Category Archives: Elections

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#HelenGym Flaherty wants to do for all of Philadelphia what Larry Krasner has done for law enforcement

The City of Brotherly Love finished the 11th month of the year with 472 homicides, 38 fewer than the total on November 30, 2021, a 7.45% decrease. That’s the good news, though 472 murders can hardly be considered as anything good.  That’s still 1.4132 per day, for a projected 515.81 for the year. Yet, as we have previously noted, homicides have been falling this fall — pun very much intended — and have been nothing like the surge seen between Labor Day and New Year’s Eve in 2021.

With 445 homicides at the end of Hallowe’en, there have been slightly less than one murder per day for November, actually 0.9 per day. If that rate continued through December, it works out to 27.9 more killings in 2022, which would put the city at ‘only’ 500 murders for the year, perhaps even 499 or 498, depending upon the vagaries of chance and just pure, dumb luck. That would leave 1990’s old record of an even 500 homicides in second place.

We did note, at the beginning of the month, that the city had initially posted 2020 as seeing 502 murders, something which, alas!, I failed to screen capture for documentation . . . but fortunately another person did not. I do not know, but I strongly suspect that someone in the city government did not want the number of murders to reach 500, and it was close enough for the city to push the number down somehow, by moving some to 2021, or by perhaps reclassifying three deaths as ‘suspicious’ rather than homicides. Thus, I have little real confidence that 2020 ended below 499, but, of course, I can’t prove it. Nevertheless, if 2022 can finish with just 500, or perhaps even a couple fewer homicides, that would be something of a victory.

However, the city is still seeing more shootings than last year, 2,154 so far in 2022, versus 2,144 through the end of November last year. It’s not that the gang-bangers, oops, I’m sorry, “cliques of young men”[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading, aren’t just as violent, but that they’re poorer shots, and the Philadelphia Police Department’s “scoop and scoot” policy of putting shooting victims into patrol cars and taking them to the emergency rooms themselves, rather than waiting for an ambulance, along with even more hard-earned experience dealing with gunshot wounds, may have reduced the death toll somewhat.

Now comes former city councilwoman Helen Gym Flaherty[2]Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect., who wants to reverse that:

Helen Gym makes it official and launches a run for Philadelphia mayor on a pledge to address gun violence

The now-former Council member and leader of the city’s progressive movement launched her run at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Center City.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Former City Councilmember Helen Gym announced Wednesday that she will run for Philadelphia mayor on a pledge to address the city’s alarmingly high rate of gun violence, saying, “Everything is at stake right now.”

In remarks to a room of about 350 supporters gathered at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Gym centered her message on public safety, vowing to declare a state of emergency on her first day in office and prioritize improving homicide clearance rates.

I am amused that Mrs Flaherty chose a homosexual ‘Community Center’ as the place in which she announced her long-anticipated candidacy.

But while the longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing said violence is “destroying our city and our people,” she was far from taking a tough-on-crime tone.

“I will not use this crisis to roll back the clock on civil rights,” she said. “While many people in this race will talk about public safety, let me be clear: Decades of systemic racism and disinvestment brought us to this place.”

There’s more at the original.

Naturally, I went to Mrs Flaherty’s campaign website, to see how she had addressed the issues . . . and found out that she hadn’t; there was no specific “issues” page. Thus, we are left with secondary sources as to what she would do as Mayor.

Gym has opposed tax cuts for businesses and corporations, and has been critical of the Police Department, championing legislation to ban the use of tear gas on protesters and rejecting calls to bring back stop-and-frisk. In 2020, she voted against a planned increase to the Police Department’s budget — along with a majority of Council, including Green.

And here’s what Mrs Flaherty tweeted in 2019.

I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels, We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.

Can any policy have failed as badly as District Attorney Larry Krasner’s ‘decarceration’ program has failed the city since then? Murders get the most attention, and yes, they’re down a bit, but shootings, and every non-self-defense shooting is an attempted murder, are up. A Twitter friend who goes by the handle Over Salted Pretzel — and really, there’s no such thing as an over salted pretzel, though there are certainly under salted ones — did a lot of the research, and has the graphs here.

Mrs Flaherty apparently wants to move Mr Krasner’s policies into City Hall as well.

It may be smart politics: despite the huge increase in murders, the vast majority of them in Philadelphia’s “black and brown” neighborhoods — and Philly is our second most internally segregated large city, so there really are segregated “black and brown” neighborhoods — Mr Krasner was re-elected in 2021, with his greatest support coming from those areas of the city. As Mrs Flaherty appears to be running on the same things as Mr Krasner has, and to the left of the other candidates, she might very well win the Democratic primary, which, in Philly, is virtually the same thing as winning the election.

There are really only two possibilities:

  • The candidate truly believes the things she has said in the past, which proves that she is just boneheadedly stupid; or
  • The candidate knows that those policies not only do not work, but are actively harmful, but she doesn’t care because she thinks they’ll win her votes, in which case she is actively evil.

You can choose for yourself which one you believe is correct.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“
↑2 Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect.
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NIMBY! The peasants are revolting!

