When Everyone's a White Nationalist

According to the Daily Beast, the New England Patriots are the team of white nationalists. Why? Because their owner, their coach and their quarterback all supported Trump. Plus they're from Boston and, apparently, Boston is a hotbed of racism.

And, by the way, if you root for the Patriots then you must be a white nationalist, too. Presumably, even if you're black. It doesn't matter if you actually believe in white nationalism or not. Just by rooting for a team with a tenuous connection to the president you are a white nationalist.

Some days it sucks to be a sport fan. Or a resident of Boston.

The CovCath Kids - What It's Really About

It's been a week and a half since a story went viral about a bunch of white Catholic boys taunting a Native American Elder and Vietnam Veteran but I'm still seeing stuff about it. Even though the story totally fell apart the next day, people are still arguing about it.

Let's get this straight - people don't really care that nasty, racist insult were hurled at the NA in question, Nathan Philips. I know this for an absolute fact and I have proof. The group the Black Hebrew Israelites did exactly that. They shouted terrible, racist and homophobic insults at both the Native American march and the Catholic kids and no one cares. No one is doxing them. No one suggested they should be thrown in a wood chipper. No pretty writers from SNL have offered oral sex to anyone who punches one of them. They have received no death threats. They've barely even been mentioned in news reports.

But people are still hating on the Catholic boys and pronouncing the MAGA hat to be the equivalent of a KKK hood.

It's clear that the whole thing is just an excuse for people to show how much they hate white Catholics who are also Trump supporters. The worst they are guilty of is "smirking while white".

That's why so many conservatives were among the first to pile on the kids. They were never-Trump conservatives and they embraced a chance to prove to the world how terrible Trump supporters are, especially if they are also religious kids from a hick state. The left is even worse. The sight of a white, MAGA-hat wearig kid facing down a person of color is so upsetting to them that they want to eliminate MAGA hats from public spaces altogether. Even a member of Congress has called for a ban on wearing MAGA hats in public "until we figure out what's going on." (Notice the irony here, he used almost identical phrasing to Trump's original pause on Muslim immigration.)

There's a lot of racism going on here and don't tell me that teenagers from Kentucky hold institutional power. There's also some misandry (hatred of men) and anti-Catholic bigotry. And it's all very ugly coming from the side that assures us it stands for inclusion and diversity.

The Catholic Kids and the Mob

The first accounts were terrible - a bunch of teenagers from a Catholic school who were in DC for the Right to Life March and were wearing MAGA hats surrounded a Native American elder who was also a Viet Nam vet and shouted insults at him. Saturday was full of people condemning the kids,

Then further videos came out showing that the the NA elder, Nathan Philips walked into the group of high schoolers. These videos had sound proving that none of the kids were yelling insults, and no one yelled "Build the wall". Conservatives who had condemned the kids fell all over themselves apologizing for believing initial reports. More liberal sources have doubled down. They say that Phillips was trying to defuse a confrontation between the kids and a hostile group known as the Black Hebrew Israelites. Phillips has even given an interview about how he walked between a beast and it's prey. People on the left who had doubts have been quite happy to accept this explanation.

I've watched the video (actually, only the part starting where Phillips arrived). Here's what happened.

After the parade the kids were told they could look around DC but to gather at the Lincoln Memorial by 5:30 to meet the buses. The Black Hebrew group happened to be in the area. They are a black-separatist group and couldn't resist yelling insults at a group of white kids, some of them wearing MAGA hats. Some of the kids responded by doing school cheers.

While this was going on, a third group arrived. This was a Native American protest lead by Phillips. It's possible that Phillips thought he was helping but he didn't waste a second deciding who was right or who started things or trying to separate the groups. He walked straight into the kids, banging on a drum and chanting.

Who in their right minds thinks that's how to resolve a conflict?

At first the kids thought that Phillips was joining them and doing a Washington Redskins "Tomahawk Chop" so they joined in with the chanting for a minute. Yes, this is clueless but these are teenagers and they are usually clueless. Phillips got in the face of one kid who was initially smiling but his expression changed as he realized that something different was going on than he had assumed. That's where the "smirk" came from. The kid stood his ground while Phillips continued to chant and beat a drum in his face. Then things broke up. No one was harmed. Most of the insults were hurled at the kids and they did an excellent job of not throwing insults back.

The incident boils down to a bunch of adults taunted a group of white teenagers, just because they were white teenagers and because some had MAGA hats but the teenagers refused to retaliate in kind. If anyone in the media had bothered to check this then there would have been no story.

Why didn't they check? Because it was too juicy a story. It had everything. It discredited the March For Life, it reflects badly on Catholics (WaPo followed up with a story on the Catholic Church's historic treatment of Indians), It paints anyone in a MAGA hat as an ignorant racist and it allowed pundits and celebrities to insist that Trump himself is directly to blame. People in the media might have known that eventually the full facts would get out but it doesn't matter. Most people will never hear the full story. The MSM continues to report it as if the kids did something terrible. I know people who watched the video and still insist that the kids are somehow to blame.

And there's so much blame. Celebrities are calling for the names of the kids and suggesting violent attacks on them. People are bragging about wanting to punch them. They are being held up as an example of white who are breath in white supremacy and misogyny daily. Not a soul on the left seems to think it's wrong for a black separatist group to start insulting a group of white guys fr being white and no one complains about Phillips assuming the white guys must be the problem.

Lists are being circulated of officials to call to have the kids expelled. Their lives may be ruined because of fake news. And the left will celebrate because it causes people to be wary about wearing MAGA hats in public or attending the Right to Life march. And it gives the left something else to attack President Trump over. This is already being used as evidence that Trump is a racist and encourages racists. Who cares if some innocent kids' lives are ruined when so much "good" can come from it? And they're just white kids, they deserve to have their lives ruined because of Bret Kavanaugh.

