Important Administrative Note: I’ve published additional blog posts, like this one, but for some reason they’re not showing up on the front page of the blog.
“Want to lose weight without drugs, pills, or human rights?”
“If the Trump administration is serious about controlling illegal immigration and illegal alien driven crime, it should begin by going after employers who hire illegal aliens. The move would not only help to prevent the exploitation of illegal immigrants, but it would also help to foster higher-paying jobs for American workers.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
If Obama is really responsible for Democrat losses, then the party and its donors just bought first class seats on the Titanic. That’s why Democrat autopsies of the defeat remain so explosive. Blame can be apportioned to white people, to racism, Islamophobia and to Global Warming, but not to Barack Obama.
Keith Ellison was the best messenger Sanders had to take a shot at Barry. Black loyalty to Obama is still the third rail of politics. And Ellison is one of the few black people in the Sanders inner circle. Obama’s pricey Wall Street speech offered the opportunity for a more direct attack from Bernie Sanders.
“I just think it is distasteful,” Bernie slurred on CNN. “At a time when we have so much income and wealth inequality … it just does not look good.”
The attack went to the heart of his differences with Obama. Unlike the Clinton era, the split is no longer between the left and the radical left. Obama and Sanders are both representatives of the radical left.
But they don’t represent the same radical left.
Bernie embodies the old left. Its mantra is class warfare. There is a great deal of talk about billionaires, working people and the ruling class. Obama pays lip service to that same rhetoric, but his is the program of the intersectional left. The intersectional left is far more interested in identity than class. It defines its organization around a coalition of racial, sexual and other minorities. Where Bernie wants to talk to the working class, the intersectional left wants to hear from transgender Muslim women of color.
The differences aren’t just intellectual. They define the tactics and agenda of the Democrats.
When Tom Perez, Obama’s DNC boss, recently read pro-life Democrats out of the party, he was following the Obama blueprint. Bernie meanwhile went on campaigning for a somewhat pro-life Dem. Bernie does not really care about abortion, gay rights, transgender bathrooms and the social issues of the intersectional left. The old Socialist follows the older slogan of the hard left. No war, but class war.
Snip.
Democrats and the left had long ago replaced pure class warfare with identity politics warfare. Intersectionality entirely displaced and demonized the old Dem white working class base.
And the Dems paid the price.
Obama’s reign torched most of the last of that white working class base. Trump’s victories would not have been possible if the Dems had not become a party of wealthy bicoastal urban and suburban elites who were out of touch with the South and the Rust Belt. And who were proud to be out of touch with a bunch of “ignorant racist, sexist homophobes” still “clinging to their guns and religion”.
The clash between Bernie and Obama is also over the autopsy of Hillary’s defeat. Did the Dems lose because they failed to turn out the base as effectively as Obama had or because former Obama voters had come out for Trump? Should the Dems try to appeal to working class whites with a class warfare pitch or work harder to turn out the intersectional coalitions of minority voters?
The French have voted to postpone their rendezvous with destiny. But kicking the croissant down the road means another half-decade of demographic transformation that lengthens the odds against ever winning the numbers to halt it….
Yet the fact is that, with the arrival of President Macron in the charmed circle, the leaders of Europe’s biggest economies and of all the European members of the G7 are childless: Germany’s Angela Merkel, Britain’s Theresa May, Italy’s Paolo Gentiloni, and now France’s Macron.
This would have been not just statistically improbable but all but impossible for most of human history. Whatever Euro-politics is about, it’s not, as Bill Clinton was wont to say, the future of all our children. Indeed, of the six founding members of the European Union – France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg – five are led by childless prime ministers: joining Merkel, Gentiloni and Macron at the no-need-for-daycare Euro-summit are the Dutch PM Mark Rutte and the Luxemburger Xavier Bettel. Mark Rutte is single and childless. Xavier Bettel of Lux is married, but gay and, hélas, for the moment without progeny….
That’s the demographics of Western Europe writ small. The Eurocrats are a Continental version of the Shakers: They’re apparently forbidden to breed, and can only increase their numbers through conversion. From Nice to Cologne to Rosengård, a significant proportion of New Europeans seem to think that, au contraire, they’ll be the ones doing the converting.
