Digital Know-Nothing

Apparently, a minor league baseball team ran a video at its ballpark honoring our veterans using the words of Ronald Reagan. When Reagan talked about the "enemies of freedom," the person who put together the video included photos of NoKo dictator Kim Jong Un and former Cuban president Fidel Castro . He also included a photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). It was poor form and undeserved, but it wasn't any worse than the words and actions of dozens upon dozens of prominent Democrats, celebrities, media-types, and academics repeatedly calling Donald Trump a Nazi, a racist, a bigot, anti-Democratic, an authoritarian dictator, and worse.

Not surprisingly, when informed of the video, some Leftist commentators were outraged. Here's an example from Thomas Boswell of WaPo:

The way to oppose hateful speech — and the implicit incitement to violence that always lies within it — is to find out who did it and punish them. Nothing else will do.

When that incitement to hate occurs on the watch of a business, then those responsible must be identified, named and fired. The Washington Nationals are on the clock.

The Fresno Grizzlies, the Nationals’ Class AAA affiliate, need to find and fire the employees who failed to monitor and prevent a video shown at their stadium on Memorial Day that placed an image of a duly elected member of Congress alongside photos of dictators — all of them characterized as “enemies of freedom.”

If the Grizzlies don’t do it, then the Nats, who had nothing to do with the hate-fomenting message — directed at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — must intervene with their minor league team. The big club must big foot: Investigate and pink-slip those who were responsible, whether by negligence or malice.

It's remarkable that Bozwell sees no irony in his comments nor does he seem to recognize that he's using the same defensive tropes that are used to protect leftists like AOC, Ilhan Omar and others. Criticism or a negative characterization of a vocal public figure who happens to be a leftist is an "implicit incitement to violence" or an "incitement to hate."

No. Actually, it's just harsh criticism, maybe over-the-top, but certainly no less harsh that the tsunami of unhinged criticism coming out of the left over the past two years. People like Boswell never call that "the implicit incitement to violence" or an "incitement to hate." Nah, that's justified outrage. Hey, maybe the person who assembled the video was exhibiting justified outrage of their own.

I try not to post regularly on AOC, but since we're on the subject ...

Like Trump, AOC is a twitter star who understands how to energize her followers. Like Trump, she skips across the surface of politics, making a splash here and there, but never discussing policy in depth. But unlike like Trump, she has yet to accomplish anything substantive, other than getting elected and becoming a phenom.

It would be nice to just ignore AOC—a socialist ideologue who doesn't have the substance, the knowledge, or the judgement that would make her worthy of consideration. But that would be a mistake. She is a big-time influencer, what Scott Adams would call a master persuader. And that makes her dangerous.

In what has become typical for AOC, a few months ago she enthusiastically praised British politician Jeremy Corben in a tweet-fest. Domenic Green summarizes Corben nicely:

Corbyn is a career communist, a supporter of Castro, Chavez, and Maduro [hmmm, are they "enemies of freedom?]. He is a supporter of Hamas and the IRA. He hates the United States, but he never has a bad word to say about Russia. He has accepted money to appear on the Iranian propaganda channel Press TV. He refuses to accept Israel’s right to exist, and endorses conspiracy theories about Israeli subversion in Arab states. He has an uncanny ability to share platforms with 9/11 conspiracists who say that the Mossad did it, with Islamists who say that the Mossad did it, and with Holocaust deniers who say that the Germans didn’t do it, but the Palestinians should.

AOC wasn't arguing policy with Corben, she was flirting with him politically. She tweeted:

"Also honored to share a great hope in the peace, prosperity + justice that everyday people can create when we uplift one another across class, race + identity both at home & abroad."

Corbin responded:

"Great to speak to @AOC on the phone this evening and hear first hand how she’s challenging the status quo ... Let’s build a movement across borders to take on the billionaires, polluters and migrant baiters, and support a happier, freer and cleaner planet".

Green related what happened when a Jewish supporter of AOC expressed just a teeny bit of concern over her flirtation with a noted anti-Semite. AOC replied (quoting Green):

‘Thank you for bringing this to me,’ she tweeted graciously when one of her Jewish followers tweeted his distress. ‘We cannot + will not move forward without deep fellowship and leadership with the Jewish community. I’ll have my team reach out.’

Green continues:

This is what it looks like when digital know-nothings play the politician. For a socialist, Ocasio-Cortez gives good management-speak. She appended a purple heart to this memo to the everyday people. This shows that her undying compassion extends even unto the one percent of touchy Zionists, and also that she felt a little wounded by the suggestion that she was either an idiot or a fellow-traveler with anti-Semites.

It is a mistake to characterize AOC as "a digital know-nothing." Sure, she's often less than one question deep. Sure, she tries to charm her way out of blatant inconsistencies and ridiculous statements.

But she knows how to influence, and that's far more important than any legislation she might sponsor. She's a true believer, and that makes her disregard any facts or evidence that conflict with her worldview. She's telegenic, and that makes her marketable as a politician.

She will be a force to be reckoned with -- taking her lightly would be a mistake.

Hard Rain

The trained hamsters in the mainstream media are already looking for squirrels—anything that allows them NOT to cover the coming evidence (and possible indictments) of partisan Democrats who participated in a soft coup to sabotage the Trump election campaign in 2016 and destabilize the new Trump presidency after his upset victory. The same media that demanded transparency in all things Trump when Russian collusion was alleged, now think that any attempt at transparency to determine how the collusion hoax (per Robert Mueller) was transformed into a 2+ year "investigation" is somehow ill-advised. "A threat to national security!" cry the perpetrators (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, et al). The trained hamsters join the chorus, suggesting that "investigating the investigators" is a "threat to democracy."

How conveeeenient. How blatantly hypocritical!

In an opinion piece, aptly titled, 'A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall,' Charles Lipson writes about the soft coup charges:

These are very serious charges, and, if proven, serious crimes. What makes them worse — far worse — is that they may well be connected to each other. If they are, they would represent a high-level conspiracy by government officials, appointed by one party and directed at political opponents during and after an election.

This assault on democracy has not been proven, but the evidence emerging in dribs and drabs strongly suggests the possibility. If it is proven, and if the Obama White House was directly involved, as some FBI texts plainly say, the scandal would be one of the biggest in American history.

How big? Big enough that major news organizations, which always favor transparency (“Democracy Dies in Darkness”), are now deeply troubled by the release of any secret documents. They know the stakes are too high and transparency too dangerous for their side, politically.

Right now, we don’t know how big the scandal is, how extensive the coordination was, and how far up it went. But we certainly need to know, just as we needed to know if Donald Trump won the presidency by cooperating with a hostile foreign power. He did not, according to the Mueller report. Now, we need to know if the U.S. government itself worked secretly and illegally to prevent his election and, when that failed, to damage his new presidency. That conspiracy would be equally serious, and for the same reasons. It needs to be rooted out, exposed, and punished.

The fundamental problem was identified by James Madison, who led the drafting of our constitution. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,” he wrote in Federalist Paper 51, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." Under Comey, Lynch, Brennan, and Clapper, under Obama and Biden, it failed to control itself.

The Dems are trying desperately to run out the clock, hoping against hope that Trump will lose in 2020 and a Democrat president will bury the soft coup investigation. It's their only play, so you can bet that delays, obfuscation, and outright lies will rule the day as news of wrongdoing—and there was wrong doing—comes out. Even more interesting ... you'll note that talk of impeachment out of the House is escalating in direct proportion to the probability that "hard rain's gonna fall." I predicted that a few posts back. The Dems are looking increasingly scared and increasingly desperate, but in the end, their strategy may yet have a chance of burying the biggest political scandal in U.S. history.

UPDATE-1:
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As if to assist in the escalation of impeachment talk, Robert Mueller gave his farewell news conference in which he stuck it to Donald Trump, suggesting that he had reason to indict, but just couldn't bring himself to do so. What nonsense. Two years, tens of millions of dollars, and yet, no indictment? His excuse that such a move would violate longstanding tradition is B.S. He didn't have a winnable case and he knew it. The editors of the Wall Street Journal [often #Nevertrumpers] comment:

... Mr. Mueller’s analysis of the obstruction evidence in his own report makes clear that no investigation was obstructed. Not the FBI’s counterintelligence probe, and not his own. No witnesses were interfered with, and Mr. Mueller was allowed over two years to issue nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants and interview anyone he wanted, including anyone in the White House.

Mr. Trump sometimes showed his exasperation, and bad judgment, in suggesting to more than one adviser that Mr. Mueller be fired, but no one acted on it. The special counsel probe rolled on without interference. Yet on Wednesday Mr. Mueller would only say that “if we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Since when do prosecutors make it their job to pronounce whether someone they investigate is exonerated? Their job is to indict, or not, and if not then keep quiet.