One of the problems for the global warming climate change activists is that even those who support their causes and want to see far more renewable and non-carbon dioxide (CO2) emitting power sources seem to want those non-CO2 emitting power sources to burden other people’s lives, not their own. From a subscriber-only article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Ocean City fights offshore wind cable planned to run under beach, through town

The plan to run an electric power transmission cable from 98 offshore wind turbines to land in Ocean City has drawn local opposition, but also supporters.

by Frank Kummer | Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Miles of power cables already snake through Ocean City to power its 5,000 households and light its famed boardwalk.

But the plan to run one cable under the beach to bring electricity generated by 98 offshore wind turbines onshore has sparked controversy. City and Cape May County officials, as well as other communities and homeowners, have lined up against it; other homeowners, environmental groups, and unions support it.

Note that: the plan is to run the cable under the beach, not over it. Once built, it would never be seen, save for some necessary maintenance access points.

Emotion is high enough that a virtual public hearing this week on running the cable under public property drew 244 viewers and dozens of commenters.

The Danish wind power company Ørsted has state approvals to build the utility-scale Ocean Wind 1 wind farm and run one of two electric power transmission cables from it under the beach at 35th Street, across the city, and along the bay north of Roosevelt Boulevard Bridge. The line would ultimately connect to a substation at the former B.L. England coal-fired plant on the Great Egg Harbor River in Upper Township, Cape May County.

The cable would run under four parcels totaling little more than a half acre of city-owned property for which the company would pay $200,000 for the “diversion” of public land, which is 13 times its appraised value. A public hearing was required because the land, including the beach, is considered part of the state’s Green Acres program aimed at protecting open space.

Four parcels, totaling less than an acre of city-owned land. Further down:

The proposal has met resistance from some residents who not only object to the cable but to the 850-foot-high turbines they believe will be visible from shore. Some just want the project moved farther out to sea.

However, Suzanne Hornick, of Protect our Coast-NJ, said her group doesn’t want the wind farm “in any way, shape or form.”

NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard!

So, the environmentalists who are wanting us all to drive plug-in electric vehicles — assuming we will be allowed to have personal vehicles at all — and live generally poorer, and who support wind and solar electric generating facilities aren’t so happy when those, in this case, wind-generated power facility, might be built where they might spot the tops of the windmill blades on a clear day, or have any way to get the power generated by such a facility to shore.

And then there’s this:

Voters defeat Michigan wind energy project, toss supportive officials

By Garret Ellison | gellison@mlive.com | November 9, 2022 | 4:56 PM EST

TRUFANT, MI — Rural voters delivered a crushing blow to plans for a 375 megawatt wind farm in mid-Michigan, where several local renewable energy ordinances were defeated across three townships and multiple officials were thrown from office for supporting the project.

On Tuesday, Nov. 8, midterm voters resoundingly rejected ordinances enabling the Montcalm Wind project by Apex Clean Energy, a developer attempting to erect 75 turbines on farmland in Montcalm County northeast of Grand Rapids.

I don’t normally use photos from news articles, but this one falls under Fair Use guidelines, as the photo shows a sign which specifically says “Not in My backyard!

Zoning ordinances in Maple Valley, Douglass and Winfield townships were voted down by substantial margins amid growing animosity toward wind and solar energy projects among rural residents in Michigan who see them as a potential threat to health and property values.

A Belvidere Township solar energy ordinance also fell amid the wave of referendums.

Seven township officials in Montcalm County were recalled over their support for the $463 million wind project, which would have generated $118 million for leasing property owners and $80 million for local governments and schools over 30 years, according to an Upjohn Institute report.

Voters recalled Winfield Township supervisor Phyllis Larson, clerk Colleen Stebbins and trustee John Black. Douglass Township supervisor Terry Anderson, clerk Ronda Snyder and trustee Tom Jeppesen were recalled. Maple Valley Township supervisor John Schwandt was recalled.

Voters told the Greenville Daily News on Tuesday that turbines are an “eyesore” and several cited disputed claims about their impact on wildlife such as migrating birds.

There’s more at the original, and this one isn’t behind a paywall like the Inquirer article cited above.

Everybody wants cleaner energy sources, but it seems that most people don’t want to see or hear those cleaner energy sources. Just from where do they believe the electricity will come, fairy dust and unicorn farts? People want cleaner-running cars, but most people want other people to buy the Teslas and Chevy Dolts, not themselves. While electric car sales are increasing, the electric vehicle share of the US market is still just 4.6%. The environmentalists demand sacrifice, but it seems that they want Other People to sacrifice, not themselves!

Looks like the peasants are revolting!

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Mid-Terms Post Mortem: Did Democrats “Democracy Is On The Ballot” Work?

There are many reasons to be considered for what has been a blown election for Republicans. Trump for one. Democrats pushing abortion, which plays to many women, without mentioning they want abortion up to birth. Lindsay Graham and a few other Republicans saying they want to pass a national abortion ban did not help. We can dive into all sorts of notions, but, what about

Biden’s Democracy Argument Worked

In the last two weeks of the election cycle, as the news seemed to be getting worse and worse for Democrats hoping to avoid a historic midterm election shellacking, party leaders opted to go all in on one particular theme—that democracy itself was on the ballot. Here, voters had a historic choice to make: Vote to save the republic, or squander it. Across the aisle, the GOP had marshaled an army of candidates behind election denialism and a vision of an illiberal United States. In his final campaign speech, President Joe Biden told the crowd assembled at Bowie State University in Maryland that the country was at “an inflection point.”