About the Gillette Ad

Gillette has a new ad out. Instead of trying to sell "shaving systems" with ever-increasing number of blades, they are lecturing men on how to be better men. You can see it here. Currently it's running 2-1 against with nearly 1,000,000 down votes and around a half million up votes. The ad combines elements of the #MeToo movement with a long line of men at their grills excusing bad actions by saying, "Boys will be boys."

Personally I find the ad offensive.

At its core the ad is based on a stereotype and a misconception. The stereotype is that men constantly engage in bullying and sexist behavior because we don't know any better. It's excused because all men do it and it's almost expected of us.

But this isn't so. I'm in my 60s and I've never heard a boy or man excused from bullying, etc with "boys will be boys". In fact, I've only heard that phrase on TV. If a guy sees a boy beating on another then he'll break it up. If he sees a pack of boys bullying a single boy then he'll step in and stop it (unless he's in personal fear for his own safety). I personally broke up something like that once. Men (and women) know that sort of thing is not allowed and we stop it. That's part of toxic masculinity.

The ad has a quick shot of "mansplaining" where a boss has his hand on a woman's arm while he explains what she "really" meant. I question how often that actually happens. I certainly never saw it. I was in hundreds, maybe thousands of meetings during my career and  never saw anything like that happen. If it had, most of the women I worked with would have bitten the guy's arm off for explaining what she'd just said.

We also knew not to touch female coworkers. Even in the 1980s it was forbidden and, after the Clarence Thomas confirmation in 1991, every man in the country got training telling him not to touch female coworkers.

That's the misconception that's at the heart of the #MeToo. It isn't male privilege that let these men get away with sexual assault. Regular guys would be arrested in a moment for that stuff. And it wasn't white privilege. It was rich guy privilege. Go back and listen to Donald Trump on the hot mic Billy Bush tape. He's saying that he likes to kiss and touch women and they let him because he's rich and famous.

There's an additional element to it, too, though, Progressive Privilege. Look at how many of the men caught in #MeToo have been on the far left. There's a pair of factors at work here. One is a sense of entitlement, "I do so much good that I'm entitled to break some rules." That's reciprocated. Look at the reactions to Bill Clinton's impeachment. Multiple feminists came out and said that they didn't care what he did to individual women in private because he kept abortion legal. There's a related feeling that "He's one of us so he couldn't really have done such a thing." Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen confessed to that attitude in December, admitting that previously he'd dismissed all allegations about Clinton out of hand because "he's one of us."

This is the progressive version of "boys will be boys". Bu tit had nothing to do with ordinary schleps at their grill and no scolding from a "shaving system" company will affect it.

Why Would President Trump Take the Interpreter's Notes?

The New York Times broke a story that President Trump was trying so hard to keep the contents of his private meetings with Russian Premiere Putin secret that he confiscated the interpreter's notes. Why, people ask, would he do that if it was an innocent meeting?

Quick answer: because the WaPo already printed transcripts of his first to calls to foreign heads of state and he didn't trust people not to leak his meeting with Putin.

A President must be able to have frank conversations with foreign leaders without the contents printed and examined by every would-be pundit.

You don't need any further reason than that.

If Trump was actually Putin's puppet then he'd be a lot more pro-Iran (Russia ally) and a lot less pro-Israel and pro-Saudi (Russian opponents) and he'd have refused to give the Ukraine lethal weapons to combat Russian incursions instead of arming them.

Are the Never-Trumpers Happy Now?

Before the election, sort-of-conservatives such as George Will and Conservatives-Turned-Liberal such as Max Boot openly rooted for exactly what we got: a House controlled by Democrats who are "acting as a check on President Trump" and a Republican-controlled Senate to continue to confirm conservative judges (Boot man have wanted the Dems to control both houses).

So here we are. Democrats control the House and refuse to compromise with President Trump on the shutdown over the border wall. They could ask for a DACA deal or something similar but they refuse to. It's all or nothing.

They've also introduced bills to take federal control of election law, outlaw assault guns (including some handguns), impeach the president (two bills), and plans to abolish the terrorism committee and replace it with a committee devoted to investigating the President.

Is all of that really what the never-Trumpers wanted?

Walls Can Be Cut!!!

A widespread story today is that the prototype walls were tested for vulnerabilities and one with steel slats can be cut. Here's the picture:

So, the implication is that the wall is useless. Is that true?

The material obtained through FOIA request had a lot of redactions. Supposedly the bars were cut with "commonly available tools" and the news reports all implied that means a trip to the local hardware store. It's hard to tell the scale from this picture. I'm going to make a wild guess that these bars are made from 1/4" mild steel and filled with concrete. I've cut mild steel by hand before and it's not difficult but it takes a long time. These bars are several inches in diameter which would make them very difficult to cut. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that it would be nearly impossible to cut these with a standard hack saw.

Then there's that center. Let's assume it's concrete. I haven't tried cutting concrete by hand with a hack saw but I know that  it's very hard and abrasive. It would ruin a hack saw blade pretty fast.

So, whatever they used, I doubt it was a hand hack saw. There are a couple of other possibilities. They might have used a saber saw with an extra-long hack saw blade. That would also require a generator and a supply of replacement blades because of the concrete. That could certainly do it but it would take a while. You can get these saws with batteries but you'd have to carry a bunch of spares and a generator would probably be lighter and easier to carry. The saw and generator will probably set you back $500 or so.

There's also the emergency saw. That's gas powered and made to cut through nearly anything. Those cost more but they are easier to transport. They run $700 to $3000.

You'd better carry a sledge hammer, too. It appears that those pieces were knocked out with a hammer after cutting.

