Tag: socialism

Truth Squad

the squad, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, lhan Omar,Ayanna Pressley,Rashida Tlaib, socialism, racism,

“I hesitate to contribute to this freak show,” Sen. John Kennedy (R‑La.) told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night.

I know the feeling.

“I don’t think President Trump is a racist,” added the senator. “I don’t think his original tweet was racist.”

While I haven’t peered into the president’s soul, I didn’t see racism in his tweet, either. But I did catch a whiff of other wrongs.

Xenophobia, for instance.

And nastiness.

I didn’t like Mr. Trump’s attempt to paint “the Squad” — Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D‑Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D‑Mich.) — as somehow un-American or illegitimate by tweeting: “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

All but Rep. Omar were born here, and immigrant Omar is just as much an American citizen as was George Washington.

“Our opposition to our socialist colleagues has absolutely nothing to do with their gender, with their religion, or with their race,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R‑Wyo.) rightly said. “It has to do with the content of their policies.”*

Let’s note that only two, AOC and Tlaib, have chosen the socialist label. Reps. Omar and Pressley have not, though their policy positions seem in sync.

It may be, as NBC News reporter Jonathan Allen wrote, that Trump’s tweet was designed to “flip the script,” ending the feud between the Squad and Speaker Pelosi, because “he wants the Democratic Party stuck to its progressive fringe.”

But the ends do not justify the means. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And our politics stinks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Cheney added (and I concur): “They are wrong when they pursue policies that would steal power from the American people and give that power to the government.”

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, lhan Omar, racism, Rashida Tlaib, socialism, the squad

ideological culture national politics & policies

Inslee, AOC, and the Watermelon

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 16, 2019
2 Comments on Inslee, AOC, and the Watermelon

Jay Inslee, Washington, president, election, socialism, watermelon, green on the outside, red on the inside,

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is running to lead the Democratic Party in the next presidential election to take back the imperial capital, Washington, D.C. His chief issue? Fighting “man-made climate change.” But he also dares to say goofy things, apparently on the theory that It Works For Trump.

Seeking to promote “more unity across the world and more love rather than hate,” he has said, in an apparent attempt at impish if instructive irony, that his “first act will be to ask Megan Rapinoe to be my secretary of state.”

Inslee is not referring to Ms. Rapinoe’s best-known statement, her infamous scream, upon a sports win last week, “I deserve this!”

Inslee is referring, instead, to her admonishment for everyone “to be better. We have to love more, hate less. We got to listen more, and talk less.…” And so on.

With this sort of inanity awarded by a major Democratic pol, you might wonder, is his primary policy plank equally hollow?

Not according to Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.).

Talking off the cuff with the climate director for Inslee’s campaign, Chakrabarti praised the Democrat’s “comprehensive plan” for fitting together disparate parts.

As I noted several months ago, AOC’s Green New Deal suffers from an over-abundance of extraneous-to-climate change elements. But Chakrabarti insists that the “interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”

It was “a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Which brings us back to the old Watermelon Theory of environmentalism: “green on the outside but red in the middle.”

This “green” agenda isn’t hollow. It is dangerous.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags election, green on the outside, Jay Inslee, president, red on the inside, socialism, Washington, watermelon

ideological culture

Not Your Mother’s How-To Manual

Post author By Redactor
Post date June 20, 2019
No Comments on Not Your Mother’s How-To Manual

communism, socialism, freedom, capitalism, motherhood, family,

“Want to Dismantle Capitalism?” asks The Nation headline for a recent interview with feminist Sophie Lewis, immediately answering: “Abolish the Family.”

In a world of YouTube videos on how to do almost everything, apparently the progressive publication noticed something missing: There is no reliable guide for going full commie.

Rosemarie Ho prefaces her discussion with Ms. Lewis, author of “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family,” by observing that “the most infamous demand of The Communist Manifesto is the ‘abolition of the family.’”

“The family, Marx and Engels noted, was where patriarchy and capitalism worked in tandem to produce willing, alienated workers,” writes Ho, “where women became little more than ‘instruments of production’ for the men who lorded over them.”

Ah, “little more” — how depressingly reductionist.

Ho applauds that Lewis “takes up this forgotten struggle” and “gives us an account of the material conditions — the biological and societal violence — that gestators, or people who are carrying fetuses, have to bear.”

