Changing The Rules

On Friday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at The New York Post detailing how the Democrat party has changed some of the basic rules of our Republic in recent years. It’s a long list.

Here are the highlights of the list:

1. When in control of the Senate, demand the end of the filibuster; when not, don’t.

2. Call for the end of the Electoral College — but only if it appears to recently favor the candidate of the opposition.

3. In an election year, change any state balloting laws deemed unhelpful through administrative fiat or court order to favor your political candidate.

4. Seek to flip electors from voting in accordance with the popular vote count in their states; indict as an insurrectionist any of the opposition who dare do the same.

5. Raid the home of any opposition ex-president who removed classified files; exempt any sitting president of your party who did the same.

6. Swarm the private homes of, and then bully and intimidate, any Supreme Court officials, politicians or citizens you oppose.

7. Appoint two special counsels: one to go after the current chief presidential opponent in an election year; the other to exempt and excuse the sitting president for the very crimes charged against his rival.

8. Lobby to remove any oppositional president through the 25th Amendment; smear anyone as ageist who suggests a cognitively challenged sitting resident of your party should be subject to similar invocations of the 25th Amendment.

9. Exempt thousands of arrested rioters from charges of 120 days of arson, looting, injuring 1,500 law enforcement officers, and assault — but only if they are radical supporters of your party.

10. Excuse any demonstrator or rioter for desecrating public monuments and cemeteries or shutting down bridges and freeways, or swarming and disrupting the Capitol Rotunda — but only if they agree with you and/or are pro-Hamas. Otherwise, ensure the charged face lengthy prison sentences.

That’s just the top ten. Please follow the link to the article to read the next ten. It’s amazing how far we have fallen in recent years. When you read the list of things that used to be considered out-of-bounds that have been done since 2016 or so, it is scary.

 

 

 

An Executive Order That Will Impact The 2024 Election

Under American law, non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections. In some areas, non-citizens are allowed to vote in local elections, but that is somewhat limited. Unfortunately, due to an Executive Order signed by President Biden in January 2021, non-citizens and illegal immigrants will have an influence on our presidential and Congressional elections.

On Thursday, Fox News reported the following:

Immigration experts are raising the alarm about how the increasing flow of migrants illegally crossing into the U.S. may significantly impact states’ representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College.

Shortly after taking office in January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order requiring that the U.S. Census Bureau factor in all residents, including noncitizens, as part of its decennial calculation of the U.S. population. As a result, the apportionment of House seats and, therefore, electoral votes for presidential elections, could be swayed as migrants continue to pour over the southern border.

“Illegal immigration has all kinds of effects and among them is that it distorts the mechanics of democratic government,” Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “Illegal immigrants aren’t even supposed to be here, so their inclusion in the census count for purposes of apportionment really is outrageous.”

“There are a lot of close votes in Congress, more than there used to be. So, it can, in fact, make a difference,” Krikorian said. “It shouldn’t be a question of: Does this give you personally more influence in Washington? The question should be: Is it right? Is it healthy for our democratic process to be distorted this way? The answer is no.”

The next President can overturn this order if he chooses to. Vote carefully.

Exactly Who Voted For Nikki Haley?

President Trump won the Republican Primary election in New Hampshire on Tuesday. As if he hadn’t locked up the nomination before, this confirms him as the nominee. There is not a realistic path forward for Nikki Haley, the only contender left. That fact was pretty obvious before the New Hampshire election, but there are always those who are slow to see the obvious.

On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article reporting exactly who voted for Nikki Haley.

The article reports:

As the New Hampshire primary election occurred today, an exit poll showed that the majority of voters who cast their vote supporting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley were not registered Republican.

According to the CNN exit poll, 70 percent of voters for Haley were registered undeclared. Twenty-seven percent were registered Republican, while 3 percent of voters were unregistered before today.

Among voters for former President Donald Trump, on the other hand, 70 percent were registered Republican. Twenty-seven percent were registered undeclared.

CNN noted in its coverage that it’s a “complete reversal” when the two candidates were compared. 

The article also notes:

One voter who was interviewed by CNN said that he voted for Haley in the primary and plans to vote for Democrat President Joe Biden in November. 

In the interview, the voter explained that his vote tonight was “a vote against Trump” and that it would be “better” to have Biden face off with Haley than Trump in the November election. He shared that he is a Democrat.

The New Hampshire Primary election is a great example of the reason political party primary elections should be limited to voters in that political party.

The Accusers Have NO Moral Ground To Stand On

On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about some of the activities surrounding the legal case against President Trump in Georgia. The shenanigans are unbelievable.

The article reports:

The special prosecutor that Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is accused of having an “improper” relationship with billed the Fulton County DA’s office $4,000 for two eight-hour meetings with White House officials while overseeing the election interference case against former President Donald Trump, according to court documents.

The apparent meetings attended by Nathan Wade, an Atlanta-based private attorney hired by Willis to assist in the prosecution of the Trump and his co-defendants, took place in 2022 after he was tapped for the role, according to invoices included in a bombshell court filing by Michael Roman, a former Trump 2020 campaign official.

Roman argues in the court filing that Willis should be disqualified from the case and the charges against him dropped because of her alleged “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Wade.

The services rendered by Wade in conjunction with the case seemingly included attending an event with White House counsel in Georgia and a meeting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, the invoices show. 

Not only are the taxpayers paying for the lawfare against President Trump, they are paying for an inappropriate relationship between the District Attorney and one of the prosecuting attorneys. The chutzpa of these people in amazing.

The article notes:

Last September, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanded that Willis detail any contact her office has had with federal officials about her prosecution of Trump, a request the DA refused to comply with. 

