Category: Political Commentary
A Nation of Imbeciles?

A Nation of Imbeciles?

By | | Comments 3 comments

If you’ve been paying even passing attention, you may have noticed how one side of our political dichotomy thinks this is a nation of imbeciles. And if you haven’t noticed that, or it doesn’t bother you, then maybe you’re one of the people they’re counting on.

While it’s only the latest insult to your intelligence that the Democrats have pulled this year, they figure you have no need to know lots of things, foremost among them whether they plan to pack the Supreme Court or not. Actually, it’s a bit worse than that. It’s pretty obvious, if you’re not isolated on a small Caribbean island inhabited mostly by wild goats, that their intent is to pack the Court if, by chance, they manage to grab control of the levers of power in Washington .Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris confirmed that by refusing to answer the question during Wednesday night’s Vice Presidential Debate. And just to be sure there was no doubt about it, the designated hitter of the Democratic Party, Jell-O Joe Biden, laid it out to reporters the next day.

There are links at the end of this posting to a replay and a transcript of the Vice Presidential Debate.

“You’ll know my opinion on court packing when the election is over,” a masked Biden told reporters while making one of his rare trips out of his Wilmington basement, campaigning in Arizona with Harris. “I know it’s a great question and I don’t blame you for asking it, but you know the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that, other than focusing on what’s happening now.”

Well, duh, yeah, it’s a great question. What would be even greater is if the American people could be given the answer to it. One would think people want to see that headline. But, reminiscent of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi telling you you’d have to wait until the Affordable Care Act was passed to find out what was in it, now the man and woman who would be President and Vice President are telling you that you need to vote for them to find out if they’ll pack the Court. You’re just not smart enough to have that information but they figure you’ll vote for them anyway.

Actually, if you’d still vote for this pair of frauds even being less-than-subtely told you are an imbecile, maybe you are one. There’s a mirror for that.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to stop mincing words about this stuff. The other side certainly doesn’t mince their words, and their hatred and venom is spread far and wide across the republic. It usually doesn’t take reading or listening to more than one never-Trump scree to be immersed in more hatred and ignorance than one should have to put up with in a lifetime. As Trump continues being the most transparent Chief Executive in our lifetime, laying out precisely what he intends to do on matters of public policy, he’s maligned by those who protect and promote those who believe their plans are too problematic for the American public to know. The whole Democratic nomination process this round has been a card trick put together by the party’s hidden puppet-master elites, aided and abetted by their wholly owned media apologists, so what should anyone expect?

Don’t believe your lying eyes

While a majority of Americans, by a margin of two-to-one, polled after watching the Vice Presidential Debate, thought that Vice President Mike Pence had won the debate, the mindless media parrots in thrall to the Dems focused on a fly that settled on Pence’s head during the debate, accused the VP of talking over Harris – which is rich, considering that Harris is known for badgering, bullying, and talking over witnesses appearing in the Senate – and “mansplaining” to her. Apparently that is how one belittles factual presentations over evasion and obfuscations.

Harris was good at those. For anyone counting, she spouted 24 lies or misleading statements in her portion of the hour and a half of the debate. Those prevarications, some of which were such whoppers that it was hard not to guffaw at them, were allowed by moderator Susan Page, of USA TODAY, who would chide Pence for going over his allotted time as he attempted to correct the record. Even given his calm, even-handed approach, Pence prevailed in most cases in getting out the facts. And in the end, despite what the commentators on the likes of CNN and MSNBC tried to lead you to believe, the speaking time of both candidates was exactly evenly divided, within precisely three seconds.

If you listened to the post-debate blather on the liberal networks, you heard that the fly on Pence’s head knew an ally of Satan when it saw one, that Harris showed “a joyfulness in her spirit” – if you consider grimaces and scowls and arrogant, self-serving smirks, which led most viewers to judge Harris as an unlikable figure, joyful – and that Pence showed Harris disrespect because . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . she is a woman.

So women are equal to men, except when they come face-to-face with a male opponent in a debate or negotiation, at which time they are to be treated with deference as if they’re a child or some sort of frail being. The liberal’s view of equality. And this, Harris, is a person who pretends she is capable of being Vice President of the United State – if not President, but we’ll get to that – and dealing with the likes of a Putin or a Xi or a Khameini. Right.

I’ll confess that, unlike those on the Twitterscape, for which this was the biggest take-away of the debate, I didn’t even notice the fly on my 48-inch flat screen. Maybe it’s because I was listening to what the candidates had to say and not just looking for inanities to throw at Pence.

If you want to get some idea of how moronic these people are, read this Salon piece, but be forewarned if you’re not a moron yourself it will take intestinal fortitude to make it through it.

What I did notice, though, was the inanity of two plexiglass screens set up, at the insistence of the Biden campaign, to protect the candidates, already standing more than 12 feet apart, from the hidden plague of the coronavirus emerging out of some unknown source and striking them down. This is the campaign that claims to have science on its side and, if you believe that, you’re one of the voters the Dems are counting on.

This is the same party whose celebrity elites are now stripping naked on screen (I am not making this up) as a way of convincing Biden supporters to actually vote. Imbeciles, anyone?

The Nancy Sideshow

The entertainment never stops. While Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, otherwise known as AOC, the co-chair of the Biden campaign’s climate change task force, railed at Harris for not denouncing fracking during the debate (Pennsylvania and Ohio voters, take note of what the real plan is), and Bernie Sanders was promising he’d be in charge of America’s healthcare (voters everywhere should take note of that), Nancy Pelosi was running her own sideshow. While the nation’s business in a time of crisis is the least of Ice Cream Nancy’s concerns, she was busy furthering her political agenda. As promised, repeatedly, on Thursday, on Friday she announced her plans to set up a process through which Congress could intervene under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove a president from office. Pelosi – whose own fitness to hold office might reasonably be questioned – insisted her proposal was not to do with President Trump.

“This is not about President Donald Trump,” Pelosi told the media. “He will face the judgment of the voters.”

Well, it might not be about Trump now, but Pelosi has to be looking ahead for her coup attempt, part II, should Trump be re-elected. But wait. There may well be more to this than meets the eye.

