First and foremost: know thine enemies and the dangers they pose. Democrats are led by fanatics who turn every breath toward their radical goals. Like demons, they never give up, ever striving, by any means available. Given great power, they are capable of wreaking enormous damage that cannot be undone. Citizenship for 20+ million illegals and statehood for D.C. would be irreversible. But politically Republicans are split. Immigration was not accomplished from 2017 to 2018 because of the ‘compassion’ for sojourners felt by Speaker Paul Ryan. ObamaCare was not removed because the Republican caucus was held back by a moderate minority and a solid bloc of Democrats. After the election of 2018 and the loss of the House of Representatives, we all knew that much of the defeat was owing to Trump’s personality along with the appeal of ObamaCare to many voters, perhaps a majority.
Trump then needed to back off the bluster, which alienated “suburban voters.” Republicans needed a coherent plan for reforming medical care without federalizing or socializing it. Ditto for immigration, particularly making clear that only legal immigrants could ever become citizens, using Obama’s DACA maneuver as a bargaining chip.
There needed to be very clear and precise strategy for winning the 2020 election, taking back the House, retaining the Senate and the Presidency, as well as ensuring that the President in 2024 will be a Republican. Democrats cheat in elections. This is not news, not in 1960 with Illinois and Texas (featuring Landslide Lyndon and Frank Sinatra), and not in 2020. They are open about it, as those of us who have lived in the Northeast know. Gerry Nadler said recently that he could tell us “stories.” George Soros and others have funded successful races for District Attorney, electing radicals, in order to stir up the pot for “change.” And Democrats, like Stacey Abrams and her coreligionists in California, were busy piling lawsuit upon lawsuit in order to facilitate cheating. There should at least have been a concerted national campaign of pushback to combat this. Now Nancy Pelosi will put forward disastrous legislation to legalize ballot harvesting nationwide.
The Trump administration and Republicans in the D.C. swamp did nothing. The Trump reelection campaign was notoriously slow out the gate. One could almost say it was not serious and overconfident. However, the stakes were very high – permanent Democrat hegemony – for this nonchalance to have been justified.
The reason is that Trump has failed with leadership. He always struck me as someone who never had had to answer to a boss, who always was in charge, and confused responsibility with self-indulgence. His attitude toward the 2020 campaign seemed to have been: Bring your best at me: I can win with one hand tied behind my back. There was an implicit dare: Accept my idiosyncrasies or you lose my policies.
The Democrats called his bluff, bet on dislike of Trump, and won. Trump should have realized that the way voters work is that once they don’t like you, you are finished. He got in as a street fighter, his heroes proclaiming “let Trump be Trump.’ Good enough – but only at first. After 2018 there should have been a recalibration and an updated message in order to have a chance at retaining Congress and the Presidency, as well as taming the DC swamp (it’s real and it’s dangerous.) It appears that for him all publicity is good so long as it is about him?
There were rumors of a climate study group, but there were no authoritative announcements that claims of an existential threat from climate change are unfounded. (Ivanka believes it.) Or that there is no systemic racism in American. Two big misses.
The advent of CoVid 19 should have accelerated this recalibration. The risks of federal agencies falling short of perfection are always great, and they come with political backlash at the Commander-in Chief. So Trump should have kept out of the spotlight until there were successes like WarpSpeed. Joe Biden’s early mistakes were hidden by Trump’s stage presence.
The fissures of 2018 were revealed in the earthquake of the 2020 election. Yes, there was cheating, probably using the familiar techniques, but now on a larger scale. It is not known which was bigger: revulsion at Trump or cheating. And, yes, there are no judicial options for challenging certified results in court. And voter privacy makes proving fraud extremely difficult. The only real means is safeguards before and during elections. Not just voter ID or signature verification, but also a whole panoply of measures designed to protect the integrity of elections, all of which were violated in the battleground states. While Soros and associates were plotting, where were the conservatives? Much time and political capital was wasted fighting the Russia hoax and then impeachment. This should have put the fear of God into the Trump administration knowing how powerful its enemies were.
