Sleepless in Midland

Left commands the language -- movie The Hunt suddenly became satire

News watchers are no doubt familiar with the movie, "The Hunt," which is supposed to depict progressives hunting conservatives to the death. The movie has been shelved, at least for now, due to the outcry from people who could easily have been among the victims of the progressive hunters.

But one noteworthy aspect of this fiasco is how the movie became portrayed in the msm after the outcry. They abruptly transformed the movie's genre to "satire."

Wait a sec. Can we really call a violent, humorless movie "satire?"

It's been true for a long time. The left has full command of the words and phrases that get accepted in the mainstream to describe themselves and their opponents. Getting the word "satire" injected in any description of "The Hunt" is just one more example.

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1:24 PM 8/14/2019

Joe Biden prefers his truth over facts

It's been widely reported that the other day Joe Biden said, "we choose truth over facts."

It seems to many of us that Democrats define "truth" as something that trends in the mainstream media even when the facts contradict. A good example is the shooting death of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson a few years ago. There was the narrative told by Brown's partner in crime. And it varied drastically from the facts of what actually happened according to witnesses. But the false narrative prevailed.

So Biden may have actually been stating a fact when he said he favors truth over facts. He was talking about his truth which he expected to prevail over contradictory facts.

Sorry Joe. Maybe your audience wants your version of truth, but the rest of us prefer the facts.

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1:46 PM 8/11/2019

Quote of the week from Dennis Prager promising only nine commandments to placate Google

Whatever benefits Google gets from favoring Democrats must be significant, because it's no longer a secret that Google has been actively favoring them by restricting the spread of conservative viewpoints.

Here's the quote of the week in response to a Google rep claiming they blocked Prager's video “The Ten Commandments: What You Should Know” because it contained the word "murder."

As he did not appear to be joking, I assured the Senate committee that we would release a Google-friendly video, “The Nine Commandments.”

Here's the full paragraph to put it into context.

The only restricted video for which Google has offered an explanation is “The Ten Commandments: What You Should Know,” a video I made. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz asked the Google representative at the hearing what could land a video about the Ten Commandments on the restricted list. The representative responded that the video referred to “murder.” As he did not appear to be joking, I assured the Senate committee that we would release a Google-friendly video, “The Nine Commandments.”

See Don’t Let Google Get Away With Censorship to read the whole article.

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1:50 PM 8/9/2019

Quote of the week from Holman Jenkins -- anybody with Trump's enemies couldn't be all bad

This quote is from Trump: A Brawler for Democracy:

A large part of the electorate so thoroughly defected from the authority of the established media and related elites that it thought anybody with Mr. Trump's enemies couldn't be all bad.

Here's more from Mr. Jenkin's article to provide some context:

As this column judged early and often, nobody needed to instruct Vladimir Putin's trolls to promote the Trump boomlet once it emerged in 2015. It was exactly the kind of democratic unseemliness the Kremlin's troublemakers exist to exploit. Whatever Russia's effect, it was trivial in the end. It did not conjure 63 million votes for Mr. Trump-votes that came to him despite an onslaught of innuendo, vilification and authentically disgraceful material covering every aspect of his life, from his sex habits to his racial attitudes, to his business practices and even his alleged eagerness to commit treason with Russia.

The real lesson is the one many continue to ignore: A large part of the electorate so thoroughly defected from the authority of the established media and related elites that it thought anybody with Mr. Trump's enemies couldn't be all bad.

Yeah. That's sounds about right.

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1:53 PM 7/28/2019

Modern politics is like professional wrestling used to be -- good guys vs villains

I started writing a blog post a couple of years ago titled "Dems search for boogie men and scapegoats, but we all do, too," but the post was never completed. It's time to revisit that concept as the parties try to put each other in the villain role.

The old pro wrestling shows were highly choreographed performances by skilled, bulked up, athletes. And most of the time the opponents were portraying either a good guy or a villain. Someone designated the good or bad status of the performers, and each was acting his assigned role. The fans ate it up.

