Porgressivism – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

November 12, 2024November 12, 2024

The Election Was a Rejection of California

May be an image of 1 person — California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks on Oct. 7, 2022, in Sacramento, Calif. (photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

Why the focus on California? Simple, California is the head of the progressive snake. Its ideological tendencies permeate the national Democratic Party. Our Vice President, and their losing candidate for president, was politically bred in the specialized, socio-political one-party petri dish of – you guessed it – California. California Democrat muckety-mucks populate Biden’s executive branch posse with a left coast view of the world.

Let’s take a look at California’s election results to get a hint of the chaos and what could have been in store for the rest of us. Wait, they aren’t finished counting in the golden state, and won’t be till Dec. 3, maybe not even then. Speaking of chaos. The state has turned itself into a model of election incompetence, and the national party has adopted it, seizing the COVID panic as an excuse to nationalize the falderol. Much vote fraud was legalized, or made easier to go undetected. Mail-in ballots, election season instead of election day, ballot harvesting, a profusion of provisional ballots, failure to clean voter rolls, and, here’s the kicker, the “curing” of ballots, were pioneered in California.

What’s the “curing”? “Curing” is how the entrenched party discovers new votes. First, the state’s Democrat honchos know the state’s blue precincts, for there are many, and target the “curing” on them. “Curing” refers to seeking out a voter who didn’t properly submit their ballot – missing signature, unmatched signatures, wrong envelope, etc. – and is allowed to correct the mistake (Hmmmm!), and, all of a sudden, a Republican victor on election day wakes up to their loss a couple of weeks later.

Millions of dollars in Democrat war chests exist to fund the cherry-picked treasure hunt. Gov. Newsom has millions left over from his recall treasury to devote to combing blue precincts for more votes. Interesting question: Why vote in elections that have more in common with the shams in Maduro’s Venezuela? California, Californezuela.

If Venezuela’s lefty caudillo, Nicolas Maduro, was California’s governor – no, it’s not as crazy as you think – he’d probably adopt Gov. Newsom’s appropriation of John C. Calhoun. Remember the nullification crisis of 1832? South Carolina asserted the power to prevent the enforcement of federal law (the tariff) within the state at the urging of the influential John C. Calhoun. That’s “nullification”, and blue state fiefdoms in the mold of California have been doing a form of it for decades regarding immigration law. Newsom doubled down on nullification-lite when he blustered after the election (see #1 below), “The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack [after Trump’s victory] — and we won’t sit idle.”

What freedoms? The “freedom” to obstruct immigration law by blocking the cooperation of state and local authorities? The “freedom” of government employees (teachers, administrators) to hide from parents the porn curriculum in third-grade classrooms or the transition of their daughter into a son, all backed up by the Democrat AG Rob Bonta? The “freedom” of XY “girls” to occupy girls’ spaces and sports? The “freedom” of the state to undermine out-of-state parenthood by its self-designation as a transgender sanctuary state for minors from anywhere? The unlimited “freedom” of a woman to end the life of her baby up to the exit from the birth canal, maybe after, who knows? The “freedom” of the state to force you onto government mass transit or into dopey EVs? The “freedom” to experience bankrupting utility bills, blackouts, brownouts, and hypothermia after the nuking of nuclear power and fossil fuels? The “freedom” of the state to be the missing link in the supply chain from ship to shore at its ports by mandating EV 18-wheelers and locomotives, something that doesn’t exist or is impractical beyond measure? The “freedom” of the state to run you out of business? The “freedom” to pay more for everything and fewer jobs to accomplish the feat? The “freedom” to be harassed on everything you say or do, especially religiously? Thanks, Newsom, for the “freedoms”.

Biden followed the California script. Biden’s version of fiscal responsibility is additions to the national debt going from $1 trillion every 100 days in 2021 to today’s $1 trillion every 200 days. Either way, your kids are being robbed.

California is tax-happy and adores the issuance of gobs and gobs and oodles and oodles of bonds. Propositions 2 and 4 (school building, water/flood/drought projects) on the California ballot appear to be headed for approval. It’s astounding that the state’s current budget of $311 billion and its panoply of taxes, taxes everywhere aren’t enough. $25 billion in more debt will be added to the outstanding total state bond debt of $79 billion, and more than $1.6 trillion if you combine state and local obligations (see #3).

California pulls out its credit card, and so does Biden/Harris/DNC; only the feds have a much more robust one, one without limit. They can gin up the money supply by making dollars appear out of thin air. They’ve got a Federal Reserve. Thus, they borrowed California’s fiscal philosophy to achieve new heights of inflation. The old Keynesian adage of spending in bad times and saving in good times was jettisoned. It’s just the spending now, no need for the saving. With the pandemic over and recovery well under way in 2021, and Biden filled with delusions of FDR grandeur, the Democrats jumped at the chance by piling $6.17 trillion of new debt onto the backs our kids (see #5). What did we get for it? Problems . . . and a few EV chargers. Sounds like California.

The country became a goat rope in the manner of California. Every celestial grouping in the radical-left progressive universe was hyped up on taxpayer dollars and deficit spending. It was enough to make drunken sailors appear judicious.

They were doing everything but the bottom-line function of government’s existence. Namely, safety and security. We have a Vice President who personally gave money to bail out rioters, under the euphemism of “protesters”, who were responsible for making hell zones of our metropolitan downtowns. It did nothing but cause the price for out-bounded U-Hauls to skyrocket.

All kinds of bedlam were celebrated on Capitol Hill and the White House. Gatherings of the transgendered were held at the White House with participants exuberantly baring their surgical scars and implants to the world and the assembled press. In the midst of the 2020 riot season and later, the Democrats went full neo-Marxist in Capitol kneelings, calls to defund the police, “reimagining” policing, and full DEI racism. Hiring practices throughout the executive branch were altered as part of the war on merit. A candidate for air traffic controller was golden so long as they exhibited the appropriate intersectionality.

