The president wasn't presidential in honoring John McCain. That's precisely his strength

The recent furor over President Donald Trump’s muted response to the death of John McCain last weekend offers renewed insight into the mind of Trump, as well as evidence as to why, despite nearly universally negative coverage by the press, Trump remains as popular as ever with his base. Moreover, he’s gaining support among independents and even blacks.

Donald Trump was not elected to be presidential. America elected the real-estate tycoon/reality-TV star not because they expected the niceties, decorum, and political correctness that are the stock-in-trade of the DC establishment. He was elected to be a political neutron bomb detonated in the heart of the Swamp.

Rhetorically and stylistically, Trump is the anti-Reagan. Whereas Ronald Reagan was gracious even to his harshest critics, using a folksy humor to counter their attacks, Trump is a street-brawler with a sledge hammer who leaves no attack unanswered.

This blue-collar-billionaire style infuriates the political and Hollywood elites, but endears him to the millions of Americans in “flyover country” who are routinely mocked and dismissed by elites — which is why no scandal, real or imagined, has been able to dent his core support.

With McCain’s passing, Trump did the bare minimum to recognize the event. That’s because McCain, the epitome of the Washington establishment, loathed Trump, and the feeling was mutual.

Trump received enormous criticism for his initial response to the senator’s passing. Instead of an official statement, he merely tweeted, “My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!” Respectful, not effusive, but with the history of feuding between the two, everyone read between the lines. Trump reportedly told advisers he did not want to lavish praise on McCain because everyone would recognize it was not genuine.

After all, it was McCain who infamously and spitefully to Trump cast the deciding (and promise-breaking) vote against the Republican effort to repeal ObamaCare — an effort McCain himself campaigned on. It was also McCain who said of a 2016 Trump rally in Phoenix that Trump had “fired up the crazies.” It was in response to that jab that Trump commented about liking people who “weren’t captured.”

The fires were stoked when the White House returned its flag to full staff after only a day and a half at half-mast (as per official protocol). Enormous pressure to re-lower the flag came from Republicans, veterans groups, and even Democrats like Rep. John Lewis (who now says McCain was a “warrior for peace,” a stark reversal of his 2008 comments about then-Republican presidential nominee McCain, who Lewis claimed was fostering an “atmosphere of hate” and “hostility” like the one that led to a 1963 black church bombing by white supremacists). Soon, Trump issued a proclamation re-lowering the flag to half-staff, stating, “Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment.”

This is the essence of Trump: He heaps superlatives on his friends (or those he is trying to win over), while firing rhetorically brutal and often just plain nasty rebukes to his opponents.

This shunning of cultural norms and presidential courtesies has made him an easy target for his critics. Trump often creates public relations problems for himself with his relentless attacks when a kind word or an ignored slight would win points.

But Trump revels in the role of outcast and pariah. His supporters see every attack on him by the elites as evidence that he is their champion. And if they have to choose between a nice guy who gets steamrolled by the Left and a bare-knuckles brawler who conquers the deep state, well, that’s not even a close call.

After all, the media and Democrats have, since the nomination of Trump, lamented the “good old days” when Republicans nominated nice, respectable men like Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney (who couldn’t be more bland and inoffensive if he was a vanilla bean). Yet when these men ran for president, Democrats still accused them of being racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, rich (and for the rich) white guys.

At 72 years old, it is highly unlikely Trump will change. His relentless, bombastic, hard-charging personality made him one of the world’s richest and most famous men. It helped him dispatch 16 highly qualified candidates in the 2016 Republican presidential field. And it helped him achieve one of the most shocking upsets in American political history when he destroyed the Clinton political machine and won an election that, even on Election Day, many pundits and pollsters gave him less than a 10% chance of winning.

In the end, despite his abrasive style and often uncouth rhetoric, Trump has had a remarkable record of success in his first year and a half as president. So we can be appalled at his demeanor or we can accept him for what he is — a street fighter doing whatever it takes to restore American greatness.

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Elizabeth Warren’s latest attempt to end capitalism

Senator Elizabeth Warren likes to paint herself as a warrior for the little guy and for those that don’t have the money to hire lobbyists in Washington D.C. That may be the image she wishes to portray to the voters ahead of the 2020 election, but her actions scream Stalinist.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The agency has jurisdiction over banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, and other financial companies in the U.S. The agency is considered “off-budget” and therefore does not answer to Congress. The agency gets its funding directly from the Federal Reserve System. The only requirement of the CFPB is to appear and report twice annually before the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committee.

Current CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney appeared before the Senate Banking Committee earlier this year lambasting the fact that there is no oversight by Congress of the agency. Mulvaney stated, “while I have to be here by statute, I don’t think I have to answer your questions.” Mulvaney then went on to beg Congress to pass legislation to rein in the unaccountable agency. Mulvaney knows he will not be the director forever and does not want unelected bureaucrats having power that elected representatives can’t even check.

Make no mistake about it, the CFPB and the lack of accountability is the brainchild of Warren. It begs the question, why would a person elected to represent the people be in favor of an agency that has no oversight?

The citizens may have gotten their answer with another piece of legislation the Senator introduced earlier this month. On August 15, Warren introduced S. 3348, the Accountable Capitalism Act.

The bill is an abomination to the word capitalism. The act will create the Office of United States Corporations within the Department of Commerce. It would be the job of this office to decide what is capitalism.

One of Warren’s principal complaints about capitalism is the return on investment. Senior officials in many companies are partially compensated with stock. For this reason, if the company does well, the stock does well, thereby ensuring officials would do what is best for the company. The Senator doesn’t like this and believes it perverts the system. The bill would incentivize officials to ignore stock prices.

What the Senator is forgetting are the profits she decries are also returned to millions of teachers, firefighters, and police officers in the form of dividends into their pensions and 401Ks. In fact, over half of America’s private sector workers are invested in the stock market through retirement plans. Is Warren trying to sabotage the private retirement market with this bill?

One of the more asinine sections of the legislation would require U.S. corporations to have the purpose of “creating a general public benefit.” Unfortunately, no one can define what general public benefit means. Because there is no definition, it would mean unelected bureaucrats would have the ability to direct whether or not a corporation could form. This would put government bureaucrats in charge of the open market. If some GS-15 doesn’t believe Product A from Company B provides a good enough public benefit, it doesn’t happen. Sounds a lot like command-and-control communism.

Senator Warren is revealing who she really is. Between the CFPB and her latest Stalinesque idea, the Senator from Massachusetts is a totalitarian that wants people to have no control over themselves. She wants government bureaucrats controlling the economy and what people do with their lives. It is a good thing Sen. Warren is trying to appeal to the communist base in the Democrat Party; this gives the people plenty of time to see what she is really about: unelected bureaucrats controlling their lives.

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An excellent speech

Rapper and fashion mogul Kanye West made brand news comments about President Donald Trump on Wednesday, and the media is not going to like them it all.

During an interview with WGCI 107.5 Radio, West boldly predicted that Trump will do whatever it takes to “do the work” to be a great president for black voters.

“I know black people that voted for Trump that were scared to say out loud. Now that’s some 1984 thought-control programming shi*,” West said when asked about his support for Trump not being popular in Hollywood.

The rapper said he understands people who “would rather have a female president” and supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but added, “I just don’t agree with it.”

When asked about Trump putting illegal alien children “in cages” and separating them from their families at the U.S. border, West reminded everyone that the president was following the same immigration practices as previous administrations.

 “That was something that was happening through a lot of different president eras — but now we’re seeing it.”

West was then asked about the historic violence in Chicago, where he is from. The rapper said former President Barack Obama had eight years to do something, and never did.

He said Trump winning the election gave black Americans the opportunity “as an entire community to see things that we weren’t seeing when Obama was in office. We as a collective wasn’t woke. Now everybody is woke.”

When asked on Wednesday if he believes Trump cares about black people, West paused and then dropped a bomb:

“I feel that he cares about the way black people feel about him, and he would like for black people to like him like they did when he was cool in the rap songs and all this. And he will do the things that are necessary to make that happen because he’s got an ego like all the rest of us, and he wants to be the greatest president, and he knows that he can’t be the greatest president without the acceptance of the black community. So it’s something he’s gonna work towards, but we’re gonna have to speak to him.”

“I got a direct line to ADIDAS. I got a direct line to the President. So, let’s see what happen with it and how I apply that to the city [of Chicago], because I’m going to apply it.”

His comments on Wednesday are eerily similar to what he said in April, when he boldly stated that “Obama was in office for eight years and nothing in Chicago changed,” adding, “Obama was our opioids. It made us feel like everything was good.”

Earlier this month, he also made headlines during an interview with ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel.

When Kimmel asked about his support for the president, West stared down the liberal host and said he wasn’t going to change his opinion on something because extreme leftists tried to bully him.

“Liberals can’t bully me,” West said, noting that he is tired of leftists like Kimmel always trying to shame and pressure him every time he voices support for Trump.

West has refused to back down for showing his support for Trump, and the rapper claiming that Trump can be the greatest president for black Americans will undoubtedly trigger the liberal media.

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Trump threatens to intervene in the Justice Department: 'People are angry'

President Trump threatened Thursday night to intervene in the Justice Department if the agency fails to take action against corrupt Democrats, saying “the whole world is watching.”

