Trump’s VP Pick Should Be Someone Who Has Never Admitted to Shooting a Puppy

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

The speculation over Donald Trump’s veep pick is heating up, and his potential choices’ respective pole positions have changed a lot since the last time I wrote about this. Now, I’ve been pretty clear that there were three main criteria for picking a running mate. One, the appointment cannot hurt the GOP, like by putting a seat at risk. Two, the nominee must be competent to be president. Three, the pick must bring something to the table as far as winning the election. And I guess I now have to add a fourth qualification. The nominee can’t have shot any puppies.

Now, I wouldn’t think that I would have to tell anybody that shooting puppies is a bad idea if you want to be elected by the American people. Americans like puppies. They don’t like people who shoot puppies. So, the thought process of anybody who wants to be liked by the American people admitting to shooting puppies escapes me.

Yet, Kristi Noem capped Cricket the dog and then wrote about it in her book. Besides being bizarre and cruel, this was politically insane. It’s totally disqualifying, and apparently Donald Trump agrees because rumor has it that she’s off his shortlist. Somewhere across the rainbow bridge, Cricket is wagging her tail as she watches Noem’s political future dragged to the gravel pit and given the Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas” treatment.

Now, Noem was terrible anyway. Her country-girl affectation was tiresome, and as soon as the Chamber of Commerce cried, she immediately betrayed young women and refused to stop men pretending to be women from stealing their sports. But you can come back from betraying the base – not for folks like you and me, but for other, softer Republicans. There are lots of pols who have flirted with establishment RINOism and come back. Hi, Marco Rubio. But you just can’t come back from shooting puppies.

I understand that rural people and farmers look at animals a little differently than BMW-driving lawyers from the big city. I get that. I also get that you can’t shoot puppies and be a successful vice presidential candidate. Hear me out. A lot of people do not dig shooting puppies. Call them ignorant, call them uptight, whatever. They just can’t get past you shooting puppies. 

You’re not going to talk this huge percentage of Americans into thinking shooting puppies is okay. When it came out that Noem shot a puppy, Twitter exploded with all these horrible arguments about how it was really no biggie that she shot a puppy. Cricket was a bad dog. Cricket was untrainable. Cricket killed chickens, but so did Colonel Sanders and no one thinks he should have been led to the gravel pit.

Look, these rationalizations for shooting a puppy are never going to fly among the suburban people – or for a lot of country and farm people too, since many of them also strongly oppose shooting puppies. The anti-shooting puppies demographic is huge, and Trump needs it to vote for his ticket. 

You are not going to talk them out of their opposition to shooting puppies, especially with lame arguments like that it wasn’t really a puppy because it was 14 months old. I argue things to people on juries for a living. Let me explain what kind of argument that is. That’s a terrible argument. Here’s my rule of thumb. I never want to have to defend somebody for shooting puppies. 

He cannot pick Noem. There is no way that we Republicans want to spend the next six months when we should be talking about how Biden is turning this country into a communist hellhole of economic despair, fat commie campus mutants, and foreign policy humiliation, trying to articulate a defense of shooting puppies so that Kristi can live her dream of getting the hell out of South Dakota.

Again, you can’t be the vice president and have shot puppies. Like the term “fetch,” if you pardon the expression, it’s just not going to happen.

Now that we have established that Trump will not pick the woman who probably cried at the beginning of “Old Yeller” and who wondered why John Wick was so darn upset, the question remains as to who it will be. Well, Donald Trump met with Ron DeSantis recently, and apparently it was a love fest. They’ve buried the hatchet, and not in each other’s skull. That’s good for the party regardless, but could it indicate that Trump is considering selecting the Florida governor for a unity ticket? Big D will certainly not harm the ticket, and he can certainly do the job of President. DeSantis also brings a track record of competence that reassures the swing voters. He also brings a lot of the reluctant DeSantis people back. Now, there are a few DeSantis folks who are effectively Never Trump, and you’re not going to get them until they look at the chaos on our campuses and everywhere else and decide to put aside their fits of pique and get with the program. But every vote counts.