As for the border, it became the apex of bedlam. Not only was the border patrol turned into the Welcome Wagon, but the border jumpers were rewarded with gifts and jet flights to the country’s interior to the chagrin of local officials. Certainly, in this instance, crime does pay. And to think that there’s an entire wing of the Democratic Party devoted to California’s favored position on immigration law, which is decriminalization. They’d like it to be the equivalent of a jaywalking ticket. Harris, their choice to accelerate the misrule, tried to hide her own calls for California-style immigration chaos but failed. Chaos, chaos everywhere, from girls’ bathrooms to the border.

This election was a repudiation of the worldview of 60-65% of the California electorate. The rest of the country rejected the state’s favorite daughter and its approach to governance. When the donkey party decided to go full California, the rest of the country said, “Whoa, whoa there! We won’t sign onto a California neo-Marxist revolution.”

There, that’s my take on what happened November 5.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. “‘We won’t sit idle’: Newsom goes on offensive against Trump”, Wes Venteicher, Politico, 11/7/2024, at https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/07/newsom-california-legislative-session-trump-resistance-00188119
2. “2023-24 State Budget”, State of California, at https://ebudget.ca.gov/budget/2023-24EN/#/Home
3. “Overview of State Bond Debt Service”, California Legislative Analyst’s Office, 2/27/2024, at https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/798
4. “California State and Local Liabilities Total $1.6 Trillion”, Edward Ring, California Policy Center, 2/28/2022, at https://californiapolicycenter.org/california-state-and-local-liabilities-total-1-6-trillion/
5. “U.S. debt by president: dollar and percentage 2024”, Annabel Burba in Consumer Affairs, 11/7/2024, at https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/us-debt-by-president.html

November 8, 2024November 12, 2024

California Dreamin’ or California See Ya?

Poll: 40% of Californians are thinking about leaving the state – HotAir — (Photo: AP Photo/Nick Oxford)

It’s “See ya”, or so it seems according to the outlook for the 2030 census. Don’t expect California’s current allotment of 52 congressional seats to stay there. It lost one after the 2020 count. The next census will probably be more brutal (see #2). Look at the map below.

After the last census, the numbers were explained away by the state’s chattering classes by emphasizing that the state actually gained population. It just didn’t grow as fast as others, they say. Yes, but according to the website San Fransisco Gate, its population has been generally static since 2017 while our country’s South and Southeast have blossomed (see #1).

Something about population decline: it doesn’t happen in a mad dash for the exits, all at once. The gradual slide begins with a birth dearth and flights to other areas of the state. Whereas before, the state benefitted from foreign migration, not, mind you, an influx from other states. That has slowed, so the total population numbers start to bend south (see #3).

Now add the numbers who’ve skedaddled. Who’s left the state entirely? It’s the socio-economic backbone of any state: the middle class and families. Even the left-of-center California Public Policy Center acknowledges the shrinking middle of the demographic pyramid. Raking in all the numbers results in a guesstimate (California Dept. of Finance) of a decline of over 57,000 in 2023 alone. After that, they expect the numbers to rise, which is normal, but not enough to keep from losing additional seats (see #4).

Thus, by the 2030 census, hopefully, the rest of the country will be saddled with 4 fewer Adam Schiffs (now a plague on the US Senate). One outcome of the last election is that the state of Gavin Newsom is slipping into irrelevancy. Really, who cares how California votes, even if they’re still counting at Christmas time? As far as the race for president goes, there are more than enough states who don’t want to be like it. The so-called “blue wall” has given way to a red wall abutting the socialist republic. Whew, what a relief.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. “What everyone is getting wrong about California losing a congressional seat”, Amy Graff, San Fransisco Gate, 4/27/2021, at https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/2021-04-California-House-Seat-Census-Population-16133275.php
2. “2030 Apportionment Forecast – 2023”, The American Redistricting Project, 12/19/2023, at https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2030-asof121923/
3. “California’s population shrank in 2020, but don’t call it an exodus”, Ben Christopher, Cal Matters, 5/27/2021, at https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/05/california-population-shrink-exodus/
4. California Dept. of Finance: Report P-1A, “Total Projected and Estimated Population for California: July 1, 2020 to 2070”, at https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fdof.ca.gov%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F352%2F2023%2F07%2FP1A_State_Total.xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

November 6, 2024November 12, 2024

Trump II, a Mea Culpa of Sorts

Harris and Trump want to strengthen the middle class. It could use the help | CNN Politics

Right now, in the aftermath of victory or defeat, things look rosy or depressing. Clear away the fog of euphoria or sadness. Settle down. Here’s what I take from the results:

I was wrong about Trump’s chances. I overplayed Trump’s negatives. Not that he doesn’t have any. He’s got plenty. Not that he wasn’t the weakest general election candidate in the GOP stable. He still is. The fact remains that the country is center-right, and the Dems fell off the left cliff. Trump had the advantage of a thoroughly discredited opposition party. At this moment, I wonder if the great bulk of the country just had enough of the left’s culture war; its eco-assault on the kitchen table, shelter, the gas tank, electricity, and the family sedan; and the socialist spending spree fueling an out-of-whack economy.

Thus, this was actually a change election, a dash away from what the Democratic Party has become. Trump didn’t have to be loved. He only had to be viewed by a majority as better than the alternative. Now, no longer facing a billion-dollar smear campaign and a recent history of radical left policies to lambast, I expect Trump’s negatives to eventually revert to norm. Where I went wrong is in not recognizing the very simple and smart calculus of it being either him or them.

But don’t forget, tomorrow is another day.

And don’t dismiss the fact that the Republicans were better organized this time around. The craziness of running an election during a pandemic, and given the Democrats’ chomping at the bit to “never let a crisis go to waste” by pushing through wild election law changes, left the Republicans flat-footed in 2020. Legislative changes were made at the state level to smooth the rough edges, but the asinine mailed ballot remains. Still, kudos to the RNC. It’s proof that even Republicans are open to life’s lessons.

