Wondering Why Americans Are Running from Blue States?
Antonio Chaves:
“…Some regulations are needed for safety and the environment, but people who equate regulatory streamlining with Armageddon should read up on how the airlines industry evolved after Jimmy Carter signed the Airlines Deregulation Act of 1978. Even though travelers complain more today about the quality of service, the option of cheaper flights has been a godsend for less affluent Americans, who would otherwise be suffering through 30-plus-hour bus rides every time they visited faraway relatives.
America is the only nation in the world that was founded on the principle of enumerated powers, but limited government cannot prevail without a critical mass of conscientious grown-ups who cherish their liberties and limit their reliance on government to protecting their natural rights. The mass exodus from states where citizens traded away their freedoms for “equality” should serve as a cautionary tale for voters and policymakers who still believe they can tax and regulate their way to higher living standards. People on the move carry all kinds of baggage, and not all of it is tangible. America’s survival may rely on whether or not refugees from these failing states choose to double down on the socialist delusion that prosperity grows out of the barrel of a gun…”
Pseudo-Authenticity
Victor Davis Hanson:
“…Americans always have been prone to reinventing themselves.
We now live in an age of radical social construction—a sort of expansive update on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American notion of becoming anyone one pleases.
One common denominator, however, seems to govern today’s endless search for some sort of authenticity: a careerist effort to separate oneself from the assumed dominate and victimizing majority of white heterosexual and often Christian males.
Ironically, the quest for a superficial separation from the majority comes at a time when the majority has never been so committed to the promise of the Declaration of Independence and when equal opportunity has become a reality rather than an abstract ideal.
Yet in our new binary society, we all have a choice to be seen either as victims or victimizers. And thus we make the necessary adjustments for the often more lucrative and careerist choice.
Victim Chic
At the most buffoonish, sometimes activists simply construct identities out of whole cloth. Ward Churchill did that pretty well, when he fabricated a Native American persona and parlayed it into a faculty billet at the University of Colorado that was otherwise unattainable for such a mediocrity with pseudo-credentials.
Rachel Dolezal, recently charged with welfare fraud, became Spokane chapter president of the NAACP by falsely claiming she was African-American.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for years leveraged old family yarns about a high-cheekbone, Native American heritage into Harvard’s first authentically Native American law professor. Her self-invention was much more likely a route to advancement than more dreary publication, better teaching, or just being Elizabeth Warren, middle-aged white female scholar.
Sometimes the self-transformation is subtler, and made through inference, not the wholesale construction of a new identity. Robert Francis O’Rourke, from a wealthy and well-connected Texas family of Irish descent, was a more or less a nondescript Democrat, three-term congressman backbencher—at least until he ran for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat. But in the midst of the national anti-Trump “Resistance,” “Beto” (Robert = Roberto = “Beto”) became a sort of veritable Latino identity politics and hard-left progressive sensation. O’Rourke’s Latinate emphasis too was a wise move, in that most longtime obscure congressional white male representatives do not become national figures and would-be presidential candidates in less than a year.
The oddity of Beto’s efforts at social construction was that Senator Rafael Cruz ran as “Ted.” In other words, he campaigned as what he really was: an assimilated Latino of half-Cuban heritage. In contrast, an Irishman without any Latino ancestry reinvented himself as a veritable Latino. And note that while most so-called white Texans voted for the authentic “Latino” Ted, most Latinos voted for the fake Latino Beto.
Barack Obama grew up as a middle to upper-middle-class student in prep school in Honolulu, the child of a visiting Kenyan student and a white middle-class mother. His sometimes privileged childhood was due largely to the talent and hard-work of his white grandmother from the Midwest who rose through the ranks to become a successful banking executive.
