Sen. Graham Said What Every Fair-Minded Person Is Thinking

Kathleen Parker,
Washington Post
September 29, 2018

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Jeff Flake may have become a momentary hero for Democrats hoping to block Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, but Sen. Lindsey Graham has cinched the role as Jiminy Cricket of the U.S. Senate.

Never one to shy away from cameras or fall short on quotable one-liners, Graham came out swinging during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings Thursday and Friday. Fearing no consequence, apparently, he railed against his Democratic colleagues with righteous outrage and said what was obviously true.
Somebody had to do it.

Flake, who seems committed to living up to his name, bucked his fellow Republicans at the last minute Friday. After voting to advance Kavanaugh to the full Senate, Flake requested a one-week delay to give the FBI time to conduct its own investigation of allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were at a party more than 30 years ago. Earlier in the day, Flake had said he would vote for Kavanaugh, but that was before he was confronted (and, apparently, intimidated) by women on an elevator who said they were assault victims and that he was “telling all women that they don’t matter.”

But back to Graham, who is far more entertaining even — or especially — when he’s mad. The usually congenial senator showed up at Thursday’s hearing with Moral Outrage on his arm and Truth as his chaperone.

Love him or not — and who doesn’t love Jiminy Cricket? — Graham said in a very loud non-whisper what every sensible, fair-minded person was surely thinking: The hearings that ultimately brought both Kavanaugh and Ford to tears were driven by a partisan quest for power without regard for the human collateral damage.

Railing at the Democratic side of the hearing room, Graham nearly shouted, “Boy, y’all want power. God I hope you never get it.”

The only thing worse than Republicans with absolute power is Democrats with absolute power, right? It is true, however, that the pitiable spectacle of first Ford and then Kavanaugh showed that Senate Democrats were willing to martyr their own best witness against Kavanaugh to delay confirmation and, assuming they win the Senate in the midterm elections, block Donald Trump from appointing any more conservatives to the high court.

Graham’s passionate commentary was, thus, a rallying cry to Republican voters, whose intensity has been flickering next to highly motivated Democrats, especially women. By Friday, he was calmer and more relaxed, perhaps because he believed Flake was onboard. He spelled out the reasons Ford’s story wasn’t compelling enough to keep Kavanaugh off the bench — no supporting evidence or testimony, not even a time or place.

Yes, her testimony was heartbreaking and seemed sincere. She plainly has suffered. Kavanaugh, too, has suffered immensely. Nearly losing control throughout his emotional statement, he was as credible as his accuser. Riveted by the proceedings, I felt at times I should look away rather than play voyeur to the humiliation of two fine people — stripped of dignity and emotionally exposed before the world.

Laugh at the U.N., Not With It

Laugh at the U.N., Not With It 

The world body’s record on human rights is a cruel joke.

Posted By Ruth King
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2018/09/26/laugh-at-the-u-n-not-with-it-the-world-bodys-record-on-human-rights-is-a-cruel-joke-3-comments-by-elliot-kaufman/
September 26th, 2018

Oh, how they laughed.

When President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” the delegates of the world couldn’t contain themselves. “I didn’t expect that reaction,” Mr. Trump responded to the laughter ringing through the hall, “but that’s OK.”

Mr. Trump’s boast merited an eye roll, but I’d laugh right back at the U.N. It deserves it.

Who but the U.N. would elect some of the world’s leading human-rights abusers—Saudi Arabia, China, Venezuela, Pakistan and others—to run a Human Rights Council and lecture the rest of us? In 2016 many of these members even tried to silence Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, in midsentence as he exposed their hypocrisy.

Who but the U.N. would elect the Islamic Republic of Iran to the executive board of its agency “dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women”? The World Economic Forum ranks Iran 140th out of 144 nations in parity between the sexes for a reason. Its regime arrests and beats women who peacefully protest for their rights. It imprisons and tortures women for removing their headscarves. Discrimination is written into every area of Iran’s civil code, from marriage and divorce to employment.

Who but the U.N. would hold a World Conference Against Racism, only to have supporters of Israel harassed, intimidated and booed off the stage with chants of “Jew! Jew! Jew!”? In 2001 the conference was “overflowing with copies of ‘The Protocols of The Elders of Zion’ and pamphlets featuring pictures of Jews with long hooked noses and evil smiles, their serpent fangs soaked in blood and their military uniforms decorated with swastikas,” according to a correspondent for the New Republic. As of June 2016, the Human Rights Council had condemned Israel more than every other nation combined. It has since passed 10 more anti-Israel resolutions, for a total of 78.

Who but the U.N. would elect Syria to a leadership post in the Special Committee on Decolonization, which fights “subjugation, domination and exploitation,” as the regime was slaughtering its own people with chemical weapons? Instead of correcting its mistake, the U.N. then re-elected Syria in 2016 and again in 2018.

Who but the U.N. would hold an official minute of silence in recognition of the death of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s murderer, torturer and jailer in chief? In fact, one wasn’t enough. The U.N. gave Castro two separate minutes of silence and then a third tribute. Under Castro, Cuba sometimes served on the Human Rights Council but never allowed inspectors into the country—except once. U.N. official Jean Ziegler, a Castro admirer and the cofounder of the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, visited Cuba in 2007. He liked what he saw.

The U.N. laughs. If it had any shame, it would cry.
Mr. Kaufman is the Journal’s Joseph Rago Memorial Fellow.

The Attack on Kavanaugh Is Un-American

The Attack on Kavanaugh Is Un-American The Rolling Stone rape hoax illustrated what happens when we adhere to preconceived narratives. By Libby Locke http://luxlibertas.com/the-attack-on-kavanaugh-is-un-american/ September 26, 2018 A reputation is a fragile thing. Last week was a testament to that simple truth. Within hours of being accused of an unsubstantiated and uncorroborated three-decades-old assault, Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s reputation as a highly respected jurist with an unblemished personal record was permanently damaged. Many rushed to declare Judge Kavanaugh guilty merely because he had been accused. Democrats all too happily called for him to withdraw his Supreme Court nomination, while his accuser’s lawyer basked in the left’s glory for slowing a Supreme Court nomination that seemed a sure thing. As the #MeToo tidal wave crests, it is crucial to remember what happens when we blindly assume the truth of allegations rather than require evidence and adhere to the notion that people are innocent until proven guilty. I have seen firsthand what happens when people mindlessly follow preconceived narratives, disregard evidence, and indiscriminately believe accusers. I represented Nicole Eramo, a dean at the University of Virginia, who was victimized by one of the most notorious false rape accusations in recent history.

