Tag: politics

We can expect more of this inter-party conflict as whites cease to become the only identity group with influence who can be safely targeted:

California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, the prominent #MeToo activist now under investigation for groping and sexual harassment of former legislative staffers, was reprimanded by former Assembly Speaker John Perez in 2014 for making racially insensitive comments directed toward Asians.

Perez confirmed to POLITICO on Saturday that he had to “strongly admonish” Garcia after she made comments against Asians in a closed-door Assembly Democratic Caucus meeting in 2014 — the same year in which she also acknowledged using homophobic slurs aimed at Perez, the first openly gay speaker of the California State Assembly.

Sources familiar with the incident say Garcia’s anti-Asian remarks came during a legislative battle that arose when Asian-American community activists successfully lobbied to defeat a Democratic proposal to overturn California’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions. They argued that such a move could hurt Asian student admission rates.

Perez in mid-March 2014 announced a move to return the bill to the Senate without any action from the Assembly, effectively blocking its advance. Garcia, the sources said, erupted in anger during a tense meeting of the entire Assembly Democratic caucus.

“This makes me feel like I want to punch the next Asian person I see in the face,” according to sources present at the meeting and other legislative sources who were told about the comments in the immediate aftermath.

It is beginning to look like there will be a Hispanic-Jewish alliance battling the Asians for control of the Democratic Party. Which is why LA Mayor Garcetti, who is the poster boy for that alliance, will be heavily pushed to be the next Democratic candidate for President.

Reince Priebus is determined to return the Washington Generals Republican Party to its more customary role of permanent defeat and retreat:

Priebus acknowledged Trump is, in some ways, not like any other Republican president. Trump is “extremely unique” in his personal style, Priebus said, and his campaign themes refocused the Republican Party on a populist message…. “I think post-Trump, the party returns to its traditional role and its traditional platform. It’s a Trump brand and he owns it and he has a way of protecting it,” Priebus said.

He’s proud to be a Republican because at least he knows he’ll lose.
He’ll surrender to the Democrats and he’ll defend the right to choose.
He’ll gladly stand up next to you and give up your liberty.
Cause there ain’t no doubt he loves to lose, God bless the GOP!

Like the Tea Party, both Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan proved to be Congressional failures, if not frauds:

In the aftermath of the Democratic waves in 2008, Ryan, McCarthy, and Eric Cantor presented themselves to Republican voters as The Young Guns – a new generation of conservatives largely untainted by the poor decisions of the Bush Administration, ready to lead in a time when Republicans were downtrodden and Democrats ebullient about the possibilities of the Obama years. Of the three, only Ryan had something particularly interesting to say: he was a blue-eyed salesman for the cod liver oil of entitlement reform. And he achieved something truly amazing: he got Republicans, at least for a time, to grasp that third rail. They voted for his reform plans reluctantly at first, but once they discovered the “throw granny off a cliff” ads had little power, their cowardice gradually dissipated.

Ryan was the most important Republican in Washington from 2009 to 2016. He now seems like a throwback from a bygone era, when voters expected their politicians to be straight-laced, honest, and sincere. He was serious, and dedicated himself to trying to tell stories to the American people about the fiscal direction of the country – stories which voters mostly ignored because they always seemed to involve hard news and histograms. Wisconsin nice and a truly decent person, Ryan’s approach was doomed in an era that values none of those things. It values the ferocity, the abandon of confrontational politics, not grand bargains and compromise.

We’ll see if the same proves to be true of Kevin McCarthy or not. Ryan seemed to start off well enough, but he rapidly disappeared into the weeds of cuckservatism and rendered himself irrelevant even before he became an ineffectual candidate for Vice-President. He proved to be timid and feckless non-leader in a time of intensifying cultural war.

And while I always thought it was unattractive, doesn’t the ticket of Romney-Ryan look even more ludicrous in hindsight than it did at the time? Even if Ryan is not being retired at the God-Emperor’s behest due to a Dennis Hastert-style problem.

