Cop Watch

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/24/2020-hispanic-voters-donald-trump-225192 When President Donald Trump tweeted, on January 20, that he had reached 50 percent approval among Hispanic-Americans, most fair-minded observers reacted with skepticism, if not outright disbelief. Trump was, after all, still the same man who announced his candidacy by accusing Mexico of sending “rapists” across the border, the same man who ordered refugee children separated from their parents, the same man who has made building a wall to shut out migrants the focal point of his presidency. Yet here he was, crowing characteristic bravado: “Wow, just heard that my poll numbers with Hispanics has gone up 19%, to 50%. That is because they know the Border issue better than anyone, and they want Security, which can only be gotten with a Wall.” So, when even the pollsters responsible for the data Trump was touting—Marist Institute for Public Opinion, for NPR and "PBS NewsHour"—cautioned of the high margin of error for that subset, and a possible over-sampling of Republicans, many on the left promptly dismissed it as an anomaly. One month later, however, and Trump is making an aggressive play for Hispanic-American votes in Florida and beyond. Meanwhile, polls suggest Marist might have been onto something—and that Democrats should be worried that Hispanic voters could help reelect Trump and keep the Senate in Republican control. If so, it would be a cosmic twist of fate: A party that has staked its future on a belief that America’s demographic picture is changing decidedly in its favor could find itself losing to a man whose politics of fear should be driving precisely those voters into the Democrats’ waiting arms.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2019/02/25/thats-a-hard-pass-on-socialism-millennial-suckers-n2542107 While the unkillable ideological cockroach that is socialism seems to be enjoying a resurgence primarily among stupid and/or evil millennials, there are three key groups who will oppose any such transition here in America. There are ex-military folks like me who served in the ruins of socialist countries and saw the way they poison a culture (and literally the land too – socialism is always an environmental atrocity). There are folks, like my wife, who escaped from murderous socialist hellholes – wear your scummy Che t-shirt around her and she’ll cut you. And then there are the rest of the Normal Americans who are both aware of socialism’s 100 million corpse tally and who don’t particularly want a bunch of aspiring campus Castros taking power and telling bossing them around for eternity. Here’s the thing, and I’ve said it before, but I’m not worried about socialism because I’ll never live in a socialist America. It either will not happen, or it will happen after I and millions of others are dead fighting for the Constitution. So, this is really not my problem, but a problem for the millennials who would have to live with it. Sadly, a lot of millennials are – how do I put this delicately? – really stupid and eager to create a system that empowers aspiring lil’ kommisars to bully the Normals. Wait, first we need to define “socialism,” because there seems to be a lot of confusion about what socialism is among the young people supporting it. “Socialism” is defined as “socialism.” You have probably seen on social media where smug dorks in knit caps post memes about how, “If you support having roads and armies, you support socialism!” Okay, if every kind of government has roads and armies, then roads and armies are not an attribute of a socialist government in particular but of government in general. This kind of soft thinking is the sad result of too many years spent watching The Daily Show, which offers its audience such pseudo-smart insights designed to blow the minds of credulous sophomores. Oh, and here’s another annoying meme – “Well, if you plan to take Social Security or Medicare, you’re a hypocrite if you criticize them!” No, dummy. It is not hypocrisy to participate in a system that steals your money even as you seek to end it. If you leftist twits are down to let us dissenters opt out, let’s do that. Otherwise, a portion of every shift at the coffee house you pull is going to pay me my Social Security once I can take it, and I want you to know that I won’t need it, but the thought of you working for me for once is so delightful I wouldn’t ever think of passing it up. Consider it payback for your endless attempts to harness my labor for your benefit, suckers. Understand that the real motivation behind “socialism,” as they use the term, is to shift power and resources from people like you into the hands of the unaccomplished losers who make up the Democrat Party. In terms of specific policies, socialism, as imagined by our useless millennials, seems to be less about Marxist doctrine than about just stealing things that millennials really want from you – that is, your money and your power. It’s an attempt to create a moral, cultural and political framework to justify making you an impoverished subject toiling for, and obedient to, the kind of hipster geebos who inhabit Brooklyn and Santa Monica. Like I said, I’d prefer to die on a pile of hot brass than live as a serf to these geeks. Let’s review some of their favorite policies. They want universal healthcare, which means you have to work to generate money so that they get the healthcare they want. Now, my preference is that I work to get my own healthcare (which I have done for north of three decades), and they work to get their own healthcare. Or not. Perhaps they will choose to spend their money on something foolish instead of healthcare, like Fyre Festival tickets, and as a result not get the healthcare they want. That’s perfectly fine with me. But they want to have their cake, and eat it too, and for you to pick up the tab, and then buy them more cakes. Plus, they want to yell at you because the icing is transphobic for some reason. You would get to pick up the tab for their college too, for some reason. It’s unclear why we’re morally obligated to underwrite their gender studies degrees. I just know that I spent a lot of years paying off student loans (which ought to be ended because they are a scam designed to enrich the liberal parasite apparatus that is academia, but that’s another rant) and maybe you’ll think I’m selfish, but I don’t want to work to pay for other people’s school too. Actually, you will think I am selfish, because now “selfish” is defined as “Unwilling to labor to produce wealth for other people.” But that’s okay. I can live with your fussy moral condemnation, millennials. What I can’t live with is you being my masters. But that’s what you aspire to be, and you are not shy about manufacturing ridiculous rationales for imposing your dictatorship of the Bernie broletariat. Remember the Green New Deal? “We have to become socialist because of…uh…the weather. Yeah, that’s it. The weather.” Well, that part they let slip through about giving free money to people “unwilling to work” kind of gave it away. Socialism today is about harnessing the awesome power of Normal Americans to fuel the lazy lifestyle of a bunch of spoiled jerks. Socialism here in America? No thanks. Not interested. And by “not interested,” I literally mean that I’d fight to the death to prevent you psychos from trashing the Constitution to impose a socialist regime here in America. And I’m not alone. I bet a bunch of you are down for the flag too. So millennial socialist twerps, keep running your vape holes about change and progress and all that stuff, but if you really want a revolution, you better put down your iPhones and learn how to shoot. To experience the full horror of a socialist America – or at least a socialist America built out of the nitwit blue parts – check out my novels People’s Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire. They explore an America split in two between red and blue in the early 2020s, and *SPOILER* socialism turns out to be a lot less awesome for its advocates in reality than was promised during all those bong hit-fueled late night dorm parties.

