The Unbearable Whiteness of Climate Protest

These ghouls are truly the burden of our time.

A genuine scourge.

At Instapundit, "THE PRESS WAS ALWAYS CAREFUL TO DESCRIBE TEA PARTY RALLIES AS “OVERWHELMINGLY WHITE,” BUT NEVER DOES THAT WITH THE CLIMATE RALLIES THAT ARE FAR LESS DIVERSE."

AOC's 'Just Society'

Well, we already had the "Great Society," and it wasn't "just," apparently.

At NPR, "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wants America to Talk About Poverty."

She's a bloody airhead.

I am proud to introduce #AJustSociety package today to begin the important work of building a more just and prosperous society.

You can read more about the legislation here: https://t.co/Cm7BdhFumU

— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) September 25, 2019

Big day!

We’re rolling out our next major project: A Just Society.

It’s a 6-piece suite:

1. Recognizing Poverty Act
2. Place to Prosper Act
3. Mercy in Re-Entry Act
4. Embrace Act
5. Uplift Our Workers Act
6. Ratify the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, & Cultural Rights

⬇️ https://t.co/nPhVxIy7fQ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 25, 2019

The Lie That Latinos Are 'Living in Fear' After El Paso Shooting

The New York Times had this up yesterday:

“It’s quite a transition from being invisible to being visible in a lethal way. It’s something new to my community. We are used to the basic darkness of racism, not this.” https://t.co/Dap8EGaIWe

— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) August 7, 2019

And at the Los Angeles Times from earlier as well:

For Latinos, the El Paso slaughter & its bigoted motive have marked a devastating new low in the Trump era. Stay tuned for coverage of the candidates later today. /4 https://t.co/wFv1f4IXO6

— Michael Finnegan (@finneganLAT) August 5, 2019

Yet, see this morning's piece at LAT, "Migrants say El Paso shooting won’t deter them from seeking new lives in the U.S.":

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico —  The massacre at an El Paso Walmart store on Saturday hasn’t diminished Silvia Ivania’s desire to move to the United States — even if the killer of 22 people was apparently motivated by hatred of Latino immigrants.

“That’s something that can happen anywhere,” said Ivania, 37, a citizen of Honduras, speaking at the Good Samaritan migrant shelter in this border city across the Rio Grande from El Paso. “The violence in Honduras is a lot worse than in the United States.”

She and several other migrants interviewed Tuesday at the shelter — temporary home to about 100, mostly Central Americans, but including U.S.-bound Cubans, Africans and others — agreed that the mass killing would not dissuade them.

“If anything, I want to go to the United States even more than before,” said Danieska Del Toro, 34, from Havana. “They arrested the guy, right? Maybe he was crazy. In Cuba we have violence too, even if the regime says there is none.”


Along the nearby Rio Grande, which separates the U.S. and Mexico, scattered groups of migrants could be seen Tuesday scampering across the river — which, at the moment, has been reduced to a few scattered puddles amid a narrow ribbon of green, and easy to traverse on foot. Its shallow depths seem to mock signs warning people of the danger of drowning.

At midday, amid 100-degree-plus temperatures, about 20 people — some holding their children’s hands — surrendered to U.S. Border Patrol vans waiting on the other side. As is usually the case, the migrants didn’t attempt to evade U.S. immigration authorities, but sought them out.

Mexican National Guard troops posted on the south side said they urged border crossers not to proceed, but didn’t prevent their passage.

“That’s their decision; we just tell them of the risks,” said one Mexican National Guard officer, who declined to be named because she wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Tucker Carlson: White Supremacy is a 'Hoax' (VIDEO)

Well, we do have some white supremacists. But these are not conservatives and Republicans. They're Nazis, and leftists will use the few examples of genuinely evil people to destroy the Trump administration an elect a Democrat-controlled national government in 2020. That's what this is really all about. It's politics. Neither of the suspects in this week's shooting were Strormfront KKK Nazis calling for mass genocide. El Paso's shooter was an environmental leftist who hated immigrants. And the Dayton shooter was a far-left Elizabeth Warren supporter. But the media's got its meme and they're going with it.