Speaking at a campaign rally in Evansville, Indiana, the president told thousands of supporters that the heads of the Justice Department and FBI “have to start doing their job.” He mentioned former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who was investigated but not charged for having a private email server as secretary of State.

“Look at what she’s getting away with,” Mr. Trump said. “But let’s see if she gets away with it. Let’s see. Our Justice Department and our FBI have to start doing their job and doing it right, and doing it now. People are angry.”

He added, “At some point… I will get involved and I’ll get in there if I have to. The whole world is watching, and the whole world understands exactly what is going on.”

Mr. Trump has a running feud with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and has called on him to investigate Mrs. Clinton and others.

The president has hinted strongly that he might fire Mr. Sessions after the mid-term elections.

During the event for GOP Senate candidate Mike Braun, Mr. Trump said Democrats in Washington who are resisting his agenda “are trying to undermine the verdict of our democracy.”

“The most remarkable thing about the modern Democrat Party is how truly undemocratic they really have become,” he said. “The so-called resistance is mad because their ideas have been rejected by the American people. They’re the old and corrupt globalist ruling class that squandered trillions of dollars on foreign adventures.”

He criticized previous trade deals, saying they have led to “the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world” out of the U.S.

“What we did to our companies and our jobs, we should be ashamed of our leadership,” Mr. Trump said. “When we pledge to work over the corruption in Washington, these are the people we’re talking about. In this election, we can’t let up. We’re going to drain the swamp. We’ve replaced failed Democrat lawmakers with America-first Republicans, and it’s happening.”

The president also pledged to crack down on social media companies that he said are censoring conservative viewpoints.

“My administration is standing up for the free speech rights of all Americans,” he said. “Look at Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants. I’ve made it clear that we as a country cannot tolerate political censorship, blacklisting and rigged search results. You know it can go the other way, also. We will not let large corporations silence conservative voices. It can go the other way too someday. We’re not going let them control what we can and cannot see, read and learn from.”

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Blue-Collar Optimism Soars

The economy continues to boom as Americans see their wages rise under Trump's leadership.

A new Harris Poll finds that a whopping 85% of blue-collar workers say that their lives are headed “in the right direction.” The high optimism level may have much to do with the booming economy. The latest economic numbers indicate that the surging economy shows no signs of slowing down. On Wednesday, the Commerce Department raised its estimate for second-quarter GDP growth to 4.2%, which means that annual growth for the first half of the year now is above 3%. And with all indications pointing up, it has become increasingly likely that growth for the entire year will be at 3% or better. The country hasn’t seen a year like that since 2005.

On top of the good GDP numbers is news on median household income, which is now up more than 4%. As Investor’s Business Daily reports, “Inflation-adjusted median household incomes in July hit $62,450 according to the latest release from Sentier Research. That’s the highest level since Sentier started tracking this more than 18 years ago. And if you combine Sentier’s numbers with annual Census data, median household income is at all-time highs.”

IBD continues, “More interesting is the fact that median household income has shot up more than 4% in the 19 months since Trump took office. It had been flat over the previous year and a half. Over the course of President Obama’s entire eight years in office, median household income climbed a mere 0.3%, Sentier data show.” Is it any wonder optimism is so high?

Harris also noted that 51% of blue-collar workers believe that the country as a whole is headed in the right direction, and 80% said that they are “very optimistic” about the future. 88% believed that their children would likely attain a better future than they. Needless to say, the large swaths of the country that Hillary Clinton and Democrats maligned and ignored — and then lost in 2016 — are clearly reaping the benefits of their vote. Go ahead and try convincing them that they voted for the wrong candidate.

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

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

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More Than 100 Facebook Employees Unite To Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

If you are a conservative and use Facebook on a regular basis you have probably observed its, what some would call blatant show of BIAS in regards to conservative content.

Not long ago Facebook squashed its trending section, but before it was done away with it clearly identified a show of BIAS almost mimicking Googles actions which are now front and center, thanks to President Trump.

Regardless of the news cycle, top trending posts for the most part were liberal leaning and dominated Facebook’s trending feed. Although it was open and visually noticed by Conservative leaning news organization, conservatives and even some Democrats; Facebook denied all claims of politically motivated BIAS.

We then saw Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testify before congress on these allegations. Watch as he struggles to answer if Facebook is a ‘Neutral Public Forum.’

Now, lets fast forward to late last week. The NY Times has reported:

“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views,” Brian Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, wrote in the post, which was obtained by The New York Times. “We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.”

Since the post went up, more than 100 Facebook employees have joined Mr. Amerige to form an online group called FB’ers for Political Diversity, according to two people who viewed the group’s page and who were not authorized to speak publicly. The aim of the initiative, according to Mr. Amerige’s memo, is to create a space for ideological diversity within the company.

With over 100 Facebook employees now banding together; risking their careers to bring light to Facebook’s internal BIAS regardless of what side of the aisle you represent, this clearly identifies that significant changes need to be made.

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Mark Levin Blows The ‘Impeachment’ Narrative To Pieces In Epic Interview

Conservative talk radio host and legal expert Mark Levin blew the “impeachment” narrative to pieces on Monday, offering liberals a lesson on how the law actually works.

During an interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Levin said President Donald Trump is in “good shape” legally regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged “collusion” between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

The conservative radio host argued that liberals desperately shouting impeachment is “entirely bogus” and that it is highly unlikely to lead to the president being impeached from office.

“The president is actually in great shape when it comes to the law and when it comes to impeachment. On impeachment, all we have to do is vote and make sure the Democrats don’t win and then he won’t be impeached. There’s an idea. The president is in very good shape. You cannot impeach a president on events that occurred before he was president.”

Levin explained that there’s no legal or historical precedent for indicting the president for accusations that occurred before he took office. The conservative host also said that a decades-old court ruling may prevent Mueller from being able to release his grand jury information to the public — meaning hardly anyone would know what the final report says about the investigation.

Levin went on to rip apart main liberal talking points being spewed throughout the media.

“I’m going through what they’ve been arguing. The president cannot obstruct justice for firing a subordinate, period. Now what about this new thing they’ve come up, conspiracy to defraud an election? I would like to know, this conspiracy, exactly who did the president conspire with? Who is it? Had they been charged, have they been prosecuted? The big enchilada is that a sitting president cannot be indicted, which I’ve been saying for eighteen months, which makes all of this entirely bogus.”

In a previous interview, Levin also eviscerated leftist talking points that anything with Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney, could harm Trump in any legal way.

Last Tuesday, Cohen pleaded guilty to charges related to campaign finance laws and other fraud. The terms of his plea deal are ever-changing, but he has agreed to spend between three to five years in prison.

Levin explained to everyone why Trump is not in any legal trouble over Cohen’s plea deal.

“I want to help the law professors, the constitutional experts, the criminal defense lawyers, the former prosecutors and of course the professors and I want to help them understand what the law is. The general counsel for the Clinton mob family Lanny Davis, he had his client plead to two counts of criminality that don’t exist.”

“It is a plea bargain between a prosecutor and criminal. A criminal who doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison. That is not precedent. That applies only to that specific case. Nobody cites plea bargains for precedent. That is number one. Number two, just because a prosecutor says that somebody violated a campaign law doesn’t make it so. He is not the judge. He is not the jury. We didn’t adjudicate anything.”

Levin’s point is that if Trump directed Cohen to use his own money to pay off Daniels and McDougal — who allege they were paid as part of a nondisclosure agreement to remain quiet about alleged affairs with Trump years ago — and then Trump paid back Cohen, that is not a crime.

He also made a more than compelling argument on Monday that liberals have no case, evidence, or precedent to impeach Trump. Liberals can hate Trump all they want, but the law is not on their side, Levin argues, in terms of removing him from office.

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John McCain’s Failed Second Act

Nothing can tarnish the glory of McCain’s first act, but democratic politics is about what comes next.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s dictum about no second acts in American life is only partially true. There are second acts, but those that fail to live up to the promise of the first are far more interesting. An assessment of John McCain’s political career suggests that the Senator from Arizona squandered the immense capital of his five and a half years of bravery and integrity while a captive in Viet Nam.

McCain’s earlier career reminds one of George Armstrong Custer, another “maverick” whose reckless audacity won him plaudits during the Civil War, but ended in failure at the Little Big Horn. McCain was an indifferent student at the Naval Academy, and at times a careless pilot. During flight training he dumped a jet in Corpus Christi Bay, and while flying too low in Spain took out some power lines. At this point he seems to have been, like several Kennedys, a typical feckless scion of a storied American family whose elite connections mitigated his questionable behavior.

But McCain redeemed himself with his heroism during his captivity in Viet Nam. Regularly tortured and abused, enduring disease and solitary confinement, he turned down an offer to be released ahead of other captives who had been there longer. He ended his first act as an iconic American hero, tough in the face of brutal treatment, and committed to the very American sense of fair play that eschewed exploiting for his own gain his father’s status as head of the U.S. Pacific Command. Finally released in 1973, McCain was poised, like many other celebrated military veterans in American history, for a political career likely to end in the White House.

But McCain never quite fully realized that potential. He became a Republican Senator, but his career marked him as an elite insider who, like many of his fellow Republicans, did not understand that the old bipartisan center had been fatally wounded by the Sixties. Particularly after the two terms of George W. Bush, the Democrat Party had moved even farther left, and wasn’t interested in “bipartisanship” or “reaching across the aisle.” As Barack Obama proved, the goal now was the “fundamental transformation” of America into a form of democratic socialism, one lite on the democratic part. “Any means necessary” and the Alinsky playbook, not the Constitution, would be the guides for this project.

