Tag: sanders

DNC drifts further Left

After Bernie Sanders was robbed by the DNC in 2016, they are making some significant changes.  During the 2016 election, the DNC was basically put under the control of Hillary Clinton.  She had access to direct their funding, she was fed debate questions ahead of time, and she quickly gained control of DNC super delegates.  Super delegates are DNC operatives who are given convention votes along side the delegates the voters select.  In 2016 they helped turn the election away from populist socialist Bernie Sanders.

The DNC is now limiting the super delegates by preventing them from voting on a first ballot.  This means they will only be used if one candidate can’t secure the necessary delegates from the actual election process.  In a coming year of populist socialists like Sanders, Warren, and Ocasio-Cortez, the Left is now likely going to spit out a candidate from their more extremist side.  Older moderates like Joe Biden will have a tougher fight in the primary.

DNC curbs power of party super delegates

The Russian Collusion story ended up being a big disappointment for the DNC.  In fact, the handful of Russians indicted small crimes like identity theft did not match up to the hype heading into the Mueller investigation.  But what about Chinese collusion?

A new study has reported that the Communist country is funneling money into Leftist thinktanks to influence policy and elections.  United Front Work Department is a committee based in Communist China dedicated to influencing foreign countries to be favorable towards communism.  In addition to funding Democrat groups, they are also seeking to influence academia and may be violating US law.  The group is also looking to recruit students to help in their attempts to show communism in a favorable light in academia.

Communist China groups funding Leftist thinktanks and efforts in education

NASCAR racer Conor Daly has lost a sponsorship for his car after it was discovered that his father once used a racial slur in the 1980s.  I suppose I won’t spend much time speculating how many sports stars have fathers who said insensitive stuff 30+ years ago, but can we all agree that this is ridiculous?  People should be responsible for their own actions.  Lilly Diabetes was the sponsor.  They certainly have a right as a business to pull their sponsorship.  And we have a right to judge whether they were correct in their decision to punish Daly for the sins of his father.

Sponsor pulls out after discovery that NASCAR driver’s dad used racial slur 30 years ago

Cuomo: America was never great

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is in hot water for countering Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan with one of his own: “America was never that great”.  I don’t know how far that’s going to get him with the majority of Americans, but it will play well with the radical Democratic Socialists on the Left.  Just yesterday Bernie Sanders said America is “fundamentally immoral and wrong”.  Andrew Cuomo’s brother and CNN commentator Chris Cuomo recently got himself in trouble suggesting that punching right-wingers was morally justifiable.

Democrat governor says America was never great

Economists are taking Elizabeth Warren to task over her far fetched Accountable Capitalism Act.  Warren, who opposes free market capitalism, came up with the idea of having corporations have to obtain a “Federal charter” to operate.  The license, in addition to the hoops they have to jump through to work in their state, would raise $1 billion in fee taxes.  Warren’s so-called “charter” would require corporate directors to consider not just their stakeholders, but also their employees and communities.

Of course, this is moronic.  Any well run company has to consider the well-being of their employees and communities or the free market will eliminate that company from competition.  In fact, that point was made by none other than BET co-founder Robert Johnson.  The Black Entertainment Television co-founder said “Most companies and most boards look at all of their stakeholders, not only their shareholders. They look at their employees, they look at the community where they reside and do business, they look at even the vendors that they do business with. So I think it’s a solution in search of a problem that’s absolutely not necessary,”

What Warren’s bill, along with the exemptions for friends of the ruling party that we have seen with previous Socialist overreaches, would create a new avenue for crony capitalism.  In other words, to get an exemption for your federal charter or to guarantee you have your charter maintained, you have to stay friendly with the party in power.  We saw the same thing with ACA where Obama’s biggest supporters received exemptions to various new labor rules.

Warren’s new socialist measure to control businesses gets a failing grade

Trump is implementing what Obama failed to do with his new Buy America push.  Trump is planning on using an executive order to create rules to ensure that federal agencies use American made goods and services for their projects.  There are questions about the legality of the executive order and sure to be legal challenges.  There are also issues of increased costs to the taxpayers if the government has to buy more expensive American goods.

Obama tried and failed to pass a buy American provision in 2009 and again in 2011.  He backed off of the provision in 2009 after American companies who sell overseas swayed him away from the influence of the US labor unions with fears of foreign retaliation.  When Obama flopped back to supporting Buy American, the Jobs Act of 2011 was squashed by the GOP.