Trump’s invective cost us the Senate races in Georgia and his horrendous “rally” in D.C. has harmed the ability of conservatives to influence the direction of the Biden administration. The present (hypocritical) calls for impeachment will resound for years to come. We can look forward to PC loyalty oaths of anti-racism and anti-Trumpism, aka anti-conservatism.
One last word: David Perdue would have won reelection in November were it not for the presence of a Libertarian who garnered 1.5% of the vote. Libertarians have swung close elections to many Democrats for years. It is past time to denounce this self-indulgent childishness.
John Hinderaker of powerlineblog.com is a wonderful conservative and an eloquent and consistently reliable commentator. Below are his comments about the President. I agree with all of them. I could add that Trump’s legacy will be many considerable accomplishments, but also a divided Republican party, and radical Democrats in position to create a one-party national government on a collision course with harsh reality, notably with communist Chin, and a considerable loss of our American freedoms. I may have more to say about this later.
Here are Hinderaker’s comments:
President Trump is right in saying that the 2020 election was rife with voter fraud. I think he is quite likely right, although no one knows for sure, in alleging that absent fraud he would have been re-elected. But his conduct has nevertheless become indefensible….
…were I a senator I would vote to accept the certified tallies. And the ultimate result is a foregone conclusion: Joe Biden will be our next president. …
At this point, it is blindingly obvious that Trump has no pathway to victory. To the extent that Democrats committed or enabled voter fraud, they have done so successfully. There never was a plausible way to challenge the certified results in any state in the 60+ days between the election and the inauguration. Whether fraud occurred, sufficient to reverse an apparent result in any state, is a complicated question of fact that would require months, if not years, to litigate fairly.
Battles in support of election integrity needed to be fought in advance of the election, not afterward, when it is too late.
The sad reality is that our president has gone off the rails. The best thing he can do from now until January 20 is nothing. No speeches, no tweets. Fights over election integrity are critically important and will continue for years to come, but for now, Trump’s irrationality is making those fights harder to win, not easier. Mr. President: Give it up. Please.
What or who is a racist? A century or so ago a racist was one who studied races and racial issues, just as a classicist the classics, or a bassoonist or a feudist (love that word.) For the race radicals is race biological, a mere social construct, something else? It is clear that in the last half century they are only concerned with the Negro race to the exclusion of others and see hatred of it everywhere. To me the term ‘racist’ has been emptied of meaning. [note 1] Our current race fanatics could better be termed racialists, because they racialize just about everything, including chess sets, classical music, traffic signals. They betray an explosive refusal or inability to acknowledge or even debate the view that systemic racial oppression of Black people is in any objective sense a myth, that the whole civil-rights apparatus of the last 60 years of special rights and privileges for some, and denial of liberties and rights to others, has become a special interest and should be dismantled. There is no fury quite like that of a special interest going to war to preserve its privilege.
Quest one. The claim that police target black men.
Characteristic is the search in academia and elsewhere for conclusive data proving omnipresent racial animus among the police against and hatred of Black people. Their quest for this statistical Holy Grail [note 2] has proven unsuccessful. Let’s look at the current claim of police ‘racism.’ Harvard professor R. Fryer admitted failure regarding his years’ long investigation to uncover evidence of racial bias in policing. (Wall Street JournaJ, 22 June, 2020.)The data show unequivocally that young Black men are way overrepresented in violent crimes and less represented in police violence than their criminality would warrant. Heather MacDonald summarized the state of the data recently. [Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2020. More detail from this article below in note 3.] The claims of Black Lives Matter and others are vaporous. Widespread acceptance of illusion is evidence, not of truth, but of groupthink, politically correct compulsion, or fear of legal action. As Larry Elder quipped, “the data are racist.” Even CoVid 19 and colorectal cancer disproportionally attack Black men. Nonetheless there are no racialist data in this empty Grail Cup.
Quest two. White racial hatred everywhere.
