Tag Archives: #Democrats

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“Based on the injuries and Riley’s physical condition, I suspected that foul play was involved” How many more innocent people are going to have to pay the ultimate price for Democratic policies of not enforcing the law?

Elwood P Dowd, the pseudonym for one of my good friend William Teach’s frequent liberal commenters, tried to conflate patriotic Americans with neo-Nazis:

White neo-Nazi and family “friend” Don Stephen McDougal was arrested for the murder 11 year old Audrii Cunningham. Audrii was found dead at the bottom of the Trinity River with apparent severe head trauma.

While all neo-Nazi’s are white, racist, anti-Semitic right-wingers, not all white, racist, anti-Semitic right-wingers are neo-Nazis. Or are they?

Do any of you Cove regulars proudly sport a swastika tattoo?

America would be a better place if all neo-Nazis were locked up for life.

True Fact: If Adolf Hitler were alive today, Don Trump and his MAGAt kult would support Adolf and the Nazis!! Admit it.

Perhaps, in his eagerness to conflate this (alleged) killer with patriotic Americans, the esteemed Mr Dowd left out a few things, things which were ferreted out by Robert Stacy McCain:

Say hello to Don Steven McDougal, 42, another repeat offender who never should have been let out of prison. Over the years, I’ve called attention to lots of criminals who fit this description. They keep getting turned loose until finally they commit an atrocity that makes nationwide headlines, but no matter how many times the lesson is repeated, people never seem to learn. Here is a summary of McDougal’s Texas record:

  1. February 2003: 3 years for assault of a public servant out of Liberty County
  2. February 7, 2006: 8 months for theft out of Harris County
  3. February 14, 2006: 180 days for possession of less than 1 gram of meth out of Harris County
  4. March 2007: 2 years for enticing a child out of Brazoria County
  5. July 2009: 180 days for unauthorized use of a vehicle out of Harris County
  6. February 2010: 4 years for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon out of Harris County
  7. September 2020: 2 years for unauthorized use of a vehicle out of Liberty County
  8. September 2022: McDougal is released after completing his sentence

That’s (seven) convictions over the span of about 20 years, so it seems that McDougal spent basically his entire adult life either (a) committing crimes or (b) serving prison time. At no time was he ever a law-abiding citizen, but they kept turning him loose until he finally killed somebody.

The dates boldfaced in the list were convictions for felonies. The Lone Star State has a three strikes and you’re out law, but, with four felony convictions, the George Soros-sponsored Harris County prosecutor Kim Ogg apparently didn’t seek that enhancement. Mr McDougal should have been in prison, serving a life sentence, when he (allegedly) killed Audrii Cunningham. Young Miss Cunningham is stone-cold graveyard dead due to liberal Democratic policies.

That, unfortunately was not the only one of Mr McCain’s crime stories relating to Democratic soft-on-crime-and-illegal-immigration policies:

Joe Biden’s Policy Gets a College Girl Killed, But White Lives Don’t Matter

by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, February 24, 2024

Since Joe Biden took office, millions of illegal aliens have been released into the United States. This is not an accident. This is Biden’s policy. Americans are literally being killed by this policy:

A Venezuelan illegal immigrant has been arrested and charged for the murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student who was found dead in a wooded area of University of Georgia at Athens (UGA) campus on Thursday.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was arrested and booked into Clarke County Jail for the accused murder of Laken Riley and charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, and other criminal violations including kidnapping, according to the Daily Mail.

Ibarra was released into the interior of the US by Customs and Border Patrol because the border crisis had worsened to a point where they did not have enough space at a detention facility to hold him.

Riley, 22, was found dead in the wooded area of campus after a roommate reported her as missing. UGA Police Chief Jeffrey Clark told reporters that this was possibly a “crime of opportunity.”

“He did not know her at all. I think this is a crime of opportunity where he saw an individual and bad things happened,” Clark said. . . .
Evidence consistent with blunt force trauma is what led to her death, according to police.

This is the first homicide that has been reported on the campus in 30 years, according to Clark.

The news of the murder broke amidst reports that there have been at least 7.2 million illegal immigrants crossing into the US since President Joe Biden took office not counting those immigrants who have gone undetected while crossing into the US.

