What the Kavanaugh Hearings Are Really About

The opening days of the Senate hearings for Judge Kavanaugh have been full of theatrics, both from spectators and Senators. We've had women dressed as Handmaids, a guy wearing a full-body condom, Senators who announced weeks ago that they will vote against Kavanaugh insisting that they don't have enough time to evaluate all of the paperwork. There have been accusations that a Mexican Jew was flashing a white power sign and that Kavanaugh refused to shake the hand of the parent of a Parkland victim and instead called security.

All of this is an attempt to Bork the judge. The term goes back to the nomination of Judge Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. That was a successful attempt at derailing a nomination by painting a judge as being outside norms. In both cases it was insisted that ratification would mean the end of legal abortion and a return to the days of back-ally abortions.

The claim that the two nominees would be a threat to abortion is, at best, dubious. Bork represented the winning side in Roe vs Wade. The theory was that he secretly hated winning his more important case and, through the sheer weight of his intellect, would convince the rest of the court to vote against abortion. The assumption that Kavanaugh will vote to overturn abortion isn't quite as dubious but there's no weight to it, either. There's no reason to think that a single justice will suddenly make the court reverse Roe Vs Wade and it's just speculation that Kavanaugh would support such a reversal.

Clearly abortion is just being used to motivate people. It's not a real issue.

But Roe vs Wade figures into this. It, along with the decision allowing same-sex marriage, are two important examples of how the left has used the courts to bypass Congress. That's what this is really about - trying to preserve a court that swings liberal.

Most of the #Resistance to President Trump has centered on court challenges. These are, at best, a holding action unless they can count on a liberal, activist Supreme Court. They will also become less effective and Trump appoints more judges.

When Harry Reid triggered the Nuclear Option a few years ago, it was with the expectation of a permanent Democratic majority. The hope was to pack the courts. And the expectation of President Clinton appointing two or more liberal justices.

So things blew up in the Democrats' faces. Instead of assuring a liberal court, they are watching a president they hate shift the courts to the right.

They have very few options. One is to try to stall Kavanough's nomination or derail it in the hope that a blue wave will give them the Senate next year. Then they can either try to keep the court at 8 members for the remainder of Trump's (first) term or hope that Trump gives up on Kavanough and nominates a blank-slate justice who turns out to be more liberal than expected. The chances of any of this coming to pass are poor. Current projections show the Republicans will keep the Senate and it's way too early to assume that Trump will not be reelected.

The biggest problem for the Democrats is that they are playing the short-game. Triggering the Nuclear Option gave them a short-game advantage but it's now working against them.

Previously, a well-qualified judge could count on an easy confirmation. Republicans have continued that tradition but after the current theatrics, I expect Republicans to start retaliating in kind the next time a Democrat is in the White House. That's a long-game reaction to the Democrats' short-game strategy. In fact, just days after Senator McCain's funeral and the call for decorum, we have hearings full of theatrics. One short-game strategy trounced all over a different one.

About Hillary's Emails

Two pieces of news has surfaced in the last few days regarding Hillary Clinton's emails during her tenure as Secretary of State. The first to come out is that FBI Director Comey told a brazen lie back in October, 2016 when he said that the FBI had checked all of Clinton's emails that were found on the laptop of her aid's husband, Anthony Weiner. Hillary and her assistant had forwarded over 100,000 emails to Weiner to print. This turned up in September, 2016, while the FBI was investigating Weiner for child pornography charges. The field agents in New York wanted to act on the child porn charges but Comey and Peter Strzok sat on the investigation. Apparently, under threats from the New York office that they'd go public and fearing political damage to Clinton when it got out that there were additional emails, Comey made the sham investigation and declared Clinton blameless. In fact, only a handful of the emails were actually checked and confidential information was found on them but the point of the investigation was to clear Clinton.

The bigger news was buried in the July Inspector General's report and recently reported on by the Daily Caller - all of the emails being sent or received by Clinton's private server were being forwarded to a business connected with the Chinese government.

Think about what a scandal that is. Every email sent or received by the Secretary of State under the first four years of Obama's administration were forwarded to a hostile government. This is huge.

It's also a near-secret.

President Trump tweeted about it and the news dutifully reported it as Trump offering no proof.

Just a few days ago they were reporting that Trump had advance notice of the meeting between his son and a Russian who claimed to have dirt on Clinton. As it turned out, they had no proof but they ran with it anyway. But the Inspector General's report that says the emails were forwarded isn't considered proof.

Side note: Back in 2016, Trump made a joke, asking if any foreign powers had hacked Clinton's server and had a copy of the 33,000 emails "About yoga and wedding plans" that she had deleted, that they should release them. It was not a call for a foreign government to hack Clinton's server (which was already off-line and in FBI custody). It was a reminder that she had used a poorly-protected server for confidential emails and it was very possible that a foreign power had copies. This turns out to be true.

Side note #2: President Obama was using an alias to communicate with Clinton on her private server so the Chinese have copies of some of his emails, too.

Why Alexandria Needs to Debate a Capitalist

A few weeks ago Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio Cortez claimed that Republicans were afraid to debate her. In response, columnist and talk show host Ben Shapiro challenged her to a debate and offered to give $10,000 to either her campaign or the charity of her choice. She refused and accused him of catcalling and giving her unwanted attention.

I can understand why Alexandria doesn't want to debate Shapiro. She has no experience in trying to defend her ideas against a skeptical audience. Her education and political experiences have all been within a bubble with no one questioning her facts or beliefs.

But Shapiro's challenge was not catcalling nor was it unwanted attention. After her unexpected primary win, top Democrats pronounced her the future of the party. She accepted that role and went on a nation-wide tour, endorsing and campaigning for fellow travelers. And, as I said before, she had stated that Republicans were afraid to debate her. So she's jumping up and down asking people to pay attention to her then saying "I didn't mean you!"

But Alexandria owes us a debate, if not against Shapiro then against some other well-informed opponent. She's not just any candidate for Congress, she's proposing major changes to our nation, changes that would affect everyone here. She needs to lay out exactly what she is proposing and how it will be paid for. What does she actually mean by socialism? Recently she's suggested that national parks and employee-owned businesses are socialist (hint, neither is). She also talks about Scandinavian socialism (again, they aren't).

If we are to become the socialist paradise she talks about then she needs to show us that she actually knows what she's talking about. Does she really understand what socialism is, how to pay for it, how to implement it and how to keep it from becoming a dictatorship? Or is she full of unchallenged ideals? The only way for us to know is if she debates someone.

That's not catcalling or unwanted attention. That's how you convince people to follow you.

Character and the Presidency

Jonah Goldberg and David Horowitz recently got into a spat over President Bush's character. It began with a tweet from Goldberg: " Re-asking a question I've been posing for three years: Please come up with a definition of good character that Donald Trump can clear. "

Horowitz gave a quick answer which Goldberg rejected then went into detail here.

He also point out that there are two varieties of never-Trumpers. My take on this is that there are the ones who hate Trump so much that they reverse long-held positions just to oppose Trump (Jenifer Rubins and moving the embassy to Jerusalem) and the ones who admit that they share values with Trump but still hate his style. The first group is totally irrational. The second group might be reasoned with.

First, I'd like to hit Goldberg with a counter-question: Please come up with a definition of good character that Hillary could clear but Trump can't. Seriously, in terms of honesty and truthfulness, Hillary sets a very low bar. It's been said that she will never tell a simple truth when she can tell a complicated lie instead. And the allegations of campaign finance violations are nothing to things the Clintons have gotten away with. Fifteen of their friends and associates were convicted in the Whitewater investigation. Further, multiple reports say that Hillary is rude to the Secret Service and other staffers while Trump is warm and friendly.

So anyone saying that he'd prefer Hillary to Trump is really saying that he prefers to be on the outside complaining about the ones in power rather than having to defend policies that he is supposed to support. Or that he needs to learn to say, "I hate Trump's style but I agree with what he's doing."

But how important is character in a president anyway? Yes, Trump cheated on his wives. So did Clinton, JFK, FDR, Jefferson, and possibly others. It's hard to think of any way that Bill Clinton was a better person than Donald Trump. It wasn't widely reported but Clinton was known for his purple-face rages. His press secretary, George Stephanopoulos, said that Clinton yelled at him for up to 45 minutes at the start of every day!

Going back further, name a test for good character that Nixon and LBJ could pass that Trump could not. Both were effective presidents and both used dirty tricks.

Ronald Reagan, the gold standard for Republican presidents, was the first president to be divorced. He was also cold and distant to his children.

Then there's the flip side. Jimmy Carter is considered a very nice man and a failure as a president. George H. W. Bush was known as a gentleman and was a one-term president. Few of the never-Trumpers cared for George W. Bush, either but he is now being held up as an example of sterling character.