“We know in our bones that our democracy is at risk, and we know that this is your moment to defend it, preserve or protect it, choose it,” he said.

It was a tall order. And let’s face it, it was a little bit belated. As we’ve chronicled on these pages, Democrats haven’t always spent the past two years as democracy’s most ardent defenders. Too many senators preferred to keep the filibuster rather than get rid of it to pass the laws necessary to confront a well-organized and well-funded effort among Republicans to curb voting rights across the country. Even the Biden administration seemed dismissive at one point, referring to voting rights as just one more niche issue among many.

Obviously, this is from a far left organization, in this case, The New Republic. But, do they have a point? I think they might. Democrats, from Biden to Democrats running for office to their mouthpieces to their pet Credentialed Media, all pushed this notion, and all pushed it the same way. How much did this play into the the distribution of votes? Did they flip a lot of Independents, who were more scared of “losing their democracy” than crushing inflation, food prices, clothing prices, and a bad economy? Of growing crime? Of wackjobs teaching their kids? And so much more? Did it drive a lot of squishy Democrats who might have flipped, or just stayed home, out to vote Democrat? Did it get the muddle headed youngsters who do not usually show up to show up?

It surely not the only reason, but, it certainly has a ring of truth. I can see Democrats poll testing it, and, seeing that it had an effect, all running with it. Because they did all run with it, did they not?

In truth, you wouldn’t be thought entirely daft if you fretted that Democrats were, at the very least, talking over the heads of the electorate. Polls ahead of the midterms consistently showed that matters such as the January 6 attacks weren’t foremost on people’s minds; democracy defense seemed like a bad bet. But the exit polls told a different story. Per Axios: “National polling showed abortion and democracy turned out to be big issues with voters. Coverage in the run-up to midterms had focused heavily on pocketbook issues.” In other words, the Democrats’ plan worked, and the media whiffed badly in their read of the electorate’s mood.

Republicans never saw it coming, and why should they have? We saw all the polls on what Americans care about. That the nation was on the wrong track. That people were upset over inflation, the economy, and crime. It didn’t need to move the needle a lot, just enough to blunt the GOP on those battleground seats in the House, Senate, and even governor races. Add it with other things, and you might not even get a red puddle. At best, Walker beats Warnock, and it’s 50-50. The GOP may not even take the House. There are 11 seats that are possible for winning 6, as the GOP has 212 wins as of this time. And they blew it on 7 races they should have held.

Give Dems credit: they’re the party of Big, authoritarian government (which we witnessed during COVID, with Joe and his vaccine mandates, with Dems telling parents to piss off, with the EV push, and so much more), anathema to democracy, to freedom, and they convinced people that the party of freedom is bad.

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Is Trump Done After The Red Sprinkle Election?

It bears repeating: you had

  • Unpopular president, who is checked out on inflation and cost of living increases, completely blew it on Afghanistan and Ukraine, takes the weekend off almost every weekend, is hyperpartisan, and typically in DementiaLand
  • Elected Democrats who are divorced from the working and middle class, and tell us to buy EVs and solar panels to save a little bit of money
  • High gas prices, and diesel is in short supply
  • Democrats ignoring and even causing rising crime
  • Citizens saying the country is on the wrong track and they are very unsatisfied
  • Democrats pushing abortion up to birth, CRT, and transgender madness, and replacing women with transgenders
  • The COVID tyranny, including firing citizens who would not take the vaccine, which we now find out doesn’t do all that much. And masking children

And so much more. Yet, you saw what happened. The GOP could end up with fewer Senate seats, and, should just barely have control of the House. Some Trump endorsed candidates won, too many lost. So…

Midterm election results raise DeSantis’s stock, scramble 2024 calculus for Trump

The 2022 midterm results Tuesday helped set the stage for the 2024 Republican nomination, further elevating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the chief rival to former President Donald Trump, should both men formally enter the race.

But it also injected new uncertainty into a presidential race that, until Tuesday, had been viewed as Trump’s to lose, according to interviews with more than a dozen Republican operatives and others keeping tabs on the nascent 2024 battle.

DeSantis, they said, clearly saw his stock rise in a party that has grown increasingly tired of being dragged down at the ballot box by Trump. But Trump’s grip on a strong plurality of Republican voters appears firm, despite a string of losses on Tuesday by his acolytes, and Republicans are still trying to determine if DeSantis could unseat the long-reigning king of the GOP.

Longtime conservative radio host and blogger Erick Erickson wrote in his newsletter that DeSantis’s performance Tuesday night reminded him of another governor who beat expectations in a strong year for Democrats and later went on to serve two terms in the White House: George W. Bush.

Former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany urged Trump to skip campaigning for Herschel Walker in the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff, lest he cost Republicans control of the Senate a second time in a row.

The New York Post, a tabloid that’s long been one of Trump’s favorite reads, declared DeSantis “DeFUTURE” of the Republican Party in a splashy front page on Wednesday celebrating his win. And other conservative news outlets continued drifting away from Trump.

