Happy Brexit Day

Congratulations to our cousins across the pond!

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Ad on immigration policy

Video of a "best ad" for the 2020 election cycle, forwarded to me by a buddy in DC:

I have not been able to find this elsewhere online, so it may be a sneak peek.

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Peter Schweizer on Sen. Sherrod Brown

Here’s more from Peter Schweizer’s chapter in Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite (HarperCollins) on Sen. Sherrod Brown (footnote numbers silently deleted) :

Sherrod Brown has always relied on a certain roguish charm when in the public spotlight. Described by the media as a “handsome, gravelly-voiced defender of the working class; perpetually mentioned in presidential conversations,” he has spent almost his entire adult life either serving in political office or running for it. The unique appeal to his supporters, in addition to that charm, is the fact that he viewed “himself as a progressive before it was cool.”. . .

. . .

Brown displays his working-class sentiments in his Senate office reception area, where he has a miner’s safety lamp sitting on the table, as well as a beer stein from the United Mine Workers. . . .

His wife, Connie Schultz, once sent an email to a colleague at the Cleveland Plain Dealer who had drawn a political cartoon critical of him. She wrote: “For 30 years, Sherrod has fought for those who would have no voice and no future without him . . . (and he) remains a hero to so many. . . .

But Brown himself, as we will see, grew up privileged. While he has campaigned with a hole in one shoe (and drawn the media’s attention to it with an early, infamous reelection advertisement), his roots are far from working class.

. . .Sherrod Brown’s friend John Eichinger jokingly explained at a Democratic Party roast back in 1982 that Brown’s approach is to “get money from the rich and votes from the poor by promising to protect them from each other.”

It is a formula that has worked in American politics for more than one hundred years.

However, a closer examination reveals a far more complex picture than that of a conventional progressive politician. More than simply using that political strategy to win office, Brown seems to have used his government office to benefit his family, in particular, his brother’s legal practice, which has engaged in what some might consider strange and suspect lawsuits. Additionally, Brown’s advocacy for “workers” appears to be far more about protecting union leaders who donate to his campaigns than rank-and-file union workers. Indeed, when the interests of union leaders and the union members clash, Brown consistently sides with the bosses who have underwritten his many political campaigns.

The chapter contains over 100 footnotes to print and online sources.  I chose the above extracts to provide a partial overview of chapter 6, and there is much more on Sen. Brown’s relationships with and activities involving labor pension funds and his association with his brother’s law firm.

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Trump rally today in Wildwood New Jersey

photo credit: The Hill

Pamela Geller reports:

People actually camped outside on [Monday] evening, for a Trump rally that is occurring today. New Jersey is a solidly blue state, but that means nothing to the people camping outside. They just want to see the #GOAT [“Greatest of All Time” – I had to look it up] president. It is going to be a wild rally in Wildwood, New Jersey.

Duke Reale, from Galloway Township, is so determined to see President Trump in Wildwood that he arrived two days early so he could be first in line. Soon, dozens showed up right beside him.

RECORD-BREAKER: 175,000 Requests For Tickets To Trump Rally In NJ Tonight; Hundreds Camp Out In Cold 

One America News will provide full coverage of the president’s “Keep America Great” rally, without interruption, this evening (Tuesday, Jan 28) starting at 7 p.m. EST. If you don’t have access to OAN, Right Side Broadcast Network (RSBN) will livestream it, and you can find the link at Conservative Treehouse (scroll down if necessary).  (Sundance usually posts the link an hour or two before the event begins, but he already has a link to the RSBN twitter video feed checking out the crowds. Click here.)

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Why this political nightmare never ends

image credit: medicalxpress.com

Victor Davis Hanson argues that the radical Democrats have boxed themselves in – they have no choice but to keep on their path to a “slow motion suicide” :

Democrats don’t talk up their alternate agenda because they know that more regulations, open borders, trade appeasement, banning fracking, and the green new deal, would be the very opposite of Trump’s plan and likely achieve the very opposite of Trump’s results. In this context, destroying Trump is not just the only viable trajectory for the Left, but it is also the only possible narrative. Again, to focus on the current left-wing agenda is slow-motion suicide.