Jordan, a staunch defender of Trump, argued that Willis’ case could be “designed to interfere with the 2024 presidential election,” in which the 77-year-old is the Republican front-runner against President Biden.

Willis, in a chiding response to Jordan, accused the committee chairman of lacking “a basic understanding of the law” and attempting to “intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case.”

Roman’s filing claims that “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney” have confirmed that Willis and Wade had an ongoing fling, and that Wade filed for divorce in Cobb County, Ga., “a day after his first contract with Willis commenced” in November 2021. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday Willis has been subpoenaed to testify in Wade’s divorce proceedings. 

Does anyone in the Democrat party have a sense of decency or a respect for the Constitution?

Will Anyone Actually Believe This?

On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article blaming the flight from some of America’s large, democrat-controlled cities on climate control. No mention of rising crime, rising cost of living or any of those trivial things.

The article reports:

“Climate migration is already taking place within American communities, new data finds, as people flee flood-prone areas, and create ‘climate abandonment’ zones,” writes an unquestioning Axios.

“The study constitutes the latest warning sign of the effects of climate change,” Axios continues without skepticism. “Population shifts, and a larger reckoning for real estate, are only expected to worsen as global average surface temperatures rise.

But then the premise of the study undercuts itself in a big way with the admission that “Americans are leaving the Rust Belt in droves and heading to areas of greater climate risk in the South and Southwest[.]”

What’s more, “cities with high flood risks, like Miami and Houston, are still pulling in more people than they are losing,” the study admits. “But these areas are growing more slowly than they would be if flooding weren’t such a threat, the study shows.”

A good faith reading of the study tells me that the conclusions come from projections and math equations. Nowhere does it say that the actual people who moved were surveyed or questioned about why they moved. The study also uses a math problem to explain away “local political, social, and economic conditions” — but you have to talk to people to understand their motive for moving.

Additionally, as stated above, the study admits that most of the country’s migration is to areas that are “of greater climate risk.” The study fails to mention that real estate on the coasts, the areas that would be most at risk if climate change were real, is increasing in value, not decreasing. If you recall, Mr. Climate Change himself, Barack Obama, spent millions on a mansion just a few feet from the same ocean that’s supposed to wipe out the coast. The Climate Change Channel, CNN, moved its headquarters from the safe, inland city of Atlanta to the edge of the water in Manhattan — the same Manhattan the “experts” told us would be flooded by now.

It should also be noted that the Bidens own property in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware–a beachfront community. It the elites who preach to us about climate change and carbon footprints followed their own rules, we might be willing to pay attention.

Whoops, I forgot…

On Wednesday, Just the News posted an article about an ethics complaint filed against Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. It seems as if the Justice forgot to list some sources of family income on her disclosure statement.

The article reports:

The Center for Renewing America filed the complaint on Monday with the Judicial Conference Secretary alleging that she “willfully failed to disclose required information regarding her husband’s medical malpractice consulting income for over a decade.”

“As part of her nomination to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Justice Jackson disclosed the names of two legal medical malpractice consulting clients who paid her husband more than $1,000 for the year 2011,” the complaint continued. “On her subsequent filings, however, Justice Jackson repeatedly failed to disclose that her husband received income from medical malpractice consulting fees.”

How convenient.

The article continues:

“We know this by Justice Jackson’s own admission in her amended disclosure form for 2020, filed when she was nominated to the Supreme Court, that ‘some of my previously filed reports inadvertently omitted’ her husband’s income from ‘consulting on medical malpractice cases,'” it went on. “Compounding the omission and further demonstrating willfulness, Justice Jackson has not even attempted to list the years for which her previously filed disclosures omitted her husband’s consulting income. Instead, in her admission of omissions on her 2020 amended disclosure form (filed in 2022), Justice Jackson provided only the vague statement that ‘some’ of those past disclosures contained material omissions.”

“Given that she was aware of this provision when she filed her first form in 2012, it would appear the Justice Jackson willfully violated § 13104(e)(1)(A) because she did not disclose this required information on her forms for several years,” the complaint asserted. “The fact that she referenced her omission in 2022 and did not correct it as required is more indicia of her willfulness to not report this information.”

If the Democrats in Congress want to violate the separation of powers and make the Supreme Court accountable to Congress, maybe they should check on their party’s own appointments first.

 

I Guess That Testimony Did Not Go As Planned

On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the ongoing trial of President Trump in New York. It is becoming apparent that President Trump is being tried for a crime where there was no victim.

The article reports:

A Deutsche Bank AG executive told a court in New York on Tuesday that it is not unusual for loan clients to overstate their net worth, and that the bank does its own due diligence in determining eligibility for loans.

Another executive testified that the bank had benefited from its business relationship with Trump and had wanted to continue that relationship — all of which runs against Attorney General Letitia James’s civil fraud case against Trump: there was no one harmed by alleged overestimates of his worth.

Trump faces the first case ever brought in New York in which a borrower is being sued for fraud when no one is claiming actual harm. The state is seeking a $250 million fine against Trump, and wants him to be forced to give up control of his businesses.

Judge Arthur Engoron, an elected Democrat, issued a summary judgment that Trump was liable before Trump was ever able to mount a defense. The current phase of the trial is simply about the penalty. But it is undermining the state’s basic allegations.

On December 1st, The Messenger reported:

The evidence shows that banks made money on these loans, which were paid off either early or on time. In fact, none of the banks complained about the Trump organization’s estimations, which were accompanied by a warning that the banks should not rely on those estimates.

Moreover, James is seeking to kill a corporation once viewed as iconic in New York, not just by denying the certificates for the Trumps to do business in the city but by imposing $250 million in penalties for money that no one actually lost.

