The Democrat Party of Racism

I hope that blacks and Hispanic people will soon become "woke" as our Prog friends like to say, to the fact that the Progressives, operating under the banner of the Democrat Party, have finally been able to do what Jim Crow and the militant wing of the Dem Party (i.e. the KKK) could not.

That is, get a segregated society that marginalized people of color. And get those people to think that's what they want, and need, to succeed in America.

Something called 'students4justice' at the University of Michigan is asking for

“a permanent designated space on central campus for Black students and students of color to organize and do social justice work.”

Over in Northampton, NH, we have a school board who cancelled a police outreach program because:

“Concerns were shared that some kids might respond negatively to a group of uniformed officers at their school,” the police department said in a post on its Facebook page last week. "People were specifically concerned about kids of color, undocumented children, or any children who may have had negative experiences with the police."

So, our little Prog SJWs celebrate and push for diversity by self-segregating, and we can't encourage better relations between the police and minority communities because we don't have better relations between the police and minority communities.

Welcome to Progland, folks.

Trump hates the media. Obama attempted to silence them

Remember when a president merely used the apparatus of the executive to silence the press?

Nothing compared to the jawboning being done by President Trump.

Good times.

"Reporters’ phone logs and e-mails were secretly subpoenaed and seized by the Justice Department in two of the investigations, and a Fox News reporter was accused in an affidavit for one of those subpoenas of being “an aider, abettor and/or conspirator” of an indicted leak defendant, exposing him to possible prosecution for doing his job as a journalist. In another leak case, a New York Times reporter has been ordered to testify against a defendant or go to jail."

Said New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote earlier this year, “it’s turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.” 

“President Obama had said that default should be disclosure,” Times reporter Shane told me. “The culture they’ve created is not one that favors disclosure.”ration spokesmen are often unresponsive or hostile to press inquiries, even when reporters have been sent to them by officials who won’t talk on their own. Despite President Barack Obama’s repeated promise that his administration would be the most open and transparent in American history, reporters and government transparency advocates said they are disappointed by its performance in improving access to the information they need." 

“This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times

Trump is Going Four Dimensional on Immigration Foes

Remember when President Trump gave a speech at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and proposed a bunch of radical stuff?


You know, totally crazy shit, like, "I’m asking all of you to enforce the laws.”


At the same time, he signed two executive orders that day, one to begin/continue construction of a border wall, and the second to restore the "Secure Communities Program" and strip money from so-called "sanctuary" cities and states. It includes the end of the "catch and release" program and money for more detention centers.  These EOs are a dead giveaway that the Trump administration fully intends to spend more effort on finding, detaining, and eventually removing these folks from society (whether it's by a long time in an American detention center, aka "jail", or by sending the scofflaws back to whence they came).  Absent anything else to distract attention, cue the sad stories about innocent mothers and their children separated by the evil Trump admin.  Ignoring that mom entered the country (illegally), then stole someone's identity to get papers to make her look like a legal citizen, something YOU or I would find ourselves serving some significant time for...


As I said, "absent anything else..."


Hence, in the next few days, we saw the wider travel ban on immigrants from seven previously identified failed states and Iran, and that's all we've been talking about since.


Many have pointed to the botched rollout of the travel ban, and its subsequent troubles in court, leading to the Ninth Circuit's ridiculous and willful disregard of the law and precedent this week, as signs of the incompetence or, at best, chaos, of the Trump White House.


But, what if this is not chaos, but orchestrated?


Trump and his advisors know that the travel ban, especially as short as it was going to be, would end up having little impact on the immediate national security prospects, and likely knew they could "figure out what the hell is going on" even without a ban.  And I have every confidence they will come up with much better vetting procedures, especially for those from the failed states in this order, but for all immigrants from countries who export terrorism (yes, I'm looking at YOU, Saudi Arabia).


They knew this would send the Left and their media squirrel chasers into paroxysms of outrage.  This would divert attention from the truly radical thing that happened here, and that's the actual enforcement of the law. 