McCain’s Senate career before 2008 illustrated his misguided bipartisanship based on a failure to see what the Democrats had become, and how his dubious perception of “principle” carried water for the Democrat opposition. The 2002 McCain-Feingold bill banning unlimited contributions to political parties was a patent violation of the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court later ruled in its Citizens United decision, which overruled a lower court’s use of McCain-Feingold to justify censoring a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton. Perhaps worse, McCain’s outspoken opposition to waterboarding, despite its proven value in gathering intelligence, was given persuasive authority by his personal experience in Vietnam. McCain’s misguided false analogy between the sadistic, pointless torture he suffered, and the carefully controlled and calibrated practice of waterboarding to obtain life-saving information, ultimately led to the banning of this interrogation technique. Obama simply droned to death terrorists rather than interrogating them.

McCain’s failure to understand how the political sands had shifted was evident in his 2008 campaign against Obama. He campaigned as though Obama and the Democrats still embraced the postwar bipartisan consensus on how American politicians ran for office and governed. He thought that despite differences, a critical mass of Democrats still acknowledged America’s exceptionalism and essential goodness. Worse, McCain created the perception that his self-image and “principled” independence were more important than supporting the goals and beliefs of the Party that still believed in America. He never seemed to get that he was the Democrats’ favorite Republican because he often served their interests more than those of conservatives. He reveled in his “maverick” moniker, unaware that the Dems used it because to them it meant “useful idiot.”

The 2008 presidential campaign illustrated McCain’s weakness. Many of us at the time knew that Barack Obama was a one-eyed Jack, a left-wing activist who believed America was deeply flawed and guilty, and needed to do penance so it could function in the world as a “partner mindful of its own imperfections.” The public face was the specious rhetoric like “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America,” a sentiment that his serial racial demagoguery belied.

But McCain took Obama at face value, perhaps unable to look past the usual ruling-class credentials and glib rhetoric. Worse, again like too many Republicans who should have known better, McCain preemptively cringed from exploiting Obama’s sketchy and dubious past, especially his connection with his pastor of 20 years, the race-baiting Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s sermon after 9/11 about “chickens coming home to roost” and his chant of “God damn America” would have ended the career of any other politician. That it didn’t end Obama’s should have alerted McCain that he was in a different political universe than he thought he inhabited.

Instead, McCain explicitly took that damning incident off the table during his campaign. And he did so for the same reason numerous other Republicans did: they were terrified of being labeled “racist.” Thus they ceded to the progressives their dishonest racial tactics simply because as members of the elite, they feared slander from the other side. So too with his dismissal of the “birther” movement.  He was praised as a “maverick” by the Dems for criticizing the “birthers,” but the Dems never reciprocated such magnanimity and attacked their own extremists when they viciously attacked George Bush and now attack Donald Trump. The consequences of this concern for personal image and high-minded rectitude in the end contributed to this country being ruled by one of the worst presidents ever.

McCain’s second political mistake was not taking advantage of the backlash among conservative American against the Democrats’ politicization of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their demonizing of the surveillance and interrogation techniques implemented to meet the demands of the citizens––and the Democrat leadership­­–– that a terrorist attack like 9/11 never happen again. The increasing radicalism of the Democrats was apparent when George W Bush was president and treated with a level of calumny and vicious insult prefiguring the current treatment of Donald Trump.

For a moment McCain seemed to get it, making him a genuine maverick when he selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate in 2008. But he never really bonded with Palin. And when the forces Palin embodied took shape as the Tea Party movement in 2010, McCain still didn’t seem to understand the anti-Republican establishment animus that had been brewing for years. When he called Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz a “wacko-bird” in 2013, and this year in a book wrote he “regretted” choosing Palin, he cheered the hearts of Democrats. Even though the Tea Party helped Republicans take back the House, slowing Obama’s “transformation,” for McCain it seemed more important to receive praise from his fellow members of the political country club that looked with distaste on these uppity “deplorables.”

A few years later that backlash produced Donald Trump, who won the prize denied to two previous establishment Republicans. When Trump during the primaries channeled George S. Patton and dismissed McCain’s heroism because he “like[s] people who weren’t captured,” that gaffe should have ended his run. But what the political wise men didn’t understand was that for the voters, the question is always, “What have you done for us lately?” It’s the spirit of the illiterate Athenian who wanted to ostracize Aristides the Just because he was sick of hearing him called “the Just.”

It wasn’t so much that people scorned McCain’s heroism, but that they were sick of that experience being used to deflect his bad political decisions and over-fondness for accolades from his bipartisan peers, rather than pursuing policy achievements that could stop the Obama juggernaut.

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Sheriff Joe’s Comment on John McCain Will Have Every Trump Fan Cheering



I have been a great fan of Sheriff Joe for many years. He was a shining light amid the darkness of Democrat authoritarianism -- JR

Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio gave what some may call the perfect answer when asked about the late Sen. John McCain.

The Arizonan was heading into Tuesday’s primary election for the Republican nomination for a Senate seat — a primary that was won by Arpaio rival Martha McSally. He was interviewed by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt.

Following McCain’s death from brain cancer on Saturday, many political figures weighed in on McCain’s life and heroic sacrifice during the Vietnam War. In a short transcript of the Arpaio interview segment released on Twitter by Hunt, Arpaio was asked to weigh in with his thoughts, too.

His answer could arguably have had fans of President Donald Trump shouting for joy at how he handled the potential “gotcha” question. Anyone familiar with Arpaio’s outstpoken style might say his answer is also a classic Arpaio thing to say:

Kasie Hunt: “Do you think John McCain is a patriot?”

Arpaio: "Yes.”

Kasie Hunt: “A hero?”

Arpaio: “That's hard for me to answer. Because I never had a hero in my life until several months ago when I woke up after 75 years and I found my hero. You know who that person is? Donald Trump.”

Some have hailed McCain as a hero due to his military service, including a brutal stint as a prisoner of war, prior to becoming first a member of the House of Representatives and then a United States senator.

While McCain had his share of critics, given the animosity between him and Trump, it is understandable that someone like Arpaio might weigh in a little more favorably on the side of the president. The Washington Examiner wrote that “Arpaio was pardoned by Trump in August 2017 after a federal district court judge ruled that he was in criminal contempt of court for not following another judge’s order to cease traffic patrols targeting illegal immigrants.”

That could easily lead Arpaio to view Trump as a “hero,” but he is not alone in holding that viewpoint. It’s not a new reaction to Trump, and it’s not one that’s limited to the United States. Public speaker and Huffington Post UK writer Jean Gasho — a native of Zimbabwe who now lives in England — gave three reasons on her blog in 2016 why Trump was her hero:

* “As a woman who loves children, to me any man who puts the life of unborn babies first has got a good heart. I can not even fathom that people can support partial birth abortions. Donald Trump condemns this evil practice, and for that alone, he won my heart.”

* “He did one thing that no president candidate has ever done, he spoke his mind. He was just real. He did not tell people what they wanted to hear and for that he had the big media houses against him.”

* “He is not a politician. He was more of a family and businessman than politician. He has raised lovely children and he is a firm believer in the institution of marriage. For that he resonated with the people, especially the American Christians. I am not into politics  but I understood his language.”

Also in 2016, Breitbart published a letter in full from “grieving mother” and “legal German immigrant Sabine Durden (who) lost her only son Dominic in 2012 when an unlicensed, illegal alien driver hit and killed him.” In the letter, Durden noted how Trump differed from the other presidential candidates.

After years of trying to draw attention to the problem of illegal immigrant crime, the pain and frustration of feeling unheard and missing her son got to Durden, who planned to end her own life. She wrote that when she heard Trump address the issue, she began “screaming, clapping (her) hands and crying tears of joy.” She credited Trump with saving her life that day and called him her “hero.”

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

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

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Contempt for America Is Normal on the Left

Dennis Prager

The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, did Americans a favor last week. He provided that which is most indispensable to understanding anything: clarity.

“America … was never that great,” he announced. In one sentence, the governor revealed the left’s true view of America. This is rare—because leftists are masters at hiding what they really believe.

For example, the left’s low regard for nonwhites is well-hidden under a mountain of “anti-racist” rhetoric. But people who consistently advocate lowering standards for blacks obviously do not think highly of blacks, and people who believe in separate black dorms and separate black graduation ceremonies obviously believe in a pillar of racism: racial segregation.

Another generally denied—if not hidden—left-wing belief is contempt for America. On a daily basis, the left describes America as xenophobic, misogynistic, imperialist, greedy, and homophobic. And that’s on a slow day at The New York Times, MSNBC, or your local university. Just last week, a New York Times column added “barbaric” to the left’s view of America.

But for some reason, the average American does not see all this as proof of the left’s contempt for America.

So, we have to rely on the occasional unguarded and unambiguous statement to know what the left really thinks.

Michelle Obama provided such a statement when, as her husband began racking up victories in early-voting states in the 2008 primary season, she proclaimed, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.”

Hillary Clinton provided her example during the 2016 election when she described half of her fellow Americans as “deplorables.”

Then-President Barack Obama provided his example in 2015 when he spoke about racism being “part of our DNA.” Now, you might argue that he was merely stating a truth, not expressing contempt. But that argument fails for three reasons.

