I daresay, not every criminal lawyer enjoys the company of their client (s) but understand it is their responsibility and professional obligation to defend them. In order to carry out the constitutional rights of their client(s) they must separate their personal feelings and objectively perform to the best of their ability.
I mention this because I always remind those who find Trump's personality distasteful to judge him by his accomplishments and how well he carries out the authority and demands of his office. The first responsibility of any president, their "primal" constitutional commitment, is to defend and protect this nation from all adversaries, domestic and foreign.
This is why Trump is concerned with border protection. His commentary and justification for his actions, at times, may reach the level of a put off and suggests a bias. I challenge Trump detractors to view his actions against the raw efforts by Democrats to undercut and thwart him for narrow political gain.
The likes of Pelosi, Schumer, Nadler, Schiff, Brennan, Clapper, Comey et al and their efforts to harangue this president are without precedent. They cannot be justified under the umbrella of objectivity and legislative responsibility.. Their distaste for this duly elected adversary and the accompanying efforts by the mass media to haunt this man is beyond sanity. Their motives are completely suspect and driven by a level of hatred that borders on treason.
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Every once in a while I come across and post an op ed I find hits a sensitive nerve and I feel compelled to re-post. This is such an op ed.
Stop and think, if you are a Trump supporter, fear what is happening to our nation and rather than speak out you remain silent and are less likely to put stickers on your car. You are reluctant to challenge those who hold different views for fear of being branded what you are not, a racist. Certainly you are not likely to wear a Trump Hat for fear of physical harm. If you are a university/college student you are likely to be the object of rejection and physical harm.
In essence, if you are Christian, you are beginning to feel and act like the (dead) Jews in Germany and Poland. You are living in Obama's America because Democrats have a mission to attack the president you voted for and who won fair and square.
It is time to speak out, not cower and shrink away. If you continue to duck you will continue to lose your freedom and America will become a former great nation. Certainly that is not what you want.
Most of the postings in this memo support my view that it is way past time to react to the slow death we are all suffering at the hands of Radical Democrats.
Historically, at times, we have been able to fall back on the youth of this nation as during the Civil Right's days but they are not there anymore In fact, they have become radicalized, are no longer taught about our great nation and the values of America. They have become snow flakes, afraid of their shadows and unable to stand tall because everything offends their manufactured delicate sensitivity.
We are growing a generation of wimps uneducated in the knowledge of their own country. This is why they are prone to listen to and believe the garbage from the mass media and those who hate this country and want to bring it down to it's knees. They have fallen for the trap of socialism and the need to change all that once made us great.
While our grandson, Kevin, was here we discussed his thoughts about his former role as a TV investigative reporter and why he chose to leave his profession and seek a master's degree in the field of social behaviour.
He believes the role of an investigative TV reporter is declining and offers no fruitful personal future. In fact, he believes TV watching is under tremendous pressure from other technological formats and challenges and that his generation does not have the temperament to watch long programs etc. nor do the owners of TV stations wish to expose themselves to controversy and potential law suits consistent with serving the ombudsman obligations and responsibilities of the "fourth estate."
If Kevin's views are correct our republic is threatened and The Western way of life will be severely challenged. The average citizen receives information on which they base their judgement regarding society and performance of their elected largely from the mass media. If the mass media no longer serves their historical role what will take it's place? How will citizens, living in a democratic society, conduct themselves as informed and intelligent voters? Add to this potential fact the decline in education and ability to discern and raw emotion is likely to supplant reason.
Judgement motivated by emotion versus reason will create an entirely different world. Where will come the checks and balances? (See 1 below.)
AND:
(See 1a, 1b and 1c below.) If your blood is boiling then read/watch this:
Finally:Factual, climate video… a very informative explanation actually based on the "HISTORY" of climate change, not on politics!
This from one of my father's former law partners and one of the best attorney's in all of Birmingham:
" to me:
M----
Labour’s hate files expose Corbyn’s anti‑semite army
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/art
And:
Vile anti-semitism met with ‘a slap on the wrist’ at most
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/art
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Salena has interviewed the blue collar workers and Democrats do not care enough to listen. (See 2 below.)
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Another Ross Rant. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/art
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Salena has interviewed the blue collar workers and Democrats do not care enough to listen. (See 2 below.)