Barack Obama projected the aura of a demigod but beneath that he had a mean side. He was a bad winner and a worse loser (if he won in a basketball he teased the loser the rest of the day and if he lost then he pouted). He loved straw man arguments and allowed his staff to attribute political differences to racism. Plus there was the weaponizing of the Justice Department and the IRS plus innumerable other scandals that were under-reported.

Anyway, the argument that Trump is lacking in character is pretty specious.

The Resistance is Dead (at least in Ohio)

In early August Republican Troy Balderson struggled to beat Democrat Danny O'Connor in a House special election. The votes are still being counted but it's considered mathematically impossible to O'Connor to win. This is a seat that has been Republican since 1982 and that President Trump carried by a wide margin. Because it was such a tight race, many are pointing to it as an early indication of a blue wave. No one seems to be aware of the campaigns themselves. As someone who actually lives (and voted) in this district I have a few insights that others have missed.

The big one is that O'Connor wasn't running as a Democrat. He was running as a moderate. In his first ad he said that both parties needed new leadership. Later, when the race turned mean, he moved on to promising to save Social Security and accusing his opponent of wanting to cut business taxes too much at the cost of Social Security. Nothing was said about open borders, $15/hour minimum wage, single-payer health care or impeaching President Trump. Certainly nothing was said about socialism, democratic or otherwise. O'Connor started the race with a big lead which took a major hit when he admitted that, yes, he would support Nancy Pelosi if she was the Democratic candidate for speaker.

While it's true that O'Connor was running in a district that's half rural, he was not an outlier. Sherrod Brown is usually considered one of the furthest left members of the Senate but he, too, is running ads about bi-partisan cooperation. So is Joyce Beatty who is in a much more urban district.

Here we are in an election in which anger toward Trump is supposed to produce a blue wave and the President is a no-show. Possibly in Cleveland someone is promising to be part of the Resistance but no one in Columbus is. Instead the Democrats are sounding like Bill Clinton moderates rather than the neo-socialists elsewhere.

The Anti-ICE Story

It sounds horrible - a pregnant woman was on her way to have her baby when ICE agents seized her husband for deportation. It only sounds a bit better that she was having a scheduled C-section and not in labor.

But the narrative really changes when you hear that the husband is wanted for murder in Mexico. Should an accused murderer be exempt from arrest because his wife is having her 5th child? Is the wife liable for arrest for shielding a fugitive for years?

There's no excuse for rushing the story to press before giving ICE a chance to explain the reason for the arrest. It was done as part of the Resistance, in order to stoke opinion against a policy they disagree with.

Ironically, the full story reinforces one of President Trumps charges that upsets the left the most - that Mexican murderers are coming across the border.

So a story was rushed out before all the facts are known in order to agitate against the President. Further the events and the release of the story overlapped the date when 350+ newspapers ran indignant editorials about the President's use of the term "fake news". What an irony.

Elizabeth Warren and Capitalism

Elizabeth Warren, who is absolutely not running for President, has proposed saving capitalism from itself. Her proposal is that once a corporation reaches an arbitrary revenue figure, it will be required to obtain a government license in order to stay in business. It will also be required to have an arbitrary number of board members from the employees, spend an arbitrary amount on reinvestment and a super majority of the board will have to agree before the corporation can engage in politics. This last part is a way to neuter the Citizen's United decision which allows corporations to engage in politics. The rest of her proposal shows just how little Warren understands about economics. Vox has a long piece explaining why the proposal is a good thing which proves that they are equally clueless about economics.

The reasoning for this proposal is an essay by Milton Friedman saying that corporations owe it to their shareholders to maximize profits. To people on the left, this means wringing every possible penny of profits, no matter how many lives are ruined in the balance. In practice, this seldom happens. Yes, plants are closed and production is moves overseas but this usually has more to do with keeping the company in business than maximizing profits. Similarly, most corporations have charitable foundations. Warren and Vox seem unaware of this.

The bigger problem is that the whole thing is based on revenue instead of profits. The left often assumes that all corporations have huge profits which are then paid out to the undeserving (meaning the share-holders who literally own the company). In reality, profits are usually a tiny percentage. Take Walmart as an example. It's at the top of Forbes's list of largest corporations. Their revenue was around $500 billion dollars. But... they only made $10 billion in profits. That's 2%. They have 3 billion shares of stock so they only pay a few dollars per share. They also only have 2.3 million employees so, even if you confiscate all of their earnings and give them to the employees, it's only going to come to $5,000/each.

But that will never happen. If the government started confiscating all profits of a corporation once it hit $1 billion in revenue then the shareholders would demand that it never hit that amount. There would be corporate inversions (buying a smaller company overseas then moving the headquarters there), splitting off subsidiaries, and whatever else it takes to avoid that. This is what we'll see if Warren's proposal becomes law, also. Corporations will find ways to avoid it.

And that overlooks the biggest problem with only looking at revenue - not all corporations make money. When I was researching this I looked at a list of corporations' income from 2017. One corporation jumped out at me - Toys R Us. They had $4 billion in revenue last year. This year they went bankrupt. That's because their expenses were greater than their revenue. Red Lobster was also on the list and they've been flirting with bankruptcy for years.

Of course, Warren knows that she can't nationalize all large businesses at this point. Her proposal is aspirational: something that will happen if she becomes President (not that she's running) and has a strong Democratic Congress. And heaven help us if that happens.

It's Anti-Trump Editorial Day

Since I'm writing this after midnight, anti-Trump editorial day was actually yesterday. 300 plus newspapers ran editorials complaining about President Trump's constant refrain of fake new and his calling them the enemy of the people. Considering normal editorial content directed at the president, no one would have noticed if they hadn't told us ahead of time.

Let's talk a bit about fake news, though. Omarose Onee Manigault Newman who is usually known by her first name has a new book out. In it she claims that someone has a tape of Trump using a racial epithet on a hot mic back on the set of The Apprentice. Omorose does not claim to have a copy of the tape and when the book was written she says that she has not heard it (she claims to have heard it since then). No one in the press has heard this tape and no one else has come forward to verify the existence of the tapes. People who are alleged to have the tapes deny their existence. Do they even exist? That's highly questionable since someone already went through hot mic tapes from The Apprentice and released the Bill Bush (grab them by the...) tape.

Omarose has dominated the news cycle for the last week but I have yet to see an article that uses words such as "unverified" or "uncorroborated" or "alleged tapes". Without those modifiers, the public is given the impression that these tapes do indeed exist.

Here's a hypothetical question: if a bitter ex-staffer made damaging allegations about any previous president, would anyone have covered it without hearing the tape? Of course not.

Fake news? They certainly abandoned normal journalistic standards. 

In 2017, President Trump complained that he had been informed that his campaign had been tapped. Editorialists all over the country insisted that there was no evidence that this happened. Never mind that the President in privy to information that the news media is not or that, as it turned out, there was FISA warrant for monitoring at least one campaign staffer which could count.

So when Trump makes a claim, the news media treats it with skepticism but when an ex-staffer makes unverified claims, she is given major coverage.

And this is being done to hurt the President and his agenda. I doubt that most newsrooms even see the double standard they use. Does that make them an enemy of the people? It certainly puts them at odds with the people who voted for Trump and his agenda.

Today's editorials will change nothing. Trump already believes the press hates him so a coordinated attack on him just provides additional proof. As I said at the beginning, if they hadn't told me that this was a special event I'd have assumed it was one of the 4-3 anti-Trump editorials the local paper runs every week. So one more Trump editorial isn't going to affect my opinion. So what's the point?

Confronting the Progressive's Past

We keep hearing about needing a conversation on America's racist past. This usually comes from Progressives. That's what the Democrats call themselves now. They abandoned being liberals early in the 2000s and adopted a return to the Progressive movement of the first half of the 20th century. Hillary Clinton, among others, explicitly called for a return to the Progressive ideals. So, here's some things you should know about the Progressives:

They were racist

Slavery and the end of the Civil War brought major upheavals. It took a couple of generations but things were finally settling down. Then President Wilson, the godfather of Progressivism, decided that the races were getting too cozy. So, he segregated federal workers which set in motion a general segregation.

They didn't like elected officials

The Progressive movement wanted to get politics out of government. Their great idea was to have politicians as figureheads and leave the real governing to dispassionate civil servants. This is where our current administrative state came from. A lot of cities eliminated the mayor except as a figurehead and turned the bulk of city management over to a city manager. This happened on state and federal levels, also, with Congress passing enabling legislation and bureaucrats writing the rules that actually implemented the laws.

They were racist

They loved science, or science-sounding things. They particularly loved Darwin. Our whole concept of race was built on top of Darwin (I'm sure he'd be horrified). They put whites at the top and blacks at the bottom which provided the intellectual underpinnings for racism. It's not racism if it's scientific, right? At least that's what they said.

They admired the fascists

FDR, the other ultra-Progressive president after Wilson, was a huge fan of Mussolini. The two corresponded and saw each other in a competition. Mussolini saw Roosevelt as a fellow fascist who was constrained by the Constitution from doing what was needed.