My article title? It comes from Collin Ruggs’ tweet on the crime.

Given that the murder was (allegedly) committed by an illegal immigrant, we already know what will happen: the credentialed media will quickly forget it ever happened. A site search for Laken Riley on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, conducted at 1:28 PM EST, returned no hits. The New York Times did cover the story, but rather than telling readers that the accused killer is an illegal immigrant, they simpy stated, “while Mr. Ibarra lives in Athens, he is not a citizen of the United States.” It’s like I’ve said before: The credentialed media don’t exactly lie, but they conceal politically incorrect facts.

In both of these crimes, we can see liberal Democratic Party policies as strongly contributing factors. President Biden cancelled President Trump’s executive orders concerning illegal immigration and border control policies, and the result was clear and obvious: we’ve seen a treendous surge in illegal immigration since the dummkopf from Delaware took office. The Associated Press reported:

The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that President Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said.

That President Trump was able to significantly reduce — he didn’t eliminate it — illegal immigration without Congress changing our immigration laws, and that President Biden is now considering something similar, now that Democratic mayors in heavily Democratic cities are squalling that there’s just no more room for them since Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) started shipping the illegals to those ‘sanctuary’ cities, proves one thing: the immigration bill, which would have allowed illegal immigration to continue, up to a point, was not needed!

So what do we have? We have Democratic prosecutor Kim Ogg, another George Soros minion, fighting “mass incarceration,” and Audrii Cunningham paid the price. We have Joe Biden and the Democrats being oh-so-sympathetic to poor, impoverished immigrants, and Laken Riley paid the price. How many more innocent people are going to have to pay the ultimate price for Democratic policies of not enforcing the law?

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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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A Democrat says the quiet part out loud Former Representative Ben Chandler admitted that he tried to confuse voters about his own positions

Albert Benjamin Chandler III, a Democrat, and the grandson of former Governor, Senator and Commissioner of Baseball A B “Happy” Chandler, won a special election in 2004 for the Sixth District congressional seat, and was re-elected in 2006, 2008 and 2010. In 2012, he was defeated by Republican Andy Barr, who continues to hold the seat today.

An article on the Lexington Herald-Leader’s website references Mr Chandler and his electoral history.

‘All politics is national’: How Kentucky’s congressional districts have slid off the map

by David Catanese | Thursday, March 31, 2022 | 10:27 AM EDT

WASHINGTON Four years ago, Andy Barr had a real race on his hands.

An outside Republican group poured more than $3.5 million into Lexington’s 6th Congressional District to counter the nationally recruited Amy McGrath’s $8 million warchest.

Barr survived the rough and expensive environment, but only by 3 percentage points.

Now his former battleground seat in the heart of Kentucky’s commonwealth looks downright hospitable, if not sleepy.

The article continues to tell readers that every congressional district in Kentucky has a party favorability rating in double digits, five for Republicans, and one, in Louisville, for Democrats. Mr Barr’s district actually has the smallest partisan advantage, at 13%.

The Bluegrass State was the friendliest in the South for Democrats, with Democrats winning most gubernatorial races, and controlling the state House of Representatives up until the 2016 elections. But it was tough going for Mr Chandler in the Sixth District, and he told the reporter how he held on for as long as he did:

Lexington’s 6th Congressional District used to fall in the competitive category when Chandler held the seat for four terms. But Chandler, now the CEO of The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, says he had to practice the “politics of confusion” in order to survive in a place where most identified as conservative.

“I had to confuse my constituents so they couldn’t tell whether I was a liberal or a conservative or a moderate,” he said, noting that endeavor became more difficult as data showed him that an increasing amount of his constituents were primarily depending on conservative media outlets like Fox News, which blared narratives that tarred his entire party with the same broad brush. “When that’s the case and you’re a Democrat, you clearly are looking at a hell of an uphill battle.”

Translation: Mr Chandler had to lie to the voters to win the races he did.

