Tag: Democrats

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Propaganda by the Deed

TESLA, Elon Musk, donkey, Democrats, terrorism

“Five Tesla vehicles were damaged when a fire was started at a Tesla Collision Center in Las Vegas on Tuesday morning,” reports Megan Forrester for ABC News, “the latest in a wave of incidents aimed at the electric vehicle company, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.”

Described as a “targeted attack” by the police, these acts of outrageous property destruction are not confined to the Silver State. Occurring all over the country, these are obvious political attacks on Elon Musk, who turned against Democrats by supporting Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run, and who has since led the DOGE effort to confront federal government “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“Violence against Tesla dealerships will be labeled domestic terrorism,” Reuters quotes President Trump, “and perpetrators will ‘go through hell.’”

As of last week, Tesla stock had plunged 50 percent since December, but “[s]hares of the automaker closed nearly 4% higher on Tuesday,” continues the Reuters report, “rebounding from the biggest one-​day fall in four-​and‑a half years the previous day, after the president appeared with Musk at the White House to select a new Tesla for his staff to use.”

“House DOGE Subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R‑Ga.,” USA Today told us last week, “announced that she and her committee colleagues had sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel asking for an investigation into the ‘organized’ attacks against Musk, Tesla and the DOGE effort.”

These spectacular destructions of private property are indeed terroristic. Anarchists used to use a similar approach over a century ago, calling the technique “propaganda by the deed.”

But the tide of public opinion turned against the anarchists, and I suspect it will turn strongly against today’s saboteurs as well. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

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election law Voting

Feds Push Noncitizen Voting

Democrats, machine, voting, elections, democracy, immigration

Two states are in trouble with the federal government, which is in trouble with them.

Florida is suing the feds because the Sunshine State needs the cooperation of the federal government to check the status of certain persons on its voter rolls.

Florida is bound by law to maintain accurate registration rolls. The federal government is bound by law to cooperate with requests from state and local governments for the information required to fully assess whether a person on the rolls has the right to vote and to be registered to vote.

But when Florida asked Citizenship and Immigration Services for just this kind of information, the USCIS balked.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is suing Virginia to prevent that state from cleaning up its own voter rolls. 

Virginia Governor Youngkin castigates the federal action as “an unprecedented lawsuit against me and the Commonwealth of Virginia for appropriately enforcing a 2006 law signed by Democrat Tim Kaine to remove noncitizens from voter rolls — a process that starts with someone declaring themselves a noncitizen and then registering to vote.”

Power Line plausibly suggests that what’s happening here is that the politicized, misnamed Justice Department regards the votes of noncitizens as most likely to be votes for Democratic candidates. So why not discard established law and established procedures if this would help tilt elections in favor of Democrats?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly

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defense & war general freedom public opinion

Fight-​or-​Flight Fact Check

Democrats, war, invasion, defense

“Majority of Americans Would Stay and Fight if Russia Invaded U.S.,” read Newsweek’s headline for its report earlier this month about a Quinnipiac University poll.

Overall, “55 percent said they would stay and fight,” the article informed, “while 38 percent said they would flee the country, like the over 1.5 million people who have fled Ukraine as Russia continues its attack on Ukrainian cities and villages.”

The Quinnipiac survey asked, “If you were in the same position as Ukrainians are now, do you think that you would stay and fight or leave the country?”

“Looking at political affiliation,” Newsweek noted, “Republicans were more likely to say they would stay and fight, with 68 percent saying they would do so, as opposed to 40 percent of Democrats.”

Yet, weeks later, Newsweek delivered a fact check to readers concerning a claim made in a social media post: “60% of Democrats say they wouldn’t fight if America was invaded.”

Their fact-​checker rated it false, because only 52 percent of Democrats said they would “leave,” with 8 percent not sure. Case-closed.

Yet, the fact-​checker kept the case open, suggesting that perhaps folks had also misunderstood the question. “Indirect evidence” of this “can be surmised” by the response to another question: “If Russian President Vladimir Putin goes beyond Ukraine and attacks a NATO country, would you support or oppose a military response from the United States?

“In this hypothetical, 88 percent of Democrats were supportive of a military response,” the fact-​checker noted, “more than both Independents (77 percent) and Republicans (82 percent).”

But hold on … supporting a military response by others, thousands of miles away, is not the same thing as deciding to personally fight an invading army.

It’s a fact. Check it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture partisanship

Authoritarian Ardor

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald calls it a “mountain of data.” 

