Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
The toxic roots of this outrageous crime are on display every day. They are found in the sick and malicious rhetoric that filled the air in reaction to the Trump campaign, that has only intensified since his victory. And it wasn’t only from liberals.
How many people on TV, in elected office, from the stages of shrill rallies, have spread the following damnable lies:
-- Donald Trump is a racist.
-- Our cops are racist.
-- Our country is racist.
Pour this poison into the heads of kids already damaged by the societal dysfunctions around them, and we might wonder why we don’t get videos like this with nauseating regularity.
The animus of the left is on constant display. Black Lives Matter tells America that waves of racist cops are out to kill our black youth. Democrat politicians have maligned Trump as a bigot for pure sport, joined by some unhinged NeverTrumpers.
Astride it all, we have had a President for eight years who has discouraged none of this, while adding his own winking double-talk that makes clear his belief that racism is still rampant in the nation that elected him twice.
So don’t let anyone get away with feigned bewilderment over how this barbaric cruelty happened. The responsibility for it is shared by anyone who has engaged in the slanders that fill the daily talking points of the left.
Democrats have been in power for so long that they’ve forgotten how to oppose. Their party has been on a roll since 2005 when the botched Social Security reform, the slow bleed of the Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina sent the Bush administration into a tailspin. The Democrats won the Congress the following year and the White House two years after that. And while they lost the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, Democrats still had the advantage of retaining the White House, a president seemingly immune from criticism, the courts, the bureaucracy, and large portions of the media. The correlation of forces in Washington has weighed heavily in favor of the Democrats for a decade.
No longer. The election of Donald Trump has brought unified Republican government to Washington and overturned our understanding of how politics works. Or at least it should have done so. The Democrats seem not to understand how to deal with Trump and the massive change he is about to bring to the nation’s capital. During the general election they fell for the idea that Trump can be defeated by conventional means, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in negative television advertising and relying on political consultants beholden to whatever line Politico was selling on a given day. This strategy failed Trump’s Republican primary opponents, but Democrats figured that was simply because the GOP was filled with deplorables. It was a rationalization that would cost them.
Republicans control the House, the Senate, 34 governor’s mansions, and 4,100 seats in state legislatures. But Democrats act like they run Washington. Nancy Pelosi’s speech to the 115th House of Representatives was a long-winded recitation of the same liberal agenda that has brought her party to its current low. Give her points for consistency I guess. Chuck Schumer is just being delusional.
Smarting from the failed nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, the Senate minority leader pledged to oppose Donald Trump’s nominee weeks before inauguration day. “If they don’t appoint somebody good,” he said on MSNBC, “we’re going to oppose them tooth and nail.” That would “absolutely” include keeping the seat held by the late Antonin Scalia empty, he said. “We are not going to make it easy for them to pick a Supreme Court justice.”
I suppose it’s too much to expect a graduate of Harvard Law School to grasp the difference between majority and minority. Mitch McConnell was able to block Garland’s appointment because the Republicans controlled the Senate. The Democrats do not. And McConnell was able to hold his caucus together because he was on solid historical ground. Lyndon Johnson’s nomination of Abe Fortas as chief justice failed in the election year 1968, and the so-called “Biden Rule” of 1992 stipulated no Supreme Court replacements during the last year of a presidency. Schumer himself, in a 2007 speech, expanded the waiting period to the final 18 months of a president’s term. Now, despite a record of calling on the Senate to confirm the president’s nominees—as long as the president is a Democrat—Schumer has adopted the strategy of no Supreme Court confirmations at all. How does he think President Trump will respond? By caving?
*****
Yes, the first duty of the opposition is to oppose. And I don’t expect the Democrats to roll over for Trump. But I am surprised by their hysterics, and by their race to see who can be the most obnoxious to the new president. They seem to have been caught off guard, to say the least, by their situation. Take for example their willingness to stand on a podium beside a sign that reads, “Make America Sick Again.” By embracing this message, such as it is, the Democrats associated not Trump but themselves with illness. Who on earth thought that was a good idea?