Is it good for DeSantis’s career to be on the ticket? He is certainly going to run in 2028, so does it make sense to tie himself to Donald Trump, who looks like he’s got a pretty good chance of winning in November? I don’t know. But I do have to praise Ron DeSantis’s troll game. As soon as the revelation that Noem shot a puppy came out, he and all his people’s Twitter timelines were filled with pictures of them cavorting with canines. So, it’s clear that Ron DeSantis meets the fourth basic VP characteristic. He hasn’t shot any puppies.

Glenn Youngkin of Virginia is apparently near the top of Trump’s list. He won’t harm the ticket because his seat will go to Winsome Sears. He is certainly competent. He makes the Democrats spend money in Virginia, donors dig him, and he reassures the kind of wussy conservatives who find Trump’s aggressive heterosexuality and Twitter game off-putting. And he’s never shot any puppies.

Another governor rising in the polls is Doug Burgum of that other Dakota, the one where the governor doesn’t shoot puppies. His seat is safe Republican, and he is clearly competent. He’s also a soothing presence for the squishes, and the dude has money for days. These are great characteristics, but perhaps his best quality is that he has never shot any puppies.

I’m a big fan of Robert O’Brien and JD Vance for a number of reasons. The new, improved, and less thirsty Marco Rubio might work. Kim Reynolds, the Iowa governor, is a good choice, as is Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas. They are all strong veep flexes, in part because none of them have shot any puppies.

Some of the previous favorites are falling behind. The bizarre notion that Robert Kennedy, Jr., might be a Republican vice-presidential candidate seems to have disappeared. Tulsi Gabbard appears to be fading. They are Democrats, which disqualifies them from being Republican nominees – duh – but I will give them this. They never shot any puppies.

We don’t hear about Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott anymore. Both have some fatal weaknesses, but at least neither has shot any puppies.

 Nikki Haley is definitely out of the running. As annoying as she is, she had something to offer the ticket. But she has broken her word about endorsing the GOP nominee, which was politically stupid. However, in her defense, that is not as politically stupid as admitting that she shot a puppy.

We’ll probably not learn Trump’s vice presidential pick for a couple of months. Trump is a little busy being framed by Soros/communist scumbags in garbage Democrat cities, but also he’s a consummate showman. He’s going to make this a big deal and wring every bit of suspense he can out of his decision. I defer to Donald Trump on public relations because if there’s one thing Trump knows how to do, it’s to get attention to get what he wants. And what he wants is a running mate who will help him nail down this increasingly winnable election. That starts with not picking someone who has shot a puppy.

X22, And we Know, and more- May 3rd

 

Can The Current Universities Be Saved? ~ VDH

Politicized faculty, infantilized students, and mediocre classes have combined to erode the prestige of college degrees, even at once elite colleges.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Elite higher education in America—long unquestioned as globally preeminent—is facing a perfect storm. Fewer applicants, higher costs, impoverished students, collapsing standards, and increasingly politicized and mediocre faculty reflect a collapse of the university system.

The country is waking up to the reality that a bachelor’s degree no longer equates with graduates being broadly educated and analytical. Just as often, they are stereotyped as pampered, largely ignorant, and gratuitously opinionated.

No wonder polls show a drastic loss of public respect for higher education and, specifically, a growing lack of confidence in the professoriate.

Each year, there are far fewer students entering college. Despite a U.S. population 40 million larger than 20 years ago, fertility rates have fallen in two decades by some 500,000 births per year.

Meanwhile, from 1980 to 2020, room, board, and tuition increased by 170 percent.

Skyrocketing costs cannot be explained by inflation alone, given that campuses have lightened faculty teaching loads while expanding administrative staff. At Stanford, there is nearly one staffer or administrative position for every student on campus.

At the same time, to vie for a shrinking number of students, colleges began offering costly in loco parentis counseling, Club Med-style dorms and accommodations, and extracurricular activities.

