Left & Right Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair. The first question from the producer asks about reports that Trump was ignorant of Russian payments to the Taliban to kill American soldiers. It’s no surprise to me, I say. Russians have been supporting the Taliban against US forces for nineteen years. When Russian invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US supported Bin Laden and others against the Russians. I don’t see what the big deal is. Mark’s answer is circuitous. He talks about frequent communications between Trump and Putin, then mentions what he claims are examples of Trump’s racism like retweeting someone saying “White Power” from a gold cart in Florida. I asked what that had to do with Putin paying Taliban and Mark related what Trump aide John Bolton said about it: that Trump probably was briefed on the Russian payments but didn’t pay attention, that Bolton saw that often with Trump and his daily intelligence briefings. I bring up Trump’s July 4th speech at Mount Rushmore and outrageous mainstream media reaction to it, quoting headlines from The NYTimes and The Washington Post depicting the speech as “dark and devisive.” Mark quotes Trump saying there is a new far-left facism in corporate boardrooms.” I agree with that because corporation are kissing BLM butts and coming out in support. Mark claims 70% of the American people support BLM. I doubt that. Mark claimes: “Trump said angry mobs are tearing down statues of our founders, our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave or violence.” I ask, “You don’t agree with that?” “No,” says Mark. “What?” I say. “Have you been watching television?” It went on like that for the rest of the hour, quite contentious. See for yourself.

America's Widening Divide

America’s divisions are deepening. Evidence is everywhere with the primary divide epitomized by the continuing effort to impeach Donald Trump, hatred of whom is palpable. That division existed long before Trump, but he has come to symbolize it since his election in 2016. Opponents see him as a rich white guy and that’s enough to hate him because their world view is that no one becomes a billionaire without robbing the poor and middle classes.

Joe Hill

Hatred of the rich has been a central leftist dynamic since at least the early 20th century when IWW (International Workers of the World) activist Joe Hill inserted his song: The Preacher and the Slave, whose refrain is: “Pie in the sky when you die” into its Little Red Songbook.

You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky; 

Work and pray, live on hay

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (that’s a lie).

Hill’s song is a sardonic view of Christians who believe in an afterlife and reflecting the Marxist vision that: “Religion… is the opium of the people” which purports that Christian teaching of earthly suffering leading to eternal happiness is a tranquilizer. The left believes a perfect society is achievable here on earth and Christianity impedes progress toward it. The US Constitution was created to limit government and preserve individual liberty and it, too, inhibits the leftist goal of utopian socialism by restricting the growth of government necessary to implement it. Folk singer Joan Baez sang “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night” at Woodstock.

That Trump is supported by the religious right and other conservatives in spite of his narcissistic tweets, his extensive history with marriages, groping women, dalliance with hookers, previous pro-abortion views, petty lying, and verbal abuse toward political rivals bewilders and enrages those on the left who want him gone. Opponents have tried to oust him with Russian collusion allegations, claims of illegal emoluments, calling him racist, obstruction of justice allegations, constructing a 25th Amendment contention of insanity, allegations that he violated campaign finance laws — have all failed. Three years of overwhelmingly negative mainstream media coverage about all that and more have neither put Trump on the defensive nor dented his support.

Though opinion polls show all the top 2020 Democrat candidates beating him, Trump’s opponents fear he’ll win anyway. Democrats controlling the US House of Representatives have suspended all other business in their effort to construct a case for impeachment. They think he’ll get credit for any positive legislation coming across his desk so they’re not passing anything. Socialist Bernie Sanders has long raged about “millionaires and billionaires,” and now so does current Democrat frontrunner Elizabeth Warren. Both have proposed wealth taxes that would confiscate 2% or more of their wealth annually and give it to the poor and middle classes in the form of Medicare for all.