Going back to 2016, Trump won the White House largely by “stealing” white, blue-collar voters from Hillary Clinton in the Rust Belt. Since then, he’s pursued Hispanic and black voters more aggressively than any Republican since Reagan, and it isn’t even close. The further left the Democrats push next year — and it looks like they’ll push very hard, indeed — the more secure the GOP base will become, aside from a very few remaining NeverTrump dead-enders. That would give Trump the liberty to spend more time and resources pursing voters which the Democrat nominee simply can’t afford to lose. 2020 is shaping up to be a fun, scrappy fight.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/23/turley_mueller_one_collusion_short_of_making_a_case_there_is_no_evidence_of_collusion.html Back to Videos Turley: Mueller "One Collusion Short" Of Making A Case, "There Is No Evidence Of Collusion" Posted By Ian Schwartz On Date February 23, 2019 MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST: Doesn't the absence of additional indictments against [Roger] Stone suggest, as the President would say, no collusion? JONATHAN TURLEY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW PROFESSOR: Well, it does. You have to call them as you see them. There is no evidence thus far of collusion between the Trump campaign or President Trump and the Russians and hacking these computer systems. And moreover, it's really quite unlikely, right? If you were a KGB spymaster, would you really collude with Donald Trump and put yourself one tweet away from destruction, on perhaps the most secret operation in its recent history? The answer is no they wouldn't do that. Would you hold a hypersensitive meeting at Trump Tower with half the media downstairs and not actually produce the evidence promised, instead, talk about adoptions? No. The most obvious explanation is probably the right one. That there was not collusion in the hacking of the system. What appears to be the case is that Stone wanted to get access to this information. That's not illegal. Journalists, operatives, even academics, all try to get their hands on material like this, whether it's whistleblowing or it came from one source or another. There is nothing illegal in that. I think so far we're one collusion short of making that case.