As applicants grew scarcer and expenses went up, universities began offering “full-service” student-aid packages, heavily reliant on government-subsidized student loans. The collective indebtedness of over 40 million student borrowers is nearing $2 trillion.

Worse still, an entire new array of therapeutic majors and minors appeared in the social sciences. Most of these gender/race/environmental courses did not emphasize analytical, mathematical, or oral and written skills. Such course work did not impress employers.

Faculty hiring had become increasingly non-meritocratic based on diversity/equity/inclusion criteria. New faculty hires have sought to institutionalize self-serving DEI and recalibrate higher education to prepare a new generation for self-perpetuating radical ideologies.

At the more elite campuses, racial quotas vastly curtailed the number of Asian and white students. But that racialist social engineering project required dropping the SAT requirement and comparative ranking of high school grade point averages.

As less well-prepared students entered college, faculty either inflated grades (80 percent are A/A- now at Yale), watered down their course requirements, or added new soft-ball classes. To do otherwise while attempting to retain old standards earned targeted faculty charges of racism and worse.

Another way to square the circle of rising costs and fewer and poorer students was to attract foreign students. They pay the full costs of college, especially those on generous stipends from the Middle East and China. Nearly a million foreign nationals, the majority from illiberal regimes, are now here on full scholarships.

While here, many see their newfound freedoms as invitations to attack America. Once here, they too often romanticize the very autocratic governments and illiberal values of their homelands that they seemingly sought to escape by coming to America.

Most foreign students assume they are exempt from the consequences of violating campus rules or laws in general. After all, they pay the full cost of their education and thus partially subsidize those who do not.

Almost half of all those enrolled in college never graduate. Those who do, on average, require six years to do so.

All these realities explain why teenagers increasingly opt for trade schools, vocational education, and community colleges. They prefer to enter the work force largely debt-free and in demand as skilled, sought-after tradespeople.

Most feel that if the old general education curriculum has been destroyed at weaponized universities, then there is no great loss in skipping the traditional BA degree. A far better selection of demanding and well-taught classes can be found online at a lower cost.

The result is a disaster for both higher education and a wake-up call for the country at large.

Entire generations are now suffering from prolonged adolescence as they drag out college to consume their early and mid-twenties. The unfortunate result for the country is a radical delay in marriage, childbearing, and home ownership—all the time-honored catalysts for adulthood and the responsibilities that come with it.

Politicized faculty, infantilized students, and mediocre classes have combined to erode the prestige of college degrees, even at once elite colleges. A degree from Columbia no longer guarantees either maturity or preeminent knowledge but is just as likely a warning to employers of a noisy, poorly educated graduate more eager to complain to Human Resources than to enhance a company’s productivity.

Yet it may not be all that unfortunate that much of higher education is going the way of malls, movie theaters, and CDs. The country needs far more skilled physical labor and less prolonged adolescence and debt.

STEM courses, professional schools, and traditional campuses are better insulated from mediocrity and should survive. Otherwise, millions more starting adulthood at 18 debt-free and fewer encumbered, ignorant, and entitled at 25 is not a bad thing for the country.

Bringing the War Home, Part II

posted by Anne-Christine Hoff at American Thinker 

Today on college campuses we are seeing the Israel-Hamas war being imported by the Left. The goal of their operations is to weaken the social fabric of society. In the same way that the Vietnam War once created a flashpoint for revolution, pro-Palestinian sympathizers are using the Israel-Hamas war to create polemics that lead to a subversion of the system.

Creating Polemics

It’s as if the pro-Hamas organizers all have the same copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and they are implementing every rule that involves weakening one’s enemies through the tactic of heightening tensions. (Of Alinsky’s 13 rules for radicals, the five below deal with increasing pressure):

1. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.
2. Keep the pressure on, never let up.
3. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure on the opposition.
4. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.
5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

Just as the 1960s far-left group Weather Underground organized the “Days of Rage,” in October 1969 in Chicago, around John Jacob’s slogan to “bring the war home,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) has also galvanized a popular movement around the Marxist language of oppression and liberation.

