Kathleen Parker and Conservatives

A recent column by WaPo columnist Kathleen Parker speculated on what Donald Trump has over Republicans that they continue to be loyal to him. She speculated that he must have blackmail tapes on each of them.

Along the way she made the statement that "the purpose of conservatives is to put the brakes on liberals' excesses".

There are two ways you can put the brakes on something. You can stop it completely or you can slow it down. Either way, this says a lot about Parker's view of conservatives.

If she meant that conservatives are to slow liberals then she is conceding that the liberals are correct in everything but they are moving too fast.

If she meant that conservatives are to stop liberals without offering a direction of their own then she is echoing the Democrats' charge that the Republicans are the "party of No" with nothing to offer.

This is what happens to a conservative who starts appearing on Sunday talk shows and writing for the WaPo. They act as a token conservetive, coasting on credentials that are way past renewing while parroting the liberals. After a while they accept the values of the people who surround them and are reduced to calling for the same goals but at a slower pace. That pretty much describes all of the "conservatives" at the WaPo as well as the "conservatives" on Sunday talk shows (I'm looking at you, John Kasich).

And, to answer Parker's question, Trump doesn't "have" anything on the Republicans who support him. They support him because, to him, conservative values are more than just applying the brakes to a liberal agenda. A conservative agenda means putting American workers first, being skeptical about global warming, standing up to China, having trade policies that are as advantageous as possible for Americans, energy independence and policies that unite Americans instead of teaching that all whites are racists.

Sorry I don't have a link to Parker's column. I read it in dead tree format and didn't see a link when I googled.

The Jeep Superbowl Ad

So, Jeep ran an ad during the Super Bowl. It's message is unity and a "ReUnited States". It features Bruce Springfield visiting a chapel in the middle of nowhere (or, according to the ad, in the middle of everywhere) to light a candle before driving off in an open Jeep while wearing a cowboy hat.

This as is so off-key, it's hard to know where to start.

The Boss is as good a starting place as any. He's the working-class hero.

He's also a guy from New Jersey who's known for ball caps instead of cowboy hats and who absolutely hated George W. Bush as well as Donald J. Trump. Does anyone think for a moment that The Boss would have made an ad calling for unity if Trump was still President? I didn't think so.

So what's he doing out in the middle of the country at the chapel? He's lighting a candle. Is this a prayer to unite the country? Or is he giving thanks to God that Trump is no longer president? I suspect it's the latter.

There's views of fields and crosses and country roads. Do you know who lives out in the country and goes to church? Trump voters. Do you think they're going to buy their SUVs from Jeep because a Trump-hater from Jersey put on a cowboy hat and drove to Kansas? Ha!

Jeep is so clueless that they didn't even include the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in their map. Alaska and Hawaii are missing, also.

One final thing - for god's sake, put the top on the Jeep Bruce!

https://www.ign.com/videos/jeep-super-bowl-55-commercial-the-middle-ft-bruce-springsteen

What Unity?

Can Joe Biden bring unity to the nation? I have no idea but it doesn't matter. He's not even going to try.

Look at where we are right now. The outgoing president was impeached. There was no hearings, no debate, no investigation. They say that he incited insurrection but they don't have a single quote calling for that. They haven't bothered to find a single witness who can testify that he was taking orders from Trump rather than acting on his own. They just copied some charges from the newspaper and went with that. By that standard, Joe Biden can be impeached for forcing the Ukranian prosecutor to be fired.

Members of Congress are accusing their fellows of being co-conspirators and of having given reconnaissance tours to insurrectionists.

There are calls for members of COngress to be expelled for making objections to the election. Never mind that the Democrats did the same thing after the 2000, 2004 and 2016 election. What was patriotic then is

treasonous now.

Tens of thousands of troops have been brought in to guard the inauguration. This is the most troops even in DC in peacetime and more than stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day.

But members of Congress are worried that there might be insurrectionists in the troops. They can't be trusted so the FBI is investigating them all.

And where is Joe Biden during all this? He's egging them on.

Remember how upset he was about reports that Trump didn't want to be at a D-Day memorial because he didn't want to get his hair wet and that he called the war dead "losers"? Joe called on the ghost of his sainted son Beau. Where is that indignation now that current troops are being slandered?

Yes, Biden says that he'll be president for all Americans but he's shown before that he despises Trump and has sneered at anyone who supported Trump. How can you call for unity from Trump voters after you've called him a clown during a national debate?

Unity means respecting the other side and making concessions. Biden has no intention of doing that. He has a stack of planned Day One orders reversing as much of the Trump administration as possible and advancing a far-left agenda. He's also declared that America is suffering from a crisis of racism. He's made other statements about Trump voters being racists.

