Article by davenji in RedState

Why Trump Will Win in 2020

To hear the mainstream media talk incessantly, there is no need to vote this November.  The oft-cited, touted, invincible, and correct polls have spoken.  Of course, the polls were seriously wrong in 2016, but we are led to believe that the necessary adjustments have been made and President Trump is dead in the water.  Further, Joe Biden “picked” Kamala Harris as his running mate and this is going to make all the difference this year.  She is certainly more photogenic than Tim Kaine, has the right skin color and sports a vagina, but little else of consequence.

We are told that more this year than in any previous Presidential election year, the choice of a Vice President is more important than ever.  The unspoken reason is the problem for the Democrats.  They realize they have a senile, old white guy with some serious political baggage and likely some more racist and/or sexist skeletons in his scandal-ridden closet as their “leader.”  If you have to resort to racial and sexual pandering in choosing a running mate, you have a problem at the top of the ticket.

Despite what the spin masters in the media say, voters do not choose a President based on the “what if” scenarios and the VP has to step in.  People did not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because of Tim Kaine any more than people who voted for Trump did so because of Mike Pence.  Even if some do this year, there is plenty of ammunition to use against Harris.  If Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate with no chance at the nomination, can dent her armor, then the GOP better do the same.

This writer believes, simply because of polarization of politics in the large-population states, that Biden will take the popular vote.  But we do not elect Presidents, thankfully, by the popular vote.  Expect to hear the obligatory screeching and hollering whenever the winner (Trump) is made official: Let’s do away with the Electoral College, Trump lacks a mandate, Biden beat him X amount of votes, ad nauseum.  Without getting into the details since they will come later, this writer is predicting that Trump will lose Michigan, but keep Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the win column.  Assuming he keeps other states he won in 2016, the loss of Michigan’s 16 electoral votes is still enough to put him over the top.

There are a couple of reasons to be optimistic about Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  Although polls show Trump handily losing (as of this writing, Trump is down 7 points in Wisconsin and 7 in Pennsylvania), those results do not quite square with other factors.  Every report this writer has read out of Pennsylvania shows stabilization in those numbers- Trump is not going up or down, and the same for Wisconsin.  Some of the polls, if you take the average, involve polling during perhaps the depths of his administration.  If Trump can weather the polling storm during tough times, that bodes well.

There is also the enthusiasm gap.  In both states, the respective primaries were basically uncontested.  Yet Trump managed to pull in more voters as a percentage of registered voters than Biden.  That is, more registered Republicans cast a ballot for Trump than did registered voters among Democrats for Biden.  If you are running uncontested and pull in 97% of a large vote count (for a primary) like Trump compared to 72% for Biden, then there is a lack of enthusiasm for Biden.  Some of them may ultimately hold their nose and vote for Biden come November, but he has some convincing to do among his faithful while Trump does not have that obligation.

I also see some possible surprise state pick-ups for Trump.  The media loves to shove Trump’s nose in the polls when they are bad.  Suspiciously absent are polls out of New Hampshire and Nevada.  Between the two states, since January 1, 2020 there have been a total of ten polls.  For comparison purposes, Michigan leads the pack with 54 polls and Wisconsin with 45.  That dearth of polling shows a virtual tie in New Hampshire and darn close race in Nevada.

We often hear of the power of suburban voters who, we are told, drove the Democrats into power in the House in 2018.  Maybe there is a shift in political attitudes in the suburbs as they drift to the left, but is what they got in 2018 really what they bargained for?  Notice how the craziness in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York and other major urban areas has not really been all that welcome in the suburbs.  All it takes is one bad suburban protest for the “we empathize with you” attitude of suburbanites to change to “get the hell out of my neighborhood.”  People do not move to suburbs to have urban life infringe on their peace.

This year, there is no major third party candidates like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein to siphon votes away from either Biden or Trump.  Here, incumbency counts for something.  It is a rare thing in American politics for voters to choose either “four years and out,” or “we prefer 12 years of the same party.”  Since 1968, an incumbent has only lost twice (George H.W. Bush in 1992, and Jimmy Carter in 1980).  Bush, had he won, would have violated the 12-year-max rule.  It is a bizarre quirk of American politics: we like stability (short-term), but we embrace change (the longer view).

The 1992 election was different in that the country was suffering a recession and Bush’s “read my lips- no new taxes” pledge doomed his chances.  We are currently in a recession, but this one is qualitatively different from previous ones that have doomed the chances of incumbent Presidents.  Everyone with a clear mind (that leaves out Biden) realizes that this recession was not brought about by bad pre-existing policies, but by a virus.  This recession was self-inflicted by all branches of government in response to the coronavirus.  In effect, Trump gets a pass whereas Bush got no quarter in 1992.  It may be the economy, stupid, but it was a stupid response that created the recession.