As they write on the CUAD website, Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a “coalition of student organizations that sees Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation.” They are a “continuation of the Vietnam anti-war movement and the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa.”

The language they use is utopian and idealistic. They want a collective future of liberation and the end of oppression. Those who are deemed on the right side are promoted as good, while those who are oppressors don’t deserve to exist. 

Open Calls for Murder

The pro-Palestinian side presents itself as calling for peace (a ceasefire) while at the same time, openly calling for the murder of Jews.

For example, Jon Levine, a correspondent for Newsweek, reported that just four days after the October 7 massacre in Israel, a pro-Hamas rally occurred in New York City. Protesters dressed up as Islamist fighters, chanting “Death to Israel” and “We want it all,” indicating that the coordinated bloodletting on October 7^th was just the beginning.

Just two weeks later, at Cooper Union, on October 25, 2023, eleven Jewish students sheltered inside the library, attempting to call 911, while pro-Hamas protesters waved wooden sticks at the library’s windows. No police came, but the protesters eventually left.

Late in October 2023, posts appeared on an online discussion forum on fraternities at Cornell University, encouraging the killing of Jews. One post stated, “If you see a Jewish student on campus, follow them home and slit their throats.”

We can see the organized, coordinated efforts to terrorize in the pro-Hamas rally in New York City, the Cooper Union library incident, the anonymous posts at Cornell University by username “kill Jews.”

Victimhood Status Ensures Right to Violence

Interestingly, the “victims” consider themselves oppressed while at the same time attending the most elite institutions in the United States. Other vocal sympathizers are history professors, medical students, and artists. They are not all Palestinian. The pro-Palestinian faction is multi-ethnic and seemingly educated, at least educated enough to attend an Ivy League school.   

For example, on April 26, 2024, Khymani James, an organizer for Columbia University’s anti-Israel encampment, was banned from the university campus after a video he livestreamed in January came to light, showing him saying that “Zionists did not deserve to live.”

He further stated, “The existence of them and the projects they have built, i.e. Israel, it’s all antithetical to peace. So, yes, I feel very comfortable -- very comfortable, calling for those people to die.”

“Be glad, be grateful that I’m just not going out and murdering Zionists.”

“Zionists, along with all white supremacists, need to not exist, because they actively kill and harm vulnerable people.”

Another open call for murder occurred at a Bakersfield city council meeting on April 10th when Riddhi Patel stated during public comment:

“Regardless of whether you elect people into office, they’ll backstab you. They’ll let you die. And for that reason -- you guys want to criminalize us with metal detectors. We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”

She also stated, “I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all of you mother****ers.”

Patel was able to post her bail of $500,000. (Where did she get the money for her release?)

Conclusion

These revolutionaries are the new face of the Marxist, far-Left, pro-Hamas movement. With breathtaking assurance, they tell us that Jesus would have killed Bakersfield city councilmen for not voting on a ceasefire. They take umbrage at having to go through a metal detector before attending a public meeting. It is a sign of their oppression. They don’t know how to say thank you. Nor do they acknowledge the blessing of being given time to speak at a public meeting and having one’s input considered.

Instead, we are told that we should be grateful that they are not murdering Zionists. From their statements, it would seem that the “Days of Rage” are here again, and they have a higher calling, not just to “bring the war home,”Just as Weatherman leader John Jacobs stated back in the sixties, they will “shove the war down your dumb, fascist throat and show [you] while [they] are at it, how much better they are than [you], both tactically and strategically as a people” (Gillies 86). Through their words, they tell us who they are and what they are capable of, tactically and strategically. They present themselves as victims, yet they are anything but.

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It's Getting Real: Guns Confiscated From at Least Two College Protests

Ward Clark reporting for RedStateVIP 

It's easy to point and laugh at some of the more comical aspects of the clueless, upper-middle-class spoiled brats in the Ivy League, waving Palestinian flags and shouting about intifada while asking for donations of vegan lunch boxes. But there are some very serious aspects of this whole thing coming to light, not least of which is that some of these rioters — some of the many rioters who are not students — came armed and, presumably, prepared for an actual insurrection.