Here's Tucker from last night:



Via the leftist Daily Beast, "Tucker Carlson: White Supremacy Is a ‘Hoax’ and ‘Not a Real Problem in America’."

Joaquin Castro Doxxing Trump-Supporting Constituents (VIDEO)

It's bad. I mean think about it: This is a Member of Congress, posting information to his personal Twitter page, calling for the open harassment of American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. Everybody gives money. It's public information so as to prevent campaign finance violations. It's not public to shame and threaten people for participating in the political process. Weaponizing information like this only serves to suppress speech and demonize political opponents. You are literally putting a target on the back of your political opponents. This is where we are in this country. Who's really dividing this country?

See David Harsanyi, at the Federalist, "Joaquin Castro’s Doxxing of Voters is Un-American."

Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump — the owner of ⁦@BillMillerBarBQ⁩, owner of the ⁦@HistoricPearl, realtor Phyllis Browning, etc⁩.

Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’ pic.twitter.com/YT85IBF19u

— Joaquin Castro (@Castro4Congress) August 6, 2019

MSNBC's Willie Geist to Joaquin Castro after he doxxed @realDonaldTrump supporters:

"These people are undoubtedly are already being harassed ... they will be because you put their names in public."

Castro later responds: "I didn't create the graphic."

Give me a break Castro. pic.twitter.com/XgBw8fkevA

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 7, 2019

Trump Sets the Terms; Democrats Are Clueless

At NYT, FWIW, "Trump Sets the Terms on Racial Division. Do Democrats Know What to Do?":

Dems condemn Trump's actions as racist and refocus debate on "kitchen table" issues. But more voices now tell 2020ers that's not enough - they need to speak directly to their racial vision to combat Trump's white ID ptx. This is the kitchen table, they sayhttps://t.co/aLpfjIGuAd

— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) July 21, 2019

GREENVILLE, N.C. — President Trump waited for 13 seconds, as the chants from the crowd of thousands grew louder.

“Send her home!” the North Carolina audience yelled, mimicking Mr. Trump’s recent tweet attacking a Somali-born Democratic congresswoman.

“Treason!” one man screamed.

“Traitor!” shouted another.

The moment Wednesday night, a microcosm of the angry tribalism that often emanates from Mr. Trump’s campaign rallies, immediately caused ripple effects for the president and his party. Some Republican members of Congress denounced the chant as racist and xenophobic. Mr. Trump tepidly disavowed his supporters’ words, only to praise them the following day. For Democrats, especially the candidates seeking to defeat Mr. Trump, the impact of the rally was clear: This will be a general election focused on race, identity and Mr. Trump’s brand of white grievance politics.

Until this past week, the 2020 field has generally tried to ignore the president’s incendiary language — talking about it, the thinking goes, only gives him more power. Instead, candidates have preferred to discuss policies, making the case for themselves by advocating changes in the criminal justice system or maternal health, or ways to eliminate the racial wealth gap.

Now some feel an urgency to take a different approach.

“This election will be a referendum, not on Donald Trump, but a referendum on who we are and who we must be to each other,” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said. “But this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

Senator Kamala Harris of California, the most viable woman of color to run for president, said that the scenes from Mr. Trump’s rally, while personally upsetting, were not surprising.

“When we’re on that stage together in the general, I know he’ll try to pull the same thing with me,” Ms. Harris said. “But I’m fully prepared for that. I’m up for it. Because he is small. He is wrong. He is a bully.”

And at a fund-raiser in Los Angeles on Friday, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told supporters that Mr. Trump is “tearing at the social fabric of this country.”

“This is not hyperbole,” Mr. Biden said. “The fact of the matter is this president is more George Wallace than George Washington.”

But even as Democratic candidates universally denounced Mr. Trump’s comments, they did not agree on how the eventual presidential nominee should combat the racial division embedded in those words. Do you, on the campaign trail, talk directly about the president’s inflammatory language, racism and discrimination in this country? Or do you talk about jobs and the economy?