Rolling Stone magazine claimed in 2014 that Ms. Eramo had tried to cover up a horrific gang rape at a UVA fraternity. The campus exploded in protest, and Ms. Eramo—who had dedicated her career to helping survivors of sexual assault and had supported the purported victim—became a national villain, receiving public condemnation and death threats.

Although we were ultimately able to vindicate Ms. Eramo publicly, winning a $3 million jury verdict for defamation, we faced the tremendously difficult task of proving what had not happened: that the reported gang rape did not occur, and that Ms. Eramo did not dismiss the accuser’s allegations. That required months of litigation—not to mention the public backlash my law firm endured by daring to ask a purported victim of sexual assault questions about her allegations.

Judge Kavanaugh finds himself in a similar unenviable position: being expected to prove a negative. To vindicate himself in the eyes of those who assume his guilt, he must show that something else happened, for example that he was somewhere else when the incident—whose location is itself unspecified—allegedly occurred. To make matters worse, the purported assault took place before cellphones, text messages, emails—making it hard to find contemporaneous documents to demonstrate the falsity of the claim.

That’s precisely why Democrats have latched onto these allegations—because they are unprovable. It is her word against his. And how dare a white man, from a privileged background, confront his accuser—either himself or through his lawyer. Even if that lawyer is a woman. The left tells us that to do so would be “insensitive” and would “revictimize” her. But with that approach, due process is thrown out the window, all law is politics, and mob rule becomes the standard. It is un-American, and all Americans should be fearful.

Senate Republicans should not have invited Christine Blasey Ford to testify without first requiring her to answer written questions under oath and produce any documents supporting her claims. The polygraph results were finally released Wednesday, but where are those therapist notes? What questions was Ms. Ford asked, and how did she answer them, in each of those settings? What do others—witnesses either to the alleged assault or to Ms. Ford’s recounting of it—have to say about it under oath?

An adversarial process—with testimony by relevant witnesses supported by contemporaneous documents—is the best way to make a determination about Ms. Ford’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s credibility. A he-said-she-said back-and-forth without documents or witnesses will produce nothing except political theater.

Senate Republicans and Democrats—along with the American public—should remember that in civil and criminal settings, the prosecution bears the burden of proof. The Senate Judiciary Committee in its advice-and-consent role for Supreme Court nominations should not disregard this bedrock principle of American jurisprudence—it should firmly embrace it. Unless Ms. Ford can satisfy her burden of proof by calling witnesses with contemporaneous knowledge of her claims or producing relevant documents supporting her allegations, Judge Kavanaugh should be presumed innocent and his nomination should be confirmed.

At this point, all we know is that every purported witness denies any knowledge of the party where the assault is supposed to have happened—including a female friend of Ms. Ford’s, who says she doesn’t even know Judge Kavanaugh. Ms. Ford, through her Democratic lawyer, Debra Katz, has only referenced—or produced portions of—very self-serving documents. The American people should be permitted to hear from these witnesses and to review these documents. And they are entitled to answers to other relevant questions to determine whether this is—as many Republicans suspect—merely a political hatchet job.

When did Ms. Ford retain Ms. Katz? Who referred Ms. Ford to Ms. Katz? If this is not a political attack, why did she choose Ms. Katz as her lawyer? What communications did she, or Ms. Katz, have with Senate Democrats before publicly making these allegations? Why did Ms. Ford report her allegation to a Democratic politician, rather than to local law enforcement or to the FBI? The controversy erupting around the Kavanaugh nomination underlines the power of the #MeToo movement, which is predicated on the idea that the dynamics between the sexes rob women of their power. But anyone still holding to that Victorian notion should have been disabused of it last week. The circus this process has become demonstrates not only the power of #MeToo but also its potential as a weapon—and how an audience eager for victim narratives and sinister power dynamics can be galvanized without proof to shatter a man’s reputation built over a lifetime of hard work. When preconceived narratives replace the demand for facts and evidence, accusations become self-proving. Don’t be surprised when people with ulterior motives invent false accusations that destroy the innocent.

Ms. Locke is a partner in the law firm Clare Locke LLP, based in Alexandria, Va.

America’s Aimless ‘Accusatocracy’

America’s Aimless ‘Accusatocracy’

By Conrad Black|
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/24/americas-aimless-accusatocracy/
September 24, 2018

Everyone knows that the entire Christine Blasey Ford challenge to Judge Brett Kavanaugh is nonsense. Her identified witnesses have deserted her. She can’t remember any precise material fact about it except the identity of the alleged drunken assailant. She was silent for 30 years and then gave a garbled account to a marriage counselor, which differs materially from what she later said publicly. Ford is a political activist of the Left and an ostentatious critic of the current administration—her perfect right, but coupled with the many implausible aspects of the timing of this challenge and the unreasonable belligerence of Ford’s counsel, it raises questions about motive.

Her account is likely largely or even wholly untrue, as it applies to Kavanaugh, but not necessarily intentionally so. The Democrats sat on this one, as they did the Billy Bush tape two years ago, waiting for the optimal moment to spring it.

Ford’s supporters believe her unquestioningly because she is a woman, a Democrat (and implicitly, a Trump-hater), and the devil take Judge Kavanaugh’s right to a fair hearing and the continuation of his reputation as a decent, civilized, public-spirited, and irreproachable husband, father, and appellate court judge, which even the Democratic senators on the judiciary committee conceded until last week.