Eventually, the media will bore of the travel ban.  The admin will lessen it's severity, they'll put something more modest together and the media will move on to those grieving mother stories.  But it'll be too late, with the die cast.


That this has the side benefit of exposing the Ninth Circuit for what it is, the Supreme Court of Californistan, well, that's icing.

Killing the Filibuster

This week was an eventful one for the President.

You have to give him some credit, the guy has a tireless work ethic.

He semi-carelessly implemented his promised "ban" on travel from 7 mostly failed-state, majority-Muslim countries, prompting the kind of theatrics one would have expected from The Left.  Cue the protests, the descriptions of it as "anti-Muslim," the faux crying by Chuck Schumer, the judge-shopping by Left-leaning State Attorney Generals, etc.

Then, he nominated Neil Gorsuch to be the next SCOTUS justice, which was a universally-applauded pick, even by those on The Left ^TM.  Which is the subject of this post.

Starting with Gorsuch.  He's an imminently qualified, well-liked and thought of jurist, in the mold of Scalia, with perhaps a bit more concern about the encroachment to Liberty we face from the administrative state.  He'll be a strong 4th Amendment advocate, which should please the libertarian-minded, and he has argued forcefully for religious liberty, and is a clear textualist, as was Scalia.

For conservatives, the pick is a home run.

Which is why he must be confirmed, and quickly.

What are the Democrats to do here?

Almost out of the box, their attack dogs, led by Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden, were painting Gorsuch as an ideologue determined to undo every civil liberty ever contemplated, and a danger to the American republic.  This despite Wyden's own vote to confirm him to the 10thDistrict Court of Appeals in 2006.

This was followed by calls that this seat should not be filled because it was "stolen" by the GOP when they refused to even give Merrick Garland a hearing.  Although that was a strategy that had been advocated by Joe Biden (remember him) in 2008, hypocrisy knows no boundaries in Democrat politics.

The fact on that argument is that the Supreme Court was a central theme, at least in conservative circles, and a key reason many reluctant Trump voters cast a ballot for him.  If The Left couldnt' get out the vote for this for Hillary Clinton, well, isn't that on their hands?  They held it within their own power to prevent a Trump nominee.  They lost.

Now, we will have to deal with the filibuster.

The GOP needs to peel off 8 Dems to prevent a filibuster, and given 2018's electoral map, that may be entirely possible.  I wonder how many of these 2018 Dems know they're dead senators walking and will just accept that and give in to their donor base and join a filibuster.  My guess is a vote against Gorsuch for a senator such as Manchin, Heitkamp, Tester, Donnelly, etc, is more dangerous to their chances than losing money from rich, progressive donors.

I advocate 2 options here for the GOP, if the Dems threaten a filibuster and can sustain it with numbers:

1. Force them to actually carry it out.  Enjoy the spectacle of Democrat senators actually bringing the senate to a halt and cover it full time on C-SPAN.  Change the rules so the Senate is in session 24/7 during it so they have to stay up all night.  Make these old geezers pay for their recalcitrance.
2. Nuke it.

For the Dems, what is the best political move here?

Given that the seat does not change the existing court balance, do they hold their fire for the next one, which will either be Kennedy or Ginsburg (my guessses).  They'd certainly want to go hard after a choice for Ginsburg.  If they retain the filibuster and give Gorsuch this seat, you might see Trump, in a Ginsburg situation, go for someone like Garland.  In fact, were it me, and I knew that one would be filibustered, I would nominate Garland for Ginsburg.  he's older, and wont' likely serve more than 20 years, and he's already been nominated by a Democrat. How would they filibuster that?

If they give up the filibuster and let the GOP nuke it, all future SCOTUS picks will be far right textualists.  Trump has a list, and he'd use it.  And he'd be mad enough to nominate the judges who piss the Dems off the most.

Also, nuking the filibuster will make Chuck Schumer and the Dems in Congress completely powerless for 2 years, most likely 4.  Do the Dems really want to take that chance.  I think they have to keep their powder dry.

We'll see.