Democratic Party leaders, particularly establishment figures with ties to Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, have largely followed a strategy of careful avoidance: responding to the president’s most inflammatory moments, while attempting to redirect the political debate to what is often described as “kitchen table” issues, such as health care and wages.

However, an increasingly vocal group of Democratic grass-roots organizers and pollsters believe that Mr. Trump’s words and legislative actions amount to a cohesive playbook of white identity politics, meant to court white voters of all economic tiers around the idea that their fates are linked, and are under threat by an increasingly diversifying America. They argue that racism and the public performance of it is a “kitchen table” issue for many voters — black and white — that must be dealt with head-on.

“Just as much time and resources as the nominee spends on targeting and messaging around health care and wages and climate change, they should spend an equal amount of resources around an alternative racial vision for the country,” said Cornell Belcher, a prominent pollster who worked with Mr. Obama. “This isn’t a goddamn distraction.”

Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director of the progressive group Center for Popular Democracy, said Democrats must embrace this moment as an opportunity.

“You have to be able to speak powerfully about our willingness to belong together,” Ms. Archila said. “Don’t just condemn the racism and the language but use it as an opportunity to argue for a vision of the country in which we can all be included.”

To some progressives, the stakes are not just winning in 2020...

Still more.

House Democrats Prepare for Civil War

Grab the popcorn.

At Instapundit, "BLUE ON BLUE: House Democrats Prepare for Civil War as Challengers Plot Primary Battles: Several entrenched New York representatives will face progressive hopefuls seeking to replicate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s success."

Also linked, "Gramscian Damage."

PC is like Jonestown on a civilizational scale. There's enormous social pressure to drink tne Kool Aid. Future archaeologists will be unable to explain what they find.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) July 20, 2019

Ilhan Omar: 'I'm Certainly Not Anti-Semitic' (CARTOON)

Seen on Twitter:

.@IlhanOmar claims she isn't #antisemitic but her statements and actions speak louder. In her short tenure as Congresswoman, she's alienated many of her Somali voters, her Democratic colleagues, and introduced a pro-BDS bill - a movement established and infiltrated by terrorists pic.twitter.com/zKIV2AR8eI

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) July 19, 2019

The Dems' 'Ultimate Nightmare Scenario'

I love this, at Instapundit, "HEH: The Democrats’ ‘Ultimate Nightmare Scenario’: Trump Loses By 5 Million Votes…. And Still Wins Re-Election."

Click through to read the whole thing.

Gayle King Interviews 'The Squad' (VIDEO)

Derek Hunter, at Town Hall, calls them "The Suicide Squad," for obvious reasons.

These four on their own will get Trump reelected in 2020.

Grab the popcorn.

At CBS This Morning:

Trump Has the Moral High Ground

From David P. Goldman, at Pajamas, "President Trump Has the Moral High Ground Against the Democrats":

ABSOLUTE MUST READ> President Trump Has the Moral High Ground Against the Democrats https://t.co/jljJa2rxkZ #Spengler via @pjmedia_com

— Roger Simon (@rogerlsimon) July 17, 2019

I'm tired of hearing conservative friends apologize for President Trump's "go back to where you came from" tweets about the likes of Ilhan Omar. The president has the moral high ground, and the weasel war dance of the mainstream media shouldn't distract us from this fact.

Even his worst enemies (e.g. ex-conservative David Frum) concede that Trump's attacks on the anti-American extremists in the Democratic Party are smart politics. As Tucker Carlson observed in his June 16 keynote at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, a new Axios poll gives the Jew-baiting Somali an approval rating of 9%: "Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — another member of The Squad — was recognized by 53% of the voters; 9% (not a typo) had a favorable view." Not a typo, indeed. When is the last time any American politican had a 9% approval rating? Americans really detest this wretched character, and with good reason. It has nothing to do with race, but with rhetoric that breaks the boundaries of acceptable political discourse, America-hating and Jew-baiting.