U.S. Air Force’s robotic X-37B space plane finally lands after circling Earth for “an unprecedented 718 days.”
UT stabbing spree followup: The stabber “was suffering from mental illness and didn’t seem to be targeting anyone in particular during his Monday afternoon spree, police said Tuesday.”
Gun-blogger Bob Owens dead of apparent suicide. Unlike many in the blogsphere, I didn’t know Owens personally, but we did follow each other on Twitter. RIP.
Windows 10 on ARM supports x86 apps, and Microsoft says your 32-bit applications should run just fine. Won’t make me use it, but for some people…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton already has filed suit against local jurisdictions that had been accused of not cooperating with federal immigration agents, in a preemptive bid to uphold a newly signed anti-sanctuary city law and head off numerous legal challenges.
Paxton filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, as Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday signed the crackdown which bars sanctuary policies and gives local law enforcement officers the right to ask the immigration status of anyone they stop. Under the law, local officers who won’t cooperate with federal immigration agents could face jail time and fines up to $25,000 per day.
Paxton filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, as Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday signed the crackdown which bars sanctuary policies and gives local law enforcement officers the right to ask the immigration status of anyone they stop. Under the law, local officers who won’t cooperate with federal immigration agents could face jail time and fines up to $25,000 per day.
“Unfortunately, some municipalities and law enforcement agencies are unwilling to cooperate with the federal government and claim that SB 4 is unconstitutional.”
The Paxton-filed suit names Travis County, the city of Austin and several local officials as defendants. A Paxton statement said the suit asks the court to uphold the constitutionality of the new law.
It’s an interesting tactic, given hat the law itself doesn’t go into effect until September 1. While sending a clear message that the State of Texas intends to enforce the new anti-sanctuary city law, a court might dismiss the suit on “ripeness” grounds since it hasn’t taken effect yet.
President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey is the big story everyone and their dog wants to talk about right now.
I’m looking at the story with the sort of numb acceptance that I view the last three minutes of the TV show coming on before the show you actually want to watch at the end of a long day when you feel too tired and numb to switch channels. (Except for Madam Secretary right before Elementary, because screw that dated love letter to Hillary Clinton.)
Did Comey need to go? Yeah, but he probably wouldn’t make my Top 10 List of Obama Administration Holdovers Who Need Firing.
The amusing thing is, of course, how all the Democrats who wanted Comey fired for investigating Hillary, then retained for sorta exonerating her, then fired for reopening the investigation in light of the Anthony Weiner laptop just days before the election, are now outraged that he’s been fired.
One of the most hilarious things about the Comey firing is that it rekindled the Democrats’ idée fixe on their “Russia hacked the election” fantasy, which they finally appeared ready to move on from. Now it’s going to be
President Trump’s official reason for the Comey firing has to do with a loss of confidence over his handling of the Clinton email investigation. The beauty of that official explanation (true or not) is that it is making heads explode with Democrats and the Opposition Media. How dare President Trump fire the person we publicly demanded he fire!
Now we have a bizarre situation in which both sides (Demcrats and Republicans) wanted Comey fired, but they had different reasons for wanting it. Democrats were upset that he might have torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s campaign by talking about the Weiner laptop discovery of additional Clinton emails close to Election Day. And Republicans hated Comey for not pursuing a criminal case against Clinton for her email server misdeeds. That’s the perfect set-up for cognitive dissonance. I’ll explain:
Democrats and the Opposition Media reflexively oppose almost everything President Trump does. This time he gave them something they wanted, badly, but not for the reason they wanted. That’s a trigger. It forces anti-Trumpers to act angry in public that he did the thing they wanted him to do. And they are.
Trump cleverly addressed the FBI’s Russian collusion investigation by putting the following line in the Comey firing letter: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.”
That one odd sentence caused every media outlet to display the quote and talk about it, over and over. And when you focus on something, no matter the reason, it rises in importance in your mind. President Trump, the Master Persuader, made all of us think about the “not under investigation” part over, and over, and over.