Today, we learn that firearms and improvised weapons were confiscated from at least two protest sites: at the University of Texas-Austin and the University of South Florida.

This is getting serious.

Anti-Israel protester Atah Othman, 39, was one of 10 demonstrators arrested on the USF campus on Tuesday — and he was busted carrying a gun in his waistband, Fox 13 Tampa reports.

Othman faces four charges including possession of a firearm on school property, trespassing, unlawful assembly and resisting arrest, arrest records show. He was released on bond just after midnight on Wednesday, hours after protesters gathered at the Orient Road Jail calling for the ten people arrested to be released. 

It is unclear if Othman is part of the school system or an outside agitator. The identities of the remaining nine people arrested are unclear. 

Judging from Mr. Othman's mug shot — you can see it at the link above — I'm guessing he wasn't affiliated with the university. That's a guess, but I'd bet on it. There is as yet no information on Mr. Othman other than that he was arrested and found to be carrying a firearm; we have no idea where he came from or what he was doing on that campus.

Also unknown are the persons who left weapons pre-positioned at UT-Austin:

Meanwhile, a UT Austin spokesperson says that guns were found on its campus hidden in a breezeway on Monday, Fox 7 Austin reports. Buckets of large rocks, bricks, steel-reinforced wood planks, mallets and chains were all found on campus belonging to protesters.

"University staff found a 5-gallon bucket filled with large chunks of concrete strategically hidden in a breezeway of Calhoun Hall leading to the South Lawn," the spokesperson told Fox 7.

"An identical bucket was found in a similar location during last Wednesday's protest. Similar buckets of rocks have been used during past protests in Austin to assault responding officers."

Firearms and improvised weapons — and, yes, rocks, bricks, mallets, and chains are weapons. Potentially lethal weapons. Intended, we can be almost certain, to be used against law enforcement officers. Another story revealed the identity of 10 of the rioters arrested at the University of South Florida, and they don't exactly have the look of students or faculty. Of course, these days, who knows?

None of that changes the alarming nature of this discovery; there was an intent on someone's part, almost certainly several someones, to conduct an armed assault on law enforcement — or counter-protestors, or college administrators, or even on people passing by.

Are these isolated incidents? Or a harbinger of things to come? How many of the rioters were armed and not discovered to be carrying? What happens when one of them starts shooting? The usual anti-Second Amendment types will use any such events to call for ever-more gun control, which will affect these people not a jot. 

The students in these riots have been, for the most part, rather comical figures. 

Some of them are hateful, and some of them are advocating for genocide — yes, real genocide — but let's be honest, most of these students are too weak and indecisive to act on any of their rhetoric. But we already know there are driving forces behind the scenes, supporting the rioters with money and logistical support. Are there other driving forces, forces who are testing the waters, who are preparing for an armed resistance to legitimate authority?

In our current round of useful idiots shouting on our nation's campuses, there have not — yet — been any weapons brought to bear by the rioters. Maybe these are isolated incidents. None of the weapons confiscated in the last few days were used, after all. 

But for everything, there is a first time. And an armed rebellion by Hamas supporters is something that America has never seen before — and with each passing day, it looks more and more possible.

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

China interfered in 2019 and 2021 but didn’t overturn Canada’s election results: Hogue Commission

 

Commission has identified financial support and disinformation as tools of election interference

SAM COOPER

MAY 03, 2024

Ottawa’s Foreign Interference Commission has found China clandestinely interfered in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections, and while the overall integrity of both contests held, foreign interference from China and states including India is undermining the rights of Canadian voters “to have an electoral ecosystem free from coercion or covert influence.”

“The evidence allows me to conclude foreign interference likely impacted some votes in the 2019 and 2021 General Elections,” Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue  found, adding “the acts of interference that occurred are a stain on our electoral process and impacted the process leading up to the actual vote.”