But this isn't about trolling the Democrats. It's about principle. President Trump has a gift for asking the obvious questions that the elites avoid, for example: What idiot let Omar into the United States in the first place? Come to think of it, why should we admit immigrants who hate us and hate everything we stand for? I believe that new Americans are as good as old Americans, and sometimes better, if they become Americans with a passion for our principles and love for what we represent. But we are under no obligation to open our national home to our enemies. The liberal globalist idea that we need to bow, scrape and apologize to every foreigner with a grudge against us rankles the American people. That inanity appeals to a few Americans--maybe about 9%, judging from the Axios poll. The rest of us have had it up to here.

Where were our holier-than-thou Democrats when the detestable Ilhan Omar dismissed the murder of thousands of Americans on 9/11 with a wink and a nod and the words, "Some people did something"? We know where they were then Omar claimed that Jews buy the votes of congressmen with cash ("It's the Benjamins, baby"). The Democratic-controlled House passed a limp-noodle resolution deploring anti-Semitism along with hostility to Muslims after 9-11 -- in response to overtly racist statements by Omar. That's right -- racist. Mind if I say it again? Rep. Ilhan Omar is a racist, because anti-Semitism is a species of racism. The false allegation that Jews buy pro-Israel votes with money is an old racist caricature. No-one in the Democratic leadership has the honesty to denounce Omar as a racist.

President Trump's remarks had NOTHING whatever to do about race. He attacked America haters. The color of their skin is irrelevant. By attacking him as a racist, the Democratic leadership has debased the concept of racism. Racism is a wicked and terrible thing. People should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Race hatred and race prejudice are detestable. But the racist here is NOT the president of the United States, but rather Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Omar's racism has consequences. Synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego were the victims of recent mass shootings. Physical assaults against Jews are routine in parts of New York City. Omar's racist rabble-rousing puts lives in danger. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Jews comprised 58% of all hate crimes in the United States during 2018, although Jews are about 1% of the U.S. population. Anti-Semitic lies of the sort that Omar propounds are an incitement to murder and mayhem. The Democrats refuse to discipline their own rogue elements. Someone had to call them out, and President Trump did...

Keep reading.

The Nightmare of an America Ruled by #AOC

From Kurt Schlichter, at Town Hall, "The Nightmare of an America Ruled by AOC and Her Socialist Pals":

The future, if you let it be the future ...

You don’t have to surrender like some 🛳🛳🛳sissy...

My new @Townhallcom column is a warning, though a hilarious one...🤷🏼‍♂️🔥🇺🇸https://t.co/3qSEd9KRVt

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) July 18, 2019

It’s hard to take braying morons like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Terrorist Cheerleader Twins seriously, but maybe we should. After all, these aspiring dictatorettes are the heart, soul, and perpetually open mouth of today’s Democrat Party. We kind of assume they are jokes because, well, they are jokes, but history teaches that the socialist future they advocate is no laughing matter. They are now setting the agenda for one of America’s two great political parties. What would happen if they somehow took power?

Not so funny anymore, huh?

Keep reading.

'Send Her Back!' President Donald Trump Rallies Supporters at North Carolina Campaign Event (VIDEO)

I watched it.

It was feakin' amazing. What a speech. Trump was cussing!

Beautiful.

Folks don't like the "send her back" chant, but who cares? Trump's steamrolling the Dems, and it's glorious, gawd!

The left is in full meltdown mode, at HuffPo, for example, at Memeorandum, "A Fascist Trump Rally In Greenville."

And at USA Today, "Donald Trump blames supporters for 'send her back' taunts against black lawmaker."

And LAT, "Trump seeks to disavow ‘send her back’ chant at his rally":

WASHINGTON —  The morning after chants of “Send her back” rang across one of his campaign rallies, President Trump sought to disavow it, insisting that he “was not happy with it.”
Trump made no effort to stop the chants during his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday night. Instead, he paused during the shouting and looked on for several seconds, appearing to show approval. The crowd broke into the chants of “Send her back” as Trump began cataloging grievances against Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

“I was not happy with it — I disagree with it,” Trump told reporters during a photo session in the Oval Office on Thursday morning.