First, America has developed into the least racist multiracial, multiethnic country in history. Those who deny this have contempt for truth as well as for America. So much for DNA.

Second, can Barack Obama or anyone else on the left name a country or group in history that interacted with other races and was free of racism? Of course not. So, singling out America as having racist DNA is an expression of contempt for America specifically.

Third, how would Obama or anyone else on the left react to someone saying, “Islamic civilization has racism in its DNA”? They would not only emphatically deny it; they would charge whoever said it with being Islamophobic.

In other words, if one tells the truth about centuries of horrific treatment of blacks under Islamic rule, one is bigoted against Islam. But if one says America has racism in its very essence, racism that is still being passed unconsciously from one generation to the next, one is not an Ameriphobe?

And now, Cuomo tells an audience that “America … was never that great.”

Cuomo said publicly what virtually every leftist believes. No one—left, right, or center—thinks the comment was idiosyncratic. If Cuomo had said, “America was never a sports-loving nation,” everyone would have assumed this was just an odd comment representing no one but him. The reason this comment hit such a powerful chord in American life is that just about everyone suspects he was saying what all his fellow leftists believe.

After all, we all know what young people are taught from elementary school through graduate school by their left-wing teachers: America is a racist country founded by racists; Americans committed genocide against the American Indians; whites have unique privileges because of America’s “systemic” racism; in the words of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist … front to back”; police are racist—both white and black cops shoot blacks because of racism; and “American civilization” and “Western civilization” are no more than euphemisms for white supremacy.

Now, why would anyone think the left has contempt for America?

Contempt for America is so central to leftism that there would be no leftism without it. Yet there remains an even more important question: Why?

Why does the left—not liberals, who traditionally revered America—have such disdain for America? I will address this question in a future installment of this series explaining the left. America and the West cannot be saved unless those who cherish them understand what motivates those who wish to see them end.

SOURCE 

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A New NAFTA and the Art of the Deal

President Donald Trump announced a tentative trade agreement with Mexico Monday, calling it "one of the largest trade deals ever made" and "much better" than the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump was joined by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto via conference call. Nieto also chimed in that it was an "incredible deal for both parties." Is it?

As always with trade, the answer is "yes and no." There are good aspects and bad ones.

Points reached in the agreement include changes to automobile manufacturing. Each car produced would have to be 75% sourced in North America, up from 62.5%, to avoid tariffs when being transported across national borders. Also, 40-45% of each car produced must be manufactured by workers making $16 per hour or more to avoid tariffs. That helps American manufacturers, but it will raise prices for consumers. Additional updates to rules on intellectual property and labor are also part of the agreement.

The deal still must be approved by Congress and the Mexican government. Trump is eager to make this happen before the midterms, and Peña Nieto is likewise hoping to have his government approve the measure before he leaves office on Dec. 1. At this point, there don't appear to be any insurmountable political hurdles to prevent the trade agreement from becoming a reality, but never underestimate the machinations of American Democrats or Mexican Socialists like incoming President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador. And in any case, time constraints likely mean it isn't going to happen this year.

It's important to note that this is a strictly bilateral trade agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. What will become of Canada, the third member of NAFTA, is yet to be determined, though clearly Trump means to use this as leverage with our northern neighbors. Trump told reporters that negotiations with Canada would start back up immediately, and Peña Nieto voiced his hope that the U.S. and Canada would be able to come to an agreement. Chrystia Freeland, Canada's minister of foreign affairs, said separately Monday that her country was encouraged by the optimism shown by the U.S.-Mexico agreement. "Progress between Mexico and the United States is a necessary requirement for any renewed NAFTA agreement."

Trump, of course, says he's prepared to scrap NAFTA altogether, insisting that the very name has bad connotations. He has repeatedly referred to NAFTA as a historically bad trade deal for the U.S. — a "disaster" — and thus he would rather this deal be referred to simply as the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement. Moreover, Trump has signaled his comfort with cementing two separate bilateral deals with Mexico and Canada, though those two nations still hold out hope that NAFTA can be renegotiated and salvaged.

Trump's strategy is simple: The U.S.-Mexico deal puts pressure on Canada, which was sidelined while Trump pursued a divide-and-conquer approach to negotiating better deals with America's biggest trading partners.

Markets reacted favorably to the news, with major U.S.-based auto manufacturers seeing bumps in their stock price and equity markets across North America also getting a boost.

A few months ago, Democrats, business leaders, and international trade groups cried that Trump was going to wreck the world economy and crash America's economic rebound with his tariffs and his America-first approach to new trade deals. None of this has come to pass. In fact, little by little, the very nations that claimed they were prepared to engage in a trade war with the United States have started changing their tune.

Earlier this summer, the EU came to an agreement with the U.S. that will allow us to export more produce and liquid natural gas to Europe. The door was also left open to work toward a zero-tariff trade deal between the U.S. and EU.

The new deal with Mexico and the positive signs for an agreement between the U.S. and Canada suggest that Trump will continue scoring points on trade. The more victories he lines up, the stronger will be his bargaining position with tougher nations like China.

As we have said frequently, never underestimate the art of the deal.

SOURCE 

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Newt Gingrich: Democrats have no idea what demons they are unleashing

New York Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on 'The Daily Show' with Trevor Noah and stood by her polarizing label of 'democratic socialist.'

A few weeks ago, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) wrote an article for Vox explaining the movement’s goals – to end capitalism and radically change America.

In normal times, the declarations of a fringe party and ideology in America would not merit much attention. However, these are not normal times. A new Gallup poll shows that 57 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism – while only 47 percent view capitalism positively.

This pattern has been building for a while. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont took socialism mainstream in the party during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries. Since then, Democratic Party candidates have been increasingly attaching themselves to the ideology.

Most notably, a telegenic young member of the Democratic Socialists of America named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated a senior Democrat in New York City’s 14th Congressional District and has since been on a whirlwind media tour, spreading the gospel of socialism.

So the Vox article (or manifesto) is worth taking seriously. Reading it, I was struck by how remarkably honest it was.

The writer, Meagan Day, a member of the East Bay Chapter of DSA, explicitly debunks the apologists in the mainstream media trying to paper over the group’s radicalism.

Day quotes several prominent news “analysts” who argue that Democratic Socialism is just New Deal liberalism rebranded. She then dumps a bucket of cold water on them, writing that “in the long run, Democratic Socialists want to end capitalism.”

In fact, she writes that the liberal, big-government reforms the movement has chosen to rally behind in partnership with the Democratic Party are simply steppingstones to this eventual goal.

“Social democratic reforms like Medicare-for-all are, in the eyes of DSA, part of the long, uneven process of building that support, and eventually overthrowing capitalism,” she writes.

This explicit goal of ending capitalism makes clear what Ocasio-Cortez meant when she said cryptically in a recent interview, that “capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world.”

This is a clear threat to the system which has made us prosperous and the envy of the world, but I appreciate the honesty. Ultimately, the United States is a democratic republic.

If Day, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders want to try and convince most Americans to end capitalism and embrace a planned, totally redistributionist economy, they are welcome to use the democratic process to do so. It is up to those of us who know better to convince Americans of socialism’s folly.

However, the second notable item in Day’s article suggests that Democratic Socialists don’t value democracy all that much. Day also identified herself as a staff writer at a New York-based, socialist magazine called Jacobin. In fact, several members of the Democratic Socialists of America are writers and editors at Jacobin magazine.

A magazine that would enthusiastically embrace this title is signaling that, like socialist movements of the past, the DSA is willing to drop the “democratic” part of its moniker and instead rely on the traditional method for socialist revolution – bloodshed, violence and tyranny.

The Jacobins were the most violent and radical political group of the French Revolution. Led by Maximilien Robespierre, the group responded to a growing backlash against the revolution by executing anyone their so-called Committee of Public Safety deemed insufficiently loyal.

The Jacobin clubs located throughout the country were used as a secret police force to root out dissent among politicians and the general populace alike.

Historian Timothy Tackett estimates that almost 40,000 people were killed under the Jacobin control of the French government. Many were beheaded by guillotine in a grotesque public spectacle after a show trial, and others were brutally executed with firearms.

In the case of one period in the city of Lyon, people were executed en masse by cannon fire. This period of carnage was known as the Reign of Terror.

A few years ago, Callista and I saw “Dialogues of the Carmelites” at the Washington National Opera. It is a moving, true story of the Carmelite nuns who refused to denounce Christ at the peak of the Reign of Terror. (The French Revolution was virulently anti-Catholic – many churches were closed and reopened as “Temples of Reason.”)

The nuns were beheaded for their unwillingness to denounce their faith. Moments before the guillotine dropped, they displayed the power of God’s love by singing hymns and renewing their vows.

A few years later we visited the Picpus Cemetery in Paris. It holds the graves of the martyred nuns and more than 1,300 victims of the Terror in a six-week period of 1794. It is a very sober reminder of what the Jacobins did during the Reign of Terror. It is not a record for which any American should advocate.

Christopher Hibbert’s “The French Revolution” contains more vivid details of the horrors the Jacobins inflicted upon the people of France. In one instance, he writes, “a woman was charged with the heinous crime of having wept at the execution of her husband. She was condemned to sit several hours under the suspended blade which shed upon her, drop by drop, the blood of the deceased whose corpse was above her on the scaffold before she was released by death from her agony.”