This is not the unity of a President who is looking out for all Americans. This is the unity of one side knocking the other to its back and putting a foot on its neck.

If Biden wants unity then he needs to start seeking moderation instead of partisanship.

He can start by calling on the Senate to vote against conviction of Trump and to urge the various prosecutors who want to jail Trump to end their efforts. He can stop calling half of America racist and claiming that we are having a crisis of racism. He's old enough to remember what real racism was in the 1950s and 60s. He should respect the progress since then and be willing to stand up to his party.

But he won't because he's just a partisan hack.

Lies of the Year 2020

We can't trust the fact-checkers to give us an honest accounting of the worst lies of the year. They hate Trump and are proud of it. So I'll do it for them.

Here are my runner-up choices in generally chronological order:

The Impeachment.

This is a hold-over from 2019. There was no quid pro quo. Trump suggested that the President of Ukraine bring back the prosecutor that Joe Biden bragged about having fired and that they look into Burisma which employed Hunter Biden. It was buried in the middle of some suggestions. The top one was asking for cooperation with Trump's lawyer, Rudy Guliani.

Calling COVID a hoax.

Trump said that the next hoax would be the Democrats saying that he did not take COVID seriously. He was right.

Drinking bleach.

During a daily briefing on COVID, a doctor from DHS talked about the disinfecting properties of sunlight. After he finished, Trump commented on how powerful a disinfectant light is and asked if it could be injected into the lungs where the virus is strongest. An ABC News VP was only half-listening, picked up on the words "disinfectant" and "bleach" and sent out a tweet accusing Trump of suggesting that people inject themselves with a disinfectant like bleach. That is not what Trump said but since it came from a high-ranking news chief, the networks ran with it and spent the next two weeks warning people against drinking bleach.

Gassing protestors so that Trump could cross the street

Protestors were ordered cleared from the streets surrounding the White House. Shortly after that, Trump walked across the street to talk about the damage to the historic church there. Everyone in charge said that the order to clear the streets came separately from the White House. It was reported that tear gas was used but footage showed that the police were not wearing gas masks therefore no tear gas was used.

Destroying the Postal Service to affect the election.

This was an out-and-out conspiracy theory. Several postal boxes were removed and a number of high-speed sorters were taken out of service. It was covered as a plot to slow the mail in order to prevent absentee voting. Actually, the postal boxes were removed as part of a long-standing policy of removing seldom-used boxes. The sorters had been slated to be decommissioned well before Trump's appointee took office. Both of these happened because mail volume is falling.

Disrespecting war dead

The Atlantic published a hit-piece claiming that Trump missed the commemoration of D-Day because it was raining and he didn't want to get his hair wet and that he called the war dead "losers". Everyone present denied that. The Atlantic refused to name their sources which suggests that none of them had first hand knowledge and that they were just repeating rumors.

Downplaying COVID.

In early February Trump told Bob Woodward that he knew that the virus was transmittable and deadly before the WHO announced it but he downplayed the threat to keep from panicking the nation. Trump-haters insisted that meant Trump did not take proper action. Actually, anyone who paid any attention to the news from China knew that the virus was transmittable and deadly. This was no secret. The real scandal here was the WHO continuing to downplay the virus through January.

And the winner is:

Trump called neo-Nazis "good people".

This is a call-back from 2017. Trump made it very clear that the "good people" he was talking about were the people protesting the removal of statues. He went further, predicting, correctly, that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be next. Despite this not being true, Joe Biden repeated the lie multiple times. It was in his 2019 speech announcing his candidacy, his 2020 DNC acceptance speech and one of the debates. That's what makes it the lie of the year.

One final note: Politifact chickened out on several of these lies. Rather than coming out and saying they are lies, Politifact has "in context" sections with the quotes. These are very long and the operative phrase is buried several paragraphs down making it unlikely that casual readers will dig down so far. That's how the "fact-checkers" avoid taking Trump's side.

How to Heal

In a recent speech, Joe Biden claimed victory in the presidential election (before the ballots were all counted) and said "let the healing begin".

Let's examine that. For the last four years the left has broken all norms in the way they treated a legally-elected president. They called him a racist and a dictator, both claims without merit. They tried to keep him from taking office and, once he was inaugurated, they tried to remove him from office. He was impeached based on unsubstantiated rumors on the personal authority of the Speaker of the House.

Now that his successor has claimed victory we are supposed to forget all that and return to normal. The right is supposed to pretend that the last four years never happened and show the new President all the respect that the left denied President Trump.