That all became curiouser this week when two bankers were called by the defense. Rosemary Vrablic and David Williams worked on Deutsche Bank loans to the Trumps for years, and they testified that the banks made millions and viewed Trump as a much-sought-after “whale” client — what Vrablic described as a “very high net-worth individual.”

Williams testified that net worth is “subjective” in such documents as property valuations and are offered as mere “estimates.” It is not uncommon for a bank’s estimates to differ from a client’s.

If nothing else, this illustrates the absurdity of the case.

Statements Like This Used To Be Investigated As Criminal

On Sunday, Red State posted an article about a disturbing statement made by a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Representative Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York, stated in an interview with Jen Psaki that President Trump needs to be eliminated.

The article reports:

Our friends at our sister site, Twitchy, picked up the comment. Goldman was on MSNBC with Jen Psaki. They were talking about an interview former President Donald Trump had with ABC’s Jonathan Karl. In that interview, Trump told Karl that he had wanted to go up to the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot to try to stop what was going on. But Trump said the Secret Service discouraged that. The MSNBC chyron at the bottom of the screen framed that as “New audio: Trump says he wanted to join Jan. 6 crowd,” which miscasts what Trump said.

Representative Godman later tweeted an apology for ‘using the wrong word.’

The article notes:

So let’s see. Saying people should act “peacefully and patriotically” is inciting. But saying someone should be “eliminated” is just using the “wrong word.” That makes a lot of sense. The funny thing here is that had Trump said what Goldman said, Goldman would likely be encouraging people to try to prosecute him over it. But Goldman’s a Democrat, so of course, out comes the pass, and he apologizes, so everything is cool. 

The double standard is alive and well in Washington.

Keeping Elections Honest

On Wednesday, The Connecticut Examiner posted an article about the results of a Bridgeport, Connecticut, primary election being overturned by a judge due to voter fraud.

The article reports:

A judge ruled on Wednesday to overturn the city’s Democratic primary election, initially won by incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim, following claims of absentee ballot fraud by his opponent, John Gomes.

After two weeks of evidentiary hearings for Gomes’s absentee ballot fraud lawsuit, Judge William Clark ordered a new Democratic primary based on 180 pieces of evidence presented by Gomes’s legal counsel.

In the 37-page ruling, Clark said the video footage presented by Bill Bloss – Gomes’s attorney – was particularly alarming.

“Mr. Ganim was also correct to be ‘shocked’ at what he saw on the video clips in evidence that were shown to him while he was on the witness stand,” Clark wrote. “The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties.

Ganim was one the many city officials called to the Fairfield Judicial District Superior Courthouse for questioning, along with Wanda Geter-Pataky, vice chair of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee and operations specialist for the city, and Eneida Martinez, a former City Council member accused by Gomes of stuffing ballot dropboxes.

At the witness stand, Ganim told the court he was “shocked” by an 18-minute video – subpoenaed by Gomes from Bridgeport police – that appeared to show 12 instances of Geter-Pataky either depositing stacks of ballots herself or handing ballots to others from behind her reception desk, and four instances of Martinez dropping off ballots.

Asked about the footage during the hearings, both Geter-Pataky and Martinez asserted their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination . Ganim, who appeared to win the primary by 250 votes after a count of absentee ballots, denied any involvement in the alleged fraud.

There needs to be serious consequences for voter fraud. That is the only way that it will be stopped. This was a primary election where the Democrat party wanted to make sure their candidate won. Is there any doubt that they would do this is a major election?

Leadership Matters

The Washington Post accused President Trump of lying when he stated that “the most dangerous cities are run by democrats.”  The Conservative Treehouse posted a graph yesterday the shows that the President’s statement was pretty accurate.

Here is the graph:

The article notes:

A republican mayor was elected to Jacksonville in the last election; therefore the Washington Post has declared that President Trump’s claim: “the most dangerous cities are run by democrats”, is false. There is a top-crime city now run by a republican.

This level of FAIL is so ridiculous, it presents itself almost as if the Washington Post intentionally trying to beclown themselves.

In 1994 Rudy Giuliani became Mayor of New York City. Mayor Giuliani instituted what was referred to as ‘The Broken Windows Theory.”

Worldatlas.com describes The Broken Windows Theory as follows:

The origin of Broken Windows Theory can be traced back to a psychologist from Stanford, Connecticut, named Philip Zimbardo. He had set up a social experiment to test the theory in 1969. Zimbardo parked an old car in the Bronx, and another one of similar condition parked in Palo Alto, Califiornia. The car in the Bronx was vandalized almost immediately with all items of importance stolen. The other car in Palo Alto was left undisturbed for more than a week before Zimbardo himself went and smashed its windows. Within hours, other people came and vandalized the car as well. The hypothesis is that a community such as the Bronx, where city services may not have the resources to encourage the upkeep of its facilities, would be more apathetic than an upscale area like Palo Alto. This theory was later stated in an article in 1982 by James Wilson and George Kelling who stated that criminal activities in a community begin as small misdemeanors and gradually grow to become capital offenses. The authors also stated that the best way of dealing with crime was dealing with it in its infancy through making neighborhoods free of social ills such as prostitution, drug abuse, and other disorderly tendencies.

In the 1980s and 70s, New York City had seen an upsurge in criminal activity and the city’s municipal council was desperately seeking solutions to the menace that was tarnishing its reputation. The city’s Transit Authority then hired the author of the “Broken Windows” article, Mr. George Kelling as a consultant who then suggested the implementation of the theory. The Transit Authority’s leader, David Gunn implemented the approach by first clearing all graffiti from the city’s subway system which was conducted during his final term from 1984 to 1990. Kelling’s successor, William J. Bratton continued with the implementation of the theory through non-tolerance of fare-dodging as well as reducing leniency during arrests for petty offences. In 1993, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani hired Bratton as the police commissioner, and this gave Bratton a wider scope to implement the broken windows theory and was noted for arrests over public urination, public drinking, and other misdemeanors. Several studies in the past have linked the significant decline in criminal activities in the past decade to Bratton’s implementation of the “broken windows” theory. The impressive results of New York City’s implementation of the theory have made several other US cities implement the theory including Boston, Albuquerque, and Lowell.

