Cleveland Tea Party Goes to Washington

Meeting Sen. Jim DeMint

Good news, bad news. . .

So there we were last Tuesday, sitting in the lobby of the Trump Old Post Office Hotel in DC, minding our own business, when who should walk by but Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Mark Meadows. I gave Rep. Jordan a thumbs-up, and they both stopped to shake hands with us and exchange pleasantries. Unfortunately, I missed the golden opportunity to ask Rep. Jordan a question that is probably on all our minds, and they carried on.

But then, who should I spy at the next table but former Senator Jim DeMint. So I went over and barged into his conversation. And I asked him point blank: will there be any indictments?  He responded that he had just had lunch with Reps. Jordan and Meadows and that they had discussed that very issue.  Sen. De Mint told me that they were guessing that some indictments would be coming down in 2 to 3 weeks, but that there would not be enough indictments. And he gave my husband a copy of his and Rachel Bovard’s new book, Conservative: Knowing What to Keep.  

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Google: it keeps getting worse

art credit: tyranny.news

Yesterday, this blog linked to a report on Breitbart concerning the left-wing bias Google is employing by manipulating the search engines. Today we read more details reported by Lucas Nolan, again at Breitbart:

Google documents leaked to Project Veritas show the company referring to popular conservative personalities such as Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager as “Nazis.”

A recent report from investigative journalism group Project Veritas claims that leaked internal Google documents shows a Google employee and a member of a Google “transparency-and-ethics” group calling conservative and libertarian commentators such as Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson, “Nazis.” The email was sent as part of internal communications between the Google “transparency-and-ethics” group and suggests that content published by PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro should be removed from the “suggestion feature.”

A Google employee named Liam Hopkins can be seen stating: “…if we understand that PragerU, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are nazis using the dog whistles…” The employee further suggests following through with the suggestion of another employee named Meredith: “I don’t think correctly identifying far-right content is beyond our capabilities. But if it is, why not go with Meredith’s suggestion of disabling the suggestion feature?”

Following the publication of an undercover video of Google executive Jen Gennai stating that the company was working to prevent another “Trump situation” after the 2016 election; the executive stated in a Medium blog post: “Google has repeatedly been clear that it works to be a trustworthy source of information, without regard to political viewpoint. In fact, Google has no notion of political ideology in its rankings.” Yet here we see Google employees discussing doing exactly that.

The rest of the report is here.

Related: Ned Ryun at American Greatness:

unless the tech companies are forcefully confronted, now, in the immediate, our self-governing republic will be over in less than a generation and we will be ruled by a tech oligarchy.

Or are we already there?

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The new "normal"? -- Victor Davis Hanson

Over the weekend, the historian Victor Davis Hanson posted an essay at American Greatness. With the progressive-liberal community constantly projecting their own fantasies and corruptions on conservatives, it is a relief to read VDH’s perspective. Here's a brief extract from his closing comments:

The current normal correctives were denounced as abnormal—as if living in a sovereign state with secure borders, assuming that the law was enforced equally among all Americans, demanding that citizenship was something more than mere residence, and remembering that successful Americans, not their government, built their own businesses and lives is now somehow aberrant or perverse.

Trump’s political problem, then, may be that the accelerating aberration of 2009-2016 was of such magnitude that normalcy is now seen as sacrilege.

Weaponizing the IRS, unleashing the FBI to spy on political enemies and to plot the removal of an elected president, politicizing the CIA to help to warp U.S. politics, allying the Justice Department with the Democratic National Committee, and reducing FISA courts to rubber stamps for pursuing administration enemies became the new normal. Calling all that a near coup was abnormal.

Let us hope that most Americans still prefer the abnormal remedy to the normal pathology.

Full article is here.

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Do you donate to conservative PACs?

Some years ago, our household stopped contributing to conservative PACs that supported various conservative candidates in a particular election cycle. One reason was that we did not always agree on their choice of candidates. So now we contribute directly to candidates we like, whether at local, state, or federal level.

Today I read about even more reasons to pause before writing out your check or filling out your credit card details. Here’s part of a sobering report at National Review by Jim Geraghty (via Instapundit):

Back in 2013, Conservative StrikeForce PAC raised $2.2 million in funds vowing to support Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for governor in Virginia. Court filings and FEC records showed that the PAC only contributed $10,000 to Cuccinelli’s effort.