Now we are witnessing the theatrics of Democrats and Republicans angling for votes in the upcoming election. Each side is trying to portray the good guy and pin the villain tag on the other. I was reminded of it today after seeing this: No One Really Wants to ‘Send Her Back’. Here's a excerpt:

All good populist demagoguery needs a villain. President Trump hardly has the market cornered on this. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton studied Alinskyite community organizing. The organizer, a self-styled renegade against The Establishment, is instructed to avoid abstractions when picking an opposition target. You’ve got to make it personal, to polarize the adversary in stark terms. Trump’s persona is to hit back harder than he is hit. No surprise, then, that he is a practitioner of this demagogic art, since he is also the Left’s No. 1 target.

Most Republican villains the Left selects (the Bushes, Mitt Romney . . .) respond by trying to prove they’re not really villains. This is a futile strategy. The demagogues making the accusation already know it’s not true. They do it because it always works. Or at least it used to. It’s different with the president, who is from the Leo Durocher School: “I come to play. I come to beat you. I come to kill you!” Trump vexes the Left because he revels in the mud wrestle. Sure, he craves admiration, but he wants to win more, and he doesn’t in the slightest mind winning ugly. In that the Left must see a lot of itself, but that doesn’t mean it has figured out an effective response.

Donald Trump is trying to put the villain role onto Democrats and making them identify with The Squad. It just might work.

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1:42 PM 7/21/2019

When NYT glorified Soviet diversity vs American Apollo mission they forgot about the Brezhnev Doctrine

The tweet reproduced on the right has circulated the blogosphere in the past few days.

The woke New York Times is glorifying Soviet diversity as a win over the U.S. to take a shot at those of us who might want to celebrate the anniversary of the moon landing. Amazingly it looks so much like what one might expect from Pravda.

A better comparison might have been to address the brutality of the Brezhnev Doctrine during that same time period. Soviet dissenters were declared mentally ill and subject to all sorts of punishments described as cures.

But foremost, let's recall the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 because their citizens were trying to sample freedoms that the Soviet system couldn't allow.

Wikipedia sums up the Brezhnev Doctrine this way:

The vague, broad nature of the Brezhnev Doctrine allowed application to any international situation the USSR saw fit. This is clearly evident not only through the Prague Spring in 1968, and the indirect pressure on Poland from 1980–81, but also in the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan starting in the 1970s. Any instance which caused the USSR to question whether or not a country was becoming a risk to international socialism, the use of military intervention was, in Soviet eyes, not only justified, but necessary.

Oh, but the diversity! In the eyes of the New York Times, freedom must take a back seat to diversity. But there's a bumper sticker idea for Putin: "Russia -- diversity is our strength. Don't like it? Turn yourself in."

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4:14 PM 7/19/2019

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Ilhan Omar

There's a song about prejudice in the ancient musical, "South Pacific" which contained the line, "You've got to be carefully taught," meaning that prejudice doesn't just happen without influence. That was a point that Ayaan Hirsi Ali made in a recent article titled, Can Ilhan Omar Overcome Her Prejudice?.

Ali told about how her Somali upbringing was filled with antisemitism, and that attitude permeated Somali culture and education. But there was this:

As for me, I eventually unlearned my hatred of Jews, Zionists and Israel. As an asylum seeker turned student turned politician in Holland, I was exposed to a complex set of circumstances that led me to question my own prejudices. Perhaps I didn’t stay in the Islamist fold long enough for the indoctrination to stick. Perhaps my falling out with my parents and extended family after I left home led me to a wider reappraisal of my youthful beliefs. Perhaps it was my loss of religious faith.

In any event, I am living proof that one can be born a Somali, raised as an anti-Semite, indoctrinated as an anti-Zionist—and still overcome all this to appreciate the unique culture of Judaism and the extraordinary achievement of the state of Israel. If I can make that leap, so perhaps can Ms. Omar.

But she readily acknowledges that Ilhan Omar is a very small part of the problem:

Yet that is not really the issue at stake. For she and I are only two individuals. The real question is what, if anything, can be done to check the advance of the mass movement that is Muslim anti-Semitism. Absent a world-wide Muslim reformation, followed by an Islamic enlightenment, I am not sure I know.