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Another Ross Rant. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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Political influence in America is garnered through a number of mechanisms -- campaign contributions, social media, YouTube, news channels, and authority from moral figures such as the church, to name a few. However, the dominant force in American politics for the last two decades has been economic warfare against American citizens.
This economic warfare has two primary components; the use of government to economically favor one group over another; and the collusion of immigrant groups to economically inhibit Americans who oppose replacement migration.
The first aspect of this warfare is simple. The government institutes programs that give special privileges to one group of people in the form of educational access and benefits, exclusive contracts with the government, quotas within the job market, and legal protections that are exclusive to those people. While many of these benefits are subtle, on multigenerational timelines they effectively destroy the unprotected group while ensuring the success of the protected group. In addition to this, there is the selective enforcement of laws and the absolution of some groups from many laws.
However, the more important aspect of this warfare is the collusion of immigrants to exclude portions of the native population from the economy. This activity has two facets -- exclusion from the market and denial of service.
Consider a nation where the native people makes up 70% of the population and the immigrant population makes up 30%. If the entirety of the immigrant population refuses to purchase the products of the native population, then as long as the native population does not reciprocate this behavior, immigrant businesses have access to 100% of the market and the native businesses have access to only 70% of the marketplace. The end result of this activity is that immigrant businesses will always win out over native businesses.
In practice, the immigrant population need not exclude all the native population. They only need to target those who openly oppose their goals of mass legal and illegal immigration. Add in the portion of the native population that goes along with the boycott of the nativists, and it becomes impossible for anyone within the native group who opposes replacement migration to complete in the marketplace.
In effect, a smaller population of people willing to engage in this economic exclusion can unquestionably control the policies of a nation when the larger group is unwilling or incapable of implementing similar policies. The smaller population has effectively conquered the larger population and controls the political future of the nation.
While marketplace exclusion is passive, the denial of service phase of the warfare is active. Here, the immigrant population and those who support the policy of replacement migration implement the following practices:
- Place pressure on employers to fire natives openly opposed to replacement
- Deny platforms to the native population that opposes replacement
- Payment processors
- YouTube
- Email, etc
- Write articles condemning the natives and ensure that anyone who employs them will be targeted as well
- Engage in violence against the natives and protest their house and employment
- Deny legal protections to those nativists as a recourse of defense from violence
- Prosecute any physical defense mounted by the nativists as initiatory violence
- Place the same pressures on their families
Using these practices, the immigrant population and their supporters can effectively destroy the ability of any native member to economically support themselves. Opposition to the immigrant group is impossible as members cannot raise capital, are not protected from violence, and have their personal sources of income destroyed. Their First Amendment rights are effectively nonexistent as exercising that right results of violence and economic destruction at the hands of foreign powers.
It is in this state that the American people now find themselves. Any citizen who openly opposes replacement migration and supports the enforcement of U.S. laws is denigrated by foreign media, has their personal businesses attacked, and if they attempt to peaceably assemble, then they are set upon by violent political groups like Antifa that assault them in the open without fear of police or legal punishment.
The end result of this economic warfare is the usurpation of power from American citizens to foreign nationals. First, this is hidden but as their power grows it moves into the open. This can be seen in Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez asserting that immigration laws should not apply to Latinos as this land is rightfully theirs, as well as Senator Kamala Harris asserting that foreign nationals have the right to make laws with respect to U.S. citizens.
1a) Mueller Express Fails to Deliver, Democrats Head for the Abyss
As the long-running Mueller Witch Hunt pulled into the station empty, the one thing that held together the disparate factions of the Democratic Party -- the thought that Mueller would hand them grounds for impeachment -- was lost and a “Gadarene stampede” (in Conrad Black’s fine phrase, descriptive of a pack of crazed swine heading for the abyss) has followed.
To be sure, those who believed Mueller would save them from the Trump revolution didn’t give up entirely. Tom Maguire had some fun at the expense of the diehards:
The Walls Are Closing In On Trump Again!
After a brief respite the media is back to Waiting For The Mueller Report: sources NOT on Mueller's now-disbanded team tell the Times that some of the team think the Barr summary went too easy on Trump. This is impressive 'sources say other sources say' journalism. High school -- the wonder years! As in, I wonder why Times reporters never outgrew that.