Mr Chandler lost to Mr Barr in the 2012 elections, but Democrats in the Bluegrass State held on to a majority in the state House of Representatives until the 2016 contests. The Sixth District, which includes more liberal Lexington, is Kentucky’s second most Democratic district, and, as the cited article pointed out, Amy McGrath Henderson, who wasn’t an incumbent, ran a competitive race against Mr Barr in 2018. Is it possible, just possible, that Mr Chandler lost in 2012 at least in part because the voters in the district were not as confused about him as he thought he could make them? Given that Democrats controlled the state House of Representatives following both the 2000 and 2010 elections, it wasn’t as though Republicans could gerrymander the district against them.

Mrs Henderson tried to confuse the voters as well, spending a clear pile of money — $8,274,396 to Mr Barr’s $5,580,477 — on mailings and television ads telling us how moderate and patriotic she was. However, she attended a fund raiser in Massachusetts and said, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky.”

There’s a simple truth here: while Mr Chandler and Mrs Henderson both tried to fool the voters of the Sixth District, Mr Barr has not, because the voters in the Sixth more closely match conservative Republican principles.

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Something I never thought I would see.

I took this photo on June 19, 2016, in Rome:

Italian soldiers on guard near the Arch of Constantine, Roma, June 19, 2016. Photo by Dana R Pico; may be freely used, with attribution.

Then there was this photo, on Twitter, from Michael Tracey:

National Guardsmen, Washington, DC, January 18, 2020.

Mr Tracey said, “Asked the Guardsmen why they are standing around with unloaded rifles. “I don’t know, I’m just doing what I’m told””

Then we had Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN), saying that we just can’t trust anyone who might have voted for Donald Trump:

Had a Republican said something like that about soldiers who voted for a Democrat, the left would be up in arms. But when a Democrat says it? Crickets.

This is the reaction of the left after a couple hundred idiots, out of thousands upon thousands of demonstrators broke into the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

It was only a few months ago that President Trump said he might send federal law enforcement agents to Philadelphia to protect federal property from the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators, whose Mostly Peaceful Protests™ resulted in curfews in 40 cities, hundreds of buildings looted, vandalized and burned. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, on July 21, 2020:

Mayor Jim Kenney on Tuesday dismissed Trump’s stated concerns about public safety as disingenuous given the administration’s inaction in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit urban centers hardest.

“If the Trump administration wanted to help cities, they would have gotten off their rear ends back in March and April,” Kenney said. “This is a game he’s playing to divert attention away from the many crises that are facing this nation, and we’ll oppose it with everything we have.”

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner compared Trump’s threat to fascism.

“My dad volunteered and served in World War II to fight fascism, like most of my uncles, so we would not have an American president brutalizing and kidnapping Americans for exercising their constitutional rights and trying to make America a better place, which is what patriots do,” he said in a statement. “Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office.”

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) dodged the question of whether Trump should send federal officers to Philadelphia and instead joined in attacking the city’s Democratic leaders.

“The rioting, violence, and lawlessness in Portland is a disgrace, and I hope it does not happen in Philadelphia,” Toomey said. “One way to ensure that it does not is for Philadelphia’s mayor and district attorney to actually support the police, enforce the law, and hold criminals accountable.”

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) said Trump’s “secret police are kidnapping and holding citizens without charges for exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed rights.”

“This is totalitarianism,” Casey said. ”Law enforcement should protect the people — not the president’s self-interested political motives. … This unconstitutional paramilitary force has no place anywhere in a healthy democracy and, considering Philadelphia’s historical significance as the birthplace of our Constitution, it would be especially disrespectful and insulting here.”

Yet Democratic Governors all across the country have closed their Capitol buildings, and put up barriers and National Guardsmen, and for what? The pro-Trump rioters who broke into the Capitol assaulted some Capitol police officers, one of whom was killed when struck by a fire extinguisher, but unless I have missed something, the only actual shots fired were by the Capitol police! The rioters broke some windows, trashed a couple of offices, and apparently stole a laptop from Nancy Pelosi’s office. Somehow, this all seems an overreaction.

The Inquirer wound up reporting that In Harrisburg and Trenton, ‘a collective sigh of relief’ as few pro-Trump loyalists show up following FBI warning:

Despite a stark warning from the FBI that state capitals could be targeted by far-right extremists or armed protesters this week, just a handful of demonstrators appeared at government buildings in Harrisburg and Trenton on Sunday as throngs of law enforcement patrolled.

