Category: partisanship

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Accountability folly partisanship

Looting Is a Bad Thing

Joe Biden, Bozo, Democratic Party

“Don’t you think you’ve gotten more conservative?” HBO comedian Bill Maher says he has been asked. 

“No, I haven’t,” he replies. “The left has gotten goofier.”

“Yes,” podcaster Joe Rogan agreed. 

“It’s not me who has changed. I feel I’m the same guy,” Maher told Rogan. “But five years ago, we hadn’t spent six trillion dollars to stay home. Five years ago, no one was talking about abolishing the police. There was no talk about, you know, pregnant men.

“Looting was still illegal,” added Maher.

“If someone had said 20 years ago, I’m not sure looting is a bad thing,” he offered, “I would have opposed it then.”

While it’s great to see someone confront extremist nonsense when it rears its ugly head — notably, in his own tribe — it is worth noting that none of this came out of nowhere. The official, public debt of the federal government was just under $20 trillion right before the Trump era. Now it’s over $30T. Throwing money at problems was a standard Democratic mode of politicking for decades. (One embraced by Republicans, too.) And throwing money at everybody in the form of a “Universal Basic Income” was advocated for at length by Democratic candidate Andrew Yang on Maher’s own show — a mere four years ago.

Democrats also have long been accused of being “soft on criminals.” But “abolishing the police”? Sure, it’s nutty, especially as advocated by Marxists, but such notions have been percolating on campuses for 50 years.

Still, Maher sees what his fellow “liberals” cannot — that absurdity remains absurd, and funny,even when perpetrated by one’s own side. Derisive laughter usually directed at Republicans must be welcomed when aimed at the bozos in the Biden Administration — not least of whom is our befuddled Bozo-in-Chief. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access partisanship Voting

Are You Suppressed Yet?

Texas, voting, suppression, elections, democracy

Last August, the Texas Legislature considered changes to the state’s election process. Republicans called these changes “election integrity” while Democrats … well, they fled the Lone Star State for six weeks — even hanging out in the Washington swamp — to deny the majority party the quorum it needed to conduct legislative business.

Democratic Rep. Chris Turner said he left “because we are in a fight to save our democracy” against what he dubbed “nationwide Republican vote suppression efforts.”

Eventually, however, Democrats returned home and legislation was passed that The New York Times reported would “cement Texas as one of the most difficult states in the country in which to vote.”

Fast-​forward to this year’s March 1 Primary Election, which The Hill reminds us “came amid the state’s new, more restrictive voting laws.” 

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to democracy’s grand destruction … Democratic turnout went not down but up! On the Republican side, the number of votes increased dramatically — by roughly 33 percent — “nearly 400,000 more than were cast in the 2018 primary, and more votes than had ever been cast in a midterm GOP primary.”

But there’s more.

In Harris County, the new voting law triggered an audit, which just so happened to find approximately 10,000 “mail ballots” that “were tabulated but not counted,” informs The Associated Press. 

Oops! Those Houston-​area Democrats and Republicans (roughly 6,000 and 4,000 respectively) would have had their votes obliterated … save for the legislation roundly attacked as “anti-​voter.”

So much for suppression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: A week after the election, Harris County Election Administrator Isabel Longoria announced her resignation.

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partisanship Voting

Gerrymandering Proceeds Apace

Gerrymandering, voting, democracy, elections, New York

An “independent” redistricting commission established in New York State by constitutional amendment has failed. That means state lawmakers get to draw political districts after all.

And boy, are they drawing them. 

The maps just proposed by the dominantly Democratic legislature may reduce the number of GOP congressional districts from eight to three. But as Adele Malpass explains, these maps “are filled with districts that are shaped like snakes [and] cross multiple bodies of water.”

Although the failed New York State Independent Redistricting Commission sports that imposing moniker, it is really just a bipartisan commission. Not so independent. The commission was set up in such a way allowing either group of partisan members to obstruct things until there is no alternative but to let state lawmakers draw the districts.

That’s what happened here.

Both Republican and Democratic commission members argue that a legislature-​mandated compromise to reconcile clashing sets of maps — a GOP-​preferred set and a Democrat-​preferred set — was thwarted by the other partisan team. The Republican claim is more plausible; they had nothing to gain by letting districts be squiggled by Democrats in the legislature.

Last November, the commission survived a Democrat-​favored ballot measure to kill it, but that victory wasn’t enough to prevent the commission from collapsing.

