Another Uniparty budget deal

image credit: foxnews.com

More bad news from the Uniparty's budget deal; this update via Ace of Spades:

'Indistinguishable from Democrats': Daniel Horowitz tells Mark Levin
what's behind Republicans' debt-exploding budget deal

Horowitz explained that the current spending levels are the result of the budget deals that congressional Republicans cut during the last session of Congress, “and now they’re looking for a repeat performance” in the current spending debate. They appear ready to hand Speaker Nancy Pelosi a debt-exploding deal that suspends the debt limit, busts spending caps, and “give away the president’s leverage on the border.”

[Ace comments:] Read the article...it's the usual gang of craven and shortsighted politicians who simply don't care about the future financial health of the country. Government spending has become so ridiculous that I wonder whether they are still trying to buy votes! How many voters actually pull the lever for the incumbent because he voted for some pork? Spending is out of control on all fronts, so how do people recognize directed spending vs. the background abomination that is the federal budget?

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One Small Step For A Couple Of Privileged White Males

photo credit: Popular Mechanics 

On the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, everyone has seen photographs, cartoons, Buzz Aldrin’s thoughtful piece at the 25^th anniversary mark, online at Popular Mechanics here (h/t Instapundit), and other commemorative articles. I thought I would link to a PC satire at Issues and Insights. It starts off:

This is the golden anniversary of possibly the greatest physical and scientific achievement in the history of mankind, when two Americans walked the surface of a heavenly body and returned to Earth safely with specimens from its landscape. Those moon rocks were then shared by America with the other nations of the world.

But had Apollo 11 happened today, 50 years after it actually did, it would be viewed by our political, media and academic elites as a bigoted outrage.

“One small step” for whom, exactly? A man? What about women? What about non-white men? What right did some white U.S. naval officer from western Ohio such as Neil Armstrong have to speak for all of humanity?

For that matter, what about non-humanity? Has the space program ever atoned for all the sufferings of the various species of animals non-consensually sent into orbit to make sure space was safe for the white men? Were any of our feathered co-inhabitants in this world of ours consulted when the decision was made to name the lunar lander “Eagle”?

Good satire, or, as Instapundit would say, is it? Full editorial is here.

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The Uniparty in Action, er, Inaction

Don Surber posts daily bullet-points of headlines around the web. Here’s an item from this morning, linked to TownHall:

Michael Reagan wrote, "While I have to watch Democrats in Congress waste time hating and sanctioning the president and trashing America as a racist country after it twice elected a black president, I still have an invasion of illegal immigrants on my southern border.

"And while I watch Democrats -- and Republicans -- in Washington spend another year kicking the health care-reform can down the road, I have a daughter-in-law and son in Los Angeles who suddenly had their private health insurance cancelled and must now sign up with the state's system because there's no competition in California.

"Both Republican and Democrats are at fault for our health care and immigration messes.

"Both parties have recently held total control of Congress and the White House at the same time, yet neither one honestly tried solve the country's two most important problems.

"If they can't find the political courage to fix health care or immigration by next fall, we shouldn't give one member of Congress from either party a single vote.

More here. Background on Uniparty here. 

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I believe he is fascist

Julia Arciga at The Daily Beast reports on Representative Ilhan Omar’s charming statement about President Trump:

“We have said this president is a racist. We have condemned his racist remarks. I believe he is fascist. . . .”

Let’s define terms. The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “fascism” as

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

President Trump loves our country and individual liberty. His administration has done more for minorities than Democrat administrations. President Obama increased federal regulation; President Trump has been de-regulating. 

“Severe economic and social regimentation” is on the agenda of the Democrat-Socialist Party; think Obamacare and endlessly playing the race card (headline at the link says it all, so you don’t have to go beyond the WSJ PayWall).  President Trump is getting government out of the way and decreasing taxes, which frees up the market to grow.

“Forcible suppression of opposition?” Like the mis-named Antifa mobs that beat up reporter Andy Ngo, who was there merely to video tape Antifa’s lawlessness in Portland? Or the Antifa mobs that rioted in Berkeley, smashing windows and committing other acts of vandalism?  Antifa should be called Pro-fa; they are the ones who want to silence their critics, to intimidate conservatives from speaking out.

President Trump takes hostile questions from the media all the time. No suppression there. It’s the left-wing media and Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al) that deliberately suppress opposing views.

Rep. Omar is spouting propaganda. Big surprise.

PS. Some online definitions place “fascism” in the far right of the left-right continuum. But as Jonah Goldberg laid out in his bestseller Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, fascist movements were and are left-wing.

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Google: the greatest threat to the next election

Dr. Robert Epstein testified on July 16 before Congress on the dangerous control Google exerts over searches, surveillance, and behavioral manipulation. The full PDF text is here (h/t Pamela Geller). He explains what Google does, how it does it, discloses Google’s and his methodologies, and proposes a solution. It is pretty frightening, and I am bookmarking it in wild anticipation of Congressional action ASAP – so the 2020 election is not utterly corrupted. Here’s an opening extract:

I am here today for three reasons: to explain why Google presents a serious threat to democracy and human autonomy, to explain how passive monitoring systems can protect us both now and in the future from companies like Google, and to tell you how Congress can immediately end Google’s worldwide monopoly on search. My plan for ending that monopoly  was  published  just  yesterday (Monday, July 15, 2019) by Bloomberg Businessweek (Epstein, 2019d). I am attaching a copy of my article to my testimony and respectfully request that it be entered into the Congressional Record.

I have been a research psychologist for nearly 40 years and have also served in various editorial positions at Psychology Today magazine and Scientific American MIND. I received my Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1981 and have since published 15 books and more than 300 scientific and mainstream articles on artificial intelligence and other topics. Since 2012, some of my research and writings have focused on Google LLC, specifically on the company’s power to suppress content  – the censorship problem, if you will – as well as on the massive surveillance the company conducts, and also on the company’s unprecedented ability to manipulate the thoughts and behavior of more than 2.5 billion people worldwide. Data I’ve collected since 2016 show that Google displays content to the American public that is biased in favor on one political party (Epstein & Williams, 2019), a party I happen to like, but that’s irrelevant. No private company should have either the right or the power to manipulate large populations without their knowledge. . . .

His entire testimony is here, or you can watch it on video at Pamela Geller’s website here.

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When cultures collapse

 

image credit: saturdayeveningpost.com

Walter E. Williams sums it up:

A society's first line of defense is not the law or the criminal justice system but customs, traditions and moral values. These behavioral norms, mostly imparted by example, word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Today's true tragedy is that most people think what we see today has always been so. As such, today's Americans accept behavior that our parents and grandparents never would have accepted.

Williams considers gun violence, popular music, unwed mothers, manners, and more. His article “Things Haven’t Always Been This Way” is at Townhall here. RELATED: Peter Skurkiss at American Thinker is unhappy about the degradation of public school dress codes in Texas. Not encouraging.

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Fascism in America

via Bookworm Room

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