Back in 2014, Politico researched 33 political action committees that claimed to be affiliated with the Tea Party and courted small donors with email and direct-mail appeals and found that they “raised $43 million — 74 percent of which came from small donors. The PACs spent only $3 million on ads and contributions to boost the long-shot candidates often touted in the appeals, compared to $39.5 million on operating expenses, including $6 million to firms owned or managed by the operatives who run the PACs.”

. . .

In the 2018 cycle, Tea Party Majority Fund raised $1.67 million and donated $35,000 to federal candidates. That cycle, Conservative Majority Fund raised just over $1 million and donated $7,500 to federal candidates. Conservative Strikeforce raised $258,376 and donated nothing to federal candidates.

Full report (“The Right’s Grifter Problem”) is here. Let the buyer contributor beware.

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Blatant: Google’s censorship

The other day, this blog linked to a report about Google’s dishonest and ham-handed censorship of Kay Cole James, Heritage Foundation President. Now there’s this by Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator:

As we now learn from the Daily Caller, The American Spectator has been blacklisted by Google. The DC’s headline, in a post by J. Arthur Bloom, is this:

Exclusive: Documents Detailing Google’s ‘News Blacklist’ Show Manual Manipulation Of Special Search Results

. . .

[American Spectator founder R. Emmett] Tyrrell drew the analogy of Communists taking over an old-fashioned pre-computer-age public library — and then methodically going through the card catalogue to remove the cards listing conservative books and authors. “Google can make all kinds of excuses,” he added, “but this is censorship, the most blatant censorship imaginable.”

Indeed it is.

. . .

(Google CEO) Sundar Pichai . . . looked a congressional committee in the eye and insisted that “we don’t manually intervene on any particular search result” — while the Daily Caller revelations revealed that “Google does manipulate its search results manually, contrary to the company’s official denials, documents obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller indicate.”

There is a name for doing that. It’s called lying to Congress. A federal crime with jail time attached.

. . .

This time around, the target is The American Spectator. This time around the iron fist belongs to Google.

The question has reached the point that conservatives need to have a serious conversation among themselves. Is it time for government regulation of these tech giants? Or is it — my preference — time for free-market competition that provides serious and successful competition to these companies?

Full report is here.

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Super Bowl, competition, and politics

Ira Stoll's "Patriots Ignite Political Debate On Success" at The NY Sun on the Super Bowl:

American politics at the moment can pretty much be explained by what you make of the record sixth Super Bowl victory by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, coach Bill Belichick, and owner Robert Kraft.

One view of it is to marvel at, and celebrate, the hard work, risk-taking, and skill that produced the achievement. That’s the more conservative view of it.

Another is to complain about it and wish the winning were more evenly distributed. That’s the more left-leaning view of it. . . .

There is more with which to agree and disagree here.

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Human nature and Western civilization

Art credit: bridgeguys.com

The Lady of the House at Bookworm Room has a lengthy review essay of a book by Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (out in paperback in 2012), which considers the default conditions of human nature, development of Western civilization, and how those behaviors and developments are reflected in today’s political stand-offs. It’s a long but worthwhile read; click here. Lady Bookworm concludes:

It’s time for me to summarize what Pinker argues took humankind from a time of tremendous cruelty and violence to the world in which we live now. These factors were:

• The development of the nation-state, which quashed local warfare, whether it was the warfare of Stone Age tribesman or medieval warlords.
• The development of manners aimed at raising mankind above its animal nature.
• The development of commerce, which forced empathy upon those who wished to be successful.
• The rule of law, not in the form of the random tyranny of a police state, but in the form a stable judicial system that allows people to calculate in advance the cost of their actions, whether in the civil or the criminal context.
• And two more Bookworm additions: The decrease in alcohol consumption, because excessive alcohol intake brings people closer to their animal natures, and the premium placed upon electing mature, experienced people to positions of power.     