By now, you might already have heard this theory, but rest assured it occurred to me first, before anyone else mentioned it on the air: What Pelosi very possibly has in mind is using this process of hers to remove not Trump, but Jell-O Joe, from office. If you consider this to be the Dem plan all along, that the radical Harris is the real candidate and Biden is just a placeholder, it’s not much of a stretch to see how a case can be built that Biden is cognitively incompetent to hold office and he’ll be pushed out so Harris can take over the position with some (however sketchy) semblance of legitimacy.

As I have called it before, what the Dems are planning is the biggest fraud in American political history, and they’re counting on a sufficient number of imbeciles among the electorate to allow them to carry it out.

Smarten up, and don’t let them do it. The country will never recover from the consequences should they succeed.

Watch a replay of the Vice Presidential Debate here.

Read a full transcript of the Vice Presidential Debate here.

Featured image, Imbecile, historic photo, veryhangry.com, used under Fair Use.
The Entertainment Event of the Year: The First Presidential Debate

The Entertainment Event of the Year: The First Presidential Debate

By | | Comments 0 Comment

 

Debate, n.: “discussion or argument about a subject”

                                                                             — Cambridge Dictionary

By now, if you’re not doing 40 years in solitary in a maximum-security prison, you’ve probably heard more than you want to hear about the Entertainment Event of the Year, the first Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Maybe you were one of the 29 million or so people who actually watched the brawl that went on at the Cleveland Clinic on the evening of Sept. 29, in which case you have your own views on the proceedings.

It’s worth noting that, based on viewership numbers, the effect of the debate in terms of electoral support for one candidate or the other is probably minimal. It’s reasonable to conclude that most voters have already made up their mind which candidate they support, and many voters have already cast their votes in early voting. The preliminary numbers are down 36 percent from the first debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, when those numbers were 45.3 million. The numbers will go up as other means of viewing the debate are figured in, as they did in 2016 when the final tally rose to 84.4 million, besting the previous record of 81 million set in the Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan debate in the pre-Internet days of Oct. 28, 1980. But it is doubtful that they will reach the 2016 numbers.

Words used to describe the countretemps – there’s one word right there – between the candidates include “brawl,” “travesty,” or, as CNN’s Jake Tapper put it, “a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck” (come on, man – using one of Joe Biden’s favorite expressions when he’s at a loss for words – how did you really feel about it?)

There are links at the conclusion of this posting where you can see a replay of the debate or read a transcript of it.

I guess it largely depends on what you were expecting, how you reacted to the proceedings. Me, I was calling it the Entertainment Event of the Year long before it actually happened. Given Trump’s flair for showmanship and his relentless pursuit of rolling over his opponents, whoever those opponents might be, and Biden’s utter contempt for the President, who would expect anything less? The biggest unknown variable was whether Jell-O Joe would hold-up to the pressure, much as he did in the last Democratic debate against Bernie Sanders, or if he’d collapse before our very eyes into a mass of babbling protoplasm. In the end, he managed to hold up pretty well, clearing the very low bar that had been set for him, while sacrificing the truth on the altar of political expediency, knowing most of the media and his own ill-informed followers would let him slide on his deceits.

When all was said and done, I’m inclined to agree with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – one of Trump’s debate coaches – who said in the aftermath that Trump’s performance was “too hot” and he often stepped on his own message, while calling Biden’s performance “very shaky.” There were times I wished Trump would have kept quiet and just let Biden hang himself, which he came precariously close to doing more than once before Trump cut him off and spoke over him.

On the other hand, there was the view of Fox News commentator Dan Bongino, who felt Trump’s strategy was to solidify his base to assure the largest voter turn-out in Republican Party history, and in that he won big in the debate, Bongino said.

While he says he will participate in the next two presidential debates planned, it remains to be seen whether Biden doesn’t yet bow out of the remaining debates.

A debate or a brawl

I’ll confess, I like the idea of a free-flowing, open format debate, adhering to the definition of the word as a “discussion or argument about a subject.” Almost out of the gate I thought that’s what we’d get as Trump and Biden went after each other, shouting over each other, and completely ignoring the pre-agreed debate rules. Shouting between the candidates isn’t exactly unknown, as anyone who watched the Dem primary debates is aware, but the debate moderator, Fox News’s Chris Wallace, didn’t seem inclined to let things go as they might.

Before the debate had gone on eight and a half minutes, Wallace was cutting into the fray, saying, “All right, we’re gonna jump in right now. Mr. President. Mr. President, there’s a moderator,” trying to quiet Trump.

At times it seemed Wallace was conducting a journalistic interview more than moderating a debate, and he appeared put-off when the candidates sidestepped his questions. Some commentators later expressed sympathy for Wallace, but my feeling is, if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. I doubt Wallace, a seasoned journalist, is looking for any sympathy, but from my perspective it would have been more useful if he just shut up and let the brawling go on. A presidential debate isn’t just about the issues, but it’s also about how the candidates handle themselves and deal with criticism.

Anyway, that was just the beginning. By the end of the full hour and a half, the debate had become one between Trump and Biden and another one between Trump and Wallace. Given the extent to which Wallace let Biden slide on key issues of fact while pressing Trump to state things he’s already stated repeatedly, I think there was good reason for Trump to feel put upon. And it wasn’t all Trump pushing the limits of decorum. At thirteen and a half minutes in, Biden, already seriously flustered as Trump tied his opponent to Socialist Bernie Sanders, said, “Folks, do we have any idea what this clown is doing?”

“Clown?” An appropriate way to refer to the President of the United States? In any case, I, for one, did recognize what Trump was doing, getting Biden to separate himself from the far left of his party, the wing that had agreed to allow Biden be the candidate in trade for accepting their far-left agenda, and getting them to see whom they had signed off on.

Two and a half minutes later, Wallace pressed Biden to say whether he supported packing the Supreme Court or doing away with the Senatorial filibuster, which Biden refused to answer, instead babbling nonsensically, “Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue — the issue is, the American people should speak. You should go out and vote. We’re in voting now, vote and let your senators know how strongly you feel. Vote now, in fact let people know it is your senators. I’m not going to answer the question.”