“Trump is done,” said a veteran Republican operative.

Erickson was certainly in the Trump Derangement Syndrome bleachers, though, not to the degree of those at places like The Bulwark. That said, there are plenty of people who supported Trump, not necessarily the Trump Train, who say it’s time to move on. I’ve always said that Trump needed to tone it down against everyone excluding the Media and elected Democrats, and, even then, spend more time saying what he and his admin were doing rather than battling the media. Use honey rather than vinegar with Republicans and those who could attempt to sway. He did a poor job in explaining what he and his admin were doing, what Republicans were doing, and what they were trying to do and wanted to do.

His action during COVID were mostly right: it wasn’t the federal government’s job to do most stuff, it was the job of the states. He was right to block flights from China, then Europe, just a little late on that. Instead of truly explaining it, he battled with the media. And he’s still battling too much. And battling with Republicans, like DeSantis. The ideas of fighting back against the Dems and Credentialed Media are great, and the ideas are there. He’s just not the best to push them. He showed Republicans they can fight back. They don’t have to be get along go along anymore. We don’t need bull in a china shop anymore. We need more smooth, like a DeSantis, and Abbott, a Kristy Noem, to name a few.

If DeSantis does run, it will look bad for Trump, because Ron and his team are masters of turning things around, for bringing receipts. At one point I was enthused by Palin: but, then she pulled her will she won’t she for the 2012 elections, then was forced to say she wouldn’t. And was showing she was spending zero time learning about national and international issues. I moved on (and caught a lot of crap for it), and it is time to move on from Trump. He’s not really helping.

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The economy being an electoral loser for the Democrats, now they’re pushing Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine!

We have noted ‘neo-conservative’ Washington Post columnist Max Boot several times previously, not particularly charitably. The neo-conservatives were rather useful to Republicans from the Reagan Administration through that of the younger George Bush, in that they supported a stronger American military. The trouble is that while conservatives wanted the US to have the world’s strongest military to defend the United States, and were proceeding from something of a Cold War mindset, the neo-cons wanted to use that military to project American power forward. President Reagan used that power judiciously, in quick, easy actions in Panama and Grenada, and the elder President Bush used it in response to the actual threat of Iraq under Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait, and the threat posed to world oil supplies. The younger President Bush used it in response to an actual threat in Afghanistan, and a perceived threat from Iraq. The actions of President Reagan and the elder President Bush went well: they had defined missions which could be, and were, accomplished quickly, and we got right back out. Under the younger President Bush? Not so much: the wholly necessary mission of destroying al Qaeda was accomplished fairly quickly, while the very much unnecessary mission of trying to build Iraq and Afghanistan into functioning, Western-style democracies took years and years and years, and, in the end were never accomplished.

But the neo-cons have learned nothing.

Max Boot, trying to look all journalist-like in his fedora. From his Twitter biography.

The midterms are a referendum on democracy in America and Ukraine

by Max Boot | Monday, October 24, 2022 | 1:11 PM EDT

Polls suggest that the economy and crime are among the most important issues for voters in the midterms — and that, as a result, Republicans are surging in the home stretch. I think a lot of voters are missing the point. These elections are actually a referendum on whether you favor the continuation of democracy in America — and Ukraine.

Can we please stop pretending that Ukraine was a democracy? In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych was elected President in what observers stated was a free and fair election. As President, Mt Yanukovych was more pro-Russian than oriented toward western Europe, and declined to sign a closer arrangement between the European Union and Ukraine, or accept NATO membership. He was not defeated for re-election, but overthrown by the “Euromaidan Revolution“. Some democratic forms were reinstated, but deposing President Yanukovych was most certainly not democratic at all.

Those issues are more closely linked than most people realize, because most of the same MAGA candidates who support Donald Trump’s strongman rule at home are either indifferent or hostile to the fate of democracy abroad. J.D. Vance, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio, exemplifies the trend: He has said the 2020 election was “stolen” and “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

That makes it all the more disturbing that Vance and other MAGA candidates are in the lead two weeks before Election Day. Vladimir Putin must have a smug smile on his face as he reads reports of recent political developments in the “Main Enemy,” as KGB agents of his generation referred to the United States.

A Post analysis found that “a majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 291 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.” Put another way, this means a majority of the most important GOP candidates reject the fundamental premise of democracy, which is to accept the outcome of an election even if your side loses. Yet in a recent New York Times-Siena College poll, 39 percent of voters (and 71 percent of Republicans) said they are open to supporting candidates who reject the results of the 2020 election. If these candidates prevail, it will mean that aspiring authoritarians could have a stranglehold on our democracy.

I must say that I find this amusing: the distinguished Mr Boot, who tells us how very much he supports democracy, also tells us that it is a horrible, horrible thing that the voters might have issues other than Donald Trump and the war in Ukraine on their minds, and that if Republican candidates win a majority in the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, in a free and fair election, our democracy is doomed.

The fallout could reach all the way to Ukraine, where an embattled democracy needs U.S. aid to beat back the Russian invasion. Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the likely next House speaker, said: “I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it.”