His disavowal of the chants came after a growing number of Republican congressional leaders criticized it but sought to put distance between the president and the racist chants.

“Those chants have no place in our party or our country,”House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield told reporters.

Later, at a news conference, McCarthy avoided repeating his criticism and defended Trump, saying that “the president did not join in” the chanting. “The president moved on.”

Pressed on whether Trump should have admonished the crowd to stop, McCarthy said the question was unfair.

“You want to dislike the president so much, you want to try to hold him accountable for something in a big audience,” he said. “I think that’s an unfair position.”

The head of the Republican congressional campaign committee, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, was among Republican congressional leaders who criticized the chant.

“There’s no place for that kind of talk,” he said at a breakfast for reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

The shouts at the rally carried obvious echoes of Trump’s favorite 2016 chant, “Lock her up,” which broke its own norms by calling for the incarceration of his political opponent, Hillary Clinton. That chant became a hallmark of Trump rallies even long after he had defeated Clinton.

Omar is one of four women of color in the so-called “squad” of progressive members of Congress whom Trump attacked earlier this week, suggesting that they should “go back” to “the crime infested places from which they came.” The others are Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

All four are American. Three were born in the United States; Omar was born in Somalia.

The racist tweet prompted the House to pass a resolution of condemnation on Tuesday, mostly along party lines. Four Republicans and an independent joined the chamber’s Democrats in condemning Trump’s words. The president has only reiterated his attacks, and his comments at Wednesday’s rally confirmed expectations that he plans to use the clash with the women to drive a hard racial wedge as he campaigns for reelection in 2020...

Identity Politics, Grievance, and the #Dems Who Hate America (VIDEO)

From Rich Lowry, at the New York Post, "Woke assimilation: Teaching our politicians to hate America":

Beto O’Rourke — the losing Texas candidate for the US Senate who bootstrapped his way into becoming a losing presidential candidate — had a message for refugees who had come to America: Your new country is a hellhole.

The former congressman told a roundtable of refugees and immigrants in Nashville last week: “This country was founded on white supremacy. And every single structure that we have in this country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression.”

Just in case the newcomers were inclined to believe that they had escaped to the greatest country on Earth — an open, dynamic, generous society that, whatever their struggles now, will afford them opportunities unimaginable back home — Beto was there to tell them of all its sins.

He had made himself into an instrument of woke assimilation.

This is the backdrop of the controversy over Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born left-wing member of Congress whom President Trump urged, in particularly noxious tweets, to return to her native country and fix it before presuming to tell us what to do.

It’s a mistake, though, to think that Omar is anything other than on her way to total assimilation, only on the terms set out by Beto O’Rourke...

More.

And at Hot Air, "Beto O’Rourke Addresses Immigrants and Refugees — By Telling Them America Was Founded on White Supremacy."

Radical Democrats Are in Charge (VIDEO)

It's Hannity, on Fox:

Why Kamala Harris' Ancestry is Relevant

At the Other McCain, "The Media Smear Machine (and Why Kamala Harris’s Ancestry Is Relevant)."

Neither of Kamala Harris’s parents are Americans. Her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica. Harris spent most of her childhood in Canada. She thus has little in common with most black people in the United States whose ancestors were slaves here. Before this fact became controversial, it was referenced by such “far-right” personalities as . . . CNN’s Don Lemon.

Keep reading.

Thanks to #Democrats, Pride in America Hits New Low

At Gallup, "American Pride Hits New Low; Few Proud of Political System":

#Democrats hate America. 🤷‍♂️ #July4th #Patriotism #Dems #Antifa #AntiAmericanism cc. @MichelleMalkin 😯 https://t.co/KH2RqkYKTd

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 3, 2019

The latest overall declines in patriotism are largely driven by Democrats, whose self-reported pride has historically been lower and has fluctuated more than Republicans'. Democrats' latest 22% extreme pride reading is the group's lowest in Gallup's 19 years of measurement, and is half of what it was several months before Donald Trump's 2016 election victory.