Make no mistake: This is the history of violent revolution, religious oppression, and dictatorship that Jacobin magazine, the DSA, and opportunistic Democrats are embracing – whether they know it or not.

Sen. Sanders, and more have recently shared articles from Jacobin magazine on their social media accounts. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., once sent a Jacobin piece to everyone in Congress.

It is hard to imagine a modern-day Reign of Terror happening in America. But consider the recent phenomenon of outrage mobs on social media demanding people be fired and ostracized for expressing un-PC points of view.

Think about the left-wing activists taking over classrooms to prevent conservative voices from speaking. Think about the rash of people being attacked for wearing MAGA hats. Think about the violence of Antifa.

Perhaps it is not so difficult to imagine.

While I do not know Ocasio-Cortez, I have interacted with Bernie Sanders numerous times in my career. He is an earnest guy, and I seriously doubt he would countenance violence in pursuit of his socialist goals.

Sanders should keep in mind, however, that the Jacobins eventually turned on Robespierre (in fact they executed him). So perhaps Sanders and Democrats rushing to embrace Democratic Socialism should be a little more careful about the demons they are unleashing to win elections.

SOURCE 

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Walmart Age-Discriminated Against Woman Who Tried to Legally Buy Gun, Oregon Rules



Hannah Brumbles tried to buy her first firearm at Walmart in Oregon when she turned 18 and could legally exercise her Second Amendment right, but the store refused, because she wasn’t 21. On Tuesday, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries ruled that Walmart had violated Oregon’s laws against discrimination.

Now, Brumbles wants the same settlement – $130,000 – from Walmart that an Oregon baker was fined for refusing to bake a gay wedding cake, Willamette Week reports

“Hannah Brumbles, an 18-year-old Deer Island woman, filed a civil rights complaint with BOLI in April. BOLI investigators found that Walmart had violated state nondiscrimination laws and filed formal charges against the company on Aug. 21.”

Hannah’s father, Chris, says that purchasing a gun when turning 18 is a family tradition. He describes his daughter as an experienced hunter and gun-user who has taken multiple gun safety classes.

SOURCE

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

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

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Trump voters are all druggies

That's how the more extreme media outlets will headline the latest piece of research in the medical journals.  But it aint so. A bit hard to know where to begin.  I probably should start by congratulating the authors on their quite humble conclusions.  They say nothing like my headline above.  But, as Churchill said of Clement Attlee, they have much to be humble about.

They know and admit that their data is what statisticians call "ecological" (group based) but fail to mention that the correlations emerging from such data are usually much higher than what emerges in correlations using individual data.  So their results are a poor guide to what individuals do.

And the fact that they had individual data but did not use it suggests that all relationships in the individual data were negligible, meaning that there was NO tendency for Trump voters to overuse prescription opiods.  That is a highly critical interpretation but, in view of the revelations inspired by Ioannidis, that is actually a conservative conclusion.  What Ioannidis showed can be summarized simply as "Medical researchers are crooks".  Sad.  And when an opportunity to bash Trump offers itself, the temptation to cheat could well be overwhelming.

But let me be charitable and assume that all the work was honestly done and all the relevant findings were reported.  The big issue then with the research is the problem of control.  Why was there greater use of prescription opioids in counties where the voters favoured Trump? The obvious explanation would be that Trump voters are poor and are tired of being looked down on by leading Democrats, who used to represent them (See Hillary's "deplorables"). So was that examined in the present study?

They made a good attempt at it and did find that socioeconomic variables explained two thirds of the relationship between Trump-voting and prescription opioid use.  But they apparently had no data on income so they used rough proxies of it.  Much error could flow from that. Better income data might have shown that opioid use was irrelevant and all the Trump voting could have been accounted for by income.  I doubt that it was but the present research cannot exclude it.

On a technical note, they based their analysis on quintiles -- a common but disreputable technique.  Why group your data when you can use it individually?  I am afraid that the usual reason is that there is no overall relationship in the data. You can show a relationship only by throwing away three fifths of it.  Sad.

Finally, let me point out that, even if we accept their findings, there are many possible interpretations of them.  One that occurs to me is that Obamacare has made it more difficult for poor people  to get treated for their ailments (overcrowded waiting rooms, doctors not taking welfare patients, doctors quitting medicine to go and play golf rather than spend half their day on paperwork etc.) and they blame that on the architects of Obamacare -- the Democrats. So Mr Trump's talk of dumping Obamacare would be attractive

And prescription opioids are only half the story  It could be that the poor mainly use doctors to get their fix.  Because of being poor, they cannot afford to buy from street dealers.  So the Trump voters were actually more law abiding.  I think Mr Trump might like that interpretation.


Association of Chronic Opioid Use With Presidential Voting Patterns in US Counties in 2016

James S. Goodwin et al.

Abstract

Importance  The causes of the opioid epidemic are incompletely understood.

Objective:  To explore the overlap between the geographic distribution of US counties with high opioid use and the vote for the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  A cross-sectional analysis to explore the extent to which individual- and county-level demographic and economic measures explain the association of opioid use with the 2016 presidential vote at the county level, using rate of prescriptions for at least a 90-day supply of opioids in 2015. Medicare Part D enrollees (N = 3 764 361) constituting a 20% national sample were included.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  Chronic opioid use was measured by county rate of receiving a 90-day or greater supply of opioids prescribed in 2015.

Results:  Of the 3 764 361 Medicare Part D enrollees in the 20% sample, 679 314 (18.0%) were younger than 65 years, 2 283 007 (60.6%) were female, 3 053 688 (81.1%) were non-Hispanic white, 351 985 (9.3%) were non-Hispanic black, and 198 778 (5.3%) were Hispanic. In a multilevel analysis including county and enrollee, the county of residence explained 9.2% of an enrollee’s odds of receiving prolonged opioids after adjusting for individual enrollee characteristics. The correlation between a county’s Republican presidential vote and the adjusted rate of Medicare Part D recipients receiving prescriptions for prolonged opioid use was 0.42 (P < .001). In the 693 counties with adjusted rates of opioid prescription significantly higher than the mean county rate, the mean (SE) Republican presidential vote was 59.96% (1.73%), vs 38.67% (1.15%) in the 638 counties with significantly lower rates. Adjusting for county-level socioeconomic measures in linear regression models explained approximately two-thirds of the association of opioid rates and presidential voting rates.

Conclusions and Relevance:  Support for the Republican candidate in the 2016 election is a marker for physical conditions, economic circumstances, and cultural forces associated with opioid use. The commonly used socioeconomic indicators do not totally capture all of those forces.

Source (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.0450)

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Trump and Mexican President Announce New Trade Deal to Replace NAFTA

Evidence that Trump's use of tariffs is just a tool to achieve fairer terms for American workers.  The tariffs were not intended to be permanent

President Donald Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced on Monday that they had reached an “understanding” to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In an Oval Office announcement, which included Peña Nieto on speaker phone, Trump told reporters that the U.S. and Mexico are putting the finishing touches on will be “one of the largest trade deals ever made.”

“It’s a big day for trade. It’s a big day for our country,” the president said. “I’ll be terminating the existing deal and going into this deal.”

“They use to call it NAFTA,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re going to call it the United States-Mexico trade agreement. We’ll get rid of the name NAFTA. It has a bad connotation because the United States was treated very very badly for NAFTA.”

Mexico is the United States’ third largest trading partner behind China and Canada. Through June of this year, U.S. exports to Mexico totaled $131.3 billion and imports were $169.3 billion or a deficit of $38 billion.

SOURCE

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Illegal Obamacare Fees Trigger $839M Reimbursement to Several States

King Obama thought he could ignore the law

The Internal Revenue Service must repay more than $839 million to six states because of an Obama-era Health and Human Services Department requirement, a federal court ruled.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern Division of Texas said the requirement unlawfully imposed a costly fee on state Medicaid programs.

In October 2015, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a multistate lawsuit against the federal government over the Obama-era regulation that “threatened to choke off Medicaid funds for the health needs of millions of Texas citizens unless Texas taxpayers paid a portion of the Health Insurance Providers Fee to help fund Obamacare.”

The states of Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska and Wisconsin joined Texas in suing the federal government, HHS and its acting secretary, Alex Azar, the IRS and its acting commissioner, David Kautter, alleging that they violated the Affordable Care Act by requiring that state governments pay a Health Insurance Providers Fee.

Notwithstanding Congress’s exemption of the states in the ACA, HHS enacted a regulation (the ‘Certification Rule’) that empowered a private actuarial board to require Plaintiffs to account for the HIPF in payments to their respective managed care organizations (‘MCOs’)– the medical providers who contract with Plaintiffs to service their Medicaid recipients,” the plaintiffs argued. “Plaintiffs’ amended complaint challenged the legality and constitutionality of both the HIPF and the Certification Rule.”

Plaintiffs requested 13 types of relief and financial recompense.

After a series of rulings and hearings, denied requests and appeals, the plaintiffs asked the court to reconsider four aspects of the case, including whether the HIPF was considered a tax or a fee. This week, the court ruled in favor of the states, in part, by ordering the IRS to repay the HIPF money it collected.

“Obamacare is unconstitutional, plain and simple,” Attorney General Paxton, who led the coalition, said. “We all know that the feds cannot tax the states, and we’re proud to return this illegally collected money to the people of Texas.”

Texas stands to be repaid $304,730,608.