Mr Boot, it seems, is very concerned that if Republican candidates win majorities in Congress as the result of free elections, they might just follow what they see as the will of the voters, and stop sending unlimited and unaccountable aid to Ukraine. Don’t the public have the right to believe that we shouldn’t do that?

Mr Boot, who never served in the military himself, is very much a fan of war, and he wants to see American and European aid to Ukraine to continue, to fight Russia, a nation with a strategic and tactical nuclear arsenal.

As we have previously noted, Mr Boot, who was brought to the United States as a child when his parents fled the Soviet Union, and other neoconservatives have not been real fans of individual liberty. Patterico’s tweet, “We may get to a point where the big debate becomes: why on earth didn’t we institute more coercive measures on the unvaccinated in July 2021, when we could have stopped COVID before it mutated beyond the vaccines’ capacity to immunize people against it?” wound up not aging well, as there were already breakthrough COVID infections among people who were immunized, and while the SARS-CoV-2 virus does seem to have mutated to be able to get beyond vaccinations to prevent contraction and transmission of the virus even more easily — it’s clear that, even originally, the vaccines didn’t completely prevent infection — it has also mutated to be a much less serious disease.

Mr Boot called President Trump a fascist, knowing that the definition of fascism includes ” individual interests (being) subordinated to the good of the nation,” as he called for individual interests being subordinated to the good of the nation![1]Via Wikipedia: “In an opinion piece for Foreign Policy in September 2017, Max Boot outlines his political views as follows: “I am socially liberal: I am pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-abortion … Continue reading

Then again, why would we expect any sense, or trust the judgement, of a man who stated, “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump.” One would think that a man who holds a baccalaureate degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master of Arts degree in diplomatic history from Yale would know and understand that the Soviet concentration camp system flourished under Comrade Stalin; did Mr Boot believe that Donald Trump would somehow establish his own ГУЛаг, Гла́вное управле́ние лагере́й, in the United States? If he did, it certainly never happened, and the repression of speech in the United States has happened only by liberal institutions in banning conservatives, not the government under President Trump.

Sadly, it isn’t just Mr Boot; the Editorial Board of The Washington Post also weighed in, telling readers, “This is no time to go wobbly on resisting Russian aggression.” Worried sick that the voters might, gasp! vote in a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the Editorial Board tell us:

It’s no surprise that the Kremlin would try to divert attention from its failures in Ukraine toward a new story about Kyiv’s purported plans to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb.” Transparent disinformation, Moscow’s tale might be intended to serve as a pretext for its own first strike with unconventional weaponry. More likely, it is another attempt to play on the West’s fears of nuclear war, the goal of which, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that tracks the conflict, is “to slow or suspend Western military aid to Ukraine and possibly weaken the NATO alliance.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin guessed right that Western solidarity with Ukraine would be crucial; he has consistently guessed wrong about the willingness of Kyiv’s friends to stay the course, despite the costs of doing so. As Mr. Putin has no doubt noticed, however, there are incipient fissures in that united front, including — ominously — signs of a split within the Republican Party over U.S. aid to Ukraine, which has totaled $54 billion since the war began in February. Rank-and-file GOP voters, possibly influenced by messaging from former president Donald Trump and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, are warming to the idea that U.S. aid is a waste of money better spent on domestic problems. A September Pew Research poll found that a significant minority of Republicans — 32 percent — say the United States is providing “too much” aid, up from 9 percent in March. Small wonder 57 GOP members of the House and 11 GOP senators voted no on a $40 billion package in May. Trump-endorsed Republican candidates for Senate in Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio have disparaged aid for Ukraine, as have several House candidates. Republican Joe Kent, running for Congress in a historically red district in Washington state, has tweeted: “No aid to Ukraine unless they are at the [negotiating] table.”

If indeed the Republicans take one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, it will be up to their leadership to contain isolationist sentiment and work with President Biden and other Democrats on aid for Ukraine. Unfortunately, potential speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said last week that next year “people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.” Mr. McCarthy — who voted for the May bill — modified that remark slightly later, noting that he supports “making sure that we move forward to defeat Russia.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell countered Mr. McCarthy by calling for “expedited” aid. To his credit, Mr. McConnell has been a strong supporter of a robust U.S. response to Russian aggression in Europe, based on the succinct, and apt, rationale that it is an investment in vital U.S. interests: “The future of America’s security and core strategic interests will be shaped by the outcome of this fight. Anyone concerned about the cost of supporting a Ukrainian victory should consider the much larger cost should Ukraine lose.”

Good heavens, it looks like the Editorial Board have gone full neo-con! The concept that intervention is required to support “vital US interests” could have been lifted from the writings of Bill Kristol.

To be sure, real democracies abroad are in American interests, because real democracies are (mostly) unlikely to start wars of aggression. But there is a real, qualitative difference between wars of aggression when Iraq invaded Kuwait, or the Muslim guerrilla wars in Africa, and the invasion of Ukraine by a nation with a nuclear arsenal capable of killing the majority of people on earth. I do not want Russia to succeed in its war of conquest against Ukraine, but I want the defense of Ukraine to turn into a nuclear war even less.