Finally, there are the candidates themselves.  Despite the occasional giggles over the drunk Uncle Joe gaffe, Trump has more star power and charisma in his pinky finger than Joe Biden has in his entire feeble body, no matter how many push-ups he does.  This is a guy who uses phrases from the 1920s like “malarkey,” or from 1960s drug hustlers on the streets (“C’mon man, cut me a break on that ounce…”).  This is a guy who could draw maybe 10,000 people tops to a podcast and, I venture three-fourths of them are there to listen to the latest Bidenism and gaffe.  Biden is a walking, talking, barely audible meme-producer.

Let’s face it: the polls are worth squat.  I doubt that many who will vote for Trump have either the time or inclination to participate in such polls, thus skewing them towards Biden which the press then dutifully reports as an impending Trump electoral Armageddon.  There is a vast swath of unpolled Americans out there of all ethnicities, genders, living in a variety of settings who will do their talking on Election Day.  A good rule of thumb when looking at those polls?  Add at least 2-5 points to Trump’s total and Armageddon looks more like a Bruce Willis movie than political reality.

P.S.- VOTE!

 https://www.redstate.com/diary/davenj1/2020/08/13/why-trump-will-win-in-2020/

 

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Why It Should Matter to Women That Kamala Harris Slept Her Way Up

 

 

Article by Dov Fischer in The American Spectator

 Why It Should Matter to Women That Kamala Harris Slept Her Way Up 

She has already run for vice precedent. 

It is no secret but public knowledge that Kamala Harris slept her way up into California political life by being a very public escort and mattress for California Democrat Kingmaker Willie Brown. Willie Brown is 30 years older than Harris and was very married at the time. It was public. It was an embarrassment.

With Joe Biden’s photo metaphorically the definition of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, voters will decide in November whether they want Harris to be their president some time in the next four years. Of almost equally significant concern is what Harris represents to hard-working women across the country who devote years to their careers to rise to higher positions of importance.

Kamala Harris’s story denigrates women who worked hard all their lives, faced cruel gender stereotypes, heard and ignored snickers, encountered and overcame real true misogyny, and yet ultimately achieved great accomplishments.

As an attorney in my earliest years of practice I occasionally was assigned to work for litigation partners who are women. I cannot think of a single female litigation partner I ever met who was not brilliant, gifted, and perfectly suited to head a major litigation effort. For that matter, I cannot think of any woman among those who have been my superiors in other walks of life throughout my career who were anything less than brilliant, gifted, and perfectly suited. They attained their positions by overcoming stereotypical assumptions, snickers, working for men who often doubted their mettle and capabilities, and nevertheless proving themselves to be as capable or even more capable than the male mentors who guided them on their ladders of success. I know the same to be true of my own daughters, now in their mid-30s. I saw firsthand how hard they worked in elementary school, high school, college, graduate school, at summer jobs and in internships, and as they broke into their respective professional fields to work their ways up the ladders in their chosen careers. I know the same to have been true of my first wife, with whom the marriage was tough but her professional qualifications were impeccable, and I saw how hard she worked to achieve her goals and attain her accomplishments. And I then saw it again with Ellen, of blessed memory, my second wife, who graduated second in her high school class, fourth in her college class, and worked her way up from packing potato chips for Frito-Lay to managing white-collar investigations for decades at a major world-class university.

Yet the world is dominated by stereotypes and by unspoken assumptions. Joe Biden tells a Black voter that, if he is not sure he is voting for Biden, “then you ain’t Black.” No one talks to White voters that way. Among the stereotypes and assumptions that unfairly hinder many women is the unspoken whisper that “she probably slept her way up to that position.” It is a terrible stereotype, and it hurts women terribly. Do most women sleep their way up? No. Do many? No. Do some? Probably a few. And those few do horrific harm to the image and reputations of all the 99-plus percent of women who earned everything they have achieved in their lives.

That is why Kamala Harris, who openly and brazenly slept her way into California Democrat state politics by publicly hooking onto the very married Willie Brown, should matter to all women — regardless of ethnicity, color, religion, or party. Just as, despite the wrong assumptions on which she plays, Harris simply is not an “African American” — her parents are from India and British Jamaica — she likewise is not a woman who rose the way that Americans teach their daughters to achieve. Yes, she went to high school, college, and law school. Good for her. So did zillions of other Americans. And then, with law degree in hand, those other Americans had to prepare résumés, do often-unpaid internships and summer volunteer jobs if not clerkships, interview for entry-level positions, and do the lowest-on-the-totem-pole legal tasks at their new positions for a few years as they worked their way up. It was not as simple as just being a mattress.

