Meadow and Cliff

© Doug Santo

Virginia Politics Tweet of the Day

San Francisco has become the slum by the bay — Bad laws cause city’s homeless crisis

John Stossel:

“…San Francisco is one of the richest cities in the world. It’s given us music, technology and elegant architecture.

Now it gives us filthy homeless encampments.

One urban planner told me, “I just returned from the Tenderloin (a section of San Francisco). It’s worse than slums of India, Haiti, Africa!”…”

and

“…I’ve never seen slums in Africa, but I’ve seen them in Haiti and India.

What I saw in San Francisco looked similar. As one local resident put it, “There’s shit everywhere. It’s just a mess out here.”

There’s also lots of mental illness. One man told us, “Vampires are real. I’m paranoid as hell.” San Francisco authorities mostly leave the mentally ill to fend for themselves on the street.

Other vagrants complain about them. “They make it bad for people like us that hang out with a sign,” one beggar told us.

San Francisco is a pretty good place to “hang out with a sign.” People are rarely arrested for vagrancy, aggressive panhandling or going to the bathroom in front of people’s homes. In 2015, there were 60,491 complaints to police, but only 125 people were arrested.

Public drug use is generally ignored. One woman told us, “It’s nasty seeing people shoot up — right in front of you. Police don’t do anything about it! They’ll get somebody for drinking a beer but walk right past people using needles.”

Each day in San Francisco, an average of 85 cars are broken into.

“Inside Edition” ran a test to see how long stereo equipment would last in a parked car. Their test car was quickly broken into. Then the camera crew discovered that their own car had been busted into as well.

Some store owners hire private police to protect their stores. But San Francisco’s police union has complained about the competition. Now there are only a dozen private cops left, and street people dominate neighborhoods.

We followed one private cop, who asked street people, “Do you need any type of homeless outreach services?”

Most say no. “They love the freedom of not having to follow the rules,” said the cop.

And San Francisco is generous. It offers street people food stamps, free shelter, train tickets and $70 a month in cash.

“They’re always offering resources,” one man dressed as Santa told us. “San Francisco’s just a good place to hang out.”

So, every week, new people arrive.

Some residents want the city to get tougher with people living on the streets.

“Get them to the point where they have to make a decision between jail and rehab,” one told us. “Other cities do it, but for some reason, San Francisco doesn’t have the political will.”

For decades, San Francisco’s politicians promised to fix the homeless problem.

When Sen. Dianne Feinstein was mayor, she proudly announced that she was putting the homeless in hotels: “A thousand units, right here in the Tenderloin!”

When California Governor Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco, he bragged, “We have already moved 6,860 human beings.”

Last year, former Mayor Mark Farrell said, “We need to fund programs like Homeward Bound.”

But the extra funding hasn’t worked.

One reason is that even if someone did want to get off the street and rent an apartment, there aren’t many available.

San Francisco is filled with two-and three-story buildings, and in most neighborhoods, putting up a taller building is illegal. Even where zoning laws allow it, California regulations make construction so difficult that many builders won’t even try.

For years, developer John Dennis has been trying to convert an old meatpacking plant into an apartment building — but it has taken him four years just to get permission to build…”

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Trump’s State of the Union was surprisingly reflective and disciplined

Michael Barone:

“…“This year,” President Trump stated in the seventh paragraph of his widely viewed and positively rated State of the Union address, “America will recognize two important anniversaries that show us the majesty of America’s mission and the power of American pride.”

“On D-Day, June 6, 1944, 15,000 young American men jumped from the sky and 60,000 more stormed in from the sea,” he said. And then in July 1969, “brave young pilots flew a quarter of a million miles through space to plant the American flag on the face of the moon.”

None of the commentators I’ve seen have questioned why Trump chose to spotlight these events. He is not usually given to historical references; even his trademark slogan is vague about just when American was great. Celebrating others’ past achievements has not been his thing. But beginning the speech by celebrating these two American triumphs provided a shrewd framing with the potential to elevate his image. . . .

The larger point made at the beginning, underlined by the appearance of three D-Day veterans and astronaut Buzz Aldrin, is a refutation, without specific mention, of an argument that underlies so much of the upscale loathing of Trump and his politics.

That is the idea—call it the cosmopolitan argument—that nationalism is always bad, a primitive and unsophisticated bias in favor of the home team, a short step (if that) from Nazism. The argument is attractive to many because it makes them feel more sophisticated than the rubes who always praise America.

But the argument is weak if you know more history. “I ask you to join with me in prayer,” Franklin Roosevelt said in his radio fireside chat on the evening of D-Day, “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”

Yes, it’s nationalism, and it’s a prayer. Roosevelt mentioned allies only at the end and in passing. Trump underscored Roosevelt’s assertion that American nationalism is for the good by introducing (and leading the singing of Happy Birthday) for 81-year-old Holocaust survivor Judah Samet, recalling how, when their train “suddenly screeched to a halt, a soldier appeared. Judah’s family braced for the worst. Then his father cried out with joy, ‘It’s the Americans!”