Did I mention they were racist?

In the 19th century colonialism was considered the "white man's burden". Whites, having a more advanced civilization, were duty-bound to civilize the savages. This faith-based bigotry was replaced with Social Darwinism. Just as individuals and species competed for the strongest, so did civilizations with the strongest almost having a duty to conquer lesser civilizations.

The fascists admired them.

Darwinism and Social Darwinism formed the intellectual underpinnings for Hitler's conquest of Europe. His Aryan master race needed to crush or exterminate the lesser races.

They were really racist

Linked in with all this was the eugenics movement. This was going to improve the species through birth control and sterilization. Planned Parenthood was founded to promote this. And Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, got a fan letter from Hitler.

They were SO racist

I keep seeing memes that minimum wage was meant to make sure that everyone made enough to live on, regardless of what he did. That's not true. The minimum wage was really meant to be sure that jobs went to whites. Minorities were usually paid less. The thinking was that, if you had to pay the same for whites as for minorities then you'd go ahead and hire whites.

They were violently racist

The KKK started in the deep south and was dying out until a revival beginning at Stone Mountain. This coincided with the movie Birth of a Nation which glorified the Klan. Wilson publicly approved of both. Suddenly the Klan went from the deep south to being nationwide. States that had never been slave states such as Indiana were suddenly hotbeds of Klan activity. But the Klan was always tightly linked with the Democratic Party.

They didn't confine their racism to blacks

That hotbed of Progressivism, Oregon, actively discouraged Asians and blacks from living in it. That's why Portland is one of America's whitest cities. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the populous was afraid of enemy spies. FDR responded to this by rounding up German citizens living in the US and anyone of Japanese ancestry. Note the disparity here - he didn't worry about people whose parents had come from Germany but if your grandparents had come from Japan then you were sent to a relocation center. Note - don't ever compare this to what Hitler did. American Japanese lost their homes and businesses but were fairly well treated. Victims of the Holocaust were brutally killed and the ones who weren't were starved.

Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican-turned-Progressive was racist, too

In a speech on race relations after his election victory he engaged in Social Darwinism. He speculated that blacks could be raised up by teaching them white ways but worried that they would debase whites by teaching them black way. He's revered as the father of the national parks but, it is usually overlooked that he was taking Indian land to make those parks. He was specifically inspired in making the national parks by a man named Madison Grant. Grant, in turn, wrote the book on racism (literally, it was called The Passing of the Great Race) which combined all of the things above and more. 

Remember all of this the next time someone talks about the great Progressive traditions

Alex Jones and the Internet

A long list of Internet giants suddenly banned Alex Jones and his InfoWars site. I'll state up front that the few times I've run across Alex Jones's conspiracy theories, they've left me feeling, in the words of Captain Jack Sparrow, sullied and unusual. Regardless there are several reasons why this was a mistake.

First is the obvious one - there are much worse sites out there that have not been banned. The reasons for the ban are too vague to be useful. For example, Louis Farakan's anti-Semitic diatribes are still out there.

This leads into the second reason - the tech giants are simply not equipped to decide what should and should not be allowed. They are staffed with far-left ideologues and only given vague guidelines instead of hard rules. It comes across more as censorship than enforcement of values.

Suppressing Jones has solidified support for him from the Right (including this post) because, given the vague reasons given, the see themselves or sites they support as being next. There have been calls for government control of the Internet giants because if this. My libertarian instincts say that this would be bad so let's not see actions that push the issue.

Finally, the effort could very well backfire. When you suppress a conspiracy theorist, he claims that you are trying to hide the truth. It gives him credibility that he should not have. Jones claims that 4.5 million people have signed up for his email newsletter since the ban. Multitudes of people who couldn't care less about Alex Jones are now wondering what he did to get banned. Some of them will believe his ravings. That's the very opposite of what the Internet giants wanted.

So, how can so many people who are so smart do something so dumb?

Feeding the Narative

Racism is epidemic in the US today. I know that because I'm constantly told so by the national news.

Unfortunately, that doesn't actually make it so.

In July there were stories about the police being called because of black kids trying to make some money. The stories were framed to give the impression that the only reason the authorities were called was because the kids were black.

Last weekend I saw two separate stories about authorities shutting down some girls. One was selling lemonade and the other was selling home-made cookies. Both stories were carried by conservative newsletter under the heading of over-reaching government. Both were very similar to the incidents of black children being shut down but neither case made the national news.

If a black child's lemonade stand is shut down then it makes the news because it's assumed that racism must be involved. Obviously there's no racism if it's a white kid so it's not a story. This in turn feeds the narrative that we are a racist nation, even if no actual racism is involved.

Why does this happen? I don't think that reporters are actually trying to manufacture racism where there isn't any. But they are trying to manufacture ratings and stories about racism get people to watch so they have a financial incentive to push them. There is also confirmation bias. They know that there is racism in the country so they are predisposed to see it.

This goes way beyond a child's lemonade stand but that makes a good starting point.

Now, how often do police kill whites? If you watch the new then you'd say that it never happens. Cops only shoot black men. The actual figures get complicated. Half of the people killed by police are white and 1/4 are black but blacks  disproportionately commit a disproportionate number of cromes (usually victomizing blacks) and the number of black men killed by police is lower than the proportion who commit crimes. My point is that twice as many whites are killed as blacks but a white man shot by the police is never covered while many shootings of black men receive nationwide coverage. Again, this distorts our opinions and feeds the narrative that America is hopelessly racist.

Racism and Reverse Racism

A woman of Asian ancestry named Sarah Jeong was just appointed to the editorial board of the New York Times. Sarah has a history of tweets that are anti-white, anti-male and otherwise offensive. He defenders insist that she can't be a racist because only whites are in an institutional position of power so only whites can be racists. There's also some blather about whites not actually having an identity the way blacks and other groups do. If this was so then she wouldn't have been tweeting about white.

Back to the first point - that only whites are in a position of power so only whites can be racists. This is an incredibly racist statement. It lumps all white together and all non-whites together. There is no room for the individual in that blanket statement. If you aren't white then you are oppressed and powerless.

But Sarah isn't powerless. She's on the editorial board of the most powerful newspaper in the country. It's silly to excuse her because of her powerlessness. She has more power than 99% of whites will ever have.

If you insist on lumping people together by race (and that is racist by the old standards) then you might notice that some groups are doing better than whites in America today - Jews and Asians to name two. And, surprise, Sarah is among those doing well. She's on the editorial board of the New York Times. For someone who's oppressed, she's doing well.

All of this mental gymnastics is silly. Racism is bad, period. It's not excusable to say that it's ok to be racist against whites because our ancestors were racist first. That just leads to a never-ending cycle of hate.

Tribalism and Civil Wars

Let's talk about nationalism and patriotism. These are dirty words to the left these days. They lead to wars and "othering" and numerous other offenses. So nationalism is to be shunned. Patriotism is nothing but taking credit for the accomplishments of people who are long dead.

Fine, so we're all cosmopolitans now.

Except we aren't. We're tribal. We always have been. It's baked into our DNA. Many species of animals form groups of some kind - packs, herds, colonies, schools, flocks. This is true for birds, fish, insects and mammals. It goes back hundreds of millions of years to the dinosaurs. All primates form packs.

What sets humans apart from all of these others is our ability to form super-packs. Somewhere in the mists of history we started recognizing people beyond our immediate tribe as part of a larger tribe. This was usually a combination of language and geography. This allowed us to form villages then towns, cities, city states, states and eventually nations.

War is really tribal conflicts on a massive scale.

So if we get rid of national identity then we will have no more wars, right? Wrong.

We still need to be part of a tribe. It's such a powerful urge that we don't even think about it. You can see that happening on the left. They've abandoned America. That's why President Obama was at pains to say that American exceptionalism was no different from German exceptionalism or other nations. He's internalized the idea that nations are bad. That's also why the left is busy tearing down monument and renaming buildings and streets (and possibly cities) and refusing to honor the national anthem. They want to do away with the concept of America in the name of international cosmopolitanism.

But there's a catch. That tribal instinct is still there so they've replaced America with a new tribe - the urban cosmopolitans.

The more you think about it the more obvious this is. They cluster together with other members of their tribe. They insulate themselves from non-tribe members. That's where the bubble comes from and why they are more likely to unfriend a conservative than a conservative is to unfriend them. They are creating ever-stricter tests to see who is and who isn't a member of their tribe. Even tribe member are one shibboleth away from expulsion.

That also explains their extreme reaction to the election of Donald Trump. He may be a New Yorker, but he's not a member of the tribe and they can't stand seeing a non-member in charge. The same is true for his appointees which is why there are calls for life-time punishment for anyone who works for President Trump. They are proclaiming themselves members of a different tribe.