On his Rumble account, “System Update,” the journalist shows “how authoritarian self-​identified followers of the Democratic Party have become.”

While admitting that “authoritarian tendencies” are in every group, Greenwald insists that “when you examine this data … and really compile it, and look all at once at it, it is extraordinary — no matter how low your expectations are of Democrats — how authoritarian they have become, particularly in the wake of the Trump years.”

Citing Pew Research from August, the well-​known reporter begins by showing how opinions on free speech have diverged over the last three years: while Republicans wanting the federal government to “take steps to restrict false info online” declined from 37 percent to 28 percent, Democratic support rose from 40 percent to 65 percent. 

And the itch to have tech companies do the dirty work for the federal government “even if it limits freedom of info” shows the same spread: R’s went down 9 points and D’s went up a whopping sixteen!

Greenwald also explores Democrats’ enduring affection for corporate media news, how enthusiastic Democratic politicians are for curbing the basic rights of their political opponents, and how much ardor Democrats show the CIA and the FBI.

All the data, Greenwald insists, shows Democrats getting “more authoritarian by the minute.”

Why?

It might best be looked at in an insider/​outsider context. Democrats are becoming more authoritarian because it is their hold on power that they are defending, and Republicans are reacting against that stranglehold. An old principle may be at work: outside of power, people tend to demand freedom; inside, they demand more power.

Authoritarianism is more appealing to insiders, viewing themselves as “authorities.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Greenwald

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general freedom national politics & policies

The Virus Is Power

Covid, China, Democrats

Remember how fast the pandemic scare went partisan? At first Democrats downplayed the contagion … because President Trump was up-playing it. Then they switched sides when they saw that they could out-​over-​play it, it being easy to “out-​empathy” Trump.

Masks went from being officially deprecated to officially required.

The lockdowns and extreme “social distancing” were instituted on the Trump/​Fauci team’s recommendation to “flatten the curve,” but after the allotted time and many hospitals suffering a serious lack of patients, the lockdowns continued in most states.

Despite a complete change of rationale.

The working notion appeared to be: keep deaths down and panic up … and wait for a vaccine.

Which Trump promised, and, well, rushed and pushed past the regulators.

Now, there exist substantial hurdles to fast-​tracking a medicine, even in an emergency. But the Democrats’ early resistance to Trump’s talk of HCQ as a successful COVID counter-​measure turned out to serve as an excuse to push vaccination, for had treatments using HCQ and similar existing medicines been normalized, the emergency authorization would have been ruled out of bounds.

And the goal of universal vaccination scuttled. 

So where are we now? 

In America, there are two basic approaches: mRNA gene “therapy” and a modified adenovirus, both focusing on the spiked protein of the SARS-​CoV‑2 virus with the aim of jump-​starting immune response.

And after the vaccines? The mandates. J.D. Tuccille, at Reason, covers this latest development — which a year ago was called a “conspiracy theory.” The Biden administration and major corporations are now developing “vaccination passports” that would continue the lockdowns for those who have not been vaccinated. 

And China may want in on that action.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

A Little Maher Common Sense

woke, Democrat

I’m not the biggest fan of Democrat comedian-​pundit Bill Maher. But when he’s right, he’s right.

Mr. Maher once said the sun rises in the east. I concur. He also says that Democrats shouldn’t be so off-​puttingly wackadoodle and tyrannical. Correct.

According to Maher, “Democrats are the party of every hypersensitive, social justice warrior, woke bulls — t. The party that disappears people or tries to make them apologize for ridiculous things. [Democrats] think silence is violence, and looting is not. [And we’re the party of] replacing ‘Let’s not see color’ with ‘Let’s see it always and everywhere.’”

In his indictment, the HBO jester argues “the crux of the problem” is that “Democrats too often don’t come across as having common sense to a huge swath of people.” 

Right again!

“It would be so easy to win elections,” he deduces, “if we would just drop this s**t!”

Maher notes a New York Times post-​election report that congressional “Democrats wept, cursed and traded blame” over the election results on a recent conference call. Rep. James Clyburn (D‑SC) warned that “we’re not going to win” in Georgia if Democrats are talking “Medicare for all or defunding police or socialized medicine.”

“Democratic rhetoric needs to be dialed back,” Maher quotes Rep. Connor Lamb (D‑Pa.). “It needs to be rooted in common sense.”

“I feel like I’m being asked to be quiet,” responded squad-​member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D‑Mich.). 

Tlaib is half right. The solution to this problem for Democrats is to abandon their anti-​common-​sense positions. Not to hide them. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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