Whatever. Mueller ran a tight ship for two years but now his gang is dispersed. Some are back in private practice and no one is worried that Mueller will fire them for chatting a bit. We'll see the report soon enough. Another week or two of staring down their rabbit hole won't hurt the Democrats any.
[A]n investigation that for two years had reconciled the irreconcilable serves no longer as a source of Democratic unity.
We are going to see hard-left Democrats and socialists force their mostly unpopular agenda on politicians and candidates from their own party. And they are now putting their identity-politics money where their mouth is by openly discouraging candidates on the basis of their race and gender.[snip] With the end of the Mueller investigation, thousands of government documents, mostly unredacted, will be released. The result may be that the hunters of Trump soon become hunted by federal prosecutors. Sworn statements of Obama administration officials in the Justice Department, CIA, FBI and other bureaucracies will contradict newly released documents.
To escape punishment, all of these players in the Russian collusion delusion may now begin to turn on one another after being so united in going after Donald Trump.
The media sensationalism and optics will play out in reverse as the "noose tightens" and "the walls close in" on people such as former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
There will also be more infighting over the collective embarrassment of the Russian collusion hoax.
It’s impossible to disagree with Conrad Black’s description of the present wreck of the Democratic party with 18 announced candidates , not counting Joe Biden:
It is uproariously entertaining to see the scurryings of the innumerable host of Democratic presidential candidates in what is already more of a lottery than a quest for the nomination of a great party to the world’s greatest office.
The Democrats haven’t got the message, but those who aren’t punch-drunk out of their senses will decode the political message the night of the election in November 2020. Then, when they have dug out from under the rubble of their fantasies, they can start to rebuild.
To be sure the Congressional Democrats are floating a series of moves with more public relations impact than likely success.
The planned subpoena of an unredacted Mueller report is unlikely to yield results.
A House panel voted yesterday to authorize subpoenas to obtain Robert Mueller’s full report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The vote was strictly along party lines.But Democrats are holding a losing hand. This subpoena, like all the others House Democrats are thinking about issuing, cannot, in all likelihood, be effectively enforced.
Democrats aren’t going to issue the subpoena yet. First, they will negotiate with the Justice Department.
The normal enforcement mechanism for a subpoena is to cite for contempt the party that refuses to comply. But it’s up to the Justice Department to prosecute that case. The DOJ isn’t going to prosecute its head.
There’s precedent for not prosecuting in these circumstances. The Justice Department declined to prosecute when then-Attorney General Eric Holder refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking documents related to the “Fast and Furious” scandal. Indeed, the Justice Department is most unlikely to bring an action for contempt against any part of the Executive branch.
Congress can proceed without the Justice Department by bringing its own action in federal court to compel compliance. But the judicial process doesn’t move quickly enough for this option to bring about the result Democrats desire.
For example, Holder refused to comply in 2012. It wasn’t until 2016 that a district court ruled in favor of Congress. Holder was out of office by then. The parties proceeded to settle the dispute (though it still hasn’t fully been resolved). Had they not settled, the matter would have dragged on through the appellate process.
One can imagine liberal judges moving faster in the case of the Trump presidency than they did during the Obama administration. Even so, time is not on the Democrats’ side.
If Trump loses in 2020, the new Attorney General could authorize release of the full, unredacted Mueller report. But with Trump out of office, few will care about the Mueller report.
If Trump wins and the GOP recaptures the House in 2020 (or 2022 if the matter is still being litigated), the House would almost certainly relent in the dispute over the subpoena.
Moreover, a recent D.C. Court of Appeals decision makes it particularly unlikely that Congress will ever obtain transcripts of the grand jury proceedings in that long-running probe and those will certainly be redacted by the attorney general before the report is given to Congress.
The majority explained that the Supreme Court has long recognized the vital purposes served by grand-jury secrecy, and thus that secrecy must be protected unless there is some clear contrary indication in a statute or rule. Disclosure is the exception, not the rule.
