Categories
crime and punishment media and media people partisanship

So Low

“I have to admit: none of this is playing out like I thought it would,” Fareed Zakaria told viewers of his CNN program last weekend.

“Trump is now leading in almost all the swing states,” Zakaria noted, adding that he is “someone worried about the prospects of a second Trump term.”

The host’s opening monologue on Fareed Zakaria: GPS went on, complaining that, “The trials against [Trump] keep him in the spotlight, infuriate his base — who see him as a martyr and even may serve to make him the object of some sympathy among people in general who believe that his prosecutors are politically motivated.”

Leave it to the Democrats to turn Mr. Trump into a sympathetic figure … with Zakaria then agreeing that these prosecutions are politically motivated.

“This happens to be true, in my opinion. I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump.”

And Fareed is not alone, even at CNN, where Elie Honig also acknowledged that, had the prosecution been brought in a less rabidly Democrat area than New York City, “there’s no chance of a conviction.”

No statement is more compelling in a court of law than what is known as a statement against interest, the admission of facts that do not serve the person so conceding or that person’s side. That’s what we now witness … as even CNN commentators recognize that the former president is being politically railroaded.

No one is above the law. That phrase loses some punch, however, when “the law” sinks so low.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture partisanship political challengers

Among the Ungovernable

What is the Libertarian Party up to in inviting former President Donald John Trump to address the party’s upcoming national convention?

The goal of this “third party” may be crystalline in its clarity — a free society as understood by Libertarians — but how this can be achieved by running candidates for office in Partisan Duopoly America is murky at best. The number of self-​identified libertarians in the country is small, though polling in the 1990s suggested that about a quarter of the population is of a general libertarian mindset: minimal government; private property; personal freedom as the tolerant community’s ideal; individual responsibility as the chief form of social regulation.

The difference between a self-​identified Libertarian and a libertarian-​ish citizen at large can be huge, in some ways: no taxes versus lower taxes, for example. These positions play dramatically differently, of course, in elections where most voters are not libertarian at all.

The 2024 convention will be held May 23 – 26 in Washington, D.C. (of all places). And Donald Trump (of all people) has accepted the invitation to speak (offered to both he and President Biden). The party is shilling registrations for the event by telling prospects that only registered attendees will be able to cast their votes to establish “the topics President Trump will address during his time at the podium.”* 

As a newsworthy event, this is one of the party’s best stunts. The very idea of inviting the presumptive Republican nominee to speak is … weird. And, therefore, newsworthy. It might make for an apocalyptic event — encompassing every meaning of “apocalyptic.”

The convention itself is titled, in traditionally flagrant Libertarian fashion, “Become Ungovernable.” While Libertarians mean this slogan in a good (and peaceful) way, its ambiguity and alarming nature is one of many reasons Libertarians get low vote totals. 

Trump addressing Libertarians could suggest a more negative interpretation of “ungovernable.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* Good luck with that.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
national politics & policies partisanship

Hypocrisy’s Cash Value

“If these corrupt Democrats didn’t have HYPOCRISY,” the Republican National Committee explained, “they’d have NOTHING!”

After months of Biden surrogates savaging former President Donald Trump for the dastardly deed of using campaign monies to cover his mounting legal fees from the plethora of trumped-​up indictments brought by partisan Democratic prosecutors, it turns out the Democrats have been doing the same thing.

The BBC noted: “Democratic donors paid at least $1.7m (£1.35m) of U.S. President Joe Biden’s legal fees during the investigation into his handling of classified documents, records show.”

“We are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers,” Rufus Gifford, finance chair of the Biden campaign, told MSNBC only days before the news broke.

Highly questionable that Biden could sell anyone a sneaker, but the other claim was a provable lie.

“The use of party funds to cover Biden’s legal bills is not without precedent and falls within the bounds of campaign finance law,” the Associated Press article quickly informed, before adding that it “could cloud Biden’s ability to continue to hammer former President Donald Trump over his far more extensive use of donor funds to cover his legal bills.”

How unfortunate! The hypocrisy could ruin the piling on by Democrats.

“Democrats say the cases are nothing alike,” The Washington Post reported.