Mr. Mueller finished his statement with an ode to “the attorneys, the FBI agents, and analysts, the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner.” These individuals, he said, “were of the highest integrity.”

Does that include Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director who is being investigated for lying to investigators? Does he mean Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the FBI paramours whose antipathy for Donald Trump is obvious from their text messages? Mr. Strzok was part of Mr. Mueller’s investigating team until those texts were discovered.

Does Mr. Mueller also mean the FBI officials who used the politically motivated, and since discredited, Steele dossier to persuade a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue a warrant to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page? Mr. Mueller didn’t appear to want to investigate that part of the Russia story. Was that behavior of “the highest integrity”?

Mr. Mueller would have better served the country and his own reputation if he had simply done what he claimed he wants to do and let his report speak for itself. Instead he has weighed in for the Democrats who want to impeach the President, though he doesn’t have to be politically accountable as he skips town. This is the core problem with special counsels who think they answer only to themselves.

Everytime you hear Pelosi, Nadler or Schiff talk about "the rule of law" or "threats to democracy" or "the good of the American people," ask this—Why are these clowns NOT interested in a soft coup directed at a sitting president by high level government officials, and would they be interested if the president was a Democrat? You know the answer before you ask the question.

UPDATE-2:
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In a scathing rebuke of Mueller's subtle attack on Trump, Law Professor Alan Derschowitz writes:

No prosecutor should ever say or do anything for the purpose of helping one party or the other. I cannot imagine a plausible reason why Mueller went beyond his report and gratuitously suggested that President Trump might be guilty, except to help Democrats in Congress and to encourage impeachment talk and action. Shame on Mueller for abusing his position of trust and for allowing himself to be used for such partisan advantage.

Heh. Partisan? That's what many of us have been saying for the past two years.

UPDATE-3:
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Law Professor Jonathan Turley harshly criticizes Robert Mueller's decision to imply wrong-doing but never actually alleging it. He writes:

[Mueller's] instructions and mandate were crystal clear. His position is even more nonsensical when you look at what he has already done. Mueller declared that “we concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime.” Yet, Mueller contradicted that statement when he declared that “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so.”

So which is it? Mueller actually did reach a “determination one way or the other” on crimes related to collusion. In his special counsel report, he found that he could “not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” In effect, Mueller ultimately came across as almost coquettish in his declaration that he would not make a clear finding of a possible crime but could not rule out criminal conduct by the president.

In other words, Mueller can produce hundreds of pages of evidence of possible criminal conduct and repeatedly refer to not exonerating Trump of crimes but somehow cannot reach a conclusion on the weight of the evidence. Of course,Mueller did not address such questions because he would not tolerate questions. The media simply listened obediently as he claimed that he was only being “fair” when he repeated that he could not clear Trump of the crime. That, of course, led the media to declare that Mueller really was searching for criminal conduct with a wink and a nod.

Whatever space Mueller occupied in maintaining such a position, it was neither created nor countenanced by federal law or Justice Department policy. Instead, he accepted the job of special counsel and then radically redefined it, without telling anyone outside of his staff. In that sense, he failed as special counsel. Mueller was not appointed to be a chronicler of allegations. Mueller was appointed to perform a prosecutorial function in the investigation of a president and his associates. Moreover, he does not get to dictate what Congress can investigate, or to stonewall the media.

As I've stated from the onset, this entire episode stinks. It sets a precedent that clearly defines the new approach to any elected president that the opposition party doesn't like or countenance.

-- Create a phony allegation;
-- Demand a special counsel;
-- Allow the special counsel to staff his investigation with partisans;
-- Make a continuing stream of false claims while the special counsel does his work;
-- Use a friendly and biased media (only the Dems can achieve this] to magnify those claims;
-- Allow the special counsel to drift far afield, indicting people, but never on charges even remotely associated with the original (phony) allegation; -- Hope that the special counsel finds evidence/wrongdoing, but if he doesn't,
-- Claim that the target worked to :"obstruct" the investigation;
-- Move to impeach the target.

No matter that this hurts the country, hurts the office of the presidency, destabilizes the Congress, and otherwise thumbs its nose at a legitimate election, only power matters.

Someday, the tables will be turned, and I fear that what goes around will come around. The Democrats are either too stupid, too power hungry or too full of hubris (or maybe all three) to believe it couldn't happen to their future president. It can, and now given their craven actions, it will.

Great-Great-Grandpa Silas

Burgess Owens tells the story of his great-great grandfather, a man who arrived in America chained inside the hole of a slave ship, who was orphaned on a plantation by the age of 8, escaped the slave owner, and via the underground railroad, wound up in West Texas, where he bought land, built a business, started a church and a school and fathered a large family. Owens contends that although he arrived a slave, his great-great grandfather lived the American Dream.

Referring to his great-great grandfather, the slave Silas, Owens writes:

Now, because of him, a bunch of Democratic presidential hopefuls want to give me money. Never mind that like Silas, I am an entrepreneur who has lived the American dream—having received a world-class education, built businesses, raised a remarkable family and, unlike most white Americans, earned a Super Bowl ring. Because of work I’ve never done, stripes I’ve never had, under a whip I’ll never know, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Elizabeth Warren and others want to give me free stuff. Never mind that it will be taken from others, who also dreamed, worked and sacrificed to earn it.

I wonder what great-great-grandpa Silas would think.

At the core of the reparation movement is a divisive and demeaning view of both races. It grants to the white race a wicked superiority, treating them as an oppressive people too powerful for black Americans to overcome. It brands blacks as hapless victims devoid of the ability, which every other culture possesses, to assimilate and progress. Neither label is earned.

The reparations movement conveniently forgets the 150 years of legal, social and economic progress attained by millions of American minorities. It also minimizes the sacrifice that hundreds of thousands of white Americans and a Republican president made laying down their lives to eradicate slavery. I think grandpa Silas would believe that this historical loss of life alone is payment in full. Every proud, contributing and thankful generation of black Americans since would think the same.

The reparation movement also reinforces a spiritual view of racial relationships that is antithetical to America’s Judeo-Christian foundation. It defies the ideals of forgiveness and second chances and scorns individual accountability. Proponents of reparations act as though black Americans are incapable of carrying their own burdens, while white Americans must bear the sins of those who came before.

Racial politics in general and the reparation movement in particular are examples of the soft racism of the Left. When you try to convince an entire race that they are victims, you are a soft racist. When you refuse to acknowledge that every individual, regardless of their race, must take responsibility for the decisions and actions they make throughout their lives, you are a soft racist. When you suggest, for example, that it's just too difficult for people of one race to get a government-authorized ID so they can identify themselves before voting, you are a soft racist. Are people really so incompetent that they can't figure out how and where to get the ID? Think of the blatant condescension involved in that logic.

Over the past decade, the term "white privilege" has emerged as the latest politically correct cudgel against a nation that the Left perceives as racist. The term has been designed to foster guilt, and in so doing, allows Leftist politicians and academics to create still more programs and policies that create dependency and a victim's mindset among particular racial groups. That's soft racism as well.

Owens continues:

... Grandpa Silas never believed anyone owed him success. Why should I believe white Americans owe me anything?

In reality, we're all owed an opportunity to create the best life we can. But that opportunity must be leveraged with education, hard work, personal responsibility and sure, a little luck. Reparations won't deliver any of that, but you'll never convince the soft racists of the Democratic party of that reality.

148 Lashes

The Left tends to do something interesting when conflict occurs across the globe. If the primary aggressor is one of Left's favorites—defined as a group or country that is viewed (often incorrectly) as "oppressed"—they are given a pass for their actions on a wide range of human rights abuses, their warlike language that advocates destruction/death to their enemies, their internal oppression of their own people, and their kinetic aggression against their enemies (e.g., rocket launches against civilian population centers). That has been the case with Islamist terror groups like Hamas (a.k.a. the "palestinians") or Hezballah, and more recently, with Iran.

Iran is the world's largest sponsor of Islamic terror and violence. Through their many proxies, they have fomented violence throughout the Middle East, continually threaten their neighbors, and even threaten U.S. forces in the region. Yet when the United States responds by moving assets into the region to counter their threats, the Left accuses the current administration with war-like posturing and predicts all-out war in the Middle East. Leftist Democrats go so far as suggesting that Donald Trump is doing the bidding of the Saudis, the Israelis, the Qataris, conveniently forgetting that despite the Obama administration's pathetic attempt to mollify the mad mullahs, Iran continues on its path to become the North Korea of the M.E.

Yet it seems that leftist media sources and far too many Democrats somehow believe that Iran is the victim in all of this. That would be the same Iran whose leadership does things like this:

After two trials described by Amnesty International as “grossly unfair,” Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.