That’s the part these clowns just don’t get: the harder we press Russia, the harder Russia as resisted. The action by OPEC+ to cut back oil production, to push increased prices, was led in part by Russia, anxious to hurt the United States and NATO Europe for giving aid to Ukraine. The cutbacks of natural gas shipments to Europe, as winter is approaching — and remember: most of Germany and Poland, and a good part of France, are north of our longest border with Canada — are methods Russia is taking against the West that is supporting Ukraine. If, after all of that, Ukraine begins to push back Russian troops, it is hardly out of the possibility that Russia would use smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troop concentrations. Vladimir Putin does not seem to be the most stable national leader around, and he certainly doesn’t think like a Westerner; he could easily see this as a logical step to cow the West into ceasing its aid to Ukraine, and a way to stave off defeat.

Once that nuclear threshold has been crossed, we have no idea whatsoever how far and how often it will be crossed. I do care what happens in Ukraine . . . but I care more about what happens in New York and Philadelphia and Lexington, and one thing about which I care is not increasing the chances that one of them could be incinerated in nuclear fire.

The GOP’s mixed signals are music to Mr. Putin’s ears. Also unhelpful, in its own way, was Monday’s letter from a group of 30 progressive House Democrats to Mr. Biden, urging the president to open direct cease-fire negotiations with Moscow. The Democrats, unlike Mr. Biden’s critics in the GOP, said they want to “pair” this new diplomatic push with continued aid; there is no moral equivalence between the two parties in that regard. Still, Russia is all too likely to advertise the progressives’ letter, which includes the suggestion that ending the war would help ease high gas prices, as evidence of flagging U.S. resolve. The White House politely but firmly rebuffed the idea, as it should have. This is no time to go wobbly — and that goes for lawmakers in both parties.

And now we have The Washington Post’s Editorial Board telling us that not only should the United States continue sending military aid to Ukraine, but that we shouldn’t even attempt to negotiate an end to the war.

If there is no negotiated end to the war — something which would decrease the chances of a nuclear escalation and the spread of a nuclear conflict — then the war must be fought to a conclusion, with one side winning and the other side losing. If Ukraine loses, it’s independence is gone and the Ukrainian people will suffer a lot more death and devastation; if Russia loses, the probabilities of nuclear war significantly increase. I, for one, don’t see what Major Kong called “nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies,” as a wise idea.

There is, of course, the unstated part of both Mr Boot’s and the Editorial Board’s messages: with the domestic issues of inflation and the American people getting poorer, in real terms, those evil reich-wing Republicans might just gain more power, including taking control of the House of Representatives, and even the Senate, which would completely mess with the left’s domestic goals of nationalizing an abortion license, expanding homosexual and transgender ‘rights,’ putting Donald Trump in jail, and generally pushing the ‘progressive’ agenda. In the end, those things are far more important to them than Ukraine, but those have not been the electoral winners they think they should be.

References

References
↑1 Via Wikipedia: “In an opinion piece for Foreign Policy in September 2017, Max Boot outlines his political views as follows: “I am socially liberal: I am pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-abortion rights, pro-immigration. I am fiscally conservative: I think we need to reduce the deficit and get entitlement spending under control. I am pro-environment: I think that climate change is a major threat that we need to address. I am pro-free trade: I think we should be concluding new trade treaties rather than pulling out of old ones. I am strong on defense: I think we need to beef up our military to cope with multiple enemies. And I am very much in favor of America acting as a world leader: I believe it is in our own self-interest to promote and defend freedom and free markets as we have been doing in one form or another since at least 1898.

In December 2017, also in Foreign Policy, Boot wrote that recent events—particularly since the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president—had caused him to rethink some of his previous views concerning the existence of white privilege and male privilege. “In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefited from my skin color and my gender — and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.”

Does that sound like a conservative to you?
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The Lexington Herald-Leader makes another losing endorsement

To the surprise of absolutely no one, what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal endorsed Charles Booker for the Senate seat currently held by Rand Paul (R-KY). The newspaper has endorsed every Democrat in every competitive race:

The newspaper’s Editorial Board lamented:

It is frustrating that the national Democratic establishment has not seen fit to support Booker’s campaign; that brain trust apparently thinks it’s more worthwhile to give millions of dollars to right-wing candidates in Republican primaries instead of helping to boost the message of credible candidates.

That’s kind of what happens when the Democrats of today have nothing on which to run except their hatred for Donald Trump. Continue reading →

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The Democrats are running on everything except what matters

The House of Representatives silly “January 6th Committee” held it’s last pre-election meeting, another meeting broadcast on television, as the credentialed media have teamed up with the Democrats to try to maintain their slender majorities in the 2022 elections. The trouble is that the Democrats have no current issues that are important to the voters. The Capitol kerfuffle, a three-hour demonstration of unarmed people, caused a few million dollars in damages — something far, far less serious than the #BlackLivesMatter riots of the previous summer and fall — and they were then over.

The real current issues are the economy and inflation, but the Democrats don’t want to talk, at least not truthfully, about that!