Our opinion?  It was wrong when Obama tried it, it’s wrong now.  Free trade produces lower prices for consumers and taxpayers, and competition helps American producers to be efficient.  A better way to help American producers is to cut taxes and regulation so that they can compete on the high end of the global scale.  But Trump is doubly wrong by doing this as an executive order rather than through Congress.  Many Democrats support Buy American provisions.  Labor unions love it.  By going it alone, Trump will alienate conservative and free market GOP members, but I doubt he’ll receive any recognition from the left.  Democrats also supported protectionist tariffs, until Trump did it.  All around this is poor strategy and contrary to free market principles.

Trump to accomplish Obama agenda item with Buy American executive order

Politifact bias check: Democrats and Nazis

Politifact has ruled on Don Jr’s claim that the Democrat platform was similar to the Nazi platform of 1930.  Their ruling?  Pants on fire.  How could it be anything else?  Politifact is frequently biased towards the Left.  In this case the result is no different and we give them an 80% bias rating in their analysis.  Let’s examine it.

First, for reference, here is our fact check of Donald Trump, Jr’s claim.  Unlike Politifact who skimmed the Nazi platform, we went point by point and showed the similarities.  Politifact started by restating Don’s claim incorrectly, then pointing out all the ways he was correct, and finally by splitting hairs and using technicalities to get to their rating.

What Donald Trump, Jr said: He didn’t say the Democrat platform was Hitler.  He didn’t say they were identical.  In fact, the points he made are really what Politifact should be looking into.  People keep calling the Republicans Nazis and saying that Trump only won because of Nazi support.  What quoted was this:

“You see the Nazi platform from the early 1930s … look at it compared to the DNC (Democratic Party) platform of today, you’re saying, ‘Man, those things are awfully similar’ to a point where it’s actually scary. It’s the exact opposite of what you’ve been told.”

What he also said was “I’ve been out hearing the left talking about all these things, fascism, Nazism on the right, and when you look at the actual history of how these things evolved, and when you actually look at that platform versus the platform of the modern left, you say wait a minute, those two are really heavily aligned and, frankly, contrary to the right.”

Here’s the actual interview.  Politifact links to it, but it’s worth watching because the context of his statement is that the Left are the ones out there calling Republicans Nazis, and it’s simply not what lines up with the facts.

Politifact then goes on to ironically quote an academic historian who says Democrats have absolutely nothing in common with the Nazi party.  This is at the top of the article, not halfway down where they admit there were many similarities.  But then they make their first huge error.

Politifact argues that Hitler did not run on the Nazi platform and that the platform was a compromise, not what Hitler wanted.  But he didn’t say the Democrats were Hitler.  He said their platform was like the early Nazi platform.  At this point Politifact is no longer factchecking what Donald Trump, Jr actually said.  They are now factchecking a caricature they have created based on their misunderstanding.

“Some points sound similar”

Here’s the funny part of the Politifact article.  They name six points in the Nazi platform that are, just as Donald Trump, Jr said, similar to the DNC platform.  We found more, but Politifact is charitable to the DNC.  In fact, they go on to say they feel that ending war profiteering, nationalizing certain corporations, ending land speculation, and oppression of media that is contrary to the state are not goals of the DNC.  But even if we leave Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of this, these were high priorities of the Obama administration.

In fact, many of the new regulations after the 2008 crash were to prevent land speculation, Obama nationalized portions of the auto industry, and Democrats have spent the last 60 years fighting against war profiteering. Dinesh D’Souza who made the film Don Jr went to see was pardoned by the Trump administration after Obama threw him in jail for a slap on the wrist campaign finance crime.

In Politifact’s summation, they admit that there are similarities.  They try to say that of the six similarities they will admit to, they are also in the Republican platform.  Although, according to their article only half of those six are similar to Republican platform points.  Then rather than ruling half true, partly true, or even mostly untrue, they slap a pants on fire rating.  We believe Donald Trump, Jr’s claim deserves a half true rating at the bare minimum.  When you throw in the diversity of DNC candidates who will affect future platforms, including rising star Ocasio-Cortez, this claim would be mostly true if it weren’t for the technicality that this next year’s platform hasn’t been written yet.