Will Trump II be a repeat of Trump I? The guy may be either more unhinged or older and wiser. We’ll see. Will he be as stubborn as Biden, who forced an Afghanistan bugout at all costs, in imposing a rash of protective tariffs on friend and foe alike? All of this without addressing our own role in hampering American manufacturing. American mismanagement, unions, and regulation did more than Asia to wreak havoc on GM and USX. Will he sellout Ukraine to Putin? What about federal spending which is putting America on a path to Argentina? Early indications aren’t promising.

Storm clouds, many of them possibly of Trump’s own making, loom over a second term. Good luck, America.

Oh, and I don’t blame you for not listening to me.

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RogerG

November 5, 2024November 12, 2024

The Democracy Prattle

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Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder is hot across streaming channels proclaiming “democracy is on the ballot” in a dash to get everyone to vote. Well, Eddie, if there are people who shouldn’t have driver’s licenses, there are people who shouldn’t vote. If you don’t care enough to know anything, don’t plague the rest of us with your choices. Also, not voting can be very rational and the best option.

It’s more than that. Democracy is not on the ballot. Democracy is a factor in our system of governance, not the determinant, especially when we choose a president across the 50 different states. Eddie, it’s a republic under law. 50%-plus-one isn’t how we govern ourselves. We choose representatives by popular vote in single districts apportioned to each state after every census per The Constitution. Senate representation, though, is equal among the 50 states, regardless of the number of warm – and maybe not so warm – bodies on its sacred soil, and is not subject to amendment (Article V, last phrase). The Electoral College ensures that we are governed by more than New York City, California’s coastal plain, and Chicago’s Democratic political machine.

Eddie needs a civics education. And maybe some History too. The dividing line between a mob/mass tyranny and democracy is a blurry one, shifting with the groupthink tides. Popularly elected tyranny is still tyranny. The late 18th-century Parisian mobs – the soldiers of the Reign of Terror – and going back further to the Melian Massacre (416 B.C.) by Athens are but two examples of popular brutalities. History is festooned with democratic inhumanities. The Jews have been victimized by them for centuries.

As we gear up for the November 5 election, two things stand out about our “democracy”: the drive to circumvent the states in the Electoral College in the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” (NPV) and the simple fact that the popular vote is a fiasco. The second one undermines the first.

The NPV is an enthusiasm of the Left (liberal, progressive, socialist, whatever) due to the occasional breakthrough of the Right in the Electoral College. They’d like to close off any avenue of escape from their clutches each 4-year election cycle. With the NPV, the choice of president would reflect the norms of the Acela Corridor, Chicago, and the California coastal plain. All other urban nodes imitate them. That’s right, run up the score by hook or by crook in a few congested spots and, voilà, the mayor of Los Angeles is next in line to be president. I jest . . . or am I? (See #3 below)

30-point margins in New York and California might do the trick. Right now, these two states are shedding residents like my dogs shed hair in the summer; yet, they still possess a wreaking left-wing critical mass to make a neo-Marxist the betting choice to run the executive branch and much more. Xi is more popular in these places than a Republican.

Any state to vote for this thing (NPV) outside these hotbeds of left-wing activism is by implication violating their oath of state office in sacrificing the choice of their people to the whims of New York and California. It’s an impeachable offense, or should be. It’s probably unconstitutional as well. The NPV violates the 14th Amendment’s privileges and immunities clause, and as a compact, it must be approved by Congress. This one skips over Congress.

The compact is a conspiracy among states equaling 270 electoral votes to gang up on the others. It creates the likely scenario of someone with the barest of majority to lock in the presidency, even though he or she reflects the worldview of only a quarter of the states.

How accurate is that popular vote? Who knows? These left-wing one-party states don’t clean their voter rolls, exceedingly complicate the voting process by allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, and created barriers to voter verification. Once deposited and stripped of its envelope (if mail-in), the ballot from whatever source, by whomever, cannot be retrieved from the humungous pile. The culprit could even be convicted of vote fraud but the vote will still count. It’s untraceable.

May be an image of book and text — Mail-in ballots

How often does this happen? Who knows? It’s rarely found out due to the nature of the secret ballot – a godsend but makes the fraudulent vote untraceable once deposited. Since the process is so loosey-goosey in these states, the malefactor must admit to it and bring it to the attention of authorities before anything is done, but the illegal vote will still be counted.

Left-wing donkey party registrars and secretaries of state try to allay fears by saying that voter fraud is so rare. The percentage number is bogus. They take the number of discovered incidents, which are infinitesimal, against the total number of votes cast to produce a statistical piece of nonsense. It’s a lie because they, and no one, can ever know the full picture of fraud given the way they have set up and run show. Without a culprit standing out like a sore thumb or walking up to them and admitting to the crime, life goes on and the donkey party candidate wins by 30 points. There’s your “virtuous” national popular vote.

We have a recent and shameful example (see #1 and #2 below). A University of Michigan noncitizen student voted and submitted his ballot. Later, he asked for it back, maybe after realizing that it was illegal, or simple second thoughts. Only then were authorities aware of the criminal act, when the offender brought it to their attention. And he won’t be getting it returned; it can’t be; it’s dispersed into the ocean of early-vote ballots.

What happens in a close election when a tidal wave of ballots flood the thousands of local voting bureaucracies around the country? Well, get ready for a months-long battle in the media and courts as our embarrassment of a “democracy” plays out in full view to the rest of the world. Recently, we have a habit of close presidential elections. In 1960, JFK beat Nixon by a scant .17% in the popular vote. The 1968 election was won by Nixon by .7%. Trump and the Dems have been locked in an evenly matched embrace since 2016. This election might continue in this pattern. Our democracy is a debacle.

That’s our “democracy” for you. We get to vote on things and offices that we don’t understand. Campaigns don’t inform, only gaslight us. Every election is not decision time. It’s a looting expedition in how much we can load up on the national debt, and thus on our kids, or on the backs of the “rich”. The NFL has a 5-month season, just like our election “seasons”. Ballots are thrown about in the mail; monster blue states won’t verify identity; and early voting is a ticket to rashness.

I long for the days when we had a deliberative republic. We elect representatives to debate, deliberate, and decide the great issues before the republic. We choose a chief executive that reflects the wishes of a broad swath of the country, and who stays in his lane of the administration of the laws. And all within a matrix of rights. Instead, we’ve gone from republic to shame.

Good luck, America.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. “Joint statement of Secretary Benson and Washtenaw County Prosecutor Savit on charges filed in noncitizen voting case”, Michigan Department of State, 10/30/2024, at https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/news/2024/10/30/joint-statement-of-secretary-benson-and-washtenaw-county-prosecutor-savit-on-charges-filed
2. Thanks to Jim Geraghty of National Review for the information and sources In “The Election Crimes of 2024”, 11/4/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-election-crimes-of-2024/
3. “The National Popular Vote Idea Is Unconstitutional and Should Be Abandoned”, Peter J. Wallison, National Review, 6/27/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/the-national-popular-vote-idea-is-unconstitutional-and-should-be-abandoned/

November 3, 2024November 12, 2024

Montana’s Californization

May be an image of 3 people and crowd — Sen. Jon Tester (D, Mt.)

*Californization: noun, becoming more like California in the mind and NOT necessarily in its geo-spatial characteristics, such as Bozeman morphing into “BozAngeles” merely because it grows to accommodate an influx of interstate refugees. Far worse and much more troubling is the manipulation of a state’s popular biases, even their prejudices, to adopt California policy preferences.

I am fearful that America is being bribed and forced to be more like California. California used to be held in high esteem, the “shining city on a hill”. That’s certainly no longer true. The state is synonymous with dysfunction, decay, decline, and colossal misgovernance. It’s hemorrhaging refugees to other states, most of them middle class and families. Its social and economic life is feudalizing. Its electorate over decades has consistently chosen to eviscerate its quality of life. The result is a basket case, a Third World state within the world’s premiere First World nation. The question is, are electorates in other states desirous to join the “golden state” in this internal Third World?

My newly adopted home state of Montana could be getting ready to make the slide. No, the influx of new people or urbanization aren’t the culprits. It’s big, big campaign money from radical plutocratic barons in progressive bastions (Silicon Valley for instance) who have an outsized role in selling California-style dysfunction to the rest of the country, the same people who’ve made their urban bubbles and bi-coastal expanses unlivable, unaffordable, and inhospitable.

They’ve perfected a deceptive style of political packaging to pour their money into: sell California’s one-party jungle primary with a well-funded Montana ballot initiative (CI-126); sell California hedonism by sanctioning through another Montana initiative the elimination of the inconvenient consequence of sex: the baby (CI-128). Just think, in it, one human being would be legally empowered to destroy another with few, if any, restraints.

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The libertine deep pockets of California and New York prop up Jon Tester. As such, Democrat Senator Jon Tester has a campaign war chest 4 times his opponent. He’s a reliable vote for his party’s main policies and leadership, the same ones that seek to remake the country in California’s image.

They try to sell this dumpster fire of thought to the “rubes” by using the rustics’ vague social and political prejudices against them. Don’t like wealthy out-of-staters? Well, figure this: Tester uses his out-of-state millions to bash his opponent as an out-of-stater. Wrap your mind around that. And put a double-hex on his challenger by attaching “wealthy” to the pejorative. Class warfare works, even in red states.

Why are these progressive billionaires and zillionaires so interested in showering millions on Tester’s reelection? Answer: he thinks and votes more like them than us.

May be pop art of text — Tester: a two-faced Janus

The numbers are astounding in the effort to keep the guy in the Senate. According to Open Secrets, Tester vacuumed up $32.6 million in contributions in the first 3 months of 2024, about 70% of it are high-dollar (over $200) and a quarter, probably more, from super zips in California and New York (See #1 below). His Republican opponent, Tim Sheehy, garnered a mere $2.1 million. Clearly, a call went down the Dems’ deep-pocket pipeline to Big Entertainment, Big Finance, and Big Tech and up gushed the dough. The Democrats’ richly endowed blue-bubble political war machine have the wherewithal to have you vote for your own demise.

No wonder streaming anything results in a deluge of Tester spots. Ditto broadcast. Tester has more cash than he knows what to do with. The estimated $315 million to be spent on this Senate race makes it per capita the most expensive in history, $487 for each one of the state’s 648,000 registered voters (See #2 below).

With cash like that available to the initiative front, they can flood the screens, your text message platform, and airwaves with a tidal wave of appeals to popular prejudices which are crafted to have you vote for California dysfunction. The license for unlimited abortion (CI-128) is couched in anti-government verbiage by people who have the rustic look, waiting to manipulate our prejudices. Bear in mind that the reality is actually about one generation claiming the power to take the lives of those in the newest. Appalling. A country appearance and mannerisms disguise the push for California debauchery.

I suspect that the gambit sells. Our blue bubbles are mired in a deep quagmire of their own making. But in vast stretches of red states lies a population with their own dark strains of thought. Protectionism in tariffs and subsidies are popular. Interstate xenophobia lurks below the surface, ready to be exploited by the dump trucks of cash from blue-state bastions.

If the Big Lie succeeds, expect your children’s fortunes to worsen, and you won’t have a clue that you had a hand in it.

*P.S.: This piece was written before the November election.

RogerG

Sources:
1. “Tester outraises GOP rival in high-stakes Montana Senate race”, Jim Cloutier, 4/25/2024, at https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/04/tester-outraises-gop-rival-in-high-stakes-montana-senate-race
2. “Voters Drowning in Ads From ‘Obscene’ Amounts of Cash Flooding Montana U.S. Senate Race”, AP, USNWP, 10/29/2024, at https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2024-10-29/voters-drowning-in-ads-from-obscene-amounts-of-cash-flooding-montana-u-s-senate-race

October 31, 2024November 12, 2024

Jon Tester is a Democrat. Don’t Forget That.

