Tag: Republicans
The Future of America Lies in Your Hands: Vote!

The Future of America Lies in Your Hands: Vote!

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The choice for America hasn’t been more clear in more than a century and a half. Not since the election of 1860, which led to the victory of Abraham Lincoln, the subsequent Civil War, and the eventual end of slavery, has there been a more impactful election.

The choice can be stated in simple terms: If you’re willing to accept and be complicit in the biggest fraud ever attempted in American political history, then Joe Biden is your guy. If you want to continue the push toward a stronger America, toward sensible economic policies, and toward policies that recognize global realities and how strength promotes prospects of peace without kneeling to the country’s enemies, then Donald Trump is your guy.

I know, I know. You don’t like Trump’s tweets. You don’t like some of the off-the-cuff things he says. You don’t like the name-calling. I don’t either. But if superficial things like that influence you more than things like policies, confronting the political elites (of both parties), mental and physical competence, and not being taken in by bald-faced political fraud, then go ahead and vote for Biden. And don’t complain later when, on the outside chance that Biden wins, you see what you’ve actually voted for. And it won’t be peace or prosperity or togetherness or justice or any of those nice-sounding things. You’ll find how much you’ve been snookered.

If you’ve been following my blog postings over the past two-plus years, you would know why Joe Biden is an utterly unacceptable candidate for President. You would have seen accounts of his misdeeds – all since confirmed in recent revelations – and you would have seen the reasons why he has earned a criminal investigation on a number of counts. And you would have seen the duplicitous and hypocritical and deceitful tactics of the Democrats in Congress and their lackeys in the mass media.

Scary Stuff

If that isn’t enough to dissuade you from voting for Biden, you would have seen the evidence of the man’s ever-more-frequently obvious mental deterioration, rendering him unfit to hold the nation’s highest office. Despite his campaign handlers’ best efforts to keep him sequestered in his Wilmington basement, when Jell-O Joe is allowed out to speak to a smattering of supporters and neutered media representatives, he has taken to speaking – not just in his usual gaffes and misstatements – but in what can only be described as “tongues.”

Here is just one example of that. Listen to it yourself.

And another.

And lots more cited here.

And it’s not just mental. Listen to his labored breathing as he spouts gibberish here.

Scary? I think so. This is the man who would have his finger on the nuclear button. That should get anyone worried. Very worried, indeed.

The inescapable conclusion is that Biden’s supposed running mate, Kamala Harris, is the real candidate, and Jell-O Joe is just a placeholder. He’ll be in the Oval Office until his deteriorated mental state becomes impossible to any longer ignore, and then he’ll be eased out of office with Harris taking over officially. And meanwhile, both Biden and Harris, considered the most liberal member of the Senate, will be subservient to the will and insane policies of the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren. Never mind that Harris couldn’t even muster enough support to make it as far as the primaries or that she is widely disliked, even despised, across the full range of the political spectrum. She, and the radical left, and the Dem power brokers, are whom you’ll really be voting for.

A Tale of Two Campaigns, A Tale of Two Americas

The photos above graphically illustrate the tale of two campaigns, and the two Americas they represent and appeal to. Both photos were taken at recent rallies in Georgia. The top image is the Trump rally held in Macon on Oct. 16, following earlier rallies, attended by tens of thousands of people, the same day in Fort Myers and Ocala, Florida. The bottom image is the Biden rally held in Warm Springs on Oct. 27. In contrast to the vibrant and raucous gathering of thousands of avid supporters – typical of all Trump rallies – we see a smattering of supposed Biden supporters, some of whom are actually reporters, isolated in 38 – count them, 38 – circles, to enforce social distancing, outside on the grass. Compared to a garden party, it looks more than silly. Later the same day, Biden attracted his largest crowd of his campaign, such as it has been, at a drive-in rally in Atlanta – 771 people in 365 cars.

This really is the choice put to voters: Which America do you support? A lively and growing and vibrant and courageous America, or an America afraid to even breathe, cowered into fear, locked down and looking forward to the “dark winter” promised by Biden? An America of hope, or an America of despair? An America where the individual is treasured, or one in which the individual is submerged and devalued and canceled in the dismal swamp of identity politics? An America of tolerance and fairness, or one in which venom and hatred and division are fostered by a corrupt political-media establishment? I know which one I’ll be voting for when I go the polls tomorrow. Do you?

I honestly have no idea how the election will turn out, which of those narratives America will choose. If you believe most of the polls – I don’t – Biden will win. Of course, those same polls said Hillary Clinton would win in 2016. So much for that theory. If you go by the enormous enthusiasm shown to Trump, whether in rallies or in the many impromptu displays like car and boat parades held around the country, contrasted with the lackluster showing of support for Biden, Trump has to take it. If you use such anecdotal approaches as I use, like my Yard Sign Theory, there will be places solidly for Trump and others solidly for Biden. Do the Trump yard signs outnumber the Biden ones? Based on my limited observations in different places, I’d give the nod to Trump.

Something like 90 million voters have already cast their votes, in mail-in, absentee, and early voting. I remain opposed to early voting in most cases since vital information, like what the Hunter Biden laptop contains, often comes in late in the game. I’ll go in person to my local polling place tomorrow and cast my vote, as I’ve been doing in most elections since my first vote when I was 18. I don’t know if we’ll know a winner by late Tuesday night. I suspect not. I suspect, unless there will be enough clear results in sufficient states to determine a clear winner, we may wait days, weeks, perhaps months to know who the winner is determined to be as Americans’ faith in their political institutions is further eroded. I hope that isn’t how things go, just as I hope there won’t be violence in the aftermath of the election, but I have my doubts about both. Many cities already are boarding up in anticipation of that violence.

In any case, I hope the sensibility of the country comes through and voters wind up picking the only acceptable candidate on the ballot. I hope they do that even if it takes having to grit their teeth and accept a candidate who is less than perfect. The alternative is too incomprehensible, too horrible, to even think about. And I hope that sensibility carries through down the ballot, too, to keep the Senate in Republican hands and to turn the House. The country doesn’t need more gridlock, nor does it need the one-party state the Dems have in mind for it.

And it’s not just the future of America that lies in the balance. In many respects, it’s the future of the world. I have had non-Americans writing to me to stress that point, and their concerns and fears mirror my own.

Readers of this blog probably know more about the issues and the opposing views of reality than most. Now go out and apply that knowledge and vote.

Featured image: Donald Trump in Omaha, Anna Reed, The World Herald; Joe Biden in Bristol Twp., Pennsylvania, Darryl Rule, LevittownNow.com. Both used under Fair Use.

Trump at campaign rally in Tucson, Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star; Masked Joe Biden waves in Bristol Twp., Pennsylvania, Darryl Rule, LevittownNow.com. Both used under Fair Use.

Trump campaign rally in Macon, Ga., Getty Images; Biden campaign rally in Warm Springs, Ga., Independent Sentinel. Both used under Fair Use.
Democracy Dies in Darkness

Democracy Dies in Darkness

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Democracy dies in darkness. If you care at all about the very survival of American democracy, you should be absolutely terrified of what is happening right now with the cold-blooded and utterly partisan repression of information being perpetrated by the social media giants, bolstered by the mainstream media. Unprecedented in the nation’s history – in the world’s history – it is not government carrying out this bald-faced censorship, but private enterprises, arguably the most powerful corporations on the face of the earth.