In Rule 6(e), Congress has prescribed grand-jury secrecy and its exceptions. Those who contend that a court may permit disclosure outside the rule argue that judges had such authority before the rule was enacted. The panel majority, however, emphasized the rule’s sweeping language: Officials must refrain from disclosure “unless these rules provide otherwise.” The rule also takes pains to spell out the situations in which a judge may authorize disclosure. Plainly, the intent of the rule was to limit disclosure; were an unwritten judicial power to ignore the limitations recognized, the rule would be pointless. [snip] This means Attorney General Barr must redact grand-jury material from the Mueller report before disclosing it to Congress. Democrats will complain long and loud about this, but I don’t see how Barr can be reasonably faulted for following the law. Congress, after all, has the power to legislate an amendment to Rule 6(e) that would permit disclosure of grand-jury materials from a special counsel investigation to appropriate congressional committees.
Prepare now for the consequences of the Deep State’s efforts to directly manipulate the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, a conspiracy well described in this lengthy article detailing how Obama, Hillary, John Brennan and James Clapper, and others schemed to keep the duly elected president from assuming office:
The article is persuasive and well-documented but too lengthy for me to do a proper summary, so I urge you to read it all. But the author’s description of its contents should pique your interest and encourage you to read it all at a time convenient for you.
- Hillary Clinton’s campaign used the Christopher Steele dossier before their involvement was covered up
- Senior Obama administration officials secretly plotted to involve senators in the “Russia” conspiracy
- James Clapper tried to use the “Russia” narrative to get the Supreme Court to invalidate Trump’s presidency
- Natalia Veselnitskaya was a Fusion GPS set-up agent who worked out of an Obama official’s office in D.C.
- Peter Strzok ran point on destroying General Flynn and covering up for Hillary Clinton
- Barack Obama used foreign powers to keep the scheme going, even after he left the Oval Office to President Trump
The plotters were too sure of their success to completely cover their tracks and frankly too bumbling to succeed. And the equally incompetent and unlikeable Hillary Clinton failed to make it over the finish line to cover up for them after the fact. In the meantime, the party that relied on these clowns is now heading for the abyss.
1b)
At the boiling point
By Stuart Kaufman
I am sick to my stomach, at the boiling point with anger. The swamp gases of Jew hatred are seeping through the surface of civilization so rapidly that I cannot see how they can be contained, especially given the tepid response of so many, including my Jewish brothers and sisters. Jew hatred is a disease that corrodes the soul. It erupts periodically into epidemic proportions and we appear to be at the inception of just such an eruption. It unfortunately is to be expected in Europe, where it has festered for centuries, but it has now broken into a fever here in the United States and it is spreading like wildfire.
The Congress is infested with Jew haters. They didn’t spring full blown from nowhere — they were elected! The recent unmitigated manifestation of pure Jew hatred by Rep. Ihlan Omar (D-MN) is merely the tip of the iceberg. Rep Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) calls herself a “second generation Palestinian” and carries with her all of the Jew hatred that is imbibed with mother’s milk by those who claim to be Palestinian (a “nation” that doesn’t exist, never existed and was invented out of whole cloth in the 1960s by an arch terrorist and murderer). Omar and Tlaib are neophytes and nobodies of whom nothing can or should be expected, but what about the leaders of the Democratic Party — falling all over themselves to find excuses for the garbage spewing unchecked from the lips of Omar and Tlaib? It is reprehensible that Nancy Pelosi was unable to secure a simple resolution from her party condemning anti-Semitism.
The number three Democrat in the House of Representatives, James Clyburn of South Carolina, soiled himself with his comments excusing Omar. According to an account in the Washington Post, Clyburn stated: “the experience of Rep. Ilhan Omar is ‘more personal’ than that of the children of people who have survived the Holocaust and other atrocities.” The Post asserted that Clyburn said that Omar “is living through a lot of pain” and drew a contrast between Omar’s firsthand experience and the perspectives of those whose parents or grandparents survived the Holocaust. He is quoted as having said “there are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her. I’ve talked to her and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain.”
Really? So I guess Clyburn believes Omar’s “personal pain” must be much more searing and overrides that of the great-grandchildren of slaves who are his constituents, since slavery ended 157 years ago (159 in his home state of South Carolina). My response to that crock of manure is to Hell with Omar’s “pain,” and to Hell with Clyburn who stated that Omar’s “intersectional experiences” are simply too important to criticize her for Jew hatred. Whatever Omar went through and despite Clyburn’s arrant stupidity, nothing entitles anyone to negate the suffering of those who went through the Holocaust.