“Mothers nurture,” acknowledges Lewis, “but they also kill and abuse their wards. That’s why it’s so valuable to denaturalize the mother-child bond. To do anything otherwise is to devalue that work. That’s the horizon that I think opens up the space for a revolutionary politics.”

Through 2,000 words of jargon, we learn that “motherhood is a very powerful ideological edifice,” as Lewis attacks “the idea that babies belong to anyone — the idea that the product of gestational labor gets transferred as property to a set of people.” After all, she informs that we should “think about babies as made by many people.”

Gestators of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our sanity!

Oh … and the family.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags capitalism, Communism, family, freedom, motherhood, socialism

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Are You Truly Free?

Tags Bernie Sanders, freedom, socialism

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Gray Lady Commies

New York Times, communism, socialism, journalism, pandering, newspaper,

The New York Times has long leaned left. But is it really a stable Pisa-tower lean, at this point? It sure seems that, in recent years, the Gray Lady has gone extreme, abandoning its “respectable” center-left perch.

The change, economist Alex Tabarrok writes for FEE, appears to have happened “around 2010 – 2014,” when we can see “an inflection point” where phrases and buzzwords like “social justice” and “diversity and inclusion” increased in number in Times editorials and news stories.

Forget, for a moment, the why — is it demand side, with the paper trying to court Millennial readers; or supply side, a result of new hires out of journalism programs and other indoctrination factories; or a mixture of both? — and concern ourselves with how far will the Gray Lady go?

Communism, apparently.

Or, at least, “Automated Luxury Communism,” as identified in what may be the stupidest article to appear in any newspaper in years.

“The plummeting cost of information and advances in technology are providing the ground for a collective future of freedom and luxury for all,” the author asserts, upon the evidence of innovations he has identified as arising … in our capitalist mixed economy, chiefly in the market sector: lab-grown burgers and “molecular whiskey.”

It all smacks of a loafer’s Marxism, with robots and AI as the proles. I could explain this better had the author bothered to do any real work on his vision, but, unfortunately (?), he offers nothing but a “wouldn’t it be neat if” blog post.

That the Times’ placed on its front page.

I guess since Democratic pols are now calling themselves socialists, their lead thought organ must seize the advance guard position by going full commie.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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incumbents political challengers term limits

Knock Down the Incumbency

Knock Down the House, socialism, term limits,

Over the weekend, I suffered through Knock Down the House … so you don’t have to.

While the documentary heralding four inexperienced Democratic women running for Congress in 2018 cost Netflix $10 million, I did not have to spend a dime — beyond my regular monthly subscription.

The award-winning film, directed by Rachel Lears, who wrote it along with her husband, Robin Blotnick, is expertly crafted. Unfortunately, it is geared to democratic socialists predisposed to adoring the subjects.

The star is now Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.), who defeated then Rep. Joe Crowley, a ten-term, 20-year incumbent … the Number 4 Democrat in the House of Representatives.

In addition to Ocasio-Cortez, the movie follows Amy Vilela, seeking to replace a retiring Nevada Democrat; Cori Bush, challenging the Clay Family’s hereditary congressional dynasty in Missouri’s 1st district*; and Paula Jean Swearengin, battling incumbent Sen. Joe Machin in West Virginia’s Democratic Party Primary. Of the four challengers chronicled, all of whom received extensive support from two progressive groups, Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, AOC was the only winner.

“Let’s assume all the energy in this room can get you on the ballot and into office,” offers a fellow at one of Ocasio-Cortez’s early meetings. “How, then, do we overcome the drop in power?”

“I think we really need to have to look at what that power does now,” AOC responds. “When it matters, [Rep. Crowley] doesn’t stand up for us; when it matters, he doesn’t advocate for our interests.”

Whatever one thinks of AOC’s politics, her point here is not without merit: the idea that we citizens benefit from longtime incumbents who ‘bring home the bacon’ is … baloney.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* At the completion of this term, Rep. Lacy Clay, Ms. Bush’s opponent, will have served 20 years. His father, Bill Clay, held the seat for 32 years before that. Together, over half a century. The film alludes to the fact that Clay Jr. gained the seat in 2000 only after the surprise retirement of Clay Sr. on the very last day to file for the office … with Jr. filing, instead.

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