We see racial differences, disparities, inequalities. We naturally search for an explanation. Some have fixated – without evidence – (couldn’t resist) on the hypothesis of white racial hatred instead of better explanations for the inequalities and disproportions that have always been part of human life. Compare black slums with white suburbs. Isn’t it obvious? Well, no. The same pathologies are also seen among poor Whites. Read Coming Apart by Charles Murray or his more recent articles. Or Officer Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. Isn’t the race hatred obvious? Actually it is not; we do not know Chauvin’s motivation, nor even what caused Floyd’s death. Can we not attribute the tremendous success of recent Nigerian immigrants to the absence of racial prejudice? Or the success of the Chinese, subject to terrific discrimination in the past and now by Harvard and other universities? Pace the racialists, there is no single factor leading to the disproportions that so upset them, and systematic racism is not among the many real factors. Still an empty Grail Cup.
Quest three. It’s racism if I say so.
The most recent and most perplexing and dangerous. Racial animus has been deobjectified. Now it is subjective, perceptual, or otherwise free from the burden of objective evidence. Reality is as personal as one’s pronouns. Some of this is encouraged by our rather defective civil rights laws, notably the Comstock decision. If race is an essential attribute of a Black man and you fire him, race according to some is an essential part of your action and arguably subject to “civil-rights” laws, the faulty logic of racialists notwithstanding. The addition of ‘offense,’ the new crime of not immediately bending the knee before these claims, adds an emotional, sometimes angry element. To justify belief in systematic racial hatred, we hear, just ask those who (claim to) suffer from it. Their suffering cannot be gainsaid, we are informed. It gives us moral clarity instead of cold statistics. Consider the University of Missouri professors who claim their Whiteness precludes their understanding the slightest thing about the Black experience, and yet rend their academic togas in jeremiads of sympathy with the soul-searing stories of oppression told by undergrads. To them the Mizzou campus is a hotbed of racist filth and hatred. (Not making this up.) To challenge this is of course offensive, hateful, and racist. But just consider that it is not plausible that a country that strongly and willingly supports civil rights laws at the cost of restricting freedom of association, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties is systematically, irredeemably racist. Many Black people are amused by this pitiful narcissism of the naked emperors. Still nothing in the Emperor’s Grail Cup.
I recently came across a new approach from several tenured folk at Princeton U. For them social science is really “just statistics and numbers about how many people are killed by the police.” The goal of their Center for Transnational Policing (CTP) is to bring “a humanizing approach” to social science, to “humanize the data.” [Note 4.] In other words, ignore the numbers when they don’t support your narrative, and rely on emotion. And heaven forfend we should offend any of our moral superiors. Any Grail Cups here would be of the plastic kind found in doctor’s offices.
In other words: Our moral superiors instruct us that anti-racism demands our complete allegiance. Sitting on the fence is guilty complicity. We MUST agree, as corporate America and universities have done. To the contrary, I say, we all need to stand up, speak up, be counted, and call out this fraud for what it is. (Not the time for a detached, aristocratic distance.) Half a century of special legal rights granted to minorities and trillions ineffectively spent on the War of Poverty, Head Start, and other programs are enough to prove Americans goodwill and racial love, not hatred.
My grail cup. Who among us, encountering a crime victim lying on the sidewalk, bleeding, incapacitated, would not instantly be the Samaritan? So what then should be our reaction to the Black and White crime-ridden, poverty-stricken slums and rural areas we all deplore? Below are five suggestions.
First, if people have been given special privileges, they will soon think they are entitled to them, and then they deserve them. Now we are in special interest territory. Let’s follow Scripture and go back to our founding principles of equal justice, equal treatment for all [Lev 19:15; Acts 10:34.] God is not partial, to the poor or to the rich. And let’s not be deceived by language; see Psalm 12:4-5.
Second, for young people, let’s promote the three-step program guaranteed to enable one to escape the poverty trap: (a) graduate high school, (b) get a job, and (c) don’t have children before marriage. 99 44/100% successful.
Third, schools should be reformed. Instead of telling children systematic racism gives them no chance in life, or that revolutionary violence does, teach them the simple basics without political indoctrination. Teachers’ union opposition to charter schools should be stopped dead. Tax dollars for education must not be restricted to government schools. Otherwise unequal treatment.