“We are breathing a collective sigh of relief,” Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora said Sunday afternoon. “It appears there are more skateboarders than protesters here.”

The relief rippled across a nation on the edge, still reeling from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that left five dead and set off a massive law enforcement response from coast to coast ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s Wednesday inauguration. Last week, the FBI warned that at least one group that backs President Donald Trump called for supporters to “storm” government buildings, and authorities said some far-right personalities indicated they’d begin their demonstrations Sunday.

In preparation, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf activated hundreds of members of the National Guard, the Capitol was closed, and police fortified the building with barricades. Streets were shut down in Harrisburg and Trenton, and residents hunkered down in their homes.

It turned out that both cities were quiet Sunday. In Harrisburg, a few demonstrators appeared, as did a couple counterprotesters, including one who approached police and denounced white supremacy while clutching his lunch in a Styrofoam container. The largest gathering near the Capitol was likely a scrapbooking convention at a nearby hotel, made up of mostly women armed with scissors and creativity.

The calm was largely the case at state capitals across the country over the weekend and in D.C., where much of the city is being patrolled by about 25,000 National Guard troops, including some from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Tall fencing surrounds the Capitol, and the National Mall is closed to the public in an unprecedented lockdown of the nation’s capital.

Of course, the left will claim that it was this determined show of force which kept the demonstrations from happening in the first place. We have to wait until January 20th, to know for certain what demonstrations will occur, but the Democrats sure didn’t react like this during the Summer of Fire and Hate.

The Democrats have been trashing our First Amendment rights ever since COVID-19 broke out, trying to deny the right of the people peaceably to assemble. They gave last summer’s demonstrators plenty of leeway to loot and burn in our major cities, but now, when the protesters are conservatives, they have automatically assumed that any demonstrations will not be peaceful, and they’ve deployed thousands of troops to stop them.

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Democrisy: It seems that Democrats in government don’t believe the rules they set for others apply to themselves

It was mostly an internet meme, circulating through the evil reich-wing communities, but, eventually, the credentialed media had to take notice; the election being over, it wasn’t as harmful to their causes anyway.

Politicians across U.S. eat own words after dining out, taking trips

by Juliet Williams, Associated Press | December 3, 2020 | 7:00 AM EST

SAN FRANCISCO — Their messaging has been clear: wear a mask; stay 6 feet apart; and, most importantly, stay home!

But their actions aren’t living up to the rhetoric, creating a real political problem for some of the most vocal leaders in California’s fight to contain the coronavirus.

First came Gov. Gavin Newsom, who won plaudits for issuing the first statewide stay-at-home order in the U.S. back in March. He broke the state rules when he and his wife were caught dining with 10 others at the posh French Laundry restaurant in Napa in early November with lobbyists and others from numerous different households, sitting close together, mask-less.

San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, was at the same $350-a-plate restaurant a day later, dining with a San Francisco socialite and six others. Breed has also won accolades for imposing some of the strictest rules in California, keeping coronavirus rates relatively low. Her spokespeople haven’t responded to queries about how many households were there — state rules cap those at three. Her spokesman rubbed salt in the wound by saying she has been trying to support local restaurants. The French Laundry is 60 miles out of town.

The Associated Press article makes it sound like Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) was the first, but he wasn’t. Newsweek posted an article listing some of the others:

  • Mayor Steve Adler (D-Austin)
  • Governor Kevin Stitt (R-OK)
  • Mayor Michael Hancock (D-Denver)
  • Mayor Muriel Bowser (D-Washington DC)
  • Mayor Sam Liccardo (D-San José)
  • Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D-Chicago)

The article also noted that Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) was preparing to break his own rules, but when it became public in advance, he cancelled his plans due to the political backlash.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was caught on tape going to a private hair salon, for which the lovely Mrs Pelosi did not apologize, but simply claimed that she’d been set up by an evil reich-wing activist.

Of course, the people on the list are all over very large areas. I’m guessing that a lot of smaller city mayors and city councilmen, etc, have also violated the rules, but they aren’t important enough to have made the national news.

There is one Republican on the list, but Newsweek also stated that:

Republican governors have faced fewer accusations, largely because they have not implemented as many of the restrictions that public health experts have called for.

Translation: they have had more respect for our constitutional rights.

