Category: national politics & policies

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insider corruption international affairs national politics & policies

The Democrats’ Wrong Number

Donald Trump, telephone, phone call, impeachment,

“Where’s Hunter?” Donald Trump asks in front of his pro-Trump rallies (and of course on Twitter), referring to Joe Biden’s son and his cushy Ukrainian sinecure. 

From the beginning of the Phone Call quasi-scandal, the upshot sure seemed to portend disaster for the Democrats, in general, and Biden’s presidential bid in particular — for, nested in the secrecies of Ukrainian corruption are not only the ties to the Biden Family Biz, but also perhaps to the conspiracy behind the Russiagate fizzle.

Surely, President Trump cannot kill two birds with one phone.

Impeaching him, however, still seems risky — for Democrats.

Mark Tapscott explored just how perilous by focusing on what might happen in the Senate, after a House impeachment. “Trump’s defense lawyers for the trial will have wide latitude to call witnesses and subpoena documents,” wrote Tapscott in late September.* “That could lead to devastating blows damaging Democrats for years to come, which possibility they would be foolhardy not to ponder seriously, given Trump’s love of political fisticuffs.”

Can the party of Big Government afford to publicize the most obvious lesson coming from their hyping of the Phone Call? 

The lesson being that the undrained swamp is nothing other than Crony Capitalist Politics As Usual.

No matter how divisive all this may seem, it may prove awfully educational — in the case against Big Government.

Bob Hope had a funny punchline, way back in the Eocene: “Boy, did I get a wrong number.”

In impeaching Trump over a phone call, Democrats may have dialed their destruction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*  See “Assessing the Most Dangerous ‘What Ifs’ of the Democrats’ Impeach Trump Frenzy,” The Epoch Times (September 29, 2019).

Donald Trump, telephone, phone call, impeachment,

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insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

Don’t Tempt Her

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Twitter,

Scrolling down @realDonaldTrump’s prolific Twitter feed, I cannot help but wonder: when does the president find time to do his job?

I am not the only one to wonder.

Still, as President, Trump sure is a great . . . troll. “I think that Crooked Hillary Clinton should enter the race to try and steal it away from Uber Left Elizabeth Warren,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “Only one condition. The Crooked one must explain all of her high crimes and misdemeanors including how & why she deleted 33,000 Emails AFTER getting ‘C’ Subpoena!”

Mrs. Clinton responded curtly: “Don’t tempt me. Do your job.”

I wonder if she fumed, under her breath, “do my job!”

CNN, in its report on this Twitter exchange — yes, this is our reality, now, this is the news! — recalled Clinton’s assurance, in March, that though she will continue “to keep speaking out” and “is not going anywhere” (heh heh), she definitely will not run again. CNN did not take Trump’s bait about Clintonian corruption, instead mentioning that “Trump’s invocation of Clinton — whom he has attacked repeatedly in his role as President — comes as the Democratic presidential primary ramps up alongside a House impeachment inquiry into the President centered around his interactions with foreign leaders.”

CNN also neglected to mention that the Hillary Clinton campaign had interacted with foreign leaders — including Ukrainian, it appears — for election advantage.

Which I guess is why we need Twitter — to allow the president to push news the press won’t cover. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Twitter,

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free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

The 79¢ Lie

Kamala Harris, pay gap, lie

Sen. Kamala Harris successfully bears aloft the banner of Barack Obama.

As “a person of color”? Yeah, sure — but mainly by pandering to ignorant ideologues.

“Look, women are still not paid equal for equal work in America,” she said recently at a campaign stop.

The Daily Wire notes that a few months ago she dug herself deeper:

“The law says that men and women should be paid equally for equal work, but what we know is that in America today, women on average are paid 80 cents on the dollar of what men are paid for the same work. African American women, 61 cents on the dollar, Latinas 53 cents on the dollar. And these are actually not debatable points.”

Well, these points are not debatable . . . in the sense that they have no merit, and everyone who has studied this objectively knows this. Politifact titles its article covering her statement: “On Colbert, Kamala Harris flubs wage gap statistic.”

“Flubs” puts it lightly.

Lies is more like it.

Former President Obama surely fibbed, too, when, in 2016, he said, “[t]oday, the typical woman who works full-time earns 79 cents for every dollar that a typical man makes.”

He knew that he was misusing statistics. He has been made aware of the debunkings of the 79¢ myth. And he understood; he’s no dummy.

The stat is not about “equal pay for equal work.” It aggregates incomes. There is no job-for-job equality and no consideration of real wages (with benefits, for instance). It is just that women-as-a-class take home less pay than men-as-a-class, per capita.

“It is known,” as was said on Game of Thrones.

The lie continues because of America’s “game of thrones.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Kamala Harris, pay gap, lie

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Deep State, Deeply Fake

deep fake, Donald Trump, Young Frankenstein,

Is there a good, presumptive reason to believe what the government tells us?

Not when it comes from the “intelligence” agencies.

