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national politics & policies political challengers

RFKj+T

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Democrat party, president, endorsement

RFK, Jr., is clearly more afraid of Democrats wielding power than he is of former President Donald Trump. That’s why the independent dropped out of the presidential race last week and endorsed Mr. Trump, the Republican Party nominee. 

“I began this journey as a Democrat,” explained Robert Kennedy, Jr., stating that it was “the party of my father [the likely Democratic presidential nominee in 1968, when he was assassinated], my uncle [President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963], the party which I pledged my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote. I attended my first Democratic Convention at the age of six. . . .”

But last October, RFK, Jr., left the Democratic Party, arguing that Democrats have “departed so dramatically from the core values that” he “grew up with,” that it has “become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big Pharma, big Tech, big Ag, and big money.” 

And he also acted out of necessity, when the party “abandoned democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president.”*

Kennedy bitterly complained about the efforts of Democrats to deny him a spot on state ballots, blasting “DNC-aligned judges” that threw him “and other candidates off the ballot — and” have attempted “to throw President Trump in jail.”

NBC News suggested that Kennedy sees Trump as “a partner — and a fellow victim.” Probably so, but RFKj specifically cited “Free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on our children” as “the principled causes that persuaded [him] to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw [his] support to President Trump.”

Kennedy Democrats for Trump?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* RFK, Jr., wondered aloud: “How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle?”

NOTE: Mr. Trump reportedly promised Mr. Kennedy that, if elected, he would release all the classified material related to his uncle JFK’s assassination. A pledge Trump made in 2016 and did not keep.

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Thought

George Santayana

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

George Santayana, “Tipperary,” Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922).

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Today

Suffrage

On August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment to United States Constitution took effect, giving women the right to vote in every state of the union.

Prior to the passage of this amendment, 15 states allowed women to vote. Most of them were west of the Mississippi. The territory of Wyoming was the first to extend voting rights to women in 1869.

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Update

Camera Shy

After the racial tensions over cops shooting black people became a big story with the Ferguson incidents, Paul Jacob worked on several citizen initiatives to require “body cams” on police officers in cities around the country. Resistance to the practice has come from several quarters, not infrequently the police themselves — despite the “cop cams’” utility being to protect cops as much as anyone.

But the strangest wrinkle to this ongoing story came recently. Consult Jacob Sullum at Reason, whose article “Albuquerque’s Police Chief Says Cops Have a 5th Amendment Right To Leave Their Body Cameras Off” tells the strange behavior of Police Chief Harold Medina, who got in a crash after driving by a homeless encampment on the way to a press conference, with his wife in the department-issued pickup truck. And yes, he pled the Fifth.

“Medina is suggesting that cops have a constitutional right to refrain from recording their interactions with the public whenever that evidence could be used against them,” explains Sullum. “By turning on their cameras in those situations, he argues, police could be incriminating themselves. That is the whole point.”

But read the whole article. It’s quite a story.

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Thought

Eric Hoffer

For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image.

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), pp. 10-11.
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Today

A Casualty of Communists

On August 25, 1945, the Cold War began (some say) when, ten days after World War II ended with the Japanese surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed Baptist missionary Capt. John Birch (1918-1845).

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Thought

Fernando Pessoa

Each civilization follows the path of a particular religion that represents it; turning to other religions, it loses the one it had, and ultimately loses them all.

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), The Book of Disquiet (Livro do Desassossego: Composto por Bernardo Soares, ajudante de guarda-livros na cidade de Lisboa; translated by Richard Zenith based on the 1998 Assírio & Alvim edition, edited by Richard Zenith), §306.
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Today

White House Burnt Down

In 1814 on this day, British forces burnt down the White House. Unlike audience reaction to the 1996 movie Independence Day (pictured), there was no widespread cheering among Americans for the building’s destruction.

One year later, the modern Constitution of the Netherlands received its empowering signatures.

August 24 birthdays include that of British anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Argentine literary genius Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and French historian and author of a magisterial study of the rise of capitalism in Europe, Fernand Braudel (1902-1985).

On August 24, 1682, William Penn received an area of territory to add it to his colony of Pennsylvania. The area comprises, today, the state of Delaware.

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies

Democrats Move On

The long decline of major-media news journalism has been quite a story. We’ve been following it for years — perhaps all our lives. 

Back when there were only three channels in the U.S., and when most cities had a newspaper or two, all competing to “cover the news,” we thought that there was some objectivity to it all — that facts were paramount. That may have been naive. But with the rise of cable television news and the 24-hour news “cycle,” and then Internet blogging, vlogging, and podcasting, all fixed around a few social media company platforms, all pretense of rigorous reporting has evaporated. 

Even corporate tool Stephen Colbert now admits that the very idea of objectivity is popularly regarded as a joke.

As it was in the beginning of the country — with Federalist papers competing with Republican papers — so it is today, except most major media outfits are Democrat, and only one major channel, Fox News, presents anything like a “Republican” spin on “the news.”

So, let’s congratulate the Democrats for finally recognizing reality.

At their national convention, just wrapped up, most journalists were not allowed on the floor. Press passes were given to loyal Democratic “journalists,” sure, but not to any of the few still trying to do actual reporting. Glenn Greenwald was refused a pass.

Instead, the Democratic Party let in a whole bunch of “influencers” and TikTokers.

Greenwald sees this as a horrific degradation of the role of honest journalism.

But maybe we should see it as the only sign of honesty we can expect from Democrats.

If propaganda be the norm, accept it and “move on.”

Silly Republicans, stuck in the past, allowed all sorts of reporters into their convention.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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David Crockett

Statesmen are gamesters, and the people are the cards they play with.

David Crockett, first sentence of The Life of Martin Van Buren, Heir-apparent to the “Government” and the Appointed Successor to General Andrew Jackson (Tenth edition, 1836).