Does this count as easily available tools? Yes, I can get them at Lowes. Are these tools that would-be immigrants will want happen to be carrying? Not a chance. Could they carry them for dozens or hundreds of miles? Possibly. Could they surreptitiously cut through the wall with these before being discovered? Probably not. I'm guessing it would take fifteen minutes per cut, minimum and four cuts would be needed. So they'd be cutting for an hour or more and raising a racket.

And that's assuming they can afford the proper tools in the first place. Yes, the coyotes can afford them but they will pass the costs on to the would-be-immigrants.

Also, keep in mind that this prototype does not match the picture that President Trump tweeted out. These were prototypes and the whole purpose was to see what the strengths and weaknesses are of each design and to try to correct them.

A few other silly suggestions about getting past the wall:

Ladders. You'll need at least two 30' ladders, one for each side. Those run around $300 and an extension ladder will be more than 15' long when retracted. That's going to be a lot of fun carrying long distances. You can probably get away with a flexible ladder for the other side. These ladders can only hold one person (two if they are light) so it's going to take a while to get a group over the wall.

Grappling hooks. The schematic the President tweeted didn't show anything for a grappling hook to catch on to. Assuming there is a cross-bar near the top, you'd still have to throw the hook 30' up which is difficult then bat-walk up a smooth wall and rappel down the other side. How many people can do this? Seriously? I doubt if I could. I had enough trouble with a nice thick rope in gym class.

Tunnels. How deep will the steel slats go? Let's assume ten feet. That means you have to dig at least 12 feet deep to get under it. In soft soil that will be tough. In hard, dry dirt it will be very difficult. Remember, once you get under the wall you have to dig back up and someone has to haul out the dirt. And you can't use pick axes or shovels on the other side because you will be digging up so there will be no room. That's an all-day job. Longer tunnels that are harder to find will take a lot longer. We're talking weeks for that. And you have to have a contact on the American side. Tunnels like that already exist but they are used for the drug trade. They are too valuable for smuggling immigrants.

The point here is that, while walls won't stop people who are very determined and have unlimited resources, they will stop people with limited resources and slow incursions enough to detect them before they make it through the wall. That means that the wall would be effective.

Trump and the Obama's Wall

On December 30, 2018, President Trump tweeted: President and Mrs. Obama built/has a ten foot Wall around their D.C. mansion/compound. I agree, totally necessary for their safety and security. The U.S. needs the same thing, slightly larger version!

The fact checkers pounced, quoting neighbors as saying,

It turns out though that the Obamas don't actually have a wall around their home in Washington, D.C. Two of Obamas' neighbors talked to the Washington Post and said that while the home does have some security features that other homes in the area lack, the house itself can be seen from the street. "There's a fence that goes along the front of the house, but it's the same as the other neighbors have," the neighbor said. "It's tastefully done."

When the Obamas purchased the nine-bedroom mansion for $8.1 million in 2017 they added security fencing in front of the home to fulfill the needs of the Secret Service. There is now a guard booth and fencing in the back of the house as well. But hardly a wall. "There is no 10-foot wall in the front, back or sides of the house—and no wall is going up," another neighbor said.

Several things need to be pointed out starting with the fact that the President was making a joke. Yes, it was a pointed joke, but it was a joke. Who fact-checks jokes? President Obama constantly used straw man arguments to score points, ascribing positions to his opponents that no one had taken but he was never fact-checked.

While Trump may have gotten details wrong about the Obama residence, pictures from before they moved in show that a combination brick wall-fence surrounded the entire property except for the front of the house. That wall appears to be in the 6-8 foot range. A reasonable person would say that the property had a wall around it. But we aren't living in reasonable times.

There was an article from TMZ from two years ago showing pillars for additional fencing being built in front of the Obama residence. The Washington Post fact-checker didn't actually go look for himself. He relied on calls from two neighbors and the photographs used are all from before the Obamas moved in. Is it possible that the neighbors lied or stretched the truth in order to embarrass President Trump? Or they might simply be behind the times. The President has amended his request from a solid cement wall to a 30 foot fence of steel slats. The neighbors could be splitting hairs over the Obama house having a steel fence instead of a solid wall. We don't know since no one has provided recent photographs

What we do know is that reporters can't get anywhere near the Obama house to find out. The Daily Caller tried and was turned back by the Secret Service. So the President's tweet is being fact-checked on the basis of hearsay. No bias there.

So why all the fuss? Why even bother fact-checking a joke, even if it's a pointed joke?

Because the point of the joke is valid. If you want to keep someone out you build a wall. All of Trump's opponents who claim that walls don't work are ignoring that a fence or wall is always the first step in a security system. And it's usually the most important part.

So all the sloppy fact-checking is meant to distract us from the President's point. It also enforces the "Trump lies all the time" meme.

An Open Letter to Mitt Romney and John Kasich

Dear Mitt and John,

I regret to say that it's over between us. I voted for both of you for president and I probably will again if it is a choice between one of you and Elizabeth Warren but even then it will be a reluctant vote because I know you'll end up betraying conservative principles.

But the big problem is Trump.

Both of you are enjoying acclaim from the left for your Trump-bashing. You are greeted as the saviors of the Republican Party and the antidote to Trump. But here's the thing, these people will never vote for you, ever. You don't represent them, you represent what they want their opposition to be - moderate and ineffective. You both had your shots at being president. Mitt at least made it to the finals but John, you barely made it out of the starting gate. Neither of you has done anything to endear yourselves to conservatives since then. Yes, Mitt, you won a Senate seat in a can't-loose race but that doesn't give you national credibility and John, you burned through your good-will as governor by spending your second term running for president and appearing on out-of-state talk shows.