At various times in school Obama was known as Barry Obama or Barry Soetoro before returning to his given name as Barack Obama as a college student. Part of the reason why the later so-called unhinged “birther” conspiracy theory took hold (i.e., that yarn that Barack Obama allegedly was not born in the United States) was that Barack Obama’s own literary agency Acton & Dystel, in one of its own promotional pamphlets produced in 1991, identified Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”
His publicist likely created that myth—and Obama himself either did not correct the mistake or was not consulted about the attribution—not because Obama was a native of Kenya but because such a false claim was seen as useful in offering greater authenticity of the author’s “otherness.” The editor later confessed error on her part.
Recent California senate candidate and former state legislator, Kevin Alexander Leon was born to Guatemalan immigrants. He later changed his name to Kevin de León by adding the de and an acute accent mark apparently to emphasize his authentic generic Latino and perhaps pseudo-Mexican-American fides, in a manner his Irish first name apparently did not sufficiently convey. “Kevin” apparently sounded too suburban in the manner that Barry lacked the ethnic gravitas of Barack. And Leon, without the de, perhaps was prone to be mistaken as too generically European (in fact, it derives from Greek “leôn,” lion).
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest congressional representative in history, grew up in a mostly upper middle-class family in Yorktown Heights, an affluent suburb in Westchester County, New York. Her parents were Puerto Rican immigrants, her father an architect. Alexandria herself graduated from the upscale Yorktown Heights High School. The suburb was 90 percent white and the average median household income was nearly $110,000, placing it among the most affluent communities in the nation. Ocasio-Cortez graduated from the private Boston University.
In other words, Ocasio-Cortez’s family’s story is one of higher education, upward mobility, and integration into the majority population (somewhat similar to Kamala Harris’s upbringing in Berkeley and Montreal, the daughter of a cancer research scientist, and a Stanford economics professor).
While Ocasio-Cortez described herself as working-class and brought up in the Bronx, her family in fact moved to Yorktown when she was 5 years old. In her meteoric political career, she has presented herself as a Bronx barista (where she moved after graduation), and an often impoverished activist, who seeks social justice on behalf of the poor. While her message is certainly mainstream socialist (abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service, ban internal combustion engines by 2030, Medicare for all, etc.), it gains credence by the working-class patina that Ocasio-Cortez wears…”
America’s resurgence is reshaping the world
Conrad Black:
“…Almost indiscernible in the endless tumult about President Donald Trump is the objective return of American might, right on our doorstep. A casual sampler of the Canadian, and even the American, media, might think that the United States was so far along in its decline that the entire process of government and normal public discourse had broken down in that country, and that the much-discussed process of national decline was accelerating in a climate of virtual chaos.
In fact, the economy of the United States is astoundingly strong: full employment, an expanding work force, negligible inflation and about three per cent economic growth. And it is a broad economic recovery, not based on service industries as in the United Kingdom (where London handles most of Europe’s financial industry, while most of British industry has fled), and not based largely on the fluctuating resources markets as has often been Canada’s experience. In the eight years of president Obama, the United States lost 219,000 manufacturing jobs; in the two years of Trump, the country has added 477,000 manufacturing jobs. This was not supposed to be possible, and this time, unlike in the great Reagan boom, it cannot be dismissed by the left (and it was false in the eighties) as a profusion of “hamburger flippers, dry cleaners and people delivering pizza,” (all necessary occupations).
It is clear that China is feeling the heat of American tariffs. Their magnificent hypocrisy of gamboling in a $360-billion trade surplus with the United States while extorting technology from American companies and reducing American high-tech giants like Apple and Google to snivelling on China’s behalf when their sales in that country are reduced, and all the while leading G-77 in cupped-hands requests for relief from the economically most advanced countries for their pollution of the world environment (although China is the world’s greatest polluter), all of it is ending. The United States will not be the world’s premier chump anymore. The most enthusiastic support the United States is receiving in its trade stance with China is from China’s neighbours, from India to Japan. Of course China is the world’s second-greatest power and must be treated with respect, but that does not mean the shameless grovelling of Trump’s predecessors, paying court to Beijing like lackeys kowtowing to the emperors of the Middle Kingdom…”
Journalism
John Hinderaker:
“…Frank Bruni, formerly the New York Times’s White House reporter and now a columnist for the paper, has a long, long op-ed that is unintentionally revealing. It is headlined, “Will the Media Be Trump’s Accomplice Again in 2020?” As though the press were pro-Trump in 2016! “We have a second chance. Let’s not blow it.” A second chance to help a Democrat beat Donald Trump.
