House and Senate members broke into a rendition of “Happy Birthday” during Tuesday’s State of the Union address to celebrate a survivor of the Holocaust and last year’s Tree of Life synagogue shooting.
Judah Samet attended the address as a guest of the White House. President Trump acknowledged him in the crowd, prompting a standing ovation, and noted it was Samet’s 81st birthday.ADVERTISEMENT
Attendees then broke into song, with Trump mock-conducting from the dais.
The governor of Virginia explained that a proposed law would allow a woman to give birth to her baby, then decide whether to kill it. A “post-birth” abortion. Aside from the fact that killing babies is what Kenneth Gosnell went to prison for, why only the mother? Why isn’t the father involved in the decision to kill the child? In the past, the “women-only” argument was that a woman’s body should be free from government intrusion. Government shouldn’t have the power to force her to carry a child, and neither should anybody else. That’s involuntary servitude, a fancy of saying sexual slavery, which is evil. Plainly, the woman is the only person with a right to decide what happens to her body, including whether to terminate the pregnancy by abortion. But under the proposed law, the carrying is done. The baby is out of her body. No slavery involved. So why should only the woman get to decide whether the baby lives or dies? Why isn’t the father involved? For that matter, why isn’t the baby involved? Who speaks on behalf of the living, breathing, child lying on the table? Shouldn’t there be someone appointed to defend the child’s rights including the most fundamental right of all – the right to be alive? Serious flaws in the logic of the proposed law. Send it back for more work.
It’s been a little crazy lately, and in the rush I neglected two birthdays.
The first, of course, is today.
Reagan
Note: This is an “encore” of a post I wrote in 2013
Today would be the 108th birthday of the greatest president of my lifetime.
People say “there’s no Ronald Reagan in American politics today”. And they’re right – but as his son Michael told me in an interview a few years ago, it’s not that there couldn’t be.
Because Reagan had three great talents: he was a great, natural communicator (who, unlike a lot of “natural communicators”, honed his craft with relentless discipline); he developed a vision and he stuck to it with determination and focus; and most importantly for today’s conservatives, he knew how to build coalitions, rather than exclude people from them.
We have plenty of people who can communicate well, although the conservative movement has had its share of duds in that department too. And we have not a few who can visioneer with the best of them – in fact, with the rise of the Tea Party, our movement’s best years may be to come, provided they keep the faith.
But as to building coalitions?
Today, we’re better at building silos.
Reagan did something that conservatives are terrible at today; he got social conservatives (at the peak of their notoriety and political cachet), blue-collar Democrats who the economy had turned into instant fiscalcons, Jack Kemp-style economic hawks and paleocons together…
…by focusing remorselessly on what they agreed on; fixing the economy, and ending Communism.
And once in office, that’s what he focused on. Oh, he paid lip service to issues that were to him tangents – and lip service from the world’s greatest bully pulpit ain’t chicken feed. But he didn’t fritter his political capital away with excessive natterings about issues that were tangential to his vision, and the vision his coalition all agreed on in electing him. He spoke eloquently on issues – many of them – and that speaking had its effect.
Some call that an abdication; it was in fact a matter of leaving that work to the members of his coalition (example: he exerted very little executive effort on abortion and gun control – but the efforts to roll both back at the state and local level started to coalesce during his time in office anyway – in part because of his leadership from the bully pulpit. But for all that, always, the focus was on “dancing with the one what brung him” to DC at the head of an impossibly-diverse coalition; his rock-solid, bone-simple two point agenda, fixing the economy and toppling the Commies.
As I moderated the “Where Do We Go From Here” event last week at the Blue Fox, and listened to some of the friction and cat-calling across the party’s various factions, I thought there was a lot of focus on what divided us. And so my final question to the panel was “what do we all – all of us, from socialcons like Andy Parrish to libertarians like Marianne Stebbins, actually agree on?” Because that is the only real way forward for any of the factions – since if any faction takes Parrish’s (tongue in cheek?) advice and forms a separate party, it’s the road to mutual palookaville, with multiple parties that are less than the sum of the parts they once were.
So for my annual Gipper Day celebration, it’ll be the usual; jelly beans at my desk, taking the kids out to dinner to talk about what Reagan’s legacy has meant in their lives (other than the uninformed, out-of-context crap the DFLers in their lives’ll say)…
…and asking my fellow conservatives “what do we agree on?”