Today’s Leftists seek to destroy every single one of those civilizing influences:

• Leftists want to destroy borders, which ends the nation-state. Their optimistic ideal is one-world government under the U.N.’s aegis. The reality will be a retreat into the tribalism that was normative for most of human history and that is defined by almost unholy levels of violence and torture against perceived enemies.
• Leftists are breaking down all normative behavior (once called “manners”). Whether it’s screaming at conservatives in restaurants, attacking politicians in their homes, being obsessed with poop, destroying sexual norms (including have a lesbian smooch at the Thanksgiving Day parade, a venue in which no one previously smooched), chronic public nudity, or anything else that once held together civilized Western society, the Left is against it. (And please feel free to add to that list.)
• Leftists are irredeemably hostile to commerce. The Leftist dream is a tightly controlled socialist economy, although one in which the rich Blue Leftists, including Barack “at some point you’ve made enough money” Obama, will retain their wealth. Place Alexandria Occasional-Cortex and her ilk in charge of the American economy, and we will go backwards to a medieval time in which profit is evil, innovation is discouraged, lending money is impossible, and the empathy and cooperation that trade brought are gone. (By the way, the Koran makes usury illegal, which is one of the reasons Muslim majority countries are economically stagnant unless they have oil wealth.)   
• Leftists are hostile to the rule of law. As we see in everything from the Title IX travesties on college campuses to Justice Kavanaugh’s travails to the Obama judge’s attacks on Trump’s executive power, Leftists don’t believe in the equal application of the rule of law. To them, law is an instrument of power to be used, not to create reliability in both civil and criminal matters in order to guide people’s actions, but as a cudgel to enforce their power. In other words, their “law” is the law of tyranny, not of freedom. This hostility to the rule of law also shows itself in the whole “sanctuary city/state” notion and the tolerance for criminal homelessness, both of which have reduced large parts of California, once America’s most prosperous state, to Third World status.
• And finally, the Left has long been in the vanguard of two other trends: (1) Urging the middle class to use drugs that interfere with civilized behavior and functionality. Starting with the Hippies and their tuning in and dropping out and continuing with the binge drinking on Leftist-controlled college campuses and the push for recreational (as opposed to medicinal) pot, Leftists encourage behavior that decreases mankind’s connection to its human nature and brings it closer to its animal nature. (2) Turning political power over to young people, whether by decreasing the voting age or by championing practically prepubescent people in politics. Again, a perfect example is Occasional-Cortex, a woman with a dismal education and no life experience, who’s seen as the Great Hope for the Left.   

Bookworm’s full essay is here.

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Progressive vs conservative solutions

 

A. F. Branco cartoon at legal insurrection

Ever since their Feb. 2016 issue dedicated to “Conservatives Against Trump,” I have been wary of National Review online. But historian Victor Davis Hanson recently published an essay on “The Great Experiment” at the NRO website, and he concludes:  

The true test of conservative solutions is to see how things are after four years of a strongly conservative president, with at least two years of a Republican Congress.

. . .

Antidote One, of unapologetic progressivism under Obama, did not lead to an economically robust and growing America, one safer abroad in a more secure world, and more cohesive, united, and stable at home — at least if that truly was the leftist agenda rather than the more hushed opposite goal of more equal but poorer Americans, America as just another nation among many, and a cultural revolution aimed at accentuating rather than assimilating race, class, and gender identities.

We shall see if the subsequent Antidote Two, of unregretful conservatism under Trump, will provide what conservatism has always promised: greater prosperity, security, and unity.

The engines of prosperity are already revving up, yet we still see anti-Trump foot-stamping, temper tantrums, and hysteria on display in the media (see cartoon at top), in academia, in the entertainment industry, and in groups like BLM and Antifa. No unity there. Yet. Perhaps when take-home pay increases due to the tax cuts, some of the hysteria will start to subside. Anyway, you can read the rest of Hanson’s essay here.

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The lies we were told about who would silence free speech

art credit: National Coalition Against Censorship

John Kass at The Chicago Tribune comments on the liberal reaction to conservative speech, which is, essentially: “Shut Up.”

The lie we were told as kids was this: The end of American liberty would come at the hands of the political right.

Conservatives would take away our right to speak our minds, and use the power of government to silence dissent. The right would intimidate our teachers and professors, and coerce the young.

And then, with the universities in thrall, with control of the apparatus of the state (and the education bureaucracy), the right would have dominion over a once-free people.

. . .

But the lie is obvious now, isn't it?

Because it is not conservatives who coerced today's young people or made them afraid of ideas that challenge them. Conservatives did not shame people into silence, or send thugs out on college campuses to beat down those who wanted to speak.

The left did all that.

It's there in front of you, the thuggish mobs of the left killing free speech at American universities. The thugs call themselves antifas, for anti-fascists.