In his concurring opinion in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote:

Government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis. At a minimum, that Amendment prohibits government officials from treating religious exercises worse than comparable secular activities, unless they are pursuing a compelling interest and using the least restrictive means available. Yet recently, during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles. . . . .

What could justify so radical a departure from the First Amendment’s terms and long-settled rules about its application? Our colleagues offer two possible answers. Initially, some point to a solo concurrence in South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, in which the Chief Justice expressed willingness to defer to executive orders in the pandemic’s early stages based on the newness of the emergency and how little was then known about the disease. At that time, COVID had been with us, in earnest, for just three months. Now, as we round out 2020 and face the prospect of entering a second calendar year living in the pandemic’s shadow, that rationale has expired according to its own terms. Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical. Rather than apply a nonbinding and expired concurrence from South Bay, courts must resume applying the Free Exercise Clause. . . . .

In the end, I can only surmise that much of the answer lies in a particular judicial impulse to stay out of the way in times of crisis. But if that impulse may be understandable or even admirable in other circumstances, we may not shelter in place when the Constitution is under attack. Things never go well when we do.

COVID-19 is serious, a highly contagious disease that can be, and is, fatal, though in only about 1% of the cases. Hospitalization rates are much higher than that.

But the damage being done to our constitutional rights is far, far greater. The precedent being set, that government can set down rules which would otherwise be unconstitutional because of some ’emergency’ simply leaves it to elected officials to decide just what emergencies outweigh our constitutional rights. Many are already wanting to abridge our constitutional rights under the Second Amendment because some bad people are wrongly using firearms. The New York Times published an OpEd by Parker Malloy, himself a male who thinks he is female, claiming that “Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.” There will always be such very good reasons to suspend or restrict our constitutional rights, when those rights are left for other people to decide. If the left can somehow ban ‘hate speech,’ what other speech can they ban? The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act actually sought to ban political speech in favor of one candidate or another prior to an election, because, well just because.

Brave men fought, and died, for our rights. At least six of my known ancestors fought in our Revolution, for the rights they were denied by King George and his Parliament. At least twenty-one of my known ancestors came to these shores, risking their lives on the open ocean in small wooden ships, for the right to worship God as they chose, and not be oppressed by King James and King Charles for not being Anglicans. Can I really support governors restricting our freedom of religion over a disease far less deadly than an ocean voyage to an untamed continent in the 1620s and 1630s?[1]Fifty-one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower either died at sea or in that first New England winter and spring.

Our great country was founded in danger, by people fleeing tyranny in England, and by brave men and women who risked their lives on the frontier, and in war, yet our political leaders today, primarily but not exclusively Democrats, would have us quaking in fear and trashing the freedoms and liberties for which our ancestors fought and died. We dishonor our ancestors when we allow their sacrifices to be wasted.
___________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 Fifty-one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower either died at sea or in that first New England winter and spring.
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Social Justice Warrior vs Social Justice Warrior

Despite today’s Democrats not being working class friendly at all, labor unions have been a Democratic Party mainstay for decades. But it seems that the left’s having gone all-out #SocialJustice is putting them in conflict with labor unions. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Controversial tax abatement bill pits Philly building trades unions against concerns for immigrant workers

by Sean Collins Walsh | November 30, 2020 | 7:03 PM EST

Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez (D-Philadelphia) Public Domain, Link

A City Council bill designed to prevent unscrupulous contractors from receiving construction tax benefits sparked a debate about whether it could also open the door for a crackdown on undocumented workers in an unusually contentious committee hearing on Monday.At issue was a bill by Councilmember Bobby Henon that would prohibit projects using construction firms that improperly classify workers as independent contractors from qualifying for the city’s residential property tax abatement, which provides 10 years of tax benefits on the value of new construction and renovations.

“How do we ensure that the application of this isn’t discriminatory toward undocumented workers who have no recourse?” City Councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez said during a Finance Committee hearing on the bill. “There’s no other way for the communities that I represent to see it any other way than they are potentially being targeted.”

After heated debate, the committee eventually approved the bill in a rare divided vote of 6-3, but not before Henon was forced to provide assurances that, before the bill comes to the Council floor for final passage, he would work to identify regulations that would ensure it does not endanger immigrant workers.