In fact, this is the only reasonable explanation I have for why the left is so unhinged at the idea of President Trump. They often use terms like "nationalist" to prove that he's a crypto-nazi and they went absolutely bananas when he suggested a military parade similar to the one he saw in France. You can't celebrate America! And you can't close the borders.

This impulse has been around for a long time but, until fairly recently, it had a natural counter-force. During the various wars the US fought, tribal bonds tightened. This was especially true during World War II when the Japanese attach on Pearl Harbor made Americans fear foreign invasion. It was also true during the Cold War when America had a rival tribe of equal stature. But, with the exception of a spurt of patriotism following 9/11, those days are long gone. There is no external threat to force us together so we are breaking apart.

So far the right hasn't hasn't responded in kind. We still think of ourselves as Americans and the left as fellow Americans who are acting strangely. We resent being treated as yokels but we still don't feel the need to form a new tribe to replace America.

This is how civil wars start. Two groups within a country decide that tribal membership is more important than national identity. And that's the logical conclusion to the left's attempted destruction of the American ideal. Eventually the outgroup will feel a group identity similar to the ingroup's and fighting will begin in earnest.

Can this be stopped? Maybe but it will take more than a different president to fix things. Certainly none of the Democrats positioning them selves to run will try to join the two tribes. Right now they are competing to see who is the furthest to the left. Their plan is to take control then subjugate the outgroup. But the country is too evenly split for that to work. None of Trump's competitors in the 2016 race was likely to bridge the divide, either.

The rise of a real external threat would go a long way to uniting Americans again but that has its own dangers in the nuclear age. We aren't likely to see a WWIII with a large portion of the populous mobilized like happened in WWII. Modern wars are fought by a small group who in turn are part of their own tribe. This will be important if an actual civil war breaks out. Most of the troops and police come from the conservative outgroup and are unlikely to fight for the elite ingroup.

The best solution would be for the left to realize the need for America and patriotism. Possibly some of the leaders of the left will look at the stress fractures across Europe and take heed.

Trump and the Press

How soon they forget...

Quote from  A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times:

I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous. I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.

I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president's rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country's greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.

It was just over two years ago that newspaper all over the world proclaimed that, yes, they had told us that previous Republicans were dangerous but they were fibbing. Donald Trump really is dangerous and all of the rules of journalism are off. No more pretense of being unbiased. Since then they have run poorly sourced (meaning one off-the-record source who was wrong), run opinion pieces disguised as news, and, in general, have been relentlessly partisan. Unlike previous presidents, President Obama pays attention to the news and reacts to it. He also hits back. The press spared no effort trying to prevent his victory and since then has attempted to hobble his administration. So why are they surprised that he responds in kind?

When Kids Lead

Recently the Left has been embracing kids as their leaders. Actually it's young adults but they are showing their inexperience and naivete. First there was the Parkland "survivors" led by David Hogg. I'm calling them "survivors" because many of them were never actually close to the shooter. They are survivors the same way that I'm a survivor of a drowning because I was on the same beach at the same time (true story). Anyway, their proximity to violence is supposed to give them special insights. The truth is that they sound ignorant and inane, resorting to magic thinking that with just a few more gun laws no one will ever go on a school killing spree again.

More recently the Democratic Party has been fawning over Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, proclaiming her the new face of the party. While she is young and pretty, at least compared to Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton and she is earnest, she is also vapid and uninformed. She has degrees in economics and international relations. Either she slept through class or she should demand her tuition back. Over the weekend she went on record as having no idea how the economy actually works (she seems to think that evolution and not capitalism is responsible for the rise of the West). While railing against Israel, she had to admit that she didn't actually know much about Israel and Palestine.

This is what happens when you live in a bubble. Her professors probably spouted off social justice propaganda to her for years and neither she nor any of her classmates actually asked any probing questions. They just accepted what they were told.

So the new face of the Democratic Party is an intellectual embarrassment. And she's not even a Democrat. She's a Social Democrat and the head of the Social Democrat Party now says that communism is good.

This is the problem with turning things over to inexperienced newcomers. Ocasio-Cortez has never been been outside her bubble. Up to this point she's gotten by by parroting lines from other people. She never engaged in introspection.

And for the record, I don't have a degree in international relations but I can explain what's going on in Palestine much better than she could. And I can explain both sides of the argument. That's because I'm older and more experienced and I don't live in a bubble.

So What Do the Anti-Trumpers Want?

The Republican elite, also knows as the never-Trumpers, have made it clear that they would prefer to see the Democrats win Congress than to love another day in a country in which a Republican Congress supports a Republican president. This list includes but is not limited to George Will, Max Boot and Jenifer Rubin, all of the Washington Post. Boot was the most recent to pen a "I hope the Democrats win" column.

So, exactly what do you guys want? What principles do you hold so dear that you would rather see a party that's leaning socialist take control of Congress than have the Republicans stay in power?

Let's start with immigration. I've read your columns for years. When George W. Bush proposed immigration reform you were against it until we closed the border. That goes back to President Reagan - we have to secure the border as a condition of allowing any sort of amnesty to those already here. You hammered on that in 2005.

Now you complain about how uncaring we are to rip families apart. What did you think border enforcement was going to look like? Did you expect a bit stop sign would be enough? Maybe you were in favor of a wall. I remember calls for a wall or at least a substantial fence in the early days of the Obama administration. But now that Trump wants a wall you think it's the dumbest thing in the world.

Or are you actually in favor of open borders so that you have cheap housekeepers and gardeners? If this is true than say so. Come out and say "America needs to have the same control over its borders as every other nation with the exception of cheap labor which should come pouring across."

Then there's trade. Max Boot said that he's in favor of free trade. Funny thing, President Trump says that he is, too, and he wants trade barriers to come down. But other countries don't want to drop their protectionism. The choices are endless talks that don't accomplish anything or a new round of tariffs. Yes, Trump's tariffs could backfire but negotiations didn't get anywhere. Again, come out and state your position on this, "Trade wars are too messy. America needs to accept that they are at a disadvantage in trade and shut up."

Boot Complained about appeasing dictators meaning Korea's Kim. They need to say, "I'd rather North Korea continue to develop the capability of destroying New York than see President Trump shake Kim's hand."

Other things they could confess, "Yes, for years I've been saying that lower individual and corporate tax rates are a good thing and that we need conservative judges on the Supreme Court but now I believe in raising taxes on corporations and the rich. And I've decided that having conservatives appointed to the courts isn't worth having Trump in the White House."

Or they could come right out and tell the actual truth, "I know I'm supposed to be a conservative and stand for certain principles but when it comes down to it, I prefer style over substance and, like late night talk show hosts, I'm happiest when the opposition is in power and I can rant about how everything would be better if we were in power. I'm not comfortable when our side has to make real compromises and I'd feel a lot better with a centrist like Romney who looks and acts the part than someone like Trump who is enacting a conservative agenda but doesn't have the proper decorum."

When you get right down to it, the Republican elite haven't liked an actual Republican president since Reagan, if then. They were lukewarm about Bush-41 and they hated Bush-43. They don't have anything good to say about Nixon or Ike, either.

Which is why no one listens to them except the other side.

Failing the First Rule of Politics

Before changing political norms, the first thing you should always do is ask, "What will happen if this is turned on me?" Invoking the nuclear option in the Senate should have warned the Democrats. They were too anxious to pack the courts with Obama appointees so they eliminated the filibuster for judicial appointments except for the Supreme Court. In response, the Republicans didn't give aththa second thought to applying the same standard to the Supreme Court.

Now Democratic leaders and others are openly calling for confrontations with members of the Trump administration where ever they are. WaPo blogger Jennifer Rubin declared that Sarah Huckabee Sanders deserves a "life sentence" of being harassed publicly. The original excuse was that "tearing children from their parents is so extreme that it requires an extreme response". That is no longer the case. A woman posted a video of herself reading a statement to Scott Pruit, head of the EPA, calling on him to resign. In he video it was apparent that he'd already finished his meal so he left rather than start a fight. She called him a coward for not responding to her. There have been other similar incidents.

Rather than calling for more violence, Democratic leaders should be looking at the long-term damages their policy of confrontation will cause. First is will this set the tone from now on? Hillary Clinton admitted that her policies would put "a lot of coal miners out of work". Will miners and other people displaced by a future administration be justified in confronting the EPA administrator? I'm only throwing this out as a single example of possible outrage.

This is where the Democrats are showing their shortsightedness. Just as the nuclear option was used against them so can confrontation.

There is also a problem with perceptions. One reason the Democrats are pushing this strategy it to fire up the base. It makes them feel that they are accomplishing something. But the image of activists confronting administrators may not be popular among the general electorate. It may repel independents and motivate Republicans. But calling off these confrontations will demoralize the base.

Democrats have forgotten Saul Alinsky's 4th rule and Republicans haven't: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." They keep adopting strategies as if they are the only ones who can use them. They assumed that eliminating the filibuster would never be turned back on them. They assume that, after harassing Republicans, they will never be harassed. With a Supreme Court vacancy, they are assuming that they can change the rules to stall for time and that it will never be used against them.