For their part, most Republicans have remained extremely proud of their country, and the latest 76% reading is just 10 points below the high recorded in 2003. Even when Barack Obama was in office, Republicans' extreme pride never fell below 68%.

Independents have historically been less proud of the U.S. than Republicans have been; currently, 41% express extreme pride -- which is, by one point, the lowest reading in the trend.

Several subgroups that typically identify as Democrats -- women, liberals and younger adults -- all express lower levels of extreme U.S. pride than their counterparts...

D Is for Damaged, Dangerous and Delusional

From Dennis Prager, at American Greatness:

D Is for Damaged, Dangerous and Delusional https://t.co/fVKUdAmhqL pic.twitter.com/SgTSe8vocc

— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) July 3, 2019

If you watched either or both of the two Democratic Party presidential candidate debates, and if you are a liberal, a conservative or a centrist, you had to have been depressed. The intellectual shallowness, the demagoguery and the alienation from reality were probably unprecedented in American political history. Only a leftist, a socialist or a communist could have gone to bed a happy person on either night.

If you think this is a baseless generalization, here are a few of myriad examples from the first night:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): “(The economy is not doing great) for the African Americans and Latinx whose families are torn apart, whose lives are destroyed and whose communities are ruined.”

Two things stand out: First is Warren’s morally reprehensible and false description of the economy. She never explains how the American economy is tearing families apart, destroying lives or ruining communities. Aside from being baseless, it is another left-wing libel against America.

She went on to explain economic inequality in America: “Corruption, pure and simple. We need to call it out.” It is difficult to overstate the contempt she and the rest of the left have for America.

Even more troubling was Warren’s use of the term “Latinx.” When leftist Orwellian newspeak makes its way into the United States Senate and into the vocabulary of a presidential candidate, the country is in trouble.

Here is how HuffPost explains the term (of which it approves):

“Latinx is the gender-neutral alternative to Latino, Latina and even Latin@. … Latinx is quickly gaining popularity among the general public. It’s part of a ‘linguistic revolution’ that aims to move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Latin American descendants. In addition to men and women from all racial backgrounds, Latinx also makes room for people who are trans, queer, agender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or gender fluid.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.): “If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.”

My only response to this statement is to ask, Do most Democrats find that a compelling argument? Do they not realize what a non sequitur it is—and therefore how demagogic?

Billionaires, like non-billionaires, pay off their debts because they do not incur debts they cannot repay, not because they are billionaires. Senator Klobuchar apparently believes that non-billionaires need not pay off their debts. Every Democrat who addressed this issue said American society should repay student debts—which amount to $1.6 trillion. The party of “fairness” thinks it’s fair that every student who repaid his or college debts—and every young American who never went to college—must pay off that debt.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro spoke in Spanish. Perhaps they—like all on the left—are unaware of the importance of all Americans speaking English in uniting the most ethnically disparate nation in human history. You cannot say “diversity is our strength” if you do not work to unite all the diverse cultures into Americans. And you cannot unite Americans without one language.

Their speaking Spanish was so transparently pandering to Latin, Latino, Latina, Latin@ and Latinx Americans that, for that reason alone, that group should decline to vote Democrat.

O’Rourke: “This economy has got to work for everyone. And right now, we know that it isn’t.”

This is just not true. Given some of the lowest unemployment rates in modern American history, this economy seems to be working quite well—certainly for all those willing to work.

Booker: “This is actually an economy that’s hurting small businesses and not allowing them to compete.”

The question I always want answered when someone on the left tells an outright lie is, Does he or she believe it? Someone should ask this of Booker. As the National Federation of Independent Businesses announced last month:

“Optimism among small business owners has surged back to historically high levels, thanks to strong hiring, investment, and sales,” said NFIB President and CEO Juanita D. Duggan. “The small business half of the economy is leading the way, taking advantage of lower taxes and fewer regulations, and reinvesting in their businesses, their employees, and the economy as a whole.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: “There’s plenty of money in this country. It’s just in the wrong hands. Democrats have to fix that.”