This frightening trend toward non-governmental repression, whether it is from the social media giants, cancel culture, or militant forces on the left such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, was the subject of my recent posting on Banned Books Week: Canceling of Thought in 2020 America on my Stoned Cherry blog. In just two weeks, its prescience has come to the fore in what I would assess to be the single biggest threat facing our democracy.

When the New York Post broke the story confirming what many of us have long suspected, that former Vice President Joe Biden had used his official position to favor the business and financial fortunes of his son, Hunter, and, worse, may have himself gained vast financial benefit, not just in Ukraine but in China, the social media giants Twitter and Facebook immediately shut down the story. They then went even further, and blocked any attempts to repeat the story, such as through retweets, and even shut down the accounts of the Post itself and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. The mainstream media, in lockstep, hardly even mentioned, or downplayed, what the Post reported, and Biden and his campaign have been virtually silent on the story, and has not been pressed on it. You can be excused if you feel you’re in Belarus, Russia, China, or even North Korea, and not in the United States of America, with the concerted attempt to keep the public from even knowing about this story.

What we are witnessing is the utter crushing of the free flow of information in this country, and it is coming from private, but extraordinarily powerful, actors. And it is coming entirely from one side of the political spectrum. This is something I have been warning about on this blog for years now, but it has now reached a critical state.

Keep in mind that the Post is not some frivolous journal. Depending on the method and time of calculating circulation, its readership ranks anywhere from No. 1 to No. 6 nationally, and, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, it is the oldest continually published newspaper in the country. Despite allowing dubious stories negative about President Trump to appear and remain on their platforms, including stories based on anonymous sources and illegally obtained (and never verified) information, Twitter and Facebook justified their actions based on these very grounds, as well as the untrue grounds that the Post‘s information had been “hacked.”

This piece isn’t intended to deal in detail with what the Post found and reported about the senior Biden’s involvement in furthering his son’s business dealings, but rather with the egregious repression of the information to keep it from reaching the voting public. I’d direct you — and strongly urge you – to read the actual stories (we, not being Twitter or Facebook, are happy to be a medium for the free flow of information), which, if accurate, confirm in detail what I previously opined about Biden’s abuse of his office while he was Vice President in the Obama Administration:

The initial Oct. 14 story reporting on emails that reveal how Hunter introduced a top Burisma official to his father

The Oct. 15 story detailing Hunter Biden’s murky business dealings in China

The Oct. 16 story about Hunter’s troubled life and pained soul

The Post stories

In brief, the stories report what some 40,000 emails – as well as thousands of texts, videos, and photos, some showing Hunter in “very compromising positions,” including having sex with an unidentified woman while smoking crack cocaine – to and from Hunter Biden reveal about his personal life, business dealings, and the leveraging of his father’s position to further his business interests and prodigious income, both in Ukraine and China. The emails were on a water-damaged laptop left in April 2019 with a computer repair shop in Delaware, and which was never picked up. While the shop owner couldn’t identify the customer as Hunter Biden, the laptop bore a sticker of the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother, and the email address was that of Hunter Biden at that time.

The shop owner, after numerous unsuccessful attempts at contacting the customer, eventually informed the FBI of its existence, and the agency seized the laptop in December. Meanwhile, the shop owner had made a copy of the hard drive, which he turned over to Robert Costello, attorney for Trump legal advisor Rudy Giuliani. In due course, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon informed the Post about the emails, and on Sunday Giuliani turned the drive copy over to the Post.

While it is true that the authenticity of the emails has not been confirmed, the Biden campaign initially did not deny their existence or authenticity, pointing only to the action by the social media platforms to block stories concerning them as “proof” they weren’t true. Subsequently, the campaign painted them as promoting some sort of “conspiracy theory.” The Democratic smear campaign went into full “Russia conspiracy” mode, with California Rep. Adam Schiff, Liar-in-Chief in the Congress, hauling out that now long-debunked theory to attempt to delegitimize the emails. That there are people foolish enough to continue to believe that sort of nonsense is indicative of the deliberate failure of the media to propagate truthful information in this country.

As further confirmation of the clear media bias that has taken hold, moderator George Stephanopoulis did not ask Joe Biden a single question about the Post reports during Thursday night’s townhall on ABC, and neither did any of the voters posting their softball questions. How this is not considered journalistic malpractice eludes me. Meanwhile, on NBC, moderator Savannah Guthrie, sounding more like a petulant high school girl than a professional journalist, hurled accusatory statements (often inaccurate) at President Trump who, to his credit, responded to them, and the often challenging questions put to him by voters, with grace and directness. Given that NBC came under attacks both from without and within even for hosting the townhall with Trump, can there be any residual doubt that there is almost no fairness or honesty left in the mass media?

There are so many things wrong with this whole state of affairs it leaves one grasping for what to include and what to leave out, so as not to confuse the issue or wind up going on for thousands of words on the topic. With some 20 million people reported to have already voted in this critically important election, how can it be considered a democratic process when virtually all the powerful levers of information are working to suppress reports that, in earlier times, would have been considered crucial to determining the outcome of an election?

Applying the Twitter standard used to suppress the Post stories, the American public would not have known about the Pentagon Papers (hacked), COINTELPRO (stolen), Watergate (unidentified sources), or the revelations of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks (hacked and unidentified soures), or Edward Snowdon (also hacked and unidentified sources). Would America be a different country today were those revelations suppressed? Undoubtedly. Would it be a better country? I doubt many would even attempt to make that argument. Further underscoring the issue, news of the trial of Assange has been largely ignored in the same media that relies on the First Amendment to defend its egregious actions, posing a further threat to freedom of expression, even more under attack in the U.K. than in the U.S.

Pushing back

There are some efforts going on to bring the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, all tech giants, to heel before things go further down the rat hole of Chinese-style repression. Senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley have called for a subpoena to haul Twitter CEO Jack Dempsey to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 23, and Hawley – a key advocate for limiting the power of social media to suppress ideas they don’t like – is calling for the Committee to subpoena Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Hawley also has joined senators Marco Rubio, Kelly Loefler, and Kevin Cramer in seeking a clarification of the Section 230 rules which protect platforms from civil liability when third parties post false or misleading information. The argument is that the platforms are abusing the special protection Section 230 gives them and, if they are going to censor third-party posts, then they should be subject to the same liability as any media source not given such protection.

Additionally, the RNC has filed a complaint against Twitter with the Federal Elections Commission, alleging that its censorship of the Post stories amounts to an illegal campaign contribution to the Biden campaign.

I would contend that the time for hearings and testimony has past, and it’s time for action. In any event, note that all the concerns are being raised by Republicans. If you think the Democrats are concerned about protecting free speech, you would be seriously mistaken. When they have the weight of what amounts to state media on their side, they remain unmysteriously silent. Partisanship and the pursuit of power supersedes basic American and human rights, as far as they’re concerned. In the one-party Democratic state of California, for instance, an Orwellian-style “Ministry of Truth” has been proposed to seek out and block what it determines to be “fake news,” and a similar measure has been introduced by a Dem in Congress. They see themselves as the arbiters of what is “truth,” and the less you know about what is really going on, the better for them, they reason. But is that better for you?