The second? Well, that’ was yesterday.
Shot In The Dark
Yesterday was the 17th anniversary of my starting this blog.
Jason Rarick won the special election in Senate District 11 last night, and did it with a pretty impressive margin in a district that was not only pretty much 50-50, but in which the GOP has never won the Senate seat.
With 100 percent of precincts in, state Rep. Jason Rarick wins the SD 11 race with 52 percent of the vote to Democrat Stu Lourey’s 46 percent. A flip for the Senate GOP #mnleg
Perhaps it’s a sign that the DFL wave from last fall has dissipated in a welter of the overreach I predicated. The GOP now has a two-vote majority in the Senate.
An interesting sign: organized labor, at least private-sector labor, was working the district hard.
For Rarick.
Didn’t see that coming, I gotta admit.
And perhaps it’s a sign that MInnesota’s real 2nd Amendment groups, which backed Rarick, are actually starting to get their clout back, and see the truth about the (in my opinion) fraudulent, Iowa-based “Minnesota” Gun Rights, which denounced Rarick for no rational reason other than the simple fact that winning would gut their gravy train. Side note: If you donate to Minnesota Gun Rights, you are a sucker and I’ll tell you to your face; you would do less damage giving your money directly to Michael Bloomberg.
Nobody ever flew one the other direction to escape from capitalist Austria into socialist Czechoslovakia. Lesson for Ilhan and AOC in there, somewhere.
Somewhere, somehow, I’m pretty sure either Ilhan and AOC got it in their head that someone did, or they know that nobody in their voting pool would check them on it if they said “as many people fled east as west”.
Minnesota “progressives” aren’t that curious or critical.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is shopping for a new casserole trivet for his Instant Pot (C) when MyLysa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, rounds the corner.
BERG: Er…Ms. Silberman.
SILBERMAN: [visibly searching for name] . Er – hello, Merg.
BERG: So – any comment about the allegations against Ralph “Satchmo” Northam?
SILBERMAN: In these inflammatory situations and divided times, it’s a journalist’s responsibility to make sure they get the facts straight.
BERG: OK. So – Brent Kavanaugh…
SILBERMAN: [Abruptly screams, face red with rage] WE ALWAYS #BELIEVEWOMEN, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!
BERG: Huh. So – Democrat governor Northam…
SILBERMAN: [Abruptly calm again] Get the facts…
BERG: Northam, Ellison, Clinton…
SILBERMAN: [Abruptly calm again] We can’t report a story where we’re not absolutely sure…
BERG: The Covington kids..
SILBERMAN: [Enraged again] . WHITE! MAGA! THE…SMIRK! I JUST WANT TO BURN THAT KID’S FACE OFF!
BERG: Right. So I’ve predicted that the media will declare Northam “rehabilitated” within the year.
Attorneys representing Nick Sandman, the Covington Kid who was the subject of Big Left’s two minutes’ hate a couple weeks ago, have started the wheels rolling on lawsuits.
“The legal counsel representing Nick and his family, Todd McMurtry and experienced libel and defamation lawyer L. Lin Wood of Atlanta, have said they will seek justice for the harm allegedly done to the teen,” The Enquirer reported. “McMurtry is with the law firm of Hemmer Defrank Wessels and has practiced law in Greater Cincinnati since 1991. He said a team of seven lawyers has been working full-time to review the media accounts of what happened.” The letters come in response to the media’s smearing of Sandmann after a selectively edited clip of an incident on January 19, 2019, went viral that showed Sandmann standing face-to-face with Native American Nathan Phillips, who was beating a drum in Sandmann’s face.
The list of people and entities served includes:
The Washington Post
The New York Times
Cable News Network, Inc. (CNN)
The Guardian
National Public Radio
TMZ
Atlantic Media Inc.
Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.