The notion that America’s money is “in the wrong hands, (and) Democrats have to fix that” should frighten every American who believes in private property and who opposes dictatorships and theft.

Castro: “I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom; I believe in reproductive justice.”

Here’s an important rule: Whenever anyone adds an adjective to the word “justice,” know that the person is not speaking about justice but about something else entirely. “Social” justice is another such example.

Castro boldly proclaimed his view that unauthorized border crossing should be decriminalized and announced, “In my first 100 days with immigration reform (I) would put undocumented (i.e., illegal) immigrants, as long as they haven’t committed a serious crime, on a pathway to citizenship.”

Though not one Democrat candidate used the term, every single one believes in open borders...

Kamala Harris Wants to Bring Back Forced Busing

This is at the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Kamala Harris and Classmates Were Bused Across Berkeley. The Experience Changed Them."

She's on record as supporting a return to the failed desegregation polices of the 1970s.

And at the Los Angeles Times, "School busing in Berkeley during Kamala Harris’ childhood was both voluntary and volatile":

Kamala Harris, Berkeley and busing >>> "Even in a city that had become a worldwide symbol of 1960s counterculture revolt, systemic racial prejudice in education and housing remained deeply entrenched." https://t.co/3sBXbF6yHe Excellent @LATSeema @melmason @finneganLAT

— Shelby Grad (@shelbygrad) July 1, 2019

.@KamalaHarris: “I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in [school]...need to put every effort, including busing, into play to de-segregate the schools...fed govt has a role & a responsibility to step up." pic.twitter.com/a7ujueP0Bu

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) June 30, 2019

The school bus ride was less than three miles from one side of Berkeley to the other, but from 1969 to 1973 it transported Carole Porter to an entirely different world.

Like her neighbor and friend Kamala Harris, Porter was one of thousands of black children bused into predominantly white neighborhoods to learn. It was part of Berkeley’s bold experiment in desegregation.

But even in a city that had become a worldwide symbol of 1960s counterculture revolt, systemic racial prejudice in education and housing remained deeply entrenched.

“That’s a really hard thing to reconcile,” said Porter, 55. “Berkeley was an oxymoron. It was a contradiction in many ways.”

Harris’ three years of busing from her family’s mainly black working-class neighborhood to a prosperous white enclave in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay was at once universal and uniquely Berkeley.

As in many American cities, the discriminatory housing policy known as redlining kept blacks from moving into white neighborhoods in Berkeley and busing fueled some white flight to the suburbs.

But unlike other sizable cities, Berkeley undertook its busing program voluntarily and required both white and black families to travel into unfamiliar neighborhoods. Rapid demographic and political changes shielded the community from the most extreme pushback, including violence, that hobbled busing efforts nationwide.

More than 50 years after Berkeley launched its busing program, Harris, one of its most famous participants, thrust it back into the spotlight in last week’s Democratic presidential debate.

As California’s first black senator chastised her rival Joe Biden for his fight against forced busing in the ’70s, she leaned on her personal history in Berkeley, portraying herself as a beneficiary of the charged battle for educational equality.

“There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said. “And that little girl was me.”

Contrary to its enduring reputation as a progressive mecca, the Berkeley of Harris’ childhood was more politically muddled. The conservative John Birch Society operated two bookstores in the area. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that Democrats cracked a Republican stronghold on the city council. Black residents were restricted to living to the southern and western flats, while whites resided in the northern hills.

Thelette A. Bennett, 71, a retired vice principal of Berkeley High School, grew up in the same neighborhood as Harris.

Bennett’s father, a black World War II Navy veteran, was an airplane mechanic at a local naval air station in 1945, when redlining blocked him and his wife from buying a house in a white neighborhood. Even in the black neighborhood where they settled, she said, they needed to get a white real estate agent to buy a home and transfer it to them.

“There were only certain areas where they could buy a home,” Bennett said. “We lived where they allowed us to live.”