I personally know many Jews who survived the Holocaust. They suffered being penned up in ghettos and/or being sent to concentration camps where they watched their parents, brothers and sisters go to their deaths, or had their children wrenched from their arms and shot before their eyes. I know survivors who were partisans during the war, who lived and hid for years in holes dug in the ground in the depths of the forests, without protection from the freezing Polish winters, constantly being hunted by not only the Nazis but by their former friends and neighbors.
I know Jews who survived the Holocaust hidden, some for years, in dark basements or cramped attics in the homes of “Righteous Gentiles” who risked their own lives to protect them. I personally know their children and grandchildren, who also bear the scars of what their parents endured: from earliest childhood, they were awakened by the shrieks and screams of their parents or grandparents, who relived their hellish experiences in their nightmares almost every night until their deaths, 40 and 50 years after the war ended. And from the survivors directly, I heard horrific stories of what they had been forced to endure. (For one such account, I refer you to my article entitled “Shifra’s Story” in the May 2015 edition of the Charleston Mercury.)
My dear friend, Joe Engel, who is well known in Charleston, spent three years in the depths of Hell, most of that time in Auschwitz and thereafter on the Death March. When Joe heard Rep. Omar’s filthy remarks and Rep. Clyburn’s callous attempt to dismiss them, he wrote a public letter to Rep. Clyburn. Here is what Joe Engel, Auschwitz survivor, wrote:
“Your statement in defense of the anti-Semitic slurs of Rep. Ilhan Omar was disappointing. The Nazis systematically exterminated six million innocent Jews in the most brutal and horrific way. They killed my family. I was there. No one deserves to be tortured or killed because of their religion or race and no one deserves to live in a ghetto or refugee camp. But you trample on the memory of my parents and my own survival by judging and measuring the pain of the Jewish community. Are you unable to condemn bigotry and anti-Semitism?”
Those are the words of someone whose life was inexorably, painfully and permanently altered by Jew haters almost 75 years ago. Joe Engel does not spend his life playing “victim” or asking anyone to feel sorry for him. He spends his life screaming out a warning: What happened there can happen here!
And now, the Jew haters are slithering out from under their rocks once again. I am beginning to fear the coming onslaught. Do you think that it can’t happen here in America? Did the Jews of Spain foresee the disaster that overtook them in the 15th century when the Inquisition gave them the choice of conversion, death or expulsion? Did the Jews of Germany, Poland or Lithuania, or those in Holland, France or Italy, foresee the catastrophe that overtook them in the 20th century and would result in the murder of six million Jews, a million and a half of whom were children? As a Jew, I refuse to hide my head in the sand, ignore reality and accept that such will be my fate, or the fate of my grandsons.
Here is a question for the Jew haters: What are you afraid of? Are you jealous of the fact that the average verbal IQ score among Jews is 120? Are you envious of the fact that Jews, at only 1.4 percent of the American population, make up 22 percent of Ivy League students and 20 percent of America’s chief executives and have earned 25 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists (not including Jews born outside the U.S., such as Albert Einstein) since 1950 — 32 percent worldwide in the 21st century—and 52 percent (!) of Pulitzer Prizes for nonfiction? Does it bother you that Jews give far more to charity than others in the same income bracket and make up a greatly disproportionate number of America’s leading philanthropists (19 out of the top 53 and five out of the top six in 2015 according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy)?
If you believe in G-d, then you should understand that the Jews are a gift to mankind from a beneficent Almighty. In Genesis 12:3, G-d says to the Jews: “I will bless them that bless thee and curse those that curse thee and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
Historically, where the Jews have been permitted to prosper, the society in which they thrived also prospered. Where the Jews were persecuted, expelled or murdered, the society that tormented them ended up far worse. You might not like that historical fact, but fact it is and right now I am angry enough to blurt it out. If you excuse the Jew haters — if you enable them to spew their filth and do their vilest (BDS comes to mind) — then America will pay the sad price. Statistics indicate that since 2017, there has been a 70 percent increase in anti-Semitism in America. Regardless of the lies spread by Omar and Tlaib, no other minority group has endured the growth in hate crimes that have been committed against Jews.