Fourth, encourage and reward work, not welfare. Some of Jack Kemp’s ideas are still valuable. Dr Carson and Senator Scott have good things to say about creation of good jobs in opportunity zones. These zones should be available to all areas, including rural ones.
Fifth, no children before marriage, but do have them. All advanced societies including ours and particularly China’s are facing the demographic nightmare of too few births. This handicaps GDP growth and stymies care of us old folk. Government should encourage marriage and child-bearing. Hungary has gone to great lengths in this regard. Prime Minister Orban pushed through legislation freeing mothers with four or more children from income tax for life. (What a great idea.) Restore the great honor due our mothers.
In other words, government should treat its citizens equally as responsible adults, not children, of any and all races. It is not government’s job to enable one to escape the consequences of his actions. Eliminating racial preferences or spoils is a first step. Actively promoting the healthiest elements of American society is a second.
Hunter
Note 1. Not just racist and racism, but also justice, discrimination, white privilege, hate speech, and the like are so shopworn, tendentious, and emotional words that outside the context of serious study of objective data, their use cannot advance any reasonable argument. See also the Encyclopedia of Social Justice Terminology (Wokish) at newdiscourses.com and Conformity to a lie [https://bit.ly/3jzypmj or https://bit.ly/3baGIlT]
Note 2. In Arthurian legend the Holy Grail or Graal is the cup Jesus used during the Last Supper to distribute to His disciples the wine now become his blood and was later used to capture the blood and water from the spear wound at the crucified Jesus’s side. King Arthur undertook a quest to locate this precious relic.
Wagner’s opera Parsifal (Percival) adapts this to his own purposes in what has sometimes been called his Good Friday opera. Parsifal, considered a fool, a barely concealed Pauline fool for Christ, becomes the hero who locates the spear and as the Grail is uncovered, healing and redemption ensue. Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin or idiot also embodies this idea in one of the novelist’s most powerful works.
Note 3.
“A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.
In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,” they concluded.”
See also her book, The War against Cops, for all the data. (I reviewed her terrific next book, The Diversity Delusion.)
Note 4. Princeton Alumni Weekly, June/July pp. 23-24.
Not if you are Grant Napear, the play-by-play announcer of the Sacramento Kings for over 30 years. He was forced to resign after stating that all human life matters. The reaction against him was immediate and vitriolic. One might almost think he was a closet pro-lifer. Or Drew Brees, whose patriotism can be cancelled by a snowflake’s hurt feelings.
A tale of two lives
Compare the hideous murders of George Floyd and Captain David Dorn. Both were black men. The last moments of both were recorded and available on the Internet. The murderers of each could face prosecution under civil-rights laws (which do not apply to us.) Yet one is celebrated worldwide and the other only made it to brief regional news coverage. There is one important difference. One died upholding the rule of law during a riot; the other after an alleged criminal offense. So clearly the world is mourning and protesting the murder of Captain Dorn. And obviously St Louis will be renaming Market Street Captain Dorn Boulevard. And Reverend Sharpton will speak at his memorial service, along with the new ”non-political” Mizzou football coach.
Back to Animal Farm
No??? Then are we not back to the Orwellian world of war is peace in which all lives are equal, just some more equal than others?. Most equal are the lost lives that can be used to support the narrative of systemic police racism and the pandemic of murders of innocent, unarmed black men, like Mike Brown. A black life is important in proportion to its usefulness in supporting these long debunked theories of institutional racism. (Unless we are talking about higher education’s institutional racism and Asians.) The highest value occurs when a murder can lead to street protests, ripe for hijacking by radicals and race hustlers. Preying on white guilt and decades of race-shame turned into political correctness, the racialists will use the riots to extort tribute from liberal and bien-pensant politicos of both parties, whose greatest fear is the threat of (a false accusation of) racism. The radicals will still dream of storming the Winter Palace on Pennsylvania Avenue, but, confident their escalating demands will always be rewarded, will compromise with racial tribute delivered by humbly repentant kneeling useful idiots. There will always be a next time.