Bruni’s piece displays a remarkable lack of self-knowledge. Republicans should be happy to note that he still has no idea why Trump won in 2016: he thinks Hillary was a fine candidate, and it was the press’s fault for not being sufficiently anti-Trump.
Through the first half of 2016, as Trump racked up victories in the Republican primaries, he commanded much more coverage than any other candidate from either party, and it was evenly balanced between positive and negative appraisals — unlike the coverage of Clinton, which remained mostly negative.
The press, including the Times, promoted Trump during the primary process because they thought he would be a weak candidate, and helping him to the nomination would guarantee Hillary’s victory. Since he won the nomination, the press’s coverage of Trump has been the most relentlessly negative of any politician in American history. The Times’s own coverage has been obsessively–almost comically, in a black sort of way–hateful.
Bruni’s arrogance when he describes the role of the liberal press–which he consistently refers to as “we”–is breathtaking:
Above all, it [the liberal press’s “success or failure”] will have an impact on who takes the oath of office in January 2021. Democracies don’t just get the leaders they deserve. They get the leaders who make it through whatever obstacle course — and thrive in whatever atmosphere — their media has created.
That is the function of the press–to create an “obstacle course” sufficient to defeat President Trump.
The funniest thing about Bruni’s column is that, for expertise on how to cover a presidential election, he turns to…Dan Rather! Seriously:
“The shadow of what we did last time looms over this next time,” the former CBS newsman Dan Rather, who has covered more than half a century of presidential elections, told me.
Bruni uses Rather as a Greek chorus, the voice of wisdom. Without irony.
Bruni’s theme is that the press needs to stop paying attention to the Trump spectacle and instead focus on substance. He doesn’t mean it, though. He certainly doesn’t have in mind talking about Trump’s strong economy, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, reduced regulations, foreign policy successes or judicial appointments. On the contrary, this is the kind of thing he has in mind:
I think that we’ve improved since then, and all along our efforts have included significant in-depth reporting. The Times’s acquisition and exhaustive analysis of confidential financial records of Trump’s from the 1990s — and its conclusion, in an epic story published in October, that he used questionable schemes to build his wealth — is a sterling example.
Heh. If Bruni thinks that is a “sterling example” of how the liberal press can defeat President Trump next time around, I can already hear the GOP cheers–“Four more years!”…”
Voters want RESULTS not resistance from new Democratic majority
Mark Penn:
“…Echoing Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 strategy, the Democratic leaders so far have fully planted a flag in simply opposing legislation, funding and appointments under the theory that putting lead boots on President Trump is the best way to get him out of office, even if the country is put on pause for another two years.
This is a fundamental mistake, and just as going overboard with Spartacus moments opposing the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh backfired and strengthened the Republicans in the Senate, this strategy too is likely to throw away the best opportunity Democrats had to build a lasting majority coalition by producing the results the Republicans failed to achieve.
The public ultimately was fed up with Paul Ryan, and under him Congress had about a 20 percent rating. He couldn’t get anything done, leading a fractured caucus to nowhere. He ultimately quit, along with 40 other Republicans. They literally abandoned the House, and suburban swing voters – voters who for a long time voted Republican – switched over to the Democratic Party. These voters were turned off by Trump, and frustrated by Ryan, because they fundamentally support progress and compromise. They are moderate, not liberal voters. They are not dancing in the hallway with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…”
Happy Ending Headline of the Day
Are The gilets jaunes unstoppable
“…Not only does peripheral France fare badly in the modern economy, it is also culturally misunderstood by the elite. The yellow-vest movement is a truly 21st-century movement in that it is cultural as well as political. Cultural validation is extremely important in our era.