Sotoudeh, who has dedicated her life to defending Iranian women prosecuted for removing their hijabs in public, has been in the crosshairs of Iran’s theocratic government for years. In 2010, she was convicted of conspiring to harm state security and served half of a six-year sentence. Then, in June of last year, she was rearrested on an array of dubious charges. Tried in secret, details of her ordeal have often come via her husband, Reza Khandan, who wrote of her new, much harsher sentence on his Facebook page on Monday.

Sotoudeh was ultimately charged with seven crimes and given the maximum sentence for all of them. Five additional years were added from a 2016 case in which she was convicted in absentia. The total 38-year sentence was severe even by Iranian standards — a country often accused of human rights abuses, particularly involving women. Observers say it may signal a newly hardline approach to political dissent. Last week, a radical cleric linked to mass executions in the 1980s was appointed head of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary.

Critics from around the world decried the outcome of Sotoudeh’s case. Amnesty International said it was harshest sentence documented against a human rights defender in Iran in recent memory. Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, told CBS News it exposed “the insecurity the regime has to any peaceful challenge.”

Not to mention the same Iran that almost 40 years ago essentially declared war on the U.S. by invading our embassy in Tehran and taking 52 people prisoner for 444 days—a clear violation of international law. A weak and feckless U.S. President (Jimmy Carter) did nothing at the time, leading the mullahs to believe that the tiger had no teeth.

Today, Iran is NOT a victim, nor does its leadership deserve any respect whatsoever. It can easily pull back and in doing so, reduce the tension that it and only it, has created. But if Iran does not do this, if it's foolish enough to pull hard on the tiger's tail, it just might reap an overwhelming response—one that in my opinion, is almost 40 years past due.

Impeachment Mania and Squirrels

Scott Johnson discusses the increasing impeachment chorus coming from a choir of Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media, and yeah, even a very few #NeverTrump Republicans. He writes:

The Dems invested heavily in the Mueller Report, but were disappointed by the outcome. Remember the weeping and wailing about the sanctity of Mueller himself? He required protection at all costs from the Hitlerian madman in the White House. Left free to run wild with a team of subpoena wielding Clintonian partisans, Mueller delivered too much of nothing. The Dems went bust on their investment.

Those Clintonian partisans on Mueller’s team heavily seeded Volume II with markers pointing the way for their Democratic friends in the House of Representatives. Volume II might have been inspired by a close reading of Hansel and Gretel. It partakes of the qualities of a grim fairly tale, not a Grimm fairy tale: a fairy tale written by lawyers stretching a bad case to please an immature audience having troubles with deferred gratification.

For their friends in Congress Mueller’s team pointed the way home. We are to believe that Trump corruptly impeded the investigation of crimes he didn’t commit — even though he withheld approximately nothing from the investigators.

The Dems’ impeachment mania is inversely proportional to the merits of their case against Trump. It represents one branch of their refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election. To borrow a metaphor used in Fourth Amendment law, it is the fruit of the poisonous tree.

I also have written about Democrat impeachment mania, noting on the one hand, the Dems' unhinged calls for impeachment but on the other noting that Trump can be removed from office much more easily by defeating him in an election that is now only about 17 months away. But alas, that would do nothing to reduce the fever of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and the fever rules all.

But I've come to realize that both Johnson and I are only half correct. There's another reason for impeachment mania, and it has to do with squirrels. It looks as if the greatest political scandal in the history of the United States just might come to light. An honest AG has appointed a no-nonsense prosecutor to investigate the scandal, along with the FBI IG who is currently wrapping up an internal report. The result might be the release of damning evidence that a soft coup, perpetrated by senior executives in the FBI, the Obama DoJ, and our intelligence agencies under the codename "crossfire hurricane" (discussed here, here, and here) actually did occur. That crimes were committed, and that the Democrat partisans involved just might be indicted.

And the Dems, fearing that serious and dangerous political corruption on their watch might be revealed, will do anything—and I mean anything—to cause a distraction that buries the scandal. The trained hamsters in the media truly don't want to cover a story of massive corruption involving Democrats, but they need a reason to ignore it. Like a dog walking through the woods, they can be easily distracted and will chase a squirrel if they see one. Impeachment is the squirrel they need.

So here's a prediction. If the "crossfire hurricane" scandal is as bad as most objective observers believe. If it involves actual crimes, hard evidence of corruption at the highest levels of government, and certainly if it presents a trail of bread crumbs that lead to the Obama White House and perilously close to the past president—articles of impeachment will be introduced in the House. Bet on it.

UPDATE-1:
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Based on copious, publicly available facts and evidence, the Crossfire Hurricane (a.k.a. "Spygate") scandal is real—it did happen. But that doesn't mean that anyone in the deep state will be held accountable. Marc Ellis writes:

To what extent, if any, will Russia-Gate actors like Lynch, Simpson, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Strzok, Page and the rest be held accountable for their alleged criminality?

... The answer, from [conservative] Fourth Estate constitutionalists like Gregg Jarrett and Sara Carter, is always couched in a context of cautionary advisement: “They should,” or, “If justice still exists in America, yes,” or, the best conditional condemnation of all, “Put it this way, if you or I had done what (Hillary, Comey, Strzok, etc.) had done, yes, we would likely be looking at serious jail time.”

Lying to a FISA court, destroying evidence, leaking classified information. These are but a minimal sampling of the alleged crimes and malefactions committed in the name of electing Clinton and usurping Trump’s ascendancy.

... it would be irresponsible to categorically state that yes, this person, those people, will ever be charged or brought to trial, let alone hear the clank of a cell door closing behind them. Due to the labyrinthine depths, interconnectivity, and power inherent in a Deep State that has shocked a nation aghast at the reach of rogue bureaucracies, no one can say for certain whether any of those who concocted this conspiracy will ever be brought to justice.

Originally, I was of the opinion that no one would be held accountable. Now, I'm not so sure.

UPDATE-2 (5/24/2019):
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As a consequence of Donald Trump's move to declassify very specific information related to the crossfire-hurricane scandal, the Dems are beginning to feel just a bit uncomfortable. Their narrative du jour was voiced by serial liar, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who opined that any effort to declassify information that might shed light on thee scandal was an effort to “weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their [the GOP's] political enemies.”

That's rich, given that the entire "spygate" scandal was about exactly that—weaponizing law enforcement and classified information against political enemies (i.e., Donald Trump). Talk about psychological projection!

Gosh ... and here I thought that the Dems demands for full transparency were sincere. After all, if the memos to be declassified show no wrongdoing, that will vindicate the Dems and people like Schiff. I wonder why he's so concerned?

Paul Mirengoff comments:

...We can’t have one party or set of partisans using the power of the intelligence community to undermine the electoral prospects of the other party.

Thus, the investigation the Trump administration will conduct through Attorney General Barr is every bit as important as the investigation Robert Mueller conducted into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Indeed, it is probably more important. We can cope more easily with interference by outsiders than with partisan involvement by insiders using the immense powers of our intelligence agencies to favor one candidate over another.

Every shred of evidence unearthed so far indicates that Democrat partisans used "the power of the intelligence community [and FBI] to undermine the electoral prospects of the other party." That not good and those partisans should pay a price—a very steep price.

Suckers

We're hearing a lot about the trials and tribulations of millennials—how their situation is financially stagnant, and of course, how they're deeply in debt due to their borrowing to attend expensive colleges and universities.

Leaping at the opportunity to buy votes, many Democrats, and virtually the entire democratic socialist wing of the party, have decided that college debt forgiveness is the answer. You'd think that those loans were forced on the poor kids who agreed to them, that there were no other alternatives to a high priced education, that augmenting the cost of college (e.g., via work) wasn't possible, and that choosing a degree with few job prospects wasn't a decision that would have long term consequences for paying down the debt incurred. None of that is true, but democratic socialists believe that taxpayers should pay for the indebtedness of others.

David Harsanyi comments:

Perhaps being a well-read and well-rounded person with a fine arts degree is more important to you than an engineering degree[*] and a big paycheck. That’s fine. That’s a choice.

Psychology, the seventh-most popular major in the United States, is also the 160th most useful major in making a living. Humanities degrees, honorable as they might be, are the least useful degrees for making a good living. They are also, by far, the most popular majors in colleges today. Then again, only around 27 percent of college graduates find jobs related to their majors.

If there were a healthy, properly incentivized economic structure in higher education, banks wouldn’t be handing out loans to students without any thought to their future earning potential. There isn’t.

So we're told that the debt burden is just too great for the millennial "victims" of the rapacious banks and that rather than working hard to pay off a debt they voluntarily accepted, they should be freed from that debt. But why stop there? How about the millions of people who must have a car to go to work, but are burdened by a car loan. The taxpayers could step in pay the bill. And mortgages? Why not? How about credit card debt, you know when you put that vacation to Thailand you've always dreamed about on your credit card and then, whoa, you realize to have to pay for it after all? Phuket!

But according to some candidates for president, millennials are "victims" and therefore have a right to free stuff. After all, you're a victim even if you never seemed to consider that loans would have to be paid off. And free stuff? No need to repay your debt, the taxpayers will comp you for it.