May be an image of 7 people and text — en. Jon Tester (D, Mt.) at the far right and Sen. Chuck Schumer (center) at the lectern

Sen. Jon Tester is a Democrat, duh! As a Democrat, and after the great national ideological sorting by party that has taken place over the last few decades, that says a lot about him. Where are the conservative Democrats? They’re gone! He insists on being a Democrat while one is left groping for a reason. He runs as a Trumper when running for reelection back home, and he absolutely fits the MAGA-clichéd look: grizzled, flat top, overhanging belly, pickup truck with gun, white farmer. But he votes as a national Democrat, which is nearly identical to being a California Democrat.

Being a Democrat today (California or otherwise) ranges from taking on the policy preferences of Europe’s Social Democrats – i.e., socialist – and enviro-extremist Greens – i.e., socialist – or the UK’s Labor Party – i.e., socialist – to the neo-Marxism of AOC, Elizabeth Warren, etc. His ads stress the part of the far-Left agenda that will sell in Montana: class warfare, interstate xenophobia, and abortion, abortion, and more abortion. If a person ever sat down to actually give them some thought, they’re a collective hot mess.

For instance, an endless Tester spot plugging his support for abortion-and-more-abortion shows him gently touching a baby in her mother’s arms. Think about it: pushing abortion and a mother with baby. It’s the logical equivalent of joining matter and anti-matter. The baby can’t understand how close she came to not being in her mother’s arms, or anywhere. The baby’s existence hung by the delicate thread of whether her mother would use her “right” to end her existence. The scene is so bizarre. But it sells in a state hung up on the freedom of the individual to exterminate the next generation.

It’s more than this. He takes the party line on January 6th, which is as close to a party sacrament as one can get. Babylon Bee satirizes it as “January 6: The Most Deadliest Day” [sic]. What did Tester say on its anniversary in 2021? He released on his website the following: “January 6, 2021 was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history . . . .” (see the full statement here: https://www.tester.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/pr-8833/)

Please watch the Babylon Bee’s parody for counterpoint and perspective. Go to the link:

Jon Tester is a California Democrat in muddy boots. Looks great but people like him are destroying our way of life. Montanans have a guy in Washington who looks like Montana but votes to turn us into California.

*P.S.: Facebook doesn’t like the Babylon Bee or the New York Post, which included a story on Tester raking in Lefty California campaign cash. A quarter, maybe more, in his treasury came from California. You’ll have to search “Montana Democrat Sen. Jon Tester rakes in cash after California soiree, New York Post” to get the story. Censorship is alive and well on Facebook.

RogerG

October 24, 2024October 26, 2024

A Lesson in How to Incinerate Your Reputation

May be an image of 2 people and the Oval Office — Former congresswoman Liz Cheney applauds as Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event at Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., October 3, 2024. (Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Liz Cheney campaigns with Harris in campaign's final stretch | rocketcitynow.com — Kamala Harris arrives to speak at a campaign event with former Congresswoman Liz Cheney in Ripon, Wis., Oct. 3, 2024. (Photo: AP)

Republican primary voters in ruling majorities are infatuated with Donald Trump. I am a Republican, and am not. Neither is Liz Cheney, former congresswoman and scion of the Cheney political dynasty. She, however, in searing hatred of Trump, has endorsed his opponent, who is the exact opposite of nearly everything that Liz and the Cheney family patriarch and matriarch have been saying and doing for the past half century or more. This is more than incongruous. It takes hypocrisy to another level, to a complete shredding of one’s life story. It’s a lesson in how to incinerate your reputation.

Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney belong in the same coffee klatch as a coming together of Antifa and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (if such a thing was possible). After endorsing Harris, Liz Cheney takes understatement to the point of absurdity. While campaigning for Harris, she brazenly tries to brush off the stunning incongruity in throw-away lines “[we] may disagree on some things” and “[we] may not see eye to eye on every issue” (see #1 below). Do ya think?!

Liz Cheney, in her role as the sister of Plastic Man, stretched all the way to the other far end of the political spectrum to work for and elect a person who would undo everything that she and her father have spent a lifetime building. Kamala Harris is trying to make the Cheneys’ Wyoming, and everywhere else, into . . . San Francisco, the Bay Area cauldron that shaped and gave birth to Harris’s ambitions. As such, Liz Cheney’s choice for president is more at home in Berkeley than Wyoming.

Doubt it? Look to Harris’s record as California senator in the 115th and 116th sessions of Congress. According to Mark P. Jones of Rice University (see #2 below), “Harris is the second-most liberal Democratic senator to serve in the Senate in the 21st century”. It’s true, and more than a cliché. She loses the crown to Elizabeth Warren, and only Warren, in both sessions. Going back to the start of the 21st century, 109 Democrats served in the Senate and in terms of left-wing zealotry, Harris came in at 108th in the most-left wing sweepstakes, just ahead of comrade Warren (see #2 below).

Elizabeth Warren poses with VP Kamala Harris over a month after 2024 endorsement snub | Fox News — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, left, stands alongside Vice President Kamala Harris at a dinner nearly a month after the senator failed to endorse a 2024 Biden-Harris ticket. (Photo: Callaghan O’Hare / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

To get a sense of the sheer farce, and the extreme mental contortions required, look no further than the issue of abortion. Harris has repeatedly called for the restoration of Roe v. Wade across the nation all the way to “fetal viability” (superficially set at 22 weeks) and beyond (see #3 below). Where’s Cheney? Juxtaposed to Harris’s enthusiasm for aborting babies is Cheney’s 2021 co-sponsorship of the “Life at Conception Act” which would extend 14th Amendment protections to the “preborn human person” from “the moment of fertilization” (see #1 below).

Anti-abortion lawmakers take on Planned Parenthood

Still, in spite of the flippant demurrals, Cheney fawned all over Harris by declaring that she would “inspire our children” . . . if they survived Harris’s abortion gauntlet, and once out of the womb, the exposure to gender confusion and “transition” medical interventions. Thanks to Biden and Harris, the gender-confused XY “girls” will be allowed to rip through girls’ sports in a twisting of Title IX. Thank you, Liz Cheney.