The IRS was ordered to repay Indiana $94,801,483, Kansas $142,121,776, Louisiana $172,493,095, Wisconsin $88,938,850 and Nebraska $36,238,918.

“Obamacare has always been an economic house of cards, and this ruling has again exposed it for what it is: a money laundering scheme,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said. “This is a prime example of the deep administrative state doing something that Congress expressly forbids.”

Even though the ACA forbids imposing the HIPF, Landry said “the federal government found a way to do it anyway. The government threat to disapprove our managed care plans risked the loss of those Medicaid funds.”

The ruling protects the state from having to paying any such fees in the future, Landry said. Once the IRS returns the money to Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards “should return any net dollars directly to the hard-working Louisianans who were forced to pay these costs,” he added.

Texas and Wisconsin will argue at a hearing on Sept. 5 that Obamacare, as amended by the recent tax bill, is unconstitutional in its entirety.

SOURCE

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Bald faced hypocrisy: Before McCain Was Their Hero Fighting Trump, Media Called Him Unhinged Racist

You can tell a lot about the weather by looking at what the wind is doing — and you can learn a lot about politics by noticing how narratives change over time.

The political winds have shifted a lot when it comes to the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, particularly from the liberal media. McCain, of course, died on Saturday after battling with brain cancer.

Tributes and acknowledgements poured in from across the political spectrum, with mourners ranging from George W. Bush to Barack Obama offering kind words about the long-serving senator and military veteran.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with being civil when a man like McCain passes, even in light of the objections many differences have had with him in the past.

Somewhat surprisingly, the left also took the opportunity to put the former Republican presidential candidate on a pedestal … but the way the same liberals attacked him just a few years ago is an eye-opening example of how narratives work.

When you compare how left-leaning outlets spoke of McCain after his death versus when he was alive, it’s hard to think of a more dramatic 180-degree reversal in tone.

There seems to be one common theme: The same outlets that savaged the senator a decade ago are now singing his praises now that they can use his passing to take shots at President Donald Trump.

That’s exactly what several pundits including independent journalist Mike Cernovich pointed out on Twitter. A series of screenshots demonstrate how eagerly outlets like The Huffington Post trashed and slandered McCain when he was a leading Republican, only to seemingly develop bipolar disorder the moment he died.

“They all hated McCain, now they use his death to attack Trump. It’s a bunch of lies,” Cernovich wrote. He backed that opinion up with a series of tweets from Cher, the celebrity singer and outspoken leftist.

Cher — while not noted for her towering intelligence — called McCain a “teabagger” and implied that he was Nero in 2013. She also suggested that he was some sort of hell-bent demon, declaring “SULFUR FOLLOWS HIM WHEREVER HE GOES!”

Fast forward to this week. Suddenly, the same Cher was defending McCain and scolding President Donald Trump for not commenting on the senator’s then-impending death. It seems the singer had suddenly found a soft spot for the “teabagger” the moment he could be used against Trump.

Then there’s The Huffington Post.

“Compare what the media is saying about McCain to what they said – in 2008 – when it actually mattered,” pointed out Cernovich. “Today oh they love the guy, but when he was running for POTUS, they called him a Nazi, racist, white supremacist, and mentally unfit for office.”

Other commentators made similar points, providing numerous screenshots of articles then and now to show the contrast.

SOURCE

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New book about ancient Europe

Language can tell you a lot

Introducing Dr John V. Day’s The Alphabet Code, a new book about ancient Europe.



Why, for more than a century now, have academics treated ancient Europeans as culturally backward?

According to academia, the only civilizations to invent writing were in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, east Asia and Central America. In other words, not in Europe.

And according to academia, the only civilizations to invent numerals were in the same places, plus the Andes. So, again, not in Europe.

As for our own alphabet, academics maintain that it was invented either in the Near East or in Egypt, and that our so-called Arabic numerals were invented in India.

But now a new book by a recognized prehistorian restores the cultural worth of ancient Europe. John V. Day, Ph.D., acclaimed author of Indo-European Origins: The Anthropological Evidence, spent more than ten years researching and writing The Alphabet Code.

His book proves that Indo-Europeans living in prehistoric Europe invented the forerunner of the Greek alphabet and also the forerunner of our numerals. The Alphabet Code even identifies several parallels between the numerals and the early part of the alphabet, implying that our numerals and letters once coincided.

For example, Indo-Europeans used the word kap to denote a hand. Hence kap gave rise to Latin captāre, to grasp; Greek kaptō, to snatch; Albanian kap, to grab; Hittite kappuwa-, to count; and Persian kp-, to hit. Normal humans being endowed with ten fingers, many languages have related words for hand and ten (or five). That’s why Indo-European kap also gave rise to Greek kappa, the alphabet’s tenth letter.

Indo-Europeans used another word for a hand in deḱ. Hence deḱ gave rise to Latin index, a forefinger; Greek dekomai, to take; Greek dektēr, a collector; Greek deksia, the right hand; and Tocharian B täk-, to fetch and to touch. Humans having ten fingers, Indo-European deḱ also gave rise to Cornish dec, Latin decem and Greek deka, all meaning ten, the tenth number. And note the similarity in form between the Greek alphabet’s kappa, Κ, and the Roman numeral for ten, X.

*  Covering from Α to Ω (or alpha to omega), The Alphabet Code is the only book that offers a true picture of what each letter means.

*  Covering from 0 to X (Roman ten), The Alphabet Code is the only book that offers a true picture of what each numeral means.                           

*  The Alphabet Code is easy to read and contains over fifty illustrations.

*  Yet it’s scholarly too, the endnotes running to nearly 900 references.

Available now as an e-book for Kindle. Buy The Alphabet Code for only $3.95 from www.amazon.com

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

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

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The Left are different

A reader named Kevin Johnson opines:

"Saying “the Left is a violent mob” is kind of like saying “the Right are all fascists.” It’s asinine virtue-signalling. How Americans fool themselves into believing they have actual alternatives in the GOP and DNC, I will never understand.

Keep on drinkin’ that establishment kool-aid and everything will turn out fine!"

This is a rhetorical game played by Leftists of the Left and by Leftists of the Alt-Right alike, wherein two opposite things are said to be equal. It appeals to the natural egalitarianism in fallen man, all of whom fall short of the glory of God, to assume that not only are venal versus mortal sins somehow equal, but that virtue and vice are somehow equal.

False equivalence is a game because it is not serious. It is not a philosophical nor political stance: it it is a mouth-noise, what we call phatic speech, merely intended to signal the virtue of the utterer by lifting him above the fray, as he judiciously pronounces a curse on both our houses. Like saying that the Jews are equally at fault as the Germans for the Holocaust, on closer inspection, one can easily see which side of the issue is elevated by the comparison, and which is undermined. The comment by Mr. Johnson is not meant to bring the Right up to share in the high moral ground of the Left: it is to silence any criticism of the Left and its perennial violent mob mentality.

Saying “the Left is a violent mob” is exactly like saying “the Right are all fascists”, except for the tiny niggling detail that one statement is true as Gospel and the other false as Hell.

Let us see if we can see which is which, shall we?

Here is an article from the Origonian concerning a Bernie voter who brought an American flag to an Anti-Fascist protest rally, and was duly beaten in the head by a baseball bat by Antifas. For those of you not keeping score, both Antifas and Bernie voters are Leftwing.

Paul Welch came to the downtown protest Aug. 4 to let his political leanings be known.

With pride he clutched his U.S. flag as he moved among the crowd of like-thinking demonstrators.

Soon a group of black-clad anti-fascist protesters, also known as antifa, demanded he lose the flag, calling it a fascist symbol. Welch refused, and a tug-of-war ensued.

It ended with Welch taking a club to the back of the head, lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood.

Only Welch was not a Proud Boy, a Patriot Prayer supporter or among the other conservative activists who descended into the area that day, many from out of town.

He was one of hundreds of progressive Portlanders who had turned out to oppose the right-wing rally held at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

So do I need to make a comment here?

I hope readers are aware of the riots that took place on college campuses when speakers on the right were threatened and assaulted by the violent mob of the left. A full list would be wearisome indeed. Here are a few:

Ben Shapiro escorted by police from CSULA due to angry protesters
February 25, 2016

Protesters at Claremont McKenna College distrupted a speech by author Heather MacDonald
April 6, 2017

Student protesters confront author Charles Murray at Middlebury College
March 2, 2017

“The three of us got to the car, with the security guards keeping protesters away while we closed and locked the doors. Then we found that the evening wasn’t over. So many protesters surrounded the car, banging on the sides and the windows and rocking the car, climbing onto the hood, that Bill had to inch forward lest he run over them”

Protest at University of Chicago over Corey Lewandowski
February 15, 2017

A group of masked protesters at the University of Chicago tried to stop Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager, from speaking.

Protests at UC Berkeley over Milo Yiannopoulos
February 1, 2017

A planned talk at the University of California-Berkeley by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos was canceled Wednesday evening after protesters threw smoke bombs and flares at the student union building where he was scheduled to speak. Violent left-wing protesters stormed the building and forced Yiannopoulos to be evacuated by police.

Man shot during protest of Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of Washington
January 20, 2017

A 32-year old man was shot while he was protesting a campus event featuring commentator Milo Yiannopoulos. Please note that this was one Leftist anti-free-speech protester shot by two other Leftist anti-free-speech protesters.