Nearly all Democrat candidates call for a huge expansion of government to “prevent climate change” or the world as we know it will be gone in ten years. They would spend trillions in “reparations” for black slavery and purported genocide of Indians. How that would be done or how it would be financed is unclear. They’re all behind the House impeachment efforts — this time over a phone call to Ukraine purportedly asking a foreign government for assistance against a political rival.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters, while recognizing his narcissism, his marriages, his groping of women, his dalliances with hookers, his previous pro-abortion positions, his petty lies, and his verbal abuse toward political rivals, still defend him. Why? Because they fear an unimpeded expansion of government with its excessive regulation, its choking of economic growth, its infringement on personal liberties, imposing progressive notions of “non-binary” sexuality, and public financing of abortion. They fear leftist control of the federal judiciary, creeping globalism, open borders, socialism, and threats to national sovereignty — all of which they see Trump fighting against.

Trump’s supporters see mainstream media as in league with the Democrat Party and Never-Trump Republicans. They don’t trust the media and are not persuaded by them. When Trump calls the media “the enemy of the people,” they cheer. They know Trump’s opponents consider them unenlightened at best and “irredeemable”; “deplorable”; “xenophobic”; “homophobic”; and “Islamophobic” at worst. They believe Obama Administration officials spied on Trump’s campaign and his transition. They’re convinced that an anti-Trump “deep state” within the federal government continues to sabotage his presidency.

James Hodgkinson before firing on congressional Republicans

Both sides worry about violence. Trump opponents suggest a recent mass shooting in Texas was inspired by Trump rhetoric, as well as demonstrations and a death in Charlottesville last year. Trump supporters point to beatings of conservatives by ANTIFA thugs and a Bernie Sanders supporter opening fire on congressional Republicans. Both sides fear civil strife will escalate after the 2020 elections no matter which side wins. Individual families avoid political discussion fearing it gets so heated that it damages interpersonal relationships.

Free Everything For Everyone

What can 2020 Democrats say to the millions of Americans who have scrimped and sacrificed for a decade or more to pay off student loans? Do Democrat presidential candidates give them any thought at all when proposing to erase a trillion-and-a-half dollars of student debt that others owe? Will there be a reparations program for those who worked like slaves to pay off their loans? Or, must we pay the debts others incurred as well? Where is the justice in that?

My choice of where to attend college was based on what I could afford and Massachusetts state colleges and universities were within my reach. Others at my small, Catholic high school went on to expensive, private colleges because their parents could afford to pay, or because they took out loans. Taxpayers in Massachusetts subsidized the universities from which I graduated and I appreciate that, but I paid taxes too because I’ve worked since I was sixteen, including while I was in high school and college. I worked full-time during two years of undergrad and another two years of grad school.

Working is what I was doing while many of my peers were smoking weed and drinking beer in dorms and frat houses. Never did I take loans or grants from government, and I didn’t ask my parents for money either, knowing I was one of eight children. I paid my own way, but when my wife went back to school later in life she took out some loans because we had four children, some of whom were also going to college. We paid those loans off within a few years and celebrated the last installment.

Not only would some 2020 Democrats forgive student loans, but they’d also make college free as well. Taxpayers would fund students who major in women’s studies, gender studies, and queer studies, and other majors of questionable academic value even though there are few, if any, jobs for which those “studies” prepare them. Democrat candidates are promising all kinds of free stuff — and not just for Americans either. During last Thursday’s televised debate, a moderator asked how many of them supported free healthcare for illegal aliens and every hand went up. Two weeks ago I wrote about hundreds of illegal aliens from Africa who walked across the Rio Grande and instantly became legal by telling border guards they were seeking asylum. From Texas, they were put on buses to Portland, Maine.

The Democrats who have retaken control of Maine government are working hard to renew state welfare subsidies for the City of Portland when that city gives welfare to former illegal aliens — now asylees. California recently authorized free healthcare to illegal aliens. Most of the Democrat presidential candidates promise “Medicare For All” if they’re elected. What they don’t tell us is that hospitals and other health care providers would go out of business if they had to accept only Medicare rates for their services.

When my primary care physician (PCP) was fired from Bridgton Hospital for refusing to take on the huge caseload new management tried to impose on him, I had to search for a new PCP. My wife’s PCP had left Bridgton Hospital earlier and joined Intermed in Portland, but that practice wasn’t taking on any more Medicare patients — which is what I had become when I turned sixty-six. I understood why; they were losing money on Medicare patients. Fortunately for me, however, my wife’s PCP agreed to take me on anyway.