Both of you spend a lot of time complaining about Trump not being presidential but neither of you seems to appreciate that the final choice was between Trump and Crooked Hillary. While lionized as  the most-qualified presidential candidate ever (talk to George H W. Bush about that) no one bothered to look at her record. She accomplished nothing as senator and her term as Secretary of State was destructive to world peace. She was responsible for transforming Libya from a prosperous nation ruled by an authoritarian to a poverty-stricken failed state. She supported both sided in Egypt and Syria which eventually caused a coup in Egypt and a civil war in Syria. And she managed to antagonize Putin. To say nothing of Hillary's ability to lose two "hers to loose" presidential races. Do the two of you seriously think that she would be a better president than Trump is?

In your attacks on the President you are showing that you value style over actions. You would be happier with a socialist from an Ivy League college than a coarse billionaire from Queens.

As a conservative, I am judging Trump by his actions instead of his tweets. The economy is doing far better than experts said was possible. The worst authoritarian excesses of the Obama years are being rolled back. The government set a record for the fewest new regulations created in a year (that's supposed to be a good thing). Border security is finally being taken seriously. Yes, that's messy. It's always messy when a law that was ignored for years starts to be enforced. But it needed to be done.

A lot of the messiness of Trump's administration is like that - Obama tried to change the norms and Trump is restoring things to the way they were as recently as 2014. This needed to be done but I don't think either of you has the guts to do it. You'd tut-tut about how Obama exceeded his authority but you'd let things stand rather than upset people. You'd fail to stand up for conservative principles.

And that's why we're through.

I wish the two of you luck in your new endeavors, Mitt in the Senate and John on talk shows that I don't watch. But please don't expect and support from me i the future.

Mark

The Wall and the Shutdown

Right now the federal government is "shut down" with no end in sight over President Trump's demand for a border wall. Trump's position is easy to understand. The wall was his biggest campaign promise and trump has probably learned from George H. W. Bush's "read my lips" promise which was a big factor in his single-term as president. As it is, Trump has backed off a lot from his original promise of a wall going from ocean to ocean. The current one will be much smaller but will still target areas with the most border crossings.

Trump's desire for a border wall is reasonable. It may not stop border crossings but it will slow them a lot. $5 billion sounds like a lot of money but the wall will pay for itself in reduced border enforcement costs (like the $1.3 billion the Democrats proposed) and reduced demand for federal aid for illegal immigrants. It will also help wages since the flood of unskilled workers depresses wages in general.

So why are Democrats so opposed to the wall? I can think of a few reasons, none of them complimentary to the Democrats.

The first is simple opposition to Trump. Many people reflexively take the opposing side from anything that Trump proposes, even if it means reversing themselves. So they are willing to see the government shut down rather than see Trump fulfill a campaign promise.

Opposition also comes from people who believe in open borders. They want to welcome anyone who wants to come to the US. While laudable, they will eventually run into the adage that you can have open borders or a welfare state but not both.

The Democratic Congressional leadership has to answer to both of these groups but I think there's more to their opposition than just this. After all, their counter-proposal is for money for border enforcement. This should be treated as a trap. Border enforcement without a wall means more children separated from their parents and more children dying in custody. That stokes opposition to Trump and helps motivate people to vote Democrat.

In the long-term, though, the Democratic party is counting on a continuing moderate influx of Hispanics. They are counting on this group to give them a permanent majority through demographics. The Democratic leadership may be willing to moderate the influx through heightened enforcement but they want to be able to revert. That's why they can't allow a wall. They are expecting that two years from now President Beto will agree to slashing enforcement funds again. But you can't defund a wall. It keeps on stopping immigrants, even if the current president welcomes them.

Hollywood and McCarthyism

Hollywood loves to make movies about the days of the McCarthy hearings and the Blacklist when writers couldn't get work (actually they could but they had to use pseudonyms or fronts). These movies always side with the poor people accused of being communists, usually portraying them as hapless victims who only joined the Communist Party to impress a girl or some such. The almost never show the truth which is that the Communist Party of Hollywood was dedicated to the overthrow of the US government and was directly controlled by the Kremlin. All of this came out in the early 90s after the fall of the USSR during a brief period when their records were public.

The point of all of these movies is to make us root for the dissident and boo the officious accuser who is willing to ruin the lives of hard-working, talented people over a difference in philosophy. Hollywood is for the underdog.

Except is isn't.

Look at what happened to Kevin Hart. He was chosen to host the 2019 Oscars. Within three days he was out after people dug up some homophobic tweets he made a decade or more ago. Never mind that he recanted and apologized for them years ago. He was judged unsuitable to host the Oscars.

Hollywood has taken the place of McCarthy and no one is there to stand up for their victims.

Note, the one exception to the movies about the Hollywood communists was the Coen Brothers' Hail Caesar. That movie correctly showed a group of writers who were dedicated communists although it was an over-the-top portrayal that included kidnapping an actor and sending the ransom to the USSR. After The Majestic, I can forgive the Coens' exaggerations.

How Socialism Fails - a Case Study

Whenever Venezuela is brought up as an example of failed socialist policies, American socialists immediately claim that the country is not really socialist and that it's problems are due to corruption and the plummet in oil prices rather than socialism. Regardless of other issues, their policies on food prices are pure socialism and should be examined as such.The following is a highly simplified account of actual policies Venezuela practiced and their results. Given Venezuela's hyper-inflation, their real prices are meaningless so I made up some round numbers to illustrate the point.

The government decided that food prices were too high so they went to the grocers and told them, "You are charging $10 for beef. We want you to cut that in half." So the grocers went to the farmers and told them, "We were paying you $7 for beef but now we can only afford to pay you $3". It cost the farmers more than $3 to produce the beef so they either went out of business or started selling beef to unofficial markets. Soon a black market for beef was established but black market beef cost $12.

