Potpourri: Some thoughts on a few topics currently in the news

Condé Nast’s liberal online publication Teen Vogue is in the news, and not for anything positive that has happened. Alexi McCammond was hired at the magazine on March 5th, scheduled to start as editor-in-chief on March 24th.

But in the interim, magazine staffers got wind of something McCammond had done, and raised enough cane that the up-coming EIC decided to resign the position she had not yet taken.

What horrendous deed had McCammond done? Had she committed murder, or armed robbery? Pedophilia? Did she vote for Donald Trump?

No. She had committed the unpardonable sin of making insensitive, some say racist remarks in tweets. In 2011. When she was 17 years-old. And has since apologized profusely for her transgressions.

But in this day of hypersensitivity, when anyone can be highly offended by anything or everything, even what one did years ago as a teenager is a hanging offense.

Interestingly, the delicate sensitivities of the staffers of this young women’s magazine were not sufficiently provoked by the sponsored content from the Saudi Arabian government, a country where women are routinely mistreated and subjected to male dominance. 

This is the essence of the cancel culture: ignorance and hypocrisy.

* * *

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., continues to amaze with her impudence, deviousness and heavy-handed partisanship.

When Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., who was recently declared the winner of a challenged election, asked to have her son, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, observe her being sworn in from the gallery above the House floor, Pelosi denied the request. 

“I guess he’s considered a risk,” Tenney said. No doubt. He’s the son of a Republican Representative, graduated from the Naval Academy and is now a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy. Who could be more of a threat to Pelosi than someone with such a positive record? And he never had a relationship with a female Chinese spy, either.

No, he’s not a risk. Pelosi; Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.; Richard Blumenthal, D- Conn.; Elizabeth (the filibuster is racist) Warren, D-MA, et al, are risks. They are working overtime to weaken the Constitution, nationalize our elections and increase the incidence of vote fraud, assist illegal aliens entering the country by the thousands, ignore the 2nd Amendment, raise taxes, increase unemployment, and the list goes on.

* * *

What is supremacy? Merriam-Webster defines it as “the quality or state of being supreme,” which is defined as “highest in rank or authority.” 

How does a group — perhaps an ethnic group — gain supremacy? In the case of a nation, supremacy would naturally go to a group that is much larger than the others, likely larger than all the others combined.

In Spain, for example, the World Atlas tells us that 89.9 percent of its population is Spanish, and just 10.1 percent is of a foreign ethnicity. 

Guess what? In Spain there is Spanish supremacy.

In the United States, even after decades of immigration, the Statistical Atlas tells us that white people still comprise the majority at 62 percent. The next closest group is that of Hispanics at 16.9 percent. Blacks make up 12.6 percent, Asians are 5.2 percent, and mixed ethnicities are 2.3 percent.

As you go back through time, the white majority was much larger. So, when the culture and norms of the United States were evolving, white people overwhelmingly set those standards. And they still exist.

So, the “white supremacy” we hear so much about is not an unusual thing, and it is not automatically a bad thing. 

* * *

Why will the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) not allow the press to participate in ride-alongs with agents at the southern border? Since the news media are the source of the information we depend upon, that might make some think there is something being hidden down there.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that the department is preparing video to distribute to news media, but cited the pandemic among reasons for not allowing reporters, photographers and camera crews into the facilities housing illegal aliens.

“We are focused on our operations, executing our operations, in a crowded Border Patrol facility where hundreds of vulnerable migrant children are located,” Mayorkas said.

Wallace challenged the Secretary, saying his answer sounded like an “excuse,” and that one pool reporter and camera crew could enter one facility and record what’s happening, without endangering the children or the crew.

Mayorkas emphasized the department’s efforts to provide such a video. Apparently, he trusts the government to provide the best information to the public. Yeah, right!

* * *

If you don’t like Dr. Suess, don’t read those books. If you don’t like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson because they were Confederates, don’t try to have the carvings on Stone Mountain removed, just don’t go there. If someone you know of goes to an event sponsored by someone or something you dislike, just deal with the difference in opinion, don’t try to get them fired or otherwise punished. 

In America, small groups don’t get to decide what the rest of us can like.

Big tech silences conservative voices as House concerned with pronouns

Published Jan. 19, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and chairman of the House Rules Committee Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., announced a resolution recently intended to “honor all gender identities” by modifying pronouns in the House rules and references to family relations, such as father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, as reported by the Daily Caller. These words would be changed to “parent, child, sibling, spouse, or parent-in-law,” the resolution said.

The announcement said that hereafter “pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules [will] be gender-neutral,” and removes references to gender, “to ensure we are inclusive of all Members, Delegates, Resident Commissioners and their families – including those who are nonbinary.” 

“Nonbinary” is the term that is applied to those who see themselves as neither female nor male. The changes also mandate that extended family members, such as an aunt or uncle, would be referred to as “child’s parent.”

Not long after announcing these critically important changes in allowable language, Pelosi’s Twitter profile still reads: “Speaker of the House, focused on strengthening America’s middle class and creating jobs; mother, grandmother, dark chocolate connoisseur.”

Given the COVID pandemic, which we are told has taken the lives of nearly 400,000 Americans; the new impeachment effort of Congressional Democrats days before President Donald Trump’s term ends; the riot at the Capitol two weeks ago; and the inauguration of the new president coming up tomorrow, one might expect there to be much more important things for the House of Representatives to busy itself with than a politically correct remaking of acceptable gender language in the House. If so, one would be wrong.

* * *

Tech giants Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Google have grown too big for their britches. Protected from repercussions of what participants post on their sites by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, these platforms have rushed past these protections into the unprotected land of publishers, just as are newspapers and magazines.

Problems arose when people and other platforms were shut down or otherwise punished by these Big Tech firms. They turned out to be primarily, or perhaps entirely, those expressing conservative ideas.

Having had their voices silenced by Twitter, some users then migrated to a new platform named “Parler.” These mistreated users were then followed by millions of others who were angered by the censorious stuffed-shirts of Twitter.

Similar actions have been taken by Facebook and Internet site host Amazon AWS and search engine and Web host Google. Parler has since been banished by Amazon for having dared to allow free speech.

By their actions of selectively deciding who can post on their site, or who can have a site hosted by them, these platforms have abandoned the protections of Section 230, and become publishers. They are not the nation’s Internet babysitters; they are not in charge of protecting the masses from ideas that do not fit the narrow range of thought they find acceptable.

These harmful acts are not immune to negative consequences. Twitter has been punished for suspending President Donald Trump’s accounts.

Politico Daily reported that “Twitter’s stock price fell by 12 percent and erased $5 billion from its market capitalization after choosing to delete an account that had about 88 million followers. The stock dropped as low as $45.17 per share,” from its high of $52.44.

The report added that “the stock fell after people saw the decision as one that was politically motivated and a way to silence a major conservative voice among the public. This also erodes interest in social media platforms that look to censor free speech.” 

* * *

President- elect Joe Biden deserves congratulations and the admiration of us all. He masterfully engineered and operated a plan to get himself elected in November, overcoming great odds. Biden’s win is truly historic.

As someone not leading the pack when the nomination race began, he managed to get the nomination. And then the really surprising win occurred.

His incumbent opponent, President Donald Trump, earned 74,111,419 votes, which was 11,126,594 more votes than he got in the 2016 election. Incumbents usually win a second term, and the last time one did not was George H.W. Bush in 1992. An incumbent losing has only occurred 4 other times in the last 100 years.

Biden’s vote total of 81,009,468 was the most ever for a presidential election, and roughly 18 million more votes than Barack Obama, a very popular Democrat, received in 2012.

In winning election, Biden beat the odds to win over an incumbent president, and at the same time increase the number of people who voted by a significant number.

In 2012 more than 129 million voted. In 2016, 137.5 million people voted, six percent more than four years earlier. And in 2020, there were more than 159 million voters, and the number of voters increased by nearly 16 percent. Wow!

He also won despite losing most bellwether counties, and significant Democrat losses down ballot. 

And, Biden was able to win even though officials in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin broke their own state laws and breached the terms of the U.S. Constitution governing elections when they changed election procedures improperly.

This election is certainly one for the books.

Is it desperation that pushes the left to promote such crazy ideas?

Democrat Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and one of a dozen candidates for the Democrat nomination for president, offered his thoughts following the West Freeway Church shooting in Texas recently. 

“It’s the job of law enforcement to have guns and to decide when to shoot. You just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place.” Bloomberg said.

You could fill several large sports venues with what Bloomberg doesn't know. But as ignorant as he appears to be on this issue, you might expect him to understand that because several non-law enforcement persons had weapons at the Texas church that Sunday, rather than perhaps dozens of parishioners being killed or injured, the murderer only killed one parishioner and injured another one.

Can things go wrong in situations such as this one? Of course. But two things must not be forgotten: First, there aren't enough law enforcement officers to provide protection in every place where groups gather, and it takes valuable minutes for them to respond to calls, and second, as demonstrated by the armed parishioners of West Freeway Church, there are many law-abiding citizens who are trained and skilled enough to effectively act to end a shooting, saving many lives.

As President Donald Trump indicated in a tweet following the incident, “It was over in 6 seconds thanks to the brave parishioners who acted to protect 242 fellow worshippers,” “Lives were saved by these heroes, and Texas laws allowing them to carry guns!”

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On the day the impeachment process got under way in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., dressed in black for the occasion, and declared, “I solemnly and sadly open the debate on the impeachment of the President of the United States.”

The House then rushed through its phase of the impeachment process, where the case against the president is to be built through testimony of witnesses with knowledge of the wrongs under investigation. The House was in such a hurry to save the country from Donald Trump that they couldn’t spare the time to have the third arm of the federal government — the judiciary — to resolve the stand-off blocking some witnesses the Democrat majority wanted to call. 

Pelosi, curiously, then put the two Articles of Impeachment the House felt rushed to create in a drawer for a couple of weeks. The House finally voted last week to transmit the Articles to the Senate where the second phase — the trial — is to take place, based upon the case developed by the House during the initial phase.

Prior to delivering the Articles to the Senate, Pelosi passed out commemorative pens made specifically to celebrate the solemn occasion that she had previously described. They completed the ceremony by singing, “We’ve Been Working On A Railroad.”

Then the group sang “We Love A Parade” as they walked across the Capital building to the Senate chamber. 

                                                                                       * * * * * *

Democrat hopefuls seem to take it as a challenge to see which of them can develop the craziest idea. Wild ideas that are both unworkable and ridiculously expensive, like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, both of which have the added element of increasing the federal government’s control over our lives, now have a new partner.

At last Wednesday’s town hall, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., unveiled another grandiose plan to decarbonize the U.S. She said that her administration will decree that any new buildings built from 2028 onwards must be carbon neutral.

Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe, she declared, “What scares me is every time you go back to the scientists, they tell you two things. It's worse than we thought and we have less time. That means we've got to be willing to do things, for example, like regulation. By 2028, no new buildings, no new houses, without a zero-carbon footprint."

Back in September she described her plan to stop using fossil fuels to produce electricity. 

“I think the way we get there,” is to say, “sorry, guys but by 2035, you’re done. You’re not going to be using any more carbon-based fuels,” she said. “That gets us to the right place.”

Warren added, “In my administration, we’re not going to build any new nuclear power plants, and we are going to start weaning ourselves off nuclear energy and replacing it with renewable fuels. We’re going to get it all done by 2035, but I hope we’re getting it done faster than that. That’s the plan.”

The Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) tells us that in June 2019, energy plants around the country produced a total of 352 million megawatt-hours of electricity, as follows:  Natural gas-powered plants accounted for 39% of it, coal 22%, nuclear 20%.

The preferred so-called “clean” energy sources, including hydroelectric power, provided less than 18 percent: wind less than 7 percent, solar 3.3 percent, hydro about 8 percent.

If current trends continue, the EIA projects that by 2035 renewables will generate only 24 percent of electric power, and by 2050 only 29 percent.

Warren did not explain where the rest of the needed electricity will come from.

Impeachment effort is falling short of Constitutional standards

Democrats have wanted to impeach President Donald Trump for a long time. Here is some background on the process.

Impeachment allows Congress to remove the President, Vice President or any civil officer of the United States. This is the fourth attempted impeachment of a president in our history. 

The Constitution says the House of Representatives may begin impeachment proceedings when it believes some official has committed treason, bribery, or a high crime or misdemeanor. Treason and bribery are well defined. However, high crimes and misdemeanors are not well defined.

After investigation the House may vote to impeach. If the measure passes, the U.S. Senate holds a trial, and if it convicts the accused, he or she is removed from office and may not hold any such U.S. office in the future. If the Senate does not convict, the impeached official remains in office.

In reality, the House can impeach an official merely by voting to do so, whether or not an impeachable offense has been proved, or even identified. All that is important is whether the vote to impeach passes. Such a situation, however, is not what the Constitution intends. 

Enemies of Donald Trump began calling for his impeachment immediately after he won the 2016 presidential election and before he had even taken the oath of office. Investigations of him and his campaign began in July 2016, when the FBI began investigating Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election, including whether Trump’s campaign was involved in those efforts.

Investigations of one sort or another have been going on ever since. The House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., is now holding hearings on impeachment, following the highly partisan, one-sided episodes in the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Conventional wisdom holds that the House Democrat majority will vote to impeach Trump, but that the Republican controlled Senate will not vote to convict. This means Trump will remain in office, and will run for, and quite possibly win, reelection.

Of the many Trump offenses, real and imagined, the one currently being pursued involves a phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky. 

During the call, the official transcript shows Trump asking for help in investigating the election irregularities: “I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot, and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine …”

And later, he asks for assistance with potential corruption on the part of former Vice President, Joe Biden. “The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

Congressionally approved financial aid was put on hold prior to the phone call. Democrats think this indicates a “quid pro quo,” a “this for that” arrangement between Trump and Zelensky.

After the term “quid pro quo” failed to get adequate public interest, the charge was changed to bribery. However, in either case, Zelensky would have to be aware that the aid was on hold pending his assistance. For one to be bribed, one must know what the other party wants, and what it will pay for it.

Zelenskyy has at least twice said he was not aware of the aid being put on hold until long after the phone call. Further, the aid was provided, and the investigation of Biden was never done. Zelensky has also denied being pressured to do anything.

During the hearings, witnesses, many of whom had impressive credentials, testified. Like the infamous whistleblower, most were not on the call. Their testimony consisted of what someone told them about the call, or what they imagined had occurred. Two witnesses who were on the call essentially said they didn’t like the content, or were uncomfortable with it.

House Democrats want you to believe that Trump’s behavior as president is impeachable. 

However, a look a history shows that to be a gross exaggeration.

Examples of actual bad behavior include:

* John Adams and Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, the latter without any congressional approval.

* Andrew Jackson ignored courts and laws and used his power to ethnically cleanse lands that he also sometimes happened to have a financial interest in.

* Teddy Roosevelt threatened American citizens with military intervention.

* Lyndon Johnson asked the FBI and CIA to spy on the Goldwater campaign in 1964, and lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, escalating the Vietnam War. 

None of these presidents faced impeachment.

Lifelong liberal Democrat, Constitutional lawyer and civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz said the following: “There is no case for bribery based on — even if all the allegations against the president were to be proved, which they haven’t been — but even if they were to be proved, it would not constitute the impeachable offense of bribery.”

Democrats, please give it up!

Celebrate the good that’s happening and fix the country’s problems

That President Donald Trump has many critics is no surprise. That he has created much of the negative feelings people have for him is also no surprise. One interesting question is, “how much of the anti-Trump fervor is legitimate opposition to his agenda, or a true belief that he is unsuited for the job, and how much is just an emotional reaction to his personal behavior?”

His pugnacious style, attacking those who criticize him, and fighting back against those who attack him, is at the root of much of the negative sentiment towards him.

Genuine dislike for Trump, some of that from hurt feelings, seems to be what drives most – or at least much of – the bad feelings toward him. So, if Trump can be fairly accused of obsessive behavior that drives much of the negative sentiment, are his detractors not also behaving obsessively?

Some abandon their professional ethics and standards, saying, in effect, “Trump made me do it.” And that attitude has taken its toll in the field of journalism, which has been severely damaged of late, and elected representatives and senators shirk their responsibility to their constituents in order to focus on obstructing Trump.

Why not balance those negative emotions with earned appreciation for the good things that have happened and are happening during Trump’s tenure as president, the strong economy being a major factor? Are these folks so petty that they cannot admit that he is doing some good things?

For example: since Trump took office unemployment has dropped, currently at 3.8 percent; we have the lowest unemployment rate in history for women, African-Americans and Hispanics; there are more job openings than there are unemployed Americans, seven million job openings and six million unemployed; the number of those counted as outside the labor force tumbled by 487,000 in 2018, asworkers who had become discouraged and dropped out of the labor force are coming back.

He has eliminated many regulations that impeded economic progress; tax cuts have further spurred the economy and resulted in people keeping more of their earnings; wages are going up with Real Weekly Earnings up 2.6 percent; manufacturing added more jobs than government, reversing the Obama trend; some companies that left the U.S. have returned, bringing jobs back; and the GDP growth rate is up.

Why not focus on fixing problems that the nation faces?

The Left largely sympathizes with the undocumented immigrants – that’s “illegal aliens” for the non-politically correct among us – and denies that the tens of thousands sneaking across the southern border and the tens of thousands more who have over-stayed their visas comprise a crisis. Trump, on the other hand, understands that it is a crisis, agreeing with the federal immigration workers and those states that have to try to deal with this senseless situation. 

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, instead of doing its job and helping to revise outdated and flawed immigration laws and procedures to help protect the country and the constituents that elected its members, plans to investigate Trump some more.

The Left’s favorite narrative is that these people are fleeing dangerous conditions, or are just looking for a better life. Of course some, likely most, are. There are proper ways of doing this, and sneaking across the border is not one of them. But others are sex or drug traffickers, robbers, rapists and murderers. 

All of those groups – both those having the best intentions, as well as those with the worst – have one thing in common: they are in the U.S. illegally. Why is any true American willing to allow this to continue?

And while the mainstream media has successfully downplayed this situation, the problem is much worse this year than last. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported on its website, “According to U.S. Border Patrol (CBP), in six and a half months their agents have apprehended more than 418,000 illegal aliens, which surpasses the total for FY2018. In the last six months, CBP has encountered more than 3,000 fraudulent family units. And CBP had apprehended almost 1,000 illegal aliens, mostly family units, before 5 a.m. on April 16.”

“Anti-enforcement politicians and Democrats in Congress reflexively blame the Trump administration or Central American dictators,” the report continued. “Democratic presidential candidate Gov. Jay Inslee (Wash.) even blamed the crisis on climate change.”

While we know that the Russians attempted to affect the 2016 election, as they have in previous elections, there is no evidence that anything they did had a real effect on the outcome. Therefore, Trump was properly elected as president under the electoral system that our Founders designed, and that has worked for well over 200 years.

There is important work to be done that is currently being delayed largely by the obsession to obstruct Trump, and ultimately remove him from office. Those things include: reforming our immigration system, straightening out the shambles that are the healthcare system, paring down the size and cost of government, and continuing to reduce harmful regulations. And these areas affect all Americans, Republicans, Democrats and everybody else.

Finding satisfactory solutions to these problems requires everyone’s good intentions and honest efforts. Now it’s time to get to work.

Democrats exercising new-found power: some good, some not so much

Since Democrats reclaimed the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives last November, they have wasted no time in putting their agenda into action. 

Unsatisfied with the special counsel’s investigation of then-candidate, and now-President, Donald Trump’s alleged illegal interaction with Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, there has been a lot of talk about starting new Trump investigations, all while serious national problems are left waiting for attention.

But the House has produced and passed one piece of legislation, H.R. 1, which the Democrat majority calls the “For the People Act.” It is intended “To expand Americans' access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and for other purposes.”

H.R. 1 has some potentially good features, if properly structured, such as reducing big money in politics.Money for political campaigns should come only from those who are eligible to vote for those candidates or measures on the ballot, and who will be directly affected by those elections. That includes businesses in districts where they actually operate, which should be able to make limited contributions.

However, H.R. 1 contains campaign-spending restrictions that benefit incumbents, including President Donald Trump. Why should incumbents receive favored status?

One poorly considered feature is that Democrats want to lower the voting age to 16. They argue that 16 year-olds are old enough to drive, get married, rent an apartment, work and pay taxes, therefore they are old enough to vote. However, that list contains things that are not universally allowed for 16 year-olds across the nation, and other things that require parental approval.

We are reminded that voting is a right. But it is also a serious responsibility; it should not be available to just anyone, or to everyone. Voting requires maturity, knowledge and forethought. Are 16 year-olds really mature enough, and knowledgeable enough to vote responsibly?

When the voting age was lowered from the age of majority – 21 years of age – to 18, the rationale was that anyone old enough to fight, be injured or perhaps die for their country is old enough to vote.

Whether one is capable of voting responsibly is not a question of age, but of preparation and maturity. At what age is someone adequately versed in the way our country is organized, and why it was designed that way? At what age are they knowledgeable enough about political issues and candidates?

Therefore, a better idea would be that someone 18, 19 or 20 who is actually serving in the military would be able to vote. Otherwise, that right and responsibility comes at age 21.

Some Democrats would go even farther in allowing unprepared and otherwise ineligible people to vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for example, recently proposed a truly irresponsible idea. Citing what she termed the wondrous things immigrants bring to America, she said: “And we want them, when they come here, to be fully part of our system. And that means not suppressing the vote of our newcomers to America.” She left unaddressed the question of whether they are here legally or illegally.

Given the Democrats consistent obstruction of Trump’s efforts to halt the entry of thousands of illegal aliens across the southern border, it appears that she not only prefers no restriction on who comes into America, but also thinks that once here they should be able to vote in elections.

It is incomprehensible that so many actually think this idea is sensible. Many or perhaps most of those wanting to enter America are good people looking for a better life. But not all are. They need to prove they deserve to be admitted, before they come in, and not receive any benefits until they do.

Though not a part of H.R. 1, the Electoral College is a target of the Left. Many of them, still feeling the sting of defeat more than two years after the election, think it denied Clinton the presidency after she collected more of the popular vote than did Trump.

The Electoral College is an original element in the Founders’ design of the government, being addressed in Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution, which outlines the way presidential elections are conducted. It was a brilliant element of our government’s structure.

In reality, Clinton lost because she ran a bad campaign, choosing not to campaign in some states that ended up voting red. This helps explain precisely why the Electoral College is necessary: because Americans who do not live on the coasts and in other population centers – who live in what is called “flyover country” – deserve something to balance their desires and electoral preferences against those of the population centers.

Ask yourself: Do we really want presidential candidates focusing only on New York, California and a few other highly populated places during campaigns, telling them what it takes to get their votes, and ignoring the rest of us? 

The Electoral College helps balance the electoral power of large states and large cities with the tens of millions of Americans who would otherwise be at their mercy. It must be protected from the power seekers.

Democrats re-take the House: It is just as bad as we expected

She’s baaa-aaak! Imagining herself suddenly somehow equal to the President of the United States, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, basked in the glory of getting the gavel returned, after Democrats won back control of the House in the mid-term election.

Anxious to get back control of the House and wallowing in the glory of things to come, prior to the opening of the 2019 Congress caucusing Democrats, led by Maxine Waters, D-CA were overheard singing: “Investigate! Salivate! Dance to the music!”

And right on cue, the political foolishness began. The bad ideas Democrats had been discussing and preparing to unleash were officially unleashed.

Barely after members were sworn in and the election of the Speaker was completed, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-CA, rushed forth to introduce articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump as his first order of business.

Not long after that, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-TN, introduced a few new bills, one of which proposes the elimination of the Electoral College.

They also introduced a bill that many people would support to fund government agencies affected by the shutdown. Too good to be true, however, the bill also contained a hidden element that would provide more than a half-billion dollars in pro-abortion funding, including repealing a provision implemented by the Trump administration that would not fund NGOs that engaged in pro-abortion activities.

On the matter of impeachment, freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, wasted no time in calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump just hours after being sworn in.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters Thursday night, Tlaib said: "People love you and you win. And when your son looks at you and says, 'Momma, look you won. Bullies don't win.' And I said, 'Baby, they don't, because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the [vulgarity deleted].'”

Where the comment immediately placed her high in the running for the “2019 Classless Congressional Comment” award, it also garnered her much attention, but also a little welcome Democrat criticism.

Defensively, Tlaib pointed out that her “colorful” language should not overshadow her message. Well, if your message is really important to you, don’t use colorful language that interferes with it.

While we are on the topic of newbies, the freshman Democrat Darling and self-described socialist and radical, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has danced and talked her way into the limelight.

Her dancing may well be the strongest of her talents, with economic understanding bringing up the rear. The 29 year-old Representative has displayed a great lack of understanding of her country’s Constitution and government organization, characteristic of many others of her age.

She has expressed strong support for raising taxes on the highest wage earners to as much as 70 percent to pay for her list of socialistic freebies. As ridiculous an idea as this is, it wouldn’t make a dent in the costs of the programs she favors.

A 70 percent tax is punitive, and would shift a great deal of money to government use rather than use by those who earned it, and has very little support. It heaps unjust obligations on the top earners, who already shoulder a hugely disproportionate share of America’s tax bill.

Democrats apparently have been forbidden from discussing the death of Police Officer Ronil Singh, the most recent American to be killed by an illegal alien. Nancy Pelosi reportedly responded to a question about this senseless crime, “No comment.”

The ban on discussion is apparently complete, prohibiting even the expression of sympathy to Singh’s family and fellow officers, lest they admit indirectly that we have a true and serious illegal alien problem that includes sanctuary cities/fugitive cities. They didn’t even allow the automatic reaction to a gun death: the call for gun control.

As the 18^th partial shutdown of the federal government since 1976 continues into its second week, there is no agreement between Congressional Democrats and President Trump to end it, as this is written.

Ranging from a few days to more than a month, under six presidents, both Democrat and Republican – Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, G.H.W. Bush and Obama – government shutdowns are not uncommon. The longest one lasted 32 days under Bill Clinton.

The responsibility for the security of the United States and its citizens falls upon the shoulders of the Executive Branch: the President, not the Speaker of the House or the Senate Minority Leader.

Following the advice – the sincere and desperation-prompted pleas – of the people who are on the border trying to secure it, Trump wants an impenetrable barrier along sections of the border.

Under those conditions, Congressional Democrats, who voted to fund a wall previously, are instead acting to support the status quo, which includes the horrible things illegal aliens have done and will do, while Trump is working to secure the border and improve the immigration process.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million people in exchange for the promise of border security. But border security was not achieved. Reagan said that was his biggest mistake. Trump does not want to make that same mistake.