After the FBI testified today that some of what FBI Director Comey said to congress about EmailGate was inaccurate, President Donald Trump’s reaction was swift:
The problem with reporting on the slow-motion trainwreck that is Venezuela is the “slow-motion” part. Things fall apart, children die, people starve, but it’s hard to gauge the rate at which the ship of state is slipping under the iceberg of reality due that giant gash of socialism in its side.
An economy in shambles, lethal street crime, dungeons packed with political prisoners, and South America’s worst refugee crisis — it’s hard to find a misery that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government hasn’t visited on his compatriots in his four years in office. But by calling for a new constitution (Venezuela has had 26) as he did this week, Latin America’s ranking strongman may well have trumped his own dismal record.
On May 1, with the streets of Caracas and other major cities teeming with anti-government protests, Maduro announced a plan to convoke a constituent assembly to write a new constitution. As anti-climactic as that sounds, this was an autocratic milestone even for the country that has turned political and economic fiat into a science. In a single flourish, the Venezuelan leader proposed not just to bend the rules, as he has done repeatedly since coming to power in 2013, but also to junk the latest constitution — which his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, fashioned into a tyrant’s toolbox — and cherry-pick a Bolivarian dream team to deliver what will presumably be an even more authoritarian one.
If the proposal stands, as virtually all of Maduro’s decrees have stood to now, the new law in turn would bury the cherished trope among contemporary Latin American strongmen that their word, no matter how arbitrary, is still anchored in democratic process. “Maduro’s proposal was not just flagrantly unconstitutional. It was the most radical move in more than 17 years of Chavismo,” said Diego Moya-Ocampos, chief political risk analyst at IHS Markit, a London-based business consultancy.
Brazilian foreign minister Aloysio Nunes went further, labelling Maduro’s proposal a “coup” and a breach of democratic civility. “Maduro chose to radicalize,” Nunes told me in an interview. “This proposal is incompatible with the democratic process, slams the door on dialogue, and is a slap in the face to the Pope’s appeal for a negotiated solution.”
There are elements of dictatorships that are unmistakable. Today I must refer to one more in Venezuela: the passing of civilians to military justice.
Venezuela´s civic-military regime represents the worst of every dictatorship. That includes tyrannical control over political freedoms and the basic guarantees of the people, the elimination of the powers of the branches of government of popular representation, political prisoners and torture, starting with the armed collectives, a kind of fascist blackshirts, with orders to attack civilians during protests.
The accusations of military prosecutors to civilians is absolute nonsense in juridical terms.
In Venezuela, the rule of law does not exist even in appearance.
The accusations of crimes of vilification and instigation to rebellion, as well as other categories of a similar nature, are part of a reactionary discourse devoid of legal grounds applied against demonstrators. The reality is that they simply serve the purpose of depriving peaceful protesters of their freedom.
When a government considers that its people are a threat to its continuity it is because it is a government whose strategy is to continue without the people and on the basis of the use of force.
This constitutes a new violation of the Constitution, which in its article 261 says clearly that:
“The commission of common crimes, human rights violations and crimes against humanity shall be judged by the courts of the ordinary jurisdiction. Military courts jurisdiction is limited to offenses of a military nature.”
More scenes from the disintegration of Venezuelan society over the last few months:
Though his wife Lilian Tintori has evidently seen him, and says that he wants the opposition to continue protesting. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Last year, the average Venezuelan living in extreme poverty lost 19 pounds amid mass food shortages largely created and then exacerbated by government price controls—60 percent of Venezuelans said they had to skip at least one meal a day. Maduro joked that the ‘Maduro diet,’ as the government-induced starvation has been called, was leading to better sex, to the applause of government workers and party loyalists but few others. There have been shortages of food as well as goods like toilet paper, deodorants, condoms, and even beer.”
“Facing a bread shortage that is spawning massive lines and souring the national mood, the Venezuelan government is responding this week by detaining bakers and seizing establishments.”
Eight Venezuelans were actually electrocuted trying to loot a bakery.