They beat people up and break things and set fires and intimidate. These are not anti-fascists. These are fascists. This is what fascists do.

. . .

What is the cost for all this?

Free speech, without which there is no republic.

American universities were once thought to be the last great refuge of ideas, where ideas could flourish and be challenged and debated. But today, the university is the place where liberty and ideas go to die.

. . .

Right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter has been silenced at Berkeley, where the free speech movement was born. And other intellectuals, including Charles Murray and Heather Mac Donald, have been silenced at other colleges, attacked by mobs.

If the left agrees with your views, you may speak. If the left doesn't agree, they will shut you down. This is America now.

. . .

University administrators have made a show of wringing their hands. But they're hypocrites. They're part of this. They are of the same cloth. They allowed this seed to bloom. They watered it, by giving in to the young who demanded a safe space from intellectual challenge.

Safe spaces are not about learning or critical thinking. Safe spaces belong to education camps, where future bureaucrats are trained in the Orwellian shaping of language and the culling of threatening ideas.

. . .

All speech challenging the status quo is offensive — to the establishment. And free speech is what American liberty is about.

Unless, of course, you're of the hard left, and can hunt free speech at American universities and crush it.

That's not fiction. That's not fantasy. And it is not a lie. It's happening now, in the United States.

Read the rest here.

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Trump Derangement syndrome

Cartoon credit: A.F. Branco at Liberty Alliance via RedState

We've seen the syndrome before with George W. and Sarah Palin. It's baaaaack with a vengeance. American Thinker contributor David Zukerman reports that “Trump Derangement Syndrome sends NYT’s David Brooks off the deepend”

Once upon a time, David Brooks was considered the house conservative at the New York Times.  But in his April 21 New York Times column, he put President Donald J. Trump on a list of "strong men" that includes Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and North Korea's Kim Jong-un.  Mr. Brooks noted that Erdoğan has "dismantle[d] democratic institutions and replace[d] them with majoritarian dictatorship."  The Times columnist went on to assert: "While running for office, Donald Trump violated every norm of statesmanship built up over these many centuries[.]"  Mr. Brooks, however, does not elaborate, explain, or elucidate the nature of the alleged violations.

But when it comes to discussion of President Trump, NeverTrumps like David Brooks feel no need to place their anti-Trump views on a foundation of fact.  For Trump-haters, the truth is in the accusation.  And so, comparing President Trump to Turkey's Erdoğan, Mr. Brooks does not set forth the democratic institutions dismantled by Mr. Trump, nor does he provide evidence of the "majoritarian dictatorship" that was constructed during the first 100 days of the Trump administration.  How could he, there being no such dismantling, no such dictatorship here?

Mr. Brooks recognizes "the collapse of liberal values at home," citing "fragile thugs who call themselves students [who] shout down and abuse speakers in a weekly basis."  But are these illiberals to be found under the banner of Trumpism – or under the banner of the totalitarianism of left?

. . .

The threat to the American spirit of liberty is not to be found among conservatives, or in the corridors of today's White House.  The threats to democracy, to free speech, to the free flow of information are to be found on the left side of the political divide, from neo-totalitarians who, like the execrable Howard Dean, would limit free speech to persons who agree with the political biases of leftists – with the encouragement of NeverTrumps in the media like David Brooks, who lack the ability to distinguish a duly elected American president from the brutal dictator of a totalitarian state.

Read the rest here.

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Updates:Gov. Kasich (RINO) on renewable energy and other bills

art credit: redstate

In an article “Kasich Veto Draws Cheers From Environmental Lobby,” Steve Byas at The New American reports:

Once again, Ohio Governor John Kasich  used his veto power to kill yet another bill favored by conservatives in his state. On Tuesday, he killed a bill that would have made renewable energy benchmarks voluntary, rather than mandatory, for the next two years.

Kasich defended his action, saying, “Ohio workers cannot afford to take a step backward from the economic gains that we have made in recent years, however, and arbitrarily limiting Ohio’s energy generation options amounts to self-inflicted damage to both our state’s near and long-term economic competitiveness.” Of course, how suspending mandatory benchmarks imposed on electric companies would limit the companies’ “energy generation options," as opposed to doing exactly the opposite, Kasich did not explain.