How would you feel to learn that Joe Biden used his influence and public funds to have a Ukrainian prosecutor, who was investigating the company on whose board his son served, fired? Or that he lied to you about not meeting with a top executive of that same company? Or that he sold out American interests to companies and institutions controlled by the Chinese Communist Party to benefit his son, and very possibly himself? Who, you might wonder, is the “big guy” referred to in one of the reputed Hunter emails, promised a carve out of 10% of a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars with China’s largest private energy company? Might it be Papa Joe himself? And have you ever wondered how Biden got as wealthy as he is, living off his government salary for 47 years?

Read the Post stories and see what you think.

If it’s up to Big Tech, the majority in the mass media, and the Democratic Party, you won’t ever find out answers to these, and many other, questions. And you should be very terrified, indeed. Democracy dies in darkness, and night is closing in all around us.

Featured image: Candle in Darkness, Rahul, Pexels. Used with permission.
The Elephant in the Room: The Other America Roars Back

The Elephant in the Room: The Other America Roars Back

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If you had any doubt that there really are two Americas, that doubt would have been shattered had you, like me, watched both the Democratic National Convention last week and the Republican National Convention this week. In stark contrast to the Dems’ dark and dystopian view of America, the GOP’s vision of the country was one of hope, progress, and unity. And while the DNC chose to present their view largely through a format of endless small video screens, much like a Zoom infomercial, reflecting the fear they would like to keep the country living in, the RNC chose a live, open, and dynamic format that, while different from a traditional convention, at least conveyed vivacity and unabashed spirit.

Honestly, as I said in my piece last week, I was expecting another largely virtual convention. That expectation went by the wayside from the very opening of the proceedings and was quickly forgotten. Dubbed “Land of Greatness” by the GOP, this was clearly, and refreshingly, an event with real people speaking to the country in real life, not a bunch of talking heads on screens and, in too many cases, in pre-recorded videos and speeches. Also refreshingly absent were the Hollywood elites that the Dems had chosen to emcee their convention.

It has been reported that President Trump used some of The Apprentice’s producers to help plan the RNC convention, and their influence and talent was clearly evident. Heretofore we were led to believe that the Democratic Party had the edge on using technology to its advantage, but if that was true in past years it’s no longer the case. And as the RNC convention demonstrated, technology or no technology, there is no substitute for people speaking directly and unfiltered to the audience.

From the opening speeches of the first night through the finale of Trump’s acceptance speech to a gathering of between 1,000 and 2,000 people on the South Lawn of the White House, followed by one of the most amazing fireworks displays over the National Mall that I’ve ever seen and a rousing operatic set by tenor Christopher Macchio, this convention walked all over the Dems’ Zoom display with big elephant feet. And while the Dems studiously avoided even one word of mention of the other elephants in the country, the months of violence and civil unrest rocking cities all across the nation, or how China was allowed to bleed away millions of American jobs, the Republicans took them head-on, portraying Democratic complicity in permitting both and how the country could look forward to more of the same were Joe Biden elected in November. Perhaps more even than the convention’s production values, this message may have resonated with voters. But we’ll get to that.

No More (Just) Mr. White Guy

Another myth dispelled throughout the most recent four nights is that the Republican Party is a party of old white men. While the Dems tried to make us believe that the country consists almost entirely of blacks and Hispanics, the Republicans demonstrated that people of all different backgrounds – white, black, Hispanic, Native American, men, women, old, young, natural born, and immigrant – can and do find a home in the GOP and, in case after case, to rise to positions of great authority within the party and the country. It was a direct refutation of the identity politics the Dems rely on and showed that people of drive and talent are welcomed and can thrive within the Republican Party based not on the color of their skin, but rather – in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., frequently cited during the convention – the quality of their character.

Some of the people of color, both luminaries and the largely unheralded, who spoke during the convention, all of whom had nothing but words of praise for the President, include:

  • Legendary NFL star Herschel Walker
  • South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott
  • Candidate for Congress from Baltimore Kim Klacik
  • Maximo Alvarez, Cuban exile and founder of Sunshine Gasoline
  • Former South Carolina Governor and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
  • Democratic Georgia state legislator Vernon Jones
  • Norma Urrabazo, pastor and executive at the National Latina/Latino Commission
  • Myron Lizer, vice president of the Navajo Nation
  • Jon Ponder, former inmate and founder of HOPE for Prisoners, Inc.
  • Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez
  • Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron
  • Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng
  • Burgess Owens, former NFL player and candidate for Congress from Utah
  • Civil rights activist Clarence Henderson
  • White House advisor Ja’Ron Smith
  • Marine Corps veteran Stacia Brightmom
  • Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes
  • Ann Dorn, widow of former police captain David Dorn, killed in St. Louis looting
  • HUD Secretary Ben Carson
  • Alice Johnson, former inmate whose sentence was commuted by President Trump

A recurrent theme was how the media portrayal of Trump as a racist and misogynist was false. Herschel Walker, speaking on the opening night, perhaps said it best.

“It hurt my soul to hear the terrible names that people call Donald. The worst one is racist. I take it out as a personal insult that people would think I’ve had a 37-year friendship with a racist. People who think that don’t know what they’re talking about,” Walker said. “Growing up in the deep South, I’ve seen racism up close. I know what it is and it isn’t Donald Trump. Just because someone loves and respect the flag, our national anthem, and our country doesn’t mean they don’t care about social justice. I care about all of those things. So does Donald Trump. He shows how much he cares about social justice in the black community through his actions and his actions speaks louder than stickers or slogans on a jersey.”

Walker’s sentiments were echoed by Jon Ponder, a convicted bank robber released early from prison and who went on to found HOPE for Prisoners, Inc., an organization that helps former convicts get a new start in life. In one of several moments in which Trump himself appeared, the President signed a full pardon for Ponder right on camera. Looking on approvingly was Richard Beasley, the former FBI agent who had arrested Ponder and with whom he is now friends.

On the last night, Alice Marie Johnson, another former prisoner whose sentence had been commuted by the President after she spent more than two decades behind bars for a non-violent drug conviction that was her first offense, gave a moving presentation. She related how she had been sentenced to life in prison without parole, a product of the crime bill that Joe Biden had helped get passed in the 1990s.

“I was once told that the only way I would be reunited with my family would be as a corpse,” Johnson said. “But through the grace of God and the love and compassion of President Donald John Trump, I stand before you tonight and I assure you, I am not a ghost. I am alive, I am whole and most importantly, I am free.”

Going one step further, the day after the convention Trump gave Johnson a full pardon.

Other speakers who gave moving and powerful accounts of their encounters with the President and how he supported them were Andrew Pollack, whose daughter, Meadow, was murdered in the Parkland high school massacre; Nicholas Sandmann, the Covington, Kentucky, teen who was ridiculed by the media mob simply for wearing a MAGA hat; pro-life advocate and former Planned Parenthood employee Abby Johnson; and Carl and Marsha Mueller, whose daughter, Kayla, was held captive, tortured, raped, and murdered by ISIS.