I wonder how a hardworking millennial, who worked two jobs and eschewed unnecessary expenditures (the vaca to Thailand comes to mind) to pay off his or her college debt, will feel when other millennials are given a get-out-of-debt-free card. Can anyone spell s-u-c-k-e-r.

But maybe the real suckers are the taxpayers who vote for Democrats who then demand that taxpayers pay for someone else's college education.

FOOTNOTE:
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* I think it's worth noting that it's a whole lot less work, a whole lot less study, and a whole lot easier to get a fine arts degree than it is to get an engineering degree, but I suppose that another matter altogether. Of course, that's the reason engineering grads get the big bucks and generally can pay off their college debt with relatively little difficulty.

Then the People Voted

First, it was the Brexit vote. There was no way the Brits would vote to remain a part of the EU. No matter that doing so gave power to centralized bureaucrats who often rule at cross purposes to the wants and needs of the British people. The elites said that the U.K. must remain a part of the EU mega-government, so stay it would. The polls indicated that Britain would stay, so stay it would. Until the people voted.

Next, it was the 2016 election in the United States. There was no way the Americans would vote to elect Donald Trump as President. Hillary Clinton was to be the next leader, no matter that she was demonstrably corrupt, provably dishonest, and mildly incompetent. The polls indicated she would win in a landslide. The elites on both sides of the aisle made no secret about their preference for her. The media was solidly in her corner. The deep state (we know know) was aggressively plotting against her opponent. She was going to win. Until the people voted.

Then it was Australia. The Labour Party (the political equivalent of our Democrat Party) ran on a platform of higher taxes, increased spending to combat the predicted (but not proven) global calamity associated with climate change, increased engagement with China, and a variety of other progressive positions. They were to be the clear winner in parliament. Polling indicated that Aussies would vote in Labour in a landslide. Australian bookies were so sure of a Labour victory, some paid off bets before the election. Labour would give Australia a more progressive parliament. Until the people voted.

Richard Fernandez comments:

Are polls wrong because people are concealing their true feelings from the woke vigilantes? Do they result from some confirmation bias that blinds us? There's a theory that the Titanic's lookouts couldn't see the ice ahead because North Atlantic temperature gradients refracted the berg's position like a mirage. We see what we want to see. True believers are especially vulnerable to the Tinkerbell effect, a kind of narrative causality, that makes desired ends seem closer than they are. Ideologues can unintentionally think that if you really believe that Labor or Hillary or Europe will triumph, then they will really prevail.

But it can equally produce the reverse Tinkerbell effect. "Legal scholar David Post coined the term to refer to the phenomenon in which heightened beliefs in something increase its likelihood to produce unwanted outcomes. For instance, if more people believe that driving is safe, more people will go out for a drive, causing chaos on the roads and thus driving becomes dangerous." Thus Hillary's confidence in her insurmountable lead caused her to skip campaigning in the "blue collar Rustbelt" and ironically undermined her.

But it's more than that. Across the world, elites suggest that their way is the only way, that their leadership is the only acceptable leadership, that everything should be centrally defined and centrally controlled.

But at least the elites make an attempt at pragmatism. The woke are entirely different. The Urban Dictionary defines the term this way:

Woke means being conscious of racial discrimination in society and other forms of oppression and injustice. In mainstream use, woke can also more generally describe someone or something as being "with it."

When the woke are considered in the context of the election loses already noted, we can add an overlay of an extreme level of political correctness that not only suggests group think, but demands it. Any criticism or opposition is labelled as racist or sexist. Stir in a media that echos these sentiments without the inherent skepticism that should exist to test these ideas. And add in a palpable condescension that labels those who disagree as bad people whose world view is "deplorable," and you've got a recipe for the votes in Britain, and the U.S. and Australia.

Although they lose elections, the woke have succeeded culturally, not because they win at the ballot box, but because they've won everywhere else—the media, entertainment, academia, the arts, education, some parts of government—and as a consequence, their ideas permeate our culture like no others. But there is pushback, lots of pushback.

Fernandez said something wise about the woke in a separate tweet:

The most remarkable thing about the woke is not their virtue but their presumption.

Without evidence, without factual backup, and with a level of hubris that is often astounding, the woke presume that their way is the only way. When their ideas, their policies, and their governance result in wreckage in the real world, they never, ever admit error—they double down.

In a way, all of this boils down to fantasy thinking. Believing something to be true doesn't make it true. In the end, maybe that's what really happened in the U.K, the U.S. and Oz. Then the people voted.

Predictions

Many voters are far too young to remember Paul R. Erlich. He was an author and media darling, interviewed by everyone from the New York Times to CBS News. His message is described by David Epstein:

... In his 1968 best seller, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich insisted that it was too late to prevent a doomsday apocalypse resulting from overpopulation. Resource shortages would cause hundreds of millions of starvation deaths within a decade. It was cold, hard math: The human population was growing exponentially; the food supply was not. Ehrlich was an accomplished butterfly specialist. He knew that nature did not regulate animal populations delicately. Populations exploded, blowing past the available resources, and then crashed.

This article appears in the June 2019 issue.

In his book, Ehrlich played out hypothetical scenarios that represented “the kinds of disasters that will occur.” In the worst-case scenario, famine rages across the planet. Russia, China, and the United States are dragged into nuclear war, and the resulting environmental degradation soon extinguishes the human race. In the “cheerful” scenario, population controls begin. Famine spreads, and countries teeter, but the major death wave ends in the mid-1980s. Only half a billion or so people die of starvation. “I challenge you to create one more optimistic,” Ehrlich wrote, adding that he would not count scenarios involving benevolent aliens bearing care packages.

Overpopulation across the globe was the climate change of the late 1960s. Disease, famine, violence, and other catastrophes were unavoidable, would happen within the next decade or two, and were all due to too many people.

Except none of those things happened on a planetary basis. Erlich, the expert de jour, was wrong.

Remember peak oil (the 1990s), or maybe the coming ice age (the 1970s), or possibly the Y2K bug (the year 2000), or perhaps North Korea-is-many-years-away-from-developing-nuclear-weapons (early 2000s) All of those things were stated as fact by "experts" who were embraced by a media that used them to promote a specific narrative. Except, none of them happened, and none of the dire predictions came to pass.

Epstein takes a broader look at "expert" predictions:

The idea for the most important study ever conducted of expert predictions was sparked in 1984, at a meeting of a National Research Council committee on American-Soviet relations. The psychologist and political scientist Philip E. Tetlock was 30 years old, by far the most junior committee member. He listened intently as other members discussed Soviet intentions and American policies. Renowned experts delivered authoritative predictions, and Tetlock was struck by how many perfectly contradicted one another and were impervious to counterarguments.

Tetlock decided to put expert political and economic predictions to the test. With the Cold War in full swing, he collected forecasts from 284 highly educated experts who averaged more than 12 years of experience in their specialties. To ensure that the predictions were concrete, experts had to give specific probabilities of future events. Tetlock had to collect enough predictions that he could separate lucky and unlucky streaks from true skill. The project lasted 20 years, and comprised 82,361 probability estimates about the future.

The result: The experts were, by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that future events were impossible or nearly impossible, 15 percent of them occurred nonetheless. When they declared events to be a sure thing, more than one-quarter of them failed to transpire. As the Danish proverb warns, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Today, the media promotes a broad spectrum of "expert" predictions—about the climate, about the economy, about conflict between nations. As long as the predictions conform with a narrative that the trained hamsters like, it's promoted endlessly. And if the prediction doesn't conform—then the "expert" is labeled a quack or a conspiracy theorist.

The bottom line is this—All predictions, even those made by "experts" should be viewed with healthy skepticism. In fact, the harder an agenda-driven media push a specific prediction, the more skepticism it should receive.

Absolutists

Flying in the face of nearly 60 years of precedent, a number of states have decided to test Row v. Wade by passing draconian anti-abortion laws. Hopefully, these laws will be ruled unconstitutional—they are extreme.

The 'abortion debate' has been ongoing ever since Row v. Wade became law. Every argument on both the pro-life and pro-choice sides has already been made and yet, because absolutists seem to control the debate on both the Right and the Left, there has been no resolution of this difficult issue. Nor will there be. Compromise is not part of the absolutist playbook.

Damon Linker has it right when he writes:

Abortion is tragic in the strict sense of the term. It's an act that pits fundamentally irreconcilable absolute rights against each other — the pregnant woman's right to determine what happens to her own body without state interference against the right to life of the fetus she carries inside her womb. Anyone who adopts an absolute position on the issue, denying the moral weight of the case for the opposite view, does so through an act of willful, ideologically motivated simplification.