It takes time to adjust. The Democrats may be counting on inertia and the media to slow the Republicans down and force them into a defensive crouch. Worked in the past. But here’s the thing about Trump: He doesn’t play defense.
Excellent. Just outstanding analysis.
I especially like the part about how McConnell can just change the rules to a straight majority vote for Supreme Court confirmations. I hope he does.
And, the Dems sure are clowns. It's the clown-shoe party, lol.
However, the president remains hopeful about the future.
“I take these things very seriously.”
“The good news is that the next generation that’s coming behind us … have smarter, better, more thoughtful attitudes about race.
“I think the overall trajectory of race relations in this country is actually very positive. It doesn’t mean that all racial problems have gone away. It means that we have the capacity to get better.”
Actually, public opinion polling consistently finds that race relations have deteriorated during the Obama regime. Indeed, a majority of white Americans say race relations have gotten worse over the past eight years, according to a report at Gallup last August, "In U.S., Obama Effect on Racial Matters Falls Short of Hopes":
Americans' optimism about the effects that Obama's election and presidency would have on race relations has ... declined significantly since he was elected in November 2008. At that time, 70% of Americans expected race relations in the U.S. to get better, while only 10% believed relations would get worse. Now, more say that race relations have gotten worse as a result of his presidency (46%) than say they have gotten better (29%).
Whites, by more than a 2-to-1 margin, now say race relations are worse rather than better. Blacks are more charitable in their evaluation of the effect of Obama's presidency on U.S. race relations, but they are divided on whether things are better or worse. Both blacks' and whites' opinions are more pessimistic than they were in October 2009, nine months into Obama's presidency...
A Pew report last June found Americans only slightly less pessimistic about race relations, with fully one third of whites saying race relations have deteriorated, with another 24 percent saying Obama tried but failed to improve relations between the races during his administration. See, "On Views of Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites Are Worlds Apart."
Sixty-nine percent of Americans say race relations are generally bad, one of the highest levels of discord since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles during the Rodney King case, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The poll, conducted from Friday, the day after the killing of five Dallas police officers, until Tuesday, found that six in 10 Americans say race relations were growing worse, up from 38 percent a year ago.
Racial discontent is at its highest point in the Obama presidency and at the same level as after the riots touched off by the 1992 acquittal of Los Angeles police officers charged in Mr. King’s beating.
Relations between black Americans and the police have become so brittle that more than half of black people say they were not surprised by the attack that killed five police officers and wounded nine others in Dallas last week. Nearly half of white Americans say that they, too, were unsurprised by the episode, the survey found...
There's been saturation coverage of the Chicago black thug Facebook beating and torture all day, and so expect new polling on race to be at least as bad as last July, when the Dallas police officers were massacred by a Black Lives Matter supporter.
The Obama regime is really going on an end-of-year administrative blitz, especially on the environment.
So craven and dishonest. Why not push these initiatives during the first administration, or before the 2014 midterms? Of course O's regime knew they'd be unpopular and the Democrats would face massive backlash.
Almost 40% of young Americans were living with their parents, siblings or other relatives in 2015, the largest percentage since 1940, according to an analysis of census data by real estate tracker Trulia.
Despite a rebounding economy and recent job growth, the share of those between the ages of 18 and 34 doubling up with parents or other family members has been rising since 2005. Back then, before the start of the last recession, roughly one out of three were living with family.
The trend runs counter to that of previous economic cycles, when after a recession-related spike, the number of younger Americans living with relatives declined as the economy improved.
The result is that there is far less demand for housing than would be expected for the millennial generation, now the largest in U.S. history. The number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same period, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Analysts point to rising rents in many cities and tough mortgage-lending standards as the culprit, making it difficult for younger Americans to strike out on their own.