Trump continued to press him on the issue, saying, “Why won’t you answer the question — radical left — well, listen.”

That was when Biden made perhaps the most disrespectful comment of the night, saying directly to the President: “Would you shut up, man?”

Trump continued to press Biden to release his Supreme Court nomination list and, rather than let Biden state clearly he would not do so, Wallace cut in, sounding the allegorical bell ending the round. Even that wasn’t enough to satisfy the flustered Biden, and he went on, “That was a really productive segment, wasn’t it. Keep yapping, man.”

Later in the debate, Trump managed to tie Biden to the Green New Deal and its $100 trillion price tag, leaving Biden to deny his support for the radical plan, co-sponsored by his running mate, Kamala Harris, as well as its cost.

Not funny, but laughable anyway

I have to say that numerous times during the debate I broke out into laughter, as unfunny as the reality was, mostly listening to the bald-faced lies and blatant absurdities Biden uttered at several points during the debate. Not the least of which was when Trump pressed him on the corruption allegations involving his son Hunter, and Biden had the audacity to say those claims had been “totally discredited.” Totally discredited, by whom, I had to ask? By Mitt Romney, Biden offered. Oh. That’s explains everything, doesn’t it?

Wallace failed to push Biden on the issue and he cut off Trump when he tried to, and went on to offer cover to Biden when he said, “We’ve already been through this, I think the American people would rather hear about more substantial subjects. Well, you know, as the moderator, Sir, I’m going to make a judgment call there.”

I can’t speak for all the American people, but this member of the American people thinks corruption and abuse of power is a substantial subject, Mr. Wallace, particularly as it involves someone who wants to be president.

Other absurdities were Biden’s claim that Trump had brought about the recession – ignoring the fact that he had created a booming economy with the lowest unemployment rate in history prior to the coronavirus pandemic – and then insisting that the Biden plan included shutting down the country until the pandemic was over. Does anyone do any logic tests, much less fact checks, on these things?

Perhaps the best and most quotable line of the night came from Trump when he said to Biden, “Let me just say, Joe, I’ve done more in, in 47 months, I’ve done more than you’ve done in 47 years, Joe.”

Much has been made about Trump’s response to Wallace’s call for him to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, something Trump has frequently already done, and he responded, “Sure, I’m prepared to do it . . . I’m willing to do anything, I want to see peace . . . You want to call them – what do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me . . . “

That’s when Biden threw in, “The Proud Boys,” and Trump, trying to think on his feet, foolishly took the bait, and answered, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem . . . “

Biden then made perhaps the most outrageous statement of the night, saying, “Antifa is an idea, not an organization.” To which an astounded Trump (echoing what I was thinking at that moment) responded, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.” Instead of pressing Biden on what amounts to an absurd claim, Wallace again rang the bell on the segment and went on to the next topic.

While Biden accused Trump of being a racist, at no point did Wallace challenge Biden on any of his racist statements, such as when he recently told a radio host, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” or his previous opposition to desegregation or his support of the crime bill that led to millions of incarcerations of blacks.

There were two points on which Trump scored and left Biden with no realistic comeback. One was how every endorsement made by law enforcement agencies have gone to Trump due to his support for law and order, and then saying to Biden how “China ate your lunch.”

Trump also made a key point of how he has been politically harassed his entire term, saying, “So when I listened to Joe talking about a transition, there’s been no transition from when I won. I won that election. And if you look at crooked Hillary Clinton, if you look at all of the different people, there was no transition. Because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started on the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with the First Lady, they were a disaster, a disgrace to our country. And we’ve caught them. We’ve caught them all.”

In the closing statements, I again had to laugh at how Biden had been coached to look directly into the camera and speak to the audience, pretending he was one of them, while uttering the usual Democratic blue sky claims how life will be so good and Paradise will descend to earth if only he and the Dems are elected. Are there still people so naive to believe that jive? Apparently so.

In the aftermath

In the aftermath, both CNN and Fox News interviewed members of focus groups they had assembled to watch and react to the debate. In both cases, when asked for a show of hands, almost no one’s opinion had been changed, and (as hard as it is to believe at this point in the game) most undecided voters remained undecided. Based on the one or two hands raised, Trump might have had a slight edge with both groups, though nothing statistically significant. What was perhaps most interesting, though, was how Telemundo’s poll of its Spanish-speaking viewers showed that 66 percent thought Trump had won the debate, compared with 34 percent who said Biden did. Perhaps the forcefulness exhibited by Trump influenced that outcome, and it has to send shivers down the spine of those running Biden’s campaign.

Meanwhile, wherever you come down on the debate or the politics, it’s clear we’ve come a long way – and not necessarily a good way – from the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Those debates wound up helping to change the course of history in the United States, and form the basis for debate among student debaters more than a century and a half later. I don’t think the Trump-Biden debate just held will have a similar impact, though this election might well determine the future course of the country.

To see a replay of the debate, go here.

To read a transcript of the debate, go here.

Featured image, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, historical image, source unknown.
Replacing RBG: Why the Dems Have No Case

Replacing RBG: Why the Dems Have No Case

By | | Comments 2 comments

 

It was not a huge surprise when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died recently at the age of 87. Named to the high court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, her tenacity in overcoming health conditions that would have killed many less ferocious fighters was remarkable. Given her more recent health issues, I think it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw that she wanted to hold on at least until after Jan. 20 when there might be the chance of a new president, one more receptive to her brand of liberal political views.

We usually can’t plan our deaths, and of course that was the case for RBG, too. While the time and date of her demise could not have been predicted, what was predictable was how, no sooner than she had taken her last breath, that the Democrats would immediately raise a ruckus about how the current president should not name her replacement but should leave that to the winner of the upcoming election. Equally predictable, the word they hauled out to apply to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was “hypocritical” if he proceeded with consideration of any nominee named by President Donald Trump. This because it was McConnell who refused to consider the naming of Merrick Garland to the court by former President Barack Obama to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in the last year of Obama’s term.

The Dems’ wholly owned toadies in the media, as well as the rabble in the street, quickly picked up the same refrain. McConnell wouldn’t give Merrick Garland a hearing, so he shouldn’t give whomever Donald Trump names a hearing, either.