You've got to be carefully taught. But you've got to unlearn it on your own. As Ali says, "I was born in Somalia and grew up amid pervasive Muslim anti-Semitism. Hate is hard to unlearn without coming to terms with how you learned it."

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2:39 PM 7/15/2019

Dems can do a Fouetté so fast it would make any ballerina envious

An about face. A Fouetté. Actually, a fouetté would be a complete 360, and Democrats sure can do them. Democrats' reaction to all those potential immigrants mobbing the border is a prime example.

Democrats were for it before they were against it. Anyone who watches Fox News Channel has probably seen the reruns of prominent Democrats proclaiming the need for a border barricade some years ago.

Then a 180 -- an about face on the issue, because it was an issue Donald Trump was trying to solve. It was called a "made up crisis." Trump wanted it, so Democrats opposed it. We know why, of course. A loss for Trump would better their chance of defeating him in 2020, or so they hope.

Then came another 180 after the msm exposed the border situation as a real crisis. Then Democrats screamed about the horrid conditions the prospective immigrants faced once they got across the border and into temporary shelters. Now the issue is the cruelty of Republicans. Never mind that Democrats spent so much time denying the issue that it made matters worse. It's as if it's all partisan politics with little compassion for actual human beings.

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2:09 PM 7/3/2019

Bernie Sanders' shrewd move -- calling corporate welfare socialism

This seems like a pretty shrewd move on Bernie's part, but it's not likely to get much traction.

He is credited with authorship of an article titled Trump Is the Worst Kind of Socialist in which he details some of the corporate welfare that he's calling corporate socialism.

Both Republicans and Democrats pay lip service to opposition to corporate welfare, and it's debatable which party is the worst offender. It all depends on which groups one thinks should get government handouts. Ideally, the government would stop trying to pick winners and losers and let the free market decide.

Nonetheless, Sanders has hit on a subject that should resonate. But it won't. Voters have been opposed to corporate welfare for years, but it never seems to matter.

By the way, maybe Sander has provided a clue as to what Democratic Socialism is. It's the same as corporate welfare, but with different special interest groups on the receiving side of the equation.

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4:06 PM 6/29/2019

Prisoners voting -- do we really need another voting bloc?

There's a movement underway that leans toward a higher level of acceptance in civilian life for people who have been convicted of a crime and have served their time. And there's a compassionate argument to be made for that. But the problem is that too often the time served in prison was advanced education for many of them in their fields of crime. It's tempting to say that juvie is elementary school, county jail is high school, and prison is college. The solution to the problem is to transform prisons into places that don't just restrain but actually rehabilitate the inmates. But that has been a goal for centuries.

Along comes a class of individuals so compassionate they want to give convicts the right to vote while they are doing time.

What we don't need is another class of voters to whom politicians will pander for their votes. Can you imagine campaign rallies in prisons? If so, you can imagine the promises the politicians will make. A guaranteed income; early releases; pardons.

A vote for me will set you free!

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1:55 PM 6/25/2019

Big Tech facing scrutiny spends heavily on lobbyists

This is one of the things that rankle regular people. We all know how Google and the other tech giants manipulate our access to relevant news to make sure what we see is what they want us to see. And it's been established time and time again that their left leaning attitude dominates their pretense at objectivity.

Some of the insiders boast about big tech's dominance: Tech Billionaire to Joe Rogan: ‘The Left Has Won the Culture Wars. Now They’re Just Driving Around Shooting Survivors’.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say that his murderous metaphor only means they want to silence the opposition.

So now we learn that Google is shuffling its lobby team. But here's the thing that stuck out in Google fires some of its largest lobbying firms. From the article: "The firms Google dropped represent about half of Google’s $20 million annual lobby bill, according to the report."

That's $20 million annually. That sounds like a lot of money, but that's just Google. According to Dailycaller.com Google, Amazon and Facebook spent $48 million on lobbying in 2018.

It's a certainty that some of it will buy them what they want from our representatives, senators and regulators. Our only hope is that those politicians and bureaucracies they buy won't stay bought.

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11:10 AM 6/15/2019

Alec Baldwin's unfunny Trump shtick was a mediocre impersonation -- that aside Baldwin really is a good actor

News sources tell us that Alec Baldwin has put his Donald Trump routine on hold, for now. His act really wasn't that good of an impersonation or very funny, so it probably won't be missed by anyone but the most ardent anti-Trumpers.

But let's give Baldwin praise where it's due. I became convinced of his acting talent when watching the movie, "Pearl Harbor." Baldwin played the war hero, Jimmy Doolittle. And he was very convincing. Got that? Alec Baldwin portrayed a great American war hero convincingly. Now that's acting!

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10:06 AM 6/12/2019

trial lawyers are the dogs that didn't bark in the issue of unequal pay to women and men

Kamala Harris made a big to-do about the perceived issue of women being paid less than men. The only reason this could be an issue is because of the way they do the math. They are taking total pay and applying men's income and women's income separately to the total without regard to anything but the totals. Anyone who has ever worked knows that some people really do deserve more pay than others because of their abilities in the workplace.

But never mind that, because, Socialism!

Anyone who watches cable channels has seen lawyers' commercials seeking cases concerning Roundup, vehicle accidents with company trucks, mesothelioma, and other possible causes of action.

There has been a law on the books prohibiting unequal pay since 1963. So if there really is a problem, how come trial lawyers aren't blanketing the TV with commercials about that?

The dogs aren't barking. And that should tell us something.

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2:37 PM 5/25/2019

A collusion Dems will ignore -- Joe Biden and China

The news Friday was heavy on the failure of the trade talks between the U.S. and China. It looks like China might try to wait out the 2020 election season in hopes for someone more likely to give in to them. They surely watched intently as John Kerry and Barack Obama gave Iran everything Iran wanted. And China, hoping to be seen as merely an economic competitor, must have hoped they could get a deal in which China had to give up nothing.

So now we hear that Joe Biden is way ahead of the other Democrat contenders for the party nomination for president. Turns out Biden and China have their own sordid history of business deals.

So if one of the reasons we are supposed to dislike Donald Trump is that the Russians might have something with which to blackmail him, it should be noted that Biden probably carries as much baggage with China. But Democrats can turn on a dime. And anything bad they can say about a Republican will get barely a shrug, or at best, a "Republicans Pounce," if said about a Democrat.

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2:05 PM 5/10/2019

It's amazing how far and fast Beto O'Rourke has fallen out of favor with Dems

Democrats can turn around on a dime. They can do a Fouetté so quickly it would make any ballerina envious. The latest example features Beto O'Rourke, and this article by Margaret Carlson titled Beto O’Rourke Blew It really slams the poor guy.

Beto was a media darling last year when he ran against Ted Cruz, and after he lost the msm groomed him to be the next Trump challenger. But the love started to fade when he appeared to be too slow to come out in favor of the far left agenda.

And here comes Margaret Carlson saying that "Beto reminds them of the worst boyfriend they ever had." Aw, now that's harsh.

Electionbettingodds.com has him at a mere 5.3% among other Democrats, and declining. It's like watching a satellite falling from orbit and making a beautiful flame as it passes through the atmosphere.

Yet another example of a Democrat Fouetté.

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3:48 PM 5/3/2019

Joe Biden, you looked so young in your video I wasn't sure it was really you

So I was watching a rerun of Joe Biden's announcement video, but I wasn't watching it, only listening to it. Looking up at the TV screen, I was in disbelief. Who was that guy?

Turns out it really was Joe. I thought it was probably some video fancy work that made him look so young. But no. He's just had some work done.

Apparently, this has been going on for quite a while. But for those of us who didn't see him regularly, the appearance this month was quite noticeable. Washingtonexaminer.com noticed. See Botox, hair plugs, and veneers: Biden could escape the cosmetic surgery scrutiny Hillary Clinton endured: "Cosmetic doctors are certain that former Vice President Joe Biden’s full head of hair, smooth forehead, and Cheshire Cat grin are the result of plastic surgery and other procedures."

Well, he's trying to appeal to an audience of people who were born decades after he was. Name recognition and appearances are influential, so who can really blame him for using any trick available to him? And besides, he's probably not the only one.

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8:37 AM 4/27/2019

The downside of shipping illegals to sanctuary cities

The Wall Street Journal contained an editorial highlighting the downside of President Trump's suggestion to send the illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities.

Here are some bullet points:

1. It would legitimize the theory that cities can defy Federal immigration law;
2. A larger population would strengthen already Democratic control of the region by potentially adding the number of representatives in Congress; and
3. It would potentially add to the number of Electoral College votes for areas that typically vote Democrat.

Although it's a clever way to show the hypocrisy of the whole concept of sanctuary cities, there are some potential problems which could ultimately outweigh the pleasure of a good comeuppance.

Many Democrats probably want increased immigration because they think the immigrants will eventually become Democrat voters. With that in mind, one has to wonder why the sanctuary city residents haven't already embraced the possible movement of the immigrants to their cities. Could it be that they aren't as foresighted as they would have us believe?

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1:34 PM 4/15/2019

So Democrats want to abolish the electoral college, huh? Let them start with their own primary

Many prominent democrats want to eliminate the electoral college so that the winner of the popular vote would become president. Voters living in flyover country would surely lose under that type of election.

This leads to our quote of the week. It's from a letter to the WSJ from Charles E. Webb. Here's the quote:

If the democrats are so bent on eliminating the Electoral College, perhaps they should try an experiment by eliminating their individual state primary, in favor of a one day, national vote primary with the plurality winner being the nominee.

Well said, Mr. Webb. Make them live up to the standards they themselves want to set for the rest of us. Saul Alinsky might even smile at that.

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1:14 PM 4/13/2019

John Solomon uncovers foreign effort to help a candidate in 2016 election -- and it's not the candidate you think

John Solomon of Hill.com spoke of this the other day in a TV interview -- transcript not up yet. And he has written about it in As Russia collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges. Excerpt:

Ukraine’s top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country’s law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.

The leak of the so-called black ledger files to U.S. media prompted Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign and gave rise to one of the key allegations in the Russia collusion probe that has dogged Trump for the last two and a half years.

Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko’s probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign.

The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to “an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign,” Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko said the tape recording is a serious enough allegation to warrant opening a probe, and one of his concerns is that the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved had frequent contact with the Obama administration’s U.S. Embassy in Kiev at the time.

Democrats were so open to any suggestion of Trump impropriety that they were willing to believe anything, no matter how preposterous. So to set an example, conservatives would do well to wait for the facts. But it doesn't seem like too far a stretch to believe that the Clinton campaign would have been happy to accept Ukrainian help.

Now that Robert Mueller, the most famous investigator since Sherlock Holmes, has wrapped up the investigation of Trump, he should hone his skills on the issues surrounding Clinton.

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1:51 PM 4/1/2019

Valerie Plame -- Senator of New Mexico?

Voters in the state of New Mexico passed up a chance to elect Steve Pearce, a fine fiscal conservative, as governor last year in favor of Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham.

But a new spot will open up as Senator Tom Udall announced that he will not seek reelection when his current term ends in 2020.

And look who is actually considering running for that Senate seat: Valery Plame. She was made famous by the Joseph C. Wilson scam, her alleged victim status as having been outed as a CIA employee, and the movie which put forth the Wilson/Plame version of the story.

Perhaps former Representative Pearce will seek that seat. Although New Mexico is currently a blue state and Trump will be on the ticket in 2020, maybe they'll both have a fair shot on election day.

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2:23 PM 3/30/2019

Let's hope the Smollett treatment isn't a preview of the treatment of the spies and agents involved in the Trump frame-up

The evidence that Jussie Smollett concocted the scheme which framed some fictitious Trump supporters for a hate crime overwhelms Smollett's denial. Yet he was let off the hook by the higher-ups in the Illinois justice system.

Move on to the false claim of collision between team Trump and the Russians. That claim was concocted by anti-Trump forces in high places: James Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, and James Clapper, to name the most well known of the key players.

An investigation into that is certainly warranted. What a disaster if the outcome is ultimately the Smollett result.

Meanwhile, if the Russians really did want to sow discord in the American public, someone in Moscow should be in line for a huge medal for achieving that result through the useful idiots within the U.S. government.