For as long as we permit the Ihlan Omars and the Rashida Tliabs to go unchecked, for as long as we elect their like to local, state and federal office, the evil will continue to grow and the epidemic will spread until it consumes what has been the greatest nation known to mankind. For as long as we permit the James Clyburns, the Nancy Pelosis and the rest of their rotten camarilla to temporize and find excuses for the Jew haters like Omar and Tlaib and their sycophants like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, or the detestable Louis Farrakhan and his “admirers,” America’s downward spiral will accelerate.
Which brings me to my fellow Jews. Following Clyburn’s disgusting remarks I happened to be in a discussion with a friend of mine, a Jew, who remarked that Clyburn was a “friend” of his. He expressed surprise that Clyburn had made such “unfortunate” remarks. He said that he still considered Clyburn a “friend” of his and that he would “discuss” it with him. If Clyburn had been my “friend” before, he would be my “friend” no more. I would “discuss” nothing with him. I would let him know, on no uncertain terms, that he had earned my undying contempt. Anything less is playing footsie with the enemy. There should be no more Jewish support for Clyburn and his temporizing buddies.
So here is my manifesto:
- I refuse to quietly accept the spreading sewage of Jew hatred;
- I refuse to quietly accept the purveyors of the sewage of Jew hatred;
- I refuse to quietly accept the temporizers for those who purvey Jew hatred; and
- I refuse to accept anyone, Jew or gentile, who finds a way through a moral maze to continue a friendly relationship with any of the above.
And if the Jew haters come after me — or my family or friends or neighbors — I will be ready.
Stuart Kaufman is a retired lawyer, investment banker and businessman. He relocated from New York to Mount Pleasant in 2012. A friend recently told him that he has been a South Carolinian all of his life ... but he just didn’t know it.
1c) Top Dem Wants to Destroy More American Norms
Elizabeth Warren wants to get rid of the fillibuster, a move that would further concentrate power in the hands of the majority and prevent compromise that is at the core of the American Constitution. The Washington Examiner reports:
“That means when Democrats have the White House again, if Mitch McConnell tries to do what he did to President Obama, and puts small-minded partisanship ahead of solving the massive problems facing this country, then we should get rid of the filibuster.”
1c) Top Dem Wants to Destroy More American Norms
Elizabeth Warren wants to get rid of the fillibuster, a move that would further concentrate power in the hands of the majority and prevent compromise that is at the core of the American Constitution. The Washington Examiner reports:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is set to announce her support Friday for eliminating the filibuster, a change that would allow the party in control of the Senate to pass legislation with only a simple majority.
The 2020 presidential candidate is expected to make the announcement for ending the 60-vote threshold at the National Action Network.
“I’m not running for President just to talk about making real, structural change. I’m serious about getting it done. And part of getting it done means waking up to the reality of the United States Senate,” Warren is expected to say. “So let me be as clear as I can. When Democrats next have power, we should be bold and clear: we’re done with two sets of rules — one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats.
“That means when Democrats have the White House again, if Mitch McConnell tries to do what he did to President Obama, and puts small-minded partisanship ahead of solving the massive problems facing this country, then we should get rid of the filibuster.”
Once again, Democrats want to get rid of rules that inconvenience them. But what if Republicans did the same, would Democrats cry foul?
2)
Western Pennsylvania's lessons: Run on real issues, not for Green fantasies
By Salena Zito
MT. LEBANON, Pa. — Either party, if it wants to win in 2020, needs to study the April 2 special election for a state Senate seat in suburban Pittsburgh.
The lesson for Democrats: You win when moderate candidates run on local issues, such as job creation and infrastructure.
The lesson for Republicans: You lose swing voters when you try to run a national campaign in a local race.
Republican D. Raja ran ads tying Democrat Pam Iovino to New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Iovino ran ads about fixing roads and bridges. Iovino won.
The converse side of this lesson: Democrats who fully support AOC’s Green New Deal will lose the labor families who put both Conor Lamb in Congress and Pam Iovino in the state Senate.
Darrin Kelly was the force behind both Lamb’s slim win in last year’s special election in a seat Trump won by 20 percentage points and Iovino’s tight win last week in a state Senate seat Trump won by six percentage points.
Kelly, the president of the powerful Allegheny-Fayette Labor Council and a city of Pittsburgh fireman, said labor’s efforts behind Iovino’s ads and the endless door-knocking and phone calls were all about promulgating a positive message about the Navy veteran who served in President George W. Bush’s administration.