Since the emergence of this sketchy allegation, the administration and the Republican senators have to give Dr. Ford a reasonable hearing, or a large block of reasonable but torqued-up women voters could be alienated and the last remnants of the NeverTrumpers might peel off and the confirmation vote could be jeopardized. Up to now, Senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have liked Kavanaugh more than they dislike Trump. Flake and Corker are doing the prudent thing, given their polling numbers, as well as the decent thing, and retiring. As they have no reason to think they are about to die, they are unlikely to use their last important Senate vote as John McCain did with the failed Obamacare repeal, as a way to kick their own party in the groin. Collins seems to be glued to the Capitol and may outlast everyone now there, including the statuary.

Honky-Tonk Games of Deception

To maintain the fragile loyalty of these nominal Republicans, Ford must be treated with greater deference than her erratic conduct and her lawyer’s impertinences would normally merit.
Beyond the Senate vote, the administration and the Republican leadership have to judge when they have gone far enough to accommodate the outrageous menu of Ford conditions for testifying, until the silent majority comes to its senses and rediscovers its voice. At that point, there will be a discernible majority that is satisfied that Ford is not being shabbily treated, ignored, or bullied; that accusations, to have any consequences, must be reasonably advanced and not dangled and jiggled as they have been as in primitive children’s amusements in honky-tonk games of deception; that the judge deserves the presumption of innocence, and that the merit of the contesting stories must be determined on the standard civil law basis of the balance of probabilities.

After presumably scratching around desperately to find a co-accuser and start a wave of long-withheld grievances against this Brett the Ripper, the best the president’s enemies could do was a very feeble tale from one Deborah Ramirez, who went to Yale at the same time as Kavanaugh, whose gambit began unpromisingly: “I remember there being a penis in front of my face.” It didn’t get better and ended with her accidentally touching said apparition. All were allegedly drunk, no corroboration.
Ford’s saga is lapidary in its comparative solidity. Even the New York Times would not publish this clunker, but no anti-Trump garbage is too rancid for The New Yorker, and out came this fable of drunken derring-do from 34 years ago, excavated from the canyons of Ramirez’s long-silent memory. Kavanaugh denies it.

Too Implausible for the New York Times

That this tawdry smear campaign might be spared nothing, there lurched out of the darkness the depressingly familiar figure of Michael Avenatti, former political operative for Chicago’s failed mayor and Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a personal and professional bankrupt and accused tax cheat, and self-nominated counsel to Stormy Daniels. He says he has at least one more complainant against Judge Kavanaugh. These latest circus acts will cheapen and coarsen the sordid “Stop Kavanaugh” movement—Avenatti is too egregious even for the anti-Trump television networks, as Ramirez is too implausible for the New York Times.

The Democrats produced this long-withheld rabbit punch, presumably to have a final try at sandbagging a proposed judicial appointment that they could not weaken in the slightest degree during the hearings, where the Democrats disgraced themselves by inciting obscene interruptions and strutting and preening like amateurs rehearsing a Sunday school morality play. But more importantly, either premeditatedly or spontaneously after they had enflamed the whole #MeToo terror and emasculation apparatus, they saw an opportunity to bag millions of independent or wavering female voters in the midterm elections, with this sudden recourse to orchestrated hysteria.

So far, contrary to his enemies’ caricature of him as a compulsively and mindlessly aggressive blowhard and hip-shooting bully, the president has played his cards wisely. The allegations must be heard and fairly judged, and he sticks with his candidate, who deserves to be believed unless there is a reason to disbelieve him. Senators McConnell and Grassley, the majority leader and Judiciary Committee chairman, have been diplomatic and consistent, unflapped but conciliatory.

When Will Sanity Return?

The burning question is how much time will be required for the sensible majority to be repulsed by the Democratic senators’ escalating Red Queen antics: Richard Blumenthal’s presumption of guilt because the allegation was made by a woman, Kirsten Gillibrand’s assertion of Ford’s truthfulness simply because she made the allegation, and Mazie Hirono’s demand that all American men maintain silence while Kavanaugh is crucified by a deranged ultra-feminist man-hating lynch mob. (Perhaps there are sinister customs in the jungles of the nether islands of Hawaii, Hirono’s state, that were unsuspected until now.)

There is no question that the majority of Americans, when they see this issue plainly, will be disgusted at these Democratic hypocrites advocating the totalitarian rape of the entire system of Anglo-Saxon justice and due process since Magna Carta 703 years ago.

It is possible, given the usual rabid chorus from the robotic national political media that this process of allowing sanity to prevail could take a week or two, though I doubt it, and make it late to get this judge confirmed before the Congress has to disperse for the election, including five to eight very close Senate races.

I think there will be a clear mandate from a united Republican Senate delegation to confirm Kavanaugh after the hearings Thursday. I doubt if even the Blumenthal-Gillibrand-Hirono- axis can continue militating once the Ramirez bibulous miracle and the Avenatti mystery victim take a tour. Those senators know no shame, but may recognize it when they see it.

On a worst case, the Republicans should leave the issue unresolved, let the Democrats wear this foolishness and dishonesty all the way to November, and confirm Kavanaugh either immediately after the election or after the new senators are installed in January.

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

The Supreme Court went a whole year with a vacancy after the death of Justice Scalia, filled by Justice Gorsuch; a few months with eight judges won’t be a serious problem. But, in their febrile partisanship, the Democrats have handed the Republicans a weapon with which they can kill the Democrats. This campaign against Kavanaugh has been the sleaziest trick since the Steele dossier, and the infelicitous mélange of cynicism, bigotry, inchoate rage, and vacuity of the Democratic point people on this issue are too good to allow them an escape based on pushing Kavanaugh across ahead of public opinion.

And in the meantime, the long-awaited disintegration of the politicized and profoundly corrupt Obama Justice Department is descending like an avalanche gathering steam as attorney general Rosenstein prepares to explain why he was contemplating miking up and speaking of the 25th Amendment. The amazing spectacle will reach a climax soon on the entire Democratic and media accusatocracy.
If more time is required to solidify public opinion against this regime of malicious or delusional denunciation, which could disqualify anybody from holding any position, let the Democrats hang themselves. For those who like a spectacle, it just keeps getting better. Those who want dignified government are an oppressed minority. Perhaps Gloria Allred and Michael Avenatti will take up their cause next.