Mob at UC Davis forced the school to cancel a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos
January 13, 2017

And I have not even listed the times Ann Coulter has been forced from the podium by Leftist mobs.

I invite anyone reading these words to list the time the Right has formed a mob and forced a campus speaker from the podium?

What about a Rightwing mob silencing someone else, not on campus? In some other venue perhaps?

What about a Rightwing mob of any sort? The last mass protests on the Right of which I have any knowledge were the Tea Party, who routinely left the areas of their protests cleaner than when they came.

Ah! But there was that one Alt-Right guy who ran over an innocent woman in Charlottesville. Well first, Alt-Right means Alternative to the Right, that is, in other words, not the Right. They are a White Identity Politics groups, sort of like ‘White Lives Matter.’ They are collectivist socialists held in contempt by conservatives, who also hold conservatives in contempt. Second, it often goes unremarked that the driver was being chased by Antifas thugs with baseball bats, trying to maim or kill him, and he accelerated his car recklessly trying to get away.

I found a convenient list of some of the recent violence, both moblike and individual. Forgive me if it repeats certain items:

June 2016:

– Protesters jumped on cars, stole hats, fought with and threw eggs at Trump supporters outside a Trump rally in downtown San Jose, Calif. Trump supporters sued San Jose over the violence.

July 2016:

-A Hillary Clinton supporter lights a flag on fire and attacks a Trump supporter in Pittsburgh.

August 2016:

-Anti-Trump protesters attacked pushed, spit on and verbally harassed attendees forced to walk a “gauntlet” as they left a Trump fundraiser in Minneapolis, Minn., and beat an elderly man. Protesters also attacked Trump’s motorcade.

–A Tennessee man was assaulted at a garage sale for being a Trump supporter.

-A Trump supporter in New Jersey was attacked with a crowbar on the street.

September 2016:

-Protesters in El Cajon, Calif., chased and beat up a Trump supporter.

October 2016:

-A GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed and spray painted with “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else.”

November 2016:

-A high school student was attacked after she wrote that she supported Trump on social media. The perpetrator ripped her glasses off and punched her in the face.

-The president of Cornell University’s College Republicans was assaulted the night after Trump won the election.

-Students protesting Trump punched and kicked a Maryland high school student wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

-A high school student was arrested in Florida after he punched a classmate for carrying a Trump sign at school.

-A group of black men in Chicago attacked a white man while raging against Trump.

-Maryland high school students punched a student who was demonstrating in support of Trump, and then kicked him repeatedly while he was on the ground.

-“You support Trump. You hate Mexicans,” a California high school student yelled at a Trump supporter, before viciously beating the girl.

-An anti-bullying ambassador was arrested for shoving a 74-year-old man to the ground in a fight outside Trump tower where people upset over his win had gathered. The woman tied to Black Lives Matter caused the man to hit his head on the sidewalk.

-A Texas elementary school student was beaten by his classmates for voting for Trump in a mock election.

-Two men punched and kicked a Connecticut man who was standing with an American flag and a Trump sign.

December 2016:

-A Trump supporter was beaten and dragged by a car.

January 2017:

-A Trump supporter was knocked unconscious after airport protesters repeatedly beat him on the head.

-A Trump supporter was attacked after putting out a fire started by anti-Trump protesters.

-When Trump protesters encountered a driver with a pro-Trump flag on his car, they surrounded the vehicle, ripped off and began burning the flag, and pounded the car. They also punctured the tires.

February 2017:

-California GOP Rep. Tom McClintock had to be escorted to his car after a town hall because of angry protesters. The tires of at least four vehicles were slashed.

-Protestors knocked a 71-year-old female staffer for California GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher unconscious during a protest outside the representative’s office.

-Milo Yiannopoulos speech at the University of California-Berkeley was cancelled after rioters set the campus on fire and threw rocks through windows. Milo tweeted that one of his supporters wearing a Trump hat was thrown to the ground and kicked.

March 2017:

-Masked protesters at Middlebury College rushed AEI scholar and political scientist Charles Murray and professor Allison Stranger, pushing and shoving Murray and grabbing Stranger by her hair and twisting her neck as they were leaving a campus building. Stranger suffered a concussion. Protesters then surrounded the car they got into, rocking it back and forth and jumping on the hood.

April 2017:

-A parade in Portland, Ore.,was canceled after threats of violence were made against a Republican organization.

-Fears of violent protests shut down Ann Coulter’s UC Berkeley speech. Campus police had gathered intel on protesters who were planning to commit violence.

May 2017:

– Republican Rep. Tom Garrett, his family and his dog were targeted by a series of repeated death threats deemed credible by authorities.

-FBI agents arrested a person for threatening to shoot Republican Rep. Martha McSally over her support for Trump.

-Police in Tennessee charged a woman for allegedly trying to run Republican Rep. David Kustoff off the road.

-Police in North Dakota ejected a man after he became physical with Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer at a town hall.

-A former professor was arrested after police said they identified him on video beating Trump supporters with a U-shaped bike lock, leaving three people with “significant injuries.”

June 2017:

-James Hodgkinson opened fire on a congressional GOP baseball practice, injuring five, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.

-Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney received an email threat that read, “One down, 216 to go,” shortly after the shooting at the Republican congressional baseball practice.

-A man driving a white Malibu reportedly fired several shots at a man driving a truck displaying a “Make America Great Again” flag in Indiana.

So tell me again, please, why exactly it is unfair or absurd to accuse the Left of a moblike, violent essence to its political worldview? Are all these listed events exceptions? All of them?

Where is the equal list of Rightwing fascist enormities? Produce it. Show me.

The midterms are coming up. I do not care how much Trump offends your personal sensibilities with his rough humor and his Yankee incivility, his adulteries and private sins. The choice is between him, a fighter willing and able to defeat the CNN-DNC incestuous agitprop machine, and the barbarians serving the dark gods of chaos and anarchy.

SOURCE

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More Marxism

I have just put up on my Marx blog a new collection of "wisdom" from leading Marxists.  It makes clear that Leftist violence is thoroughy intentional and central to Leftism.  It is not at all the work of a radical "fringe" or "incidental" in some way.

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Socialism:  A reminder



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Dem Rep Says Trump “Doesn’t Need To Commit A Crime” To Be Impeached

Democrats will never let something as inconvenient as the Constitution get in their way when it comes to avenging Hillary by impeaching President Trump.



None have been more unhinged and relentless in their efforts to nullify the votes of 63 million Americans than the members of the self-segregating Congressional Black Caucus and especially Rep. Al Green of Texas.

Aside from possibly being the ugliest member of Congress, Green has been an absolute fanatic about leading the lynch mob and despite multiple failed efforts, is feeling that the brouhaha over stool pigeon Michael Cohen is going to be the key to finally stick it to Trump.

There is the matter that nothing that the president has done is even remotely the “high crimes and misdemeanors” specified in our governing document but that won’t deter Green and others who believe that impeachment is a tool to get rid of someone that they just don’t like regardless of what the Constitution specifies.

Congressman Green made his case in an interview with far-left host Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now” on Thursday when he dismissed the idea that Trump had to have actually committed a crime to be impeached.

SOURCE

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

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

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Russophobia

We have heard of Islamophobia and homophobia but those are not phobias.  They are not indicative of mental illness. But Russophobia seems to be.  The Left and to some extent the Right never stop talking about the Russian "danger" when Russia is absolutely no danger to the United States.  NOBODY in his right mind attacks a major nuclear power.  Even the Soviets did not do that. Yet in both Congress and in the media there is this obsession with Russia. Such an obsession does appear to me to identify Russophobia as a true phobia.

Let Vladimir Vladimirovich detail some of that irrationlity.  The video below starts with a long-winded "question" from an American woman in which she asks why Vladimir Vladimirovich does not speak more warmly of the USA.  After a couple of minutes of that we hear from Vladimir Vladimirovich.



The hook on which American commentators hang their hostility to Russia is his acceptance of the request from the democratically elected Crimean parliament for Crimea to become part of Russia.  Since Crimea is and always has been populated overwhelmingly by Russians, that made perfect sense.

It is customary among Russia's critics to criticize the elections for the Crimean parliament but all sorts of international observers were present -- including the ineffable Jimmy Carter -- and found no significant irregularities.  There are probably more irregularities in American elections -- with illegals voting.

Crimea became a problem in the aftermath of the Soviet implosion.  Hastily drawn lines were put on the map which did not always take proper account of the ethnicity of the people affected.  So adjustments were inevitable.

How would Americans feel if in the aftermath of some political problem, Florida were hived off and assigned to be part of Mexico?  That was exactly the sort of problem that Russia faced in Crimea and in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Vladimir Vladimirovich simply legalized a people's movement and won wide praise for it in Russia.

Particularly during the reign of King Obama, many conservatives liked a lot of what they heard about post-Soviet Russia.  Russians generally are intolerant of political correctness and that is reflected in the policies of their government.  It is certainly refreshing that Russians don't idolize sexual abnormality. Fortunately Mr Trump has come along to bring also to America critical thinking on many issues of political correctness.

Russia is a great country -- the largest country on earth by a long chalk.  And it has a vivid cultural life that we all to some extent can enjoy.  Below are two songs that are very popular in Russia,  Both are simple sentimental songs -- nothing warlike or aggressive about them

The first (Cranes) is sung by Dmitry Hvorostovsky, an excellent bass baritone who seems to be little known in the West. Spelling his name could be the problem! In the second Hvorostovsky combines with renowned Russian soprano Anna Netrebko to act out "Moscow nights".  Netrebko is a rather shy person when she is not belting out one of the great operatic arias and Hvorostovsky brought that out at the beginning by saying she was the girl he wanted.