8/9/18: Socialism falters, Chris Collins in trouble

Some Democrats are cheering the fall of Democratic Socialism.  In Tuesday’s primary, the candidates endorsed and supported by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped like flies.  Democrat voters went for the more middle of the left side of the road liberals who don’t openly talk about doubling taxes.  But while Democrats #walkaway from their energetic rising stars, that still leaves them with a November election platform of raising taxes and obstructing Trump.  We’ll see if that ends up being a winning combination.  The candidates on the left with the most success were ones backed by none other than Hillary Clinton.

Down goes Socialism, establishment Democrat party is back on top

Republican Chris Collins is in trouble for insider trading.  The New York representative called family members after the failure of a new drug being developed by a company where he served on the board.  The insider trading saved his son and others about $768,000 in losses.  Collins has vowed to fight.  Congress had passed strong anti-insider trading laws in 2012, but those were walked back the following year and quietly repealed by Obama.

Chris Collins hit for insider trading making his seat a target in November

Speaking of the midterms, Democrats are in trouble in the Senate.  But to take the House, they believe there are only 15 competitive races they have to win.  Of the 23 seats Dems need to retake the House for the first time since 2010, they believe they have 8 in the bag already.  Democrats are not running on much, except for independence from other Democrats and hatred for Trump.  In fact, it’s almost hard to tell who 2018 Democrat candidates despise more, Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump.  The American people meanwhile have to decide if they believe them.  Democrats have worked in lock step to obstruct any sort of government movement, so it is kind of weird for them to pretend to be independent now when an election rolls around.  The great economy and success of Trump’s agenda doesn’t help either.

Democrats confident in their strategy of having no agenda and opposing themselves

Need to Know 7/30/18

How much will Democratic Socialism cost?  How about triple what our government costs now.  Over the weekend I mentioned how Ocasio-Cortez wants to raise taxes by $4 trillion to have an eco-friendly liberal economy.  Government guaranteed jobs comes in at another $543 billion.  A new study is saying universal healthcare through Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan would cost another $3.2 trillion per year.  That’s makes for an annual budget of $12 trillion per year to cover the Democratic Socialist agenda.  The current budget is $4 trillion and we have annual deficits of about a half a trillion.  Extrapolating that out, we’d not just have to increase taxes 3x.  We’d also have to cover another 1.5 trillion dollar deficit.

How would you like to pay three times the taxes you are paying now and still have our government crushed with debt?

Study: Medicare for all completely unaffordable

President Trump is calling for a government shut down if Democrats continue to obstruct immigration reform.  But you need to remember how this works.  If a Republican Congress puts together a spending bill that Democrats obstruct, then it’s a Republican shutdown.  If a Republican President refuses to sign a bill that doesn’t take care of problems like immigration, then it’s a Republican shut down.  If Democrats can’t get enough votes to pass their agenda because Republicans are obstructing, then it’s a Republican shut down.  If Democrats control both houses and the Presidency, but can’t get their agenda passed, it’s a Republican shut down.  Basically, it’s always the fault of the Republicans.

Trump says fix it or shut it down

Trump’s tariffs have created odd bedfellows.  Democrats, who up until Trump did it supported protective tariffs, are now 100% anti-tariff.  Not really, but whatever it takes to win elections.  Meanwhile, the hated Koch brothers have signaled they will work with Democrats who oppose tariffs and support them.  So you have a Republican President who supports tariffs, Democrats who suddenly oppose them, and Libertarians who are going to put up money to elect Democrats who are anti-libertarian on everything but tariffs.  What a weird world we live in.  I wonder who Democrats hate more, Trump or the Kochs?

Koch brothers to back Democrats over tariff spat

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Hall of Fame

The latest gaff by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez kind of makes me wonder if she is a GOP operative secretly working to stop Bernie Sanders style socialism.  Ocasio-Cortez was recently in Kansas campaigning for Brent Welder, promising to “flip this seat red”.

This follows Ocasio-Cortez’s assertion that the only reason unemployment is so low is because everyone has two jobs.  Unemployment is actually measured by surveying the percentage of people who are currently seeking employment.  It has nothing to do with how many jobs each person has.