Democrats’ failure to make 2022 about the threat to democracy

Analysis by Aaron Blake | Tuesday, October 18, 2022 | 11:29 AM EDT

Utah voters who tuned into Monday night’s Senate debate were treated to something relatively rare in the 2022 election: a candidate putting Jan. 6, 2021, front and center in his closing argument. Independent Evan McMullin seized upon texts Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent to the White House indicating a willingness to help President Donald Trump contest the 2020 election results, saying Lee “betrayed your oath to the Constitution.”

Despite the well-publicized Jan. 6 hearings, including the likely final one, held last week, the insurrection has not been an overarching focus of Democrats’ 2022 campaign messaging. Politico reported last week that Jan. 6 has featured in less than 2 percent of ads run for House Democrats.

Maybe, just maybe, the actual Democratic candidates, as opposed to ‘pundits’ like Amanda Marcotte or formerly Republican #NeverTrumpers like Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin who have former President Trump living rent-free in their skulls, need to do something really, really radical like win votes, and they are a bit more in tune with what concerns voters most.

Even President Biden’s handlers minions recognize that truth, not that there’s anything they can do other than lie about it. Yeah, most families are focused on putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads, but the ability of the working class to do just that has suffered under President Biden. Most Americans are not better off today than they were in 2019.

This lacuna in their messaging comes even as most House Republicans supported Trump’s baseless last-ditch election challenges that led to the attack on the Capitol, and even as a majority of the GOP’s most prominent candidates have either denied or questioned the 2020 election results.

Indeed, a new poll reinforces that Democrats haven’t really driven the argument home. Many Americans view Trump as a major threat to democracy. But the Republican Party more broadly? Not so much.

Of course, many Americans view that Democrats as a far greater threat, as the far-left wing has pushed ‘transgenderism’ in the schools, in ways that a lot of parents see as personally threatening to their children, which is why Glenn Youngkin rather than Terry McAuliffe is now Governor of Virginia, and Republicans control the state House of Delegates as well. Mr Kristol’s The Bulwark has gone all out pro-transgenderism, to show you just how far the #NeverTrump former Republicans have gone. The Republican neo-conservatism of the Bush years has moved wholly toward the Democratic Party, including their foreign interventionism when it comes to the war between Russia and Ukraine.

A New York Times/Siena College poll shows that 45 percent of Americans regard Trump as a “major” threat to democracy, while just 28 percent say the same of the GOP.

That 28 percent figure is actually smaller than the percentage who view the Democratic Party as a threat to democracy (33 percent) — despite there being no comparable example of Democrats trying to overturn an election. (And no, Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton aren’t analogous.)

Actually, yes, they are. When you consider the definition of analogous, “similar in a way that invites comparison : showing an analogy or a likeness that permits one to draw an analogy,” it’s not difficult to see how those two ladies’ reactions to their electoral defeats were attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the victors.

Some of this is partisanship — along with Republicans’ successful attempts to play up the issue of voter fraud, despite the utter lack of evidence that it’s a major problem in American elections. Polls have long shown Republicans and Democrats view the other side as a threat to democracy, but for very different reasons.

But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll see that isn’t the full story: It’s also the case that many Democratic voters haven’t been convinced that the problem goes beyond Trump.

The poll shows that 71 percent of Trump 2020 voters regard Democrats as a major threat to democracy. But just 52 percent of Biden voters say the same about the GOP.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Denial is not a strategy

Despite his rent-free residency in the brains of the far left, Donald Trump simply isn’t immortal; he’s 76 years old, and will be 78 by the time the 2024 elections come around. He’s significantly overweight, and, despite his wealth, eats garbage. Even if he were elected in 2024, he’d be constitutionally limited to just four years in office. But the policies of today’s Democratic Party, mandating plug-in electric vehicles that most Americans cannot afford, pushing drastic social changes that many Americans dislike, and ignoring increasing violent crime rates, would last a lot longer than that.

After several paragraphs, some of which reveal the author’s clear bias in favor of the Democrats, we come to his conclusion:

But the integrity of the democratic process is something Democrats and the Jan. 6 committee have pitched as being of the utmost importance — going to the core of who we are as a country. Yet at this point, with just half of Biden voters and one-quarter of independents saying the GOP is a major threat to democracy, it’s clearly not something they’ve convinced voters is truly at stake in 2022.

Why do I, personally, believe that the Democrats are the far greater threat? Their responses, primarily by Democratic Governors, to COVID-19 were heavily weighted toward dictatorial control and the blatant abridgement of our constitutional rights. That the government can order churches closed, or restrict our First Amendment right of peaceable assembly, ought to be anathema, but Democratic — and sadly, a few Republican as well — Governors did just that, and thanks to the unreasoning fear instilled by the government, millions and millions of people accepted that as reasonable and legitimate.

At least here in the Bluegrass State, Republican state legislative candidates ran hard against Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) authoritarian dictates, and the voters rewarded the GOP with an additional 14 seats in the state House of Representatives, and two more in the state Senate. I’d like to see that be more important to other voters, but I guess that we’ll see in 20 more days.

Well, who knows? The poll numbers favor the Republicans, but the only poll which really matters will be taken on November 8th, and surprises have been known to happen before.

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If you’re scared, say you’re scared! And The New York Times are scared poopless!