Diocese of Covington
Diocese of Lexington
Archdiocese of Louisville
Diocese of Baltimore
Ana Cabrera (CNN)
Sara Sidner (CNN)
Erin Burnett (CNN)
S.E. Cupp (CNN)
Elliot C. McLaughlin (CNN)
Amanda Watts (CNN)
Emanuella Grinberg (CNN)
Michelle Boorstein (Washington Post)
Cleve R. Wootson Jr. (Washington Post)
Antonio Olivo (Washington Post)
Joe Heim (Washington Post)
Michael E. Miller (Washington Post)
Eli Rosenberg (Washington Post)
Isaac Stanley-Becker (Washington Post)
Kristine Phillips (Washington Post)
Sarah Mervosh (New York Times)
Emily S. Rueb (New York Times)
Maggie Haberman (New York Times)
David Brooks (New York Times)
Shannon Doyne
Kurt Eichenwald
Andrea Mitchell (NBC/MSNBC)
Savannah Guthrie (NBC)
Joy Reid (MSNBC)
Chuck Todd (NBC)
Noah Berlatsky
Elisha Fieldstadt (NBC)
Eun Kyung Kim
HBO
Bill Maher
Warner Media
Conde Nast
GQ
Heavy.com
The Hill
The Atlantic
Bustle.com
Ilhan Omar
Elizabeth Warren
Kathy Griffin
Alyssa Milano
Jim Carrey
Defamation cases are very hard to win. Justifiably so.
Amazon Prime members can read Kindle books for free. The one I’m reading now was advertised as a realistic action thriller, so I thought I’d take a chance. Why not? It’s free, if I hate it, I just push delete.
I’m three pages in.
Milton, the main character is a British assassin in the James Bond mould. He has parked his car and walked around to the trunk. Here’s where the story picks up and I quote: “he unfolded the edges of the blanket to uncover the assault rifle that had been left at the Dead Drop the previous night. It was an HK53 carbine with integrated suppressor, the rifle that the SAS often used when stealth was as important as stopping power. Milton lifted the rifle from the boot and pressed a fresh 25 round magazine into the breach. He opened the collapsible stock and took aim, pointing down the middle of the road. Satisfied that the weapon was functioning correctly, he made his way toward the bridge and rested it in the undergrowth, out of sight.”
See? Total realism. That’s how you test a rifle. Slam in the mag, fold open the stock, point it down the road. You don’t test-fire it, cycle the action, don’t even look inside the chamber to see if it’s loaded. Apparently, I’ve been doing it wrong all these years and never knew.
Delete.
Joe Doakes
People who don’t know, or like, or care about guns write about them pretty much the way I write about golf.
Politically, Arizona has been bright red historically. But it may be turning purple, and, if politics matter, newcomers can find communities that align with their social and other perspectives.
Translated: “Don’t worry, all of you Urban Progressive Privilege entitlees; even here in a whole new place, there nothing that says you need to rattle your echo chamber by learning to treat other peoples’ perspectives as anything other than caricatures”.
. Her crusade against the scourge of parents whose kids skip school, for example:
The good news is that post-CNN town hall, although much of the media lauded Harris and posted adoring articles about her acumen and likability, several took it upon themselves to resurface videos of Harris’s recent support for cracking down on truancy violations. In 2010, for example, video shows Harris saying, “I believe a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime. So I decided I was gonna start prosecuting parents for truancy.” “Well, this was a little controversial in San Francisco,” Harris noted, with a folksy giggle. Another video showed Harris bragging about her power: “As a prosecutor in law enforcement, I have huge stick. The school district as a carrot. Let’s work together in tandem…to get those kids in school.”
Have I ever mentioned how much I love prosecutors who are drunk with their own power?
Her policies involved $2,000 fines, and even jail time, for parents whose kids missed “too much” school.
Which, people who actually pay attention to this issue will tell you, is a stupid, stupid plan, unless your goal is to paint yourself as “tough”:
…the people hurt by this carceral approach are the very people who are most likely to be financially crippled by a few fines. We’re not talking about wealthy people here, and generally speaking, criminal justice reform advocates fear using punitive means to “help” poor people because it can be so easy for them to get trapped in a cycle of unpaid fines that leads to jail time, which leads to time forcibly taken off of work, which leads to even less money and even less ability to pay outstanding debts. None of this, you can imagine, helps children get a more stable home life with more attention from parents.
With junior high and high school kids, truancy often isn’t something parents can control (while still holding down jobs, anyway).
With younger kids? If they’re missing school regularly, it’s usually not a matter of “truancy”; it’s problems at home, more often than not problems stemming from one personal or social pathology or another.
In what other area of society do we try to address this sort of thing with fines and jail time?