The Big Media Lie

If you had any doubt about the source for creating and maintaining the two separate Americas, the mass media quickly wiped out any question you might have had about that. Because I didn’t want the interruptions with talking heads that marked coverage of the DNC convention on Fox News, I watched all four nights of it on MSNBC, which normally I’ll avoid like the plague. On MSNBC, I was able to see the entire DNC convention uninterrupted. But that wasn’t to be the case for the RNC convention. Early on the first night, as Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who had defended their home and lives from a mob of Black Lives Matter protestors only to be charged with gun violations by the same prosecutor who refused to charge any of the looters or rioters in her jurisdiction, were telling their story, MSNBC cut in so Rachel Maddow could “explain the lies” told by the McCloskeys. Now wait a minute. I don’t need a despicable character and congenital liar like Rachel Maddow explaining anything to me, nor do I need the likes of former Missouri Senator and Democratic hack Claire McCaskell, called out of the hangar of washed-up politicians by Maddow, or the racist Don Lemon or the general idiot Chris Cuomo on CNN, telling me about what the McCloskeys actually experienced. I’ve seen it first-hand and to me it’s clear who the liars are, and it’s not the McCloskeys.

Despite the biggest and most shameless lies told during the DNC convention, never once did Maddow or the others on the leftist networks interrupt it or “explain” any of those lies. But they did it repeatedly during the Republican convention. While Fox News was still doing its talking heads thing, I searched for a source where I could watch the RNC convention without it being filtered through interpretations or distortions of either side of the political spectrum. And I found it on C-Span, where I was able to watch the rest of the convention in its entirety without interruption.

I am sure I was not alone in this. While overall viewership ratings were down slightly for the RNC versus the DNC (as it was in 2016, too), it was off markedly for MSNBC and CNN. Meanwhile, Fox News, during Sean Hannity’s segment, scored record viewership for any convention coverage ever – more than 7 million viewers on the first night, compared with 2 million on CNN and less than 1.6 million on MSNBC, and 8 million on the second night. But the real gainer was C-Span, where viewership for the RNC convention was a rocking six times that for the DNC convention. On the first night of the RNC, 440,000 viewers, myself among them, tuned in on C-Span, versus just 76,000 for the DNC in the equivalent time slot, and this pattern continued through the week. The DNC performance on social media, according to Nielson Media Research, was no better. I think this was an indictment of the kind of distorted coverage provided by the other networks, especially the ones on the left.

To me, it is encouraging that so many Americans still want to get their news unfiltered and can see through the lies told them by the likes of CNN and MSNBC. Allowed to do so, it’s clear that views can begin to change. The post-convention show on C-Span took calls from viewers all over the country, with separate call-in numbers for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. It was no surprise that almost all the callers on the Republican line supported Trump. What was a surprise was how almost all the callers on the Democratic line said they were changing their support to Trump and, in some cases, changing their party affiliation to Republican after being life-long Democrats. Most of those on the Independent line also said they’d vote for Trump in November. Again, this pattern continued through the convention.

Probably the issue that was most cited by those shifting their support to Trump was the violence afflicting the country and the belief that the Dems were either unable or unwilling to do anything about it. It didn’t hurt that the worst of the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was going on during the convention, and people were fed up watching American cities being destroyed by mindless violence. Apparently this message started to get through to the Dem leadership, and even to the talking heads of CNN and MSNBC.

After nearly three months trying to convince viewers that all that was going on was “peaceful protesting,” Cuomo came out Tuesday, the second night of the RNC convention, and called anti-police rioting “a Rorschach test for where this country is,” adding, “I think it probably represents the biggest threat to the Democratic cause.” And then Lemon, who previously had gone so far as to defend the rioting as a “mechanism for a restructure of our country or for some sort of change,” agreed with Cuomo’s Rorschach reference. And then he went on to reveal the real crux of the matter in his eyes: “The rioting has to stop. Chris, as you know and I know, it’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups. It is the only thing – it is the only thing right now that is sticking.”

So it’s not the loss of property, the loss of life, the destruction of livelihoods, the tearing down and burning of whole segments of American cities that is the problem. It’s that the poll numbers for Biden and “the Democratic cause” are going down. Got it?

Do you still doubt the key role the media play in creating and fostering the divisions the country is suffering through? The bigger question is, how can democracy even survive such bias and untruths?

Melania

Melania Trump, the largely unheralded First Lady, deserves a section of this posting all by herself. While all the adult Trump children – Donald Jr., Tiffany, Eric, and Ivanka – had speaking rolls during the convention, First Lady Melania’s presentation at the end of the second night was perhaps the most remarkable from a family member.

You didn’t have to wonder whether she used to be a model. That was apparent seeing the grace with which she carried herself coming down the long White House arcade to the podium. We get to see so little of this First Lady that it’s remarkable observing her beauty and composure, not to mention her striking wardrobe (it doesn’t hurt being married to a billionaire, but one can certainly see the attraction she held, and apparently still does, for the President).

Melania must be the most classicly feminine and cultured First Lady the country has had since Jacqueline Kennedy. Were Trump a Democrat and not a Republican, the media would be fawning all over her like a 15-year-old boy in heat, but instead she’s almost shut out, when not being actively derided. Part of that is probably the result of her own reticence to be the center of attention – we remember how at the beginning of the President’s term she preferred to stay in New York with son Barron – but the rest is pure prejudice.

It was striking to hear a First Lady speak with an accent. To me, it signified how open and welcoming this country is, to not only elect a black man to the country’s highest office, but now to have a foreign-born First Lady. And once she started speaking, it was clear the audience of about 100 people gathered in the Rose Garden, which she recently had renovated after many years without an updating, loved her. She seemed to have some difficulty with the teleprompters, holding her head in one direction or the other for a bit longer than seemed natural, but she spoke with confidence and expressed herself with a clarity that belied the fact that English is not her native language. If only Joe Biden could be as coherent.

The First Lady spoke of her immigrant roots.

“Growing up as a young child in Slovenia, which was under Communist rule at the time, I always heard about an amazing place called America, a place that stands for freedom and opportunity,” she said. “As an immigrant and a very independent woman, I understand what a privilege it is to live here and to enjoy the freedoms and opportunities that we have.”

Melania acknowledged the pain caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, saying, “”My deepest sympathy goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one, and my prayers are with those who are ill or suffering.” She also spoke of her work addressing the opioid epidemic, and her work with children both here and in Africa. She spoke to the mothers of the country about her “Be Best” campaign to encourage more civility in online discourse and the concerns they share about the use of social media by their children. And she addressed how her husband’s approach did not please everyone, but – garnering a laugh from the audience – she said, “Whether you like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking.”

Melania also addressed the issues of racial justice confronting the country, and described how she saw the legacy of the slave trade first-hand upon arriving in Ghana.

“It is a harsh reality that we are not proud of parts of our history,” she said, but went on to urge an end to the unrest, saying, “Stop the violence and looting being done in the name of justice.”

It occurred to me that Trump and his re-election campaign would be advised to make greater use of Melania, getting her out front-and-center to help influence hearts and minds. But, of course, most in the media had nothing good to say about her speech, and then another washed-up member of the Hollywood elite, Bette Midler, tweeted, “#beBest is back! A UGE bore! She can speak several words in a few languages. Get that illegal alien off the stage!”