A Question of Confidence

A Question of Confidence

By Carson Holloway
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/25/trump-vs-the-elites-a-question-of-confidence/

September 26, 2018

America’s political and media elites are amazed and appalled by the loyalty of Donald Trump’s core supporters. How, they wonder, can these voters continue to stand behind such a man, with all of his evident faults? To ask and answer the question actually says more about our elites than it says about Trump’s supporters.

Trump’s voters stick by him not because they are blind to his weaknesses but because they have more confidence in him than they have in the elites who oppose him—and with good reason.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump ran not only as someone outside of, but as someone actively opposed to, the members of the country’s political and media establishment. They were, he never tired of suggesting, incompetent and self-serving. For its part, this establishment not only withheld its support from Trump but did everything in its power to destroy his candidacy.

Trump won anyway. A sufficient number of voters found his critique of the establishment plausible, and they were thus willing to disregard that establishment’s dire warnings about the potential consequences of a Trump presidency. Trump’s rise, then, depended in part on a stunning collapse of confidence, on the part of many voters, in the nation’s traditional elites.

Since Trump’s election, these elites have done nothing to regain this lost confidence. On the contrary, they have acted in ways that almost seem calculated to deepen, if possible, the hostility and disdain of Trump’s voters. Each day the establishment trumpets its superior claims to govern, and each day it discredits these claims by its own behavior.

The political and media establishment presents itself as the defender of high political seriousness, in contrast to Trump’s supposed lack of seriousness and petty-mindedness. It is Trump, however, who has gone about the business of governing the country, and who has done so with tolerable success. Leaving aside the flamboyant and bruising discourse that Trump both uses and provokes in others, the country is not materially worse off under his stewardship than under that of previous presidents. On the contrary, in many ways it is better off.

Meanwhile, the establishment, the self-anointed upholders of seriousness, are preoccupied to the point of mania with anonymously sourced stories about alleged infighting within Trump’s administration. These stories always carry a veneer of real gravity, since they involve those who are entrusted with administering the government. Nevertheless, they are in substance on the level of the hallway conversation of high school sophomores: “Did you hear what A said about B to C?!” Ordinary Americans who voted for Trump can see this small-mindedness for what it is.

The establishment claims to be defending honor and integrity in public service, in contrast, they say, to Trump’s striking deficiencies in these virtues. These same anonymously sourced stories that are the establishment’s favorite reading, however, often tell a tale of political professionals who denounce the president—safely behind the veil of secrecy—and who boast about opposing his aims from within the administration. Most Americans work in, or have worked in, some kind of formal organization. They recognize the behavior of Trump’s enemies. Accepting a job from a man and then secretly working to undermine his reputation and frustrate his intentions is actually the opposite of honorable conduct.

In contrast, Trump has exerted himself strenuously to do the things that he said he would do as president, and when he thinks he has to attack someone (which admittedly is pretty often) he at least does it in the open. To this extent, Trump’s behavior is actually more honorable than that of his establishment detractors.

The country’s traditional establishment claims to defend the institutions and norms of our democracy, in opposition to Trump’s supposed efforts to undermine them. It is Trump’s enemies, however, who made a circus out of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings on a nominee to the Supreme Court. Every tactic used by Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Dianne Feinstein to destroy Brett Kavanaugh is now a precedent for similar tactics to be used in the future against the nominees of a Democratic president. Such precedents would not be set by people seeking to conserve the norms and institutions necessary to the proper functioning of our government.

Finally, the elites claim to stand for the rule of law in opposition to Trump’s supposed lawlessness. The president, however, has not been charged with any crime. But Trump’s enemies certainly have committed crimes, and collaborated in the commission of crimes, in order to harm the president. The leak of the transcript of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador, and the leak of the existence of a FISA warrant on Carter Page, were unlawful disclosures of classified information done by government officials collaborating with journalists inside the Beltway.

In every case, the establishment’s pretensions to superiority are transparently groundless and self-serving. And this is why Trump can persist as a viable political phenomenon. Many voters can plausibly believe that, whatever his weaknesses, he is not as bad as his rivals for power.

Good Midterm News for the GOP

Good Midterm News for the GOP


Nate Jackson
https://patriotpost.us/articles/58476-good-midterm-news-for-the-gop
September 26, 2018

Two recent polls may indicate that the blue wave isn't as guaranteed as some think.

The latest Gallup poll has some encouraging news for Republicans and a warning for Democrats gleefully awaiting November’s blue wave. “Forty-five percent of Americans now have a favorable view of the Republican Party, a nine-point gain from last September’s 36%. It is the party’s most positive image since it registered 47% in January 2011, shortly after taking control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. Forty-four percent give the Democratic Party a favorable rating.”

A couple of significant things are at play here. At this time last year, the GOP had just failed to repeal Obama Care as Republicans had been promising since 2010. Democrats were also winning the fight over the debt ceiling and spending. Thus, Republican voters had a lower opinion of their own party. This year, Americans are reaping the benefits of the GOP economic boom fueled by lower taxes and fewer regulations. The politically interested also note that Neil Gorsuch now sits on the Supreme Court, as will Brett Kavanaugh despite the Democrats’ horrendous orchestrated character assassination.

What do Democrats have to offer besides Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Meanwhile, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that “Republican enthusiasm about the upcoming election has increased, drawing nearly even with Democrats.”

The takeaway here isn’t so much the polls themselves as who votes come Election Day (or via early voting). Midterm elections are all about turnout, and enthusiasm dictates turnout. If the GOP can stoke voter enthusiasm and keep favorability high, Republicans might not only thwart a blue wave but bring a red one akin to 2010 and 2014.

Trump’s Triumph at the U.N.

Trump’s Triumph at the U.N.