“Venezuelans are fleeing to Brazil for medical care…A spiraling economic crisis and hyperinflation have cleaned Venezuelan hospitals of needles, bandages and medicine. Desperate for care and often undocumented, patients are overwhelming Brazilian emergency rooms as they turn up by the thousands.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
That hyperinflation was so bad that Venezuela outlawed their own currency. “In mid-December, the Venezuelan government surprised its citizens by withdrawing from circulation the 100-bolívar note, its largest and most used bill, with only 72 hours’ warning.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
“The Venezuelan government is investigating alleged corruption in a $1.3 billion contract between the state oil company and a private contractor co-founded by a Saudi prince, according to law-enforcement officials and related documents.” Usual WSJ hoops apply.
“Why is it that reporters keep scratching their heads about Venezuela’s descent into extreme poverty and chaos? The cause is simple. Socialism. End it and you will end the misery.”
Fracking means Venezuela will run out of money sooner rather than later. “A country like Venezuela, which was on the edge even before prices fell from $100 a barrel, well they’re running out of foreign exchange reserves, they’ve fallen from $66 to about $15 billion. And they’re collapsing and they’re running out of the ability to import food and other materials, and so there you’re dealing with almost societal instability, and order is being maintained by folks with guns.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The regime’s useful idiots among the American left remain strangely silent as the country they once held up as a shining example of the success of socialism collapses:
Michael Moore:
In 2013, the American filmmaker tweeted the following about #Venezuela 🇻🇪…
As previously reported, Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez said she will obey the law, which is a good thing, given that Travis County previously lead the country in refusing to hold illegal aliens who had committed such crimes as sexual assault, aggravated assault with a weapon, burglary and DUI.
That’s a big change from previous years, when such bonds generally passed without any organized opposition, but, as previously noted, that wasn’t the case this year.
Interestingly enough, the first two bonds passed in Williamson but were defeated in Travis, while the third (“for arts and athletic programs, including an indoor aquatic center, the District’s outdoor athletic facility #3, upgrades to Dragon Stadium and design of auditoriums at Round Rock and Westwood high schools”) was defeated in both Travis and Williamson.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is one of those rare instances where campaign yard signs did make a difference. Here’s the official statement from the Round Rock Parents and Taxpayers group that opposed the bonds:
At last count over 8,900 voters from Round Rock ISD voted against the bond propositions,more than the total number of votes cast in the 2014 election. This represents a stunning rejection of these heavily-promoted bond propositions from the Round Rock ISD community.
We were up against a nearly $100,000 pro-bond campaign, that sent more than half a dozen mailers to thousands of voters. The bond propositions enjoyed favorable press and official endorsements, as well as a district administration that in our view crossed the line in their own efforts to promote passage of this bond package.
In comparison, our grassroots coalition came together spontaneously from different members of the community with independent negative reactions to the flawed bond package. Many of us first met each other through this. In this David versus Goliath battle, we had much less money and less than 5 weeks to organize.
So what really doomed the bond, if we were so outmatched?
These bonds failed because they deserved to fail.
Patrick McGuinness, Round Rock Parents and Taxpayers Association
Here’s a story that isn’t getting much play on this side of the pond. The UK held it’s regular yearly local council elections May 4, which fell in advance of Theresa May’s national snap election coming June 8.
The Tories cleaned up, gaining 563 seats across the UK while Labour lost 382, being pushed to third place in their traditional stronghold of Scotland behind the Scottish National Party and the Tories. “Stunned pollsters said if the same thing is repeated in the June 8 General Election, Mrs May could be heading to a landslide majority of more than 100 seats.”
Barring unforeseen circumstances, it looks like the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party is headed for an epic defeat in June. Corbyn is not the source of Labour’s woes, which would be their manifest disinterest in the economic plight of blue collar workers (who used to make up the heart of their constituency) in favor of progressive victimhood identity politics and fanatical opposition to carrying out Brexit, but the local elections show that Corbyn’s leadership certainly isn’t helping
UKIP was also all but wiped out, losing all 114 seats it, most to the Tories, and leaving them with a single seat they took from Labour. Now that UKIP has achieved it’s goal of leaving the European Union, it looks like supporters are flocking to the Tories. And I suspect a goodly number of UKIP members were probably former Labourites dissatisfied with the party’s Europhilic outlook who are now firmly (if reluctantly) in the Tory camp.
Wondering how George Galloway’s Respect Party did in the election? They didn’t: they deregistered last year.