But a large influx of African Americans during and after World War II and whites affiliated with UC Berkeley were pulling the local politics to the left, paving the way for desegregation. Black leaders raised concerns about segregation in the city starting in the late 1950s.

In response, the school board studied the matter, concluding that all but three of the district’s 17 elementary schools and two of the three junior high schools were segregated. (Berkeley High, the city’s only high school, was integrated by default.) In 1964, the school board voted to desegregate its junior high schools.

Residents’ reactions were not as extreme as the segregation battles elsewhere in the country, such as the South, but “it wasn’t as far from that as you might assume,” said Natalie Orenstein, a reporter for local news site Berkeleyside. “There were definitely really angry parents and hours-long school meetings.”

Desegregation opponents launched recall campaigns of multiple school board members over the junior high busing program, but lost by a wide margin.

Democrats Move Left --- Frankly, It's Just All Out in the Open Now

It's not like the Dems haven't been a far-left extremist party. It's now that they're not afraid to come out as the crypto-Marxists they truly are.

At LAT, "This is not your father’s Democratic Party: Debate shows how leftward it has moved":

The Democratic Party opened its 2020 presidential debates with a remarkably policy-focused exchange that illustrated how consistently to the left they have moved. For the night, at least, this was Elizabeth Warren’s party.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who entered the debate with momentum behind her campaign, set the tone and dominated the early part of the debate, which focused on economic policy.

“When you've got a government, when you've got an economy that does great for those with money and isn't doing great for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple,” she said. “We need to make structural change in our government, in our economy and in our country.”

Even those of her rivals who don’t fully share that assessment declined chances to put themselves at odds with Warren. Instead, they sang from the same hymnal of left-wing economic populism declaring the need for broad reforms of the political and economic system.

“It is time we have an economy that works for everybody,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, after minimizing his differences with Warren’s plan to break up big tech companies.

The shift in the party goes beyond economics. As the debate made clear, it includes gun control, abortion, climate change and immigration, among other issues. On each of those, candidates took positions to the left of those embraced by either of the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who was barely mentioned by any of the candidates.

Rather than Clinton’s call for abortion to be “safe, legal and rare,” for example, the debate featured candidates stressing that the universal healthcare plans they backed would include public funds to pay for abortions for poor women.

On healthcare, only two candidates — Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio — raised their hands when asked who would favor fully abolishing private health insurance plans in favor of instituting “Medicare for all.” But even those who favored a more moderate approach, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, for example, said they preferred a new government health insurance option for all — an idea that was considered too radical to pass when Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act less than a decade ago.

On immigration, former Obama Cabinet official Julián Castro pressed for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, making that a civil rather than a criminal offense. While Castro was correct in saying that the Trump administration had used the criminal law in a far more aggressive way than its predecessors, the law that makes unauthorized border crossings a criminal offense has been on the books for decades. Eliminating it is a move popular with some activists.

At least three of the candidates — Warren, Booker and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio — share Castro’s view. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke disagreed, and the clash between the two Texans over decriminalizing the border made for one of the night’s most intense moments, but it was notable that the disagreement came on a proposal that went far beyond anything that the Obama administration, in which Castro served, ever talked about.

And there was broad party consensus on gun control, an issue that Democrats for years shied from. Booker’s proposal to require gun licensing goes significantly further than what gun-safety advocates have dreamed of proposing.

The leftward tilt of the party did give some candidates pause.

“We have a perception problem with the Democratic Party that we are not connecting to the working class,” said Ryan, who represents the Youngstown, Ohio, area. “We have to change the center of gravity from being coastal elites and Ivy League.”

Klobuchar took a veiled swipe at Warren’s promises to enact broad changes in the political and economic system.

“I don’t make all the promises others up here make,” Klobuchar said. “I’m going to govern.”

But others argued for going further left, notably De Blasio, struggling for a breakout moment and calling the primary a “battle for the heart and soul of our party.”

“This Democratic Party has to be strong and bold and progressive,” he said.