By Roger Kimball
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/25/trumps-triumph-at-the-u-n/
September 25th, 2018|

Maybe you are like those members of the audience seated in the General Assembly who tittered when the president began his speech noting that, “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.”The bureaucrats shifting upon their glutei maximi upon the plush receptacles provided by the custodians of the United Nations may have found the president’s frank statement risible. But their hilarity detracts not one iota from the truth of his observation.

What President Trump said was not braggadocio. It was the unvarnished truth.

What Were They Laughing About Again?

In less than two years, the United States has added some $10 trillion in wealth to its economy. Four million new jobs have been created, and unemployment has plummeted to historic lows. Consumer confidence has soared, while tax reform has put more money in the pockets of average Americans and turbocharged American businesses.

Meanwhile, the President’s attention to the United States military has reversed the decay orchestrated by the Obama Administration, upping military spending to $700 billion this year, $716 billion next year. In short, “the United States is stronger, safer, and a richer country than it was when I assumed office less than two years ago.”

Giggle away, ye bureaucrats, giggle away.

So it is with the president’s speech. Barack Obama is reputed to be an impressive orator. But he never gave a speech that, in substance, could hold a candle to President Trump’s speeches at Warsaw, at Riyadh, before the joint session of Congress last year, or indeed his “rocket man” speech at the United Nations. And this topped them all for forcefulness, clarity, and wisdom.

The forcefulness and clarity, I believe, are acknowledged by everyone, even the president’s opponents. Emblematic passages include his description of ISIS “bloodthirsty killers,” his characterization of Iran as a “brutal regime,” the “world’s leading sponsor of terrorism,” whose leaders “sow chaos, death, and destruction” and “plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.” All this is patently true, but one is not supposed to utter such things on the floor of the General Assembly.


This is not the usual language of diplomacy. It is the frank argot of truth: a tongue rarely heard in the echo-chambers of the United Nations with its squadrons of translators who translate clichés from one language into another swiftly, accurately, and inconsequentially. How refreshing—though admittedly, how startling it must have been to hear someone deliver an entire speech without lying.

Sovereignty Is Key

But I spoke of “wisdom,” too. Again, you may think that the conjunction of the name “Trump” and the virtue of wisdom is odd. But think about it. What, in the end, was this speech about? It was an elaboration of Trump’s chief foreign policy idea, “principled realism.”

“Realism” connotes an accurate and unsentimental appreciation of the metabolism of power. The “principles” in question involve an affirmation of who we are as a people, which turns on our affirmation of national sovereignty.

The president’s articulation of this simple, yet deep, idea is what lifted his speech out of the realm of pedestrian blather and marked it for the history books.

No one who has listened to President Trump talk about his “America First” agenda will have been surprised when he said, “America will always act in [its] national interest,” or “We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy,” or “Moving forward, we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends.”

President Trump has made those points before, though perhaps not always so bluntly.

What was new was his meditation on the importance of sovereignty.

He was right, and in the halls of the United Nations, nearly unique, in pointing out that “responsible nations must defend against threats to sovereignty not just from global governance, but also from other, new forms of coercion and domination.” More can be said—and I trust will be said—about those novel forms of coercion and domination. For now, however, we should pay attention to these key phrases in the president’s speech.

On moving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and our moving our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem. The aim of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is “advanced, not harmed, by acknowledging the obvious facts,” to wit, the fact that Israel is a sovereign state and, as such, has the right to determine where its capital city should be.

On the immediate implications of a policy of “principled realism,” which means that “we will not be held hostage to old dogmas, discredited ideologies, and so-called experts who have been proven wrong over the years, time and time again. This is true not only in matters of peace, but in matters of prosperity.”

Translation of that last bit: “free trade” is a great desideratum, but trade that is not fair is not free. Henceforth, those who wish to trade with the United States, the world’s largest economy, must abide by the principle that “trade must be fair and reciprocal.”

The Long-Term Solution to the Migration Crisis

Let me touch briefly on one additional theme, migration (which subsumes immigration). “Uncontrolled migration,” President Trump observed, is a direct threat to national sovereignty and hence will not be countenanced by the United States. How stinging to the ears of the assembled bureaucrats must his words have been. “Migration should not be governed by an international body unaccountable to our own citizens.” Quite right, and worth the price of admission.

The president was also right that, “Ultimately, the only long-term solution to the migration crisis is to help people build more hopeful futures in their home countries. Make their countries great again.”

For those with ears to hear, this speech reminds one why—improbable though it may have seemed—Donald Trump is shaping up to be not just a good but a great president. Few people, least of all me, would have predicted it. But so it is. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the American people like the free, open, unapologetic taste of American success.

We are the richest, most generous country on earth. But we are not, despite the efforts of transnational progressives like Barack Obama, the world’s patsy. Donald Trump understands this. That is why he was elected. It is also why he will go down as one of the most extraordinary leaders this blessed country has ever been vouchsafed.

Why Trump is President

            Obama Reminds Us Why Trump Is President

David Harsanyi

The Daily Signal

https://www.dailysignal.com/author/david-harsanyi/

September 14, 2018

“How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad,” former President Barack Obama asked a crowd in Illinois last week. Well, probably no harder than saying the words “radical Islam,” I imagine. Or maybe it’s slightly less difficult than not sending billions of dollars to Holocaust-denying terror regimes that have both the means and intent to murder Jews — in 2018, not 1942. And it’s definitely a lot easier than not meeting, posing, and then smiling for a picture with Louis Farrakhan. But thanks for the lecture.

Obama may well find the presence of a few hundred pathetic white supremacists more perilous than a deadly worldwide ideological movement with millions of adherents. But just as Obama’s sins do not excuse President Trump’s inexplicable answer to the Charlottesville riot, Trump’s words don’t excuse the most divisive modern president, a man whose unilateralism and contempt for the process and the Constitution helped create the environment in which Americans now find themselves.

While Obama’s self-reverential speech was crammed with revisionism, the most jaw-dropping contention from the former president was probably a defense of his record on free speech: “I complained plenty about Fox News,” the scandal-ridden Obama explained, “but you never heard me threaten to shut them down, or call them ‘enemies of the people.’”