Forget it. That's not going to just happen. If you want healing then there are some specific actions that Mr. Biden needs to take:

1. No criminal charges against Donald Trump of his family. There are prosecutors in New York who have been making it clear that they  desperately want to send the Trump family to jail. It doesn't matter if any laws were broken. As Bernie Sanders once said, "An inventive prosecutor can always find something to charge you with."

This is a terrible idea. It would make us look like a banana republic and the election look like a coup. More important, it breaks another norm and says that partisan hatred is sufficient cause to punish a former office-holder. That norm is vital. Like the one about showing respect for the President, once you break it you can't expect the other side to abide by the old rules. If the Trump family is charged then I guarantee that eventually Hunter Biden will go to jail, too.

Joe Biden needs to issue orders and twist arms to be certain that no one charges Donald Trump with anything.

2. No repercussions for supporting Trump. AOC, the Lincoln Project and others want lists made of all people who worked for the Trump administration or donated money to the Trump campaign so that they can be blacklisted. Keith Olbermann wants these people "removed from polite society". While it is true that Olbermann is a crank, he's a crank who used to be an MSNBC news anchor and he still has a large following.

Purging the government of anyone associated with the previous administration and ensuring they never work again is another broken norm and another page from the Banana Republic playbook. Biden must denounce this movement if there is to be any healing.

3. Biden needs to admit that he lied during the campaign. This would be the hardest thing for him. He likes to tell stories and he hates to admit that they are not true. He started his campaign on a lie, that Trump called Klansmen and neo-nazis good people. He repeated it constantly. But the transcripts clearly show that Trump denounced those groups and that the good people he was talking about were the ones who were protesting the removal of a statue. Trump then went on to accurately predict that Washington and Jefferson would be next.

71 million people voted for Donald Trump. They know what he actually said. Biden needs their respect if he wants the country to rally around him. The same is true for the claim that Trump called honored war dead "losers". No one who was with him will verify that story. John Bolton said that he'd have devoted a chapter in his book to it if it had happened. All of the sources for this claim are anonymous. We've been assured that these were people close to the President but the NYT said the same thing about their anonymous columnist and he turned out to have been a low-level consultant. Despite the dubiousness of this story, Biden repeated it again and again.

I know that right now Biden sees himself as the winner with no need to apologize for anything. He was running for "the soul of the nation" and he got more votes than any candidate in history. But Trump got more votes than anyone in history except Biden and Biden's winning margin was razor-thin in multiple states. The Republicans are on track to keep the Senate and have picked up multiple seats in the House. This was not a Blue Wave mandate and Biden should not act like it was.

I don't believe for a moment that Biden will do any of the things I've listed here. He has nothing but contempt for Donald Trump and Trump's supporters. He talks a lot about being willing to back down when he's wrong but he won't do that here. He's full of malarkey.

An Open Letter to John Kaisch

Governor,

Now that you made your address to the Democratic National Convention endorsing Joe Biden over Donald Trump you might be feeling proud of yourself. You have an illustrious career. But, in many ways, your career is built on illusions.

You won election to Congress in 1982. That was a Democratic wave year. You were the only new Republican. That seems impressive but it isn't. You beat Bob Shamansky, a 1st-term Democrat who was so irritating that the Ohio Democrats were willing to sacrifice him when reapportioning the state.

You made your name by being a pro-defense budget hawk. Within a few months of you arriving in Congress you made headlines after finding $100 hammers in the budget. Most of these weren't really over-prices items. They were a side-effect of cost-plus contracts. With those, the price of everything is added together, the allowed markup is figured, divided by the number of items and that is added to each item. If there's two items, one costing $1 and one costing $99 and the mark-up is 6% then the $1 item will be charged $3 and the expensive one $102. That looks bad for the cheap item but the whole contract is $106.

You eventually topped out in Congress, retired then reentered politics and ran for Governor. You had another stroke of luck. The incumbent was Ted Strictland who had won during another Democratic wave. He turned out to be a very poor governor and you ran during a Republican wave. You got even luckier when you ran for reelection. You opponent self-destructed during the Summer and you essentially ran unopposed.

I suppose that every governor pictures himself running for president but that reelection gave you a lot of buzz. A governor from a swing-state who was reelected by a landslide. Most people outside the state didn't understand how weak your opposition was.

Then came your run for president. And it all fell apart. Your strategy was to enter the race late and take advantage of the polling bump from declaring, going into the primaries. You planned to win New Hampshire, try to hold on until Ohio then leverage a win there to take Michigan and other midwest states, giving you momentum.