My point here is that private health insurance payments far exceed low Medicare rates, but even with those de facto subsidies, Medicare is still projected to go broke. Still, Democrat presidential candidates are declaring they would abolish private health insurance if elected — which would, of course, hasten Medicare’s bankruptcy. About 150 million Americans pay for private health insurance policies.

Here’s hoping I’m not wrong in my belief that voters in 2020 will realize we cannot afford what Democrats are proposing. Heck, we can’t even afford what we’re doing now with the national debt increasing at almost a trillion dollars a year. In 2019 our $22 trillion debt eclipsed our gross domestic product (GDP) and shows no sign of slowing down. The two biggest drivers of annual budget deficits are Social Security and Medicare and politicians of both stripes lack sufficient courage to tackle those “third-rail” issues.

I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and will likely vote for him again in 2020 if present trends continue. However, he’s not doing much about deficit spending. He has increased economic growth with tax cuts and reduced regulation. Federal revenue is up as a result, but not enough to balance the budget. Unfortunately, the best I can say about Trump and the deficit is that the Democrats are likely to be worse than he has been. 

Trump Derangement Syndrome Persists

Platform or personality? When deciding for whom to vote, how much weight does each carry in voters’ minds? Is it more important to agree with candidates than to like them? What if you like them but you don’t concur on the issues? As I’ve listened to people in the four years since Donald Trump first announced his candidacy for president it has become evident among his detractors that hatred for him as a man far outweighs whatever his performance has been as president. Trump’s supporters, however, care more about what he does than about what he says or tweets.

Trump supporters cringed when he said he got the most electoral votes since Ronald Reagan because a quick search reveals that he didn’t. His egotism is so enormous that the presidency with its all its ego-stroking perks cannot satisfy it, but his favorability ratings climb nonetheless. Trump’s base is satisfied because he’s doing what he said he would do, like appointing conservative judges to the courts, cracking down on illegal immigration, and reining in China’s illegal trade practices.

That drives the left and the media — which Trump supporters see as conjoined twins — absolutely bonkers because they not only hate Trump, they also disagree with him on the issues. Rather than criticize his policy positions though, they fire ad hominem salvos — continuously. Trump is racist, sexist, xenophobic, they insist, and so are those who voted for him. Leftist politicians and media have done little else throughout Trump’s presidency, but the effect has been the opposite of what they intend. Rather than drive them apart, relentless criticism of both the president and his base drives them closer together.

Some Trump supporters wish he would consult with staff before talking or tweeting. If he didn’t trip over his own tongue so much he could have implemented more of his agenda by now, they believe, and who could argue? Others say they held their nose voting for him in 2016 but have since grown to like him in spite of the dumb things he says. As Senator and former opponent, Lindsay Graham said last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC): “We have a lot in common; I like him and he likes him.”

The Mueller report is due any time now but many are beginning to realize that it will have no evidence of Trump collusion with Russia in the 2016 election. However, Democrats won a majority in the US House last November and with that comes control of key committees, so Democrat chairmen are using subpoena power to scrutinize Trump on many fronts. Will they find anything with which to impeach the president?

It’s hard to believe they will considering that media coverage of Trump has been more than 90% negative and they’ve been looking everywhere for negative things to report. The two-year Mueller investigation has probed so many areas far afield from its original charge of investigating Russian collusion that we have to wonder what’s left to investigate. It seems clear now that removing Trump from office is the goal for Democrats and if there’s no Russian collusion, they’ll look for something else.

Meanwhile, Democrats who want to run against him are voluminous and more announce almost every day. They’re promising the moon: free tuition, free medical care, government jobs for everyone, money for those unwilling to work, reparations for descendants of slaves and Indians, and rebuilding every single structure in the whole country. When asked how to pay for all that, they say they’ll tax the rich and print money.