The government asked the grocers why their shelves were empty and they replied, "There's no beef available. The farmers won't sell it below cost so they've gone out of business." So the government went to some select grocers (meaning friends of officials) and gave them money to buy beef from other countries. Depending on the grocer there were four ways the money was used:

1) The grocer pocketed the money and used some of it to bribe officials to look the other way.

2) The grocer bought foreign beef and sold it to the black market.

3) The grocer bought foreign beef and sold it at $5. The first person through the door was someone from the black market who bought all of it.

4) The grocer bought foreign beef but kept it in a back room and only sold to close friends and family.

The result for all of these is that the shelves remained bare and the only way for the average person to buy beef was on the black market.

This is the inevitable result of well-meaning government officials who try to help people by ignoring markets and setting prices too low. Shelves remain bare and a black market develops. The Soviet Union was notorious for bread lines and for its black market.

Venezuela got a lot worse after this. Because of their hyper-inflation and limited foreign currency reserves, the government couldn't keep subsidizing buying food from other countries so even the black market was affected.

This works the other way, too. The State of New York has very high taxes on cigarettes so there's a thriving black market from people who buy cartons of cigarettes in other states with lower taxes then sell individual cigarettes in New York.

The bottom line is that markets develop around what people will pay for goods and what sellers are willing to sell them for. If the government sets prices too low then the goods vanish from the shelves and move into a black market. If the government sets the price too high then markets will develop to get around the official prices.

And that's why socialism fails.

Why the Socialists Scare Me

Socialism is on the rise. A large percentage of the Democratic Party wants socialism. A Socialist made a strong showing in the presidential race in 2016 and a much-younger one managed to defeat the 4th-most powerful Democrat in the House. I find all of this terrifying.

Socialism means that the government either owns or controls "the means of production" which means most employers. It's a totalitarian philosophy where the government intrudes into every facet of your life.

"But wait", you say, "Scandinavian socialism" and "Democratic socialism!".

Ha!

Free college and centralized health care does not make a country socialist. That's just the bait. Scandinavian countries are basically capitalist and the socialists are insisting that capitalism is the cause of all of society's ills and needs to be eradicated. The Antifa movement calls itself "anti-fascist" but they are also anti-capitalist. What's more, the Scandinavian countries manage because they are small, homogeneous and xenophobic. They are the opposite of the racially (but not ideologically) diverse population the American socialists want.

As for the democratic part, socialists have a long history of being for democracy right up until they are in power. Then they change the rules to see that they never have to win an election again. They're already talking about how they'll do this. They lost two out of five presidential elections in the Electoral College so they want to abolish that. They've also noticed that the Senate gives as much power to small states as to large ones so they want to change that. They also noticed that members of the House of Representatives from small states represent fewer people than members from large states so they want to change that.

They want increased voting rights. If you're a convicted felon they want you to vote. They are even allowing non-citizens to vote in some municipal elections. They are also big on making it as easy as possible to vote (and as easy as possible to cheat).

They keep trying to change the rules for nominees to the Supreme Court. Since that hasn't worked, they are now floating ideas such as term limits or outright court packing.

They don't believe in individual freedoms, either, at least not the traditional ones. Freedom of speech has been under attack for years under the guise of "hate speech" where hate speech is anything they don't want to hear. If you only believe in protecting speech that you agree with then you support political censorship. And they really love that. For years, progressive speakers can say anything they want on campus but conservatives, even moderate ones, are protested as hate speech and have to provide expensive security. Recently that's gone a step further. Corporations are examined to see if the officers have the correct views and any deviation from the party line can result in the company being made unwelcome. This is an amazing guilt-by-association where the private opinions of one executive or board member taints an entire company.

Colleges have long been mono-cultures but now the tech giants are also embracing a far-left corporate culture and dissent is punished. During the 2016 election, someone wrote a pro-Trump message on the physical wall in the Facebook office and this was treated as vandalism. Only pro-Hillary messages were allowed. Google, Facebook and Twitter all have the reputation of being far quicker to punish conservatives than progressives.

And this is only getting worse. There have been a few recent incidents where Republicans have been equated with Nazis or Nazi-enablers. These didn't spring out of no-where, hundreds of miles apart. It's what the left is telling itself. After years of calling President Trump every name they can think of, they've gone on to do the same to the entire Republican Party.

Once you've outlawed hate speech and declared all conservatives to be white supremacists then you've shut down debate completely - which is the goal. I'm a conservative who believes in free speech and capitalism. If these socialists ever take power then I'll have to stay quiet or face the gulag.

And that's why they terrify me.

Obama admits that Identity Politics are Racist

At a recent event at Rice University, former President Obama said this:

"In those environments, you then start getting a different kind of politics … that's based on, 'that person's not like me and it must be their fault,' and you start getting a politics based on a nationalism that's not pride in country but hatred for somebody on the other side of the border. And you start getting the kind of politics that does not allow for compromise, because it's based on passions and emotions," Obama said.

"It's identity politics," Baker said.

"Which is why, by the way, when I hear people say they don't like identity politics, I think it's important to remember that identity politics doesn't just apply when it's black people or gay people or women," Obama said. "The folks who really originated identity politics were the folks who said Three-Fifths Clause and all that stuff. That was identity politics … Jim Crow was identity politics. That's where it started."

When you read a more complete transcript, he meant to be saying that President Trump is an evil nationalist who hates foreigners but he got sidetracked by Baker's interjection of identity politics and said a few true things that I don't think he meant to say. But he's right, identity politics and intersectionality are just as racist as Jim Crow. They judge people by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and possibly a few other traits rather than who they are. They try to dismiss it by redefining racism so that only white people can be racist but that puts us right back to defining people solely by their race.