After his election, President Clinton tapped Labor Secretary Robert Reich to lead the effort to extract, as Mr. Reich put it in 1994 congressional testimony, "social, ancillary, economic benefits" from private pension investments. Mr. Reich called on pension funds to join the administration's "Economically Targeted Investment" effort. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros assured participants that "pension investments in affordable housing are as safe as pension investments in stocks and bonds." Six pension funds ultimately agreed to invest in public housing that was backed by $100 million in federal grants and guarantees, but the program never took off. In the end, even unions and their pension funds rejected the effort to direct any part of their retirement savings toward someone else's welfare. The Clinton administration lost the battle to use pensions to fund low-income housing, but it succeeded in winning the war by drafting Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the commercial banking system into the affordable-housing effort. It did so by exploiting a minor provision in a 1977 housing bill, the Community Reinvestment Act, that simply required banks to meet local credit needs. Bank regulators began to pressure banks to make subprime loans. Guidelines became mandates as each bank was assigned a letter grade on CRA loans. Banks could not even open ATMs or branches, much less acquire another bank, without a passing grade—and getting a passing grade was no longer about meeting local credit needs. As then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified to Congress in 2008, "the early stages of the subprime [mortgage] market . . . essentially emerged out of the CRA."

Meme thread mixup

http://donaldjtrump.com/cf

U.S.—The nation’s liberals were struck by a devastating blow this week after finding out a hate crime, reported by Empire actor Jussie Smollet, didn’t actually happen. “I needed this to be true,” said liberal columnist Hanna Spalding. “When I first heard the news of this attack, I was filled with so much hope. I felt so validated. Then that was taken away. Now I just want to cry into my pillow.” The attack had been called “a modern-day lynching” by democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker but after Chicago police reported that the “trajectory of the investigation” into Smollet’s story had shifted, Smollet was stripped of his victim status. Booker became irate, phoning the Chicago police chief and shouting repeatedly, “Check it again! CHECK IT AGAIN!” After some deep breathing exercises, Booker spoke with reporters. “How are we supposed to intentionally turn the nation against each other and exploit these divisions for political power if people won’t commit a simple hate crime once in a while?” Candlelight vigils are being arranged in liberal cities across the country as millions mourn the loss of one of the most potentially divisive crimes in the last decade. “There was so much promise there. Now there’s just emptiness,” said one mourner in Berkley, CA. “While Smollet’s attack may have been a hoax, our emotions have undergone a modern-day lynching,” said activist Andrea Jones at a vigil in Chicago. “If you think about it, this is even worse than if the crime had actually happened. A lot of people put a lot of hope into Smollet’s story. Our expectations have been violently assaulted. Yesterday we thought one man had been attacked. Today, our narrative is the one in a hospital bed, sucking Jell-O through a straw and fighting for its life.”

