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folly national politics & policies political challengers

Tonight’s Permitted Debate

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Tonight, the Democratic Party holds its first presidential debate of this cycle. Finally! It’s one of only six total throughout the entire campaign for the party nomination.

And all the other debates will be on weekends, with much lower TV viewership.

What does it suggest when a political party wants to minimize rather than maximize the degree to which the public gets to see its candidates and hear the party’s message?

“[I]t seems infelicitous,” writes The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, “for Democrats to be embroiled in a very public fight in which party leaders are increasingly being accused of limiting the exposure of the candidates to voters.”

Is Supreme Democratic Party Commander Debbie Wasserman Schultz afraid that familiarity will breed contempt?

As party chair, Wasserman Schultz unilaterally decreed that debates shall be limited to just six. She also warned that “candidates will be uninvited to any debates if they accept invitation to any debates outside the 6-debate schedule.” (Meanwhile, Republicans are holding nine presidential debates, but likewise, dictatorially, blocking participation in additional debates.)

Wasserman Schultz, facing protests and heckling, claims her only aim is to prevent the debate schedule from getting “out of control.”

Or out of her control, perhaps?

Presidential candidate and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley called it a “rigged process,” asking, “What national or party interest does this decree serve?”

The limited debate schedule serves as a huge advantage for frontrunner Hillary Clinton by limiting the breakout opportunities of her opponents.

But, at least tonight, all the world’s a stage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

Volney

By ignorance and cupidity, a secret war, fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation, sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its own bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism.

C. -F. Volney, The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires (1793; first English-language edition, 1802)
Categories
Accountability crime and punishment general freedom responsibility

Heroism for Everybody

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Liberty is achieved, when it is achieved, at a price. Vigilance.

And this isn’t just an inspiring political message. It’s practical advice for extraordinary circumstances.

What’s the best thing to do if you meet a mass murderer on a rampage, or a terrorist on his mission? It may not be to merely call 911. As one counterterrorism consultant puts it, “We are conditioned to dial 911 and wait, but, in the case of an active shooter, that does not work.”

This conflict expert, Alon Stivi, went on to explain that “[m]ost casualties occur within the first ten or fifteen minutes, and police response usually is too late.”

And speaking of 911, remember that on 9/11/2001, the most successful anti-terrorist effort was by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93.

That was heroism. It cost them their lives, but they accomplished something in that they saved lives, too.

Some people don’t like bringing this up for fear of, well, hurting some feelings. But Ari Armstrong has an answer for this:

If we avoid serious discussions about self-defense and survival tactics in cases of intended mass murder out of fear that such discussions are somehow insensitive to victims of past attacks, all we accomplish is to ensure that more people will be murdered in possible future attacks.

There is a reason we should keep ourselves fit, and alert. Who knows when we may be called upon, by circumstance, to defend not only ourselves and our loved ones, but our way of life?

Sure, this “call” is made by the unjust. But we, the just, should answer anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Ernest Bramah

“Before hastening to secure a possible reward of five taels by dragging an unobservant person away from a falling building, examine well his features lest you find, when too late, that it is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount.”

Ernest Bramah, The Wallet of Kai Lung

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links

Townhall: Privatizing Government, Democrat-Style

Click on over to Townhall.com for an expanded discussion of Wednesday’s Common Sense. Then come back here for more reading:

Hillary Clinton:

Emanuel Rahm:

* As I mentioned in Wednesday’s Common Sense, and in full disclosure, my brother, Mark Jacob, works for the Tribune.

Categories
Thought

Tom Paine

“An Avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men tostretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He thatwould make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression;for if he violates this duty he a establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Thomas Paine (1795)

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video

Video: About “Winter on Fire”

A behind-the-scenes look at a fascinating documentary:

And the documentary in question is…

Categories
folly ideological culture

Swedish “Generosity”

religion, Sweden, Bishop, tolerance, folly, progressivism, secular, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

The headline? Gaspworthy: “World’s First Lesbian Bishop Calls for Church to Remove Crosses, To Install Muslim Prayer Space.”

Are we being punked? Onion–ized?

I checked: apparently not.

The place is the Seamen’s mission church in the eastern docks of Stockholm. The Church of Sweden’s local bishop challenged the mission’s priest with a what-if: Suppose a Muslim came off the boats and wanted a place to pray?

Had the encounter been just a one-off, we could shrug it off. But this is one latitudinarian cleric, and she didn’t let it go:

Calling Muslim guests to the church “angels,” the Bishop later took to her official blog to explain that removing Christian symbols from the church and preparing the building for Muslim prayer doesn’t make a priest any less a defender of the faith. Rather, to do any less would make one “stingy towards people of other faiths.”

Generosity über alles strikes again!

I’ve long wondered about radicals who infiltrate religions. If you don’t like Catholicism, join or start something else; if you find the Baptist Conventions opprobrious, check out the Methodism, Greek Orthodoxy, or . . . Thelema. Why horn in on someone else’s religion?

But there is a reason it’s happening in the city that gave us “Stockholm Syndrome.” The Church of Sweden’s a state institution, while Scandinavia’s real religion is secular progressivism. You need no gift of prophecy to see where that’s bound to go.

Separation of church and state just makes sense. To each religion its own. There need be no fighting for adherents, or laying down of one’s own beliefs merely to appeal to “inclusion.”

Unless or until you get the government involved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability national politics & policies responsibility tax policy

Raising Taxes & Truth

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Sheila Weinberg wants to raise your taxes. So fervent is her money-lust that she even threatens to run for president, and only half-jokingly, on that single issue.

More surprising: I would enthusiastically vote for her.

What gives?

Well, Weinberg isn’t demanding a tax increase or a spending cut, per se — just one and/or the other until accounts are balanced. She points out that tax increases tend to concentrate the minds of taxpayers to oppose greater spending by government. Otherwise, as long as governments — local, state and federal — can hide the true costs of their “services,” more will be spent, and more debt incurred, than the people can afford, or want.

That’s why this friendly CPA founded Truth in Accounting, a nonpartisan, non-profit group working to “compel governments to produce financial reports that are understandable, reliable, transparent and correct.”

Too much to ask? No, if you ask me, or you, or Sheila, or anyone else . . . until we inquire of politicians, and then, well . . . apparently, yes. And not merely at the federal level.

“For years, citizens have been told that their home state budgets have been balanced,” Weinberg recently told Watchdog.org. “If that were true, state debt would be zero . . .”

Yet, last month, Truth in Accounting issued its 2014 Financial State of the States report disclosing that state governments are truthfully — whether they admit it or not — a cumulative $1.3 trillion dollars in arrears. Individually, all but 11 states are carrying debt.

Lies won’t set us free. Or pay the bills.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

Gelett Burgess

“The Bromide does his thinking by syndicate. He follows the main-traveled roads, he goes with the crowd. In a word, they all think and talk alike — one may predicate their opinion upon any given subject. They follow custom and costume, they obey the Law of Averages. They are, intellectually, all peas in the same conventional pod, unenlightened, prosaic, living by rule and rote. They have their hair cut every month and their minds keep regular office-hours.”

Gelett Burgess, Are You a Bromide?, 1907.