That’s the thing. We often hear Trump’s hyperbolic, and sometimes destructive, attacks on the press. Thankfully, as of yet the president hasn’t applied the power of the state to inhibit anyone’s free expression. And this is no thanks to liberals’ eight-year efforts to empower the executive branch — when that was useful to them.

It’s worth remembering that it was Obama who called out the Supreme Court during a State of the Union speech for defending the First Amendment in the Citizens United case, and his allies who still argue that state should be able to ban political documentaries — and, yes, books. Let’s also not forget Obama’s Internal Revenue Service admitted to, and then apologized for, cracking down on conservative political groups. It was the Obama administration that blamed the Benghazi attack on free speech, apologizing to tyrannies for the excesses of free expression, and then, for good measure, threw the amateurish filmmaker behind “The Innocence of Muslims” into jail.

Most of all, let’s not forget that Obama did a lot more than complain about Fox News. The administration was so preoccupied with the cable news network (the only major station that could reasonably be seen as the opposition) that top-ranking administration officials like Anita Dunn, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod all engaged in a concerted effort to openly delegitimize its coverage.

That was unprecedented, but OK. Less OK, though, was that not long after that effort, Attorney General Eric Holder decided to spy on a Fox journalist — shopping his case to three separate judges, until he found one who let him name reporter James Rosen as a co-conspirator in a crime of reporting the news.

We also know that the administration spied on Associated Press reporters, although the scandal received only a fraction of the coverage afforded an average Trump hyperbolic tweet. Is it any wonder that many of us view the panic-stricken reaction to everything Trump does as contrived and hypocritical?

None of Trump’s actions thus far rise to the level of any of these Obama attacks on free expression. Not a single person has been prevented from reporting the news and leveling any criticism he desires. If anything, the policy positions and Supreme Court picks of the administration have strengthened First Amendment protections.

Yet the idea that the president of an administration that engaged in what the AP itself called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” on journalism would be brazen enough to give us one of his moralistic lectures on free expression is predictable. Obama always plays by a different set of rules. These are the kinds of attacks that pushed many voters to find someone “who fights.”

“Democrats aren’t just running on good old ideas like a higher minimum wage, they’re running on good new ideas like ‘Medicare-for-all,’” Obama noted. If “Medicare-for-all” is such a great idea — which I suppose means Obamacare is failure — why did Democrats spend every drop of political capital unilaterally shoving a wide-ranging national restructuring of a vital part of the economy through the system? Anyone who argued at the time that Obamacare was merely a step toward a bro

ader socializing of medicine was immediately called a liar by professional fact-checkers, a racist by Democrats, and an accessory to murderer by activists.

You remember the comity of the Obama years, right?

The former president’s haughty finger-wagging reminds us that the Trump presidency is, in big part, a manifestation of the resulting fracture from the systematic destruction of process and subversion of political standards by Obama’s administration and its allies.

Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate

Lacking worthy menaces to fight, it is driven to find a replacement for racism. Failing this, what is left?

By 

Shelby Steele

http://luxlibertas.com/why-the-left-is-consumed-with-hate/

September 23, 2018

By Shelby Steele

http://luxlibertas.com/why-the-left-is-consumed-with-hate/


September 23, 2018September 23, 2018Even before President Trump’s election, hatred had begun to emerge on the American left—counterintuitively, as an assertion of guilelessness and moral superiority. At the Women’s March in Washington the weekend after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the pop star Madonna said, “I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House.” Here hatred was a vanity, a braggadocio meant to signal her innocence of the sort of evil that, in her mind, the White House represented. (She later said the comment was “taken wildly out of context.”)

For many on the left a hateful anti-Americanism has become a self-congratulatory lifestyle. “America was never that great,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said. For radical groups like Black Lives Matter, hatred of America is a theme of identity, a display of racial pride.

For other leftists, hate is a license. Conservative speakers can be shouted down, even assaulted, on university campuses. Republican officials can be harassed in restaurants, in the street, in front of their homes. Certain leaders of the left—Rep. Maxine Waters comes to mind—are self-appointed practitioners of hate, urging their followers to think of hatred as power itself.

How did the American left—conceived to bring more compassion and justice to the world—become so given to hate? It began in the 1960s, when America finally accepted that slavery and segregation were profound moral failings. That acceptance changed America forever. It imposed a new moral imperative: America would have to show itself redeemed of these immoralities in order to stand as a legitimate democracy.

The genius of the left in the ’60s was simply to perceive the new moral imperative, and then to identify itself with it. Thus the labor of redeeming the nation from its immoral past would fall on the left. This is how the left put itself in charge of America’s moral legitimacy. The left, not the right—not conservatism—would set the terms of this legitimacy and deliver America from shame to decency.

This bestowed enormous political and cultural power on the American left, and led to the greatest array of government-sponsored social programs in history—at an expense, by some estimates, of more than $22 trillion. But for the left to wield this power, there had to be a great menace to fight against—a tenacious menace that kept America uncertain of its legitimacy, afraid for its good name.

This amounted to a formula for power: The greater the menace to the nation’s moral legitimacy, the more power redounded to the left. And the ’60s handed the left a laundry list of menaces to be defeated. If racism was necessarily at the top of the list, it was quickly followed by a litany of bigotries ending in “ism” and “phobia.”

The left had important achievements. It did rescue America from an unsustainable moral illegitimacy. It also established the great menace of racism as America’s most intolerable disgrace. But the left’s success has plunged it into its greatest crisis since the ’60s. The Achilles’ heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like “systemic racism” and “structural inequality.” But what happens when the evils that menace us begin to fade, and then keep fading?

It is undeniable that America has achieved since the ’60s one of the greatest moral evolutions ever. That is a profound problem for the left, whose existence is threatened by the diminishment of racial oppression. The left’s unspoken terror is that racism is no longer menacing enough to support its own power. The great crisis for the left today—the source of its angst and hatefulness—is its own encroaching obsolescence. Today the left looks to be slowly dying from lack of racial menace.