And they keep acting like they are in charge and will always be. They tell themselves that their cause is just and the Republicans are evil so co-existence is no longer an option. They are sure that somehow President Trump will be removed from office, if not by impeachment then by the 2020 election. They still haven't learned that their dominance is not preordained. They were sure of their permanent Democratic majority in 2008 only to lose Congress in the 2010 and 2014 elections. They were positive they'd keep the White House in 2016. And they act as if they haven't lost state elections all across the country. They need to relearn how to coexist with the Republicans and stop acting like spoiled children.

Trump Hysteria

For the past week or two the nation has been in the grip of a new round of Trump hysteria. It began with the G7 conference when the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau did an about face from what he'd said to President Trump and attacked Trump over trade. The Left bemoaned Trump not getting along with the other G7 leaders (conveniently forgetting that Germany's Merkel decided to postpone her retirement specifically to oppose Trump. How do you get along with that?)  Then people complained about the summit with North Korean's Kim. It was disrespectful to have US flags side-by-side with the NK flag or Trump was too friendly with a despot (from the same people who complained when Trump insulted Kim last year) or that Trump must have made a bad deal because Trump known nothing about high-stakes negotiation (see The Art of the Deal).

Then things really went into overdrive when AG Sessions announced a zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigrants. That meant an end to the catch-and-release policy on illegal immigrants with children. A combination of policies and court decisions said that it was cruel to put children in the same facilities as adults so they were put in special child-dentition facilities until they could be placed with someone within three weeks.

Outrage over this started slow but caught on quickly. Samantha Bea lashed out at Ivonka Trump for sharing a picture of herself with her child. Similar outrage was shown any time anyone connected with the administration was shown with their child. "How can you be so insensitive as to show your child when children are being ripped from their parent's arms?"

Pictures were shared of the harsh conditions. The initial pictures were from 2014 and all of the facilities used were opened under the Obama administration. None of that mattered.

The national news media picked up the story, labeling it a "crisis" then an "emergency".

A photographer took a short video of a child crying after her mother set her down so ICE agents could search her. It became the symbol of children being ripped from their parents. Mever mind that she was only crying because she was set down, she was not separated from her mother, the mother was not a refugee - she was just following her sisters in search of a better job, and the mother had left three other children behind. The picture was still the symbol of children ripped from their parents.

As the hysteria grew so did the comparisons. George Takei claimed it was worse than the Japanese internment under FDR (overlooking that his family was imprisoned for being the wrong ethnicity while children of illegal immigrants are taken away because their parents broke the law). Others insisted that this was the Holocaust all over again with space blankets being substituted for gas chambers. No one seemed to give a damn for the hardships and danger that the parents put their children through while going through Mexico.

After President Trump signed an executive order to keep families together the left totally lost their minds. With no specific policy to protest they began attacking members of the administration. Suddenly it was unacceptable for members of the administration to eat in a restaurant. Previously, when people were harassed by restaurant staff, the owners apologized. Now they celebrate it.

I could name other things but you get the idea.

I don't think all of this hysteria is really about immigration policy. I think it's the realization that Trump is not going anywhere. The Inspector General's report on the Clinton email investigation showed that the top agents in the FBI were very biased against Trump. They even ignored new evidence in the Clinton investigation in order to pursue the investigation into non-existent  Russian collusion.

The Russia investigation has been the left's last hope for getting rid of Trump and it's evaporating.

Even worse, the left has been counting on a Blue Wave to retake Congress with the possibility of impeaching Trump. All hopes of a Blue Wave are gone. The Democrats might win a small majority in the House but it will be a struggle to keep the Republicans from picking up a seat or two in the Senate.

And Trump's popularity is rising. He's as popular as Obama at this point and more popular within his own party than anyone but George W. Bush.

And that's the real root of the current hysteria. Trump's no going anywhere. He'll serve out his full term and will likely be reelected. It's like election night all over. A man they hate runs the country and they can't stand it.

Why Trump Will Win Reelection (new version)

I've written before that President Trump will be reelected in 2020. I'm even more sure of it now. Here are my reasons:

1) The Left really hates Trump.

This sounds counter-intuitive but the presidents who is really disliked by the opposite party get reelected, usually by wide margins. Nixon, Reagan, and George W Bush were all hated by the Democrats. Clinton and Obama were hated by the Republicans. They all won reelection. Ford, Carter and George H. W. Bush were tolerated by the other party and all were defeated.

2) The Democrats don't have a message.

Yes, they have a half-assed newer deal but they aren't going to win any votes with it.

3) The Democrats don't have a leader.

Barack Obama left the party in shambles. Now he's become the de facto leader, interviewing possible successors. A lot of Democrats are fond of Obama but he's the lamest of lame ducks and he has a history of putting himself ahead of his party (which is how he decimated the party in the first place).

4) The Democrats don't have a front-runner.

The 2020 election is 2 1/2 years from now. Typically successful candidates are known well before the election. Candidates who only emerge during the primaries typically go down in flames (think Dukakis or Kerry) Right now the Democratic front-runner is Joe Biden but it's unclear if he will even run. Elizabeth Warren denies that she's running. Most of the ones who have made it known that they will run are unknowns. They are having trouble being known because of the next point...

5) The Democrats can't get their message out.

Network news and cable news wants to feel like part of the resistance. That means they show anti-Trump 24/7. What little message the Democrats have is drowned out by anti-Trump coverage. The exception to that if Fox but they aren't going to carry any water for the Democrats, either.

6) Trump is keeping his promises.

The Democrats keep dismissing it at Trump playing to his base but Trump is actually following up on his major promises. Which leads to...

7) Trump is doing well in the polls.

A year ago the left was sure that even all else failed, Trump would be a one-term president because of his unprecedented unpopularity. Since then he's gotten a lot more popular. He's polling ahead of Obama at the same point and he's ahead of everyone except a post-9/11 Bush in popularity within his own party.

8) Foreign affairs.

Korea is a big deal. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem is a big deal. Trump is playing hard-ball with international trade but his goal is to open more markets to US companies. If he succeeds then this will be a big deal. Defeating ISIS should be a big deal but it happened to quickly and easily that it will probably be forgotten.

9) Low expectations

Remember the predictions for a Trump presidency? The economy was supposed to crash but that didn't matter because Trump would cause a nuclear war. And if he didn't he'd establish a fascist dictatorship with blacks enslaved and all other non-whites sent to concentration camps. But none of that mattered in the long run because everyone was going to die of global warming. Trump would have to work really hard to live down to all the expectations. That makes his accomplishments seem even better.

10) Hate Trumps Love.

8,000,000 Obama voters voted for Trump. Instead of trying to woo them back, the Left is blaming them and insisting they are racists and sexists. Hollywood is piling on this. Late night talk shows compete to see who can be the most insulting to the president. An Oscar-winning actor drops an F-bomb at the Tony awards. Popular actors and directors put out tweets. No one on the Left is willing to admit that the Democrats no longer represent the working class. Instead they are consumed with hate. Polls have shown that Democrats are disowning conservative relatives over Trump (this actually happened in my wife's family). And Bill Maher would rather see the economy crash than see Trump reelected. Which brings me to my final point...

11) It's the economy stupid.

Bill Clinton was right when he said this in 1992. When Trump took office his predictions of 4% growth were dismissed as impossible in today's economy. We were told to get used to anemic 2% growth from now on. But the economy has surpassed all expectations. Growth is currently over 3.5% and unemployment is the lowest it's been in years. At the rate things are going, unemployment will soon be the lowest it's been in most people's lifetime. It's already the lowest on record for blacks. It's nearly impossible to run against that.

A word of warning - it is possible that things might change. Trump might trigger a real trade war which could crash the world economy. Or some unexpected weakness could suddenly appear as it did in 2008. I don't expect this, though. Growth under Obama was too sluggish to allow a bubble to form. Right now the economy looks strong and should continue to be for several years yet.

Craziness From Campus

What happened to the left being "reality-based"? They keep getting loonier and loonier as dogma replaces reality. This is most evident in college campuses.

Exhibit 1: A doctor of feminist studies evaluates a dog park from an Intersectional Feminist viewpoint. Here are her criteria:

1. How do human companions manage, contribute, and respond to violence in dogs?

2. What issues surround queer performativity and human reaction to homosexual sex between and among dogs?

3. Do dogs suffer oppression based upon (perceived) gender?

This is the ultimate example of anthropomorphism. The author, Helen Wilson, Ph.D. is taking the belief that gender is a social concept instead of a biological reality and applying it to animals. She worries that animals are "assigned" genders and sexual orientation at birth based on biology rather than their individual orientation. She also worries about proper consent and that dog parks contribute to rape culture. There is no affirmative consent. The dog who happens to have male genitalia does not ask the dog with a uterus "Can I sniff your nose?", "Can I sniff your butt?", "Can I hump you?". He just does it and it's up to the female to drive him off if his advances are unwelcome.