It’s hard to know how much of this is genuine and how much is political smokescreen. But at this point, I’m a little surprised Trump hasn’t simply fired Mueller, Rosenstein, and everyone else who is part of, or playing along with, the legal charade:

President Donald Trump is considering firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, multiple people familiar with the discussions tell CNN, a move that has gained urgency following the raid of the office of the President’s personal lawyer.

Such an action could potentially further Trump’s goal of trying to put greater limits on special counsel Robert Mueller.

This is one of several options — including going so far as to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions — Trump is weighing in the aftermath of the FBI’s decision Monday to raid the office of Michael Cohen, the President’s personal lawyer and longtime confidant. Officials say if Trump acts, Rosenstein is his most likely target, but it’s unclear whether even such a dramatic firing like this would be enough to satisfy the President.

Trump has long been angry at top Justice Department officials, who he feels have not done enough to protect him from Mueller’s ongoing probe. But two sources said the raid could mark a tipping point that would prompt the President to take more aggressive action against the special counsel.

Firing Mueller could throw Trump’s presidency into crisis and not all of Trump’s legal advisers are on board. One source said Rosenstein wouldn’t be fired.

But some of Trump’s legal advisers are telling him they now have a stronger case against Rosenstein. They believe Rosenstein crossed the line in what he can and cannot pursue. And they consider him conflicted since he is a potential witness in the special counsel’s investigation because he wrote the memo that justified firing former FBI Director James Comey. The legal advisers also believe they have successfully argued to the American public that the FBI is tainted and think they can make the same case against Rosenstein.

A senior administration official said the White House has been discussing potential options with key congressional Republican leaders, fearful of “blindsiding them.” A person familiar with the conversations says a top congressional Republican advised the White House not to fire Rosenstein.

What a surprise that the do-nothing Republican leaders are fearful and advise doing nothing. That’s like saying that a fish recommends water. But President Trump not only has the legal authority to fire these jokers, thanks to Obama, he also has the legal authority to declare them enemies of the state and order drone strikes on them.

Both Fidesz and Jobbik outperform expectations in Hungary:

8 million Hungarians went to the polls to elect a 199-seat parliament in the 2018 general elections, which many expected would see the incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán- and his right-wing Fidesz party – win his third consecutive term. And, as covered here on numerous prior occasions, Orban’s campaign had been centered around anti-immigration policies, an especially sensitive topic not only in Hungary and Central Europe, but across the old continent.

His main competitors are Gergely Karacsony, a candidate for the Socialist and Dialogue parties; and Gabor Vona of the far-right nationalist Jobbik party, or rather were because according to the Hungarian election office website, Prime Minister Orban’s ruling Fidesz party has won a sweeping, landslide victory according to preliminary results with 69{3f291be52f3892c625db69bf603a5e6e4e8a242d20ba3e933d9d39378ad5a5d2} of the votes counted.

• Fidesz with 49.5{3f291be52f3892c625db69bf603a5e6e4e8a242d20ba3e933d9d39378ad5a5d2} of party-list votes, matching most pre-election opinion polls
• Formerly far-right Jobbik second with 20{3f291be52f3892c625db69bf603a5e6e4e8a242d20ba3e933d9d39378ad5a5d2} of list votes, Socialists at 11.9{3f291be52f3892c625db69bf603a5e6e4e8a242d20ba3e933d9d39378ad5a5d2}
• LMP and DK parties also poised to clear parliamentary threshold based on partial count

In other words, Orbán’s Fidesz party has secured an absolute majority, and may even reach as much as a two-thirds majority of 133 seats, enough to pursue a constitutional amendment, making life for George Soros in Hungary even more unbearable.

Can Jobbik really be called “far-right” or “extreme” when it has nearly twice the electoral support as the Socialists?

This is what the Right needs to be doing throughout the West. Embrace nationalism. Reject immigration. It’s not that hard and it will be successful, because everyone can see that the neo-liberal world order has failed, that immigration is dreadfully destructive of both the economy and the society, and that those who are pushing the globalist vision of one race, one world, one government are literally and materially evil.