Liz Cheney is a lesson in allowing your personal vindictiveness to sell out the country to a San Francisco/Berkeley/countercultural revolution. She’s already begun her personal “transition” to the left by adopting the donkey party’s smears against states who actually made law, heartbeat laws, to put meat on the bones of what it meant to be pro-life. Now, Liz adds her voice to the left’s lie machine in her feeble attempt to make the most incomprehensible political tag team in recent memory seem “normal” (see #5 through #8 below).

It’s a scene of political self-immolation. For the rest of us, if Liz Cheney has her way, we’ll be stuck with porn in elementary school libraries and third-grade classrooms, bankrupting energy prices, DEI run amok, CRT-style “public safety” which means no public safety, no borders, Israel facing a new Holocaust, Taiwan as a new base of operations for the Red Chinese PLA Navy, tax-and-spend to national oblivion, and the crusade against babies in sanctioned/subsidized abortion up to birth. As for your personal prospects, don’t take your kids to the park. Sounds like where Kamala is from, San Francisco.

And all of this because Liz Cheney is infuriated by the presence of Donald Trump. In her mind, we avoid Trump, but in our mind, we get a country that we won’t recognize nor want to live in. Speaking of minds, Liz Cheney has lost hers.

RogerG

Sources:

1. Thanks to Charles C.W. Cooke for his insights into this topic in “Liz Cheney’s Abortion Comments Show Why Stumping for Harris Was a Mistake”, National Review Online, 10/22/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/liz-cheneys-abortion-comments-show-why-stumping-for-harris-was-a-mistake/
2. For an analysis of Kamala Harris’s brief history as a U.S. Senator go to “Kamala Harris is extremely liberal — and the numbers prove it”, Mark P. Jones, The Hill, 8/8/2024, at https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4816859-kamala-harris-is-extremely-liberal-and-the-numbers-prove-it/
3. “Kamala Harris’ call for ‘reproductive freedom’ means restoring Roe”, Megan Messerly and Alice Miranda Ollstein, Politico, 7/29/2024, at https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/29/kamala-harris-abortion-restoring-roe-00171657
4. “Biden Administration: Title IX Protections Extend to Transgender Students”, Lauren Camera, USNWR, 6/16/2021, at https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2021-06-16/biden-administration-title-ix-protections-extend-to-transgender-students
5. “Abortion Advocates Are Lying about the Tragic Deaths in Georgia”, Calum Miller, National Review, 9/24/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/09/abortion-advocates-are-lying-about-the-tragic-deaths-in-georgia/
6. “The Abortion Pill Killed These Women. Its Supporters Blamed Pro-Lifers”, Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 9/23/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/09/the-abortion-pill-killed-these-women-its-supporters-blamed-pro-lifers/
7. “Untreated Side Effects of Abortion Drug Killed Amber Thurman, Not Georgia’s LIFE Act”, Kayla Bartsch, National Review, 9/23/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/untreated-side-effects-of-abortion-drug-killed-amber-thurman-not-georgias-life-act/
8. “Kamala Goes on Sex Podcast to Lie about Georgia Abortion Law”, Brittany Bernstein, National Review, 10/7/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/kamala-goes-on-sex-podcast-to-lie-about-georgia-abortion-law/

October 12, 2024October 26, 2024

Is Kamala Harris a Marxist?

Kamala Harris is an ‘airhead’ | Sky News Australia

No, but not because she isn’t unwittingly trying to be. For her, Marxists are communists who are meanies, much like Cinderella’s stepmother. Deep down inside, she, in the manner of all who rose out of the California one-party tar pit, has an abiding affection for much that lies under the Marxist rug. For her and all her delirious fans, James Lileks, essayist and satirist, has produced a concise description for Kamala and her classmates in his hypothetical history class. Here it is:

“Communism was invented by a hairy, smelly dude who sat in the library all day writing an explanation for why he was broke and ignored. He came up with some ideas that appeal to people who think they can figure out a secret special formula that explains everything and also has the totally coincidental outcome of giving them stuff they didn’t work for or deserve, at the expense of successful people with lots of friends and hot wives and steady access to a bath so that people don’t faint when they walk into the room.

“This system is utterly at odds with human nature, history, economics, and common sense, and hence it is beloved of two kinds of people: college professors who can fasten on a fat Western college like a leech on a whale, and clever sociopaths who can use it to exert power over the masses. It killed millions in the 20th century, yet we are told true communism was never tried, which is like poisoning 200 million people with a dose of arsenic and insisting they would have been fine if they’d been fed twice as much. Any questions?”

I don’t think Kamala is listening. She’s too busy passing notes.

May be an image of ambulance and text

RogerG

September 27, 2024October 26, 2024

The United States of California

Bye-bye California: More and more golden state residents are deciding to move away for good. (photo by ©SFGate)

Get ready. Buckle up. The dysfunction of California is about to become the dysfunction of the United States. Take a look at a red/blue county or precinct election map of California and you will see what lies in store for our country (see maps below). East of California’s Coast Range, and beyond the coastal plain from San Diego to the Bay Area, extends a vast Republican hinterland that is essentially inconsequential to the governance of the state. The same thing awaits the huge stretch of the country between the two coasts and outside the deep blue urban bubbles that dot the landscape like islands in a vast red ocean (see maps below). Furthermore, as urbanization proceeds apace even in solidly red states, they too will increasingly resemble the quality of governance in Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and California. Today, urbanization is poison to good governance.

May be an image of map and text — 2020 election nationally by precinct

Who’s responsible for this sorry state of affairs? First, the people, whether in town or country. They vote for “wrong track”. Many believe in the impossible, such as bountiful entitlements (unreformed Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid), papering over in trillion-dollar spending bills every grand greenie scheme, a strong national defense . . . and, amazingly, low taxes and fiscal sanity. The tooth fairy anyone?

Second, the Democrats’ base. They are the boosters of America’s institutional socialist party, the equivalent of Europe’s Social Democrats. Well, let’s just call them the Social Democrats. And third, the Republicans’ base. They are in the grip of a psychotic personality disorder, one that emotes in bouts of vengeance, and will blindly follow the person who best captures their sense of resentment and defiance. The result is a competitive socialism and a broad and chronic sense of post-election disappointment.