I'm old enough to have actually heard Doctor Martin Luther King on TV and believe in his goal of a society where people are judged for who they are instead of the color of their skin. The Left has rejected that vision and embraced a new one that is as bad as what King was protesting against.

I hope that President Obama isn't forced to retract his statement.

Why Trump Will Be Reelected

I'm writing this on the eve of the 2018 election. At this point the predicted Blue Wave looks more like a Blue Ripple and may even turn into a Red Ripple (which sounds tastier). The election is being billed as a referendum on President Trump. Regardless of how it turns out, Trump has a near-lock on reelection in 2020. There are several reasons why I'm making this prediction:

The President's party typically does poorly in the first mid-term election. Under Obama, the Democrats suffered a major Red Wave in 2010. So did the Democrats under Clinton. Both presidents went on to be reelected. Trump's popularity hit a historic low point last year but it's recovered and is above Obama's at this point in Obama's presidency. So, midterm results seldom have much to do with a President's reelection.

Another problem is that the Democrats have far too many candidates. The first tier of candidates, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have all run and lost before. The are also ancient. Biden and Sanders make Trump look young and Clinton, who is a few months younger than Trump, can't match his energy.

Of the she second tier, only Elizabeth Warren is nationally known. The rest, like Kamala Harris and Corey Booker, are known to political junkies but not to the general public. That makes it hard for them to raise enough funds to break through into the top tier. There are a couple of billionaires in the third tier who can get around this by self-funding but they're even less known.

Despite all these candidates, the actual policy differences between them is minimal. Bernie Sanders was able to challenge Hillary Clinton from the left but the party as a whole has moved so far to the left that there are few actual policy differences. That makes it even harder for candidates to break into the top tier.

All of that gives Trump and advantage but what really cinches it for him is the white hot anger the Democratic base feels for him. In order to win the general election, a candidate will need to appeal to more than just the Democratic base. But the base hates Trump so much that they will not support anyone who doesn't share their hatred of Trump's policies.

Immigration is a big factor here. Democrats laughed at Trump and his wall but illegal immigration is a major economic issue to working-class Americans. It's a major reason Trump won and a clear majority of the population supports enforcing immigration laws. Prior to Trump, enforcing boarder security wasn't a controversial policy. But that's changed. The more Trump enforces immigration the more the Democrats call for open borders. That's a losing issue for them but calls to abolish ICE are so common that the Democratic candidate will find it impossible to disown them.

A lot of pundits have described Trump as a populist but that means that anyone opposing him is going to have to take a lot of positions that are unpopular with the general electorate, just to get the nomination.

Little has been written about the internal problems within the Democratic party but they are real. The Democratic elite is richer, whiter and much further to the left than the majority of the party. That's how Trump was able to win states like Pennsylvania and it gives him a chance at making further inroads into the Democrats.

There's still a possibility that Trump will lose reelection. A major recession will kill his chances of reelection. That's somewhat outside his control. There's also the possibility that a scandal will finally stick but that gets less likely every day.

Barring one of these external events, the Democrats don't have a chance of unseating Trump.

Why the Democrats Can't Be Allowed In Power Again

The Democrats have gotten scary over the last decade or so. They are rejecting the basis of America in general. If they come to power (meaning the Presidency and both houses of Congress) our basic institutions are at stake. If this seems overwrought, just look at the the things they want to eliminate:

The Electoral College. In two of the last five Presidential elections, a Republican won the Election even though the Democrat had more votes (note, in neither of these cases did the Democrat actually have more than 50% of the vote). Their response is to propose abolishing the Electoral College.

The Senate. After the Kavanaugh confirmation, several prominent Democrats pointed out that the Senators voting for confirmation represented smaller states than the ones against confirmation. They also began referring to the Senate and the Electoral College as racist remnants of slavery.

Free Speech. This the oldest point on the list. For years the left has tried to argue that the 1st Amendment doesn't protect hate speech. Unfortunately the best definition of hate speech is any speech they hate. In other words, they are in favor of outright censorship of their opposition. This has been going on in colleges for years - progressive speakers are welcomed with open arms but conservatives are protested and often required to pay for expensive security.

Guns. The left's antipathy for the 2nd Amendment is even older and more deeply ingrained than for the 1st Amendment. The subject or their ire varies from decade to decade. Currently they are after AR-15s. In other decades they were after handguns. Facts and figures don't phase them. They are operating from the viewpoint of, "I don't want a gun so no one else should be allowed to own one."

Due Process. Due process is part of the 5th and 14th Amendments. For certain crimes, the left has given up on due process, at least on college campuses. A "dear college" letter circulated to colleges by the Obama administration called for new, harsh policies for accusations of sexual assault. The standard of guilt was reduced to 50.001% likely, the accused was often denied right to a lawyer and, in many cases, wasn't even told what the accusations were until his hearing. While college is not the court system, being expelled for sexual assault still carries a life-time stigma and can ruin someone's life. Many on the left want to see this precedence carried into the courtroom. Their justification is that "women lie about rape so seldom that they should always be believed." The figures they are citing put false rape accusations in the 1%-3% range but these figures are for cases that were investigates and actually went to trial. Even if that number was correct, it turns on its ear the liberal adage "I'd rather see 100 guilty go free than a single innocent convicted". This reversal shows the sea change in the shift on the left from being liberals to being progressives.

Honest elections. The Democrats are convinced that their key to total control is getting more people to show up at the polls. Accordingly they keep making it easier and easier. They refuse to purge voter rolls of people who are dead or have moved. They register every warm-body they can find with little regard for their legal status. They insist that any sort of ID requirement is voter suppression. In some cities they allow non-citizens to vote on some issues which makes it even easier for some to slip through the cracks and vote in the general election.