Today, Trump argued, American nationalism continues to be benign, whether it’s trying to stop Iran’s genocidal nuclear ambitions by withdrawing from the Obama nuclear deal or it’s seeking to oust the disastrous Nicolas Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela.

This State of the Union can also be seen as a refutation of the identity politics conceit that white cisgendered males are inevitably the villains of history, ever-ready to oppress women and people of color, and that virtue inheres only in their intended victims.

That just doesn’t compute when you watch Trump’s salute of SWAT officer Timothy Matson, who “raced into gunfire and was shot seven times” and brought down the hateful murderer at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

There was less emphasis than many predicted on divisive issues — the border “barrier,” as Trump has taken to calling it, and abortion. On these, Democrats are at risk of getting out on flimsy limbs…”

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Green Deal Tweet of the Day

Green New Deal Tweet of the Day

The Incredible F1 Rocket Engine

Saturn V Stage I Engines

F-1 rockets on display at Kennedy Space Center.

Blackface Headline of the Day

Elizabeth Warren Admits To Wearing Paleface At College Costume Party

Political Headline of the Day

‘Republicans Are Brainwashed,’ Democrats Dutifully Chant While Clad In Identical White Uniforms

In attacking Neomi Rao, Democrats are arguing against progress — in more ways than one

MEGAN MCARDLE:

“…Neomi Rao is eminently qualified to be a judge; the former law professor has worked in both Congress and the White House, in addition to her academic experience. She has also long leaned right; when she was in college, and for some time after, she wrote right-leaning opinion pieces. Progressive groups have seized on these old writings as evidence of racial insensitivity and hostility to sexual-assault survivors, and in Rao’s confirmation hearing Tuesday, Democratic senators called her to account for them.

I’m tempted to write “Democrats are reduced to pointless obstructionism,” but “obstructionism” implies the ability to obstruct. Senate Democrats lack that ability, having done away with the filibuster for lower-court judicial nominations when they were in control. Thus they are reduced even further, to “pointless mudslinging.”

Yet “pointless” doesn’t mean “harmless.” The Democratic senators’ juvenile tactics will not stop Rao’s confirmation, but they are lowering the already debased national discourse. . . .

Of course, if the latter-day inquisitors get their way, and everyone is liable to future prosecution for views they no longer hold, we might all become somewhat less cognitively supple. Consider the message that progressives are sending to anyone hesitant about some proposed social change: “We want equality and justice. Also, after we win, we want to punish anyone who disagrees with us right now.”

Future punishees could be forgiven for being reluctant to support any such victory. Moreover, at the beginning of any major campaign for social change, those people will definitionally be in the majority; if they weren’t, the campaign would be unnecessary.

There’s a certain irony in watching progressive groups deploy tactics that are anti-progress in every sense of the word…”

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Will the last Democrat politician in Virginia without a blackface picture please turn out the lights?

Liz Sheld:

“…In the 80s, the thing to do in Virginia was take pictures in blackface apparently.

Yesterday, we learned that the Democrat attorney general of Virginia, Mark Herring, wore blackface at a party in 1980. We learned this after he called for Democrat Governor Ralph Northam to step down from office because *he* appeared in blackface (or in a KKK outfit) in his medical school yearbook. Northam initially admitted the blackface picture was him but subsequently changed his mind and currently denies he is the blackface on the page bearing his name in his medical school yearbook.

The man who’s second in line to become Virginia’s governor on Wednesday admitted that he too has worn blackface — just days after he called on Gov. Ralph Northam to resign for the same thing.

Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring on Saturday declared, “It is no longer possible for Governor Northam to lead our commonwealth, and it is time for him to step down.”

But on Wednesday, he issued a statement saying he wore brown makeup and a wig in 1980 when dressing up as a black rapper during a party when he was a student at the University of Virginia.

“In 1980, when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow, and perform a song. It sounds ridiculous even now writing it,” Herring said.

“But because of our ignorance and glib attitudes — and because we did not have an appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of others — we dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup.”

“Wore brown make up?” Interesting way of putting it. Does anyone think that either one of these jokers, Northam or Herring, would be accorded any courtesy by the media if they were Republicans. No. There would be special theme songs on cable and network news, there would be special graphics, there would be people interviewing every person that ever went to school with these blackfacers. They would be parked outside their residences, following relatives around, going through trash, confrontations by angry activists captured on video, think of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing as a paradigm. Why aren’t we seeing this?

Now Herring is 2nd in line to take over from the blackface governor. So who is the first in line? I’m glad you asked because….