One illustration of this cultural divide is that most modern, progressive social movements and protests are quickly endorsed by celebrities, actors, the media and the intellectuals. But none of them approve of the gilets jaunes. Their emergence has caused a kind of psychological shock to the cultural establishment. It is exactly the same shock that the British elites experienced with the Brexit vote and that they are still experiencing now, three years later. . . .
We have a new bourgeoisie, but because they are very cool and progressive, it creates the impression that there is no class conflict anymore. It is really difficult to oppose the hipsters when they say they care about the poor and about minorities.
But actually, they are very much complicit in relegating the working classes to the sidelines. Not only do they benefit enormously from the globalised economy, but they have also produced a dominant cultural discourse which ostracises working-class people. Think of the ‘deplorables’ evoked by Hillary Clinton. There is a similar view of the working class in France and Britain. They are looked upon as if they are some kind of Amazonian tribe. The problem for the elites is that it is a very big tribe.
The middle-class reaction to the yellow vests has been telling. Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.
Now the elites are afraid. For the first time, there is a movement which cannot be controlled through the normal political mechanisms. The gilets jaunes didn’t emerge from the trade unions or the political parties. It cannot be stopped. There is no ‘off’ button. Either the intelligentsia will be forced to properly acknowledge the existence of these people, or they will have to opt for a kind of soft totalitarianism…”
Cornyn offers ‘reciprocity’ for 17 million concealed carry permit holders
“…The ranks of gun owners with approved concealed carry permits has swollen to 17 million, and new legislation offered in the Senate Thursday would make it easier for them to carry their weapons across state lines.
Bolstered by a larger pro-gun caucus in the Senate, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn is introducing his latest version of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.
“This bill focuses on two of our country’s most fundamental constitutional protections — the Second Amendment’s right of citizens to keep and bear arms and the Tenth Amendment’s right of states to make laws best-suited for their residents,” said Cornyn, a top Senate GOP leader.
“I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance this important legislation for law-abiding gun owners nationwide,” he added.
He already has 31 co-sponsors.
North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson has introduced parallel legislation in the House…”
El Capitan
Cookie Analysis
Movie Parody of the Day
Chyron of the Day
Mt. Clark
Dangerous Ship
LAKE MICHIGAN (July 11, 2018) The future littoral combat ship USS Wichita (LCS 13) conducts acceptance trials, which are the last significant milestone before a ship is delivered to the Navy. LCS-13 is a fast, agile, focused-mission platform designed for operation in near-shore environments as well as the open ocean. It is designed to defeat asymmetric threats such as mines, quiet diesel submarines and fast surface craft.
Health Headline of the Day
Trump’s secretary of state slams Obama’s ‘misguided’ Mideast policy
In general, I think Trump’s foreign policy has been good—certainly better than his predecessor’s.
“…U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration’s Mideast policies on Thursday, accusing the former president of “misguided” thinking that diminished America’s role in the region while harming its longtime friends and emboldening Iran.
In a speech to the American University in Cairo, Pompeo unloaded on President Trump’s predecessor, saying he was naive and timid when confronted with challenges posed by the revolts that convulsed the Middle East, including Egypt, beginning in 2011.
Pompeo denounced the vision outlined by then-President Barack Obama in a speech he gave in Cairo in 2009 in which he spoke of “a new beginning” for U.S. relations with countries in the Arab and Muslim world.
“Remember: It was here, here in this very city, another American stood before you,” Pompeo told an invited audience of Egyptian officials, foreign diplomats and students. “He told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from ideology. He told you 9/11 led my country to abandon its ideals, particularly in the Middle East. He told you that the United States and the Muslim world needed ‘a new beginning.’ The results of these misjudgments have been dire.”…”
Unwanted House Visitors
SO NOW THE PRESS IS CALLING ARMED HOME INVADERS “UNWANTED HOUSE VISITORS.”