None of that worked. Everyone knew you were running months before you formally announced so there was no bounce. A lot of the big-money donors were already committed. You did well in New Hampshire but didn't win. You did win Ohio but that was your only win. Regardless, you hung on until the bitter end. A lot of people think that you acted as a spoiler, splitting the anti-Trump vote with Ted Cruize and allowing Trump to win the nomination.

A lot of people are still angry with you for that. Many of them are Democrats.

Then you positioned yourself, trying to somehow keep Trump's delegated from voting from voting for him and settling on you as a compromise candidate. That never got off the ground but it showed that you placed yourself ahead of your party.

You spent your last two years as Governor semi-retired. You were on talk-shows every week and only in the state part-time. And yes, we noticed.

Then came your retirement to the Sunday-morning talk shows. You have a niche with them as a Republican who hates Trump. That puts you in demand and your short speech to the DNC burnished your credentials.

But you are trying to get Joe Biden elected! I get that you hate Trump personally but do you have any principles? You stood there and told us that Biden will not lurch to the left. Shortly after that Bernie Sanders came on and assured us that BIden would indeed move to the left. Even the Washington Post commented on the cognitive disconnect between what you said and what Sanders said. You're both probably engaging in wishful thinking but I've read Biden's platform. It's very far left.

So, someone is lying. Either you are lying to us, Governor, or the Biden campaign lied to you. Or maybe you lied to yourself. It doesn't matter. Biden has always been left-of-center and the center has moved far to the left.

There's something you should know about your new friends, Governor. I'm sure they shook your hand and told you how courageous you are and how you are helping your country. But they never voted for you. And they never will vote for you. They don't even like you. Some of them absolutely hate you. AOC complained about your stance on abortion. Others blame you personally for not dropping out of the race early and allowing Trump to win.

Here's something else that you should know: they don't really hate Donald Trump, at least not the way you think they do. They hate him because he's a Republican president. They hated George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon the same way. They hated Romney when he ran (remember Biden saying that he'd put blacks back in chains). They love McCain now and have his daughter telling us hw terrible Trump is but they hated him when he ran (he was going to turn society back 60 years and reintroduce segregation and Jim Crow). Since Ike there have only been two Republican president that the Demcrats didn't hate with a passion: Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Both of them were defeated.

If you had run a better campaign and managed to win in 2016 then that's how they'd feel about you. You would be the divider-in-chief and the most divisive president ever. That's because it's not the person they hate, it's the office when occupied by a Republican. Heck, if you were president then they might have even gotten Donald Trump to tell the nation about how divisive you are.

Look at how the Democrats have acted. Trump isn't the one telling people to harass members of the other party if they dare to go into a restaurant. It's nancy Pelosi who refuses to negotiate, not Trump or the Republicans. It's irrational to blame Trump when it's the Democrats who are acting so childish.

That's who you've thrown your lot in with, Governor - a party that detests you now and would hate you if you were president. I certainly hope you failed in your efforts to put them in power.

Just a Reminder

For two months people have been protesting and rioting over the treatment of blacks in this country. One of the chief complaints is the incarceration rate for blacks sometimes described as the "School-to-prison-pipeline".

All of the crime bills responsible for this have Joe Biden's name on them. Every last one. He even bragged about this back in the 1990s.

Now Biden is the Democratic presidential candidate. His likely pick for running mate made her reputation as a prosecutor who was tough on drug crimes (and who also giggled about her own drug use in college).

When challenged about his crime bills by Charlamagne tha God, Biden said, "You've got more questions? Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.

I just thought people needed to be reminded about that.

From a gun owner to the protestors

I don't have any "assault weapons" and at the age of 65 I'm not going to try taking on the police or military but I still think I'm qualified to answer the question a lot of protestors have been asking: "Why aren't you guys helping us?"

Let's start with a counter-question: "Do you guys really want to go there? To start an actual civil war to be fought in the streets instead of just 'peaceful' protests?" And the follow-up, "If you want ar armed civil war then why aren't you armed?"

It's true that a big defence of the 2nd Amendment is to preserve the option to overthrow a government that has become oppressive. But if you ask a "gun nut" what an oppressive government looks like, he'll probably tell you it would be Marxist with an overbearing centralized government that did not respect individual rights starting with the right to bear arms.

Guess what? If you protestors had your way that's exactly what you'd set up. You've said so. It's in BLM's charter (the organization). Among other things they want to abolish capitalism and the nuclear family. Once you do that you won't want any competition so you'll confiscate guns and we won't have things like the 4th Amendment to protect against house-to-house searches.

So the gun-nuts are going to sit this one out and cheer on the government.