Not surprisingly, the Environmentalist Lobby cheered Kasich, who ran for president this year as a Republican. The Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, and Ohio Consumers’ Counsel all praised the veto. The “benchmarks,” as they are called, were created by legislation in 2008, requiring electric companies to gradually obtain more energy from “renewable sources,” rather than being allowed simply to make a free market decision to buy the least expensive electricity.

Senator Bill Seitz (R-Cincinatti), however, was not pleased. “It is apparent that Gov. Kasich cares more about appeasing his coastal elite friends in the renewable energy business than he does about the millions of Ohioans who decisively rejected this ideology when they voted for President-elect Trump,” Seitz said in a press release. “We can only hope that President Trump and his amazing cabinet of free market capitalists will save us from this regulatory overreach of Al Gore-style policies that take unnecessary money out of ratepayers’ pockets.”

Seitz said he would move to totally repeal the mandates in the next legislative session.

Kasich made it clear by his veto that he does not trust the free market to sort out which type of energy source is best for Ohio consumers. This veto is a confirmation for many more conservative Republicans that Kasich is simply not a conservative.

Ohio legislators can return to Columbus to override this veto, if they wish. . .

During the Republican presidential contest, Kasich defended the implementation of controversial Common Core standards in his state, and attacked fellow Republican candidates who opposed them — fellow governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, as well as former Governor Mike Huckabee, and U.S. Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. At the time, Donald Trump was not mentioned, although Trump also opposed Common Core, seen by conservative opponents as an attempt to nationalize public education.

There have been numerous other deviations from conservative principles by Kasich, including his backing of the expansion of Medicaid in Ohio under ObamaCare. When Kasich was in Congress, he was one of only 42 Republicans who voted for President Bill Clinton’s ban on assault rifles. He also favors granting U.S. citizenship to illegal aliens.

Clearly, Republican primary voters made a good decision to reject John Kasich for the Republican nomination for president.

And another item on the 2017 New Year’s Wish List to Columbus lawmakers: Pass the Ohio Health Care Compact.

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Trump endorses Renee Ellmers?

 Trump endorses Renee Ellmers

Not a good development. From Conservative Review:

[Ellmers is] a fighter alright – a fighter for the Boehner K Street political elites.  There is perhaps no sitting member who embodies the source of anger among Republican voters – the anger that has engendered the rise of Trump in the first place – more than Renee Ellmers.  After she was elected as a “Tea Party conservative” in 2010, she immediately became one of the most loyal foots soldiers for Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy and has done more to fight the conservative grassroots on immigration that any sitting House member.

. . .

Check out her CR profile here, and you will discover a more extensive liberal rap sheet than almost any sitting Republican congressman. 

Ellmers (R-NC) was endorsed by Sarah Palin, and upon election in 2010-11, promptly turned to the left. On immigration issues, NumbersUSA gives her a better report card rating than Conservative Review, but Mr. Trump could have sought out any number of congress critters with better track records. 

Ellmers faces a tough primary tomorrow; here's the report from NPR.

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Michelle Malkin at CPAC: GOP Sold Out Movement Conservatives

Michelle Malkin at Occupy the Truth Rally in Cleveland, 2012

Photo credit: Pat J Dooley

Michelle Malkin at CPAC: GOP Sold Out Movement Conservatives

Legal Insurrection reports on Michelle Malkin’s explosive speech at CPAC:

Many speeches were given at CPAC this weekend, but one stood out from the rest.

Conservative author, activist and entrepreneur Michelle Malkin gave a fiery speech in which she reminded movement conservatives that they have been repeatedly betrayed by the Republican Party.

Malkin began her speech by saying:

“It’s not people outside the party that have thrown the conservative grassroots base under the bus. It’s the people who have paid lip-service to limited government while gorging on it.”

She was only getting started. In the course of her seventeen minute speech, she went after Republicans for the Gang of Eight, Common Core, cronyism, immigration and more.

She slammed the party elites who smear and sneer at the conservative grassroots as fringe while pretending to support causes they care about at election time.

When it came to Common Core she named names, singling out John Kasich for claiming he believed in local control of education. About Bush, she said:

“There are three reasons why Jeb Bush failed. His last name, his support for amnesty and his cheer-leading and cashing in on Common Core.”

This was the first time Malkin has spoken at CPAC in 13 years and it was well worth the wait. Once you start watching this, you won’t be able to stop.

The video is on the same page here.

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