Law and order makes a difference. When people understand that there are consequences for breaking the law, they tend to respect the law. When Mayors do not enforce the law, things will eventually become unruly. For whatever reason, Republicans seem to be more inclined to support the police and enforce the law than Democrats. The statistics posted by The Washington Post bear that out.

Would You Vote For This Person?

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about retired Air Force Col. Kim Olson, a Democratic candidate in a closely watched House race in Texas.

The article reports:

“What the hell you got snipers on the roof for in a peaceful march? Even if people loot, so what? Burn it to the ground, you know, if that’s what it’s going to take to fix our nation,” retired Air Force Col. Kim Olson said during a live digital event on Tuesday, shown in a clip obtained by the Washington Examiner.

“I don’t think people want me to say that,” added Olson, a Democratic candidate in Texas’s 24th Congressional District, which covers much of the suburban area in between Fort Worth and Dallas.

Olson, 62, made the comment during a several-minute answer to a question about what she thought about far-left calls to disband or defund police departments.

Olson started by saying that while “defunding” is a “tough word,” explaining that she supports prioritizing funding services such as rehab centers and social workers.

“You can’t just tackle the police, you’ve got to tackle some of the social injustice issues that are going on within our justice system,” Olson said. “You can’t train racism out of folks.”

The article provides some information about her military career that indicates that she would probably play the Washington game very well:

Her military career is a highlight of her resume — she was one of the first women to attend and graduate from military flight school — but it is also a potential liability. In the early 2000s, when she was stationed in Iraq, the Pentagon accused Olson of directing contracts to a private security firm that she helped operate. While Olson denies personally profiting from the arrangement, she pleaded guilty to charges that included creating the appearance of a conflict of interest, paid a $3,500 fine, and was permitted to retire with an honorable discharge. That history has not been a major issue in her campaigns or line of attack from her opponents.

There seems to be an inference in her statements that everyone is a racist. I object to that statement. There are some (ignorant) people among us who are racists. I have encountered a number of them in my life. I have no idea why they are racist. The best way to deal with them is to understand who they are and treat them accordingly. Keep them out of positions where they can exercise their racism. I don’t know whether the policeman who killed George Floyd was a racist or simply an out-of-control policeman. From the information coming out now, there was a personal vendetta involved that may or may not have included racism.

At any rate, burning down businesses solves nothing. It puts the people the rioters and looters care about at a disadvantage when stores in their neighborhoods refuse to reopen. The best thing we could do to fight racial injustice would be to improve our schools in neighborhoods with failing schools and set up mentoring programs for children without fathers in their homes.

 

I Think This Problem Was Preventable!

The Daily Wire is reporting today that Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims of California has stated that she is not enforcing Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s lockdown order because her team has their “hands full trying to re-arrest” criminals who are out on “zero-dollar bail,” a policy implemented in 2019. New York City and California seem to be having a lot of the same problems due to the same ridiculous policies.

The article reports:

In August of 2018, California set in motion their “zero-dollar bail” policy.

“California will become the first state in the nation to abolish bail for suspects awaiting trial under a sweeping reform bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown,” NPR reported at the time. “An overhaul of the state’s bail system has been in the works for years, and became an inevitability earlier this year when a California appellate court declared the state’s cash bail system unconstitutional. The new law goes into effect in October 2019.”

“Today, California reforms its bail system so that rich and poor alike are treated fairly,” Brown said in a statement.

The reforms to the bail system may treat the rich and poor who are suspected of committing crimes equally, but they are a nightmare for innocent citizens who become victims of the crimes committed by criminals not held in jail.

The article notes:

Moreover, as noted by The Los Angeles Times in March, the blue state granted early release to 3,500 inmates “in an effort to reduce crowding as coronavirus infections begin spreading through the state prison system.”

“Lawyers for Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday told a panel of federal judges the state is taking ‘extraordinary and unprecedented protective measures’ to slow the spread of the virus and protect those who live and work within California’s 35 prisons,” the report said. “The accelerated prison discharges — affecting inmates due to be released over the next 60 days — come in the face of pressure to do much more.”

The voters of California have only themselves to blame for this mess. What percentage of Californians voted in the election of Governor Newsom, and how many people voted for him?

This Would Be Funny If It Weren’t So Sad

Fox News posted an article about some recently declassified documents today that really makes me wonder about the wisdom of choosing Joe Biden as the Democrat nominee for President.

The article reports:

Usama bin Laden wanted to assassinate then-President Barack Obama so that the “totally unprepared” Joe Biden would take over as president and plunge the United States “into a crisis,” according to documents seized from bin Laden’s Pakistan compound when he was killed in May 2011.

The secretive documents, first reported in 2012 by The Washington Post, outlined a plan to take out Obama and top U.S. military commander David Petraeus as they traveled by plane.

“The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency,” bin Laden wrote to a top deputy. “Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour … and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden specifically wanted fellow terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri to shoot down Obama.

“Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work,” bin Laden wrote to the top lieutenant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. Kashmiri wouldn’t get too far along in the plot, however; he was killed in 2011 in a U.S. drone strike shortly after bin Laden himself was shot to death by Navy SEALs.

I guess Joe Biden’s reputation internationally is not too wonderful.