Ocasio-Cortez got famous for beating Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th district.  The district is so blue that if Crowley and Ocasio-Cortez both ran and split the liberal vote, one of them would still win.  But Ocasio-Cortez didn’t seem to take that into account when she attacked Crowley for trying to run a third party campaign because he had originally registered for multiple parties, and New York won’t allow him to remove his name from the ballot.  Crowley endorsed her and promised to support her, but Ocasio-Cortez lashed out in paranoia when she found out his name would still be on the ballot.

Perhaps what made her infamous though was her admission that she has no clue what she’s talking about when it comes to Israel.  Ocasio-Cortez fumbled through an interview where she tried to insinuate that Israel was blocking Palestinians from accessing their homes and actively occupying Palestine.  Eventually she gave up.  In a later interview, she promised that she would “get with activists” so she could learn more about the Israel/Palestine issue.

Not all Democrats are on the Ocasio-Cortez Socialist train.  Ocasio-Cortez herself supported lower taxes when she was a business owner, but her business failed shortly before she switched to Socialism and tried to get involved in politics for the first time.  At age 26, Ocasio-Cortez went to vote for the first time and discovered she had been purged from the New York voter rolls for 8 years of inactivity.  That was 2016.  She then joined the Bernie Sanders campaign and rose from non-voting millennial failed business owner to rising star of the DNC.  But not all Democrats are happy with her.

Florida representative Alcee Hastings has already shut down any prospects of her taking over the DNC.  “Meteors fizz out,” Hastings said. “what she will learn in this institution is that it’s glacial to begin with, and therefore no matter how far you rise, that’s just how far you will ultimately get your comeuppance.”

Perhaps her paranoia was justified.  One time relevant Democrat Joe Lieberman is telling Democrats to vote for Joe Crowley.  The party split between moderates and socialists is more defined than ever.  Who knows, maybe she’ll succeed in turning more districts “red”.

 

7/21/18 Comics

head on backwards

Maybe you’ve run into this argument.  Generally, I think Democrats don’t want a border wall and don’t want illegal aliens charged with a crime because they support open borders.  But if you challenge them on it, they get offended.  Ever try pointing out that Hillary Clinton supported a border “fence”? Like when she voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006?  Oh look, here’s video of her bragging about voting for it:

 

So let’s talk about the cost.  $21.6 billion.  That’s no small amount.  That’s almost twice as much as it costs to build an aircraft carrier.  So some, perhaps Libertarians and Conservatives, have a reason to think a border wall, fence, barrier, or whatever you want to call it, would cost too much.  But not Democrats.

In 2016, Obamacare cost taxpayers $110 billion.

But let’s ignore Obama’s previous spending. Let’s ignore his average deficits of $900 billion a year.  Let’s talk about the future.  Democrats, such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and nearly every other potential future Democrat Presidential candidate supports guaranteed jobs or universal basic income.  The only one who doesn’t is Joe Biden, who at his age might be struggling reading internal party polls.

A government guaranteed jobs program would ONLY cost $543 billion.

So Democrats really have no credibility when it comes to the argument that a wall costs too much.  Here’s an idea for Democrats to think about.  Guaranteed employment means people need something to work on.  Why not have them build a wall?

To Those Who Suddenly Care, Welcome

I feel like I should welcome all the people who are suddenly now concerned about violent protesters. When St Louis was burning and cops were being assassinated in their cars, people got upset if you said you support the police or that this went beyond free speech.

When Antifa, angry that Trump won, were smashing Starbucks windows and burning property in the streets, we were told this is all free speech and #resistance.

When protesters set Berkeley ablaze, Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders said he understood their anger, condemned their violence, and admonished the violent ones not to say they were Bernie Sanders supporters.