The problem with that line of argument is that it completely ignores long-established precedent, the actual basis for McConnell’s refusal to take Garland up for consideration, and such delicate niceties as the U.S. Constitution. Leave out the details and the facts – something the Dems and their media acolytes have gotten rather proficient at – and it sounds like they have a case. Add in those details and facts, and it becomes clear that they don’t.

“The McConnell Doctrine”

Let’s start with McConnell’s reasoning in refusing to bring Obama’s nominee up for consideration while saying he would consider Trump’s nominee. Sometimes referred to as “the McConnell Doctrine,” it wasn’t, as the Dems have asserted, that he wouldn’t consider a SCOTUS nominee in an election year. It’s that the nomination was brought within the context of a divided government: The Democrats controlled the White House, but the Republicans controlled the Senate. That is not the case now, when Republicans control both the White House and the Senate. That is the reason for the different response, not hypocrisy. And McConnell is relying on two centuries of established precedent.

One would need to go back 132 years in American history, to 1888 and the term of President Grover Cleveland, when a Senate controlled by the opposite party considered and approved the appointment of an election-year nominee to the high court. Facing a backlog of cases in the high court, a Republican Senate approved the nomination of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, made by Democratic President Cleveland. There have been 10 cases in American history when an election-year appointment was made by a President of one party to be considered by a Senate of the other party, including six made before the election. Fuller’s appointment was the only one of those to be considered and approved before the election. Of the four made in lame-duck sessions after the election, three were left open to be filled by the winner of the election. Only three nominees of the 10 were filled after election day in a way that favored the elected President, the earliest in 1845, the most recent in 1956.

The Constitution

The Constitution is the basis for all U.S. law and legal precedence. Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives the President the right to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court, with “the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” To wit:

“He [the President] shall have Power . . . and he shall nominate, and by and with Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Justices of the Supreme Court . . . “

It doesn’t say anything about whether the nomination and appointment takes place in, or not in, an election year. The president is president, and holds the powers of the president, from noon on the first day of his term until noon on the last. And the Senate has the right to advice and consent to the president’s nominations. This isn’t a matter of debate nor is it a matter of interpretation. The Constitution includes no exceptions or qualifications on this point.

Even Justice Ginsburg herself was clear on the subject. In 2016, while offering support for President Obama’s nominee, she said, “The president is elected for four years, not three years, so the power he has in year three continues into year four.” While urging members of the Senate at that time to “wake up and appreciate that that’s how it should be,” she conceded there is little anyone could do to force the Senate’s hand.

The red herring of RBG’s deathbed wish

The Dems, including no less than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who should know better, have made a big deal out of what has been said to be RBG’s deathbed wish. As reportedly transcribed and released by the late Justice’s granddaughter, Clara Spera, she said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

To which the proper response is a big, so what? As even RBG would have recognized, the hand does not reach far from the grave. All the more so in matters of state, politics, and the Constitution.

Given some of the less-than-judicious things Ginsburg had to say about Donald Trump, before later retracting them, as well as her very liberal views of the law, it’s no surprise that she didn’t want to be replaced by one of Trump’s nominees. But who the person is who replaces her on the court is not up to her, and neither are the conditions of the appointment. That’s just the way it is, sympathy or not for her preferences. Of course at this point we don’t know whether Trump will succeed himself in office or not. We do know he is President now, and has to power to name a replacement for Ginsburg. As he will, and as he should.

Even more irrelevant are the rantings of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Last time I checked, the House plays no part in consideration of or approving a SCOTUS appointment. Nancy says the Dems will “use every arrow in our quiver.” And what arrows are those, Nancy?

The Dems dug their own hole

Until 2013, it took overcoming a Senatorial filibuster – requiring 60 of 100 votes – to approve presidential nominees. That was when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, not happy because he couldn’t muster enough Democratic votes in the house he led, got rid of the filibuster rule for most presidential appointees, including lower court judges. Old Harry apparently forgot, or never knew, the adage, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. In 2017 the Republicans, who had taken over control of the Senate, got rid of the filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominees. Thus, it only takes 51 votes today to approve whomever President Trump nominates. As of this writing, it looks like the votes will be there, even if not a single Democrat votes in favor of his appointment (that in itself goes against what has happened in the past when nominees of presidents of both parties have often been approved by overwhelming, even unanimous, votes of both parties, indicative of how partisan politics have become in recent years).

The new crop of radical Dems seem to have no sense of history, since they are now advocating packing the court with additional members to give them the edge on rulings by the high court. Since it was established in 1789 with six justices, the number of justices has ranged from a low of five to a high of 10. But since 1869 Congress – which has the power to set the number of justices – has set the number at 9, where it is today. Having an odd number of justices is important to avoid deadlocks, and even RBG supported keeping the high court at nine justices. Said Ginsburg in 2019, “Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time.” With more ethical sense than many of her supporters, she pointed out the danger of packing the court to further Democratic Party interests, saying, “It would be that — one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”

The last attempt at packing the court occurred under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and it didn’t end well for Roosevelt. With no sense of, or regard for, history, the idea is again being pushed by the radical Dems. If you can’t win on your ideas, win by forcing your ideas on others. Easy-peasy, but disastrous for democracy and our republic.

The need for a full court now

The idea of nine justices and an odd number of justices on the court is perhaps more critically important now than at almost any time in recent memory. With court challenges already being filed over issues related to conduct of the upcoming election, and with tensions and maneuvering to impact the outcome of the vote running high, it is almost inevitable that electoral outcomes in many places across the nation are going to wind up at the Supreme Court. Should the vote divide 4-4 issues will not be decided in final form, and the faith of the American public in the electoral system and process will be even further undermined than it is already. For the high court to be able to rule definitively, whether one agrees with those rulings or not, is essential to settle crucial issues, possibly even including outcome of the vote for president.