Sometimes The News Is Just Silly

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a recent comment made by a CBS news anchor. It is an amazing comment.

The article reports:

CBS This Morning anchor and Barack Obama donor Gayle King gushed over Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams on Tuesday morning, saying the former state legislator and failed gubernatorial candidate is “extremely qualified” to be vice president of the United States.

Abrams is openly lobbying to serve as Joe Biden’s running mate come November, despite never being elected to any office beyond the state legislature. As she touted her voting rights work and “competence and skills and willingness to serve,” King cut in to praise her as ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

“That’s a great nuts and bolts answer because everybody knows you’re extremely qualified,” King said. “I’m looking for something about Stacey Abrams the person. Why is she a good choice and have you had any talks at all with the Biden team?”

What is the world are her qualifications? The article notes that Abrams has never held a position higher than House minority leader in the Georgia legislature. It also notes that she told Elle magazine in an article published April 15 that her credentials for vice president included “25 years in independent study of foreign policy.” Exactly what does that mean?

The article also notes:

Outside of her political career, Abrams is a noted romance novelist, publishing several books under the pen name “Selena Montgomery.” CBS is currently adapting one of her novels, Never Tell, into a TV drama.

Keep in mind that if Joe Biden is the Democrat nominee for President, his choice of running mate is extremely important. The videos Joe Biden is making in his basement don’t show a man who would be able to handle the job of president, so it is likely his vice-president will assume the office sometime during his first term if Joe Biden is elected. Stacy Abrams may be a very nice person, but she has never actually run a business or exhibited leadership skills. Her claim to fame is that the Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from her by suppressed voter turnout when the numbers actually show increased voter turnout. No objective person looking at her resume would in any way describe her as extremely qualified.

Seems Fair To Me

On Saturday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the logical next step after the Supreme Court decision that mandatory government union dues violate the First Amendment.

The article reports:

In 2018, Mark Janus convinced the Supreme Court that mandatory government union dues violate the First Amendment. Now he wants his money back.

After his triumph at the High Court, Janus asked a federal trial judge to require the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) pay out about $3,000 in agency fees the union collected from his paycheck between 2013 and 2018. The judge declined and Janus lost on appeal, prompting a new petition to the Supreme Court.

So-called right-to-work cause lawyers including the Liberty Justice Center and the National Right to Work Foundation are litigating some 30 cases that collectively seek $120 million in garnished wages for public sector workers. Public sector unions proved surprisingly resilient after the Janus decision, seeing modest increases in membership and limited losses of revenue. Judgments ordering restitution to aggrieved workers, however, could vindicate doomsayers who predicted the end of agency fees would devastate organized labor. Approximately 5.9 million public employees paid mandatory fees prior to Janus, a massive pool of prospective plaintiffs.

The article concludes:

Trial judges in about two dozen other cases and two appeals courts have reached the same conclusion and rebuffed worker attempts to recoup lost wages. If allowed to stand, those decisions “are likely to doom all such cases,” Janus’s petition to the High Court warns.

“This Court should grant review so the employees in these suits can recover a portion of the ‘windfall’ of compulsory fees unions wrongfully seized from them,” the petition reads.

Other Janus follow-on cases are currently pending before the Supreme Court. One petition asks the Court to declare the so-called integrated bar unlawful under Janus. Integrated bar rules require lawyers to join a state bar association and pay fees as a condition of practicing law. Another petition asks whether employers can designate a union as the sole representative of its workers in collective bargaining.

The Court will hear the case in its next term, which begins in October, if it grants review. AFSCME’s response to Janus’s petition is due on April 9. The case is No. 19-1104 Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31.

Open Secrets details some of what the dues paid to AFSCME were used for:

In the 2016 races, almost all of AFSCME’s more than $1.7 million in candidate contributions went to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. The breakdown is similar in the 2018 election cycle — more than 99 percent of its $1.1 million in candidate contributions so far have gone to Democrats.

The AFSCME also contributes millions of dollars to liberal outside spending groups.

The union has given roughly $3.6 million to outside spending groups in the 2018 election cycle alone. More than 70 percent of that spending has gone to a super PAC called For Our Future, which was formed by labor unions to support Democratic candidates. Sky Gallegos, who is listed as For Our Future’s treasurer, is the Democratic National Convention Committee’s deputy CEO for intergovernmental affairs.

The union gave just over $11 million to outside spending groups in 2016, and about half those contributions went to For Our Future.

The AFSCME has lobbied Congress on right-to-work policies, according to lobbying disclosures. The union’s lobbying efforts overall have totaled than $2.3 million annually since 2009, peaking at $2.9 million in spending in 2011.

Union dues account for much of the money in politics. If people who choose not to join the union are not required to pay union dues, this will impact political campaigns in America.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences At Work

Evidently the coronavirus has been around since December. China kept quiet about it, and when it spread to Iran in January, Iran kept quiet about it. One of the ‘advantages’ of a totalitarian regime is the ability to keep the public from knowing about a pending epidemic. Well, there seem to be some consequences of the fact that China and Iran chose to remain silent about the problem. As of now, Iran has the highest number of deaths outside of China.

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that after the death of Commander Soleimani,  Democrat Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif in a secret meeting in Munich. The meeting was in February.

The article includes a quote from the Israel National News:

This year’s Munich Security Conference may go down in history as the COVID-19 viral super-spreader “event of the century,” if not in all of recorded history. That’s because the Munich 2020 event took place from February Friday 14-Sunday 16, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif attended.

Unknown to apparently all the high security-minded attendees, FM Zarif was likely carrying much more than the dark secret that the COVID-19 virus had already begun rampaging through the highest echelons of the Iranian government and society. FM Zarif , or one of his minions, was likely carrying the actual COVID-19, and infected who knows how many of the world’s highest and most influential politicians at the Munich event.