More broadly, Hogue’s report emphasized the risk that politicians could censor themselves in ways that impact Canada’s democracy and elections, due to hostile state interference.

... “There is a real risk of politicians modifying their positions or their messages as a result of foreign interference, and this risk will increase if we do not take sufficient protective measures to guard against it,” Hogue wrote.

The second phase of the Commission will look at what these measures could be.

... In a press conference Friday after the report’s release, Hogue said the Commission’s investigation continues and must probe more deeply into two mechanisms of election interference already confirmed: financial support for some candidates, and disinformation attacks against others.

... In one example, Hogue cited intelligence from the 2019 election of “at least two transfers of funds approximating $250,000 from PRC officials in Canada, possibly for foreign interference-related purposes,” into a clandestine network that included 11 candidates, including seven from the Liberal Party and four from the Conservative Party.

“Some of these individuals appeared willing to cooperate in foreign interference-related activity while others appeared to be unaware of such activity due to its clandestine nature,” Hogue wrote.

In perhaps the most prominent alleged case of Chinese interference detailed in  her first report, Hogue found that Liberal MP Han Dong’s nomination in 2019 could well have been secured by covert support from Chinese international students who faced threats from Chinese officials. She noted that Dong denied any involvement in the alleged Chinese interference.

“Before the election intelligence reporting indicated that Chinese international students would have been bused in to support Han Dong, and that individuals associated with a known PRC proxy agent provided students with falsified documents to allow them to vote, despite not being residents of Don Valley North,” Hogue’s report says.

“After the election, some intelligence indicated that veiled threats were issued by the PRC Consulate to the students, implying that their student visas would be in jeopardy and that there could be consequences for their families living in the PRC if they did not support Mr. Dong.”

“Given that Don Valley North was considered a “safe” Liberal seat, if foreign interference did impact the nomination race, this would likely not have affected which party held the riding,” she concluded. “It would, however, have affected who was elected to Parliament. This is significant.”

“This incident makes clear the extent to which nomination contests can be gateways for foreign states who wish to interfere in our democratic process,” Hogue added, noting “this is undoubtedly an issue that will have to be carefully examined in the second phase.”

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was warned of potential irregularities involving the students and Chinese officials in Han Dong’s Don Valley North nomination and decided not to intervene before the October 2019 election, Hogue said there also is no indication that Trudeau and the Liberals examined the case any further after the October 2019 election.

“I asked Mr. Trudeau whether the issue was revisited after the election,” Hogue wrote. “The specifics of any follow-up are at this point unclear, and I am not certain what steps were taken.”

Hogue also found that British Columbia MP Kenny Chiu and former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole were attacked with Chinese disinformation in 2021 & Chiu may have lost his Vancouver-area riding due to attacks on WeChat.

“There is one riding where disinformation may have led to the election of one candidate over another,” Hogue said, “but I cannot say for sure.”

Regarding China’s attacks on the Conservative Party in 2021, Hogue pointed to an after-the-fact, February 2023 briefing from CSIS to the Prime Minister’s Office that “opined that PRC foreign interference activities in 2021 were ‘almost certainly’ motivated by a perception that the CPC was promoting an anti-PRC platform.”

According to Hogue’s report CSIS’s note said: “[redacted] the timing of these efforts to align with Conservative polling improvements; the similarities in language with articles published by PRC state media; and the partnership agreements between these Canada based outlets and PRC entities; all suggest that these efforts were orchestrated or directed by the PRC.”

Hogue said she found “no bad faith” on the part of Ottawa’s so-called SITE election monitoring task force, which did not make a public announcement on Chinese disinformation in 2021 or warn Chiu and O’Toole that they were under attack, but there were serious problems with communication and expectations, she said.

“While it is not obvious what government could or should have done during the election, it raises an important question about responses to online misinformation and disinformation (including during an election),” Hogue wrote. “This will likely be explored in the second phase of the proceedings.” 

More to come