“Burn it down, blow it up”

The very existence and legitimacy of the rule of law is already under attack, and not just by the rabble in the street. None other than members of the mass media and commentators given wide attention are advocating a destruction of our current system and imposition of their will by any means necessary, even if Biden and the Dems manage to regain control of the White House and Congress. If you have any doubt about that, listen to the words of none other than CNN anchor Don Lemon, who makes up with chutzpah what he lacks in brain power:

“We’re going to have to blow up the entire system,” Lemon said to fellow host Chris Cuomo. “You’re going to have to get rid of the Electoral College, because the minority in this country get to decide who our judges are and who our president is. Is that fair?” And if you had any doubt about what this rabid segment of the population has in mind, Lemon clarified things for you by saying, “And if Joe Biden wins, Democrats can stack the courts and they can do that amendment and get it passed.”

Some go even further, advocating violence and arson. RBG’s body was barely cold when author Reza Aslan, an Iranian-American scholar of religious studies (sic), tweeted, “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire fucking thing down . . . Over our dead bodies, literally.” Another author, Aaron Gouveia, who claims to know what it takes to raise happy sons, tweeted, “Fuck no. Burn it all down.” And a member of the Wisconsin Ethics Commission – ethics, Dem style, mind you – Scott Ross, writing to Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, said, “Fucking A, Ed. If you can’t shut it down, burn it down.” And those are authors and supposed keepers of the national ethics. What about the mindless anarchists who have taken over the streets?

Things have sunken so far in this country that when the President and First Lady Melania Trump went to pay their respects to Ruth Bader Ginsburg – whom Trump has called “an amazing woman” – on the steps of the Supreme Court, crowds booed them and chanted, “Vote him out! Vote him out!”

Meanwhile, the cowardly Jell-O Joe Biden, cowering in his Wilmington basement, has once more blown with the political wind. After previously announcing that he would release a list of names of people he would consider for nomination to the Supreme Court should he be elected, he now refuses to, calling it “inappropriate to do so.” While Donald Trump announced his list of prospective high court nominees as he was running for President the first time – it may have been a key factor in his election – and recently added to it, Joe Biden would rather keep voters in the dark.

Asked by a local Wisconsin reporter during one of his rare and brief forays out of his basement – “Should voters know who you’re going to appoint?”– Biden made it clear what he thinks of voters’ right to know whom he supports. “No, they don’t,” he responded. “But they will if I’m elected. They’ll have plenty of time.”

Do you really need to know more than that about where you stand with Jello-O Joe and his Dem power-broker handlers?

Photo credits: Featured image, Ralph Bader Ginsburg, AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin, used under Fair Use
Profiles in Cowardice – Part II

Profiles in Cowardice – Part II

By | | Comments 3 comments

Yesterday I presented my Profiles in Cowardice 8-5. If you haven’t read that piece, which includes an explanation of the Profiles, you should read it first.

Today we present Profiles in Cowardice 4-1.

4. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

Like with Chicago’s Lightfoot, a reasonable person has to scratch his or her head and wonder, how did this overgrown buffoon get to be mayor of America’s largest city? It’s said that New York City has good water, so there must be another explanation. The answer lies with mindless Democratic Party loyalism and the mental frailty known as liberalism.

Back when I lived in New York I came to realize that most New Yorkers, despite the reverie in which some hold the city’s residents, aren’t terribly bright. But even New Yorkers were fed up with the widespread crime and dirt and deterioration that marked Gotham in the 1970s, when I lived in the city. It took a Rudy Giuiani twenty years later to get things sorted and return New York to the realm of habitability after three decades of decline and decay. But that wasn’t something de Blasio could tolerate, and in short order he plunged New York back into the chaos that preceded Giuliani. And then, in a single week at the end of May, he allowed the forces of anarchy and destruction near-free reign, finishing the job he started, and things have only gotten worse in the months since.

New Yorkers report that the homeless have taken over the subway system – the world’s largest mass transit system – child molesters have taken over formerly upscale hotels, and nude men wielding 2 x 4s roam the streets. Thugs knock over elderly people just because they can, violent criminals are released overnight on their own recognizance, only to return to the streets and commit more crimes, and whole blocks of formerly tony boutiques and shops are boarded up. Along with hundreds of other businesses, looters ransacked Macy’s flagship store on Herald Square (yes, Virginia, there is an idiot in Gracie Mansion), and the murder rate has soared to levels not seen in many years. Is it any wonder that so many people are leaving New York that moving trucks are double-parked as they load the furniture of those who have given up on life in New York ever returning to normal?

After urging people to go about their normal lives at the beginning of the coronavirus fiasco, de Blasio continues to keep the city locked-down, and the country’s most populous city remains a ghost of its former self.

In his latest act of cowardly moronicy, de Blasio has announced he will put all top city employees, including himself, on furlough to help ameliorate New York’s massive budgetary shortfalls. But New Yorkers must wonder, in de Blasio’s case, if they will be able to tell the difference.

3. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

If it seems that I’m picking on New York, it’s because it’s so easy to pick on. Cowardice seems to have taken over the state, beginning right at the top with the Empire State’s chief executive. Or Coward in Chief, if you will.

It’s hard to overplay Andrew Cuomo’s cowardice, even harder to overplay his utter, shameless dishonesty. A shell game conman in Brighton Beach would seem like the epitome of honesty and discretion compared with Cuomo.

While Cuomo made small rodent noises decrying the violence downstate in Gotham – more indicative of the antipathy he and de Blasio have for each other – he didn’t do anything about it. If that were his worst offense, Cuomo might have been spared receiving his own Profile in Cowardice. But Cuomo’s offenses are far greater than that.

This recipient of the white feather yowled about how he needed ventilators, needed hospital beds, needed PPE, needed just about everything to deal with the coronavirus pandemic coming to his state. Never mind that, as governor, Cuomo had taken no action to address a possible pandemic. While it’s a matter of some debate whether Cuomo was willfully remiss or was just doing what his predecessors had (or hadn’t) done to prepare, it’s not a matter of debate that Cuomo got everything he begged Trump for, and then some. In return for receiving every ventilator needed – New York wound up with so may ventilators it started sending them to other states – for getting a U.S. Navy hospital ship, which was hardly used, and a complete Army field hospital at the Javits Center which treated about 1,100 patients before being closed in May for lack of need, Cuomo now has come out and accused the President of having “caused” the coronavirus outbreak in New York. Do we want to talk about ignorance with impudence? One need go no further than Cuomo.