When private health insurance was unable to provide uniform affordable coverage, Congress had no choice but to take it over through Obama-care. The success of that program proves the principle is sound: government must do what private industry can’t do. Thousands of people are without electricity during dangerously cold weather. Private power companies have demonstrated they are incapable of providing uniform affordable coverage. Congress has no choice but to take over the electrical industry. This is right in line with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ socialist philosophy, she’s the logical choice to introduce the legislation. Government, not private business, is the only way to ensure prompt and efficient delivery of essential services to women and minorities, whatever the weather might be In other news, the Post Office isn’t delivering mail today. Mn/DOT pulled its snowplows off the road. St. Paul schools are closed and it’s mandatory recycling program is suspended. Government workers cannot promptly and efficiently deliver essential services because of the weather. Hmm, maybe we should revisit the concept of government taking over private businesses? Do we really expect union government employees to be climbing power poles in the howling freezing wind in the dead of night? Would that idea work any better than Obama-care or its inevitable successor, Kamela-care? Whatever those guys on the power poles make (and they’re almost all guys), it’s not enough. Whatever those gals in Congress make (and the goofy ones are almost all gals), it’s too much.
I for one am so happy I’ve got private-sector power. Although it’s a private monopoly in the area, so it’s not quite free market…
DC/Baltimore area liberal political comic lives it out:
Tim Young was heading to one of D.C.’s newest hotspots—The Wharf—when his life changed. He was walking down a well-lit section of M Street at about 7:45 p.m. Wednesday when two men approached him—one of them had a gun. “Terrified. You know, when I talk to people about this… you’re scared. There’s no man card involved. I was defenseless,” explained Young, who’s a political comedian and host of ‘No Things Considered’ at the D.C. Examiner. The men ran off with his cell phone.
Details: Last night I was robbed at gunpoint by 2 men in DC by the new @TheWharfDC on the way to get coffee at @dolcezzagelato at 7:45pm. They got my phone and tossed me around while people watched from a half block away. Then they ran off. Thanks to @DCPoliceDept for your help.
Now, he said he absolutely plans to apply for a concealed carry permit in D.C., but it won’t be easy. The District is one of the toughest places in the country to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. “When you’re in an instance where there’s a gun is pointed at you and your life is being threatened for your property and no one’s going to help—and now I know that no one’s going to help—I want to feel more secure. I want to feel safe, and I have something to defend myself with,” he said. When asked how the situation would have went differently if he had a gun, Young told Bruce Johnson on ‘Off Script’ that he probably would have pulled it out to defend himself. He addressed people who are against conceal carry permits by saying they’ve probably never been in his position. “I think a lot of those people who are opposed to having a conceal carry permit and being able to own a weapon have never had one pointed directly at them when they have nothing on them,” Young said.
Remember that quip you get from every bobbleheaded liberal when you remind them that the Second Amendment is supposed to be about defending freedom against tyranny?
“What?”, they inevitably respond, “you’re going to fight at tank with your AR15?” (No, I won’t have to, because if the government comes for the guns, it’ll be the AR15s and the tanks against the progressives with their protest signs. But I digress).
The question about whether tyranny in Venezuela will, to paraphrase Mick Jones, will stay or go, is partly about socialist power politics, partly about manipulation of mobs…
…and mostly about who’s got the guns.
Military defectors say it’s also all about guns. The military apparently doesn’t have any, or at least access to them, despite the massive arms sales from Russia that Venezuela’s socialist regime has spent its oil bounty on. [Former soldier] Hidalgo Azuaje added: “We’re not saying that we need only US support, but also Brazil, Colombia, Peru, all brother countries, that are against this dictatorship.” The military men are pleading for arms. They’ll take care of the job, they say, if they have the tools to do it. Recall that when Venezuelan soldiers mutinied in the area of Petare earlier this month, their priority also was seizing weapons. It does suggest that a penurious armed force with no access to weapons is the problem. Apparently, not even the soldiers are trusted with guns by the dictatorship. The Maduro regime is starting to arm gangs as a means of checking the military. They trust gangs and thugs, but not responsible military men with guns, and seem to have disarmed them
It’s worth noting that Hugo Chavez – whose death let to Maduro and his clacque ineriting and extending their absolute power – got his start as a paratrooper in the Venezuelan army. So the regime knows what it needs to defend against.
When Brazil’s new government instituted a right to keep and bear arms for Brazilians, it wasn’t entirely about street crime.
Totalitarian dictatorship has been described as “a boot on your face, forever”. A monopoly on firepower is what makes it possible to keep that boot there, unmolested.