This nitwit-ism elicited this tweet, which is very good:
Lift Up Your Hearts: The Democrats Are in a Shambles
Conrad Black:
“…First, the takeover of the House of Representatives by the Democrats was, on balance, not as jarring to the vital organs as was feared. As a figure of horror, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has become almost like Bette Davis, one can believe she just acts the part, though she acts it convincingly. And she has earned her spurs as a Democratic legislator with staying power, the first speaker to serve non-consecutive terms since Sam Rayburn (D-Texas). She certainly didn’t get much back-talk from all those bushy-tailed Democrats who were going to send her off to knit antimacassars for her grandchildren. She does not, however, appear to be an effective spokesperson as leader of the opposition, and is strangely inarticulate for someone who must have spent more time in public speaking for the last 40 years than almost anyone in the country.
A second source of happiness, despite the Democrats’ window-rattling ululations of joy, is that they have no mandate to do anything, and they have taken the bait the president dangled to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Pelosi at the White House three weeks ago. The Democratic leadership seems to think they can convince the country that the well-being of 800,000 federal employees, which could be ameliorated without capitulating on the spending bill, is more important than dealing with the protracted shambles in immigration, which most Americans acknowledge to be the country’s greatest problem.
Third, the official debut of Schumer and Pelosi as leaders of the opposition where one of them is actually at the head of part of a branch of government, following the president’s address from the Oval Office on Monday, was a hilarious fiasco. They made an American Gothic apparition with forked tongues rather than a pitchfork and looked like an off-duty pantomime horse doing straight-up. They aren’t making it. They failed to convince anyone that a few weeks of furlough for government employees is more worrisome than the unarmed invasion of the United States by millions of unskilled foreigners…”
Trump plan would improve current border situation
The main thing for democrats and media is that Trump not get a win.
Byron York:
“…The department has already announced where the barriers would go. There would be five miles in the San Diego Sector, 14 miles in the El Centro Sector, 27 miles in the Yuma Sector, nine miles in the El Paso Sector, 55 miles in the Laredo Sector in Texas, and 104 miles in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas.
In all, counting work that is done, being done, and planned, the administration would build 330 miles of new barrier, 150 in areas with no barrier today.
All of it is a project that, in a less crazy time, might be the subject of bipartisan approval. Indeed, as the White House is fond of pointing out, bipartisan majorities in Congress voted in favor of an extensive border barrier back in 2006.
Politics aside, the bottom line is that even the relatively short lengths of barrier the Trump administration is building will do good. Just look at some of the fencing made from rusted steel helicopter landing mats from the Vietnam era. The administration is replacing it with imposing barriers that will discourage illegal crossings. That’s a net plus.
And there is no doubt such barriers work. In San Diego, for example, a barrier has made a tremendous difference. “In the 1980s, migrants overran the border and the Border Patrol,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in 2017. “Thousands gathered nightly on a small slice of the border … there, men, women, and children waited for nightfall before making their passage.” In 1986, agents apprehended an astonishing 629,656 illegal immigrants in the San Diego area.
When U.S. officials constructed one barrier, and then another, that number fell dramatically; by 2015, apprehensions fell below 30,000.
Now, the flow of migrants presents a new and different problem. While smaller than several years ago, it is largely made up of families and unaccompanied children who have no valid claim to asylum but who cannot, by U.S. law, be returned to their home countries. As long as those migrants can freely cross the border, they can stay in the United States — a situation that will attract more and more illegal immigration.
The president’s proposal, which in addition to a barrier contains provisions for more immigration judges, more Border Patrol agents, more detention beds, more medical resources, and more technology, would improve the situation. If the political debate were not being fought at such an extreme pitch, that might be obvious to all…”