Iovino, like Lamb, is moderate and suits the pragmatic nature of the district that has swung back and forth. Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, also a Navy veteran, held the state Senate seat until last year when he was elected to Congress. Reschenthaler succeeded Democrat Matt Smith, a moderate who is now the president of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce.
So it’s not a hair-on-fire moment for Republicans who think they have lost the suburbs forever; party-switching is the norm in this district. For Democrats it is a good lesson, though: Kelly and labor families are at the helm of the swing, and national Democrats should take notice on what issues bring voters home to them in western Pennsylvania suburbs.
“When I was knocking on doors people told me, ‘We want our roads taken care of. We want our public schools funded.' And they were sick and tired of hearing national messages. We want the way it's supposed to be from the bottom up, and that will be our message forever,” he said.
Kelly is in the catbird seat as the president of the labor council in one of the best economies he said the region has seen since the heady days of the steel industry. “That is largely on the backs of the energy industry and construction,” he said.
Last week the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry issued a report showing the Pittsburgh jobless rate hit 3.6%, the lowest since the beginning of the '70s when steel was king and Terry Bradshaw was the starting quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Nearly half of them were in construction and you don’t have to look any further than the massive ethane cracker plant under construction in nearby Monaca to tell the story of the remarkable transformation this area has undergone for union families.
“Five years ago Monaca was a snapshot of everything Western Pennsylvania had lost,” he said of the Beaver County borough that was once the home of manufacturers who produced everything from iron, steel wire, glass, tile, and tubing.
“We lost our industry — not just part of it, we literally lost everything. And when you lose your main base of employment, you lose your main base of taxes, which funds our public schools, our roads, our waterways, our ability to invest in our infrastructure. That goes with everything, your health department, everything that comes of that nature,” he said.
Today it is a bustling construction site filled with scores of massive towering cranes, thanks to Shell’s decision to build a multimillion ethane cracker plant there, a construction project that is estimated to employ more than 10,000 over the next 10 years, with talks of an additional ethane hub to be located nearby as well.
“Now you look at it and it is breeding life. It is breeding a new generation of people that get to stay and live and bring up their families in Western Pennsylvania,” he said with pride.
But if the national Democrats pick a candidate who deeply supports the Green New Deal, Kelly said all of the hard work they have done locally to flip the red region to blue won’t matter.
“Oh, they'll lose this area,” he said bluntly.
His AFL-CIO union agrees. They warned Democrats this spring the climate change legislation would affect U.S. workers. Kelly knows when you outlaw someone’s job, they are not that likely to vote for you.
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3)I have thought a lot about AI, and the implications of its further development. Some, like Musk, think it could be the end of society as we know it if we are not careful. Others think it offers wonderful opportunities to materially improve productivity, healthcare, and many other things. In Silicon Valley they believe a guaranteed minimum income is the solution to people being pushed out of their jobs by AI driven programs. Classic Democrat solution- throw money at it. One journalist even wrote that “AI will lead to people questioning their self-worth, and what it means to be human.” Utter, total, nonsense. All of it. It is just hyperbole. They have zero sense of history. The World Economic Forum released a study forecasting the creation of around 55 million net new jobs due to AI, but there will be huge displacement of lower level existing jobs, and a huge retraining required of existing workers. Since AI is coming on slowly, this retraining will have time to happen in an orderly fashion, and so the displacement might be more controlled and smoother than might seem at first blush. The key is to keep the government out of the whole process and let private industry do the training of their own staff, or through apprenticeships.
