The unbridgeable divide

René Magritte's classic

Liberal / progressive vs conservative.   I’ve usually attributed the unbridgeable divide to critical thinking vs emotions.  Dennis Prager expands on the reasons for the divide:

The Left-Right divide in America is, unfortunately, unbridgeable. There are three reasons.

First, we are divided by our vision of what we want America to be. The Right believes the Founders’ vision was brilliant and moral, that bourgeois middle-class values are superior to alternative value systems; that rights come from God, not man; and that the state must be as small as possible. The Left (not liberals) shares none of those values.

Second, we are divided by the means we use to achieve our vision. Given their different ends, left and right obviously differ on what means to use to achieve their ends.

Third, and perhaps most troubling, there is a reality-perception divide. Left and Right have different perceptions of reality.

. . .

The Left believes socialism is economically superior to capitalism. But the reality is that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty. This is, therefore, not an opinion divide—”You prefer capitalism. I prefer socialism”—but a reality divide.

The reason this is so frightening is that it means one side has lost its grip on reality. If half of this country cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, that is not a good sign for the nation’s future. 

. . .

The full article is here. 

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Election Day

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Conrad Black on the sham impeachment

Wood Print by Will Bullas via fineartamerica

Conrad Black sums it up:

A shabby fraud launched by a partisan whistle-blower who is acting on hearsay about an innocuous telephone call whose summary, though perhaps not entirely complete, was immediately released to the public cannot go much farther. It has been kept alive by a Star Chamber in which the president is not represented and the Republican questioning and calling of witnesses is done at the behest of the Democratic leadership.

. . .

Under any scenario, the wheels are coming off this disgraceful Democratic garbage cart in all directions. Impeachment will fizzle ignominiously while the former administration is arraigned on serious charges from the Russian scandal, and the Democrats will wallow in their squalid failure to produce a feasible candidate for the White House. Normalcy, for which the country longs, is not dead; it is reawakening at last.

I hope he’s right. Read the entire column here.

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Are you ready to vote?

illustration of New York polling place ca 1900 via Wikipedia

Are you prepared to vote on Tuesday?  Check out your sample ballot at the Board of Elections website for your county.  Information for each county elections board in Ohio can be found at this link.  (Have your ward and precinct details at hand to access your sample ballot.)

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On the ballot next week: judges

Next Tuesday is Election Day. On the Cuyahoga County ballot are two municipal judge races:

Marilyn B. Cassidy vs Jack Russo

and

Ronald J.H. O'Leary vs W. Moná Scott

The website Judge4Yourself.com is a service of the Judicial Candidates Rating Coalition, and the recommendations go to Cassidy and O'Leary.  I am never happy to read that a candidate has been recommended or endorsed by the Editorial Board of cleveland.com, but the other positive ratings appear consistent.  

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Agriculture amnesty bill

Bronson Stocking at Townhall reports on yet another push for amnesty in the House:

Lawmakers have forgotten the lessons of the previous amnesties, or they are hoping the American people have. Yesterday [Weds.], a bipartisan group of House members introduced the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019. Like the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the new bill claims it will only apply to a limited number of illegal-alien agricultural workers, and it promises tougher employment verifications in the future. These are the same broken promises politicians made when they passed amnesty back in 1986. 

Via Neil Munro at Breitbart:

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is opposing the bill. “The name of this mass amnesty bill name should be changed to the Mandatory Farm Labor Act of 2019,” FAIR said.

NumbersUSA just sent out an update on the bill:

Agriculture amnesty bill to include weak E-Verify provision

A bipartisan group of House Members has introduced a new agricultural amnesty bill that includes a new twist from past ag amnesties -- a provision that requires farmers but nobody else to use E-Verify. The E-Verify provision isn't enough, however, to hide the fact that this will be an amnesty for millions of illegal ag workers and encourage more illegal immigration.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act, H.R. 4916, was introduced on Wednesday. The official text has yet to be released, so we don't know all the details. But here's what lead sponsor Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) says the bill would do:

Establish a program for agricultural workers in the United States to earn legal status through continued agricultural employment and contribution to the U.S. agricultural economy.

Reform the H-2A program to provide more flexibility for employers, while ensuring critical protections for workers. The bill focuses on modifications to make the program more responsive and user-friendly for employers and provides access to the program for industries with year-round labor needs.

Establish mandatory, nationwide E-Verify system for all agricultural employment with a structured phase-in and guaranteed due process for authorized workers who are incorrectly rejected by the system.

NumbersUSA's Director of Government Relations, Rosemary Jenks, issued the following statement:

Congress tried amnesty as a solution to large numbers of illegal agricultural workers in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act. As predicted, it failed because the workers left agriculture for easier, better-paying jobs as soon as they got their amnesty, and illegal immigration actually increased thanks to the promise of future amnesties. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act will have the same result: amnestied aliens competing with Americans for non-farm jobs; and more illegal immigration incentivized by amnesty. Moreover, by mandating E-Verify only for agricultural employers, it will actually encourage more illegal aliens to compete with American workers and legal immigrants for non-farm jobs, where E-Verify is not required.

Last year, House lawmakers considered advancing legislation that would require all employers in the U.S. to use E-Verify in exchange for reforming the H-2A agricultural guest worker program. The legislation did allow current illegal ag workers to apply for the new guest worker program, but did not provide an opportunity for permanent amnesty like the Farm Workforce Modernization Act promises to do.

The most concerning aspect of H.R. 4916 is that 44 U.S. Representatives from both sides of the aisle have signed on as original cosponsors.

[NumbersUSA will] continue to monitor the legislation and will post actions after Congress returns from its current recess and we have been able to read and analyze all the details.

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A Halloween Fright

On social media . . .

click to embiggen
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