A single white-on-black shooting in Ferguson, Mo., four years ago resulted in a prolonged media blitz and the involvement of the president of the United States. In that same four-year period, thousands of black-on-black shootings took place in Chicago, hometown of the then-president, yet they inspired very little media coverage and no serious presidential commentary.

White-on-black shootings evoke America’s history of racism and so carry an iconic payload of menace. Black-on-black shootings carry no such payload, although they are truly menacing to the black community. They evoke only despair. And the left gets power from fighting white evil, not black despair.

Today’s left lacks worthy menaces to fight. It is driven to find a replacement for racism, some sweeping historical wrongdoing that morally empowers those who oppose it. (Climate change?) Failing this, only hatred is left.

Hatred is a transformative power. It can make the innocuous into the menacing. So it has become a weapon of choice. The left has used hate to transform President Trump into a symbol of the new racism, not a flawed president but a systemic evil. And he must be opposed as one opposes racism, with a scorched-earth absolutism.

For Martin Luther King Jr., hatred was not necessary as a means to power. The actual details of oppression were enough. Power came to him because he rejected hate as a method of resisting menace. He called on blacks not to be defined by what menaced them. Today, because menace provides moral empowerment, blacks and their ostensible allies indulge in it. The menace of black victimization becomes the unarguable truth of the black identity. And here we are again, forever victims.

Yet the left is still stalked by obsolescence. There is simply not enough menace to service its demands for power. The voices that speak for the left have never been less convincing. It is hard for people to see the menace that drives millionaire football players to kneel before the flag. And then there is the failure of virtually every program the left has ever espoused—welfare, public housing, school busing, affirmative action, diversity programs, and so on.

For the American left today, the indulgence in hate is a death rattle.

Mr. Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is author of “Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country” (Basic Books, 2015).

Republicans’ Turn in the Barrel

The volatile polls have swung against the GOP. But there is room for recovery.

By Karl Rove

http://luxlibertas.com/republicans-turn-in-the-barrel/

September 12, 2018

With the last primary in New York this Thursday, the 2018 general election is fully underway. Let’s take stock of the political landscape as the contest enters its final eight weeks.

President Trump’s approval rating in the Real Clear Politics average is 40.6%, while 53.6% disapprove. That’s a deterioration from 43.6% and 51.8% in late August. The explanation is hardly a secret: Mr. Trump recently received a barrage of bad news, including the plea deal of his former personal lawyer, the conviction of his former campaign manager, and high-profile criticism of his administration by current and former insiders.

Presidential approval is the most important indicator of voter sentiment in midterms. Yet Mr. Trump’s numbers vary by state and district. He remains popular in red states like Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee and in congressional districts that typically lean Republican by 5 points or more.

Even as the president’s personal approval has declined, attitudes toward the economy remain positive. Mr. Trump’s rating on handling the economy is 50.7% approve, 42% disapprove in the Real Clear Politics average. Stronger consumer confidence and small-business optimism—which recently hit a 45-year high in the National Federation of Independent Business Index—could help some Republican candidates overcome the burden of Mr. Trump’s unpopularity.

Yet the Democratic advantage in the generic ballot has expanded from 3.9 points in the Real Clear Politics average on Aug. 11 to 8.2 points now. It’s generally thought Republicans can keep the House with a 4- to 6-point deficit. If the numbers don’t improve by Election Day, Nancy Pelosi will become House speaker.

The polls have been swinging back and forth all year, and Republicans are now having their turn in the barrel. The question is whether the polls swing again so that Mr. Trump’s numbers rise and the generic ballot tightens before Nov. 6.

This won’t happen by itself. It will require deliberate effort by the White House political operation and the president. He enjoys rallies and controversies—but it’s no accident his numbers improved following the announcement of the Singapore summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in June. Mr. Trump is a more formidable political force when he’s viewed as a world leader and president. He diminishes himself when all his energy is focused on stumping for candidates and tweeting about critics. Bob Woodward’s new book criticizing his presidency and the New York Times op-ed by an anonymous “senior administration official” were bound to draw attention. The White House could have limited the damage if it had responded with a short, restrained and dismissive statement and moved on. Of course, as Mr. Woodward’s book intimates, containing the president’s self-destructive tendencies is not easy.

Brett Kavanaugh’s impending Supreme Court confirmation is an opportunity for Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans to pivot to more-constructive messaging. The dignified Judge Kavanaugh creates a contrast with Democratic senators’ histrionics.

Recent polling also suggests that Republican House and Senate candidates are doing better where they have emphasized substantive differences with their Democratic opponents rather than boilerplate. For example, the wave of ads from the Paul Ryan-sponsored Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC over the past month improved the images of some vulnerable Republican House candidates in races across the country.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s disciplined Senate campaign should be a model for Republicans nationwide. In a state Mr. Trump carried by only 1.2 points, a recent Quinnipiac poll shows a dead heat—49% to 49%—between Mr. Scott and three-term incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson. Mr. Scott has an independent brand and has focused like a laser on the small number of voters who are undecided or weakly attached to their current choice.

The Florida contest proves there are two very different types of terrain in 2018. In Senate and House contests in states that lean Republican by 5 points—or voted for Trump by 10 points—the normal rules apply. If a GOP incumbent runs a solid race, the state or district’s underlying nature will express itself.

But GOP Senate and House majorities require victories in less rock-ribbed Republican turf like Florida, too. In these places, the key voters are soft Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who approve of Mr. Trump’s policies but not the man, as well as the even smaller number of undecided voters. The big tactical challenge for GOP candidates is balancing the needs to generate high Republican turnout and to reach those pockets of swing voters. Mr. Trump’s volatility makes this a daunting challenge.

Trump’s Income Bump

  Summary

The Obama years demonstrated how sensitive U.S. businesses and workers are to anti-growth policies while the Trump economy is demonstrating their pro-growth liberation.

Trump’s Income Bump

The Census shows that faster growth is helping all income levels.

Remember those warnings of an economic implosion if Donald Trump was elected President? Well, instead, the economy has broken out of the 2% growth doldrums from 2009-2016, and Barack Obama is suddenly elbowing his way back into the public debate to claim credit. Yet the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual report on U.S. income released Wednesday underscores how the Obama policies of redistribution retarded growth for so many years.