One of the more breathtaking developments of recent years has been the transformation of Democratic Party politicians and activists from skeptics of alphabet soup intelligence agencies — CIA, NSA, FBI and many more — to becoming enthusiastic cheerleaders.

On the bright side, Republicans are drifting in the other direction, from their old-fashioned lockstep support of “intelligence agencies” to a new realism — the relentless Deep State “coup” attempts against the Trump Administration having proved . . . instructive.

While we might wish to think that, whew!, these agencies are comprised of loyal Americans, consider what Senator Chuck Schumer said earlier this year, almost approvingly: “You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

But more important than all this is the developing techniques the Deep State can marshal. I refer to Deepfake tech, where anything video can be faked, convincingly and completely. If not now, then very soon, technicians within the Deep State — and outside, too — will be able to videofake anything, from Trump cavorting with Moscow hookers to an Iranian “attack” to . . . UFO landings.

We shouldn’t have trusted intelligence agencies in the run-up to the Iraq conquest, now we have good reason to doubt anything and everything they tell us. 

Which means Congress should take very tight control of them, rein these agencies in — for Congress is indeed worried about deepfake tech.

How?

Well, de-classifying old secrets might be a good start. The last bit of the JFK assassination files? Maybe. UFOs? Maybe. But it’s what’s not on our radar that may be the most important.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Are You a Conspiracy Theorist?

Representative Rashida Tlaib, screams, Trump, rally

Politicians are all over the vaping issue, like packrats on pet food.

The House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, C-SPAN explains, held a hearing on the relationship between e-cigarettes and an outbreak in lung disease. Government experts spoke. There was only one empaneled pro-vaping witness, Vicki Porter, who said that vaping was “a health miracle to me,” since it got her off of smoking tobacco.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz (D–Fla.) insisted that the record show that she was not to be trusted, since she merely expressed her own opinion as to the superiority of vaping over smoking, noting that Ms. Porter “is not a public health expert.”

But it was Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.) who really came out swinging for the interventionist government. Her main concern, writes Robby Soave at Reason, appeared to be Porter’s direct challenging of “the tortured logic of the Oversight and Reform Subcommittee hearing.”

Rep. Tlaib said she “wanted to know more about you,” to Ms. Porter. “You call yourself a ‘converted conservative,’” Tlaib stuttered, “and a reformed Marxist.

“Are you a conspiracy theorist?”

Wh-what?

Ms. Porter answered reasonably. Then Tlaib questioned her regarding why she had winked at one of her colleagues. Porter said they knew each other.

In the 1960s, the CIA pushed the phrase “conspiracy theorist” as a way to publicly marginalize anyone who questioned official pronouncements on the JFK assassinations and even trickier subjects, like UFOs. Rep. Tlaib is either one of those who bought into the CIA line, or is part of some less-than-transparent agenda.

So, are you a conspiracy theorist?

My answer might have been, not until right about now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Representative Rashida Tlaib, screams, Trump, rally

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national politics & policies Popular too much government

E-Panic

vape, vaping, law, ban, prohibition,

One of the better arguments for government relies upon sobriety: we want rational, measured responses to threats, not panicky, hot-headed reactions. We have a rule of law to prevent revenge and vendetta, replacing them with justice and civil order.

But when we expand the concept of “threat” far beyond interpersonal violence and to dangers from our own foolish or merely misguided behavior, “sobriety” too often doesn’t even seem an option.

Take drugs. 

Specifically, take “vaping.” 

That is the innovative technology of “e-cigarettes” that can be used to replace the smoking of tobacco and other drugs with inhaling drug-laced water vapor.

Vaping is far less dangerous than tobacco, at least for emphysema and lung cancer, but it is not harmless. Several hundred people across several of these United States have become very ill and a few have died of a mysterious lung disease.

So of course the Surgeon General calls it an epidemic, and the White House and Congress take up the cause to regulate and even prohibit vaping. And India just “became the latest country to ban electronic cigarettes,” according to Bloomberg. 

Whoa, the subject has barely been studied, and what we know so far is that it was not major-brand nicotine e-liquid, but, instead, boutique product that has caused most of the casualties. 

The leap to legislation has been too quick for consumers to alter their own behavior with new information.

Besides, prohibition and regulation haven’t worked to prevent the current opiate overdose crisis.

The rush to “do something very, very strong,” as President Trump puts it, is the very opposite of why we say we want government.

Its lack of sobriety is . . . sobering.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Listen to the Warm

Greta

I like publicity stunts as much as the next activist. But haven’t we had enough of the whole Greta Thunberg bit yet?

On Wednesday, the 16-year-old Swede provided testimony on an apt stage, let us grant her that — the U.S. House of Representatives’ foreign affairs subcommittee joint hearing on the global youth climate change movement. 

She didn’t prepare any remarks, though. She merely “attached” the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming “as her testimony.” Her rationale? “I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists.” And “to unite behind science.”

You know, for “real action.”