I hate to tell Dr. Wilson but that's how animals reproduce in the wild.

Exhibit 2:An English professor at Marquette University recently recounted "a day that felt like a constant barrage of microaggressions" as part of her ongoing diary of "everyday microaggressions" that she uses to see past her own "whiteness." Here's the really crazy one:

Following this panel, a white professor posts to social media how proud she is of white students (pre-service teachers) for buying school supplies for "underserved communities," playing into this savior script and celebrating altruistic charity instead of teaching ways to re-route power.

So it's now a microaggression for white students to do an act of charity for minorities because it makes them feel good about themselves. I suspect that given the choice between being given school supplies and being told that some college students are being taught ways of re-routing power, the "underserved communities" would take the supplies. I'm sure there are generations of liberals rolling over in their graves right now at the idea that charity is offensive.

The problem is that this stuff doesn't stay on campus. The second example is from an education department. They are training future teachers to be flaky. This is all newspeak. As the Instapundit says, "1984 wasn't meant to be an instruction manual."

Samantha Bee's Horrible Joke

In early June, Samantha Bee reacted to a picture of Ivanka Trump holding her son. Bee was reacting to news reports of illegal immigrant families being separated at the border and was outraged that Ivanka would show herself with her child when other parents are having their children stripped from them under her father's government. Bee went on to use one of George Carlin's 7 words you can't say on TV, calling Ivanka a "feckless C***".

A bit of background. US policy has always been that children cannot be sent to adult prisons. So the choices are separating them or giving adults with children a Get Into America Free card. Apparently the latter has been the policy. There's a legitimate policy debate there. Should we encourage illegal immigration by allowing adults with children in or should we discourage it by arresting illegal immigrants as we find them, knowing that it will separate families? Or should we have prison facilities for entire families?

But all of this is too deep for Bee. Her show is all about shock and outrage. So she took advantage of the president's daughter and did something shocking.

There are only a few forbidden words in today's language and Bee used one of them. Furthermore, in her half-assed apology, she said that she's been trying to "reclaim" the word by using it fairly often on her show.

I'm amazed that basic cable allows that word to be used.

As for Bee "reclaiming" it, the word has two main uses. One is to refer to a woman's genitalia. The other is usually paired with "dumb" to mean, "I only keep this woman around for sex".

In her bit, Bee went on to suggest that Ivanka put on a nighty and seduce her father into changing his policies. So, she may have upgraded "dumb" to "feckless" but she still meant it in the crude sense. No reclaiming there.

So Bee feels it's ok to use a vulgar expression while suggesting incest between President Trump and his daughter. Never mind that Ivanka is way more liberal than her father. She's related to him so it's ok to attack her for his policies.

The left has a varying standard on presidential children. It was forbidden to even mention the Obama girls unless the press was quoting a press release. It was a national story when the Bush twins used fake IDs at a bar. It was also a national story when someone dared to ask Chelsea Clinton (who was in her late-20s and stumping for her mother) about her father's impeachment. If the President is a Democrat then the kids are off-limits, if a Republican then it's open-season.

Still, it's quite a stretch to go from a zero-tolerance policy implemented by the Attorney General to the President's daughter.

Samantha Bee is the truly feckless one.

When and Why Did the FBI Start Investigating Candidate Trump?

Until this month, the official story was that the FBI began their investigation of the Trump campaign in the Fall of 2016 after John McCain turned over the Steele Dossier to them. That timeline changed considerably with the revelation of Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Now it's being alleged that the FBI started investigating the Trump campaign much earlier.

Under the new timeline, Trump was under pressure from the Washington Post's endorsement panel to name some foreign policy advisors. The seasoned professionals were boycotting Trump so he had to settle for 3rd string back-benchers - people who had done business overseas. That set off alarms because at least two of these advisors "had ties with Russia".

Personally, I think it went back even further. Fairly early in 2016, Vladimir Putin was asked about Trump and said that he was clever (later translations say that he may only have called Trump colorful). Reporters demanded that Trump repudiate Putin, something that Trump's ego was not going to allow. Instead Trump accepted the compliment and said a couple of complimentary things about Putin. The pundits went crazy insisting that this somehow proved that Trump was Putin's puppet and that Trump was planning on overthrowing the US government and installing himself as an authoritarian leader.

Keep in mind that no one batted an eye when SoS Clinton met with Russia to reset relations or when POTUS Obama did his own reset. Or when Obama premised flexibility after the next election to the Russian ambassador over a hot mic Or when Obama made fun of Romney for calling Russia our biggest geo-political rival.

It's been pretty well established that the FBI and Justice Department were being run by Obama loyalists. I'm guessing that they were among those never-Trumpers who believed that Trump was colluding with Putin and looking for any excuse to open an investigation. Then Trump added some people with "ties to the Kremlin" to his advisors. Russia is pay-to-play. Anyone doing business there has ties with the Kremlin and these advisors had done nothing illegal. But that's all the excuse the FBI needed.

The New York Times article that broke the store about Operation Crossfire Hurricane admitted that the FBI considered quietly meeting with the Trump campaign. They decided against it. Why? Because they wanted to catch the Trump campaign doing something with the Russians.

In a Sunday morning news show, Comey claimed that it was all about Russia but why have FBI informants meet with the Trump campaign if things were as innocent as Comey claimed (and remember that Comey lied under oath to Congress about wiretapping so he is not a reliable source).

I think that rather than the FBI investigating the Russians and their connections with Trump, they were investigating Trump and his connections with Russia. The focus of the investigation was not Russia, it was Trump.

And that's why it's a scandal.

Trump and North Korea

Earlier this week North Korea reacted to statements by Vice President Pence about pursuing a Libyan model for denuclearization and to joint military maneuvers with South Korea. They threatened to break off talks and to respond with force.

On Thursday, President Trump made his own response by cancelling the summit and reminding that we can also use force.

Naturally the pundits went crazy. In the Washington Post's afternoon email summary, there was an editorial plus columns by five columnists on what a poor negotiator Trump is. By the end of the day, North Korea released a statement that they are still willing to talk.

The irony here is that most of these same pundits had been worried that Trump was too caught up with the idea of winning a Nobel Prize and wanted the summit too much. They insisted that North Korea's Kim would be able to take advantage of Trump.

Trump came to office with the reputation of being a master negotiator and he is showing it here. He's proving that he's willing to walk away from a bad deal, or from someone who is unwilling to deal. That's important with North Korea. They've gotten the better of the US in previous negotiations.

It's also not as unusual as the pundits claim. Reagan walked away from a deal with the USSR only to have them restart negotiations. During negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the head of the PLO, Yasser Arafat constantly walked out, forcing Secretary of State Madeline Albright to run after him in high heels.

It's a nice change from President Obama's approach to Iran. It was obvious from the start that he wanted a deal more than they did and they used that to negotiate a bad deal.

In reality, the biggest obstacle to an agreement with North Korea is the actions of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton. They are also the reason that mentions of Libya set off warnings from North Korea.

During the George W. Bush administration and after the overthrow of Iraq, Libya voluntarily gave up its nuclear program in exchange for promises of normalized relations.

That lasted until the next American administration and the Arab Spring. A group of Islamists associated with the Arab Brotherhood met with Hillary Clinton and convinced her that they could be trusted to run Libya. She in turn convinced Obama and the US joined the effort to overthrow the Libyan government.

Pundits have complained that Trump announcing the Iran agreement will hurt negotiations with North Korea but Libya is a much bigger issue. We are reapplying sanctions on Iran because they are not in compliance with the agreement.

But we overthrew Libya after they gave up their nuclear program. The reason we gave, that we were protecting women and children refugees, was a lie. We were protecting Islamic rebels. But we'd almost certainly left Libya alone if they were nuclear-armed.

So now Trump has to convince Kim that he will be safe from the US, even after the next change of administrations. That's going to be far more difficult than it would have been if we'd stayed out of Libya. But I do think that the Trump administration is the best equipped for the job in a generation.

Who Moved?

A recent article in the Washington Post examines how whites have left the Democratic Party in favor of the Republicans. It attributes a lot of this movement to polarization within the parties. Southern conservatives used to be welcome in the Democratic party but these days they align with the Republicans. The same is true in reverse with Northern intellectuals who have left the Republicans to become Democrats. All of this is well and good, but I take issue with one phrase, "As most whites shift rightward, they perceive the Democratic Party to be shifting leftward".

I'm continually amazed that anyone can fail to see how far the Democratic Party has moved in the last decade. Here are some examples:

• In 2008, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were both against gay marriage.
• Both candidates were for a moderate rise in the minimum wage.
• Clinton was running as a return to her husband's administration and policies.
• Obama made fun of Clinton's health care plan because it included an individual mandate.

How have things changed since then?