Limits to immigration. Abolish ICE is a current battle cry among Democrats and Democratic Socialists. They aren't real clear what they would do in its place. It's implied that they would allow open borders. To quote Milton Freedman, " It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." Welfare states are only possible when the majority of citizens are productive workers. Add in the antipathy to acculturation and you have the recipe for a failed state.

Capitalism. This is a growing movement on the left. They want to eliminate capitalism with "social democracy" or something similar. They are always vague about exactly what they want. Somehow it involves workers running the companies and deciding what will be produced. Their rhetoric is still rooted in the notion that everyone works in a 19th-century factory and that the factory owner have unlimited wealth. They also ignore the fact that every country that has tried real socialism (not just free college and health care) devolves into a dictatorship pretty fast.

So, that's what we have to look forward to if the current crop of Democrats get in power. This is an example of winning an election then using their power to be sure they never have to run again. If they manage to accumulate enough power they will ruin the country.

So we can't let these idiots in power again. 

Blaming the President

There's a tendency for the party out of power to hold the President personally responsible for tragedies. This often veers into conspiracy theory. One example for President Obama is Benghazi where many Republicans are convinced that Obama called off a rescue mission, leaving four Americans to die. Various Congressional committees have investigated this and none has found any proof.

But that's nothing compared to the left's need to blame Republican presidents. This was most recently on display after the tragic shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue which left 11 dead. The shooter previously announced that he was against President Trump and had voted against him. Regardless, Democrats and the news media lost no time in blaming Trump for the shooting. Trump, according to them, has raised the acceptable level of violence through loose talk to the point that shooting Jews is acceptable. He also used coded references. By complaining about George Soros, the billionaire who has donated millions to oppose Trump, is sending a dog whistle about Jews. never mind that Soros is a non-practicing Jew and Trump's daughter and son-in-law are practicing Orthodox Jews, Trump must be sending signals about killing Jews. This is a case of projection - they hate Trump so much that they can't admit that something bad can happen without Trump being the instigator.

This happened earlier. A news report listed Trump as the collaborator during a hurricane.

This is not unique to Trump, though. The left did it to President Bush.

After Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, I watched the contributors for the Daily KOS comb through the state budget. They were positive that the levee failed because funds had been cut to pay for Bush's foreign wars. The levees actually failed because the cement parts weren't sufficiently robust. There was even a theory that Bush ordered the levees to be dynamited in order to floor the poor, black sections.

But that pales next to the 9/11 Truthers. To them, it is inconceivable that something as big as 9/11 could happen without the government's cooperation. They invented a conspiracy where the government secretly planted explosives in the Twin Towers and blew them up. Never mind how impossible it would be to secrete enough explosives to do that, they invented an imaginary form of thermite that could do it.

These are all irrational responses fed by hate for the purpose of justifying their hate. But they are not unique to Trump.

Political Violence

Two incidents in the last week have the left up in arms against President Trump. The first was a series of bombs sent to prominent Democrats. There were at least 14 of these. None actually exploded and all were sent to people who have mail rooms that open their packages for them so these were almost certainly meant to intimidate rather than harm. Far more serious was a gunman who attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh in one of the worst attacks against Jews in US history.

The left blamed President Trump for both incidents. While it's true that the bomber appears to be a Trump supporter, he also appears to be a nut case.

The gunman is both anti-Semitic and anti-Trump. Considering that Trump is our naiton's most pro-Israel president and his son-in-law and daughter are Jewish, as are the President's grand-children, there's just no way that Trump could have influenced someone who is violently anti-Jew. Regardless, the left has been blaming Trump regardless, accusing him of using anti-Semitic code-words and in raising the level of violence in general.

Here's the thing, most of the violence is from the left. Just this month someone sent ricin-laced letters to members of the Trump administration including the President. These did not actually have ricin, only ground castor beans which is enough to set off ricin alarms. So this was nearly identical to the fake bombs - both were designed to alarm people rather than actually hurt anyone. But the ricin letters barely got any publicity while the bombs were a top story for days.

But the ricin letters where just the latest in a long line of violence against Republicans. That includes a Bernie Saunders supporter trying to assassinate the Republican members of Congress and going back to more Bernie supporters physically disrupting Trump rallies in 2016. Someone attacked a Republican candidate with a knife. A different Republican candidate, a woman, had her arm twisted. Republican headquarters have been burned or had their windows smashed. I could go on but you get the idea. There are a disproportionate number of attacks against Republicans than Democrats. But the left doesn't even see this.

When condemning political violence, it's important to condemn all political violence. Otherwise you are saying that you support it as long as it's against people you disapprove of.

That's what's been happening. The left condemns the KKK and the Proud Boys but cheers on Antifa. They complain about Trump's violent rhetoric while ignoring actual violence against Republicans.

This shouldn't be a surprise. This is just an extension of the left's definition of hate speech. For years they've been claiming that hate speech is not free speech and should not be protected but their definition of hate speech usually comes down to any speech they hate. Now they've extended that to violence. If it's against Republicans then it's justified because the Republicans must have brought it on themselves (this was an excuse after the Republican softball team was attacked). In the few cases where Democrats are attacked then it is immediately blamed on President Trump.

There are a couple of special cases that should be mentioned. First, if the violent offender is Muslim then the conversation immediately turns to gun control.