In fact, US Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, not only met FM Zarif, but met him in Zarif’s hotel suite where there was likely a rat’s nest of COVID-19. Unless drastic steps are taken, Sen. Murphy may become the Typhoid Mary of COVID-19, and infect the entire US Senate and House of Representatives.

As of February 28, 2020 there were officially 210 actual deaths in Iran. Unofficially, there have been over 500 reliably reported Iranian deaths. But, what is very unusual about the Iranian deaths is that a large number of extremely high ranking government officials in Tehran, the capital, have actually caught the disease and have died. The officially “First reported” Iranian case was on February 19. Working backward from the 19th, that means COVID-19 was likely already circulating in Iran from middle-to-late January when FM Zarif, or one of his staff, could have caught the disease.

I don’t wish anyone ill, but it seems like violating the Logan Act might be the least of Chris Murphy’s problems.

I Totally Don’t Understand This

Yesterday Breitbart News reported a puzzling comment by House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat. Representative Clyburn was being interviewed on Fox Business Network by Neil Cavuto. The article includes part of the transcript of that interview.

The article reports:

NEIL CAVUTO: As you’ve been seeing with Michael Bloomberg, he’s been jumping in the polls on the heels of his very expensive, pricey ad buys if you include $125 million slated for Super Tuesday. Could you, would you back him?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: I’m going to back whoever our nominee is — Absolutely.

CAVUTO: Even with the things he’s said about African-Americans? Does that bother you?

REP. CLYBURN: Not as much as what Trump has said about African-Americans. Anytime that I go to the polls, I’m considering positives and negatives on all candidates and I try to go with the one whose positives outweigh the negatives.

CAVUTO: Let’s leave the words aside, whether you like his style or not, tweets or not, or comments or not, he’s delivered the goods for a lot of African-Americans. Does he not with record-low unemployment levels?… You don’t think that’s something that’s constructive?

REP. CLYBURN: No, because it’s not true. I’m saying that the African American unemployment is not the lowest it’s ever been unless you count slavery… We were fully employed during slavery. So, it all depends how you measure this up.

This is how blind hatred affects judgement.

On February 7, 2020, CNS News reported:

Trump loves to boast and exaggerate, so it’s easy to throw out little “Pinocchio” ratings when Trump claims we have the lowest black unemployment rate in American history, since it’s only been measured since 1972. But it’s literally the lowest ever measured in American history. What the fact-checkers are doing is littering achievements with asterisks, trying to distract from the undeniable fact that unemployment is at record lows for blacks, Hispanics, women, the disabled and undoubtedly other groups Democrats claim to champion.

This is the link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website page that has all of the unemployment statistics. You can explore that page for pure numbers. We should all celebrate the fact that the Trump economy has been good to all Americans of all backgrounds.

Ignoring The Law Because You Think You Can

On Tuesday, CNS News reported the following:

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) confirmed Tuesday that he met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on the sidelines of a security conference in Germany at the weekend, justifying his decision to do so by saying that “if [President] Trump isn’t going to talk to Iran, then someone should.”

There is little doubt that Iran is an enemy of America. Why is a member of Congress meeting with their Foreign Minister?

The article continues:

Murphy said he also wanted to request the Iranian regime’s help in bringing the civil war in Yemen to an end; and to push for the release of Americans incarcerated in Iran.

“I don’t know whether my visit with Zarif will make a difference. I’m not the President or the Secretary of State – I’m just a rank and file U.S. Senator,” Murphy wrote.

“I cannot conduct diplomacy on behalf of the whole of the U.S. government, and I don’t pretend to be in a position to do so.”

“But if Trump isn’t going to talk to Iran, then someone should. And Congress is a co-equal branch of government, responsible along with the Executive for setting foreign policy. A lack of dialogue leaves nations guessing about their enemy’s intentions, and guessing wrong can lead to catastrophic mistakes.”

Senator Murphy may consider Congress a ‘co-equal branch of government,’ but the President is the person who conducts foreign policy. Congressmen on their own do not have that authority.

The article concludes:

The 1799 Logan Act prohibits unauthorized persons from negotiating with foreign governments which have a dispute with the United States. No-one has been convicted for violating the act.

In 2015, 47 Republican senators signed a letter to the Iranian regime suggesting that a nuclear agreement between President Obama and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be an executive agreement which another president or Congress would be empowered to abrogate.

The initiative prompted some critics to invoke the Logan Act.

Among the Democrats who condemned the letter was Murphy, who accused the signatories of “undermining the president.”

“I can’t even imagine the uproar if Democratic senators [had been] writing to Saddam Hussein in the lead up to the Iraq War,” Murphy told the National Journal at the time.

I guess that was then and this is now. It’s amazing how quickly the rules change for the Democrats.

A Democrat Member Of The House Ethics Committee Has Been Arrested

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today with the following headline, “Feds Arrest Crooked State Democrat David Nangle in Massachusetts — He Was Sitting on House Ethics Committee.”

The article reports:

Nangle is a compulsive gambler.
MassLive reported:

Massachusetts State Rep. David Nangle, who is accused of using campaign funds to pay for personal expenses, had “regular cash flow problems as a result of extensive gambling,” federal prosecutors said in court records.

The Democratic state representative was arrested Tuesday on several charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, filing false tax returns and making false statements to a bank…

…“Despite his salary and perks, Nangle was heavily in debt, had poor credit (with a credit score reported as low as 593), and had regular cash flow problems as a result of extensive gambling at various casinos…,” federal prosecutors said.

Elected by the voters of Massachusetts.