• No one who is against gay marriage is allowed in the Democratic Party.
• There is a vocal wing in the party for raising the minimum wage to $15/hour - more than doubling it.
• in 2016 Bernie Sanders was mainly running against the major achievements of Bill Clinton
• ObamaCare had an individual mandate.
• There is a vocal wing in the party that is for Medicare for all and free collage
• A socialist made a strong challenge to Hillary Clinton. Granted he calls himself a "democratic socialist" but he also took his honeymoon in Soviet Moscow
• A number of honest-to-god Marxists won primaries
• A majority of Democrats distrust capitalism and would prefer socialism
  

Serious, socialists and Marxists are now accepted in the Democratic Party and people are still saying that the shift is only perceived?

The Cynical Reason the Santa Fe Shooting Won't Get as Much Press as the Stoneman Dougals Shooting

On May 18th, a student in Santa Fe, Texas killed 10 students and injured another 10. This was the deadliest school shooting since the Valentine's day shooting at Stoneman Douglas, Florida. The Stoneman Douglas shooting led to nationwide school walkouts and a massive protest in Washington DC. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that none of that will happen with the Santa Fe shooting.

My reasoning is that the Stoneman Douglas shooting was politically beneficial to the Democrats and the gun control crowd (which has a huge overlap). The gun used in the Florida shooting was an "assault weapon" and some of the survivors from the shooting immediately blamed Republicans and the NRA for not banning that class of gun. This was magical thinking - the insistence that the shooting would not have happened if only the shooter had been denied a particular class of weapon.

Democrats and anti-gun activists rallied in the hope that this tragedy would add to the predicted "blue wave". The NRA was condemned as a near-terrorist organization and Democrats began running on an anti-gun platform for the first time in a generation.

But the Texas shooter changed all that. he used a shotgun and a 38-special revolver. None of the "common sense gun control" provisions being demanded would have touched these weapons. An old-fashioned six-shooter does not have a high-capacity magazine. I haven't heard any details about the shotgun but they seldom hold more than five or six shots.

These are weapons that date back to the 19th century. All of the arguments about military-style weapons being too dangerous for civilians evaporate when presented with this shooting. The only argument left is a total ban on all guns. That moves well beyond what's reasonable.

A second reason that we will not see a repeat of the activism from the Florida shooting is the counter-protest. The NRA got a huge membership and fund-raising bonus from all of the anti-NRA activism. This is important because gun owners are more motivated to vote on a single issue than non-gun owners. Having someone propose taking your property away is a concrete action. Wanting to take away someone else's property is abstract. Concrete beats abstract in the polls. This will be even more urgent if Democrats propose going after revolvers and shotguns.

So, there will be no mass nationwide demonstrations, no marches on Washington, no student activists.

A few thoughts about the shootings in general. In Texas, things worked as they should - the shooter was stopped by the school safety officer. There was no indication that the police were cowering outside the school until the shooting ended.

In both cased plus Sandy Hook, the shooters got their weapons through their parents. The Florida shooter's mother bought him his AR-15 and at least one pistol because he was on the school shooting team. The Santa Fe and Sandy Hook shooters took their parents' guns. People were referring to the Bushmaster rifle the Sandy Hook shooter used as the "mass murderer's weapon of choice" but it wasn't. It was the gun his mother used for target practice. The lesson here is that when a parent owns weapons then provisions need to be made to keep those weapons out of the hands of disturbed teenagers.

The Santa Fe shooter was apparently emulating the Columbine killers. He wore a black trench coat and had some bombs. Initial reports are that the bombs were dummies but that still shows the futility of trusting in gun control to stop school killings. Disturbed teems will find a way.  Note: Columbine was supposed to be a bombing. The killers started shooting after their bomb failed to explode. And they were not wearing black trench coats during the shooting. They weren't even part of the "Trench Coat Mafia".

Questions for Comey

I doubt that I'll ever get to ask former FBI Directory Comey any questions but there are a few I'd love to ask:

1) You said that you announced that the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server was reopened because you feared that it would cast aspersions on her presidency if people found out after the election that an active investigation had been kept secret. You believed the polls showing that Clinton was going to win and worried that the news would affect the legitimacy of her presidency.

However, informing President-elect Trump about the Pee Tape provided a "news hook" and allowed the media to report on the Steele Dossier. This undercut the legitimacy of Trump's presidency. If you were dispassionately serving the office of the President then why didn't you find some way to brief Trump on the dossier without undercutting his legitimacy? Or were you hoping to undercut him?

2) You said that you didn't want the FBI to investigate the Pee Tape because you didn't want it to go on record that the President was being investigated. However, the press was reporting that the President was being investigated for collusion with Russia. One of the reasons that the President fired you was that you refused to publicly state that the President was not under investigation.

Given that you were willing to let the press claim that the President was under investigation when he was not, why were you so worried about the harm it would do him if an actual investigation was opened? If it is harmful to the country for people to hear that the President is under investigation then why didn't you shoot down the various rumors? And if it is alright then why not open an investigation as the President asked you to do several times?

3) Given that the FBI was using the Steele Dossier to spy on the President Elect's staff, why were you so uninterested in the origins of the information? To this day you seem to be surprisingly ignorant about who paid for what. Specifically, Republicans paid Fusion for opposition research but Steele was not involved until the Clinton campaign was paying the bills.

4) As soon as you met Donald Trump for the first time you decided that you needed to memorialize all meetings with him. What was the reason for this? Your first meeting was when you briefed him on the Pee Tape. You say that he praised you earlier and asked you to stay on and that he seemed shocked by the tape. Outside of passing judgement on the state of his marriage, what happened that made you decide to memorialize this meeting? Or are you rationalizing partisan dislike for the President-Elect? Had you already judged him based on campaign material and the Access Hollywood tape?

The Democrat's Bad Week

Last week was terrible for the Democrats but I'm not sure they recognize it.

At the beginning of the year the generic Democrat had a huge advantage over a generic Republican. That's shrunk. While the Democrats are still ahead, it's only by a half point more than the margin of error. The expected Blue Wave looks more like a blue ripple.

A new book about the Clinton campaign is about to come out and the excerpts reflect terribly on the Democratic standard bearer. It seems that Hillary is a bit of a sexist herself, ignoring the 18 women in the press corps to call on the guy from Fox in the back. Worse, some of her trusted staffers were known for being touchy-feely with the women in the press corps. So Hillary is a hypocrite, insisting that such behavior disqualified Trump from the presidency while allowing it to go on under her nose. She also said what many outsiders, including me, observed - that Hillary's only vision for the presidency was herself in it.

The Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against President Trump, Wikileaks, the Russians and possibly a few others claiming damages by Trump's collusion with the Russians to deliver emails to Wikileaks. The fact that they aren't waiting for the independent council's report shows that they lost hope of anything coming from it. It's unlikely that this suit will get anywhere and, it would be in the Democrats best interests if it was thrown out quickly. If it's allowed to progress, the Republicans will be able to demand access to the DNC's hacked server to verify if it really was hacked by the Russians. The Democrats will be forced to explain, under oath, why they didn't allow the FBI to examine the server. There's also an unconfirmed report from Wikileaks that the emails were given to them by a Democrat. That's not something that they want repeated since it ruins the whole collusion narrative.

Then there's Comey, Comey, Comey. The ex-FBI boss gave an interview to former Clinton-spokesman George Stephanopoulos, his book finally came out, and his leaked memos were released to the public. Combining all of this we found out that his private briefing with President-elect Trump was only about the pee tape and skipped all the other allegations in the Steele Dossier, that this provided the news hook that the networks needed to report on the dossier and that when President Trump said that he needed loyalty, he was probably, indirectly asking if Comey had been leaking information to make Trump look bad. We also find that he did not feel the need to memorialize any previous conversations with other people, not even the one where Attorney General Lynch told him that the Clinton emails were a "matter" instead of an "investigation". A year ago Comey was being presented as the last honest man who was going to tear down Trump. Now he comes across as petty and possibly duplicitous.

The More Comey Talks, the Less I Like Him

Former head of the FBI, James Comey is on a publicity tour to promote his new book. Between interviews and previews from the book, I have a better feel for the man than previously. And what I'm hearing isn't good.

It's obvious that Comey thinks very highly of President Obama and very poorly of President Trump. His wife and daughters marched in the pussy-hat protest the day after Trump's inauguration. Comey also felt very guilty about his role in the defeat of Obama's chosen successor, Hillary Clinton. His various actions seem a lot more understandable if you assume that he saw his duty as clearing the way for a Clinton presidency.

The Clinton email investigation certainly looks like it was designed to clear Clinton rather than actually investigate her. That explains the lack of a grand jury and the generous granting of immunity. He's tried to shift the blame to his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, but she's pushing back. He was also surrounded by people who were pro-Hillary/anti-Trump. Andrew McCabe, his second-in-command was married to someone who received substantial contributions from Clinton-affiliates when she ran for office. A memo exonerating Clinton was begun months before the investigation concluded. None of these are the actions of an impartial seeker-of-truth.

