The Kavanaugh Accusations

What to make of the accusations that Brett Kavanaugh sexually attacked a 15-year-old when we was 17?

There are two obvious possibilities - that it happened just as his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, describer or that she's outright lying. But these events happened nearly 40 years ago. There are several ways that Ford could be telling the truth as she sees it but not accurately describing what happened.

Here's the thing - memory isn't fixed. It's malleable and can play trick on you. What's more, Ford claims that she didn't tell anyone about the incident for decades. Memory is not a video file that can be reversed and replayed at will. It's a bunch of incidents with links to and from them. If you don't think about an event for a long time then it can be difficult to accurately reconstruct it. It's also possible to create false memories. One notorious example came from the 20th century's most notorious witch trial (and I'm not speaking figuratively). Members of a preschool were arrested on charges that they took their charges into underground chambers where they performed satanic ceremonies. This was impossible since the preschool was build on a slab with no basements. It turned out that people questioning the children had planted false memories in the kids by asking specific questions. Keeping that in mind, here are ways that Ford's memory could have played tricks on her:

It didn't happen as described. Was Ford actually forced into the bedroom or did she embroider the story to excuse being alone with two drunken guys (while possibly drunk herself)? She cold have been telling herself that it wasn't her fault that she was alone with them until she believed it.

It wasn't Kavenaugh. Did Ford know the two people who were in the bedroom with her? Or did she later decide it was these two? And if it was later, how much later was it?

It happened to someone else. Ford has very distinct memories of the incident but everything surrounding it is vague. Possibly she heard someone else describe the event and internalized it until she believes that it happened to her then fixed on Kavanaugh and his friend Judge as the perpetrators. This is the very definition of a false memory.

Because of the way this allegation was made, there was no time for a proper investigation. What we do know is that there is no supporting evidence. None at all. Of the three names we have, two deny that anything happened. In cases like this, investigators look for a pattern of behavior. Men who abuse women don't limit themselves to a single victim. Look at Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lower. Or Bill Clinton or Donald Trump. They all left a long trail or women willing to come forward and accuse them. So far, Ford stands alone in accusing Kavanaugh. But, at the same time, multiple women have supported him. His wife and two previous girl friends plus 200 other women have all vouched for his character.

Given how unsupported the accusations are, they should never have been made public. It's likely that they were only released to blacken Kavanaugh's name and force delays in the confirmation vote. The ultimate goal to to put off any confirmation vote until after a new, Democrat-controlled Senate is confirmed. After that, no one that President Trump nominates will be confirmed. Period.

What's more, we can expect similar accusations for all future Republican nominees to the Supreme Court.

A dirty trick like this should not be allowed to succeed.

A deplorable anniversary

September 11th is the sad anniversary of the 9/11/01 terrorist attack that killed thousands and led to a pair of seemingly-endless wars.

But, on the bright side, it's also the second anniversary of one of the worst weekends of the Clinton campaign. First, on September 9th, her description of Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorables" became public. It wasn't the first time she'd used it. She'd been using it as an applause line in private events. But this time she said it in public and it was widely reported.

Either she got so comfortable using the line or she assumed that the press would continue to cover for her. Or she simply forgot where she was. Her health wasn't the best that weekend.

Things got worse when she collapsed at a 9/11 tribute and was seen being dragged to a car like a sack of flower in a jumpsuit. She left her campaign to twist in the wind, first saying that she's overheated (on a not-particularly hot day) then that she was dehydrated (is it really the best move to say that your candidate won't drink water, suggesting that she only imbibes alcoholic beverages?) before settling on pneumonia a the cause. She topped this of with an accusation of sexism - she tried to "power through" the pneumonia because women aren't allowed to get sick.

Clinton continued to lead in the polls but this one-two combination motivated Trump voters to vote against her while reinforcing her reputation as a liar.

With All Due Respect Mr. Obama

Recently former President Obama gave a speech that broke with tradition and criticized President Trump while glorifying his own administration. Here's a few thoughts I have about what he said:

Obama: "How hard is it to say Nazis are bad?"

At least as hard as it is to say "Killing cops is bad." During your presidency, My Obama, two cops were shot and killed from ambush in New Orleans. At the same time BLM protests were calling for "More dead cops". Did you call for the protestors to moderate their rhetoric? No. Did you meet with the families of the slain police or send a representative to their funeral to signify that you were against killing police? No. But you did meet with BLM leaders just days after the shooting.

Obama: " When you hear about this economic miracle that's been going on… when the job numbers come out … suddenly Republicans are saying, 'It's a miracle,'" he said. "I have to kind of remind them, actually those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016."

Not really. Here's the official numbers. During 2015 unemployment started at 5.7 and dropped to 5.0. During 2016 unemployment had a high of 5.0 and a low of 4.7. It was 4.8 in January, the month that you left office. It dropped to 4.7 in February, 2017, Trump's first full month in office, 4.6 the month after that and has not been above 4.4 since August of 2017. The unemployment rate has been below 4.0 four of the last five months. It is currently near the lowest in 18 years. Unemployment among minorities is the lowest ever.

Granted the economy bottomed out from the crash of 2008 and recovered under Obama and the current trend is a continuation of the Obama recovery. But it is untrue to claim that years when unemployment fluctuate between 4.8 and 5.7 are the same as years in which it is 3.8-4.7.

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.