https://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2019/02/green-with-laughter.html Green With... Laughter? Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez launches her Intersectional Environmentalism proposal to de-carbonize the US economy and solve every social problem within ten years. Megan Mcardle, David Harsanyi and Jon Chait wack the pinata. I'll give Megan props for the best headline: ‘We’re nuts!’ isn’t a great pitch for a Green New Deal But this proposal, and especially the accompanying (and withdrawn) fact sheet isn't merely ludicrously ambitious and devoid of common sense (Eliminate air travel?!? Retrofit "every" building in America?!?). It also reveals a stunning absence of basic knowledge of history and public finance. One wonders whether Ms. AOC actually has the time and temperament to collaborate with experts and study an issue (yet another reason she is the Trump of the left!). Or did Democratic leadership cut her loose and send the real Washington hands off on other projects? Let her primary herself! On to specifics. This passage on how the extreme environmental makeover might be financed may have sounded great in a college dorm. A freshman dorm. But this is a frightening level of ignorance about the structure, legal authorities, independence and role of the Federal Reserve when it comes from a Congressperson as part of a legislative package (my emphasis): How will you pay for it? The same way we paid for the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs. The same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit. There is also space for the government to take an equity stake in projects to get a return on investment. At the end of the day, this is an investment in our economy that should grow our wealth as a nation, so the question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity. Ah, well, what? The Federal Reserve is an independent entity - it won't be financing this green agenda just because AOC thinks it ought to. As to their legal authority, well, it is widely agreed the Fed can purchase government backed debt. They crept beyond that during the 2008 financial meltdown and used their lending authority to finance parts of the AIG bailout in what was widely perceived as an dire, backs against the wall, emergency meltdown scenario. But it is not at all obvious why an independent Fed would choose to finance these green projects or whether it would be within their legal scope. Back on the history front, this JFK/Ike/FDR nostalgia is ahistorical nonsense: Americans love a challenge. This is our moonshot. When JFK said we’d go to the by the end of the decade, people said impossible. If Eisenhower wanted to build the interstate highway system today, people would ask how we’d pay for it. When FDR called on America to build 185,000 planes to fight World War 2, every business leader, CEO, and general laughed at him... At the time, the U.S. had produced 3,000 planes in the last year. By the end of the war, we produced 300,000 planes. That’s what we are capable of if we have real leadership. One at a time: Kennedy first laid out the man-on-the-moon vision in May 1961. The US was losing the space race to the Soviet Union, which had the first satellite and the first man in space (their legacy rocket program from WWII gave them a head start). Did people say "impossible"? The relevant Senate Committee unanimously approved funding a few weeks later. Polling was scattered: per Forbes, in 1959 52% thought a man on the moon was doable within 20 years; in early 1961, 65% approved of the attempt. Well, until the price tag was announced: per Wikipedia, 58% opposed the use of funds for that purpose. But "impossible"? Not seeing it. And Ike? Well, he didn't wait for people to ask how we'd pay for the highway program - he asked Congress to extend the gasoline tax in his original proposal. No, fiscal conservatism wasn't invented last weekend to thwart Green Dreams. As to FDR, my goodness: his speech calling for a massive rearmament effort was delivered on May 15, 1940, five days after Germany began their invasion of France. The French collapse along the Meuse was well underway, although the public (and possibly Allied military leadership) may not have been fully aware. The Times front page, with the Roosevelt speech in the upper left: Although AOC is surely hearing laughter today, people were not laughing in May of 1940 (Geez, did she see "Churchill"? "Dunkirk"? How about "Avengers - Infinity War"?). In fact, FDR pressed into service William Knudsen, the head of General Motors, to dial up America's industrial base. Here is how historian Arthur Herman described Knudsen's approach: “I’m no soldier,” Knudsen told Roosevelt when he got to Washington that May, “But I know if we get into war, the winning of it will be purely a question of material production.” He persuaded FDR that three steps were needed to get America’s businesses and factories ready for getting back to work, and getting ready for war. The first was to rethink Roosevelt’s own anti-business instincts, and to bring industry leaders into the administration to deal with the production crisis. The second was to scrap many of the New Deal’s anti-business regulations and tax policies, in order to give businesses an incentive to switch to wartime production and hire workers, retool, and expand their plants. The third was to take control of the war mobilization process away from Washington bureaucrats and give it to America’s most innovative and productive companies. That sounds sort of the opposite of the AOC plan to put the government in charge of everything. Well. Other than showing no grasp of common sense, history or public finance I would say AOC is good to go.

But this proposal, and especially the accompanying (and withdrawn) fact sheet isn’t merely ludicrously ambitious and devoid of common sense (Eliminate air travel?!? Retrofit “every” building in America?!?). It also reveals a stunning absence of basic knowledge of history and public finance. One wonders whether Ms. AOC actually has the time and temperament to collaborate with experts and study an issue (yet another reason she is the Trump of the left!). Or did Democratic leadership cut her loose and send the real Washington hands off on other projects? Let her primary herself! On to specifics. This passage on how the extreme environmental makeover might be financed may have sounded great in a college dorm. A freshman dorm. But this is a frightening level of ignorance about the structure, legal authorities, independence and role of the Federal Reserve when it comes from a Congressperson as part of a legislative package

“I sympathize with Jeff Bezos, but I find it quite ironic that they’re raising privacy concerns, when the high-tech industry, primarily Google and Facebook, but also Amazon, pedal in selling our information and invading our privacy on a regular basis.”