If that wasn’t bad enough, she went on to tweet, “Oh God. She still can’t speak English.”

Well, Miss M – the M surely stands for Moron – how good is your Slovenian? What ignorance. But there must still be some decency left in this country because there was an outpouring of tweets accusing Midler of xenophobia and racism, which of course were appropriate words to categorize the venom contained in her mindless tweets.

The Dems Have Nothing to Say

It seems all the Dems have to offer in response are the kinds of gripes one has come to expect from them. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech, given from Jerusalem where he is on a trip promoting relations in the region, was criticized as a Hatch Act violation. Never mind the substance of what he said, or the demonstrable positive influence he and this Administration has had in the Middle East, in stark contrast to the mess Trump’s and Pompeo’s predecessors helped create.

Further criticisms were offered of Trump’s pardon of Jon Ponder or his overseeing of a naturalization ceremony for five new American citizens. Not to mention – horror of horrors! – his use of the White House and the South Lawn for his acceptance speech and the closing festivities. Never mind that Obama, in eight years, couldn’t manage to achieve criminal justice reform, which Trump has, or deported more people from the country than has Trump.

And of course, the other big criticism: People at the White House events weren’t wearing masks or social distancing. That’s the best they can do. Now remember, their candidate has said he’d shut the country down and require everyone to wear masks, so why would we be surprised? Never mind that the scientific evidence is, at best, mixed whether masks offer any real benefit, and no criticism has been made of rioters not wearing masks. But anything to divide us, and any criticism of Republicans is fair, right?

Note also that the Republican Party paid for the fireworks and other features of the closing ceremonies and no tax dollars were expended on them, but that won’t be enough to stop Nancy Pelosi and her gang from mounting one more expensive and pointless investigation.

But you know what? The Dems have squandered so much of the taxpayers’ money, the nation’s reputation, and our patience, I really don’t give a damn whether Pompeo broke the Hatch Act or whether it was technically proper or not that Trump used the White House as a backdrop during the convention. If the President can stir a bit of patriotic feeling and even a bit of excitement in his activities, I say go at it. The only marvel to me is that he has survived four years of the relentless and feckless and, at base, illegal and treasonous attacks mounted by the Dems and the dogs in their partisan media.

While Biden supporters all breathed a big sigh of relief at the end of their convention that their candidate managed to get through 25 minutes reading off a teleprompter and was greeted by flashing headlights in a Wilmington parking lot, Trump went almost three times as long, 70 minutes, in his acceptance speech, and no one doubted that he could. And then, as Uncle Joe cowered in his basement, Trump was off the next day for a campaign rally in New Hampshire.

But it wasn’t acceptable to the nihilists that one of the two major parties could hold its convention unmolested. After the final refrains from Macchio and the applause had died down, those attending the closing ceremonies at the White House were greeted by taunts, assaults, and death threats from the violent leftists, anarchists, and general morons and useful idiots gathered in the streets outside the White House grounds.

Among those attacked and threatened by the violent mobs were Sen. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley. Beset by about 100 Black Lives Matter activists – some of which Paul said appeared to have been brought in from outside the area – Paul credited the D.C. police with possibly saving his and his wife’s life.

“I truly believe this with every fiber of my being,” Rand said, “had they gotten at us they would have gotten us to the ground, we might not have been killed, might just have been injured by being kicked in the head, or kicked in the stomach until we were senseless.”

The couple finally had to seek protection from the security detail assigned to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to escape the mob. Needless to say, there have been no denunciations of this mob violence on White House guests by Biden or any other Democrat.

This is what the country has come to, and why after two weeks of political blather I am slightly more hopeful that Donald Trump will be re-elected in November and we at least will have a chance, as slim as it might be, of being spared from the abyss.

Featured Image: GOP Elephant and Flag, from latinovations.com, used under Fair Use
Melania Trump: Brendan Smialowski, AFP-Getty Images, used under Fair Use
Back to the Plantation

Back to the Plantation

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One of the vestiges of the plantation system which depended on slavery for its existence was the racial divisiveness perpetrated by economic elites to maintain their power and control over both blacks and whites. In simplest terms, this translates to “divide and rule.”

“You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings,” Georgia populist leader Tom Watson told a gathering of white and black laborers in 1892. ““You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.”

Lyndon Baines Johnson, who rose through the ranks of Texas racist politics to become the president who, after decades of helping block civil rights legislation in the House and the Senate, fostered passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once related essentially the same theory to Bill Moyers. In classic LBJ style, Johnson told Moyers, a Johnson staffer before he became White House Press Secretary and, later, a journalist, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Women March on Washington
Women March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Library of Congress.

This was a theory I first learned in the aftermath of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It made sense to me then, and it still makes sense to me, though the nature of those elites have changed during the intervening half century, as have their tools. And it wasn’t just white populists who laid out the theory, plain as day for anyone who cared to look.

The white liberal and the new plantation

“The white liberal is the worst enemy to America and the worse enemy to the black man.”

That’s not a quote from Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. It’s a quote from Malcolm X, the black liberation theology leader and firebrand, who said it about the same time LBJ was getting the civil rights theology and launching his War on Poverty, and not long before Malcolm X’s assassination on February 21, 1965.

“The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power,” he said. “The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro, 20 million black people. A political football, a political pawn, an economic football, and economic pawn. A social football, a social pawn.”

Malcolm X
Malcolm X. Source unknown. Used under Fair Use.

Malcolm X’s message – it’s worth reading the full quote, which is quite long – was that blacks need to solve their own problems and not depend on whites of either persuasion, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, since for either of them it’s just a game of power and control.

“The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros, and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have. If the Negro wasn’t taken, tricked, or deceived by the white liberal then Negros would get together and solve our own problems.”

Now, 55 years later, Malcolm X’s message still hasn’t gotten through to many African Americans, much less to both white and black people who continue to pursue and support policies that effectively keep blacks, and all people of the underclass, down on the new plantation. I’m reminded of his message watching the multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi and her hypocritical House Democrats kneeling in Kente cloths draped around their necks, and as trendy young white people proclaim on social media that they “stand against racism,” as if any right-thinking person doesn’t stand against racism, any less than someone might stand against kicking puppies or drowning babies. Or as politicians, lacking as much in balls as brains, call for disbanding the police, when it is black people who will be the main victims of the lawlessness, violence, and vigilantism that inevitably would ensue.

Look at what people do, not what they say

By way of disclosure, I’ve never considered myself a liberal, even during my radical phase (aspects of which persist). Like Malcolm X, I’ve never trusted self-proclaimed liberals who always have struck me as having ulterior motives or who operate under some sort of misplaced guilt or, at best, a Pollyannish view of the world. I tend to discount what people say in favor of what they do and, even more, the results they obtain through their actions and policies. This is highly relevant if you want to see the principle of “divide and rule” at work in contemporary liberal politics.

Consider this crucially important fact: While the U.S. has spent somewhere north of $22 trillion – that’s trillion, as in a thousand billion or a million million dollars, 22 times over (by some estimates, depending on how you count it, it’s closer to $27 trillion) – since LBJ declared the War on Poverty in his 1964 State of the Union address, the percentage of the population living in poverty has hardly changed at all in the past half century. Given that in the most recent normal year total U.S. GDP was just over $21 trillion, that’s a powerful lot of money to garner zero real reduction in the poverty rate. How can this be, you ask?