Absolutists on the Right argue that a woman has no right to terminate a pregnancy, even in the weeks immediately after she discovers she's pregnant. That's a ridiculous position that is retrogressive, unfair, and just plain wrong. Absolutists on the Left argue that a woman has every right to terminate a pregnancy, regardless of the reason, even in the weeks immediately before she's ready to give birth to a viable baby. That's a morally questionable position, unless the mother's life is at stake. Absolutists on the right contend that abortion should be illegal even in the case of rape and incest. That's a reprehensible position that is absurd. Absolutists on the Left argue that even in the final days of pregnancy, the fetus is not a person and can therefore be aborted. That's a cynical play on semantics and flies in the face of scientific evidence of viability.

Those absolutist positions are cemented in place. It's unlikely that they will change. Linker continues:

The convictions and preferences of tens of millions of conflicted women and men is likely to have little influence over the shape of abortion law in the coming years. In America, government is increasingly conducted as a clash among mobilized activists pursuing incompatible vision of moral purity. And in no area of policy is that truer than it is on abortion.

Since compromise, although the best path, cannot be achieved, we arrive at this: If a woman is pro-choice, she should be allowed to control whether or not she has a child. That will undoubtedly lead to a small number of very uncomfortable moral dilemmas, but so be it. If a woman is "pro-life," she can opt not to have an abortion, even if she doesn't want another child. The government, including legislatures in the individual states, should stay out of it.

Nightmare

I have significant reservations that the deep state would defeat any legitimate attempt to get to the bottom of the soft coup that began during the Obama administration, was conducted by senior officials of the FBI, the DoJ, and Intelligence agencies, and attempted to discredit a candidate for president and then, after he won in a monumental upset, unseat him from his duly elected office. The soft coup—NOT the Russian collusion hoax, was the real story of the past two years, but the democrats and their trained hamsters in the media worked overtime to bury it.

Now, a no-nonsense Attorney General, William Barr, has initiated an investigation into the soft coup, naming U.S. Attorney John Durham as the man in charge. The Dems, going to their standard playbook, have already attempted to discredit AG Barr, making specious allegations, finding him in "contempt of congress" for following the law, and otherwise doing their usual politics of personal destruction thing. With the exception of their base, no one is paying attention. So far, the same strategy has not been tried with Durham, who Kim Strassel describes this way:

The Connecticut prosecutor is a straight arrow. Even Chris Murphy, Mr. Durham’s home state Democratic senator, praised him this week as “apolitical,” “serious,” and “fair.” In a 37-year tenure at the Justice Department, Mr. Durham has served six presidents. Federal records show he has never donated to a political candidate. He’s the antithesis of a showboater; he doesn’t do news conferences and he doesn’t do leaks.

Mr. Durham has also specialized in investigations into government actors—from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Central Intelligence Agency to political figures. The record shows that he doesn’t bring prosecutions lightly, but also isn’t afraid to hold the powerful to account. I’ve confirmed he’ll be joined by the highly respected Nora Dannehy. Ms. Dannehy was herself once the U.S. attorney in Connecticut and in 2008 led the probe into the George W. Bush administration’s controversial firing of U.S. attorneys. She only recently returned to Justice from private practice and is working as counsel in Mr. Durham’s office.

I suspect, however, that deep inside the Dem smear machine, operatives are working overtime to find something, anything, they can use to discredit Durham. Why? Because the soft coup is real—not a hoax—and backed by already public evidence (e.g., payments, emails, text messages, public statements, court documents) of significant wrongdoing by parties very close to the top of the Democrat pyramid.

If I'm wrong, and the truth of the soft coup becomes public, this will be the greatest political scandal in American history. People (e.g., James Comey or James Clapper) may very well be indicted and some may be convicted. But most important, it will serve as an object lesson to both Dems and the GOP that weaponizing government agencies against your opponents is a very bad idea. Barack Obama did that repeatedly during his presidency (the 'Chicago way')—the IRS scandal is but one example. It looks like the same thing was done late in his presidency with top officers at the FBI and the CIA.

Maybe my early concerns are correct and the whole thing will be buried. Maybe I'm wrong and Durham will find no evidence of wrongdoing. But may, just maybe, those who did this will be held to account. For the Dems, this possibility is a nightmare, but it's one of their own making.

Dreyfus

Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing develop an interested analogy when they argue that Donald Trump is the Alfred Dreyfus of the 21st century. They write:

The time for an accounting has arrived for former senior members of the FBI and Intelligence Community. They aided and abetted in propagating a false narrative about the Trump campaign colluding with Russians, accused the President of the United States of being a “traitor,” and misled the American people. They made Donald J. Trump the Alfred Dreyfus of the 21st century: a completely innocent man, framed by his own government because of who he was (Dreyfus, a Jew, was the victim of French anti-Semitism [Trump, who is bombastic, sometimes crass, and often unpresidential was the victim of this smear because the establishment didn't like his style or his low opinion of them]) and not what he did.

Dreyfus was framed of spying for the Germans based on a forged document. Trump was framed by a fraudulent dossier.

Worse, the [Trump] framing was done as a distraction to cover up for those who weaponized our law enforcement and intelligence tools against a political opponent. President Trump deserves an apology from them all.

It's the last sentence that is the one that matters. Either the Dems are so driven by irrational hatred of this president that they truly do believe their own bullshit (I've used the word "chasing" in previous posts). Or they're so frightened by the prospect that the inverse investigation (you know, the one that may lead to AG William Barr uncovering a soft coup attempt initiated by more than a few Obama era officials and agencies that weaponized against Trump in the waining year of the previous administration) that they're will do anything to keep a friendly and compliant media busy with specious claims of "obstruction" (for a crime that never occurred).

My guess is the latter. Not every Democrat is stupid or deranged, and that means that at least some of them recognize that the evidence, the Mueller Report, and good ol' common sense indicates that Trump did not do the crime. But that doesn't matter. If the inverse investigation exposes the scandal of a soft coup attempt, if it implicates Hillary Clinton and gets too close to Barack Obama, if it exposes Clapper and Brennan, Comey or McCabe for the partisan liars that they are, the Dems will lose, and lose badly in the 2020 election. That can't be allowed to happen.

So the circus must go on, and on, and on until the clock runs out and the Dems control the White House, the House, and the Senate. Then the soft coup scandal disappears, just like it was supposed to do when Hillary won the election. But she didn't, and that's why Trump is Dreyfus, and the Dems, despite all of their obnoxious bluster, are running scared.

A "Calming Feeling"

As if not to be outdone by the anti-Semitic ranting of her good buddy, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep Rashida Talib (D-MI) made the following statement in a May 10, 2019 podcast:

"There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people's passports," Tlaib said just after the 28 minute mark. "And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.”

Sometimes it amazes me how dishonest and ignorant "anti-Zionist" leftists can be. Not only is the overall tenor of her statement (that "palestinians" helped the Jews after the holocaust) patently false, it containss so many historical inaccuracies as to be laughable. Philip Klein responds the the overarching implication of Talib's comment:

During World War II, the Palestinian leader at the time, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, met with Adolf Hitler and allied with the Nazis. As the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum recounts, "al-Husayni collaborated with the German and Italian governments by broadcasting pro-Axis, anti-British, and anti-Jewish propaganda via radio to the Arab world; inciting violence against Jews and the British authorities in the Middle East; and recruiting young men of Islamic faith for service in German military, Waffen-SS , and auxiliary units. In turn, the Germans and the Italians used al-Husayni as a tool to inspire support and collaboration among Muslim residents of regions under Axis control and to incite anti-Allied violence and rebellion among Muslims residing beyond the reach of German arms."

— After World War II, when the Jewish people declared the state of Israel, their official proclamation said, "We appeal - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions." Instead of choosing to live peacefully, however, Arab leaders encouraged Arabs to flee Israel, and the next day, the young nation was invaded by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq.

— The terrorist group the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964, three years before Israel occupied the West Bank in the Six Day War, territories that we're now led to believe is at the heart of the conflict.

So, to sum up, Tlaib's claims that her Arab ancestors provided a "safe haven" to Jews after the Holocaust ignores the Jewish presence [for millenia] in the region and efforts to establish a Jewish state that predated the Holocaust, ignores that her ancestors allied with Hitler at the time of the Holocaust, and ignores decades of violence and terrorism directed at Israel both before, during, and after the Holocaust.

As always, prominent Dems and their trained hamsters in the media remain silent as Omar and Talib spread their lies, encourage anti-Semitic tropes, and provide verbal support to Islamist terror organizations.

For the Democrats who feel uneasy with this, who reject the notion that elected officials at a federal level can state their antipathy with Israel and Jews and suffer no consequences within their party. it's time to recognize that it won't get better. But it will get worse, maybe much worse.

#Walkaway.

UPDATE:
----------------
Rushing to the defense of one of their own, Democrat leaders have circled the wagons around Talib. Chris Perez reports:

Democratic leaders were rushing to the defense of freshman Congresswoman Rashida Talib on Monday after she got blasted by Republicans — including President Trump — for comments she made about Jews moving into Palestine after the Holocaust.