“There is no comparison,” offered a Democratic National Committee spokesman. “The DNC does not spend a single penny of grass-​roots donors’ money on legal bills, unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters …”

Let’s get this straight: the difference is that Trump is upfront in asking his middle-​class supporters for help, while Biden’s money came surreptitiously from wealthy Democrats?

This must be the proverbial dime’s worth of difference between the parties.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Richly Revealing

There is something rich in the latest gag order placed on Mr. Trump.

“Former President Donald Trump on March 27 criticized the New York judge overseeing his ‘hush money’ case and criticized the judge’s daughter,” explains Jack Phillips of The Epoch Times, “just hours after the judge handed down a gag order against him.”

Richly … ironic? 

Apt? 

Idiotic?

“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.

And what they are trying to do is make Trump look bad.

Just rich. 

With meaning. 

More philosophically minded folks say we have a crisis of meaning these days. I don’t know. I see meaning everywhere!

But it’s not always meaning we like.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment partisanship

Caveat Preemptive

Were Donald J. Trump an exemplar of strict Kantian honesty; had he a reputation for exactitude about his achievements and acumen; if hyperbole had not become his own very public modus — then, and only then, would the near half a billion judgment against him make even a modicum of sense.

But the former U.S. president and infamous branding entrepreneur is and has always been known to be something of a b.s. artist. No one has excuse to take what he says literally. Business partners and all who make deals with Trump should do their own diligence. Their watchword should be: caveat emptor.

Yet, last week, New York State regulators and prosecutors bent over backwards to find Trump guilty. “On Friday, New York County Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Donald Trump to pay a staggering $355 million for repeatedly inflating asset values in statements of financial condition submitted to lenders and insurers,” explains Jacob Sullum of Reason. “When the interest that Engoron also approved is considered, the total penalty rises to $450 million. All told, Trump and his co-​defendants, including three of his children and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, are on the hook for $364 million, or about $464 million with interest.”

That is a lot of money to protect other businesses from Trump’s characteristic exaggerations, which so appalled the court. But not any of the banks Trump did business with.

No one has been harmed, for Trump repaid all the loans.

There is no victim — making Trump the biggest-​name victim of victimless crime prosecution of all time.

We, the people, know that “honesty is the best policy” is not standard business practice, and that Trump doesn’t always follow it. But we are also not demanding that our governments insert themselves into every successful transaction looking for fibs and fakery.

That would be a recipe for selective prosecution.

Which is just what this case is: selective prosecution of a political opponent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
ballot access partisanship

Enthusiasm for Extremism in Action

She insists it’s about the rule of law. And not political. Not in any way.

“Maine Secretary of State Claims Politics Played ‘No Role’ in Booting Trump Off Ballot,” is how The Epoch Times headlined the story.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has unilaterally barred former President Donald Trump from the Maine presidential primary ballot. As in the Colorado case, the excuse rests with the January 6, 2021, protest rally and mob entrance into the capitol building. She says that “the weight of evidence” she “reviewed indicates that it was an insurrection.” 

Knowing what real insurrections are, and what words mean, and the long history of protests that get out of hand, including in recent times, most non-​partisan people, as well as all Trump supporters, must conclude just the opposite: no insurrection was even attempted.

Bellows may actually believe that the January 6 events constituted an insurrection, that her job allows her to do what has never been done in American history, and that this would be good for the nation.

On the insurrection issue, she and Democrats rely upon motivated reasoning. People worked up in a cause can believe almost anything that would aid the cause. Still, the common-​sense guess is that almost no one really believes her … but of course her Democratic comrades must pretend.

On the scope of her position, prudence would usually steer a partisan such as herself away from doing such a radical thing.

On the good of the nation, the clear hyperpartisan appearance would exacerbate tensions around the country, widening the divide into a chasm.

What may really be in evidence, though, is that leftists are mimicking the radicalism of the pandemic lockdowns, driven by the sheer frenzy of their vision of themselves as embodiments of righteousness … always to exercise arbitrary power.

An enthusiasm that spreads virally. As a mania. 

Thus does extremism work.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts