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Conrad Black:
“…Each week, as the thundering host of Democratic seekers of their party’s 2020 presidential nomination scramble for attention and try to outflank their rivals to the left, that party rolls out a new policy proposal that lurches further away from where the solid center of American politics has always resided. The most transformative presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, to adapt a sports metaphor, moved center-field, 10 yards to the left under Roosevelt, and 10 yards to the right under Reagan, but always between the 30-yard lines.
In the five elections between 1876 and 1892, the popular vote was always very close, and the Democrats actually led four times, losing in 1880 by only 2,000 votes out of 9 million cast (James A. Garfield defeated Winfield S. Hancock). Even so, their candidate was only victorious twice; both times with Grover Cleveland. The Republicans ran as the party of Lincoln and Grant and victory in the Civil War, and kept expanding veterans’ pensions more widely among their families. The Democrats prevented the emancipated slaves from voting in the South, states they won en bloc, while they rounded up immigrant and working-class votes with their political machines in the great cities of the North and Midwest. Thus the popular vote was deceiving, as the Democrats won almost all the votes in the South and the Republicans won safely enough in the North.
But policy differences revolved mainly around the tariff—the Democrats wanted lower tariffs to get lower prices for the working and middle classes and the Republicans wanted higher tariffs to promote domestic manufacturing growth and profits.
Democrats then departed the center of the political field starting in 1896, when they nominated for the first of three times William Jennings Bryan, a Nebraskan who promoted a radical increase in the money supply by issuing silver as well as gold-backed currency: bimetallism. The Republicans won the next four elections easily, and only lost in 1912 when Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft split the vote, enabling Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win. His margin was over 3 percent (570,000 votes), because of the unrepresentative margin in the South, but it was still a hair’s-breadth election as he only won California (10 percent of the country’s population) by under 4,000 votes out of 1 million cast in the state. Wilson won on his slogan “He kept us out of war” but delivered his speech to Congress requesting a declaration of war less than a month after he was inaugurated the second time.
The Republicans won the three elections in the twenties quite easily and then, with the Great Depression and World War II, the Democrats won five straight terms under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Since then, the parties have alternated two-term presidencies, with the exception that Democrats receive a single term with Jimmy Carter, and the Republicans three terms with Reagan-Bush (1981-1993); the election of George H.W. Bush may be seen substantially as a reward for the public’s satisfaction with President Reagan. Thus, since Cleveland left office in 1897, there has only been one occasion when either party has not received at least two terms (Carter 1977-1981). Between Wilson and George W. Bush, the second term was one-sided, and usually a landslide: Coolidge in 1924 (25 percent margin), Roosevelt in 1936 (24 percent), Eisenhower in 1956 (15 percent), Johnson in 1964 (23 percent), Nixon in 1972 (23 percent), Reagan in 1984 (18 percent), and Clinton in 1996 (9 percent). George W. Bush and Barack Obama were narrowly reelected because—unlike FDR, Ike, LBJ, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan—they did not do especially well in their first terms.
For 2020, Democratic rhetoric and the conventional wisdom relentlessly inflicted on the country by the anti-Trump media claque holds that Trump should be easy to defeat, because his polls have never risen above 50 percent. This is meaningless chatter because it neglects to remember that Trump in 2016 was running against the Republicans as much as the Democrats. As someone who changed his party registration seven times in 13 years, Trump had no call on party loyalty. In the first six months of his presidency, the congressional Republicans sat on their hands and were not entirely averse to the voluminous musings about impeachment. In the only sensible sentence I ever heard from former Arizona senator and ardent NeverTrumper Jeff Flake, “It’s the president’s party now.”
In 2020 there won’t be a split such as that caused by Ross Perot to defeat the senior Bush in 1992 and probably Robert Dole in 1996; and Trump’s record seems certain to be much more successful that Carter’s, who had 20 percent interest rates, high inflation, unemployment, and taxes to deal with in 1980. Whatever happens with the current southern border state of emergency, Trump is putting a border in place and has won that argument. The country wants a border, without government shutdowns. Trump has worked the “Mexico will pay for it” nonsense into the facts of more favorable trade arrangements and has kept faith with his followers, unlike the Bush “No new taxes” pledge in 1988.
Trump is not going to be running as an unsuccessful president as Carter did, or even as a marginally successful president as the Bushes and Obama did. He has delivered tax cuts and reform and great prosperity, as Reagan did, and he is the first president to deal seriously with illegal immigration and oil imports and nuclear proliferation to rogue states (Iran and North Korea), since those crises arose. He has refused to be stampeded by the eco-Marxists while doing nothing to backpedal on the environment itself, and has partially delivered on trade imbalances and will almost certainly reach a much improved trade arrangement with China.
Contrary to the assessments of Trump-haters who supposedly know something about the economy, such as Paul Krugman and the Economist magazine (which on the subject of Trump is as drivelingly hostile but not as amusing as Vanity Fair or the Daily Beast), this economy is not going to cool out appreciably in the next 18 months. As was mentioned here last week, the Democrats are going to pay heavily for the disgraceful Russian-collusion red herring.
To return to the thought at the top of this piece, the Democrats now look more like the Republicans of 1964 (Barry Goldwater) and the Democrats of 1972 (George McGovern), as the reality sinks in that Trump has demolished the post-Reagan bipartisan tweedle-dee-tweedle-dum politics of sloth, a depressing “new normal” and foreign policy impetuosity (Iraq War) or defeatism (Iran, North Korea, Syria). In the aftermath of this shock, the Democrats are like a suicide case contemplating Russian roulette with all chambers loaded, and they are the ones loading in the cartridges: open borders, a top personal income tax rate of around 70 percent, nationalized health care; legalized infanticide; a green policy that bans cars, airplanes, oil, coal, and bovine flatulence; and now reparations for African-Americans, and perhaps, says Senator Elizabeth Warren (0.5 percent American Indian), for the native people. Unless a sensible person like Michael Bloomberg or even Joe Biden—or possibly Amy Klobuchar or Sherrod Brown—gets hold of that party, the Democrats will self-inflict mortal wounds and give Trump the greatest plurality in history, (breaking Richard Nixon’s record of 18 million in 1972).
In 1944, Roosevelt focused on the spurious claim of a Republican congressional candidate that the president had sent a destroyer back to retrieve his dog in the Aleutian Islands, while returning from his Pearl Harbor meeting with General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz. FDR’s Republican opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, found himself running against the president’s dog. In 1940, Roosevelt just had to recite the names of three reactionary congressmen: “Martin, Barton, and Fish,” and the absurdity of the refrain helped to win him a third term.
Trump is no Roosevelt (either one), but the Democrats seem to be yielding to the ineluctable urge that possesses each party every other generation, to utter a primal scream of nonsense, get everything off their chest and out of their system, be dragged to the padded cell by the voters, and regroup back at center-field four years later. It may even be good for them—as therapy, not as government…”
Related: Conservative African Methodist Denounces the Racism of Progressive American Bishops
“…JAMMU: The Pakistani Army Thursday heavily shelled forward posts along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch and Rajauri districts, committing repeated ceasefire violations but drawing “strong” retaliation from the Indian Army, an official said.
This is the seventh consecutive day that Pakistan breached the ceasefire, targeting forward posts along the LoC.
There have been fresh ceasefire violations in Nowshera and Krishna Ghati sectors, officials said…”
EZRA LEVANT:
“…Trudeau was detonated today by his former Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s first Aboriginal A-G. She just testified in Parliament, in meticulous detail, how Trudeau and his staff tried to get her to drop criminal charges against a corrupt company that he liked. She refused to bend the law for Trudeau’s cronies. But they didn’t stop. Trudeau; his chief of staff; his principal secretary; even the finance minister. They met her ten times, phoned her ten more. trying to get the charges dropped. She wouldn’t. So Trudeau fired her as A-G…”
“…Donald Trump’s talks with Kim Jong-un ended abruptly on Thursday as the president said he was forced to walk away after the North Korean dictator demanded that all sanctions be lifted in return for giving up only some of his nukes.
Trump said the final snag that caused the sudden breakdown was over sanctions – and Kim’s push to have all of them lifted in exchange for a concession Trump and his secretary of state could not live with.
‘Sometimes you have to walk away,’ Trump told reporters at a press conference in Hanoi that was abruptly moved up after a breakdown in talks.
The president expressed his hope that the two leaders would meet again, but acknowledged: ‘It might be soon, it might not be for a long time. I can’t tell you.’…”
THOSE LUCKY EARLIER GENERATIONS ONLY HAD TO STORM THE BEACHES AT NORMANDY AND GUADALCANAL
Steve Miller:
“…ROMA, Texas — Modesta Vela is a spirited 60-year-old with rich black hair and a grandmotherly air who runs a food pantry in this border town. But she doesn’t just put food on people’s tables in the state’s second-poorest county — monthly rations of produce, canned goods and rice.
“I’ve worked for over 30 years helping people in Roma vote,” said Vela, who was arrested twice in October on charges of vote harvesting, or illegally assisting voters with their mail-in ballots, the same charges she faced in 2010. ”And sometimes people try to stop you. I am doing a favor for the governor. I am getting people to vote. I am helping older citizens people who cannot leave their homes and vote.”
Omar Escobar Jr., the Starr County district attorney, says that far from being an exemplar of grassroots democracy, Vela is the “godmother of voter fraud.”
Vela denied the allegation, contending that the people she assists struggle with issues ranging from mobility to unpacking the multiple envelopes and instruction sheets that mail-in balloting entails…”
Paul Bedard:
“…Confidence in the media has hit rock bottom, with many news consumers believing that reporters file their reports before knowing the facts and 60 percent are under the impression that sources pay for stories, according to a depressing new survey of American journalism.
The Columbia Journalism Review poll also confirmed the pending death of print newspapers and magazines and a remarkable shift to social and online media as sources of news…”
Jay L. Zagorsky:
“…Every time you go to the pump, each gallon of fuel you purchase puts money into a variety of pockets.
About half goes to the drillers that extract oil from the earth. Just under a quarter pays the refineries to turn crude into gasoline. And around 6 percent goes to distributors.
The rest, or typically about 20 percent of every gallon of gas, goes to various governments to maintain and enhance the U.S. transportation’s infrastructure.
Currently, the federal government charges 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline, which provides 85 percent to 90 percent of the Highway Trust Fund that finances most federal spending on highways and mass transit.
State and local government charge their own taxes that vary widely.
Combined with the national levy, fuel taxes range from over 70 cents per gallon in high-tax states like California and Pennsylvania to just over 30 cents in states like Alaska and Arizona. The difference is a key reason the price of gasoline changes so dramatically when you cross state lines.
While people often complain when their fuel prices go up, the real burden of gasoline taxes has been falling for decades. The federal government’s 18.4 cent tax, for example, was set way back in 1993. The tax would have to be 73 percent higher, or 32 cents, to have the same purchasing power.
On top of that, today’s vehicles get better mileage, which means fewer gallons of gas and less money collected in taxes.
And electric vehicles, of course, don’t need gasoline, so their drivers don’t pay a dime in fuel taxes…”
ATLANTIC OCEAN (Feb. 19, 2019) F/A-18 Super Hornets assigned to Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 7 launch from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72).
GULF OF THAILAND (Feb. 16, 2019) An assault amphibious vehicle (AAV) assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) departs the well deck of the amphibious transport dock ship USS Green Bay (LPD 20) en route to the Royal Thai Navy landing platform dock ship HTMS Angthong (LPD 791) in preparation for an amphibious exercise.
Paul Bedard:
“…If you like to eat, then you should be cheering global warming.
That’s the claim in a new scientific report that counters global warming fanatics like former Vice President Al Gore and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and offers proof that CO2 added to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is nature’s Miracle-Gro.
In what some are calling the counter to the liberals’ “Green New Deal,” the new report provided to Secrets said that instead of fighting over the stalemated global warming debate, the world should take advantage of increased CO2 levels by growing plants and food that thrive on it.
“Fortunately, carbon dioxide, a non-polluting gas that is created when fossil fuels are converted into energy, has proved to be a powerful plant food,” said the report from the CO2 Coalition of scientists who reject claims it will end the world in 12 years…”
Francis Menton:
“…Just a few days ago (February 19), I posted part XX of this series. The subject of that post was a new compilation of historical temperatures for Australia (going back to 1910), known as ACORN2, just out from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The effect of ACORN2 was to increase the reported rate of climatic warming in Australia by 0.2 deg C per century over the previous compilation known as ACORN1, which had only been issued about 6+ years ago and had itself also increased the reported rate of warming as against the previous official records by about 0.2 deg C per century. The increased rate of warming is entirely accomplished by adjusting earlier-year temperatures downward.
Could there possibly be anything honest about what is going on? My source for the February 19 post — independent Australian researcher and blogger Joanne Nova — provided a link to the the BoM’s 57-page Research Report that supposedly justified the changes. That document appeared “impenetrable” both to Nova and to me, but maybe some much cleverer person could figure out what they were doing?