Let’s look at the numbers, Governor. The death rate in New York State stands at 1,703 per million population (it’s significantly higher than that in New York City, but let’s just look at the state of New York). The only higher death rate in all the world is across the river in New Jersey, another Democratic state, where it stands at 1,744 per million. Outside the U.S., the highest death rate is that of San Marino, with 1,237 deaths per million, followed by Peru with 935 deaths per million. The death rate for the U.S. overall stands at 607 per million – about a third of New York’s rate, and eleventh in the world.

If the half-dozen states with the highest death rates – all Democratically controlled states – were taken out of the equation, the U.S. death rate falls to about 362 per million, twentieth in the world, down between The Netherlands and Ireland. Now you probably don’t know that, if you get your news from the mass media, who would have you believe the U.S. is the worst case in the world, but those are the facts, if you’re still one of those increasingly rare people to whom facts matter. But we digress.

What you also might not know, and which secures Cuomo’s place among my Profiles in Cowardice, is that it was his order to send thousands of elderly COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, leading to thousands of excess deaths – estimated between 6,400 and as high as 12,000 or more – among nursing home and long-term care facility residents and staff, ostensibly to save space in hospitals, even as the Comfort hospital ship and the Javits Center field hospital went underutilized. Even as the policy was being questioned, Cuomo doubled down on his decision, despite having called nursing homes a “feeding frenzy” for the virus.

“It was the single dumbest decision anyone could make if they wanted to kill people,” said one person whose elderly father had been in a nursing home where 50 people died, before dying of the ailment at home.

The DOJ is now investigating New York, along with three other states – New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan – whose Democratic governors followed similar policies as Cuomo’s.

Cuomo, more than perhaps any other governor in the country, has tried to present himself as the most effective counterweight to the coronavirus, and when you have a brother who is a CNN anchor providing you with journalistic oral gratification, you can try to get away with that. A look at the facts tells a different story, and Cuomo has earned his place on our list.

2. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

We’ve talked about Nancy “Let Them Eat Ice Cream” Pelosi before, and I’m sorry to have to inform you of this, we’ll probably have to talk about her again. Meanwhile, she has earned her place on our Profiles of Cowardice.

If you’re disturbed by hypocrisy, as I am, it’s hard to find a bigger hypocrite than Pelosi. You know when she says she’s praying for Donald Trump, the saints are rolling over in their graves, groaning. When she says she cares about the Constitution while tearing up the President’s speech right up there on the dais, the Founding Fathers are rolling their eyes. When she says she’s looking out for the ordinary people, you can just see her bankers rubbing their hands together as they count her many millions of dollars and her fellow millionaires who are Dem donors doing the same. And when she says she wants to get assistance to the millions of individuals and businesses suffering due to economic dislocation caused by coronavirus shut-downs, if it doesn’t include payoffs to Democractic causes and sacred cows, she’s not in any rush, so suck it up, suckers.

Ice Cream Nancy’s latest display of hypocrisy was another hair styling kerfuffle (what is it with politicians and their hair?) After publicly supporting closure of hair salons to keep from spreading coronavirus, Pelosi was caught on camera trotting maskless around a San Francisco hair salon, which had been closed to the public, so she could get her hair done. After all, she’s Nancy Pelosi, and you’re not. The graceful thing to do would have been to cop to what she did. Even Lori Lightfoot, in her own way, claimed responsibility for her hair salon hypocrisy. But Pelosi is too much of a coward to do that. Reminiscent of the words used by former Washington Mayor Marion Barry when he was caught red-handed snorting cocaine in a hotel room with a prostitute – “Bitch set me up!” – Pelosi used virtually those same words.

“I was set up,” she said.

No one put Pelosi in that stylist’s chair other than herself, any more than the police put Barry in that hotel room. Neither was set up, but both are cowardly liars. Meanwhile, the owner of the salon – it was not her but an independent stylist who let Pelosi in, but it was she who released the security video – has gotten so much hate directed at her that she has to permanently close her salon and leave San Francisco. Not a word of remorse, much less apology, from cowardly Pelosi. No, indeed. It’s Ice Cream Nancy who has demanded the apology from the salon owner.

But Pelosi earned her penultimate place on our list for something much more serious than her hypocrisy. As cities across the country burn, she has blocked every piece of law-and-order legislation that has been brought before the House. If it’s bad for Trump, Pelosi’s arch-nemesis, let ‘er burn. The irony is that Pelosi’s strategy might actually be working in Trump’s favor. It wouldn’t be the first time.

1. Joe Biden

And the winner of the top spot in our Profiles in Cowardice (envelope, please): Jell-O Joe Biden.

If you’ve been watching Joe Biden over the past several months, you’ve seen a doddering old fool babbling nonsensically, almost entirely sequestered in his Wilmington basement. Propped up by his wife, Jill, and his faceless political handlers, an unprejudiced observer would call what is being done to Biden elder abuse, all in the cynical pursuit of political power. It’s painful listening and watching this man as he embarrasses himself on a daily basis. The few questions he answers are softball questions that have been scripted or pre-approved by his handlers. Without a teleprompter, he’s lost, even responding to these cream puff questions. He can barely get by with a teleprompter, mechanically reading statements prepared for him.

As a human being, not as a politician, I have sympathy for Biden. I’ve been around dementia and have seen its debilitating effects first hand, and Biden exhibits all the symptoms of it. It’s a difficult and frustrating stage that afflicts many older people. I can see old Uncle Joe having his Jell-O with other kindly elder folk at dinner in a rest-home dining room. Thus my name for him. What I can’t see is him at the helm of the nation in the Oval Office.

Biden, as we’ve previously documented in several postings on this site, has been mired in various corrupt deals and bad policies for much of his political career, most recently during his stint as Barack Obama’s Vice President. Biden’s corruption goes beyond enriching son Hunter, who leveraged his father’s position to fill his coffers and fortunes in Ukraine and China. As former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi ably laid out in detail at the Republican National Convention, Biden has spent a half century in politics enriching various members of his family, much like a crime family boss. It’s impossible to determine his position on any issue since, if you don’t like what it is today, wait a day or two, and it will change. He is the quintessential opportunist.

