Categories
Common Sense

Cackling Into the Future

In September 2019, Paul Jacob offered “Chortling Evil,” in which he checked in on a would-​be President Kamala Harris in full campaign mode. Now that she is back in that full-​chortle mode, let us review:

On her campaign website, Harris assures us that should Congress fail “to send comprehensive gun safety legislation” to her “desk within her first 100 days as president”  she would “take executive action to keep our kids and communities safe.”

Included in such a demanded “comprehensive” bill is “universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and the repeal of the NRA’s corporate gun manufacturer and dealer immunity bill.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, on last Thursday’s Democratic presidential candidates’ debate stage, challenged the notion of executive orders to ban assault weapons. At issue? Constitutionality. She smiled wide, all teeth and bright eyes, with “Hey, Joe, instead of saying, ‘No, we can’t,’ let’s say, ‘Yes, we can.’”

And she laughed and laughed.

But aside from mocking the idea of abiding within the limits of the Constitution, what else has Kamala Harris supported?

Well, for one she has supported the Democrats’ lashing out at the gig economy, and at freelancers and contract workers in general. She was on the list of opponents of California’s measure to strike down AB5, the Democratic-​dominated Assembly law to do just that:

[A]ll the listed opponents of this measure were politicians, including our current Vice President (then Senator) Kamala Harris as well as socialist Bernie Sanders.… Paul Jacob, “The Ultimate Legislature,” September 7, 2021.

Of course, it is not policy that takes center stage any longer, but politics and wild maneuvering. It is not just now, after the June 27th debate debacle and the July 13th assassination on presidential contender Donald Trump. The strange proceedings against Trump in case after case has been called “lawfare” — political warfare under cover of law — and former prosecutor Kamala has boasted that she would be likely to prosecute Trump after she is elected! The vendetta is strong. And the ugliness. Here is a sample from the recent past:

“This Judge,” the former president wrote on his own social media site, “by issuing a vicious ‘Gag Order,’ is wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement, including the fact that Crooked Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and their Hacks and Thugs are tracking and following me all across the Country, obsessively trying to persecute me, while everyone knows I have done nothing wrong!”

To them, Orange Man’s very existence is “wrong,” and the thing they most want is Trump to shut up. So, in the course of a trial upon a subject combining campaign finance regulations with more prurient interests, a judge gagging the defendant from speaking in public about his prosecutors is … well, convenient. For them. 

The prosecution is arguably an attempt to silence Trump; gag orders remove doubt. And allow the Empire State to exact the punishment before the trial concludes.

The prosecutors and politicians and major media propagandists who are aghast at Trump’s charges aren’t exactly saying that what Trump says about the judge’s daughter (that she “represents Crooked Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, and other Radical Liberals”) is false

They object … because … what he says makes them look bad.

Paul Jacob, “Richly Revealing,” March 28, 2024.

Kamala Harris looks and sounds bad in general, and the substance of her badness will only get more obvious as we approach the Democratic Convention. Will she stay as the Democratic candidate to “beat Trump?” Comedian Dave Smith and outré historian Joseph Farrell are among the many voices that predict she will not be chosen at the convention.

What do you think?

Categories
Thought

A. James Gregor

Mussolini was a Marxist ‘heretic.’

A. James Gregor, Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism (1979), p. xi. In his 1969 analysis, The Ideology of Fascism, he elaborated on Mussolini’s socialist bona fides: “Mussolini was a well-​informed and convinced Marxist. His ultimate political convictions represent a reform of classical Marxism in the direction of a restoration of its Hegelian elements.
Categories
Today

The Fourteenth

July 28, 1868, is the official date for the certification of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-​one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-​one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-​thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Categories
Common Sense

All a‑Twitter About Kamala

The Obamas just gave Kamala Harris their endorsement. But before you rush to the Babylon Bee to get the taste of it out of your mouth, take a look at when Paul Jacob noticed a past connection between the pols: “Sen. Kamala Harris successfully bears aloft the banner of Barack Obama.” But by “banner” Paul meant “lie”! See “The 79¢ Lie,” October 8, 2019. See also “Why Lie?” May 22, 2019.

While the press does a full-​court praisefest for the Vice President, we all  pretty much remember that she was originally picked for the rôle not because anyone liked her but because she fit the intersectional boxes as a woman of color. Paul asked the multi-​million-​dollar question, though: “How important is the color of a person’s skin or their ancestry or the skin color of their spouse to that person’s fitness to be president?” Find out his answer in  “Birth of a Twitterstorm,” July 2, 2019.

Speaking of Twitter (now known as X), Kamala Harris once demanded that Donald Trump be thrown off the platform. See “Twitter Abuse,” October 4, 2019. Update: Trump was thrown off Twitter, following the events of January 6, 2021. He is now back on X. 

In “Into and Out of the Muck,” August 2, 2019, Paul Jacob wrote of the humiliating takedown of Senator Harris by Representative Tulsi Gabbard. How times have changed, however, now that Democratic Party insiders and the corporate media have anointed Harris as their party’s standard-​bearer for the presidency in the general elections next November.

Oh, and don’t forget The Babylon Bee on Barack Obama’s endorsement!

Categories
Thought

A. James Gregor

In 1934, Mussolini reiterated that capitalism, as an economic system, was no longer viable. Fascist economy was to be based not on individual profit but on collective interest.

A. James Gregor, The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism (1969), p. 299, showing that fascism has always been the very opposite of a free-​trade, freedom-​of-​contract society.
Categories
Today

Royal Charter

On July 27, 1694, the Bank of England received a royal charter, beginning a long history of central banking in England. Subsequent inflationary booms and deflationary busts are usually considered “mysterious” by people connected with the bank.


July 27 births include that of Samuel Smith (1752), an American who served as a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, and later as a politician in several capacities in the state of Maryland; Hilaire Belloc (1870), author of a classic analysis of modern political governance, The Servile State; and American singer and songwriter Bobbie Gentry (1944).