The Democrats know that impeachment will not lead to a conviction. They accept that they are not gaining traction in the polls. They fear that Trump’s wounds heal quickly and what doesn’t destroy him can make him stronger.

So why continue? Again, there is little other alternative. Moreover, addicts do not act logically and the Left is hooked on Trump and cannot quit him. Finally, they hope to destroy Trump physically. He will be 74 in June. By the standards of senior medicine, they feel Trump is locked in a self-destructive cycle: little sleep, little exercise, poor diet, too heavy, too stressed.

Hanson’s column at American Greatness is here.

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Peter Schweizer on Fox/Levin tomorrow

Peter Schweizer has been making the rounds on the news shows, talking about his book, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite (HarperCollins). I am partway through the book, and it’s both frightening and well-documented.  As I linked the other day, Rebecca Mansour at Breitbart reported that the

bombshell investigative book contains 1,126 endnotes totaling 83 pages of source material, Breitbart News has learned.

In addition, the book contains no unnamed sources. Instead, it is based on hard evidence and documents, including: foreign and domestic corporate and legal records, tax liens, lobbyist disclosures, property records, White House visitor logs, federal bankruptcies, and federal criminal trial records.

Anyway, Mr. Schweizer’s appearances on, e.g., Watter’s World, are frustrating, as most hosts do most of the talking. But Sunday evening (tomorrow), Mr. Schweizer will be on Mark Levin’s Fox broadcast at 8pm of Live, Liberty and Levin.  While I go hot and cold on Mr. Levin, his Sunday evening broadcasts on Fox are generally restrained, well-prepared, and designed to maximize the commentary by the guest. I’ll be tuning in.

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Still an uphill battle

Most of the metrics are up: the economy, employment, Main Street, jobs, etc.  And even though the impeachment charade should never have been validated by the Senate, many conservatives can be comforted by the fact that things are, indeed, getting better. Or are they?  Mark Bauerlein at American Greatness sobers us up again:

The election of November 2016, the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the Mueller report debacle, the Iran turnaround, and other wins for conservatives may be satisfying, but they have not shaken the leftist lock on our institutions one bit. The simmering stew of LGBT rights, toxic masculinity, white privilege, disparate impact calculations, and Millennial social justice campaigns has become dogma in corporate America, media, higher education, K-12 public schools (and many private schools, too), Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Broadway, the art world, museums, libraries . . .

. . .

For the Left, outcomes trump procedure just as politics eclipses intelligence, conscientiousness, and competence. One thing I saw in more than 30 years in academia was that while leftists on the faculty were not always the brightest bulbs in the room, they often managed to populate university and department committees where policies were created and passed. While we were teaching and researching; they were reshaping the institution. We were getting on with our work, pushing our individual careers, getting our names in print, and believing we were advancing the field and the school. They were taking over. Put it this way: We were clueless, they were canny.

Donald Trump understands this. That’s one reason the Left despises him. He typically doesn’t bother to debate ideas and ideals, but this is not anti-intellectualism, as the liberal says. It is, instead, his awareness that politics is now, first and foremost, a battle of persons, not ideologies or tax rates or trade. The Kavanaugh episode proves the point, for this battle was all about the individual (which is one reason why Supreme Court appointments are so heated).

In recent times, conservatives have tended to focus on ideas. If, after President Trump leaves office, they don’t start thinking more about personnel, if they don’t consider the population of institutions as much as they do the structure of institutions, if they choose a leader who thinks technocratically instead of ad hominem-ly, we will indeed end up with the permanent Democratic majority liberal intellectuals have predicted for the last 20 years.

Read the rest here.

And a follow-up: One American News’s special report on FISA abuse (blogged here) is not at present scheduled for a re-broadcast.

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