Look at the audience.  They could be Americans if we did not know otherwise.  All Northern European peoples are essentially identical genetically. Any differences are tiny. Almost all differences are cultural.  Russians too are our people. They are not our enemies.

Finally, I am putting up a video of "Volga Boatmen" sung by the magnificent Russian bass Leonid Kharitonov.  Again there is  nothing aggressive about it.  It is basically a very simple sea shanty.  It does however remind us of the strength of Russia.  It basically tells of determination and endurance, essential Russian qualities, and Kharitonov conveys that very well



So that is my toe-dip into Russian culture -- in the hope that it may make some tiny contribution to friendly relations with a great country and a great people.

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Tiny bridge at the centre of the Venezuelan refugee crisis

Crossing the Rio Táchira river in the eastern Andes, the Simón Bolívar International Bridge is being clogged daily with thousands of refugees, who say they will die if they stay in their motherland.

They are trying to flee from Venezuela — a country which has essentially ground to a standstill as murderous gangs roams the streets and devastating food and medical shortages leave millions of residents fighting to survive.

To make matters even worse, the country has just been hit by its most powerful earthquake in more than a century.

The bridge connects the embattled socialist nation with relatively stable Colombia and the differences between the two towns on either side are stark.

Residents in Villa del Rosario in Colombia sometimes used to cross over to San Antonio del Táchira on the other side to visit shops and friends, but now the traffic is all one-way — as millions of Venezuelans clamour to escape their homeland which has descended into an economic basket case.

President Nicolás Maduro blames the country’s woes on “imperialists” in the United States and Europe for waging “economic war”. However, critics say it’s a simple case of economic mismanagement.

The United Nations says more than 2.3 million Venezuelans have already fled the country. That’s more than 7 per cent of the country’s entire population — making it one of the largest mass migrations in Latin America’s history.

More than a million of those desperate refugees have arrived in Colombia in the past 18 months and many of them have resorted to using the tiny Simón Bolívar International Bridge as their escape route.

Some of those passing through the clogged checkpoint, left warnings on Google reviews — saying the bridge has become “overwhelming, hot and hellish” in recent months as tens of thousands of refugees flee.

Many said to avoid it all costs as border guards struggle to contend with the constant exodus of poverty-stricken refugees, however some crossing the border were sympathetic with the overworked staff.

“Here even border guards looked compassionate and kind,” said one traveller who recently crossed the bridge “Must be tough having such spectacle under your very eyes every day.”

Many of those escaping are using Colombia as a bridge to Ecuador and Peru, where some believe they will have better luck finding jobs and applying for asylum.

More than a half million Venezuelans have entered Ecuador since January, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency. In Peru, officials recorded more than 5000 Venezuelan entries on a recent single day.

Now, both countries have announced dramatic rule changes which could see thousands of refugees stranded. Both revealed they would allow entry only to people with valid passports.

Venezuelans were previously able to enter using only paper ID cards. About half of those who have made the journey so far didn’t have passports.

But obtaining a passport in Venezuela is close to impossible. The country is struggling with shortages of paper and ink — so hardly any passports are printed, let alone issued.

The situation is becoming increasingly dire in the poverty-stricken country which — despite having the largest proven oil reserves in the world — has millions of residents dying from a lack of medicine.

Four in five Venezuelans now live in poverty and millions have to queue for hours every day to get their hands on basic food rations as inflation reaches terrifying levels.

Inflation now sits at 82,766 per cent — similar to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s — and experts fear it could exceed 1 million per cent by the end of this year.

The new border rules drew an immediate rebuke from authorities in Colombia.

Though his own country already imposed its own often ignored entry requirements for Venezuelans, Colombia Migration Director Christian Kruger warned that the new passport rule in neighbouring Ecuador could create a bottleneck at the Rumichaca International Bridge connecting the two countries.

Officials estimate over 4000 Venezuelans crossed from Colombia into Ecuador each day over the bridge earlier this month.

“We are immensely worried about the consequences this might present,” he said. “The exodus of Venezuelans from the country is one of Latin America’s largest mass-population movements in history,” William Spindler, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said earlier this month.

Colombia began requiring Venezuelans to present a passport or border card allowing for short trips into the nation earlier this year. But thousands still sneak in through hundreds of illegal entry points along the 2200km border with Venezuela.

Colombian officials recently agreed to provide legal status to 442,000 who participated in a registry for migrants without valid documents.

A border crossing from Venezuela into the Brazilian city of Pacaraima was closed earlier this month after a judge ruled it should be shuttered until a program to relocate Venezuelan refugees could keep pace with the hundreds arriving each day.

That decision was later reversed by an appellate court. Peruvian Interior Minister Mauro Medina said the passport requirement was needed to ensure an orderly migration.

“If something happens to them, we have a way to identify them,” he said. “Also, some bad apples — who don’t represent the majority, who are decent people — filter in and police should have the adequate tools to identify them.”

Peruvian migration officials estimate between 17,000 and 25,000 Venezuelans are now in southern Ecuador with the intention of heading on to Peru, Chile or Argentina. They will have until August 25 to enter without a passport.

Mr Kruger said the new passport rule is unlikely to stem the tide of migrants and called on Ecuador and other nations to work together on dealing with the crisis in crafting commonsense policies.

“Requiring a passport isn’t going to stop this migration,” Mr Kruger said. “This isn’t a migration of people leaving their country just because they want to. They’re leaving because they need to.”

SOURCE

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The latest Leftist attempt to destroy America

Some top Democrats running in Texas are calling for the decriminalization of illegally crossing the United States border.

Rep. Robert O’Rourke who is running against incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate, declared that illegal entry should not be a criminal matter, while he was campaigning in southern Texas:

“These asylum seekers — penniless, at wit’s end, after surviving three weeks on the road, very often with their children — then attempt to do what I think any human would do, which is request asylum in between the ports of entry,”

“We should not criminalize that.” O’Rourke stated.

Cruz’s seat is solidly red, however that fact does not deter comical publicity stunts like this one. It is safe to make the educated assumption that this message does not coincide with the vast majority of Texans, however the race has gotten interesting.

Recent polling numbers suggest the race it tighter than Cruz would like which may be a significant result of the national attention and monies being spent on the O’Rourke campaign. The campaign has raked in $23.3 million based on recent reports.

Some other Democratic candidates identified similar feelings while on the campaign trail last weekend.

Veronica Escobar, who is running to fill O’Rourke’s seat said: “The United States has built a system on incarcerating migrants, we really have to evaluate the way that we’ve criminalized migration.” “When we treat asylum-seekers like criminals, the next step is we have to jail them, we have to incarcerate them,” Escobar continued. “It’s incredibly costly.”

Former U.S. Customs agent and Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez, used her experience to argue that illegal immigrants are not a public threat. “The majority of people are not coming in to do harm,” she said said. “We still have to have some kind of checking and verifying, but I don’t think coming in here undocumented should be a criminal issue.”

SOURCE

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Arizona governor must pick a Republican to replace McCain under Arizona rules

Can we hope for Sheriff Joe?  He is very popular

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey will make the appointment that will fill the seat of Sen. John McCain, who died Saturday after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

Under state law the replacement must be of the same party as Mr. McCain, a Republican, according to election experts. That ensures the GOP will maintain control of the Senate — though given Mr. Ducey is a Republican as well, that was likely anyway.

Because the vacancy happened so late in the year, Mr. Ducey’s replacement will serve through the end of 2020, and the seat will next be on the ballot in November of that year. The winner would then serve out the final two years of the term Mr. McCain won in 2016 — his sixth.

Mr. Ducey’s decision could be tricky. Arizona’s other Senate seat, currently held by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, is up for election this year and the party primaries are on Tuesday. That race has turned into a bruising battle with an establishment-backed candidate in Rep. Martha McSally and two candidates from the right wing, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former state lawmaker Kelli Ward.

The conservatives are splitting the vote and Ms. McSally seems headed for a comfortable victory — but Mr. Ducey may face pressure from some corners of his state to name one of the others to fill Mr. McCain’s seat.

SOURCE

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Stadium Fever Makes Taxpayers Delusional

Attention, Sports Fans: That new stadium your city is talking about is likely costing you far more than you realize. In an op-ed at Forbes, Independent Institute Research Fellow Art Carden discusses the latest evidence: a study published last month in Economic Inquiry by two academic economists who studied hotel occupancy data from Charlotte, North Carolina, to determine the financial impact of various political and sporting events.

“Back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations show incremental hotel‐tax receipts fall short of the debt service incurred in constructing and maintaining the city's sports venues,” write the economists, Craig A. Depken of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and E. Frank Stephenson of Berry College.

One extra cost that the public often ignores regarding public stadiums is extra policing, whether for a sports game or a political convention. Plus, the public often falls prey to the propaganda of developers and other special interests. “When construction starts on a new stadium or convention center, local leaders congratulate themselves like they’ve won some kind of great economic victory,” Carden writes. “They haven’t. They’ve simply fleeced the taxpayers for the benefit of construction companies, team owners, and other special interests by saddling them with white elephants for which they’ll pay for decades.”

SOURCE

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

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

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