“I don’t think those are challenges that are going to keep young households permanently out of the housing market, but it may keep their homeownership rate near historic lows for likely the indefinite future,” said Ralph McLaughlin, Trulia’s chief economist.
The share of young Americans living with parents hit a high of 40.9% in 1940, just a year after the official end of the Great Depression, and fell to a low of 24.1% in 1960. It hovered between about 31% and 33% from 1980 to the mid-2000s, when the rate started climbing steadily.
The census data on living arrangements goes back annually to 1980, and prior to that was collected each decade.
Household formation is closely correlated with housing affordability and income. Among those aged 25 to 34, 40% of those earning less than $25,000 headed their own household. The share rose to 50% for those earning between $25,000 and $50,000, and 58% for those with incomes above $50,000, according to the Harvard Joint Center.
Census data also show younger Americans are getting married and having children later in life than previous generations. Even so, economists project the historically large millennial generation will more than double its current number of households through 2025...
President Obama acknowledged Tuesday that voters may have elected Donald Trump in part out of “natural desires for change,” but he batted down the idea that American voters gave an “outright rejection of my worldview.”
Hours after arriving in Greece to begin his final foreign tour as president, Obama tried to explain the American election, allowing elliptically for the first time that Trump’s election might have been a repudiation of his own presidency.
Presidential elections, Obama said, can turn on personalities as well as campaigns. Sometimes there are “natural desires for change when you have an incumbent who’s been there for eight years,” Obama said.
Still, “a pretty healthy majority of the American people agree” with his vision, Obama said, even though they did not elect Democrat Hillary Clinton on her promise to continue it.
“Sometimes people just feel as if we want to try something to see if we can shake things up, and that, I suspect, was a significant phenomenon,” Obama said.
Defending his record, Obama said key elements of his economic agenda for eight years — raising wages, investing in infrastructure and education — were directed at addressing the kind of anxiety that Trump successfully tapped into throughout his campaign.
"The problem was, I couldn't convince a Republican Congress to pass a lot of them," he said. "Having said that, people seem to think I did a pretty good job. And so there is this mismatch between frustration and anger."
Reacting to Trump’s stunning election upset for the second time in less than a day, this time on foreign soil, Obama drew a distinction between Trump’s victory and the so-called Brexit vote in Britain this summer, but also reflected on how nationalist sentiment that is threatening European unity might inhibit America’s own success...
My last column noted that although America is fighting something like five wars, nobody seems to be talking about it. It would be nice if that were the only important subject that’s not getting enough attention but it isn’t. Here are a few other topics that would be getting major daily attention, if our press and our candidates were better...
I’ve been trying to figure out what common trait binds Clinton supporters together. As far as I can tell, the most unifying characteristic is a willingness to bully in all its forms.
If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.
If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.
if you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.
On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.
We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.
We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that.
Yesterday, by no coincidence, Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos all published similar-sounding hit pieces on me, presumably to lower my influence. (That reason, plus jealousy, are the only reasons writers write about other writers.)
Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole.
Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?
Some Trump supporters online have suggested that people who intend to vote for Trump should wear their Trump hats on election day. That is a dangerous idea, and I strongly discourage it. There would be riots in the streets because we already know the bullies would attack. But on election day, inviting those attacks is an extra-dangerous idea. Violence is bad on any day, but on election day, Republicans are far more likely to unholster in an effort to protect their voting rights. Things will get wet fast.
Yes, yes, I realize Trump supporters say bad things about Clinton supporters too. I don’t defend the bad apples on either side. I’ll just point out that Trump’s message is about uniting all Americans under one flag. The Clinton message is that some Americans are good people and the other 40% are some form of deplorables, deserving of shame, vandalism, punishing taxation, and violence. She has literally turned Americans on each other. It is hard for me to imagine a worse thing for a presidential candidate to do.
I’ll say that again.
As far as I can tell, the worst thing a presidential candidate can do is turn Americans against each other. Clinton is doing that, intentionally.