“Republicans’ desperate attempts to smear @RepRashida & misrepresent her comments are outrageous,” tweeted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “President @realDonaldTrump & House GOP should apologize to Rep. Tlaib & the American people for their gross misrepresentations.”

Speaking to The Hill in an email, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said: “If you read Rep. Tlaib’s comments, it is clear that President Trump and Congressional Republicans are taking them out of context. They must stop, and they owe her an apology.”

Apology, huh? Forgiving Talib for misrepresenting the post WW-II history of the region, refusing to note that "palestinian" leaders were Nazi sympathizers, conveniently forgetting to mention that the "palestinians" first attempted to annihilate the Jews and them fled at the behest of their own leaders, suggesting that as a consequence of the holocaust migration to Israel, the Jews were responsible for the dispossession of the "palestinians"—a people that never had a government, a capital, a bureacracy, or any of the other typical indicia that indicate a state?

Apology? Not on your life.

Equity

Jordan Peterson is the author of the international best seller, 12 Rules for Life, and is well-received by millennials who often treat him as a quasi-life coach. Because of his popularity and the fact that his message conflicts with many leftist narratives, progressives tend to dismiss him and/or demonize him. Here is Peterson on one of the left's core narratives—"equity:"

The mantra of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity (DIE) perhaps constitutes the primary identifying factor of the tiny minority of radical collectivist ideologues that nonetheless have come to dominate the humanities and social sciences in Western universities (and, increasingly, the HR departments of corporations). Of these three, equity is the most egregious, self-righteous, historically-ignorant and dangerous. “Equity” is a term designed to signal “equality,” in some manner, and is a term designed to appeal to the natural human tendency toward fairness, but it does not mean the classic equality of the West, which is equality before the law and equality of opportunity.

Equality before the law means that each citizen will be treated fairly by the criminal justice and judicial systems regardless of their status — and that the state recognizes that each individual has an intrinsic value which serves as a limit to state power, and which the polity must respect. There is likely no more fundamental presumption grounding our culture.

Equality of opportunity is a doctrine of openness predicated on the fact that talent is widely distributed although comparatively rare. This should come as no surprise to anyone, given that some people are much better at doing a given task than others and, because of that, it is in everyone’s selfish interest to allow such talent to come to the fore so that we can all benefit. This means that no one should be arbitrarily denied the possibility of their contribution for reasons unrelated to the task at hand. This is also a fundamental principle of Western culture, particularly in its free-market guise.

Conservatives rightly characterize the equity issue as a debate over equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcomes. There is no guarantee of equality of outcome, but every society should attempt to provide equality of opportunity. Progressives argue that we have failed in that regard, but there are few, if any societies on the planet who have tried harder to overcome that failure or done more to remedy it.

But it's more than that. It also goes to the central question of the spectrum human ability, and of the parallel spectrum of personality and character traits that drive some to excel while others are perfectly willing to live their lives without the stress (and risk) that always accompanies high achievement.

Progressives often take the fall back position that those who do not achieve "equity" have somehow been victimized by our broader society, and if it were not for that, we would achieve equity of outcome. That position flies in the face of our collective experiences and observations, and that's the reason that equity argument embedded in the broader political correctness narrative leads to cognitive dissonance among large portions of the electorate. People observe distinct and irrefutable differences in physical and intellectual traits among other people, they have encountered many people who are driven, who are risk takers, who have failed only to try again. But they've also encountered and others who who are less enthusiastic about achievement, who are risk averse, and who are crushed by failure, unwilling to try again. That's human nature and it will always be with us—at least as long as humans in their current form sit at the top of the food chain.

Dead Wrong!

One of the ways to avoid bad predictions and erroneous decisions is to be held to account for the bad predictions and erroneous decisions you do make. It's perfectly okay to make mistakes, but it's not okay to make analogous mistakes repeatedly, and it's even worse to make those mistakes because you're driven not by what you believe is clear thinking, but rather by ideologically driven hatred. The progressive left makes lots and lots of predictions about the economy, about the environment, about foreign relations, about fiscal matters, about governance, about taxation and yes, about things like Russian collusion—only to be proven wrong over and over again. But because the trained hamsters in the media want to promote the progressive left's narratives, those mistakes are never examined. In essence, the left is never held to account for being wrong and then wrong again; for predicting catastrophic consequences, when no such consequences appear.

David Harsanyi examines the left's predictions on Donald Trump's tax reform package, enacted early in his presidency:

For those of you who survived the Great GOP Tax Cut Massacre, things are finally looking up. The unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent last month, the lowest level since 1969. We've now experienced over a full year of unemployment at 4 percent or lower. The economy beat projections, adding another 263,000 jobs in April. Wages are rising.

It was Larry Summers, Bill Clinton's former treasury secretary and Barack Obama's White House economic adviser, who warned that tax reform would lead to over 10,000 dead Americans every year in December of 2017. Summers, considered a reasonable moderate by today's political standards, was just one of the many fearmongers.

The same month, after cautioning that passage of tax cuts would portend "Armageddon," then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi explained that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), a reform of corporate tax codes and a wide-ranging relief, was "the worst bill in the history of the United States Congress." Worse than the Fugitive Slave Act? Worse than the Espionage Act? Worse than congressional approval of the internment of Japanese Americans? That's a really bad bill.

The tenor of left-wing cable news and punditry was predictably panic-stricken. After asserting that the cuts wouldn't help create a single job, Bruce Bartlett told MSNBC that tax relief was "really akin to rape." Kurt Eichenwald tweeted that "America died tonight." "I'm a Depression historian," read the headline on a Washington Post op-ed. "The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929," proclaimed the same writer. And so on.

None of this is even getting into the MSM's straight news coverage, which persistently (and falsely) painted the bill as a tax cut for the wealthy. "One-Third of Middle Class Families Could End up Paying More Under the GOP Tax Plan" noted Money magazine. An Associated Press headline read, "House Passes First Rewrite of Nation's Tax Laws in Three Decades, Providing Steep Tax Cuts for Businesses, the Wealthy." "Poor Americans Would Lose Billions Under Senate GOP Tax Bill" reported CNN. Yahoo News ran one piece after the next predicting doom.

Okay, all of these left-leaning politicians, pundits and media sources were wrong. Dead wrong! But rather than admit error, they do what they always do, double down. Even "moderate" Dem candidates for president (think Joe Biden) say they're going to raise taxes to improve the plight of the middle class. That would be the same middle class that has benefitted substantially from Trump's tax reform. I guess Biden et al haven't heard the aphorism, "If it's not broke, don't fix it."

But that's not to say that some things could be improved. The Trump administration, like every administration before them, has over-spent and increased the national debt to dangerous levels. That should be corrected, but I've yet to see any Democrat plan to reduce spending in any meaningful way. The swamp is extremely difficult —maybe impossible—to drain, but suggesting that by giving the swamp creatures more tax dollars, the middle class will benefit, is either monumentally stupid or breathtakingly naive.

"Peace and Justice"

It was a small thing really, but telling. A group of Democrats in the House invited Imam Omar Suleiman to read a prayer ‘for unity, not division’ in the House of Representatives this past Thursday morning. Dominic Green reports:

[the] prayer ... elicited a touching tweet of gratitudes from paragons of unity Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour.

Suleiman is the very model of a progressive preacher. That’s why Eddie Bernice-Johnson [a Democrat from TX and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus] praised him on Friday as someone who, in ‘times of struggle’, has ‘time and again used his voice to call for peace & justice’. He just hates gays, sexual equality, and the Jewish state. Imagine the outcry if he had been invited by a Republican.

Suleiman thinks homosexuality is a ‘disease’:

‘When Allah describes homosexuality as a repugnant shameless sin and details his punishment of a people that practiced sodomy, how can anyone who believes in Allah not find it immoral? …If as Muslims we don’t take a clear stance on this, we will be forced to confirm and watch this disease destroy our children.’

Homosexuality, Suleiman believes, is ‘wrong’,‘obviously harmful to society’, and ‘not natural, because of human reproduction and all the diseases and things of that sort that come as a result’. Muslims, he says, should try to cure homosexuals of ‘that wrong idea or wrong practice’. Suleiman compares homosexual impulses and acts to bestiality and incest:

‘Now what if someone says, “But what if someone is born that way, what is someone is a homosexual and they can’t help that?” Then we would say that not every impulses is to be acted upon. OK? We don’t allow bestiality. We don’t allow incest.’

Suleiman wants to keep the sexes separate:

‘Basically guys and girls cannot be friends… You have to understand this, especially girls, OK?