A betrayal of the promise of equal treatment from the 1950s and 1960s
To this troglodyte there is nothing peaceful about these “peaceful protests.” They were always designed to intimdate with an implicit threat. If scores or hundreds of screaming people are coming in my direction demanding their version of justice, I would feel rather intimidated. Just like Bogdan Vechirko, the truck driver happening upon a group of “protesters” blocking I-35 in Minneapolis. He was dragged out, beaten, arrested, and taken to jail. (Shades of the Rodney King trucker.) His truck hit no one, yet he was charged, unlike those who beat him. It takes very little for a “peaceful” protest to turn into a lynch mob. I am a dissenter from the false narrative they intend to orce us to hear, assent to, and genuflect before. My counter-narrative does not figure in the “dialogue” they and my friends in higher education wish to impose. Our country can only be unified in their way, not only by defunding police or abolishing ICE, but by muzzling blind wretches like me. Or you.
Equal treatment under the law means as individuals, not as members of a favored or disfavored group. All lives matter, as does truth
It’s not relevant, but I personally mourn every loss of human life, including at the execution of vicious criminals, children killed in the womb, or of those like George Floyd, Captain Dorn, and the departed we have known. I bend the knee before the altar, and only there.
Update: An interesting example ids New Hampshire. This state abolished its CON laws a few years ago, but many mercantilistic laws and regulations conspire to limit new hospital construction and adaptation to new ideas. Read a short article about it here.
In Fox News’s program, Life, Liberty, and Levin yesterday, Mark Levin interviewed Dr Anthony Fauci. Levin asked him about CON laws’ responsibility for limiting the number of hospital beds. Fauci ducked the question. You can watch it starting about 40 minutes in or read the transcript here.
Back to the original post.
Thirty-five states maintain certificate-of-need (CON) laws, which prohibit expansion of hospitals in terms of beds and expensive equipment, like MRI machines, without state approval. State bureaucrats determine ‘need’ in conjunction with the testimony of competing hospitals before a legislative body. The competing hospitals – shockingly – do not usually believe their competitors have proven need. These perverse laws are predicated on two beliefs:
Free market principles don’t work in the healthcare industry
Centralized government controls do work
These notions have been proven wrong, but, worse, since the days of Wilson and Roosevelt they have acquired the power of myth. FDR’s depression policies failed, as unemployment was higher in 1939 than in 1931, the final year of the Hoover presidency. Fireside chats notwithstanding, government intervention, price fixing, market destabilization, picking winners & losers, and all the rest, usually makes things worse.
The upshot is that states with certificate-of-need laws have fewer beds and higher mortality rates than the states without them. For more detail, see my post from 2015 at the link below:
Announcing his appointment to the number two post in the Department of Homeland Security, NPR (National Progressive Radio) characterized him as an “immigration hard-liner.” Other outlets like the Atlantic echoed this terminology.
Mr. Cuccinelli, a former Attorney General of Virginia, respects the rule of law and does not believe in politically selective enforcement. Only in progressive fantasy is this position anything other than middle of the road. But since to progressives everything devolves to politics and is reported according to their point of view, the label hard-liner is very apposite. The label far-right might do, apart from its being untrue, but would enable an opponent to counter with far-left. Hard-liner is better since it has no ready opposite. Soft-liner would suggest the lining of coats and hats. In this underhanded way NPR’s shaping of public opinion through terminology is more effective.
NPR of course has no journalistic need to characterize people politically, especially in a way revealing of its own political beliefs. FWIW, today’s Wall Street Journal did not seek to characterize Mr. Cuccinelli politically and simply reported his appointment straight up, like a good Scotch. Refreshing.
Cats are extraordinarily ferocious killers. Domestic cats, well fed and kept healthy at the vet’s, will often torture their victims for more than an hour before dispatching and eating them. (I have seen this.) Yet it is true that declawing a cat should not be done on an animal which is let outdoors, as it cannot defend itself. Is declawing cruel? Some believe that laser declawing does not present the disadvantages of other methods.