Meanwhile, the national debt has reached $22 trillion, eclipsing annual GDP — Gross Domestic Product — the sum total of all economic activity in the country. Some of us remember that twenty years ago President Clinton and a Republican Congress worked together to balance the federal budget and even talked about spending the surplus to actually pay down the national debt rather than keep adding to it every year.

Trump’s tax cuts have stimulated the economy and government revenues are rising, but government is expanding even faster and so is the annual deficit. It’s growing at about $1 trillion a year again. This used to used to be a big issue for Republicans though doesn’t seem to be anymore ever since Trump took office. Americans paid $523 billion interest on the debt in 2018 and that will keep rising. How long can this go on?

All of us know how much we make and how much we spend — what happens when we spend more than we make. There’s a limit to how much debt we can sustain before it seriously cramps our lifestyle. We don’t need degrees in political science or economics to understand the same is true for our country no matter what part of the political spectrum we occupy.

The Party Controls The Past

General Lee

“He who controls the past controls the future… He who controls the present controls the past,” wrote Orwell. Here in 2017, the left is firmly in control of both academia and media and is using both to control the past. That’s what played out last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Charlottesville City Council voted 3-2 to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee which had been there for a century. Nearby is a statue of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Both Lee and Jackson were southern heroes. They were also Democrats, but you won’t hear about that in media or academia.

Stonewall Jackson

They fought for the Confederacy and that makes them villains in the view of the 21st century left, which is in firm control of the Democrat Party. No matter that most slaveholders were Democrats. No matter that Democrat US Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia who served until his death in 2010, had also been a member of the KKK. There was so many Democrats south of the Mason/Dixon line, the party referred to it as “The Solid South.”

Byrd eventually apologized for his KKK membership and denounced the organization, but it remained part of his history: “I apologized a thousand times ... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened,” he wrote. He was right to apologize and also right that he could not erase his personal history.

But the Democrat Party believes it can and continues trying to pin its own shameful heritage onto Republicans — the party of Lincoln. Just prior to its 2008 convention, the Democrat National Committee erased fifty years of party history from its web site. How many Democrats lynched blacks? There isn’t room here to list them. How many Republicans? None that I know of. The Democrat Party has never apologized for protecting slavery before the war or for preserving Jim Crow for a century afterward.

Recorded under cover by James O'Keefe

Leftist media from the Huffington Post to CNN is downright gleeful as it tries to associate today’s Nazis and KKK with the Trump Administration. Trump issued a statement after Charlottesville saying: “We condemn in strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence — on many sides.” It was a reasonable response considering all the violence leftist groups perpetrated during his campaign, beating up Trump supporters as they left his rallies. Many of those agitators were were paid by the Democrat National Committee and the Clinton Campaign and wore “Trump is a Nazi” T-shirts. They violently shut down Trump rallies in Chicago and New Mexico.

Jared Loughner was obviously nuts

Then came James Hodgkinson, a Democrat Bernie Sanders supporter, who shot Republican Congressman Steve Scalise and several other people at a Republican softball practice two months ago. The New York Times editorial board blamed “both sides” for political violence claiming that Sarah Palin caused Jared Loughner to shoot Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and political rhetoric motivated Hodgkinson to shoot Republican Rep. Scalise. Trouble is, there’s not a scintilla of evidence associating Palin and Republicans with Loughner who was obviously nuts, whereas Hodgkinson had long, strong association with Democrats. He had a hit list of Republicans.

It’s okay for the NYTimes, but Trump is not allowed to blame “many sides.” Leftist media demand that he specifically denounce white supremacists which he subsequently did. NBC’s Chuck Todd called his "many sides" statement, “a failure of presidential leadership,” From his "Meet The Press” platform, he assembled a panel who did their best to associate white supremacists with the Trump Administration and Republicans.

Media went out of their way to avoid blaming President Obama’s anti-cop rhetoric after five Dallas policemen were murdered by a black man who “wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers." Few people reading this will have heard that several police officers and a former federal prosecutor have sued President Obama, his Attorney General Eric Holder, Black Lives Matter, and others for sparking the murders of policemen around the country. That’s because leftist media controls perception and in politics, perception is reality. Thus it controls the present, and the past.