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10:24 AM 3/27/2019

Steven Levitsky's four authoritarian behaviors attributed to Trump are more common on the left

Steven Levitsky was on C-Span's Washington Journal talking about the book he co-authored with Daniel Ziblatt titled "How Democracy Dies." (Watch it here.) An onscreen graphic shown at least twice during the program displayed the authors' four behaviors that precede the collapse of democratic countries they've studied. A book review found here tells us what they are:

There are four main indicators of authoritarian behavior that the authors highlight: 1) the rejection of democratic institutions, or at least a weak commitment to them; 2) the denial of the legitimacy of political opponents; 3) the toleration or encouragement of violence; and 4) the desire or willingness to reduce civil liberties (see 23ff., 61ff.). Even before his election, Trump displayed all four in ways by now familiar. The Republicans abdicated their responsibility to democracy, failing to take a principled stance against him. Often for reasons of expediency, they supported him despite his unfitness for office and of the clear danger even to the constitutional order that many of them indicated he presented.

For simplification, here they are in outline form:

1) the rejection of democratic institutions;
2) the denial of the legitimacy of political opponents;
3) the toleration or encouragement of violence; and
4) the desire or willingness to reduce civil liberties.

Professor Levitsky didn't try to disguise the obvious source of his fears, Donald Trump and his followers. Perhaps Trump espoused some of those tendencies in the campaign and afterwards. But we should all do well to remember that Trump is a bombastic blowhard. It's good that enemies of the U.S. take his threats and insults seriously, but most us out here in flyover country don't. And a president alone will not be able to transform the U.S. from it's current form of government to authoritarianism without a lot of public support. Trump probably knows better than to think his supporters would follow him down that path.

Meanwhile, if one looks at Mr. Levitsky's list and recalls recent newsworthy incidents, it becomes obvious that people on the left are more likely to commit them than people on the right.

Any observer can tell you that conservatives are more likely to uphold democratic institutions, more likely to uphold civil liberties, and less likely to encourage violence than those on the left.

Just look at what political front runners on the left want to do. Here's a short list: Abolish the electoral college, restrict free speech, restrict gun rights, convict without due process, and brutalize people with whom they disagree.

Professor Levitsky gives us a wake up call, all right. But his targets should be the people with whom he most likely agrees politically.

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3:05 PM 3/20/2019

Should sheriffs be deciding what is or isn't constitutional?

In one sense, it's amusing and somewhat admirable to see the left's sanctuary city tactic turned around and used against them. Defiant U.S. sheriffs push gun sanctuaries, imitating liberals on immigration:

(Reuters) - A rapidly growing number of counties in at least four states are declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, refusing to enforce gun-control laws that they consider to be infringements on the U.S. constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Organizers of the pro-gun sanctuaries admit they took the idea from liberals who have created immigration sanctuaries across the United States where local officials defy the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce tougher immigration laws.

And this. Rural Sheriffs Defy New Gun Measures:

For instance, in New Mexico, 30 of 33 county sheriffs have signed a letter pledging to not help enforce several gun-control measures supported by Democrats in Santa Fe, according to the state’s sheriff association. The sheriffs, who are elected, say they are heeding the wishes of voters in the counties they serve. More than two dozen counties in the state have enacted “sanctuary” resolutions backing the sheriffs and affirming that no tax dollars in their jurisdictions should go to enforcing the proposed laws.

Nationwide, some see their battle as a conservative version of the “sanctuary” resistance to the Trump administration’s illegal-immigration crackdown led by Democratic mayors in major cities like New York and Los Angeles.

“If a state or city can become a sanctuary for illegal immigration, then we can become a sanctuary for Second Amendment rights,” said Russell Shafer, sheriff of Quay County in eastern New Mexico.

That's a cute turnabout. Maybe the publicity points scored with the tactic might be worth it. But is it really the job of law enforcement officers to interpret the constitution? Actually, that's the job of the Supreme Court. They should take another page from leftist's book and find a friendly forum in which to sue for enforcement of the 2nd amendment.