New York State has now banned declawing of cats. In a statement Governor Cuomo said this:
“Declawing is a cruel and painful procedure that can create physical and behavioral problems for helpless animals, and today it stops. By banning this archaic practice, we will ensure that animals are no longer subjected to these inhumane and unnecessary procedures.”
This is the same Governor who celebrated as a great victory new legislation that in essence sanctioned abortion of helpless children at any time, for any reason, before or after birth, and by any method. He had the lower Manhattan Freedom Tower lit up in pink to celebrate this milestone of progressive benevolence. He promises to have unlimited abortion written into the state constitution.
“Cruel and painful” procedures such as dismemberment abortions are celebrated, while declawing of cats, often needed to prevent the euthanasia of cats that will not stop clawing people, is subject to legislative remedy.
Among the PC crowd the terms ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘illegal aliens’ (citizens of another country) are proscribed. The bowdlerized term “undocumented immigrant” is much preferred. By not distinguishing between legal immigrants and illegal migrants, the implication is that both are immigrants of the same kind, that residence in the U.S. of illegals is somehow legitimate. These are wonderful people, we are informed, better and less criminal than regular citizens. Not having a green card or other legal authorization to be in our country is really only a technicality, to be removed by the next Democrat administration.
But how many of these people are truly “undocumented?” Among the information and documentation available about most of them we can identify:
a court order for deportation (the million ignoring it are to be rounded up)
an arrest warrant
a subpoena to appear before a court
Having been deported before
Having a regular job without a green card (illegal)
Having a visa you have overstayed (illegal)
Using a bogus Social Security number (necessary for most jobs; illegal)
Being on voter rolls (illegal for Federal and most state elections)
Receiving government assistance (welfare – illegal)
Owning property
Documentation in their country of citizenship
There is an abundance of information about these people, enough to identify the great majority as eligible for deportation.
No crime besides illegal entry or visa overstay
During a Democrat Presidential debate one of the moderators, José Diaz Balart, asked a question about illegal aliens who had committed no crime beyond being undocumented. By ignoring their illegal presence the framing of his question presupposes that the vast majority of the ‘undocumented‘ fall into that category. It is possible that there are a few who subsist 100% by panhandling on the streets or through the generosity of relatives and friends. There may even b e a few stay-at-home moms entirely dependent on the earnings of their hubbies. But let’s get real. The vast majority work illegally, via fraudulent Social Security numbers, under the table for cash, or by criminal means. To claim otherwise is akin to the pleading of Jeffrey Epstein’s attorneys that he should be released on bail because he has lived “a law-abiding life.”
Alice Johnson is the little old grandmother recently pardoned by President Trump. The pardon was widely praised as redressing a miscarriage of justice. Even my favorite commentators at the PowerLIne blog thought this was well done. See here.
However, I have several problems with this. One is the incessant meme that drug offenses are non-violent. Even President Trump has often stated that drugs are responsible for many deaths and personal tragedies, including in my family. Perhaps not directly violent, but deadly violent in consequences. Another problem is simply listening pleas from people famous for being famous like Kim Kardashian West. Accrediting celebrity pleas without consulting the Justice Department is another. Finally the truth seems to be that Alice Johnson, hardly an innocent grandmother gulled into something she was unaware of, was deeply and criminally involved in the trafficking of tons of cocaine. Her sentence was no more or less just or unjust than those convicted with her. Should they be pardoned as well? Read about this at The Federalist: The Characterization of Alice Johnson’s crimes is wrong. She deserved punishment.
California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets in return for a commission for herself, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.
The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort.
Bloom, who has assisted dozens of women in prominent harassment cases and also defended film executive Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, represented four women considering making accusations against Trump last year. Two went public, and two declined.
In a statement to The Hill, Bloom acknowledged she engaged in discussions to secure donations for women who made or considered making accusations against Trump before last year’s election.
From Instapundit. The full article in The Hill is available here.
The Missouri Intelligencer 