When I was in law school I went the extra mile by trying to “make” law review. I further extended myself and, through my own exceptionally hard work and months of research and effort, successfully wrote a law review article that was deemed of sufficient quality to merit my being promoted to be Chief Articles Editor of law review. Over time, that same law review article would be cited by at least nine different federal judges in judicial opinions they respectively would hand down in cases brought under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) dealing with the fiduciary duties of officers and directors of financial institutions. Thanks in part to that hard work, I was offered the opportunity of a lifetime to clerk for a brilliant and gifted United States federal appeals court judge, the Hon. Danny J. Boggs, who would become the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and who even was on a short list for the United States Supreme Court.

Then I began my litigation career at Jones Day, an enormously prestigious international law firm of more than 1,000 of the world’s top attorneys. Alas, for all the prestige, life at the bottom as a first-year associate was often bleak, inglorious, entailed absorbing enormous personal emotional abuse from one or two arrogant and pathological litigation partners who enjoyed lording their power and psychologically abusing new associates, and working brutally long overnight hours. One of my closest colleagues killed herself over Christmas Week vacation; she could not take it any longer. Over the next 10 years I worked my way up the ladder, first at Jones Day and next at Akin Gump. As I kept inching towards the top over nearly a decade, I knew that this line of work would not ultimately be for me. Having by then married my second wife, a life partner who shared my dreams and who supported my passion to return to the rabbinate, I left that world and transitioned back to the rabbinate, to legal consulting, to teaching, and to writing. I had “earned my stripes,” my income level from which I now was departing, and all I had attained.

In that sense, I am not at all unique. That is the American Way, regardless of vocation, trade, or profession. That is the way I made it, and that is the way that 99-plus percent of all successful people make it, whether in law, in medicine, in carpentry, in electronics, in high tech, in accounting, or on the assembly line: through hard work and honest ethical effort. In the particular field of law, it is about working hard in school, hard studying, tough final exams, a brutal state bar exam, years of working long hours and gaining promotions and pay raises by producing increasingly excellent work. With that hard work and success, experienced attorneys find that newcomers assigned to them as subordinates approach them with respect because the newest attorneys realize what it takes and what it took for their assigned superiors to have reached the top. I never heard a whisper of suspicion that anyone ever rose up the ranks in Jones Day or Akin Gump by spreading legs.

Yet so many successful people unfairly face suspicions, born of stereotypes and of jealousies. “Oh, he got it because his father or mother runs the law firm.” “Oh, this firm is a long-time [Catholic / Protestant / Jewish] law firm, so because she is [Catholic / Protestant / Jewish], they promoted her instead of me.” One hears that. One wonders.

Kamala Harris’s story denigrates women who worked hard all their lives, faced cruel gender stereotypes, heard and ignored snickers, encountered and overcame real true misogyny, and yet ultimately achieved great accomplishments. Kamala Harris instead is a poster child for those extremely few women who despicably chose to take the short-cut up the ladder through frisky behavior with married men 30 years their senior. That play and strategy did not work out well for Monica Lewinsky, whose name forever will be associated with vice. Our society’s rejection and mockery of Lewinsky to this day, a quarter century later, is the vice precedent that should define Kamala Harris. Vice precedent, Kamala Harris.

 

 https://spectator.org/kamala-harris-willie-brown-women-stereotypes/

 

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Commenting is Open to the FCC, Tell Them What You Think

Jim Hoft for the Gateway Pundit

Chairman Ajit Pai of the Federal Communications Commission.

Pai is currently requsting public comment of his filing on social media censorship of speech in America.

* * * * * * * * *

On behalf of President Trump, the Secretary of Commerce through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), filed a petition July 27^th asking the FCC to limit protections for social media companies under Section 230.

TRENDING: "Trumpster, Just Leave! Just Leave!" - Smith's Grocery Store Employees Threaten, Curse at Customer for Improper Mask Use in Store (VIDEO)

Brendan Carr, one of the three Republican commissioners, welcomed the petition.

Here is an important paragraph on page 2 of the filing.

Specifically, per E.O. 13925, NTIA requests that the Commission propose rules to clarify:
(i) the interaction between subparagraphs (c)(1) and (c)(2) of section 230, in particular to clarify and determine the circumstances under which a provider of an interactive computer service that restricts access to content in a manner not specifically protected by subparagraph (c)(2)(a) may also not be able to claim protection under subparagraph (c)(1);5

Hopefully, Americans will swarm this FCC petition with comments!

America will be lost forever if the tech giants continue to restrict speech and collude and censor the voice of the American people.

We have seen firsthand at The Gateway Pundit what Facebook and Twitter have done to our accounts.

They REFUSE to allow conservative voices on their platforms.

In September 2018 Jim Hoft from The Gateway Pundit spoke to Congress about Facebook censorship.

Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft Testifies to Congress on Facebook Censorship: Full Statement (VIDEO)

Since that time the censorship and collusion between the tech giants have only escalated.

Last month Rep. Greg Steube grilled Google over its censorship and discrimination against The Gateway Pundit.

TGP at Tech Hearing: Rep. Greg Steube Grills Google CEO on Why Google Is Hiding Gateway Pundit — Steube Demands Evidence Within 2 Weeks! (VIDEO)

So far it’s been over a week, only 178 have commented on this petition.

Here are the NTIA’s areas of 230 they want addressed — via Multichanel

Here is an overview of the proposed 230 changes — via Cooley Law Firm

Here is a back story on President Trump’s FCC petition — via Reuters

** Americans can post their FCC public comment here.

The deadline is September 2^nd.

On the left side of the page you can select either +New Filing or +Express.

1. Express is typically for individuals, the easiest way to comment.
2. New Filing (standard method) allows upload of supporting attachments.
3. Here’s FAQ’s on how to comment.

Here’s more on this story: “After an initial flurry of comments from individuals opposed to President Trump’s petition to the FCC to regulate social media, the latest comments posted by the FCC have been a flurry of submissions from supporters of the petition, mostly copies of faxes from a Florida-based religious group.”

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War Chief Republicans or Reservation Chief Republicans?

Will GOP leaders settle for the poor wages of compromise like Black Kettle? Or will they refuse to compromise with those who wish to destroy us and fight politically, even to the end, like Tecumseh?

Hezekiah Kantor for American Greatness

I’ve been thinking a lot about the coming election and what people on the Right will do depending on the outcome. If President Trump wins, will they go back to the failed strategy of trying to compromise with the Left even though we would finally have the power to restore America? And if Trump loses, will they slide back into the role of playing lackeys—giving away the keys to the national house?

At the same time, I keep returning back to a single thought: which Republicans will be war chiefs and which will be reservation chiefs?

What is a war chief and what is a reservation chief? People who don’t live west of the Mississippi as I do may be unfamiliar with the distinction. As a rule, war chiefs were American Indians who refused to submit to displaced from their tribal lands—whether by other Amerindians or by Americans. The war chief chose war and its attendant ills over submission. 

The reservation chiefs, often without being prompted, sold off tribal lands that were not theirs to sell for cheap trinkets: beads, whiskey, and buttons rather than risking conflict.

When I think of the reservation chiefs, I think of those who sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $24 worth of beads, or men like John Ross or Elias Boudinotwho just accepted the idea that their people, the Cherokee, should passively submit to being removed from the Southeast to Oklahoma. I think of the Chiefs Black Kettle and Little Raven who bowed their heads and passively submitted to being removed to reservations chosen not by them but for them. I’m sure many of these men thought that what they were doing on behalf of their people was necessary, even praiseworthy.

When I think of the war chiefs, I think of those proud American Indians who fought back against their displacement, who refused to give up their traditions, who attacked despite overwhelming odds. 

When I think of war chiefs, I think of Metacom, the Wampanoag chief who realized the folly of his father’s accommodation with the Puritans. Even though it was too late, he still fought the fight to retain his ancestral lands. I think of Tecumseh, the Shawnee Chief who spent his life trying to unite the tribes of the Old Northwest to eject the invasion of my equally courageous and brave ancestors who were displacing them in their lands. I think of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse who, though they were ultimately doomed, resisted their dispossession and land loss rather than be a party to it.

What was the difference between the reservation and war chiefs? Maybe the former thought their lands were going to be taken anyway, right? Why not get the best deal possible if defeat is inevitable? Why submit to the indignity, the pain, the suffering, and loss if the material results are the same—or perhaps even worse? (And they often were.)

The answer is in the immaterial value of resistance.

There is a reason Crazy Horse, and not Elias Boudinot, is the subject of a massive stone monument dedicated to his memory. There is a reason children in the public schools, especially American Indian children, know who Tecumseh is; and it is the same reason they probably have never heard of Little Raven. Because what Crazy Horse and Tecumseh bequeathed was a gift to their descendants: the gift of knowing that the pride was unbroken, the gift of knowing that they knew how valuable their patrimony was and that they were willing to go to great lengths to defend it and pass that pride on to their descendants.

This immaterial principle of a psychological and emotional patrimony, an inheritance of pride is why Texans praise and know the names of the heroes of the Alamo like Davy Crockett and not the leader of the massacred prisoners of Goliad. It is why young Israelis know who Eleazar ben Ya’ir was and not the names of those who collaborated with the Romans in the destruction of Judea. I could go on, but these people, these other various examples like the Amerindian War Chiefs are the ones who—even in defeat—won a victory for their causes and their posterity.

How can we quantify the value of this gift to posterity? We can’t.