Look at the charts, below, to get a visual picture of the reality. What we see is that poverty was in major decline beginning in 1959, five years before Johnson’s declaration of his war on it. That decline continued for another five years, running through 1969. Beginning in 1970, a full 50 years ago, there has been essentially no long-term change in the poverty rate even as the country threw trillions of dollars of the national treasure at it.

As is visible, there have been blips up and down through both Democratic and Republican administrations and congresses, but the same overall reality persists across the span of a half century. As the third chart demonstrates, the African-American poverty rate has shown, marginally, the most improvement, especially when compared with the Hispanic and general poverty rates. But an interesting and undeniable reality emerges when you look at the first and third charts: The highest recent poverty levels in all three key categories – African-American, Hispanic, and the general population – peaked during the Obama administration, and all three reached historic lows during the Trump administration. How can this be, you might ask, given that Obama is painted as a friend of the poor and minorities and Trump is portrayed not only as their enemy, but as an out-and-out racist?

Like I said, get below the rhetoric and the reality emerges. Clearly taking the brakes off the economy and creating jobs that lower the unemployment rate and empower individuals and families, as Trump did in stark contrast to the effect his predecessor’s policies had on the economy, provides a road map for reducing poverty. Jobs are a key factor, if not the only one, in poverty reduction. There are other factors at work, too, and we’ll look at them toward the end of this piece.

Follow the money

“Follow the money” is a phrase that we learned from Deep Throat during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. It’s salient to our discussion here.

I had a sociology professor when I was an undergrad at Rutgers University sometime in the late 1960s. I don’t recall his name, but he was a black man, and I always looked forward to his classes. One thing about him was that he was straightforward and honest in his discussion of social issues and didn’t try to promote any ideology, something that seems to have become a hallmark of more recent sociological education (I can say this having since been a professor of sociology myself and seeing the ideological blather in the text books, and ostensibly believed by other professors, that is fed to students in the field).

In any case, my professor had previously worked with an anti-poverty agency on Long Island in New York. He told us how this agency had spun its wheels “studying” how to provide low-income housing to people, how much money passed through it, how it debated one approach and another approach, and in the end, not a single unit of housing was built. My professor said that, had the money the agency spent been given to the people it ostensibly had been set up to help, every one of those families could have gone out and bought their own house.

Sadly, my professor’s example is far from a unique case, given the trillions of dollars spent on “helping” poor people over the intervening five decades without any real effect (a similar calculation was made for FEMA’s spending after Hurricane Katrina when it was determined that the money the agency spent bureaucratically could have paid for a new house and two new cars for everyone who lost their home in the storm, and that, too, is far from unique).

If you still have any doubt that the vast bulk of the money spent fighting poverty doesn’t go to the people in poverty, the chart below should dispel that doubt. As per-person spending has climbed inexorably over the past six decades, it certainly hasn’t gotten to those in need of the funds. As per-person spending approaches $20,000, the poverty level this year for a family of four is set at $26,200. If the preponderance of the money went to that same theoretical family, they’d be receiving nearly $80,000, a long, long way from the poverty level. Needless to say, that’s not where most of the money goes.

When you look at the sheer volume of money involved, is it any wonder that those into whose hands, and pockets, it passes want to be sure to keep their constituents in poverty? In this context, what is said about one party in particular, the Democratic Party, that it depends on the existence of a permanent underclass for its very existence, begins to make sense and takes on credibility. Looking strictly at the numbers, the existence of poverty, maintaining as many people as possible dependent on the largesse of what passes for anti-poverty spending, bolsters its electoral power and, more, furthers the interests of its power brokers while favoring their influence and their wealth. They are the new plantation masters.

Down on the urban plantation

It’s a clever ploy, a revival of “divide and rule” for more than half a century, and the Democratic Party continues to rely on this strategy, keeping its black constituents down on the urban plantation, well into the 21st Century. Consider for a moment these facts:

  • Democrats run 35 of the nation’s 50 largest cities (37 if you count the “Independent” mayors of San Antonio and Las Vegas, both of whom ran with Democratic support).
  • Democrats run 15 of the 16 cities ranked the worst-run cities in America in 2019 by WalletHub, including Washington, D.C., which came in 150th out of 150 cities ranked. Other cities in the bottom 16 include Los Angeles (ranked 135th) , Philadelphia (137th), St. Louis (139th), Chicago (140th), Cleveland (141st), Oakland (144th), Detroit (145th), New York (146th), Chattanooga (147th), and San Francisco (148th). Gulfport, Miss., ranked 149th, is the only one of the worst-run cities with a Republican mayor. The only big city to rank in the top 10 of best-run cities was Oklahoma City, also with a Republican mayor.

    Detroit decay
    Detroit decay. Pixabay.
  • All of the top 10 most dangerous cities in the country, including Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Baltimore, Stockton, Cleveland, and Buffalo, have Democratic mayors. Of the top 25 most dangerous cities, most are controlled by Dems, and have poverty rates between 18 and 39 percent, compared with a 2019 national average of 12.3 percent. As gun violence runs rampant in these cities, most have strict gun control laws, giving meaning to the phrase, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.
  • All but two of the 10 cities rated “least healthy” on two different lists are run by Democrats.
  • All 10 cities with the highest numbers of homeless residents, led by Los Angeles with an estimated 58,000 homeless people, are Democratic-run sanctuary cities which provide refuge to illegal immigrants, disadvantaging lower-income legal residents of those cities and creating unsafe and unhealthy conditions for all residents.
  • The Democratic virtual one-party state of California, with one of the largest and most prosperous economies in the world, has the highest poverty rate of any state in the union, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure.
  • Six of the 10 least educated cities in America are in the same Democratic one-party state of California. In Democratic stronghold Baltimore, which ranks fourth in per-student educational spending in the nation, not a single student in 13 public high schools is proficient at math, and nine of 10 black boys in the city’s schools can’t read at grade level. Meanwhile, thousands of consultants, contractors, and administrators are paid salaries in excess of $100,000 a year by the city’s school system.
  • Many of the cities run by Democrats haven’t elected a Republican mayor in more than 100 years. That’s the case in Newark, N.J., ranked the fifth worst city in the nation to live in. Detroit, once the wealthiest city in America and the one LBJ planned to be the “Model City” of his Great Society, and which today is ranked the country’s worst city, hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1957, about the
    Detroit decay
    Decay of Detroit, the “Model City.” Daniel Lincoln/Unsplash.

    time its golden era began its swan song. Chicago, one of the country’s most segregated and violent cities, elected its last Republican mayor in 1927. St. Louis, one of the nation’s most dangerous and poverty-stricken cities, has been electing Democrats as mayor for 71 years. Philadelphia, for 68 years. Baltimore and Oakland for more than half a century. In Flint, Mich., Dems have been mayors for 88 years. In New Orleans, mayors have been Democrats since 1872 – 148 years, longer than most countries have been in existence. What do all these cities have in common, besides being Democratic fiefdoms? They’re all wracked by poverty, crime, corruption, and urban decay. If anyone cares to argue that the Democratic Party, the party that in its history supported slavery and Jim Crow, has changed over all those decades, if anything the change has been for the worse where these cities’ residents are concerned and as their condition has continued to deteriorate over the decades.