While there are major risks of AI getting out of control in certain situations, where the algorithms talk to each other and create their own code which no human has reviewed, or where weapons are totally in control by AI, and could potentially attack without proper human control, these things can potentially be controlled, and the Pentagon is very on top of this. At least for the foreseeable future, the out of control robots is not plausible. Maybe there will be some James Bond type crazy out there, but one tomahawk missile would put a quick end to that. I am sure that since the beginning of time, new discoveries for saving labor were viewed the same way AI is now. Whether it was the wheel, the gun, the plow, electricity, the industrial revolution, the personal computer, cell phones, or any of the things that have transformed work and society, none has ended human functions or feelings, and neither will AI. I am old enough to recall how computers were going to put people out of work and destroy society. Yes, some were put out of work for a while, but now we have 3.9% unemployment and going lower. The reality is, since the cave man, humans have sought to find ways to make hunting and tasks more efficient, and work and life easier, and more efficient. It has worked out very well for eons. Disruption of the norm, is the norm for humans. That is what sets us apart from the chimps. Creative destruction, which is the key to capitalism and wealth creation, is what moves society ahead and improves life and standards of living. That is one reason why America is the most successful nation on earth. That is why the EU fines our tech companies to try to stop us from racing too far ahead. When I was a kid we all had one telephone, and it was a party line with 6 other people. To get the news, we often had to go to the theater to see the news trailer before the film. Files were kept on paper. Copies were made with carbons and corrections with white out. There was no Amazon to sell things at lower prices, and deliver the same or next day. There were not even fax machines. There were no conference calls, and lawyers and businessmen had to fly or drive to a meeting to do deals. When you were driving you could not speak to anyone on the phone, thus that time was wasted. Now you can call from an airplane, or sit in your office on skype, or tap into information on the internet from 35,000 feet, or in remote locations. If you wanted information or data, you went to the library, or lawyers to the law library. Everything took a lot longer to get done. Information was not readily available to everyone, as it now is to anyone anywhere with a cell phone. That alone has changed the world, and people’s ability to make better informed decisions. As opposed to the dire predictions that inequality will be far worse, reality is, hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, have been lifted out of abject poverty by better methods, better agriculture technology, availability of the internet, and the combination of both. Life expectancy is much longer than it ever was for most people on the planet. The internet has made a much more informed populace, which changes how people view their governments. It is why dictators try to stifle internet access. AI is simply the next step on this track man has been on since chimps evolved into humans.
You do not need to think hard to see all of the productivity enhancing improvements we take for granted today. So law librarians are out of a job, but they likely became assistants, or maybe paralegals. Factory workers have been taught how to use computerized machines that do the job and make the product faster, better and safer. Far better productivity which keeps costs, and therefore prices, down and produces better quality for less money. Everyone benefits. Warehouses are operated by AI driven robots 24/7, making it possible to deliver same day or next day. Bottom line, there are always generational inventions, and they scare many by making it seem they are going to destroy jobs and lives. The exact opposite has happened throughout history. Some people get displaced, but then they learn a new job, and everyone is better off because the new technology improves productivity, quality and the standard of living for all, and healthy life expectancy. Some who are at the leading edge get very wealthy, but that is the reward for taking the risk of invention of a new, untried idea. Inequality is relative. Some get very wealthy, and most of the rest get a much better standard of living. That is what we see happening in America today. So the top 1% get a lot of wealth. The rest get a much better life than they had due to the new technology, and the super wealthy give a lot away to charity, or provide the capital for new start- up companies. They actually put that wealth to good productive uses. It is not sitting under the mattress. The bigger, tougher chimp got the girl chimp. It Is how the planet works, and it is never going to change.
Just as the internet and computers have produced all sorts of scams and ways to commit crimes and spying, or to wage cyberwar, it has, on balance, been a total, very positive game changer for the human race. AI is simply the next iteration of the evolution of that technology. We need to be sure to control it, but it will be a vast new enhancer of knowledge, living standards, health care, production, ability to defend the country, and general problem solving. In the end we will all live better, richer, and longer, healthier lives for it, and we will all earn more because productivity will be greatly enhanced so workers can be paid more to produce more efficiently, at lower cost per unit. Quality of life for all who try to be productive citizens will continue to improve substantially.
Bottom line, there are always risks of bad people misusing every new technology, and the risk takers get very wealthy, but that is part of how it always works in the advancement of knowledge by humans. There is no stopping AI, nor whatever comes next, so embrace it, understand it much better, and do not be scared by the pronouncements out of Silicon Valley and the media. When Edison and Tesla competed brutally, and invented electric lights, and the ability to transport power over grids to homes and factories, there were all sorts of scare articles and scary pronouncements by politicians, the media, and others. People got electrocuted, especially one infamous incident in front of a large crowd. There were some huge issues in the start-up phase, but imagine life if electric power and lights had not been successfully invented and put into use. AI is no different.
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