But I can tell you, how we speak of Republican leaders in decades to come—even if we are defeated and submerged by the globalist “march of history”—will in large part depend on whether or not they choose to be War Chief Republicans or Reservation Chief Republicans. On every issue.

The Left has made it very clear what they want to do with us and our patrimony. They want to abolish the family. They want to swamp our nation with third-world colonists regardless of our desires, making them citizens as soon as possible, so that they can rule this country permanently. They openly state their plan is to keep their governing coalition united by demonizing white men, describing them as super oppressors in terms of wealth, income, and status. They openly state it is their goal to target and destroy the history,monuments, and memories of these super oppressors and have been carrying it out with zeal. They want to continue the process of outsourcing our jobs. They will do nothing to stop the importation of drugs into this country because this would require them to secure the border; and so tens of thousands more Americans will die from drug overdoses—the progress of which has been halted for now by the Trump Administration.

Will Republicans be Reservation Chief Republicans, selling our patrimony cheaply—the patrimony that belongs to all American citizens: whether they be black, white, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or agnostic—for the cheap Chinese trinkets of globalization? Will they be Reservation Chief Republicans, allowing the MEET Complex—that body of leftist occupied institutions: Media, Entertainment, Education, and Tech—to continue to poison the American mind and soul in exchange for profit and sordid programming?

Or will they be War Chief Republicans? Will they tell the truth and fire back at their opponents—even if they are called sexists, or racists, or homophobes? Will they fight for the right of Americans to have decent paying work and dignity—even if their opponents call them nativists and bigots for it? Will they put American First, even though our illegitimate globalist elites bare their teeth at them?

Will they settle for the poor wages of compromise like Black Kettle? Or will they refuse to compromise with those who wish to destroy us and make us strangers in our own country and fight politically, even to the end, like Tecumseh? That’s the question of our day.

Chris Wallace's Sanity In Question After He Makes Pronouncement About Kamala Harris

Bonchie reporting for RedState

Someone may need to do a wellness check on Chris Wallace. Sure, we all know he doesn’t like Donald Trump. That’s not exactly groundbreaking or rare, but some of his recent pronouncements have been head scratching to say the least.

In the wake of Kamala Harris being picked as Joe Biden’s VP candidate, he’s apparently decided to one-up himself, making a statement that leaves me questioning his sanity.

“Fox News Sunday” anchor on Wednesday said Sen. (D-Calif.) is “a reasonably safe choice” for Democrats, adding that the presumptive vice presidential nominee isn’t very far to the left on the political spectrum.

“She is not far to the left, despite what Republicans are gonna try to say,”

His comments come a day after former Vice President chose Harris as his running mate. After Biden’s announcement, said Harris was his .

I’m sorry, what? Also, this affords me the perfect chance to use this gif.

Though I realize the media are rushing to paint Kamala Harris as a moderate, I’d expect more intellectual honesty here from Wallace. This is Fox News we are talking about. If I wanted to be gaslit about Democrats, I’d just go watch CNN.

On the merits, Wallace is simply wrong. Kamala Harris is rated the 4th most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. Some rankings even have her more liberal than Bernie Sanders, which may seem odd until you remember that Sanders has not been nearly as anti-gun as Harris is. The California Senator supports a mandatory gun buyback in the mold of Australia, which is a deeply left-wing position that essentially sets fire to the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Harris also supports the Green New Deal in full and promoted it heavily during her now doomed primary campaign. She supports some form of Medicare for All, though she’s waffled on what that looks like more times than my son trying to pick a flavor of ice cream. On the three most important topics that define political ideology, guns, the economy, and healthcare, she’s not a moderate at all. She’s about as far to the left as you can go.

But I can keep going. She wants to ban straws, rewrite government regulations to decrease the eating of red meat, and supports a climate tax. Speaking of taxes, she also supports tax hikes in general. Not on Wall Street of course, but on the 80% of middle Americans who got a tax break under the Trump tax cut.

Wallace would go on to say she adds “excitement” to the ticket.

But he said she’s likely to energize voters as Biden’s running mate.

“She adds some excitement to the ticket. She’s a statement to African Americans and especially to African American women, who are the real solid core of the Democratic Party, that the party does not take them for granted,” the veteran newsman added.

I always look forward to white guys in their 70s telling people what is important to African American women. In this case, Harris cratered with black voters during the primary, so how “exciting” she is to them is certainly up for debate. Regardless, her ability as a retail politician is being enormously exaggerated by most of the media right now. This is a person who started with every advantage possible in the Democratic primary, including an initial poll lead, and didn’t make it through December.

In short, the idea that she’s not far-left is objectively false. The idea that she’s exciting, likable, or adds a lot to Biden’s campaign is debatable at best. Why Wallace would dabble in such nonsense is beyond me, and I suspect he knows better.