VA Democrat Lt. Gov. accused of sexual assault

Crazy, right? We have the top three (Democrat) executives of Virginia all embroiled in some serious scandals.

Vanessa Tyson, the college professor who accused Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault in 2004, issued a lengthy statement Wednesday detailing the alleged incident.

“With tremendous anguish, I am now sharing this information about my experience and setting the record straight,” she wrote. “It has been extremely difficult to relive that traumatic experience from 2004. Mr. Fairfax has tried to brand me as a liar to a national audience, in service to his political ambitions, and has threatened litigation. Given his false assertions, I’m compelled to make clear what happened.”

Dr. Tyson, and she is a DOCTOR, just like DOCTOR BLOWSEY of the Kavanaugh fame is a DOCTOR. SURVIVOR & DOCTOR Tyson is no slouch in the credential department, writes Politico, SURVIVOR & DOCTOR Tyson is “a political science professor at Scripps College and visiting fellow at Stanford University.”

Many of the major Democratic candidates for president were quick to condemn Northam over his blackface getup but pointedly refused to comment on the allegations against Fairfax, the only statewide elected African-American Democrat. Tyson, too, is African-American.

Tyson released her statement through the Washington law firm Katz, Marshall and Banks, which lists sexual harassment law as one of its areas of expertise and represented Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her when the two were in high school. Ford’s accusations led Democrats to proclaim the need to “believe the woman.”

Where are we in this intersectional polka dance? Believe all women?!? Maybe not, if they are accusing the wrong kind of person. Or maybe there is something different about this accuser. It sure looks that way.

Over at Bearing Drift, Stephen Spiker games out who is next up to bat for Virginia’s leadership.

Now who is dropping this oppo on the VA Dems? After all these years and campaigns, why is this info coming out now? Cui bono?…”

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Donald Trump’s Annihilation of the Democratic Party

Worth clicking over.

Conrad Black:

“…The nadir of the amoral egotism of what might broadly be called “Me-ism” has been reached by the avant garde of the Democratic Party in their race to the bottom of the electoral depths. The renunciation of any notions of sacrifice, patriotic pride, the spirituality of life, or the recognition of anything except the smash-and-grab politics of endless atomized grievances and instant gratification of convenience, has reached what must, in its way, be the end of history.

The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist, led the way downwards with an unctuous statement on the virtues of delivering children, assuring their survival as live babies, and then determining in discussion with the mother (of course) whether they deserved to be allowed to survive.

This was an attitude that appalled a large section of opinion in 5th century B.C. Athens. In espousing it, far more than the utter moral vacuity of the cutting edge of the Democratic Party has been exposed. When running for governor, Northam called his opponent a racist and President Trump a “narcissistic maniac.”

The Bigger Fight
The informal, spontaneous, emergent strategy of the Democrats is finally erupting and foaming from the mouths and nostrils of their legislators and candidates in a mighty outburst of opportunistic consciousness. This is a delayed reaction to the destruction of their monopoly on political power by the Trump phenomenon, compounded by the recognition that Trump can’t be impeached and will do everything he promised if he can get a firm enough grip on the apparatus of political power.

The supreme struggle for the commanding heights of American politics, the battle of Verdun or of Stalingrad, has come over immigration. The decades-old understanding between machine Democrats vacuuming up easy Latino votes and largely Republican employers exploiting the cheap labor of illegal Latino immigrants enabled Donald Trump to forge a new coalition of the threatened working class, the middle class exhausted by more than a decade of flat-lined purchasing power, the silent majority of disinterested patriotic Americans, and the legitimate immigrants who do not want their ability to climb the socio-economic ladder as American immigrants have done for 240 years to be undercut by swarms of illegal migrants with no sense of choosing a new country and determining to accept that country’s values and work within them…”

and

“…The Democratic train is now roaring off the tracks and down the third rail which politicians used not to touch, out of a lingering sense of self-preservation. The logical coruscation of this dispersal—this flight from the political center to the left, to stage a goal-line stand of the die-hards against the Trump ogre, grinding relentlessly forward, heedless of the semi-daily announcements by most of the national media of his imminent collapse in legal shambles, is to repurpose abortion as the end of the policy rainbow.

Abortion is too intrusive, too inconvenient; let the children be born and then the mother can decide whether she wants to be a mother after all, or kill the child, or give it up for adoption.

This was the logical end of the nonsensical Roe v. Wade decision that childbirth is exclusively a matter of a woman’s control over her body: it decided correctly that the state does not have the power and should not seek the power to inflict childbirth on a woman who does not want to have a child. But it ignored the real question of when the unborn attain to the rights of a person. That is why the decision is vulnerable and the Democrats, in cold terror that it could be overturned, are in panic and are moving the battle-lines forward to the position of Ralph Northam, far from a natural oracle of moral opinion this past week.