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3:19 PM 3/13/2019

Democrats are masters of the message -- from net neutrality to save-the-internet

Democrats run rings around Republicans when it comes to the language, slogans, and the message. It doesn't hurt to have the msm repeating those messages ad nauseam, and one has to wonder how they would fare without that strong wind at their backs.

So here they are attempting to resurrect Net Neutrality by calling it by a new name. Democrats unveil 'Save The Internet Act' to restore net neutrality laws.

The net neutrality issue pitted the big tech companies versus internet service providers. And no doubt both sides of the issue have poured buckets of money into campaign coffers to see that their side prevails.

But once again, Democrats have proved their mastery of the message.

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3:39 PM 3/10/2019

The Republican electorate transformed, according to WaPo

Henry Olsen at WaPo tells us all about what he thinks Republicans want in The GOP is the party of Trump. Here's an excerpt:

Trump has earned this high level of support because he has delivered on the items of supreme importance to almost every Republican faction. University of New Hampshire professor Dante Scala and I examined these groupings in our book “The Four Faces of the Republican Party.” Pre-Trump, the party had four factions: fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, “somewhat” conservatives (also labeled business conservatives) and moderates. Trump brought new voters into the primary process and created a fifth faction: nationalist conservatives, who want to lower immigration and redo foreign trade deals. Four of these five have received the things they care most about under the Trump administration.

Democrats like to use that word, "nationalist." But he's probably wrong on his description of the fifth group wanting lower immigration. Mr. Olsen does what so many Democrats do, and that's lumping legal immigrants with illegal immigrants together under one name.

But he's right to say that Trump delivered what a lot of conservatives wanted, and that's a better economy than we had. However, there's also the appointment of Constitutional judges -- something almost all conservatives wanted, not just religious conservatives. But one of the most important elements of Trump's appeal to voters is that he doesn't roll over and play dead whenever the msm rips into him. He fights back. Many conservative voters love that contrast between Trump and so, so many of the previous Republican presidential aspirants.

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2:32 PM 2/27/2019

Progressive Dem candidates now favor slavery reparations

We're learning from news reports that both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris support reparations for black Americans. The knee jerk reaction to that is that they are using Democrats' tactics of identity politics to pander to a voting bloc.

The problem for taxpayers, who comprise only *37% of the US population, is that all the burden falls on them whether they feel the need for absolution or not. Eloquent writers have provided plenty of reasons to oppose reparations. But let's accept for the moment that there would be some societal benefit to a system that provided absolution to the guilt ridden.

The problem for taxpayers, who comprise only *37% of the US population, is that all the burden falls on them whether or not they would like to do it.

Michael Eric Dyson's Individual Reparations Account provides a solution. Make the payments into the account optional. That way those who feel the need can do it, and those who don't don't.

What's not to like about optional reparation payments?

Previously: Individual Reparations Account not such a bad idea if donors can withdraw money if race relations sour

*numbers come from US Debt Clock as of the time of this writing. 122,425,807 ÷ 328,644,256 = 0.3725

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2:41 PM 2/26/2019

Let's not give too much credit to AOC for the Amazon pullout of NYC

That Thanks for Nothing AOC sign in NYC got a lot of coverage for its message. But it gave too much credit to AOC for Amazon's decision not to place its new HQ2 in New York. Members of the NYC Council and union leaders put the scare in Amazon. Check out Amazon’s New York Project Foundered on Labor Organizing, Opposition to Subsidies:

After the announcement, a group of state and local leaders seized on the incentive package and questioned why one of the richest companies in the world was getting subsidies at all. Cries of corporate welfare and vulture capitalism became refrains among progressive Democrats, including the state’s newest political star, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as from within the newly Democratic state senate.

Those politicians, together with union leaders, also beat a drum about Amazon’s stance against organized labor. Members of the New York City Council joined in, grilling company executives at hearings in December and January over their record with unions and about the closed-door negotiations with state and city officials that had produced the biggest project-based incentive package in state history.

“This was a secretive process intentionally structured to avoid a substantive public review in advance of any commitments being made,” City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a Jan. 30 hearing.