It was what happened right after she demanded “real action,” though, where the stark reality of the situation became clear: a grown man in a suit, elected to Congress, asked, “Could you expand on why it’s so important to listen to the science?”

And then the non-scientist spoke . . . not very expansively.

 Forget that science qua science isn’t to be “listened to,” it is to be engaged in, with conjectures, research and refutations. (There was nothing like that at the hearing.) Forget also that the science is increasingly less clear on the severity of what warming we see. Remember only that an elected official used a girl to imbue a text (the IPCC report) with moral legitimacy, dubbing it “best available ‘united science’” — the better to push an unargued-for massive coercive government intervention into the life of our civilization.

Is no adult in the room ashamed of what they are doing . . . exploiting a cute youngster to subvert rationality?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Greta

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judiciary national politics & policies Popular Second Amendment rights

Packing

Beto

“Are you proposing taking away their guns?” 

“I am,” replied former Texas Congressman Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke to ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir’s question. If, anyway, “it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield.” 

“Hell, yes,” he added, later in last week’s Democratic presidential debate.

“We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

Yesterday, I noted that U.S. Senator Kamala Harris seemed oblivious to any consideration of the constitutional rights of citizens to “bear arms.” Today, consider the constitutional work-around both Democrat presidential contenders support. You see, when they talk about confiscating your guns, they do not intend to go to all the hard work of changing the law of the land. They plan, instead, merely to change the High Court — something the president, with a majority of Congress, can do — and have the new justices re-visit the legal interpretation.

O’Rourke “spoke openly after launching his run,” informs Politico, “about expanding the high court to as many as 15 judges.” Fox News reported that he “is open to making drastic changes to fundamentally reshape the Supreme Court — essentially court-packing, with a twist.”

The “twist” is the scheme that I wrote about in March. In a bizarre nod to bipartisanship, O’Rourke would have Republicans select five justices, Democrats select five more, and then have those ten judges select yet another five. 

Only tradition and public opinion have kept the highest court in the land from previous hijackings.

Is Republican opposition all that stands in the way now?

Gives a whole new meaning to the question: Are you packing?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Beto

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education and schooling national politics & policies Popular too much government

Biden Under the Bed

Joe Biden, bed, monsters, record player, black child,

Former Vice-President Joe Biden was put on the spot, again, about race. During last Thursday’s presidential candidates’ debate, ABC newscaster Lindsey Davis asked what responsibility Americans should “take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?”

Triple, Biden said, “the amount of money we spend. . . .”

On “very poor schools, the Title I schools.”

From $15 to $45 billion a year.

Dodging the reparations question, he offered a four-part plan for educating poor children that was very . . . educational. 

Biden’s second solution is “make sure that we . . . help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home.” 

Send in more psychologists!

Step three is to “make sure that . . . 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds go to school. School. Not daycare. School.”

Sounds like forcing every parent to put their 3-year-old into school. Or just “poor” 3-year-olds? Neither sounds good.

If my elementary school math still holds, next comes policy objective No. 4. 

And it’s a doozy. 

“We bring social workers in to homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children,” Sleepy Joe declared. Because as he explained “they”— wealth-challenged parents — “don’t know quite what to do.”

But Biden does. “Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, make sure that kids hear words.” 

The former VEEP explained that children from “a very poor background will hear four million words fewer spoken by the time they get [to school].”

Language skills matter. But do we really want the next president to station a social worker under every kid’s bed to make sure the record player isn’t skipping?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Joe Biden, bed, monsters, record player, black child,

Illustration adapted from an image by Rusty Clark

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An Opportunity to Forgo

national unity, war, peace, nationalism,

“We just marked the anniversary of 9/11.” 

That’s what Democratic presidential aspirant and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg reminded last night’s debate audience. “All day today, I’ve been thinking about September 12th, the way it felt when for a moment we came together as a country.”

The terrorist attacks in New York City and at the Pentagon, and the attempt foiled by brave citizens who were killed in the crash of their airliner in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, did indeed result in a wonderful bond of unity throughout our country.

Having lost more than 3,000 citizens, we came together.

“Imagine,” instructs Buttigieg, “if we had been able to sustain that unity.”

Before we all sing along with John Lennon, though, consider: (1) It is not so easy for government to re-create the sort of public horror, fear, grief, etc., necessary to ensure maximum national unity, and (2) please don’t try. 

The purpose of government is not to produce a pressure-cooker society where we forever exist on a wartime footing.

Do you miss the good old days of World War II? Totalitarianism threatened much of the globe; 70 million people died in the war. But it unified our country, which defeated Nazism, fascism, and a murderous empire.

We must memorialize the victory, not repeat it . . . just for unity’s sake. 

Yet the Green New Deal resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocosio-Cortez (D-NY) states that “the House of Representatives recognizes that a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal is a historic opportunity. . . .”

Opportunity? 

Our motto should be ‘Liberty’ — not ‘never let a crisis go to waste.’ 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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