So where have all those trillions of anti-poverty dollars gone? That would be a good question to ask these mayors, city councils, state governments, their Congressional backers, and those running the various anti-poverty agencies and failed school systems, spread from coast to coast to coast. And maybe their bankers and investment brokers and real estate agents, too.

And don’t buy into the argument that other developed countries spend more on anti-poverty programs than the U.S. (for the most part, they don’t), or on healthcare (they don’t), or education (they don’t). Money, at least not its lack, isn’t the problem. Misguided programs, corrupt officials and politicians, and just plain bad policies are. Given the dismal results of those policies over such a long period of time, one has to assume that malice of intent more than just bad judgment lies at the heart of their failure. Divide and rule: Keep those poor folk down on the plantation and rake in the big bucks. Follow the money.

Martin Luther King Jr. march on Washington
Martin Luther King, Jr., leads the march on Washington, August 28, 1963. Library of Congress.

What things work and how the plantation masters work against them

There are some things that are known, at least empirically, to help people get out of poverty. The plantation masters know this, and they work against them methodically, often under cover of some sort of politico-babble. We’ll look, briefly, at them here.

Education

Getting a decent education and at least a high school diploma – and, better, a college degree — is one of the known routes out of poverty. Educational choice, through vouchers and charter schools, in many cases have been shown to offer low-income people a better education than often available in the normal public school system. Even Barack Obama said “The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education.” So why do he and so many of the urban plantation masters oppose both vouchers and charter schools (while putting their own kids in private schools)?

Two-parent families

Two-parent families are another antidote to poverty. The overall child poverty rate is 17.5 percent. For children in homes headed by a single mother, it’s 50 percent. In 2015, 77.3 percent of non-immigrant black births were to unmarried mothers. For Hispanic immigrants, it was 48.9 percent. For whites, it was 30 percent. In 1965, the rate was 24 percent for black babies and 3.1 percent for white babies. There are many factors involved in this differential, the role of welfare rules that favor single mothers, households without a man or father, being just one of them. Whatever the reasons, the economic impact is significant.

Helping black men improve their situation

A better educational environment, improved employment opportunities, and staying out of trouble with the law help black men improve their situation, which overall has a positive impact on reducing poverty among African-Americans. Trump’s answers have been improving employment prospects, economic opportunity zones in under-privileged communities, and criminal justice reform. The answer of at least one Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, is to help African American, Latino, and Native American communities “start businesses selling legal marijuana.” Yup, keep those poor folks in the drug culture. After all, it’s been such a big help to their communities over many years.

Full-time employment

Finding and keeping full-time employment Is another of those elements that are basic to getting out of poverty. Rather than depending on public assistance, becoming self-sufficient is a critical step in upward mobility, and its efficacy is evidenced by the relation between a declining unemployment rate and declining poverty rate. But the new plantation masters would rather depress employment, shutter whole industries and send jobs to China, thus increasing dependency on them.

These are not the only things that impact on poverty, but they are some of the bigger ones. By now, 56 years on, it’s time to declare America’s longest war – the War on Poverty – a lost cause, and to begin to empower all people in poverty, and most especially African-Americans, as Malcolm X said, to solve their own problems, and to send the new plantation masters packing. All the signs are that they won’t go easily, and they’re already figuring out new ways of fleecing the populace and keeping folks down on the plantation. Divide and rule is as relevant today as it was in 1892, and as long as people buy into it, its impact will be as pernicious and long-lasting.

Featured image: Sugar Cane Plantation. North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy Stock. Used under Fair Use.

Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh
Why It’s Become Impossible to Vote for Democrats

Why It’s Become Impossible to Vote for Democrats

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I consider myself an independent. To my recollection, I have never registered with any party in the half century in which I have been voting. For many years I felt my journalistic ethics prevented me from choosing one party over another. More recently, my frustrations with the various parties and the state of the American political system in general have continued to make it difficult to cast my lot with any one party.

Over the years I have voted for what I felt was the better candidate. In my younger years that usually, but by no means always, translated to the Democratic candidate. In more recent years, as my views evolved and the Democratic Party seemed to stray further and further from my values, my choices more commonly translated to voting for the Republican candidate. And in between and occasionally, despairing of both major parties, I have voted for the Libertarian candidate, who often has represented my views best even knowing there was virtually no chance that candidate would be elected.

Now, while I still won’t identify as a Republican, after Thursday’s travesty in the Senate Judiciary Committee and seeing the despicable, dishonest, and blatantly political behavior of the 10 Democratic senators on the committee, I believe it has become impossible for me to vote for any Democratic candidate, in any race, in any locale, ever. I don’t like using words like “evil” when it comes to political behavior, but what I witnessed on the tube during the grilling of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by the Democratic senators I feel qualifies as just that – evil. What’s more, I cannot see how any right-thinking, fair person of good will could ever support or vote for one of those people or support a party that would orchestrate – as was absolutely clear was the case – such a display of utter mindless political barbarity. Certainly not me. As of Thursday afternoon, I’m out.

A big part of my antipathy stems from my feelings on hypocrisy. I’ve never been able to stomach hypocrisy, regardless the party or source from which it stemmed. But it was hard to hold down my lunch observing the unbridled hypocrisy on display on the Democratic side of the committee dais.

Here is how Merriam-Webster defines hypocrisy:

“a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not : behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel

“especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion ”

Let’s run down the list of the most egregious cases of hypocrisy on display Thursday:

  • Dianne Feinstein, Senator from California, Ranking Member of the Minority. Feinstein received the letter from accuser Christine Blasey Ford in July and sat on in for two months. She did not mention it to the committee or committee chairman, she did not mention it to Judge Kavanaugh in her meeting with him, she did not request an FBI or any other kind of investigation of it, and she did not mention it at any point during the intensive confirmation hearings Judge Kavanaugh went through. Instead, she waited until after the process was completed and the appointment was set to go to a vote, and then suddenly she produced the letter, demanded an FBI investigation, and claimed she hadn’t gone public with it to protect Ms. Blasey Ford’s privacy (this is a whole other can of worms, but we’ll get to that a bit later in this posting). The Senate should censure Feinstein for the outrageous way she handled the whole matter.
  • Richard Blumenthal, Senator from Connecticut. Watching Blumenthal challenging Kavanaugh was, to put it politely, revolting. This fraud repeatedly lied about his military record during the Vietnam War, referring on several times during his electoral campaign to his service in Vietnam and what it was like coming back home from the war. The only problem with that was that Blumenthal never served in Vietnam. After receiving five draft deferments, and with conscription closing in on him, he enlisted in the Marine Reserve, meaning he was safe and sound in the U.S. and would never see combat, nor anything else, in Vietnam. Without faulting him for staying out of a war many people, including this author, sought to steer clear of, the issue is with how he deliberately lied and misconstrued his military service. His lies (which he explained by saying he had “misspoken”) were revealed by The New York Times, which noted that, while he had uttered them so many times they had become part of the news record in Connecticut, “It does not appear that Mr. Blumenthal ever sought to correct those mistakes.” Blumenthal at the time was the attorney general of the Nutmeg State, which would seem to carry a high bar for integrity. Blumenthal clearly lacked, and lacks, that integrity. Regardless, we can lay the blame for sending this fraud to the Senate on the voters of Connecticut, who elected him despite the falsehoods he plied on them. As is said, we get the government we deserve. Or, in this case, even less.
  • Mazie Hirono, Senator from Hawaii. This is another senator that makes one wonder how the voters of her state could ever send such a low figure to the Senate. Hirono showed her sexism last week with her own words, which I hope are henceforth always tied to her: “Guess who’s perpetuating all of these kind of actions? It’s the men in this country. And I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up.” That was bad enough, but it wasn’t the only thing Hirono said or did that underscores Hirono’s hypocrisy. She actually sent out a fundraising email 30 minutes into Blasey Ford’s testimony before the committee, seeking to garner donations for her political campaign off the back of someone she believed suffered sexual assault. When the faux pas was realized, Hirono’s crack team sent out a second email apologizing for the first one, saying any funds raised would be donated to “organizations helping survivors of sexual assault.”
  • Dick Durbin, Senator from Illinois. Now what can we say about “Dirty Dick,” a serial liar, or the voters who keep sending him back to the Senate? Dick Durbin is going to question someone’s veracity? Really? One can’t make these things up.
  • Kamala Harris, Senator from California. Harris distinguishes herself by browbeating and rudely speaking over white men giving testimony. She did this last year with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then Homeland Security Secretary and later the President’s Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly, and NSA Director Mike Rogers, and she did it again Thursday with Brett Kavanaugh. Harris, who has presidential aspirations, is known for protecting prosecutorial misconduct when she was California Attorney General, and while she is quick to criticize sexual harassment, she got her start and some cushy jobs as the 29-year-old mistress of Willie Brown, the married 60-year-old mayor of San Francisco who was then overseeing what is viewed as one of that city’s most corrupt administrations. There is so much corrupt and hypocritical about Harris one could write an entire piece, but we’ll let it go at this for now. As for the voters who sent Harris to Washington, she has said California is the future of the country. Let’s hope not.

While all the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, on the committee showed the highest respect for Ms. Blasey Ford – as well they should have – once it was Judge Kavanaugh’s turn to be heard, the Democrats turned into a pack of jackals, attacking him, challenging his veracity, asking him the most banal and minute questions about when he was a high school student, and demanding repeatedly that he call for an FBI investigation of himself and the allegations. Kavanaugh for his part called the Democrats’ actions for what they were, a “calculated and coordinated political hit.”

The irony of the Democrats’ clearly orchestrated campaign meant that any chance of a fair hearing for either Blasey Ford or Kavanaugh was lost. Even if one was persuaded to believe Blasey Ford, it was impossible to take her testimony out of the context of the Dems intent to derail Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation. And that same intent to derail his candidacy meant there was no fair chance given to Kavanaugh or his rebuttal of the accusations made against him, and he was forced into the impossible position of having to prove a negative. I’m inclined to think raising his voice and crying while making his statement, and later his growing belligerence at the Dems’ questions, didn’t enhance Kavanaugh’s position, but neither did it give us any real insights into the veracity or lack thereof in his statements.

Repeatedly we heard how Blasey Ford had made a compelling and credible presentation, but I’m sorry, I heard nothing of substance from her that we didn’t already know. She still was unable to state exactly where this alleged attack took place, how she got to or from the house in question (which the Arizona prosecutor, Andrea Mitchell, that the Republican senators relied on to question Blasey Ford and, at least at the outset, Kavanuagh, established was some 7 miles from Blasey Ford’s home), or the names of any other parties who could have corroborated her allegations. I don’t usually like to agree with political commentator Dick Morris, but I have to concur with his assessment of Blasey Ford as a “very damaged woman.” While something at some time somewhere might have happened to her, it was not at all clear that it was what she has accused Brett Kavanaugh of doing. I come back to my contention in my previous posting that we might never know what did, or did not, happen between Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh, and for someone to pretend they do know is absurd.

Perhaps the most contentious and most questionable issue concerns Feinstein’s insistence that she had not shared Blasey Ford’s accusations when she first received them in July because Blasey Ford wanted to maintain her anonymity. Yet Blasey Ford was attempting to share her accusations with the Washington Post, and eventually she shared those and her therapist’s notes with the Post as well. Now let’s say you wanted to preserve your privacy. Wouldn’t the Washington Post be the place you’d go to do that? Blasey Ford also acknowledged that her attorneys, Debra Katz and Michael Bromwich – both, especially Katz, strongly supportive of Democrats and Democratic causes – had been recommended to her by Feinstein’s staffers. While Bromwich said they were working pro bono, during one break Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was caught on video handing a cash-sized envelope to Bromwich, who promptly put it into his jacket pocket. What was in that envelope, we wonder?

Until this week I have not been a huge fan of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. But it was Graham who finally broke the tedium of Mitchell’s questioning of Kavanaugh and spoke out, just as the Democrats had had an opportunity to do, and called out the Democrats’ thinly veiled attempt at destroying Kavanaugh’s nomination, as well as his reputation.

Addressing Kavanaugh, Graham asked, “Are you aware that at 9:23 on the night of July the 9th, the day you were nominated to the Supreme Court by President Trump, Sen. [Chuck] Schumer [Senate Minority Leader] said – 23 minutes after your nomination – ‘I will oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination with everything I have and I hope a bipartisan majority will do the same. The stakes are simply too high for anything less.’ Well, if you weren’t aware of it, you are now.”

Then addressing committee Democrats, Graham bellowed, “If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020. You said that – not me!”

Speaking again to Kavanaugh, Graham said, “You’ve got nothing to apologize for. When you see [justices] Sotomayor and Kagan, tell them Lindsey said ‘hello,’ ’cause I voted for them. I would never do to them what you’ve [the Democrats] done to this guy. This is the most unethical – sham – since I’ve been in politics. And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy.”

Graham went on to say the Democrats had no interest in protecting Blasey Ford, adding “she is as much of a victim as you [Kavanaugh] are.”

And then addressing the bigger issue, Graham said, “This is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward, because of this crap. Your high school year book [one of the things the Democrats had repeatedly questioned Kavanaugh about].”

Even Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, often a darling of the liberal media though he is a Republican, unloaded on the politicization of the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh by the Dems.

After all was said in done, on Friday, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, after initially saying he would support Kavanaugh’s nomination, putting to rest whether the Republicans would have enough votes to secure the nomination, went off to a secret meeting with Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat. And by the time that meeting was over and Flake and Coons took their seats with the committee, Flake announced he would only vote for Kavanaugh if an FBI investigation was conducted. A time limit – maybe up to a week – he said should be set on this investigation so a vote could be held, but in one single stroke Flake handed to the Democrats exactly what they wanted, justifying his decision by saying he was doing it to keep the country from being torn apart.

Well, Sen. Flake, the country is already torn apart, and caving to such a naked political ploy won’t make it any less so. If anything, it will make the divisions deeper and more set. And as for me, the Democrats won’t get another one of my votes. After Thursday’s events, my conscience couldn’t accept giving them any.

Image CNN, AP via theguardian.com