Amazon executives were completely unprepared for the backlash, according to the people familiar with the matter. Polls showed a majority of New Yorkers supported the new campus, but Amazon grew more wary when state Sen. Mike Gianaris, who represents the project site in Queens, was nominated on Feb. 4 to the Public Authorities Board. The seat meant Mr. Gianaris, an outspoken critic of the deal, could potentially veto the proposed campus.

(Alternate link)

Give credit where credit is due. She probably deserves a little of the blame for chasing away a vibrant large scale employer. But to give her full credit is misplaced.

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1:43 PM 2/24/2019

Kamala Harris tries to capitalize on misunderstanding about tax refunds

For several days viewers of cable news programs have been hearing that IRS tax refunds will be lower than in the past. Whether that's good news or bad news depends on your political perspective, it seems.

A tax refund means the taxpayer had too much withheld from his/her paycheck or otherwise paid more than was actually due for the year. It's smart to pay just the right amount, but that's not always possible.

Perhaps we should be grateful that the IRS refunds the over payment, but it's no reason to celebrate. And a lower refund is no reason to fret.

So those news commentators who lament the lower refund amounts have it all wrong. And along comes Kamala Harris chiming in on that wrong headed belief:

The average tax refund is down about $170 compared to last year. Let’s call the President’s tax cut what it is: a middle-class tax hike to line the pockets of already wealthy corporations and the 1%.
12:09 PM - 11 Feb 2019

WaPo's Glenn Kessler rips it apart in Kamala Harris leaps to unwarranted conclusions in tax tweet:

This tweet combines two factoids into a highly misleading package. Yes, tax refunds are smaller, based on preliminary data. And, yes, in the long run, the Trump tax cut raises taxes on the middle class — if you make the probably unrealistic assumption that Congress will not act to rescue tax cuts for individuals.

But Harris presented these facts without nuance or qualification, making it appear as though the smaller tax refunds were evidence of a tax hike on the middle class. In reality, the size of a tax refund reflects nothing about the size of a tax cut or tax increase — and at least in 2018, the vast majority of middle-class Americans can expect to pay less in taxes as a result of the Trump tax law.

Harris earns Four Pinocchios

But being wrong and wrong headed has never hurt a politician pandering to popular belief.

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5:35 AM 2/14/2019

Democrats discover power of forgiveness -- of other Democrats

Wearing blackface wasn't such a big deal after Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax got accused of assaulting a female. It's as if someone unplugged the loudspeaker. Suddenly the target changed from Governor Northam to Lt. Gov. Fairfax. WaPo's Paul Kane explains why in Democrats struggle to answer for Virginia lieutenant governor after unified stand against Kavanaugh:

But then came the assault allegations against Fairfax, followed by state Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) revealing that he had once worn blackface at a party while in college. Suddenly, the prospect of all three statewide officials resigning en masse emerged — with it, the likelihood that the Republican state House speaker would be next in the line of succession to become governor.

Now, Democrats are struggling with a confusing set of questions, trying to separate the three scandals into different baskets. Hanging on to the governor’s mansion, especially heading into the decennial redistricting in 2021, is critical.

Hold them to their own rules, as Saul Alinsky would say.

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2:05 PM 2/9/2019

There should be a statute of limitations on distasteful jokes- Give Northam a break

The focus of MSM attention these past few days is the possibility that Virginia Governor Northam posed long ago in a yearbook photo in garb that is regarded as screaming, yelling, ultra racist by today's standards.

As satisfying as it is to see Democrats held up to the standards they use for Republicans, it's still unfair. What was halfway acceptable 30 or 40 years ago might be considered totally out of bounds today. But the problem is with the time travel aspect. A lawful society doesn't make rules, then turn back the clock and convict people of violations for acts that were OK at the time.

Most crimes have a statute of limitations attached to them. Once that time has passed, the law doesn't exactly excuse them, but it ignores them. The same thing should occur in civil society. But as it works now, the rules get changed, and past events fall into that new category: OK at the time, but wrong now. We really shouldn't hold people responsible for things they did in the past just because the mob wants to apply new rules to past acts.

Ethnocentrism is judging another culture by the values and standards of one's own culture.

What we have now is Era-centrism: Imputing a sin or crime to long ago acts that, due to social evolution, are now unacceptable.

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2:21 PM 2/3/2019