This Could Be A Problem For The Democrats

Breitbart reported yesterday that exit polls in the New Hampshire primary show that turnout for 2020 Democrats among young voters and new voters is down from previous years. This is not good news if the candidate is Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders has a lot of support among young voters who have a very naive idea of what socialism means. Traditionally young voters do not turn out in big numbers. If Bernie Sanders is to have a chance to defeat President Trump in November, he needs the youth vote to turn out.

The article reports:

Exit polls by NBC News reveal that only about five percent of New Hampshire Democrat primary voters said they did not vote in the 2016 presidential election and only 12 percent said they had never voted in a Democrat presidential primary before — down from 16 percent in 2016 who had never voted in a Democrat presidential primary.

There was also no significant increase in the number of swing voters who voted in Tuesday’s New Hampshire Democrat primary, NBC News reports:

There was an expectation that the number of independents participating in this year’s Democratic primary might be higher than previous years, since the Republican contest is not competitive. That does not seem to have happened: 43 percent of primary voters report being registered as undeclared on the voter rolls, which is in line with prior Democratic contests when there were also hotly contested Republican races. [Emphasis added]

Stay tuned. The strong showing of Pete Buttigieg reflects the search of Democrats for a more moderate candidate. However, Mayor Pete has done such a horrendous job as Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, I suspect his failures as Mayor will become a campaign issue at some point. Mayor Bloomberg also has problems with the release of a speech that should cost him the minority vote. Despite what the media has told you, there are no other ‘moderate’ Democrat candidates.

A Very Easy ‘Follow The Money’

The Washington Examiner is reporting today that the House is planning to vote next week on a law that would override right-to-work laws in the 27 states that have those laws.

The article reports:

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, argued that such “right-to-work” laws are unfair to unions and the workers that back collective bargaining, necessitating his bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

“Under current law, unions are required to negotiate on behalf of all employees, regardless if they belong to the union or not,” Scott told the Washington Examiner. “The PRO Act simply allows workers to decide that all workers represented by the union should contribute to the costs associated with negotiating on their behalf.”

Scrapping the state laws would force potentially millions of individual workers to give away part of their salaries, whether they wanted to or not, said Greg Mourad, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee, which represents workers in cases against unions. “The term ‘right to work’ means the right to not have to pay for union so-called representation that workers don’t want, didn’t ask for, and believe actually goes against their interests,” he told the Washington Examiner.

The article notes:

Right-to-work laws say that employees cannot be forced to join or otherwise financially support a union as a condition of their job. Specifically, the laws prohibit union-management contracts from including so-called fair share fee provisions that require all workers to support the union financially.

When you consider that unions donate large amounts of money to Democrat campaign coffers, this bill is not a surprise. However, it seems to me that it is a violation of the Tenth Amendment–the federal government does not have the authority to determine right-to-work laws in individual states.

The article concludes:

The resurgence in right-to-work laws may now be ebbing. No other state appears poised to adopt one. Missouri would have been the 28th state, but voters last year approved a referendum stopping the measure before it went into effect.

The PRO Act would rewrite the NLRA to undo the 1947 amendment. “This bill, and others we’ve seen in various states, tries to subtly redefine ‘right to work’ to mean only the right to not have to formally be a member of the union, which is already guaranteed by the Supreme Court,” Mourad said. Nonmembers would still be obligated to support unions financially.

There has long been support for scrapping right to work on the Left, but the PRO Act enjoys unprecedented support among Democrats. The Senate version of the PRO Act was introduced with 39 original co-sponsors, comprising almost the entire Democratic caucus. The legislation is certain to pass the Democrat-majority House but is unlikely to be taken up in the Republican-led Senate.

“They’re testing the waters for the next time they are in the majority,” Vernuccio said.

In this instance, the Democrats are standing for the unions–not for the working man. This is simply a scheme to take more money our of workers’ pockets, give it to unions, and have unions give it to Democrat candidates. Democrat majorities in Congress are not helpful to the average American.

I Actually Agree With The Democrats On This!

The New York Post posted an article today noting that the Democrats are expressing concern that they do not have a viable candidate for President in 2020. I agree.

The article reports:

Democratic Party leaders have reportedly been struck by anxiety as the 2020 election approaches — and some fear they have no viable candidate to back.

Leaders and activists in the party are wary that all their top contenders have major weaknesses and are urging other possible candidates to get in the race, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Tuesday.

“You can imagine much stronger candidates,” Democratic National Committee member Elaine Kamarck told The Washington Post.

Kamarck would back Sen. Sherrod Brown or retired Navy Adm. William H. McRaven if either could be convinced to throw their hat in the ring, according to the report.

I hate to be cynical here (but I will anyway), but the fact that this article was published in The New York Times convinces me that it is an opening salvo in the battle to make Hillary Clinton the candidate.

The article at The New York Post continues:

The missteps and faults of the candidates have lead to speculation about whether Hillary Clinton may consider entering the race and kicking off a potential 2016 rematch between her and President Trump.

A source close to Clinton told The Washington Post it’s unlikely she’ll run — but it’s not completely out of the picture.

“Ultimately, it’s unlikely she would do it,” the source said. “But put it this way: It ain’t zero. And does she think about it all the time? Absolutely.”

Another Clinton insider told the newspaper, “Her view is: I ran against this guy, I know how to do this.”

“She has battle scars to prove it,” the source added.

Some recent remarks from Hillary Clinton cause me to question how well she would do in a debate with President Trump. There is a definite gap in the energy level between the two candidates, and recent statements by Mrs. Clinton have not necessarily been founded in sound logic. Nominating Mrs. Clinton would not be a wise move for the Democrats, I don’t think she would wear well.