Real median household incomes ticked up 1.8% to $61,372 between 2016 and 2017 while the poverty rate dropped 0.4 percentage points to 12.3%, according to the Census Bureau. Income gains were strongest among Hispanic households (3.7%). The poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics fell to 21.2% and 18.3%, respectively, the lowest since at least 1972.

Incomes increased across the distribution range with the share of people earning less than $15,000 declining 0.3 percentage points to 10.7%, the lowest level since 2007. The proportion of households earning more than $150,000 increased by 0.7 percentage points to 14.7%.

Surging investment earnings have driven up incomes at higher incomes. But at lower levels the income growth appears due to more people working more. While the number of people with employment earnings rose 1.7 million last year, the number working full-time and year-round grew 2.4 million. This lifted nearly one million people out of poverty in 2017.

Mr. Obama last weekend touted the employment growth during his Presidency, but the slower growth over eight years kept marginal workers on the sidelines. As economic growth has picked up over the last 18 months, lower-skilled Americans who were working part-time have moved to full-time employment, which appears to have slightly depressed the growth in median earnings for full-time workers.

The Labor Department’s monthly survey for August showed that 681,000 fewer Americans over the last year were working part-time because of slack business conditions and 266,000 fewer because they couldn’t find full-time jobs. Employers are scrounging for workers with job openings hitting a record high of 6.9 million in July.

Painful as it may be, recall the languid Obama years. Between 2009 and 2014, median household incomes stagnated and poverty increased as the expansion of welfare programs reduced the incentive to work. More than 1.5 million workers were added to the disability rolls. It wasn’t until the end of 2013, more than four years after the recession ended in June 2009, that 99 weeks of unemployment benefits were allowed to expire and the Social Security Administration began to tighten review of disability applications.

Meantime, regulatory policies aimed at punishing businesses loathed by liberals from fast-food franchises to coal mining hampered investment and hiring, particularly among less educated workers.

President Trump’s deregulation has unshackled business animal spirits while tax reform has boosted capital investment, which is starting to show up in greater worker productivity and higher wages. Minorities and less skilled workers left behind by the Obama economy are finally catching up.

The Obama years demonstrated how sensitive U.S. businesses and workers are to anti-growth policies while the Trump economy is demonstrating their pro-growth liberation.

Source:

Lux Libertas

http://luxlibertas.com/trumps-income-bump/

September 12, 2018

Absentee Ballots for November Election Now Available

Absentee ballots, which allow any registered Maine voter to cast a ballot without going to a voting place on election day, are now available.

Absentee ballots can be requested until Thursday, November 1 by contacting the municipal clerk in the town or city where you are registered to vote or by using the online form here:

https://www1.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/AbsenteeBallot/index.pl

 For more information about absentee voting, visit the Maine Secretary of State's Office here.

https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/voter-info/absenteeguide.html

Information provided by Senator Andre Cushing, September 12, 2018

You Can’t Bribe Susan Collins

You Can’t Bribe Susan Collins
A crowdfunding campaign threatens the Senator on
Kavanaugh

Lux Libertas
http://luxlibertas.com/you-cant-bribe-susan-collins/
September 11, 2018

After the undignified theatrics at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings last week, it was hard to imagine that the opposition to this competent Supreme Court nominee could get any more embarrassing. Well, how about a campaign to trade a Senator’s vote for political donations?

A crowdfunding website is trying to strong-arm Senator Susan Collins, the Republican from Maine, by giving more than $1 million to her 2020 opponent—unless she opposes Judge Kavanaugh. Donors are asked to make a financial pledge and then enter their credit-card information. As of Tuesday afternoon, 37,425 people had put down $1,041,878.
The fine print makes clear the quid pro quo: “Your card will only be charged if Senator Susan Collins votes for Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.” To avoid the money bomb, all Ms. Collins must do is vote “no.”

It isn’t clear this is even legal. We’re all for citizens exercising their free-speech rights, including campaign donations, for or against political candidates. But federal law defines the crime of bribery as “corruptly” offering “anything of value” to a public official, including a Member of Congress, with the intent to “influence any official act.” The crowdfunders in this case are offering something of value—withholding funds from her opponent—in return for a Supreme Court confirmation vote.

“I have had three attorneys tell me that they think it is a clear violation of the federal law on bribery,” Ms. Collins says. “Actually, two told me that; one told me it’s extortion.”

She adds that her office hasn’t “made any kind of decision” about whether to refer the matter to prosecutors. But her astonishment at the strategy is clear: “It’s offensive. It’s of questionable legality. And it is extraordinary to me that people would want to participate in trying to essentially buy a Senator’s vote.”

Another pressure tactic, one Ms. Collins says she finds “incredibly offensive,” is “the out-of-state voicemails being left on the answering machines of my state offices.” Many of the messages are profane. “In one case—and we are going to turn this over to the police, but unfortunately, of course, the person didn’t leave a name or number—but they actually threatened to rape one of my young female staffers.”

The Senator’s office also has been receiving coat hangers in the mail, a grisly attempt to insinuate that a Justice Kavanaugh would restrict abortion rights. About 3,000 have arrived so far. “I am pleased to say,” Ms. Collins says with a small chuckle, “we had a group that has a thrift shop that helps low-income women ask us for 300 of the hangers. So at least 300 of them have gone to a very good cause.”

Even diehard opponents of Judge Kavanaugh must recognize the unseemly nature of this bid to intimidate a U.S. Senator. Not that it will work. “I’m going to do what I think is right,” Ms. Collins says. “I am going to cast my vote—as I have done on all of the other Supreme Court nominees that I’ve been called upon to consider—based on his qualifications, his character and integrity, judicial temperament, his record, and his respect for the rule of law and fidelity to the Constitution.”

Some two-thirds of Maine voters supported Ms. Collins in her last election, so opponents will have their work cut out in 2020. Meanwhile, the next time progressives complain about the menace of money in politics, remind them of their failure to object to the crowdfunding bribe offered to Senator Collins.