The “people”, both in their party’s primaries and in the general electorate, choose failure. Let’s not be puerile in blaming somebody else: “elites”, “establishment”, academia, the media, or some other nebulous cabal of the beautiful and hyper-wealthy-and-powerful. We did it; we chose it; we continue to choose it. Period.

In more sensible times, the Democrats’ socialism should write them off as an electoral joke. Instead, they’re competitive. It’s much more than the wind in their sails from their much larger stable of lefty zillionaire donors and left-wing academic/media commissars who occupy the commanding heights of the culture. Sometimes, your greatest strength arises from your opponent’s weakness. And lately, to the great joy of the donkey party, the GOP base has decided to go bonkers.

The evidence of the Republican voters’ mental incapacity lies in a Democrat Senate (51-49) and their poor showing in the last four national elections in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. 2016 was a squeaker (No, DJT, you didn’t win by a “lot”.) with a Republican Senate narrowed to a two-seat majority. The 2018 midterms saw our Social Democrats capture the House. 2020 was a Trump loss and a Social Democrat Senate. Then, we had the 2022 midterms. Inflation gripped the country; the national debt exploded; many of our urban spaces are violent open sewers; a totalitarian COVID shutdown destroyed our economy and public schools; our educational system is a mess; housing and energy are out of reach; appeasement foreign policy has made a comeback; the Kabul humiliation; boys are taking over girls’ sports; and a new Axis is turning the international scene into something that resembles our urban spaces. 2022 was supposed to be a red wave but became a desultory mist with a paper-thin Republican House majority that is both ungovernable and too busy neutering itself.

It’s a personality type that seems to attract Republican voters today like moths to a light; that and the endorsement of their new avatar, Donald Trump. The precursor to MAGA was the Tea Party bursting on the scene in 2009. Within Republican ranks, a feistiness was brewing which gave us 2010 Senate candidacies of, for example, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware (the so-called “witch”) who went down in flames. Republican voters had more electable choices at the time – including a former Delaware governor – but favored the fiery type so long as they showed sufficient belligerence. The general election results of that year and following, however, were dismal.

National Donors Keep Tea Party Losers Angle, O'Donnell on Political Stage | Fox News — Sharon Angle (l), Christine O’Donnell

Nonetheless, a truculent streak survived to remain a big part of the GOP base’s psychological profile. It’s attractive to them but not much to anyone else. But 2016 seemed to confirm their “wisdom” in the surprising Trump victory. They probably thought that the rest of the country was now onboard with their war against “the establishment”. And then along came 2018, 2020, and 2022, and repeated letdowns for the party. 2024 may yet prove to be a replay of 2022, or worse, and proof of the old definition of insanity falsely attributed to Einstein: “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting ….”

In 2022, we saw Trump endorsements in key competitive races go down in flames: Kari Lake (Az.), Herschel Walker (Ga.), Dr. Oz (Pa.), to name a few. Trump’s pugilistic refusal to accept defeat in 2020 paved the way for Georgia to be represented by two socialists in the Senate. Think of that: Republican governor Brian Kemp – the one who wouldn’t kowtow to Trump’s 2020 election rantings – sailed easily to victory as Walker succumbed to the Social Democrat Raphael Warnock. Even in Georgia, cantankerousness and an “outsider” status aren’t appealing attributes once we leave the tight confines of a party primary. It’s a lesson that today’s GOP base stubbornly refuses to learn.

May be pop art of text

The GOP base enthusiastically walks into the Social Democrats’ field of fire as the socialists throw money behind the most MAGA-like candidate in the Republican primary. The Social Democrats know something that Republican voters willfully ignore: pugilism in a candidate may whip up primary voters but is an advantage for the opposition in the general election. Funny thing, the Republican base wants Trumpiness and the Social Democrats are happy to accommodate them.

It is for this reason that socialism is competitive. Social Democrats get away with hiding their neo-Marxist roots – don’t expect their ideological soul mates who dominate our media to spill the beans – while Republicans continue to ignore reality. The Social Democrats know how to muzzle their cranks in election season. The GOP gives theirs a bullhorn.

May be an illustration of text

So, expect more boosterism for a culture of death (abortion unrestrained, euthanasia), drug legalization, fiscal stupidity, increasing dependency on public assistance, a dilapidation of national defense, the weight of the Leviathan behind teenage genital mutilation and XY “girls” in women’s spaces, a furtherance of the official pogrom against white males, and the world around you turning to crap. Much of it can be laid at the feet of Republican primary voters for refusing to present viable alternatives.

When candidates like a stroke victim (John Fetterman) and a mentally addled senior citizen (Joe Biden) consistently best MAGA darlings (Dr. Oz, Trump, Lake, etc.), it’s proof that something has gone awry, not with the “system” or the “establishment”, but with the base. In other words, Republican voters are making it easy for the USA to become USC – no, not that USC, the United States of California. California is the template for the entire country, with its dysfunction, greenie totalitarian utopianism, fiscal insanity, flood of refugees fleeing the dysfunction, its feudal society of a shrinking middle class and burgeoning poor amidst the super-rich behind their manor walls.

And watch after this election for the “wrong track” number to hit the stratosphere. The Social Democrats’ base is brainless for its belief in the impossible, such as a prosperous socialism. The Social Democrats in their base are firmly committed to oxymorons. For their part, the Republicans are impervious to simple campaign arithmetic.

Welcome to the United States of California. Yuck!

A man walks along a section of Union Pacific train tracks in downtown Los Angeles. (photo: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

RogerG

September 24, 2024October 26, 2024

The Race Hustle

May be an image of 3 people and text — BLM co-founders from left: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. Pictured at the Glamour of the Year Awards at NeueHouse Hollywood, 11/14/2016. (photo: Jordan Strauss, AP)

Preface:

I wrote most of the following before the release of Matt Walsh’s film “Am I Racist?”. He stole my thunder.