Reports: U.S. may defund UN mission to Lebanon

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 3:30 PM PT – Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The Trump administration may veto a United Nations resolution to extend an international peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. According to reports, Israeli and U.S. diplomats have insisted the mission do more to curb Iran’s influence in the country.
The U.S. is the main sponsor of the $250 million UN mission to Lebanon. The U.S. and Israel claimed Iranian backed terror group Hezbollah has been controlling the Lebanese government and blocking access by UN peacekeepers.
However, the UN has called to ramp up its assistance to Lebanon, regardless of its domestic politics.

“The humanitarian response has been swift and wide-ranging. It is just the first phase in what will be three elements of the needed response. The second, recovery and reconstruction, will cost billions of dollars and require a mix of public and private finance. The third element is responding to Lebanon’s preexisting socioeconomic crisis.” – Mark Lowcock, Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations

U.S. diplomats have suggested American taxpayers should foot the bill to rebuild Lebanon, especially in the face of Hezbollah’s obstruction efforts.

https://www.oann.com/reports-u-s-may-defund-un-mission-to-lebanon/

The Case for Trump

There's little wrong with President Trump 

that more Trump couldn't solve.

This essay is adapted from Michael Anton’s forthcoming book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return (Regnery Publishing).

posted by Michael Anton at Claremont Review

Americans who want to remain citizens of a united country that at least makes some desultory attempt to protect them and further their interests have no choice but to stay the course. As the saying goes, the only way out is through.

I know that some readers will lament that the Trump Administration has been a disappointment. “Where’s our wall?” I’d like to have seen more progress by now, too. “Why wasn’t he tougher during the riots and their aftermath?” I don’t know.

But it does seem clear that a few of the things we thought all along are actually true. The presidency is hard enough to manage with decades of experience in politics and a series of elective offices under your belt. It’s that much harder when a president assumes the office not merely from the outside, but politically speaking, from out of nowhere.

It’s harder still without a party. Yes, President Trump enjoys the overwhelming loyalty of Republican voters—but his hold on Republican donors, and especially officials, is much more tenuous. He ran against them and won—and most of them will never forgive him. They play nice to his face and undermine him behind his back. That’s before we even get to the ones in open rebellion. No president—Democrat or Republican—has ever come to power facing organized efforts by his own party’s middle management to tally lists of people declaring on the record that under no circumstances will they work for the incoming administration. It’s been hard, to say the least, to staff up when a good chunk of the party is dead-set against their leader, and nearly all the rest spent their careers furthering policies diametrically opposed to those he ran—and won—on.

And that’s just President Trump’s ostensible own side. Then factor in all his open enemies from the other party, and virtually every other power center in our society, plus the steadfast opposition of the so-called “deep state”—i.e., the very federal bureaucrats whom he was elected to oversee and direct. Viewed from this angle, one may fairly wonder how it’s been possible for him to accomplish anything at all.

More fundamentally: where do you think the country would be without him? Even if you’re disappointed with less than 200 miles of wall, remember that leading Democrats not only insist that every single new inch is a moral atrocity, they want to tear down sections that already exist.

Think the trade agenda is progressing too slowly? Well, President Trump already renegotiated two of our worst trade deals. How many new, bad ones do you think a Hillary administration would have signed by now? Trump not tough enough on China for you? A little too much talk about his “good friend” Xi Jinping? I sympathize. But he’s still done more than all the last four presidents combined. More than that, he’s reversed the China policy of the last four presidents combined. Have you heard how Joe Biden kowtows to China?

And I know that some will insist that, so long as a single American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine is deployed anywhere in the Middle East, then Trump has failed—or worse, betrayed them. But in fact, the president has mostly succeeded at the tasks he promised for that region: defeating ISIS, revitalizing our alliances while requiring more from our allies, and prudently disengaging from existing conflicts while not starting any new ones.

All of these trends, changes, policies, and initiatives, and many others—however incomplete—would be reversed in the event of a Trump loss. The ruling class would hail the president’s defeat as a historic repudiation of.... (read much more HERE)

 Article by Cal Thomas in The Western Journal

Cal Thomas: We're Edging Toward the Fulfillment of Benjamin Franklin's Dark Prophecy of Despotism

What would you think if local politicians decided to cut the size of their fire department while buildings in their city were ablaze? What about a general who orders his soldiers to stop fighting and surrender to the enemy?

Something similar has occurred in the once tranquil city of Seattle, where in the midst of riots and over the objections of the mayor and police chief, the city council has voted to defund the police and reduce by 100 the number of officers on the force.

The city council added to the indignity by cutting the chief’s salary. Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best resigned in her own form of protest.

Seattle has about 1,400 police officers, clearly not enough given the ongoing lawlessness.