In other news, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, introduced a Congressional term limits bill.

The Left’s rejection of American values is a very real threat

A recent poll reflects that 53 percent of Democrats now view socialism favorably, while 47 percent view capitalism favorably, almost an exact flip from a 2012 poll.

This should be no surprise to those who pay attention to things political, given the relative success of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary campaign in the 2016 election, and the unexpected arrival on the scene of the unknown Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a Democrat incumbent in a New York congressional primary. Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are openly socialist.

Democrats prominently display their dissatisfaction with America’s capitalist success, sometimes embarrassing themselves in the process. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo drew broad but deserved criticism when he stated, “We’re never going to make America great again. It was never that great.”

"We have not reached greatness," he said. "We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone, and every woman's full potential is realized and unleashed, and every woman is making her full contribution."

Cuomo is confused on this issue, as he is on many others. Greatness to him is perfection, as he said, an impossible goal to achieve. Heaven knows he has missed that mark by miles.

Next up is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The 2017 tax cuts helped tens of millions of Americans, and as Cato’s Chris Edwards explains, those making between $40,000 and $50,000 a year saw a 46 percent reduction in taxes paid. The tax cuts also allowed companies to raise wages and give bonuses.

Pelosi, however, calls these benefits “crumbs,” and pledged to take them away if Democrats regain control of the House. You see, millionaire Pelosi, one of its wealthiest members, knows better how to spend people’s money than they do.

And then there is former CIA Director John Brennan, complaining that his free speech has been infringed because President Donald Trump rescinded his security clearance.

This seems much ado about nothing: He no longer works for the government, and Trump does not value his input and will not ask him to consult on matters requiring a security clearance, so he does not need one. 

In case you are wondering, the president has the authority to remove a security clearance from any administration employee who has one.

Furthermore, a security clearance has nothing to do with one’s right to free speech. In fact, having a security clearance may actually cause a sensible person, which Brennan plainly is not, to be more careful about what they say than someone without a clearance.

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, let the cat out of the bag regarding security clearances held by former government employees, and this makes it clear why so many former and present government employees rushed to Brennan’s defense.

“One of the reasons you’re going to see a lot of pushback and a lot of screaming on this issue of security clearances is that it goes to the heart of their ability to cash in,” Schweizer said on Fox News’ “Hannity” program. “If they don’t have a security clearance, they cannot cash in with [government] contractors in this way,” he said, referring to the revolving door between government workers who move to employment by government contractors.

A former government employee with a security clearance can work with private sector contractors on classified government projects; a former employee without one cannot. Both Brennan’s feelings and pocketbook have been hurt.

And Brennan’s shadowy and possibly criminal behavior while a government employee, and since, justifies taking away his clearance.

The brilliant columnist Wesley Pruden puts the increasingly socialist mindset of Democrats into perspective: “The latest polls show that Democrats now prefer the socialism that wrecked the economies of Europe to the capitalism that built America. Capitalism is an imperfect economic system, too, as Winston Churchill famously said, but its lasting virtue is that it is better than all the others.”

From the very beginning of the American idea, our Founders expressed concerns about how it all would end. Both our first and second presidents, George Washington and John Adams, had concerns.

Washington used his farewell address to warn that partisan "factions" could tear the country apart. "Democracy never lasts long," said Adams. "There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide."

And James Madison, president number four, was afraid that liberty could be lost by "gradual and silent encroachments of those in power."

Everyone who thinks socialism is better than capitalism should be required to spend a month in Venezuela, once the crown jewel of South America, now a place with bare store shelves, a starving population, and the highest rate of inflation in the world at 27,364 percent on May 31.

Here at home, the fascist Antifa protestors chant “NO borders NO wall NO USA AT ALL” at their demonstrations.

Is all of this a signal of deliberate abdication of founding principles and ideals, or merely illustrate gross ignorance of them?

If you really want to complete America’s suicide and turn it into Venezuela, vote for radical socialist Democrats.