After viewing the film, there are two takeaways. First, jargon-laced pseudo-scholarship predominates in many academic fields, especially in education and the other “soft sciences”. They are laced with the 21st-century’s equivalent of phrenology or astrology. Much that is produced is riddled with the silliness of circular reasoning. How so? They use what they’ve never proven to justify major actions to defeat what they’ve never proven. It’s absolutely embarrassing to watch the drivel take hold.

The peddlers are chasing ghosts of their own fevered imaginations. The absurdities look compelling to the unwary as the proponents beam so confidently and arrogantly in their nincompoopery and glibness.

And this leads to the second observation: it sells to a more than insignificant chunk of the population. Random people sign petitions to rename the George Washington Memorial after Geoge Floyd. They are easily goaded into saying “f*#& you” to a semi-sentient allegedly racist old white man in a wheelchair. Some people, maybe many, are easily shamed into believing the unbelievable, and paying hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to debase themselves in what can only be described as Maoist shaming sessions. At least Mao’s Red Guards seized, beat, and tortured their victims into the humiliation. They had to be brutalized into demeaning themselves. Not so with these deep-pocketed sheep. Is this what late-stage civilizational decay looks like?

So much for the “wisdom” of the American people. It’s enough to cause the sane to seek refuge in a hermitage.

********************

Well, here it comes. I’m a “racist” to today’s activist-entrepreneurs who’ve turned racial oppression into a lucrative career. If I am, so is Booker T. Washington when he wrote in 1911,

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

And to think that he wrote it in 1911. He was way ahead of his time. He was branded an “accommodationist” for lacking sufficient militance in that era. Derisive labels are commonplace for this crowd of the race obsessed. That way, these race hustlers don’t have to explain themselves or their political jihads, just spew epithets and force skeptics to cower.

And the hustle certainly pays well. The hustle popularly known as Black Lives Matter (BLM) hit the mother lode on the back of the killing of George Floyd, raking in $90 million in 2020. BLM people, who before were just getting by, became celebrities with real estate portfolios, six-figure consultancies, and five-figure speaking gigs. Self-described Marxist and co-founder Patrisse Cullors fell into the lap of luxury in the purchase of a $1.4 million, 2,370 sq/ft Malibu area home. No more Banquet frozen dinners for this aspiring member of the Fortune 500.

No one really knows what happened to about half of that $90 million windfall from 2020. What we do know is that friends and associates in this hustling conglomerate – now called the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation – are watching as their fortunes blossom. Oppression pays, and not necessarily for the oppressor, but especially for the self-anointed spokespeople of the oppressed. It once again proves that mammalian waste attracts flies.

These champions of the oppressed need to keep the pot boiling. They covet oppression, real or imagined, like John D. Rockefeller coveted crude oil. Into this swamp of race-covetousness dives Hasim Coates. Who’s he? Coates carved a Denver satrap out of this vast oppression-mongering empire. A small fish in an ever-expanding pond, Coates joins Ibram X. Kendi, Kimberle Crenshaw, Robin D’Angelo, et al, in the CRT brigades as they swim about for fun and profit. He’s a fixture on the Denver political scene pushing causes and fellow-travelling candidates, and himself, into the control of Denver schools and wherever he can sell the gambit.

May be an image of 2 people, beard and people smiling — Kristen Fry, left, and Hashim Coates, right (Photo courtesy of Kristen Fry, (Screenshot via Hashim Coates for County Commissioner/YouTube)

Sometimes, people who’ve made a career in noisy hyperventilation necessitate the regular use of epithets, slanders, and smears, but inflate the balloon too much and it pops in their face. Coates’s ears must be ringing after one Denver school principal and mom stuck a pin into his hustle. Coates is a fan of redistributionist justice at the school level (and male prostitutes as it turns out) which translates into the same approach as the “reimagining law enforcement” of wannabe future president and Democratic standard bearer, Kamala Harris. “Reimagining” is making a shambles of the schools like it did our streets.

Coates, a common fixture at Denver Schools’ board meetings, claimed a white woman, parent Kristen Fry, grabbed him and used a racial slur to threaten him. He filed charges with the Denver PD; police criminally cited Fry; Coates won a restraining order against her; and the local DA accommodated by filing charges against Fry. The problem is that there is no evidence of anyone using the “n” word or touching Coates. Surveillance tape shows no touching and witnesses close to the encounter vouch to no use of the slur.

Coates is no stranger to the race hustle in Denver. Now, Fry is suing Coates, one of his associates, and four members of the Denver Public Schools Board for defamation, reminding all of us that the race hustle is still a hustle and therefore open to legal action by its victims. Not surprisingly, many hustlers end up penniless or behind bars. Right now, though, there’s still quite a bit of money left in the game to attract half-witted academics and scammers with the right melanin count, choice of bed partners, genitalia, and pronoun diversity.

Epilogue: Please go see “Am I Racist?”. Matt Walsh does a great job in exposing the baloney.

P.S.: Facebook wouldn’t initially approve this post because it “goes against our Community Standards”. What exactly does? A New York Post article on Patrisse Cullors’s real estate buying binge as one of my sources, that’s what. I removed the source but you can access the piece by searching “Patrisse Cullors real estate buying binge”.

May be a graphic of 1 person and text

RogerG

Sources:

1. “After Raising $90 Million in 2020, Black Lives Matter Has $42 Million in Assets”, Nicholas Kulish, New York Times, 5/17/2022, at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/business/blm-black-lives-matter-finances.html
2. “Who’s In Charge of Black Lives Matter’s Millions of Dollars?”, Robby Soave, Reason, 2/1/2022, at https://reason.com/2022/02/01/black-lives-matter-funding-millions-patrisse-cullors/
3. New York Post article on Patrisse Cullors’s real estate buying binge censored by Facebook.
4. “Radical Activists Nearly Ruined a Denver Mom with Racism Charge. Then the Evidence Came Out”; Ryan Mills, National Review Online, 9/3/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/radical-activists-nearly-ruined-a-denver-mom-with-racism-charge-then-the-evidence-came-out/