Back to Orwell:

Party official O’Brien asked Winston Smith where history exists. “In records… In the mind. In human memories,” said Winston under torture.

O'Brien and Winston Smith

“Very well then,” said O’Brien. “We, the Party, control all records and we control all memories. Then, we control the past, do we not?”

“But how can you stop people remembering things?” asked Winston.

“You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right,” said O’Brien. “…When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists… only in the mind of the Party …Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”

The Politics of Fatigue

Summer is half over and I haven’t played enough — almost not at all, but I’ve begun to make some changes to allow it. Yes, I have to finish a book proposal and send it out, but I hate doing it and have to force myself to work at it every day for a little while at least. I have to get outside more and clear my head between sessions. I also have to stop reading obsessively about political goings-on. I’m staying away even though it's especially hard to do when so much is happening. It's been a nice break to avoid politics and write about other things, but here are some political “reflections on the passing scene” as the great columnist Thomas Sowell used to pen occasionally before he retired.

*After seven years of promising to repeal Obama care and passing countless bills to do so knowing they’d be vetoed by Obama, Republicans in Congress can’t do it with a Republican president who would sign it. Meanwhile, Obamacare is collapsing as predicted. Thanks Democrats. Thanks Republicans. You’re both pathetic. If members of Congress and everyone else who works for our way-too-big federal government were forced to be under Obamacare along with the rest of us, it would never have passed in the first place, or would surely be fixed now.

 *Seventy years ago, Congress passed Amendment 22 which limited a president to two terms. It’s time for Amendment 28 to limit senators and congressmen to a total of twelve years each, after which they must be banned from lobbying for an additional ten years. Think of all the obnoxious senators and congressmen we wouldn’t have to listen to if Congress’s terms had been limited seventy years ago too? Think of where we’d be today instead of where we are.

*Finally, finally, we have some actual evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. It’s very thin — not evidence of actual collusion, but only an email indicating that Donald Trump, Jr. was open to hearing about possible help from a Russian back in June, 2016. Over a year of investigation, and that’s all we’ve got. Will another year of even more investigation yield anything else? Don’t hold your breath. The investigation is having the desired effect however. It’s driving Donald Trump crazy, much crazier than he otherwise might be.

*Meanwhile, I’m kicking myself for not working harder against Donald Trump during the primaries. I should have trusted my first instinct that any guy in his seventies who would pay that much attention to his hair has personality problems. When I think that we had sixteen alternatives, any of which would have been so much better, including Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, or anyone else except John Kasich. Okay, maybe even him.

*President Trump’s antics are so embarrassing I can hardly stand it, but Hillary Clinton? I could never have brought myself to put a check next to that name. If I could go back to that voting booth last November, I believe I’d do the same thing. In the meantime, I’d like the president’s sterling cabinet to get together and prepare an ultimatum for their boss: Fire the Mooch, stop tweeting, do what General Kelly tells you, use the speechwriters you had for the Middle East and Poland speeches, and use the teleprompter exclusively when speaking in public — or we resign, en masse, right now. Maybe that would smarten him up.

The Mooch was fired the day after I wrote this on Sunday. Hooray for General Kelly!

*Yeah, Trump’s approval ratings are very low, but guess whose ratings are even lower — the media’s. Trump deserves his ratings and media have certainly earned theirs as well. Can there be any more doubt about left-wing mainstream media bias? Yeah, Fox is biased right, but nearly every other television media outlet is biased left — and most newspapers too. I’ve spent years on both sides of the spectrum and it’s patently obvious to me. Are we all ready to admit this now?

*Trump’s worst mistake would be to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It would be worse than firing Mueller, which would only make the left — in media and in government — go even more crazy than they are now. But how much crazier can they get? They’re already cutting Trump’s head off in effigy and one leftist wing-nut opened fire on Republicans at a baseball practice, nearly killing Congressman Scalise and wounding several others. But to fire Jeff Sessions would sink Trump with conservatives who are already annoyed with his tweets. His support would dry up almost entirely.