Well, now we move to the next step. Another hard-working Australian independent researcher and blogger, Jennifer Marohasy, decided to get the detailed records for a particular station, just to see what adjustments had been made, and whether any possible legitimate explanation could support them. The station that Marohasy selected is Darwin. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Australia, Darwin is the biggest city (not very big — about 150,000 people) in the vast northern areas of the country. Marohasy’s February 23 post is titled “Changes to Darwin’s Climate History are Not Logical.” A version of Marohasy’s post was also published on Watts Up With That on February 22.
Basically, Marohasy documents that Australia’s BoM has shortened Darwin’s temperature record to begin in 1910 (records actually exist back to 1895), and then adjusted the earliest temperatures downward by a full degree and more C, just since the previous set of downward adjustments only 6 years ago. For example, here is what has happened on the first day of the series as it now exists:
[O]n 1st January 1910 the maximum temperature recorded at the Darwin post office was 34.2 degrees Celsius. A few years ago [in ACORN1], the Bureau changed this to 33.8 degrees Celsius, cooling the recorded temperature by 0.4 degrees. In its most recent re-revision of Darwin’s climate history the temperature on this day has been further reduced, and is now just 32.8.
And of course, it’s not just the one day. Let’s look at the first six days of January 1910:
All of them got adjusted down by something in the range of 0.8 to 1.2 deg C, even after prior downward adjustments just 6+ years ago. The environmental reporter for the newspaper The Australian asked the BoM for an explanation, and here is what he got:
For the case of Darwin, a downward adjustment to older records is applied to account for differences between the older sites and the current site, and differences between older thermometers and the current automated sensor. In other words, the adjustments estimate what historical temperatures would look like if they were recorded with today’s equipment at the current site.
But here’s the problem, idiots: this is the same explanation you gave six years ago for the 0.4 deg C downward adjustment then. What about temperatures in the year 1910, or the equipment in 1910, or the site in 1910, changed between ACORN1 in 2012 and ACORN2 in 2019 to justify further downward adjustments averaging a full deg C? Nothing. Marohasy:
Neither the equipment, nor the site has changed since ACORN-SAT Version 1 was published in 2012. Yet another 1 degree has been shaven from the historical temperature record! To be clear, the weather station has been at the airport since February 1941, and an automatic weather station was installed on 1 October 1990. A Stevenson screen was first installed at the post office site in 1894, and has always been used at the airport site. So, why was the temperature dropped down by a further one degree for 1 January 1910 in the most recent revision – undertaken just a few months ago? There is no logical or reasonable explanation.
Are you still wondering if there is anything honest about this? Marohasy compiles a graph of the raw mean maximum annual temperatures as recorded at Darwin, versus the “adjusted” ACORN2 series that is now Australia’s official temperature record. Note that the site did move in 1941, from the post office in downtown Darwin out to the airport. To indicate the discontinuity, Marohasy graphs the post office series in green, and the airport in blue. Here is her graph:
Is the post office site systematically warmer than the airport site? Note that the last several years at the post office were considerably cooler than the first years at the airport. But the BoM has made the executive decision to replace the temperatures recorded at the post office in the period 1910 to 1941 with temperatures that average about 1.5 deg C cooler. Pre-adjustments, 1906 looks like the year with the hottest mean maximum temperature, and by a wide margin; and number two is also pre-1910. Post-adjustments, the warmest is 2016. This is how you get to have “hottest year ever” press releases every year or two.
Conclusion, from Marohasy:
What the Bureau has done to the historical temperature record for Darwin is indefensible. The Bureau has artificially shortened and cooled Darwin’s climate history to make it consistent with the theory of human-caused global warming.
It’s completely dishonest and fraudulent…”
Babylon Bee is satire
The Occasional Cortex video is not. The video has to be seen to be believed. I thought California voters were dumb. New York voters say “dumb, hold my beer” as they vote for this nitwit.
“…In 1941, Lois Gunden was 26 years old and had a job as French instructor in Indiana. But when the Mennonite Central Committee needed a French speaker to go to Vichy France to help Spanish and Jewish child refugees, she went. In France, it was Lois versus the Nazis. And at least sometimes the indefatigable Lois won, thus saving the lives of children for whom deportation would have meant death.
After the United States entered the war, Lois was interned and eventually repatriated to the United States, where she spoke little of her experiences. But Lois’s courage and resolve were not forgotten by at least one of those whose life she saved. In 2013—eight years after her death—Lois was recognized as “Righteous among the Nations.” Today would have been her birthday…”
From Gail Heriot