It’s pretty obvious that the Dem power brokers know Biden can’t possibly serve out a full term, if by chance he is elected President, and they have installed Kamala Harris – another malleable politician who will blow with whatever wind is beneficial to her – as his putative running mate, but who is the real candidate. Speaking in Tampa on Tuesday, in one of his rare trips out of his basement, a befuddled Biden let the cat out of the bag when he referred to the “Harris-Biden ticket.” Doing a verbal dance around the reality, Harris in a recent speech referred to “a Harris administration,” even if she tried to recover with a closing reference to the “Biden-Harris ticket.” Do you wonder who the real head of the ticket is?

It’s not Biden’s corruption, and certainly not his mental state, that earns him the top spot on our Profiles in Cowardice. No, it’s his willingness to put himself ahead of his country, his willingness to be used and manipulated politically, his willingness to do and say anything, just so he can be President of the United States, even with the full knowledge he is not up to the task. He has as much as acknowledged that fact himself, and that was months before his condition had deteriorated to its current degraded state.

If you were on an airliner and Joe Biden was the pilot, you’d get off that airplane. Joe Biden himself would. Yet, he wants to put himself at the controls of the country, be captain of the Free World. And for that, he deserves the top spot in our Profiles in Cowardice.

It wasn’t always like this in American politics. There was a time when those who would run for high office put their country, and not their own political or vain egotistical interests, first. If you’re of a certain age you might remember, as I do, a former Senator from Missouri named Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton was named to be George McGovern’s running mate in the race for President in 1972. And then it came out that Eagleton had suffered over the years from bouts of depression and previously had been hospitalized and given electoshock treatments. After some hemming and hawing and questions about his suitability to be the next in line to have his finger on the nuclear button, Eagleton stepped down.

Eagleton had performed well in all the positions he held, including Missouri AG, and he went on to serve two more terms in the Senate. I’d venture that Eagleton would run rings around Biden given their respective conditions at the time of their nominations. But while Eagleton set aside his political ambitions, Biden refuses to acknowledge what is openly apparent, allowing himself to be used as the figurehead in a political ploy that might well be the biggest act of fraud ever attempted in American political history.

I give you my nomination for the No. 1 spot on the Profiles of Cowardice, Jell-O Joe Biden.

May God (or the American electorate) save us.

Photo credits: White feather featured image, Max Braxmeier, Pixabay, used with permission. The following used under Fair Use: Bill de Blasio, Robert Miller, New York Post; Andrew Cuomo, AP Photo; Nancy Pelosi, greatamericandaily.com; Joe Biden, Kevin Lamarque, Reuters
Profiles in Cowardice

Profiles in Cowardice

By | | Comments 2 comments

 

In 1956, John F. Kennedy, while still a U.S. Senator, published a book titled Profiles in Courage. It presented the stories of eight former U.S. senators, mostly in antebellum America, who demonstrated courage in standing up for their beliefs in contrast to prevailing and more politically convenient views. If you are of a certain age, you may well have been assigned the book on a summer reading list. I’d like to think contemporary students still are being assigned the book, though a cursory look at the current knowledge base seems to end roughly around the debut of SpongeBob SquarePants, and even that falls under the rubric of Ancient History.

What we see all around us today is not courage, but rampant cowardice. The country is not threatened by strength but by the weakness exhibited across the board, from the so-called news media, to politicians ranging from minor to not-so-minor mayors to state governors and Congressional leadership, to the destructive rabble in the streets. It is this weakness that will be our undoing. And it is cowardice fostering and standing, for all to see, behind it.

There is so much cowardice in evidence at this time in our history – a time that demands courage and strength as few periods have – it’s hard to single out just eight manifestations of it for inclusion in this Profiles in Cowardice. You’d have to be imprisoned in a Uyghur internment camp in western China not to know that this all has to do with Trump as the radical left, the Democrats and their toadies in the media, and the other anti-Trumpers do their utmost to discredit him and undermine his re-election chances, the country be damned, but that is the orchestrated backdrop for the wave of cowardice we’re suffering under.

The list that follows is far from comprehensive. Like JFK, I could write a book on contemporary American cowardice. I selected a range of examples to illustrate how pervasive this cowardice is. It may not be comprehensive, but it gives some of the better examples of it. Today I’m giving you Profiles in Cowardice 8 – 5. Tomorrow you’ll get Profiles in Cowardice 4-1. Stay tuned and check back in.

8. The Mass Media and Social Media

In putting together this list, it was hard to assign rank order to the cowards, and in terms of impact on the country and our democracy, media cowardice and complicity with the other cowards bringing down the country might be the most dangerous manifestation of it of all. It is what allows lies to be told, coverups to be conducted, and creates a picture of things that is actually a negative image (in the photographic sense, i.e., inversed) of reality.

Looting, rioting, arson, and murder? “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests.”

A travel ban to try to stop entry of a deadly virus? “Xenophobic and racist.”

Historic peace breakthroughs in the Middle East? “Shameless.” And – do we even need to mention it? – “They’re not wearing masks.”

Possible treatments shown to be beneficial in treating the coronavirus? “False news”

I’d need more space than available to me to list all the examples of media cowardice.

The one mitigating factor is that surveys show most Americans are skeptical of what they hear and read in the media, and confidence in what passes for contemporary journalism has sunk almost as low as confidence in Congress, which would be a hard bar to clear but that is where the trend is headed.

It seems the pimple-faced wunderkind who keep the gates at Twitter and Facebook and other social media care more for the views of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party than for free expression or the right of a free people in a democracy to make their views known, even unpopular views, and to make their own decisions about what is true or correct and what isn’t.

Thomas Jefferson said, “A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.” But what did Jefferson know? After all, he was a slave owner, right? Of course, unlike the cowards and toadies in much of our media organizations, he also had courage and spoke the truth.

7. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the Common Criminals Creating Chaos in the Streets

What kind of coward needs to hide behind a mask? The kind who make up Antifa, BLM, and the common criminals hiding among them and under their cover who are out to take and destroy, to loot, burn, and murder. Employing the tactics of fascism, Antifa pretends to oppose fascism. As blacks die at the hands of other blacks by the dozens and hundreds and thousands in Chicago and in other cities all across America, BLM pretends it is only the police who are the problem.