Going Back To The Origins Of The Problem

I’ve done a couple of articles recently on the charges against Brett Kavanaugh (here and here), but there is one fact that is continuously overlooked by people reporting the story. On September 4th, Townhall posted an article with the following headline, “Christine Blasey Ford’s Lawyer: Okay Fine, Protecting Abortion Was Part of Why She Accused Kavanaugh.” What? So it’s okay to attempt to ruin a man’s marriage, career, and life in order to protect abortion?! That’s sick.

Then we have another article from Townhall about The New York Times again bringing up those charges in a new attempt to smear Justice Kavanaugh. But there is a problem. The supposed victim has no memory of the incident described by Max Stier who coincidentally represented Bill Clinton when Clinton was accused of exposing himself to a woman in a hotel room.

This is disgusting, and it needs to end. It is time for Justice Kavanaugh to sue the people making the allegations and demand to see the proof of those allegations. The allegations are at least thirty-five years old, and there seems to be no evidence of a pattern. I suspect that certain Democrat operatives would pay serious money for any woman willing to come forward and charge Justice Kavanaugh with improper conduct some time in the past ten years. However, at this point no one who is paying attention would believe the charges. The Democrat slander campaign has backfired.

I Guess The Truth Is Not Important If You Are A Democrat Candidate

Newsbusters posted an article today about the reporting on some recent embellished stories told by Joe Biden.

The article reports:

Apparently, the truth and the accuracy of details meant little to the so-called “powerhouse roundtable” on ABC’s This Week. During the latter half of the Sunday show, the panel defended former Vice President Joe Biden after The Washington Post exposed that a war story Biden had been telling for years was actually a tall tale.

But it wasn’t entirely false. As The Post explained and ABC rationalized on Thursday, Biden created the story by conflating several real events into a, sort of, Frankenstein’s monster designed to tug on the heartstrings of listeners. According to The Post, “Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony.”

But the facts be damned on ABC News.

First up was ABC political director Rick Klein, who said the story “shows the best of Joe Biden and the worst of Joe Biden. It’s him connecting and telling a really compelling story. It’s also him sanding away the edges and conflating things and maybe confusing details.”

The thing that is amazing about the above statement is that if your grandfather was ‘sanding away the edges and conflating things and maybe confusing details,’ you would probably have him checked for dementia. I really wonder if Joe Biden is going to be the Democrat nominee for President. I wonder if by some miracle he is the candidate, is he up for the task?

The article continues:

Washington Post national correspondent Mary Jordan was flippant about her own paper’s reporting on Biden’s latest gaffe. She suggested the voters she was talking too were telling her: “Come on, let’s focus on the big stuff, it’s the economy and the character of the leader and the character of the country that we want going forward”.

“And that’s what they’re saying. It’s big time. It’s big stuff that we care about. It’s not about the stories,” she concluded.

As Klein’s argument showed, it’s a double standard with it came to Democratic candidates and President Trump. If it was Trump telling Biden’s tale, then the media would be running story after story about him intentionally “gaslighting” America. Perhaps that’s why the news story wasn’t “resonating”.

I guess we are going to find out if American voters are willing to elect a candidate who the friendly media admits doesn’t even tell the truth when he is running.

What The Democrats Are Really Afraid Of

You can dismiss the turnout at Trump rallies versus the turnout for Democrat candidates. You can dismiss the tweets you may not like, but you can’t dismiss what is happening to the President’s approval numbers in minority communities.

The American Spectator posted an article today with the following headline, “Why Trump’s Approval Ratings Are Up Among Minorities.”

The article notes:

A mounting number of voter polls show that, despite shrill denunciations of the President by the Democrats for his alleged racism, Trump is enjoying a dramatic increase in his approval ratings among minorities. This isn’t, as some liberal news outlets and pundits have suggested, wishful thinking based on outlier polls. The trend began showing up in surveys early this year and appears to be gaining momentum. Some polls now show his approval numbers at 25 percent among African-American voters and 50 percent among Hispanic voters. If those figures hold for the next 15 months, they will render Trump unbeatable in November of 2020.

The article notes a number of reasons for the rising approval ratings. Among the Hispanic community, two reasons are the President’s stand on immigration and the economy. Those in the Hispanic community who followed the rules to become Americans do not support endless illegal immigration. Those in the Hispanic community have also seen a dramatic increase in employment opportunities and a decrease in unemployment. In the black community, people are asking why cities that have been controlled by Democrats for decades and given massive amounts of money by the government still look worse than cities in other countries that were totally destroyed during World War II. In other words, after voting Democrat for decades with no visible improvement in their situation, minorities are seeing positive change. Minorities have the lowest unemployment numbers in history. They are seeing employment opportunities they have not seen before. Pocketbook issues are having an impact on the way they view President Trump.

The article concludes:

The main reason for the surge in Trump’s Hispanic support, however, is the economy. As Steve Cortes, a member of the President’s Hispanic Advisory Council, points out:

Hispanics neither desire nor expect a laundry list of deliverables from government, but rather seek the conditions to advance and prosper independently.  As the most statistically entrepreneurial demographic in America, Hispanics have thrived amid the Trump boom as regulatory and tax relief unleashes a small business surge. Every American benefits from this new dynamism, but Hispanics most of all.

Hispanic voters, mind you, will be the largest ethnic minority in the electorate by 2020. They, combined with African Americans, may very well decide who will live in the White House after the next election. Moreover, the days when Democrats could win all of their votes by screeching “racism,” encouraging illegal immigration, and offering massive giveaway programs are probably over. President Trump appears to be building real support among minorities by providing genuine opportunity in a thriving economy. If he receives their support in anywhere near the percentages suggested above, he will win in 2020 no matter who runs against him.

The presidential election of 2020 will be very interesting.