Suleiman threatens women by comparing the wrath of Allah to a father committing an honor killing:

‘Allah doesn’t just own 20 guns, Allah owns hell fire. So you’d better be careful. You’re overstepping your bounds. Sisters, the same thing happens too, because you know what happens with a really jealous dad? He kills you and he kills the guy. You are offending Allah… whenever you make yourself promiscuous or whenever you open yourself up to that relationship.’

And, to everyone’s amazement, Suleiman preaches hatred of Israel:

‘The Zionists are the enemies of God, His Messengers, sincere followers of all religions, and humanity as a whole.’

Suleiman talks about ‘Apartheid Israel’ and accuses Israel of ‘genocide’, two lies which meet the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism — a definition endorsed by parties in democratic states all over the world, though, not, curiously, by the Democratic party.

Gosh, you'd think that given the bigotry Suleiman espouses, the Dems would be outraged. You'd think they would NEVER invite a man like this to offer the opening prayer in Congress. You'd think the Dem leaders would publicly condemn the invite and Suleiman's positions.

You'd be wrong.

On issues like gay-rights and sexual equality, the Dems are on the right side—except when intersectional politics comes into play. When a person of color and a Muslim offer a bigoted take on those same issues, the Dems are cowards, silently looking the other way. And the Dems' trained hamsters in the media decided it wasn't a story—what a surprise.

And in the growing tradition of leftist Democrats Keith Ellison, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib and dozens of others who are publicly "anti-Zionist"/anti-Israel, who promote and support the despicable BDS movement, who defend naked aggression by Islamist terror groups like Hamas and Hezballah against Israel, far too many Dems privately support anti-Semitic bigots like Suleiman.

#Walkaway

Chernobyl

The HBO mini-series, Chernobyl, began this past weekend. It's a dark story of the multiple human errors—in execution and far more important, in judgement—that resulted in the greatest civilian nuclear disaster in human history. But there's a secondary lesson that can be learned from Chernobyl, and it has more to do with group think, with the desire to suppress alternative views and opinions, and inadvertently, to obscure or muzzle the truth—all in the name of communist party loyalty. As a consequence of these things, dozens of people (actually, a surprisingly small number) died unnecessarily and thousands were put in immediate and long-term danger of radiation poisoning. All because the truth conflicted with the party narrative.

Some might think that Chernobyl is another Hollywood-generated anti-nuclear power film a la "China Syndrome," but the creator of the film, Craig Mazin, disagrees. He tweeted:

“The lesson of Chernobyl isn’t that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous.”

Hmmm. "Lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism." I can think of one group that has trafficked in those things over the past few years. "Lies" that became a hoax that continues to roil our politics and damage our country. "Arrogance" that suggests that there is only one way to think about things, and "suppression of criticism" that has seen left-leaning major social media platforms censor/ban people that oppose the narrative. (Spare me the argument that crazies like Alex Jones are representative of the people who have been censored/banned. They. Are. Not.)

Ironically, the same group that traffics in "lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism" is a collection of minor league communist wannabes who think that the state can and should control our lives and the narrative in all things. Just like the party apparatus that was in place during Chernobyl, the wannabes think the narrative trumps all. And just like the party apparatus that existed when Chernobyl happened, they are dangerous.

Depressing

Just when you think the Democrats have hit peak Trump Derangement Syndrome, they prove you wrong yet again. This week, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the Dems rolled out their latest crazy political stunt, finding AG William Barr in contempt of congress for following the law. Jerry Nadler and his band of intrepid hamsters decided that they needed an unredacted version of the Mueller report, knowing full well that it could not be given to them without a court order. Rather than getting that court order, they decided to demand the report, using it as an excuse for generating headlines by finding Barr in contempt. It's great political theater and nothing more.

Victor Davis Hansen notes the hypocrisy in all of this:

... Democrats are calling for Barr to resign or be impeached for not regurgitating the unproven allegations against Trump. In other words, Barr acted too much like a federal prosecutor rather than a tabloid reporter trafficking in allegations that did not amount to criminal conduct.

The besmirching of Barr's conduct is surreal. He certainly has not done anything even remotely approximating the conduct of former President Obama's two attorneys general.

Has Barr dubbed himself the president's "wingman" or called America a "nation of cowards," as did former Attorney General Eric Holder?

Has Barr's Department of Justice monitored reporters' communications or ordered surveillance of a television journalist? Has Barr used a government jet to take his family to the Belmont Stakes horse race, as did Holder?

Has Barr met secretly on an airport tarmac with the spouse of a person his Justice Department was investigating, as did former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who had such a meeting with Bill Clinton?

The Mueller report ignored the likely illegal origins of the Christopher Steele dossier, the insertion of an FBI informant into the Trump campaign, the unlawful leaking of documents, and the conflicted testimonies of former high-level intelligence officials.

All of those things were potential felonies. All in some way yielded information that Mueller drew on in his investigation. Yet Mueller never recommended a single indictment of any of the Obama-era officials who likely broke laws.

Mueller was instead fixated on possible collusion with Russia. But it is a crime to knowingly hire a foreign national to work on a presidential campaign -- in other words, to "collude." That is exactly what the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee did when they paid British subject Christopher Steele to smear Trump.

Did Mueller argue that the possible crimes of John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and other former government officials -- lying to federal investigators, perjury, obstruction of justice, deceiving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, planting an informant into a political campaign, unmasking and leaking the identities of individuals under surveillance -- were only peripheral to his investigation?

Not really. After all, Mueller indicted Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone and others for crimes that had nothing to do with collusion and were far less serious than the improper behavior of top Obama administration bureaucrats.

Hansen concludes, as I have over the past month, that the Dems frenzy is a feint to 'controversialize' Barr before he completes an thorough and professional criminal investigation of the deep state soft coup that attempted to unseat an elected president.

Should Donald Trump win in 2020—and the Dems unhinged behavior makes that more and more likely by the month—this 3-ring circus of political dishonesty, viciousness, and unhinged behavior will continue for another four years. That's depressing.

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach!!!

It's hardly news that a large number of House and Senate Democrats want to overturn the results of a democratic election, because ... Trump. You might think that if Donald Trump were as bad and corrupt and stupid and traitorous and bigoted and racist and misogynistic and xenophobic and ... well you get it ... as the Dems claim, and despite Mueller's clear findings to the contrary, he really, really did collude with the Russkies and then obstructed justice, the Democrat's electoral victory in 2020 would be a foregone conclusion (regardless of the candidate they run) and Trump would leave office.* Apparently, they're not as confident as they would have us believe, so they're perfectly willing to put the country through the impeachment of a sitting president, much like the idiocy that the GOP put the country through during the Clinton presidency. After all, what's more important, the Dem's naked grab for power or solving little problems like healthcare, or immigration, or infrastructure?

But the craziest of the Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) crowd want a trifecta—three impeachments—and they want them NOW!

Those suffering severely from TDS insist that in addition to Donald Trump, Justice Bret Kavanaugh should be impeached and removed from the Supreme Court.

And once a duly elected president and his Supreme Court nominee have been removed, the truly deranged members of the party (e.g., Maxine Waters) now want to impeach AG William Barr.

In my view, the Dems should embrace their craziness and impeach all three! After all, independent voters just love crazy. And since we're now all channeling crazy, I'm certain that three on-going impeachments in the run-up to the 2020 elections will result in the Dems achieving a great electoral victory. I know that sounds crazy, but in the world of the Dems, crazy is the new normal.

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach!!!

FOOTNOTE:
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* Of course, the most prominent Democrat in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tells us that she fears that Trump won't abide by the results of the 2020 election and will remain as president for life. As I noted in my last post, this level of psychological projection makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time.

Results

In what has to be a prodigious level of stupidity, coupled with a monumental lack of self-awareness, melded with a huge amount of chutzpa, all driven by a titanic case of (Trump) derangement, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats are warning the rest of us that Donald Trump may not accept the results of the 2020 elections when the Dems win a sure, if narrow, victory. The implication—Trump will become a dictator—President for Life—and we should all be scared—very, very scared. This prediction is, of course, free of any evidence or rational thought. It's based on nothing but increasing levels of Dem craziness.

Paul Beddard reports:

This week’s Liberal Media Scream features the paranoia of the left media fearing that President Trump won’t leave office peacefully, à la Venezuela.

Picking up on how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed Trump might not leave office if he loses by a close margin in 2020, MSNBC host Joy Reid on Sunday gave credence to how “there is a very real possibility that the president of the United States wants to have foreign interference again so that he can stay office” and “he doesn’t have any intention of committing to a peaceful transition of power.”

She quoted from an article about how Nixon considered refusing to leave office, and proposed: “So, it’s not completely unprecedented that a president at least contemplates the idea of staying in office unconstitutionally. How much of a threat do you think there is of that now with this president?”

What makes Pelosi's (and other trained hamsters') warning all the more ridiculous, is that they're exhibiting a case of psychological projection. After all, it has been the Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media who, after more than 2 full years, have been unable to accept the results of the 2016 election.