The council vote to reduce the force is far less than the 50 percent cut demanded by the Black Lives Matter organization, which increasingly seems to be running — and ruining — Seattle and other cities.

This decision could be seen as a victory for mob rule and could encourage more cities to take a knee before criminals.

Not that more evidence is needed that the mob is winning, but in Chicago, which has become an almost daily shooting gallery, Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx has decided to drop felony cases, including charges of murder and other serious offenses.

An analysis by the Chicago Tribune found that during Foxx’s tenure, “25,183 people have had their felony cases dismissed through November 2019, up from 18,694” under her predecessor.

Last weekend, overnight, rampaging looters streamed into downtown Chicago by caravan and then proceeded to smash their way into businesses along the Magnificent Mile, stealing high-end merchandise and anything else they could get their hands on.

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Why don’t reporters investigate who organized the raid? Where did these people come from? Who, what, when, where and why? Aren’t those the questions every good journalist should ask?

Journalism was once a proud profession. What happened?

Deep beneath the lawlessness spreading like coronavirus across the land is a moral and spiritual drought that politicians do not have the power to fix.

In previous generations, fiery preachers would remind citizens of the consequences of living unrestrained and unaccountable lives. They called it “sin,” but that diagnosis has virtually disappeared, along with the generation of Billy Graham, and we are left with the current moral desert.

We can’t say we have not been warned by history and experience about the dangers inherent in unrestrained living.

America’s second president, John Adams, said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Which raises the question: What happens to our Constitution and our nation when a growing number of those among us become immoral and irreligious?

That great sage, Benjamin Franklin, remarked at the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia: “I agree to this Constitution … and I believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”

Franklin’s basic philosophy of sound government was that personal and national freedom are in jeopardy if the people become wicked and immoral.

He believed that when such behavior becomes widespread and people fear for their lives and property, demands for a police state become almost inevitable so that order might be restored.

Given what is occurring in Seattle and elsewhere, it would appear we are edging closer to the day when Franklin’s prophecy is fulfilled.

https://www.westernjournal.com/cal-thomas-edging-toward-fulfillment-benjamin-franklins-dark-prophecy-despotism/

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Black Man Shoots 5-Year-Old In The Head Point-Blank, EneMedia Don’t Care

Kylee Zempel reporting for The Federalist

Every day, corporate media commit sins of omission and commission. In their current scramble to shine a spotlight on what many leftist journalists deem “systemic racism,” they have elevated the deaths of black Americans at the hands of white people, while turning a blind eye to black-on-black crime as well as white victims of black perpetrators. Today, their grave sin of omission involved the execution of an innocent 5-year-old boy.

On Sunday, 25-year-old Darius Sessoms, a black man, allegedly killed white 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant while the child’s two young sisters looked on. While Hinnant was riding his bike in the front yard of his father’s North Carolina home, Sessoms, his neighbor, reportedly ran across the yard and shot the child in the head point-blank. One neighbor witnessed the incident, as did the boy’s 7- and 8-year-old sisters.

“My first reaction was he’s playing with the kids,” said Doris Lybrand, the neighbor who saw Sessoms run across the lawn and shoot the boy. “For a second, I thought, ‘That couldn’t happen.’ People don’t run across the street and kill kids.”

“We were eating our dinner and heard a bang. We knew it was a gunshot,” Charlene Walburn, another of the boy’s neighbors, described the scene. “So I told him to call 911, and I ran to the door.”

The boy’s father dashed out to his son, screaming and holding his bleeding body. Hinnant was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

After the shooting, Sessoms fled in a black vehicle. The U.S. Marshals Service Carolinas Regional Fugitive Task Force, Goldsboro police, and Wayne County Sheriff’s Office arrested him nearly 24 hours later. Sessoms is being held in the Wilson County jail without bond and has been charged with first-degree murder.

“I just don’t understand why he did it,” Walburn continued. “How can you walk up to a little boy, point blank, and put a gun to his head and just shoot him? How could anyone do that?”

The same neighbor described Hinnant’s sweet demeanor. “He would come over, him and my husband would always talk back and forth and he would ask my husband to put air in his tire,” Walburn said. “If he saw me on the porch with a popsicle, he would always come over and ask me if he could have a popsicle.”

Sessoms reportedly had dinner with Hinnant’s father last week and was seen at the father’s residence earlier in the day Sunday.

Day in and day out, the national media has stoked the coals of racial tension in America, cultivating a blazing inferno of strife — both literally and figuratively. The world has watched as lawless rioters and looters desecrated America’s cities, setting businesses and churches ablaze, coaxed onward by an approving news media. Journalists have run cover for violent actors, lumping them in with peaceful protesters.