Bobby Henon used to be political director of Local 98 of the powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Philadelphia is a union town. Unions have tried to retain a stranglehold on all construction in the city, and they make projects more difficult for non-union contractors. [1]This is something I have seen first hand, having jobsite experience while working for a non-union ready-mixed concrete supplier in the Philadelphia suburbs, while providing concrete for a few … Continue reading Kensington, where Maria Quiñones-Sánchez’s[2]While the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was, according to the Democrats, completely free of fraud, Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez herself said that “the ward leaders opposing her have a history of … Continue reading district is based, was 38.9% Hispanic according to the 2010 census. While the exact percentage of the population which is in the United States illegally isn’t known, in 2016, the Rev John Olenick, then pastor of Visitation Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) Roman Catholic Parish in Kensington, said that his “parish consists of many undocumented people from places like Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, [the] Dominican Republic, and other countries.” Visitation BVM Church celebrates one Mass in English on Sundays, but three Masses in Spanish, which lets you know just how busy the parish is.[3]According to the church bulletin, the church has a Pastor, two Associate Pastors, another Redemptorist priest in residence, and a deacon. That’s more staffing than any parish of which I have … Continue reading We may not know the exact percentage of legal vs illegal immigrants are in Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez’s district, but it’s clear that there are a lot of them.

Henon said the bill was not meant to target immigrants and that it was merely meant to ensure construction firms were following employment law.

“This is not penalizing workers in anyway. This is protecting workers,” he said. “I am always open to having a conversation to try to work out some of the unintended consequences with our Revenue Department.”

But Quiñones-Sánchez said that filing as an independent contractor is the only option available to undocumented immigrants — who make up between 15% and 25% of the local construction workforce, according to a 2018 estimate by the city controller — aside from working completely off the books.

Quiñones-Sánchez said if Henon was primarily interested in safety, he would propose a bill aimed at ensuring undocumented workers are protected by safety rules, not one that would keep them off job sites.

Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez has just pointed out, though I doubt she meant to do so, that the illegal immigrants haven’t broken the law only by having crossed into the United States illegally, but continue breaking the law, every day, because they have to work for a living, but they have to violate our employment and tax laws to do so. Either they are presenting forged documents to employers to work on the books, which is a felony, or they are working off the books, for cash, meaning that they are breaking our income tax laws, another felony.

Economically, labor unions bargain for higher wages through the law of supply and demand. If they can force a company or an industry to use only unionized workers, they have effectively reduced the supply of potential workers to the population of union members. For non-unionized workers, allowing illegal immigrants[4]I do not use the mealy-mouthed adjective “undocumented” to soft-peddle the fact that such immigrants are here illegally. to compete for jobs is to increase the supply of workers vis a vis the demand for them, which exerts negative pressure on wages in general.

Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez, a liberal Democrat, opposes the ideas of Mr Henon, another liberal Democrat, because, as will inevitably be the case, the goals of the #SocialJusticeWarriors are inevitably contradictory. I just enjoy watching them fighting with each other.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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↑1 This is something I have seen first hand, having jobsite experience while working for a non-union ready-mixed concrete supplier in the Philadelphia suburbs, while providing concrete for a few projects in the city itself. Unions can make it difficult for non-union workers to get to the jobsite, and concrete is a perishable product.
↑2 While the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was, according to the Democrats, completely free of fraud, Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez herself said that “the ward leaders opposing her have a history of Election Day shenanigans and campaign finance violations.” WHYY, the NPR station in Philadelphia, reported: “After the election, the city’s Board of Ethics found that the 7th Ward/Friends of Angel Cruz and Quiñones-Sánchez campaign committee had committed campaign finance violations for accepting excess contributions from other political committees.” Both campaigns, and Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez personally, had to pay fines levied by the city’s Ethics Board. Who knew that there were ever ethics in Philadelphia?
↑3 According to the church bulletin, the church has a Pastor, two Associate Pastors, another Redemptorist priest in residence, and a deacon. That’s more staffing than any parish of which I have been a member.
↑4 I do not use the mealy-mouthed adjective “undocumented” to soft-peddle the fact that such immigrants are here illegally.