*Maybe a third party will emerge of disaffected Democrats and Republicans who would shrink the federal government and return power to the states. We could call it the Tenth Amendment Party. 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. (Amendment 10)

Democrats' Diminishing Brand

Donald Trump has record disapproval ratings for a president early in his first term. Congressional Democrats and mainstream media tell us so repeatedly, reporting little else but alleged collusion with Russians. Yet his congressional candidates keep winning special elections despite being vastly outspent.

They cannot understand it. Trump is their antithesis. He enrages both, fears neither, but voters like that. Do Congress and mainstream media not realize they have approval ratings lower than Trump’s?

Trump can be crude, egotistical. He bragged about grabbing women. He stretches truth to look good, yet voters accept him warts and all. They know a lot of guys just like him. Every corner bar has them. They can be tiresome but they’re harmless, and deep down most are nice guys. Tell them they’re full of sh** and they laugh, because they know they often are. They don’t take themselves too seriously, unlike hysterical Democrats and solemn talking heads who claim leaving the Paris climate change treaty will destroy the world and repealing Obamacare will kill thousands of Americans.

Voters detest Congress and loathe mainstream media. It’s the pomposity, the political correctness, the condescension to anyone who doesn’t think as they do. Voters don’t believe a man is a woman just because he says he is. They don’t want to call him “her” or her “him” as media do, and they don’t want to be forced to by government either. New York City has a civil statute requiring it. Last week, Canada passed a law making it a “hate crime” to refuse. And they don’t like their kids learning about transgenders in kindergarten.

Voters like borders around their country and they want them enforced. They don’t like being called bigots because they want American citizenship to mean something. They want people to work for a living if they’re able and they resent supporting deadbeats. Despite Democrat media denials, they know they’re paying for lots of them because some are neighbors and relatives. They know many illegal immigrants are on welfare and working under the table too. They know this pushes their wages down and their taxes up no matter what Democrats media claim.

When the majority of the FBI’s most wanted terrorist are Muslim, they know there’s a connection with Islam. They don’t like Democrat media calling them racist for saying it. They don’t understand why, but they detect some kind of solicitous interdependence between radical Islam and Democrat media. When someone shouts “Allahu Akbar!” while killing people here or in Europe, voters know immediately it’s a Muslim terrorist — even though media claim for days or weeks — or even years to be puzzled about motive.

They know it can be a sacrifice to raise children but it’s wrong to kill them in the womb. They know that’s what abortion does no matter what Democrat media claim. They don’t like being accused of a “war on women” for saying it either. They know Planned Parenthood is all about abortion (330,000 per year) and doing pap tests (380,000 a year) helps mask that. They don’t believe Democrat media insistence their tax money isn’t spent on abortions.

They know being called “non-college-educated-white-men” is a put down. They believe Hillary spoke for most Democrats and media when she called them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.” They believe media think them deplorable, bitterly clinging to guns and religion as Barack Obama claimed. They’re not fooled when racism is called Affirmative Action. When blacks, Hispanics, and women are given preference, they know it’s white men who are sent to the back of the bus. It’s especially galling when after nearly three generations of “Affirmative Action,” they’re called “privileged” and told to “renounce” it.

They know women vastly outnumber men in colleges and universities, which are almost all controlled by the leftists who support Democrats and media. They know professors teach that dead white men are responsible for bad things in history. They see white men habitually depicted as dumb, oafish, nasty, or cruel by television and Hollywood. It’s almost a hate crime when any other group is thus portrayed, but not when it’s white men — the universal scapegoats of our age.

When Democrats and media hit Trump he hits back — and voters love that. Some Democrats like Ohio Representative Tim Ryan are starting to get it: “I think, in part, we try to slice the electorate up. And we try to say, ‘You’re black, you’re brown, you’re gay, you’re straight, you’re a woman, you’re a man.’ The reality of it is there’s no juice in that kind of campaign,” he said.

Will Democrat leaders listen? Will their media partners? Maybe they will if they keep losing.