The Dems created a Russian collusion hoax to delegitimize Trump, paid to have phony evidence created by the Russians to frame Trump, then demanded that a special counsel be appointed to "investigate" the phony evidence, then refused to accept the special counsel's findings, and now suggest that criticism of the investigation of the hoax is "obstruction." The Dems are acting increasingly crazy. In fact, a recent poll indicates that a full 57% of Dems actually think the current President of the United States committed treason. That's nuts! It's beginning to become obvious the Dems are incapable of serious governance.

But according to those same Dems, it's Trump who won't accept the results of an election. Yeah .. right.

"Freedom"

In what has become a bi-annual exercise in terror, the palestinian terror group, Hamas, and a Gaza-based Iranian-sponsored terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, launched approximately 700 rockets across the Gaza border, targeting Israeli civilian centers. The rockets killed four people and injured many others. Israel responded, destroying multiple Hamas and PIJ facilities and targeting commanders from both terror organizations. Matthew Brodsky comments:

Aside from serving as a reminder that Hamas remains as wedded as ever to its charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel as part of its "struggle against the Jews," this latest escalation also highlights the regime in Tehran's ability to impact to the situation in Israel and Gaza, which is likewise devoted to goal of wiping Israel off of the map. The latter's impact can be seen by the subversive role played by the PIJ as they often operate behind the back of Hamas leadership. As the former head of Israel's Military intelligence's Research Department, Yaakov Amidor put it, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, unlike Hamas, is a completely owned and operated Iranian subsidiary, "established by Iran, financed by Iran, and does what Iran wants it to do." A former national security adviser and current senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), Amidor explained, Hamas was dragged into the current escalation by PIJ, who first tried to deny their responsibility for the attack.

Iran would consider it a benefit if Israel were bogged down in a major operation Gaza, which would give Iran a freer hand to continue its entrenchment enterprise in Syria. Amidor believes agreements with Hamas are unlikely to hold if PIJ acts independently and "if Hamas does not take control and do what it should as an organization that is control of the Gaza Strip."

It was the PIJ who ignited this latest round even if Hamas was quick to join in. Taking credit for the strikes that reached Ashkelon, PIJ claimed it fired a new type of missile at the city and said, "what is coming next is greater."

As these events occurred, yet another pro-Palestinian Democratic Congresswoman, Rashida Talib, leaped to the defense of the Islamic terror groups involved. Beth Baumann reports:

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) took to Twitter on Sunday to slam the New York Times for a headline about the attack: "Gaza militants fire 250 rockets, and Israel responds with airstrikes." The Times headline is accurate [although the number of rockets increased to over 700], considering that is precisely how the attack started.

So ... a rising young Democratic member of Congress doesn't like the "dehumanizing" aspect of a NYT headline, but is absolutely silent on the Palestinians blatant rocket attack on Israel. After all, according to Talib, the palestinians "just want to be free."

Uhhh, nope. The palestinians, in the guise of Hamas and the PIJ and along with Iran, just want to eradicate Israel and all Jews who currently live there. "Freedom" for palestinians (and sadly, far too many other Islamic states), is freedom from Jews—an anti-Semitic ideology that will not change.

Jewish supporters of the Democratic party should consider the many anti-Semitic comments of Rashida Talib's BFF, Rep. Ihan Omar, along with Talib's recent contribution, and ask themselves whether a party that won't explicitly and unequivocally condemn such positions is worthy of their support. #Walkaway.

UPDATE-1 (5/7/2019):
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Not to be outdone by her comrade, Rep Ilhan Omar (D-MN) enters the fray, expressing her solidarity with palestinian terrorists who launch rockets at Israeli civilian centers, because ... "occupation."

The occupation canard is the go-to position for leftists who try to justify an Islamist ideology that is blatantly anti-Semitic and murderous at it core. But that reality never deters a true leftist. Omar decided to provide her support for Hamas when she tweeted:

How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends?

The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) May 5, 2019

Yeah ... "cycle of violence." Another go-to phrase beloved by leftists. In actuality, Omar reflects a "cycle of hypocrisy" that infects the left every time the palestinians decide to throw a violent tantrum to satisfy their Islamist masters in Iran or to submarine any attempt at peace negotiations.

Interesting that one side—Hamas and the PIJ—launches rockets against civilians in an obvious violation of international law. The Israelis defend themselves by destroying rocket launching facilities and killing the perpetrators, but their actions always seem to be "disproportionate" to leftists with palestinian leanings. Because the palestinian rocket launchers are purposely embedded behind human shields, there are civilian casualties—civilians put directly in harm's way by the Islamists. Progressives whine about "war crimes" when in fact the only war crimes are perpetrated by the Islamists.

Tiana Lowe comments on Omar's latest:

The "endless cycle of violence" would cease in perpetuity if Palestinians were able to remove the literal terrorist organization now in power (officials in Gaza have managed to avoid holding elections for 13 years now), or if said terrorist organization were to stop launching barbaric attacks at Israel unprompted.

Leftists like Talib and Omar often think they're the smartest people in the room, when in reality, they're fools. They can't process historical fact and indulge in magical thinking to make their case.

A small dose of reality: There is no "occupation" in Gaza. Israel left Gaza in 2005. Its military presence was withdrawn, its settlements were dismantled, governance was turned over to the palestinians who proceeded (in 2007) to elect Hamas. Hamas proceeded to build a corrupt government, siphoned billions that poured in from other countries, never changed their charter that advocated the destruction of Israel, never built a viable economy ... how long a list would you like?

Both Talib abd Omar are Islamist sympathizers who should be roundly condemned by mainstream Democrats. They fact that they are not called to account speaks volumes. #Walkway.

UPDATE-2 (5/7/2019):
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A few days ago, a New York Assemblyman and Democrat, Dov Hikind, tweeted:

After more than FIVE HUNDRED rockets were fired by Hamas terrorists at Israel, KILLING 4, not a single Democratic candidate for president has issued a statement or said a word on it.

Shame on @thedemocrats! The whole lot of them!

As of today (5/7/2019) and after more than 700 rockets, not a single Democrat candidate for president has tweeted or made a statement. Cowards.

Meanwhile, the man who some Dems have claimed is an "anti-Semite," Donald Trump, tweeted:

Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens....

....To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace - it can happen!

It's only fair to ask who the real anti-Semites are.

#Walkaway.

UBI

Among the many leftist schemes that run counter to human nature is the suggestion that everyone should be guaranteed a basic income, regardless of one's desire to hold down a paying job. The notion of "universal basic income" (UBI) has been bandied about by leftwing politicians for some time now, and has even been tried "experimentally." The idea is to take money from productive taxpayers (who generally have jobs or own businesses that provide jobs to others) and give that money (often with few strings attached) to those who are in poverty. This concept takes the notion of "free stuff" to a ridiculous extreme, but some progressives have argued it's a solution for those who are "the most vulnerable."

Anna Coote, writing in the leftwing Guardian, reports on a recent study of "universal basic income" prepared by Public Services International, a decidedly left-wing, pro-Union organization:

A study published this week sheds doubt on ambitious claims made for universal basic income (UBI), the scheme that would give everyone regular, unconditional cash payments that are enough to live on. Its advocates claim it would help to reduce poverty, narrow inequalities and tackle the effects of automation on jobs and income. Research conducted for Public Services International, a global trade union federation, reviewed for the first time 16 practical projects that have tested different ways of distributing regular cash payments to individuals across a range of poor, middle-income and rich countries, as well as copious literature on the topic.

It could find no evidence to suggest that such a scheme could be sustained for all individuals in any country in the short, medium or longer term – or that this approach could achieve lasting improvements in wellbeing or equality ...

I guess there's a reason that work and compensation for that work has been a part of human existence for thousands of years. But leftists can't seem to get past the notion that workers are somehow "exploited" for the work they do and that people who choose not to work should be supported by those that do work. They can't seem to process the notion that a small but significant percentage of the public would game a system like "universal basic income" or that programs that already provide historically generous support to "those who are most vulnerable" already provide income or income equivalents (e.g., food stamps).

Cootes continues with more from the study:

The cost of a sufficient UBI scheme would be extremely high according to the International Labour Office, which estimates average costs equivalent to 20-30% of GDP in most countries. Costs can be reduced – and have been in most trials – by paying smaller amounts to fewer individuals. But there is no evidence to suggest that a partial or conditional UBI scheme could do anything to mitigate, let alone reverse, current trends towards worsening poverty, inequality and labour insecurity. Costs may be offset by raising taxes or shifting expenditure from other kinds of public expenditure, but either way there are huge and risky trade-offs.

In the world of leftist politics, there seems to to no societal problem that can't be solved with more taxes and bigger government intrusion into our lives. Given the results of this study, it would be interesting to poll the 20-plus Democrat presidential contenders to see where they stand on UBI.