Perhaps this grotesque gerrymandering will be stymied by courts. It would be great if Empire State voters had the power to enact a more robust district-​drawing commission. But sadly, New Yorkers have no statewide right of citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency national politics & policies partisanship

Pandemic Second Opinion

Malone, US military, covid, vaccines

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson’s aim, in moderating a panel discussion last week, was to provide, in his words, a “long-​overdue second opinion” on the coronavirus pandemic. The senior senator from Wisconsin gathered a wide variety of experts who offered up a lot of information. 

Included in the nearly five hours of material is some startling information — data derived from military personnel and their families.

You may remember that the current president has made the “vaccines” mandatory for the military. Well, Ohio attorney Thomas Renz “presented DOD medical billing data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) that paints a shockingly disturbing picture of the health of our service members in 2021,” writes Daniel Horowitz for Blaze. 

What was found?

  • A massive 300% increase in DMED codes registered for miscarriages in the military
  • Cancer diagnoses: up nearly 300%
  • Diagnosis codes for neurological issues: up 1000%
  • Bell’s palsy: 291% increase
  • Female infertility: up 471%
  • Pulmonary embolisms: 467% increase
  • Congenital malformations: 156% rise

Now, these do not represent individual cases, but specific diagnoses, which can be multiple for each patient. Still: alarming.

And in case you might wonder about blaming COVID itself for some of these, consider the miscarriage rate: it was normal in 2020, before the vaccines, and it spiked in 2021, with the vaccines. 

These rate increases were based on data going back five years prior to 2021.

While these issues need to be fully addressed, the sad truth is that approved, official government personnel and the pro-​vax “expert” authorities declined to participate in the Wisconsin Republican’s hearing.

More evidence that the pandemic has become a partisan issue, with Democrats pushing the official narrative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people partisanship

Telling Us Clearly

news, media, mainstream, msm, Democrats

“While everyone in America gets to cast a ballot on Election Day,” Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon, Jr., explains, “in reality rich people, corporations, foundations, politicians and other elite individuals and organizations have outsize power.” 

Ah, the Washington perspective … but don’t worry, Bacon adds, “The media that those people consume is telling them clearly that the current Republican Party is a threat to the nation’s future.”

Notice he does not use the term “informing” or “educating.”  

America’s major media is a pit of partisan vipers more interested in how they can spin the news to turn votes their way, than on what you, as a citizen of a democratic constitutional republic, need to know to make informed decisions your way. 

Mr. Bacon remains convinced, however, that the press “still doesn’t go far enough.”

He decries that “GOP radicalization and democracy erosion isn’t being covered extensively or aggressively by a big, important chunk of the media — the morning and nightly news shows of the big broadcast channels (NBC, CBS, ABC) …” 

Can’t be serious, can he?

The columnist, like so much of the national press corps, believes in “an emboldened media.”

In fact, he is mightily disappointed that more news coverage “doesn’t implicate the GOP.” Bacon justifies the thumb on the scale because “in most cases,” he asserts, “the GOP’s behavior is far worse than the Democrats’.”

I think we’re supposed to take his word for that … or maybe already suspect as much — if well-​lectured in the right universities.

Bacon’s column is headlined, “The rise of pro-​democracy media.” 

Close in letters, but what he and other “journalists” are calling for is Pro-​Democrat Media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Sore Losers Lumped

Stacey Abrams, voter fraud, elections, democracy, power

“[R]ight now,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger expressed to Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’s Face the Nation, last Sunday, “we need to restore trust wherever we can.”

Having “stood up to” pressure from President Trump after the 2020 election, and now persona-​non-​grata in his own party, Raffensperger has become a popular guest on progressives’ legacy media … though, not always providing the soundbites they crave. 

“In Georgia, we’ve been fighting this — this theme of, you know, stolen election claims — from Stacey Abrams about voter suppression [in 2018], and then 2020 it was about voter fraud,” explained the secretary. 

“Both of them undermine voter trust.”

“They may both undermine voter trust,” Brennan quickly countered, “but I’m sure you draw a distinction between someone who doesn’t hold any kind of office and the president of the United States actively putting pressure on you to find and manufacture votes. They’re not equivalent,” she added.

Raffensperger acknowledged that the president’s “positional power is just much higher than a candidate running for governor. But be that as it may,” he continued, “when people lose races, I think the proper thing to do is admit that you lose. And if you want to run again, by all means do so.”

Partisans will debate whether Abrams’ claims of voter suppression are more right or wrong, defensible or incredible, honest or dishonest than Trump’s charges of vote fraud. But both have been blindly accepted not only by their own political side, but by the rah-​rah crowd in the respective partisan corners — er, halves — of the media as well.

Leaving other elected officials to grab their midnight trains to somewhere else, the lonely Georgia Secretary of State stands his ground, making a non-​partisan, principled point.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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