To hell with control over their own bodies! Women will decide in post-natal calm whether to kill the child. It is to this unspeakable assault on every principle and value that has guided, inspired, and undergirded American civilization, where the Democrats are arriving at their last post…”

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Hawkeye Landing

An E-2C Hawkeye assigned to Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 117 prepares to land on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) in the Indian Ocean, Jan. 28, 2019.

Virginia Politics Tweet of the Day

SOTU Tweet of the Day

NBC News, to Claim Russia Supports Tulsi Gabbard, Relies on Firm Just Caught Fabricating Russia Data for the Democratic Party

Journalism (Fake News)

Glenn Greenwald:

“…NBC NEWS PUBLISHED a predictably viral story Friday, claiming that “experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.”

But the whole story was a sham: The only “expert” cited by NBC in support of its key claim was the firm New Knowledge, which just got caught by the New York Times fabricating Russian troll accounts on behalf of the Democratic Party in the Alabama Senate race to manufacture false accusations that the Kremlin was interfering in that election.

To justify its claim that Gabbard is the Kremlin’s candidate, NBC stated, “analysts at New Knowledge, the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election, told NBC News they’ve spotted ‘chatter’ related to Gabbard in anonymous online message boards, including those known for fomenting right-wing troll campaigns.”

What NBC — amazingly — concealed is a fact that reveals its article to be a journalistic fraud: That same firm, New Knowledge, was caught just six weeks ago engaging in a massive scam to create fictitious Russian troll accounts on Facebook and Twitter in order to claim that the Kremlin was working to defeat Democratic Senate nominee Doug Jones in Alabama. The New York Times, when exposing the scam, quoted a New Knowledge report that boasted of its fabrications: “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the [Roy] Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.’”

That fraud was overseen by New Knowledge’s CEO, Jonathon Morgan. At the same time Morgan was fabricating Russian troll accounts and using them to create a fraudulent appearance that Putin was trying to defeat the Democratic Senate candidate, he was exploiting his social media “expertise” to claim that Russians were interfering in the Alabama Senate election. In other words, Morgan used his own fake Russian accounts to lie to the public and deceive the national media into believing that Kremlin-linked accounts were trying to defeat the Democratic Senate candidate when, in fact, the accounts he was citing were ones he himself had fabricated and controlled…”

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Donald Trump chooses greatness — and so should we.

Roger Kimball:

“…Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that unemployment is at a generational low and that Black and Hispanic unemployment is at an historic low? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that economic growth, well north of three percent, is at a level declared impossible under the anemic leadership of Barack Obama? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that manufacturing is flooding back to the US? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice at the president’s attack on the regulatory state, the monstrous regime of Title IX fanatics, and other efforts to transform ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ into a safe-space chest-less pajama boys? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that wages are rising, that inflation is stable, that the stock market is booming? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that 2018 marked the first time in 46 years that that cost of prescription drugs dropped? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that the president is endeavoring to rationalize our immigration policy and enforce our immigration laws? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that the president has made historic inroads in negotiations with pariah states like North Korea and adversarial states like China? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice in his rebuilding and modernizing the US military? The answer to all these questions is ‘Yes, they should.’ But will they?…”

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9 Liberal Celebrities Who Have a Blackface Problem

Nitwit celebrities get what they deserve as the PC monster turns on its own. Click over for the names.

MATT MARGOLIS:

“…Last week, when the country learned about Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s med school yearbook featuring him in either blackface or in a KKK uniform, there was universal outrage. There have been calls for his resignation even within his own party. Northam has so far refused to resign, and he probably has good reason. Liberals tend to only get outraged when it’s convenient for them, but in time, they are very forgiving when one of their own does something racist.

Heck, how many Democrats served with and repeatedly praised former KKK-member Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V.)?

Northam knows that he can probably ride this out and serve out his term. How many liberals have donned blackface and not seen their lives and careers destroyed? To answer this question, let’s look to Hollywood… a bastion of left-wing ideology and hypocrisy. They’ll call Donald Trump a racist despite no evidence of it, but they’ll turn a blind eye when one of their own mocks African Americans by wearing blackface for the sake of entertaining other rich white liberals…”

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Elizabeth Warren in big trouble now

Howie Carr:

“…Stick a fork in cold crab omelette — the fake Indian is all done now.

She speak-um with forked tongue one time too many, and now The Washington Post, of all places, has scalped her. The smoke signals went out last night — as early as 1986 she was lying on a Texas bar application that she was “American Indian.”

Lieawatha admit-um she talk with forked tongue, only she use white-eye language, calling it “furthering confusion.”

No confusion anywhere. You are an utter fraud. Fake Indian, you will have many moons to reflect on your serial lies. Never will you be great white father…”

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Merle Haggard, Take Me Back To Tulsa

Doug Santo