People cheered when an Antifa member punched Richard Spencer in the face. I’ll admit, I cheered.
People paused for a moment when an alt-leftist from Bernie Sanders campaign staff walked onto a softball field and started gunning down GOP congressmen. In fact for almost a whole 24 hour news cycle there was unity in the thought that a line had been crossed. At the same time, Antifa on social media cheered the attack on right-wingers who opposed the Socialist agenda.
As Antifa emailed threats of violence to Fascist rally organizers and got nationalist events canceled through threats of violence, many sat in silent approval because our violence is apparently better than their violence.
Now that the racist Fascists have drawn blood, people are starting to care. In fact, they care so much that if you even mention “both sides”, you are shouted down and lumped with the racists. Condemning all violence and promoting all free speech has become anathema to the crowds. It is as evil as suggesting all lives matter when a cop is shot dead in his patrol car.
The Socialists of the Antifa movement and the Fascists of the Nazi/KKK movement have one goal in mind. They seek power. One seeks it through populist appeals and promises to those they seek to control, the other through an overt demand that all others should bow to them. Both sides oppose liberty. Both sides only approve of their own free speech and believe the other should be limited.
The only way to truly diffuse this war that the vast majority of Americans want no part of is to embrace liberty. The demands of both the Nazis and the Socialist Antifa are incompatible with the constitution. Unfortunately, embracing liberty means giving up aspirations of controlling others through big government. Even non-radical Republicans and Democrats struggle with that concept.
If you are finally ready to denounce all violence and all attempts by partisan groups to gain power over our lives through big government, then welcome. If you are simply mad that their side killed someone on your side, then this article isn’t for you.

No Haunting for James Hodgkinson

For 8 years the media waited, seemingly hoping and praying that their charge of violent domestic Conservative terrorism would be proven true.  Every time there was a mass shooting, the media had what seemed to be pre-written stories about the TEA Party bogeyman ready to go.  When James Holmes, a radicalized leftist, walked into a movie theater and shot it up, the media had a 52 year old TEA Party member named Jim Holmes up on the screen within hours.

Now we finally have that guy.  Hodgkinson was a frequent protester who was politically active, hated the President, planned out an assault, carefully picked his targets, and did it with clear mainstream partisan political motives.  He wasn’t a fringe character acting on conspiracy theories.  He wasn’t living in a cabin in the woods with a scraggly beard talking to the trees.  He wasn’t even a religious extremist.  James Hodgkinson was a campaign volunteer who in posts and letters clearly articulated the views of his party.

He was everything the media was hoping for. The only problem is Obama is no longer the President. Hodgkinson wasn’t a TEA Party protester carrying his 2nd amendment and anti-big government views to their final conclusion. He was a 99%er fed on the left’s rhetoric about Trump being a traitor and the rich seeking to harm the poor. When the left says Republicans want dirty air and dirty water, when they have commercials where Republicans rob Grandma or push her off a cliff, when they argue that Republican policies will result in the deaths of women and children or destroy our planet, apparently their followers listen.

Bernie Sanders just four days before the shooting was in Chicago calling for political revolution against Trump. He accused Trump of engineering policies that would kill women and children. He called Trump a liar. He announced that Trump would not be allowed to get away with it. Four days later, Hodgkinson walked onto a softball field with a rifle and a handgun and carried out “justice” and “resistance” against GOP congressmen.

As of this post, the shooting has happened three days ago.  Surely James Hodgkinson is still in the news cycle being analyzed and discussed at length, right?  Wouldn’t his ghost haunt the headlines for at least a week? A politically motivated shooting by a mainstream protester. Surely this is as newsworthy now as it would have been for the last 8 years, right?

CNN.Com has plenty of space for headlines.  Hodgkinson isn’t there. Of the entire front page, there is a story about Rand Paul on the baseball field and a story about one of the Capitol police officers throwing out the first pitch. Headlines that are more important than discovering what made Hodgkinson tick?  “Watch Newt Gingrich Contradict Himself”. “How NBC Botched the Megyn Kelly Rollout”. “State Budget Puts Powerball in Jeopardy”.

NBCNews does a little better, including a link to a US News report that the “Baseball Practice Gunman Had List of GOP Lawmaker’s Names”.  One other headline says “Guns Recovered in Virginia Shooting Appear Legally Bought”.  I would assume that’s about Hodgkinson.  The Washington Post offered a biography of Hodgkinson after the shooting suggesting that he had no idea who was on the practice field, despite eye witness accounts that he verified it was the GOP practice team before opening fire and had a list of targets.

Don’t hold your breath.  Will we find out if Hodgkinson was in the audience earlier this week when Sanders called for revolution? Will we find out what his duties were with the Sanders campaign? Is it possible Hodgkinson was ever paid by the DNC to show up at a Trump rally? Don’t expect the same sort of media curiosity you might have seen if Obama was President and James Hodgkinson was a TEA Party activist.