Orban’s strong win could boost other right-wing nationalists in Central Europe, in Poland and in neighboring Austria, and expose cracks in the 28-nation EU.

Of course it will. Nationalism is rising and the Alt-Right is inevitable, because the truth cannot be obscured indefinitely. Communism has failed. Socialism has failed. Neo-liberalism has failed. Conservatism has failed. Constitutionalism has failed. Civic Nationalism has failed. Multiculturalism has failed. Feminism has failed. Globalism has failed. Once the impossible has been eliminated, what remains, however improbable or unpleasant, must be the truth.

Notice that all of the alternatives are lies, knowingly and consciously told for the purpose of deception. That is not an accident or a coincidence.

It’s really not hard to figure out. No one believes anything the media says anymore.

It’s not surprising that after little more than a year in office many people who voted for a president still support him. But it’s also surprising that a president who has been the object of more negative reporting than any in our history still enjoys something like the same middling base of support he had before taking office. Unless it’s the negative reporting that is the problem, which I suspect is very largely the case. You can only ask adults to participate in the fiction that a retweet of a wrestling GIF is a credible threat of violence against some nerd reporters at a cable station or delight in what you hope will be the failure of American trade policy before they decide to tune you out. Very largely this had already happened by Inauguration Day, but now the work of MSNBC and The New York Times and PolitiFact is complete. Millions of Americans do not know the difference between what is true and what is false and have decided that they do not much care either.

There was, I like fondly to imagine, a different course that might have been taken here. It is just possible, I suppose, that members of my profession could have exercised their reasoning faculties to decide what in the administration was good, what was bad, what was unremarkable or indistinguishable from what any modern president would do, what was painfully idiotic, what was, perhaps, evil. We chose not to exercise this responsibility. Instead we decided to indulge in our live-action roleplaying fantasies about being brave selfless journos taking on a mean demagogue because we love the Constitution so much.

The morons in the media may have the memory of goldfish, but those of us who still remember how they said Bill Clinton getting it on with an intern in the Oval Office was no big deal aren’t inclined to take their solemn declarations that the God-Emperor banging the occasional Playmate or porn star more than a decade ago is an imminent threat to the Constitution.

The media killed its own credibility. Now they are Fake News and everyone knows it, even those who pretend to believe them. As Glenn Reynolds says, their chief occupation is now deciding what facts they are going to try to hide from the American people.

The God-Emperor continues to be more popular with the US electorate than Obama ever was.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating hit 50 percent in Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll Monday, which puts him ahead of his predecessor at the same point in the presidency. The last time Trump hit 50 percent in the Rasmussen tracking poll was February 27. At the time, he was generally within the 47-50 percent range. The President’s approval rating outpaces that of former President Barack Obama, who sat at 46 percent in Rasmussen’s tracking poll on April 2, 2010.

But the more important thing about Trump’s persistent popularity is the way this reveals the increasingly limited ability of the US media to influence the way the American people think. They are throwing literally everything and the kitchen sink at this man and yet none of it sticks to him.

At this point, he could go down to the border, personally machine gun invading immigrants, and his popularity would increase 10 percent. The Stormy Daniels affair reveals that we have reached the point of negative returns for media hit pieces on the president.

The Washington Post is complaining that Trump is becoming increasingly hardline on immigration.

President Trump’s sharp shift in tone on immigration this week from would-be dealmaker back to the hard-line stance he campaigned on comes amid signs that some of his conservative base is growing impatient for him to fulfill promises on the border wall and other measures to crack down on illegal immigration.

Over the past two days, Trump has issued declarations on Twitter that shut the door on a legislative deal to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation, blamed Democrats for the failure, demanded the Mexican government take stronger action to close the border, and conflated a refu­gee crisis from Central America with the Obama-era deferred-action program that Trump ended in the fall.

Here is hoping that we will see truly hardline policies put in place soon. His conservative base is right. It is time to send them back and build the wall.