What about the last-minute opening and closing of the email investigation? Comey now says that he was sure that Clinton was going to win and was trying to protect her. He claims that it would have undercut her presidency if he hadn't announced the investigation. This seems odd. The matter sat on his desk for a month before he approved acting on it.

I suspect that the impetus here was lower-placed agents who threatened to go public if he continued to sit on the new batch of emails. He was saving Clinton from that. That's what Comey was alluding to but couldn't come out and explain.

He had already done the same thing earlier, after Loretta Lynch had a private meeting with Bill Clinton. If Lynch had announced that there was no reason to charge Clinton after that meeting it would have looked like she'd been bought off somehow. So Comey took matters into his own hands.

So, after doing all he could to help Hillary Clinton from her self-inflicted damage, Comey ended up reporting to President Trump after all.

From Comey's recent statement, he despises Trump and has all along. He liked heading the FBI so he went along with Trump, more or less, but he treated his new boss with suspicion.

Before the inauguration Comey informed Trump about the Steele Dossier but failed to mention that it was opposition research that had been shopped to the FBI and news organizations. He also failed to mention that information from that had been used to monitor the Trump campaign (or maybe he did reveal that since Trump complained about his people being wiretapped).

Trump invited Comey to a private dinner and asked for his loyalty. At least that's how Comey described it. Trump may have used slightly different words. Comey describes this as if he was being asked into the Mafia. But, at the time, the news was full of government employees vowing to be part of the Resistance and to fight Trump. It seems perfectly reasonable for the president to ask the head of the FBI if he was to be trusted or if he was part of the Resistance?

And let's not be under any illusions. Comey was part of the Resistance. From the beginning he began writing detailed memos about his meetings with Trump so that he could use them later. He also continued investigations of "Russian collusion". His department kept leaking details. When asked by the White House in general or Trump specifically, Comey and the FBI insisted that Trump was not being investigated but they refused to say this in public. The reason was that it would set a bad precedent to confirm or deny an investigation. Never mind that the rumors were crippling the president, if the FBI set a precedent by shooting down a rumor then they'd constantly have to shoot down rumors.

Then there was Flynn. Trump used the phrase "I hope you can see your way clear to clearing him." Comey insisted that was a direct order phrased as a polite request. Somehow I "polite requests" and "subtle" are not words normally used to describe President Trump.

In his book, Comey describes his dinner with Trump. Trump marvels at the hand-lettered menus. Comey takes this to mean that Trump didn't realize the White House had a calligrapher and is amazed by the concept. More likely Trump is used to someone printing out menus on a PC and is surprised that someone takes the time to do it by hand. This is typical of Comey's attitude about Trump - always take the least charitable option.

After he was fired, Comey decided to get revenge. He gave his memos, which were both government property and classified, to a friend to leak to the press in the hopes of triggering a special council. He currently claims that he doesn't want to see Trump impeached - because he wants him voted out of office. Neither is likely.

In all of this, Comey has shown himself to be petty and driven by revenge while trying to present himself as a model of virtue.

The Delusions of Children

David Hogg, one of the students who was in the high school during the Valentine's Day shooting, has made a number of public statements. Most of his assertions are misguided or misinformed.

He seems to spend very little time blaming that actual shooter, Nikolas Cruz, not does he spend any time condemning the various officials who were given notice that Cruz was disturbed and possibly planning a school shooting but who did nothing. Neither does Hogg spend any time condemning the police who stayed outside the building until the shooting ended. These are all appropriate targets of Hogg's rage and changes in the policies that they followed might prevent future shootings.

Hogg's main target is the AR-15-style rifle that Cruz used. There is nothing magical about these guns. Yes, they are more powerful than a pistol but they are less powerful than a hunting gun or than military weapons used prior to Viet Nam. During the 1960s, the military decided that most combat was done at fairly close range and that a lighter weapon was sufficient. The idea that these are somehow more powerful than other civilian weapons and therefor to dangerous for civilians to posses is misinformed.

It should also be pointed out that Cruz did not used high-capacity magazines. He carried a backpack full of 10-round magazines and reloaded as needed. This is typical of mass shootings. Many guns can be reloaded quickly. Even the lowly revolver has speed-loaders available and can be reloaded within a few seconds.

Very few mass shootings are performed with AR-15s. Most are done with a pistol or a pistol in combination with a rifle or shotgun.

Something that was unusual about this shooting is how it ended. Cruz only carried the one gun. He shot at people until it jammed then he dropped it and slipped out with the students. If he had carried pistols then the shooting might have gone on longer.

So, eliminating the AR-15 would not have stopped the shooting and might have made it worse.

Also, classmate have said that Cruz showed them his AR-15 and pistols two years ago. He would have been 17 then so an adult (probably his mother) bought them for him. Raising the age would not have helped.

Hogg totally misunderstands how politicians and the NRA work. He has accused Senators Rubio and McCain of having blood on their hands for accepting money from the NRA. He even had a price tag on his microphone during his speech at the March for Our Lives event. This represented the amount the NRA has given Marco Rubio divided by the number of students in Florida. This came out to $1.05. Hogg meant to show how little value Rubio put on a student's life but it actually shows how small the NRA contributions were.

In Hogg's mind, Congress should do the right thing and pass what he sees as common sense gun laws. What stops them is the NRA which buy them off. Without NRA money, Congress would quickly pass gun legislation.

While it's true that the NRA donates millions to candidates, the amounts spent are not all that high. The figures that Hogg used say that Rubio received around $1 million since he first ran in 2010 and the NRA has spent around $2.3 million attacking Rubio's opponents in that time. That would account for two elections plus Rubio's presidential campaign. Rubio raised over $25 million on his 2016 Senate campaign alone so the NRA money only amounted to 2% of the money he raised. That rises to 6% if you count the money spent to defeat anti-gun opponents.

The NRA's real strength is not in the amounts it spends on candidates. It is in the NRA's ability to mobilize voters. They score candidates' records and publicize the score. Candidates who they rate highly are given money. Even without the NRA contributions, these candidates are still pro-gun. 30% of Americans own guns and a large percentage of them consider a candidate's stance on guns when voting.

In the 1990s, Democrats controlled Congress and passed some anti-gun legislation. Many of the moderate Democrats who voted for this lost the next election. This was widely attributed to moderate, gun-owning swing voters. Similarly, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the 2000 Presidential election because he couldn't carry his home state of Tennessee. This was also attributed to his role in passing the gun legislation.

In other words, politicians are pro-gun because their constituency is pro-gun. The NRA is just a proxy for the gun owners.

But Hogg is too young to understand that well-meaning people can have different opinions about complex subjects and the assault-weapon ban in the 1990s expired before he was born.

Put it all together and you have a young man who is very vocal about his beliefs but very misinformed about the causes he is championing.

Why the assault Weapon Ban Won't Happen

After the school shooting on Valentine's Day, there was a big push for "common sense" gun control. It was led by students from the school where the happened. The students, particularly David Hogg, were articulate and very vocal about assigning blame. They did not seem to blame the actual shooter. Instead they blamed the NRA for opposing bans against the type of gun used and they blamed any politicians who accept money from the NRA. Hogg has specifically called out various people for "having blood on their hands".

For the first month after the shooting there was strong pressure to ban "assault weapons". But I think that the wave has crested.

The capstone was supposed to be the "March For Our Lives" in DC. This was going to be the biggest demonstration in history. Or at least recent history. Organizers promised at least 600,000 people and claimed that 800,000 actually showed up. It was bigger than President Trump's inauguration.

Except it wasn't. The crowd was actually more like 200,000. This was still an impressive number but nowhere near what was (over)promised.

The march was supposed to be non-partisan but it was very obvious that it was an anti-Republican event.

The march was supposed to be for "common sense gun measures" but in the aftermath, it has been swamped with calls to repeal the 2nd Amendment. While there was a chance of banning certain classes of weapons, there is no chance of repealing the 2nd Amendment and calls to do so are alienating people who might otherwise be convinced that AR-15s are bad.

David Hogg has lost focus. He was effective as the front-man for a movement but recently he got into a fight with talk show host Laura Ingram. Now he's trying to get her fired by calling for a boycott by her sponsors. He even listed officers and contact information for Arby's. While the left would love to see Ingram off the air, it's a major distraction from Hogg's message on gun control.

Of course, this was never about making children safer. There's nothing magic about the AR-15 and similar. Getting rid of them will not stop school shootings. The idea was to set the precedent then move on to stricter gun controls after the next shooting. But they got greedy.

David Hogg will probably soon find out that he has reached the limits of his fame. He was only useful while focusing on gun control and Republicans.

In the meantime, the NRA is pushing back. Membership and donations are soaring. And politicians are being reminded that it's not the NRA's money that gives them so much power, it's all of the gun owners who vote.