Based in Marxist ideology, these groups have as their sole objective the destruction of capitalism and our democratic system. Funded by a range of left-leaning donors, including George Soros and members of the Democratic nomenklatura, they move from city to city, staging “peaceful protests” that somehow seem to degrade into violent insurrection in case after case. And if you want to see who is behind those masks, the mug shots of arrested Antifa members in the image below will tell you: It’s almost entirely rich, white, indoctrinated, bored college kids. Like recently arrested members of the so-called New Afrikan Black Panther Party, a largely prison-based Maoist group terrorizing New York City, many are disaffected white kids playing revolutionary. Shades of the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army, of Patty Hearst fame, of the 1970s. Or Germany’s terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang and Red Army Faction – from which Antifa grew – or the Red Brigades of Italy.

It’s not just me who says these violent hooligans are cowards. None other than German historian Bettina Röhl, daughter of terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, says it.

“Out of cowardice, it [Antifa] practices covering its [members’] faces and keeping their names secret,” says Röhl. Take off the masks, and this is what you find:

6. Incompetent, Spineless Democratic Mayors and Governors

The current wave of unrest in the country began in Minneapolis on May 25. Had the Democratic boy mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, taken a stand and put a stop to the violence that broke out in his city that day, much of the destruction and mayhem the country has suffered in the months since might have been avoided. But this spineless wonder decided to abandon the 3rd Precinct police station in the city to “de-escalate” the situation, sending a clear signal that violence and looting was acceptable. Police said that the mayor was “content to let the city be overrun,” and that’s exactly what happened. And continues to happen.

Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz’s response was equally feckless, delaying for days sending in the National Guard, and then holding troops back from a full response to the violence. But when Walz, like the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds he is an orphan, asked for $500 million – that’s half a billion dollars – in federal emergency relief to pay for the damage done to the city and the 1,500 buildings destroyed by the “peaceful” demonstrators, President Trump had the good sense to deny the request.

The violence quickly spread across the nation, from Atlanta to Los Angeles, from New York to Seattle, from Washington to Portland, from Chicago to Albuquerque, as city after city fell victim to the national tantrum released in Minneapolis. And one cowardly Democratic mayor and governor after another allowed the thugs and anarchists to take control of their cities, or major parts of them. There was the idiotic response of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who said the take over of a chunk of her city’s downtown area and a police precinct might turn into “a summer of love.” Love, until people began being killed. Equally cowardly, yellow-bellied Washington Governor Jay Inslee, more concerned about the polar bears than the people of his state, claimed ignorance of the whole affair. Ignorance with impudence.

And then there is the cowardly mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, who perhaps deserves a special award for his spineless ineptitude. Taking an award for her supporting role in this cowardice is Oregon Governor Kate Brown. If you’ve been held captive by drug cartels in Mexico the past several months, or you get your news from CNN or MSNBC or most of the other so-called national news outlets, you might have missed the fact that rioting has been going on in Stumptown continuously for (as of this writing) 116 days and nights, with just minimal response from city and state officials.

One thing that marks all these cowardly mayors – and if I didn’t name all of them, it’s because the list would be unduly long and unwieldy, not because they didn’t qualify to be named – is that, when they go down in the street to talk with the natives storming their cities, they are universally jeered and belittled. They’re lucky to get away with their lives. And those unruly natives have the audacity to terrorize even the residences of these boy and girl wonders. Old Ted Wheeler has had to abandon his condo to spare his neighbors from harm when the “peaceful protestors” came and vandalized and tried to burn down the building. If there is one lesson none of these inept officials ever learned it is that you can’t appease a bully.

The brilliant answer they and their equally cowardly and senseless city councils come up with is to defund the police. Okay for them, with their private security details, and then when the mobs come after them anyway they wonder where the police are.

Somehow all these Democrats must have pooled their meager brain cells and come up with the astounding conclusion that all the violence and unrest would be bad for the re-election prospects of the detested Orange Man in the White House. Picture their surprise to learn that most Americans aren’t ready to turn the country over to the rabble and their strategy appears to be backfiring. Some of them are too dim-witted to even figure that out, though once released it’s damned hard to get the tiger back into the cage.

5. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

Some mayors deserve to be singled out for their own Profile in Cowardice. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is one of them. Like the other mayors cited in these profiles, one has to wonder what kind of voters would put people like this in office. I understand that Democratic Party loyalty and the myths that hold them in thrall are powerful things, keeping people down on the Democratic Plantation. Still, you’d think people would see through the scam and at least not put people like Lightfoot into office. You’d think.

You might remember Lightfoot as the little martinet who defended getting her own hair done while ordering hairstyists and barbers to close their businesses across the city. She could get her hair done, but not you, because she’s mayor, and you’re not. After all, she has to be in the public limelight, she said. The rest of you can go to hell, bad hair and all.

That would have been disgraceful enough, and then when violence broke out in Chicago, with widespread looting and destruction across the (formerly) Magnificent Mile and other parts of the city, Lightfoot looked the other way and let it go on. Her own Democratic aldermen pleaded for assistance to protect residences and businesses and public safety, and she told them they were full of excrement. Lightfoot is another clear case of what I call ignorance with impudence.

Meanwhile, children, teens, and adults, mostly black, continue to be shot and murdered at record and near-record levels in Chicago. While people die, while residents are afraid to venture out on the street, as Chicagoans (and the city’s already tenuous tax base) flee, Lightfoot gets her hair done.

Do black lives matter? Not in Chicago, apparently.

Tomorrow: Profiles in Cowardice 4-1. Find out who is the biggest coward of all.

Photo credits: White feather featured image, Isaque Pereira, Pexels, used with permission. The following used under Fair Use: Fiery peace, CNN; Antifa, conservativenews.com; Antifa mug shots, unknown; Minneapolis burns, Carlos Gonzalez, Star Tribune/Getty Images; Lori Lightfoot, Rich Hein, Chicago Sun-Times