Over and over, the media have repeated the story of George Floyd and hurled blanket accusations of police brutality, which has encouraged violence against police officers, all while largely ignoring deaths that aren’t politically expedient. These deaths include that of black police officer David Dorn, who died while protecting a store from violent looters in St. Louis. Now the media is ignoring the death of Hinnant at the hands of a black man.

The media will continue their race framing, as if every act of man is the product of a racial consideration. It doesn’t apply only to crime, either. Everything in American culture and politics in 2020 must be viewed through a racial lens. Brands have been canceled, sports teams renamed, and Black Lives Matter scrawled across basketball courts and end zones. Former Vice President Joe Biden yesterday announced the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, after activists and party leaders pressured him to choose a woman of color.

As the blaze of manufactured conflict continues, be mindful of the media’s framing. Note not only their sins of commission as they intentionally divide Americans over the color of their skin, but also their sins of omission as they ignore victims that cut against the “America is racist” narrative, such as the many victims of black-on-black crime. Today, the victim they’ve ignored is Cannon Hinnant.

Will the mainstream media say his name?

 

 Article by Victor Davis Hanson in Townhall

Democrats Are Waging War Against Tradition and the Constitution

Several of the 2020 Democratic primary candidates favored the abolishment of the Electoral College. Or, as once-confident candidate Elizabeth Warren put it, "I plan to be the last American president to be elected by the Electoral College."

Furor over the Electoral College among the left arose from the 2000 and 2016 elections. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, respectively, won the popular votes. But, like three earlier presidents, they lost the Electoral College voting -- and with it the presidency.

The Founding Fathers saw a purpose in the Electoral College. It ensured that small, rural states would retain importance in national elections.

The Electoral College lessened the chance of voting fraud affecting the outcome of a national vote by compartmentalizing the outcome among the various states. It usually turns the presidential election into a contest between two major parties that alone have the resources to campaign nationwide.

The college is antithetical to the parliamentary systems of Europe. There, a multiplicity of small extremist parties form and break coalitions to select heads of state, often without transparency.

Yet to change the U.S. Constitution is hard -- and by intent.

Historically, an amendment has required a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and an additional ratification by three-fourths of the states through votes of their legislatures.

There is a chance that some states could render void the Electoral College without formally amending the Constitution.

To circumvent the Constitution, Democrats have pushed "The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact," an agreement among a group of states that would force state electors to vote in accordance with the national popular vote and ignore their own state tallies. Already, 15 states totaling 73 percent of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency have joined.

Liberal academics have an array of proposed constitutional changes. Why do two Wyoming senators each represent about 290,000 voters while each California senator represents 20 million?

Forget that the founders established a constitutional republic, not a radical democracy, in order to check and balance popular and often volatile public opinion. One way was by creating an upper-house Senate that would slow down the pulse of the more populist House of Representatives.

Nevertheless, there is an ongoing effort to dream up ways to create more, and apparently liberal, senators -- to change the rules rather than the hearts and minds of the voters.

In his recent eulogy at John Lewis's funeral, Barack Obama proposed giving statehood to liberal Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. That would instantly give Democrats four additional senators.

Others want senators allotted by population. That was the argument in a recent Atlantic article titled "The Path to Give California 12 Senators, and Vermont Just One,"

There is nothing in the Constitution that specifies the exact size and makeup of the Supreme Court. It only offers guidance on how justices are appointed and confirmed, and that there will be a chief justice. But since 1869, the Supreme Court has been fixed at eight associate justices and one chief justice.

Democratic primary candidates Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke and Elizabeth Warren said they would consider ending that 151-year tradition and "pack" the court with additional justices in the fashion of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's failed 1937 effort.

The left is apparently afraid of a second Donald Trump presidential term that might allow him four or five Supreme Court picks over eight years in office.

The effect of such appointments could be mitigated by expanding the court to 12 or more justices, along with altering the rules for selecting them.

In his eulogy for Lewis, Obama also called for an end to the Senate filibuster. He claimed it was a racist relic from the Jim Crow era used to stymie needed social change.

Given recent polling, Obama now apparently believes Trump will lose the election, and Congress with it. But he also seems to fear that fundamental progressive transformation could be checked by a filibuster-happy Republican Senate minority.

Democrats were perfectly happy with the filibuster -- or the mere threat of the filibuster -- from 2017 to 2019, when the Democratic Senate minority blocked much of the Trump agenda.

Efforts to change time-honored rules for short-term gain are becoming more common.

Sanctuary cities nullify federal immigration law to empower illegal immigration. The nonenforcement of laws against rioting and looting has become common in big cities. The First Amendment is inert on college campuses.

The left should beware. Politics are volatile and often change. When Democrats destroy longstanding rules for short-term advantage, they may regret it when they too are in need of sober traditions and the U.S. Constitution.

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2020/08/13/democrats-are-waging-war-against-tradition-and-the-constitution-n2574188 

 

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