The second special case is the left's growing antisemitism. I mentioned this to a far-left friend on Facebook a few months ago and was called a troll. But antisemitism is growing world-wide and it's mainly from the left. There is a direct relationship between colleges with active BDS movements and antisemitic incidents. Bernie Sanders had to assure people that he was ethnically Jewish but not a practicing Jew. A member of Washington DC's city council insisted that Jews control the weather. Louis Farrakhan maintains relations with many Democrats regardless of how anti-Jewish his rhetoric is. Linda Sarsour, co-organizer of one of the anti-Trump women's marches has similarly made anti-Jewish statements. England's far-left Labor leader, Jeremy Corbin, has alienated Jews in his party. And, of course, the gunman who shot the Jews in Pittsburgh hated Trump as well as Jews. But the American left refuses to see this. They like to think of themselves as loving diversity but they also have a growing hatred for Israel which spills over into a general dislike for Jews in general and practicing Jews in particular.

Elizabeth Warren Enters the 2020 Race and Looses It in a Single Day

The initial headline sounded good: Senator Elizabeth Warren had a DNA test done and it proved that she does have some Indian ancestors. For years she's been haunted by the fact that in her early career she was listed as Native American despite looking whiter than white.

The problem was in the details. Yes, a researcher found some evidence of Indian ancestry but it was much further back than she'd been claiming. Rather than her mother being related to two modern tribes, the DNA analysis showed that the apparent Indian ancestor was six to ten generations back, far too distant to affect her mother's status. Further, there is very little DNA mapping from North American tribes so the analyst used Mexican and Peruvian DNA as a proxy. So all we really know is that, like most European/Americans, Warren had a distant ancestor who was from somewhere in the Americas. That's a long way from proving the Cherokee ancestry she'd originally claimed.

So the initial story was favorable but the follow-ups will continue to haunt her. She took a vague, unsubstantiated claim (every family has those) and proved it wrong while claiming it proved her right. In doing so, she brought the whole false claim back into the news cycle. What had been old news became news again.

And she did it three weeks before an election where the Democrats can't afford any further distractions angering Democratic campaign professionals across the country. It also gave President Trump a chance to dig her on her Indian claim yet again. By the end of the day she was sending out angry tweets, sounding more like Hillary Clinton than the high-minded icon she pretends to be.

This proves that A) Warren is running for president, B) she's already reacting to Trump rather than forcing him to react to her, C) her timing and judgement are really poor.

Six years ago she was widely followed. Her line about corporations not accomplishing things on their own was so powerful that Barack Obama appropriated it with his "you didn't build this" line in the 2012 campaign. Two years ago Bernie Sanders was seen as the consolation candidate after Warren decided not to run. But those days are past. She's no longer widely quoted. She's forced to do stunts like her "saving capitalism act" (an example of really bad economic policy) and releasing a genetic study that shows she's no more Native American than most whites.

Warren still has a decent shot at the nomination but there's no way she can defeat President Trump.

Why I Don't Believe Dr. Christine Ford

In evaluating the conflicting testimony between Dr. Ford and Judge Brett Kananaugh, people have been trying to read how earnest each was and how "believable" each seemed. This is the wrong approach. Rather than trying to judge how well they presented their case, we need to look at externals.

Years ago I was on a Duck tour of Plymouth, Ma. My daughter asked me if something the guide said was true. My answer was that the things I knew about were incorrect so I didn't trust the parts that I knew nothing about.

This is how I approach Dr. Ford's statements.

She claims that, while a teenager, Kavanaugh placed his hand over her mouth making her think that he'd kill her by accident and causing trauma that lasts through today. She said that the event is burned into her hippocampus.

The events she describes happened so long ago that it is impossible to prove or disprove with anything approaching certainty. But we can look at more recent events.

According to Dr. Ford, she has crippling claustrophobia caused by the attack. When she and her husband remodeled her house she insisted on having a second front door as an escape route from her living room. Her husband didn't understand the reasoning and loss of curb appeal. This lead to couple's counseling which is when she first revealed that she had been attacked.

But, records show that the house was remodeled in 2008 and she went to counseling in 2012 so the one did not directly lead to the other. Further, the extra door appears to have been installed so that the Fords could (and still do) rent out a spare room. And pictures of the Ford residence from Google Street View show that the extra door is not particularly visible so there is no affect on its curb appeal.

In other words, Dr. Ford wasn't being truthful.

Another supposed symptom of Dr. Ford's claustrophobia is her inability to fly. Her lawyer gave this as the reason that she could not appear before the Senate on September 24 - because she had to drive across the country.

But it turns out that she flies regularly. So that one is an outright lie.

She also told the Washington Post that she opposed President Trump because Kavanaugh was on the President's list of possible Supreme Court nominees and she did not want to live in a country where Kavanaugh was on the highest court. But that can't be true. Trump didn't add Kavanaugh to his list until a year after his inauguration.

These lies are significant, too. Part of Dr. Ford's story is that she's had life-long psychological problems because of Kavanaugh but the examples she gives are false. Does she even have any real lasting effects from the incident? If so then why did she feel the need to make some up? The obvious answer is that she wanted to make the incident more serious than it was. If she'd simply said that, while they were both teens and drunk, Kavanaugh had felt her up and put his hand over her mouth but it had no lasting effect on her then Kavanaugh would already be confirmed. So she embellished her story.

And that's where it really unravels. Once we establish that she embellished the facts we have to wonder how much of her testimony is true? Is she really convinced that it was Kavanaugh?

We also have to remember that this is a woman who twice traveled to DC to march in anti-Trump protests. So we have to wonder if she's really relating a traumatic experience from her teens or if she's using this as a chance to #resist?

The worst falsehood anyone has caught Kavanaugh in was that he was legally allowed to drink while in college. (Yes, some people have come forward and said that Kananaugh lied about his drinking but none of them have actually contradicted his sworn statements.) None of the various accusations about Kavanaugh have complimented each other. And Ford's is the most credible one.

So, measuring the statements that we can check by the two parties, I believe Kavanaugh is the one telling the truth.