Today’s credentialed media are wholly in bed with progressivism and the Democratic Party, so it must’ve really hurt The New York Times to publish this:

Republicans Gain Edge as Voters Worry About Economy, Times/Siena Poll Finds

With elections next month, independents, especially women, are swinging to the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights. Disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party.

By Shane Goldmacher | Monday, October 17, 2022, | 3:00 AM EDT

Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinctive advantage as the economy and inflation have surged as the dominant concerns, giving the party momentum to take back power from Democrats in next month’s midterm elections, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found.

The poll shows that 49 percent of likely voters said they planned to vote for a Republican to represent them in Congress on Nov. 8, compared with 45 percent who planned to vote for a Democrat. The result represents an improvement for Republicans since September, when Democrats held a one-point edge among likely voters in the last Times/Siena poll. (The October poll’s unrounded margin is closer to three points, not the four points that the rounded figures imply.)

With inflation unrelenting and the stock market steadily on the decline, the share of likely voters who said economic concerns were the most important issues facing America has leaped since July, to 44 percent from 36 percent — far higher than any other issue. And voters most concerned with the economy favored Republicans overwhelmingly, by more than a two-to-one margin.

There’s a lot more at the original.

Also see: William Teach: Surprise: Republicans Have The Edge On Mid-Terms

I’ve said this before, countless times: while a subject like global warming climate change may elicit large claims of support for action to do something to stop it, when it’s a choice between spending more or being taxed more to fight a problem that may be thirty or fifty or eight years in the future, and putting food on the table this evening, food on the table will always be the more immediate concern. And today’s Democratic Party is running on everything but today’s concerns. They’ve invested so much effort in the so-called “January 6th Committee”, but that’s an issue of the past, not the present. They’ve energized the supporters of former President Trump to fight against the Democrats far more than energized Democrats to fight against Republicans, because it’s simply not an issue that’s important in 2022. They’ve shilled climate change, at a time when inflation has significantly reduced the real value of Americans’ wages. Joe Biden walking away eating an ice cream cone and telling us that the economy is great might not be the best sales technique to people who have noticed that groceries cost a lot more, as does the gasoline to get to the grocery store. The Democrats’ concentration on abortion, abortion, abortion is, in effect, a concentration on black voters — black women have abortions at five times the rate white women do — and while there was a surge in support of Democrats when Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization was announced, much of that has now faded, as most of the states in which Democrats are strongest had already acted to keep prenatal infanticide legal in those states. The Democrats’ cries about 15-year-old rape victims turned out to be kind of meaningless when the vast, vast majority of abortions are in no way or sense therapeutic. When you have a former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate saying that one of the reasons she’s leaving the party is because they can’t even tell the difference between males and females anymore, you know that the Democrats, as fueled as they are by their hatred of former President Trump, just aren’t campaigning in the real world anymore.

Despite controlling both Houses of Congress, and the White House, the Democrats are in trouble because they are not campaigning on the things which affect the vast majority of Americans today.

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More Biden Administration muddled and contradictory policies

As we noted on Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s foreign policy only made the decision by OPEC+ to cut petroleum production by two million barrels per day has not helped his efforts to bring down inflation. But it’s more than just pissing off Russia and Saudi Arabia:

Biden juggles Iran nuke talks as Iranian repression grows

President Joe Biden has criticized Iran over the government’s brutal crackdown on antigovernment protests, praised the “brave women of Iran” for demanding basic rights and signaled possible sanctions.

by Matthew Lee and Aamer Madhani, Associated Press | Wednesday, October 5, 2022

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has hit back at Iran over the government’s brutal crackdown on antigovernment protests. He’s praised the “brave women of Iran” for demanding basic rights and signaled that he’ll announce more sanctions against those responsible for violence against protesters in the coming days.

The outpouring of anger — largely led by young women and directed at the government’s male leadership — has created a seminal moment for the country, spurring some of the largest and boldest protests against the country’s Islamic leadership seen in years.

And while the Biden administration says it is dedicated to standing by the women of Iran, the president faces a tough question: Can he credibly side with the protest movement while also trying to salvage the languishing 2015 Iran nuclear deal that would pump billions into Tehran’s treasury?

“The risk of a nuclear Iran is terrifying on all levels,” Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, director of a network of activists that promotes human rights in Iran and a nonresident scholar with the Middle East Institute’s Iran Program, wrote in an analysis this week. “However, President Biden simply cannot offer the prospect of sanctions relief and de facto legitimize a regime that is ruthlessly gunning down its own citizens in the street.”

There’s more at the original.

Of course, Iran’s leadership has hated us ever since the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khoumeini took over in 1979, and as long as the mad mullahs are in charge, that will remain the case. We can never expect any help from Iran on oil prices, but let’s face it: the OPEC+ action helps Iran just as much as it helps Vladimir Putin and the Saudis, as Iran will get more money for its oil exports as well.

Mr Greenblatt is wrong, of course: the Iranian regime, which has been in power for 43 years, does not need President Biden to somehow legitimize it. The fact that the United States has actually been negotiating with Iran about the nuclear deal shows that the US regards the Iranian regime as the leadership of that nation, and that everybody is very worried about Iran developing and building atomic bombs shows just how much everybody worries about it.