Science is gradually confirming his amygdala-based theory of politics:

Psychologists conducted brain scans on a total of 93 adults (first they studied 48 Caucasian adults, 58{e4703c56c4188c228685943b148064279a37085e2b6bbaf4ff431841da5c8102} of whom were female, and then replicated the effects with 45 adults from diverse ethnic backgrounds, 67{e4703c56c4188c228685943b148064279a37085e2b6bbaf4ff431841da5c8102} of whom were female) and found that the size of the bilateral amygdala, which governs emotions, survival instincts, and memory, was strongly correlated with support for the existing social order.

This mindset is known as “system justification,” and is highly correlated with conservatism, says Jay Van Bavel, professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. “A system-justifying psychological orientation favours the social, economic, and political status quo, and may promote vigilance to social hierarchy and a preference for ideologies that characterize extant inequality as legitimate and necessary,” explain the authors in the paper, published in December in Nature Human Behavior. The study evaluated this by the system justification scale, which poses questions such as, “In general, you find society to be fair,” and “Everyone has a fair shot at wealth and happiness.”

Earlier research (notably one paper co-authored by the actor Colin Firth) found a link between conservatism and the volume of the right amygdala, with higher volume linked to conservatism. Van Bavel says his research found that system justification, more than specific political ideology or the tendency to legitimize economic inequality under capitalism, was the strongest indicator of variations in the size of the amygdala.

The authors followed up with 20 participants and found that those with larger amygdalas were less likely to take part in protests. “Although the sample size was small, this link between amygdala volume and protest behaviour provides initial evidence that the amygdala may not only be related to beliefs about society but also willingness to take action to change certain aspects of the social system,” note the authors.

This is why you simply cannot fix SJWs. It’s no more possible than trying to make them taller, or smarter. Their shrunken, tiny little brains are the problem.

It looks like some of the damning information is beginning to leak out to the press:

Newly uncovered text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page suggest a possible coordination between high-ranking officials at the Obama White House, CIA, FBI, Justice Department and former Senate Democratic leadership in the early stages of the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to GOP congressional investigators on Wednesday.

The investigators say the information provided to Fox News “strongly” suggests coordination between former President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, and CIA Director John Brennan — which they say would “contradict” the Obama administration’s public stance about its hand in the process.

There will be far more than this coming to light. But just this would be enough to land some very high-ranking government officials – and former government officials – in prison.

Or so we are told. But it sounds credible enough. Notice who rushed to convince Trump not to veto it: Pence, Short, Mattis, Ryan, and McConnell. Remember that when things start getting interesting.

Immigration seemed to frustrate Trump the most. He secured $1.6 billion for some fencing and levees on the border; it comes with strings attached and the amount fell far short of the $25 billion requested for a wall. He was also eager to blame Democrats for the failure to reach a deal to protect dreamers by coming up with an alternative to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that he ended last year.

Even Friday morning, Trump asked aides how he could still get more money for the border wall and whether some of the items that Democrats celebrated were in the bill — such as money for what are known as sanctuary cities and Planned Parenthood — were really included in the package, according to people familiar with the discussions who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

He was told that it was unlikely he could get more wall funding and that Democrats did secure the items they were touting. He grew angry. So, shortly before 9 a.m., Trump took to Twitter.

“I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded,” Trump tweeted.

Inside the White House, senior officials such as Vice President Pence, legislative director Marc Short and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were summoned to persuade the president to sign the bill and avoid a shutdown.

Mattis stressed that the Pentagon desperately needed the funding boost — a $66 billion increase over last year’s levels — that the bill would provide. Aides told Trump it would be “historic” funding, a word that he likes to hear.

Short argued that the funding package would give the president money for immigration and infrastructure programs and that the White House had already committed to signing the bill. Trump was given a list of all the planes, submarines and other military equipment the bill would fund, a list the president would rattle off later in his hastily organized appearance in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room.

 House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) made his own pitch, calling the president about 30 minutes after the veto threat. Trump continued to say the bill was terrible, but Ryan again touted benefits for the military. McConnell (R-Ky.) called Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, two White House aides said, to keep tabs on the situation.