Nine Words That Confirm California's Sharp Left Turn Toward Authoritarianism

Investors.com  "By now it's widely known that California is cracking down on plastics — bags and straws — as if they were existential threats. It's virtue signaling gone wild as cities race to outlaw plastic straws because banning plastic bags just wasn't enough. 01:01

02:26

"It was at the one of the more recent book burnings, rather, make that plastic straw bannings, that we were told what many of us already know: The "progressive" left in California won't rest until it has established authoritarian control over everyone's lives.

"The inadvertent announcement was delivered by Santa Barbara City Councilman Jason Dominguez. 

"During the July session in which the City Council voted 6-1 to ban plastic straws and allow plastic stirrers and cutlery to be used only when it is requested by customers, the Democrat said "We have to regulate every aspect of people's lives."  . . . 

. . .  This state is filled with politicians who want to regulate, manage, supervise, subjugate, and muzzle the nearly 40 million everyday people of the state. Don't think so? Consider the following evidence:

• No state restrains commerce with the same degree of enthusiasm that California does. Doing business in California is possible only the right permits, licensing, approvals, and compliance are in hand.

• Few states tax as punitively as California does.

• California has the most restrictive gun laws in the country.

• The free-speech movement began at the University of California in the 1960s, but California lawmakers today want to establish speech codes.

• The freedom to practice religion is threatened.

• Some have complained that Fourth Amendment protections are in danger.

• California's rural residents feel so strongly that they are being tyrannized by left-wing coastal elitists that many want to split off from the rest of the state.

Cartoons added by TD

• Gov. Jerry Brown is an advocate for the "the coercive power of the central state." The animating force behind that advocacy, according to Chapman University professor Joel Kotkin, is a hunger for the state "to gain control over virtually every aspect of planning and development."

• Sacramento is planning to force a full transition away from fossil fuels.

• According to the Cato Institute, only one state allows its residents less freedom than California.

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Hillary Embarrasses Herself at the Grammys; "The awards shows are turning into Meet the Press with sequins and cleavage."

National Review, January

It’s merely unbecoming for a winner to taunt his vanquished foe. It’s pathetic for a loser to poke fun at the man who beat her.

"People with “I’m With Her” back tattoos don’t seem to get how wince-inducingly pathetic it was for Hillary Clinton to attempt to rub Donald Trump’s peccadilloes in his face at the Grammys last night, so picture this: 

"A year after blowing a 28–3 lead in the Super Bowl, Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Quinn appears on national television, his eyes full of mockery, to read aloud that gossipy Sports Illustrated story about troubles within the New England Patriots organization. With a victorious smirk on his face, Quinn reads these words: “Brady always knew the hits were coming during Monday morning film sessions — ‘The quarterback at Foxborough High could make that throw,’ Belichick often would say after replaying a Brady misfire.” The audience guffaws in approval.

"Except Quinn would never dare do that even if he wanted to, for one simple reason: He does not get to make fun of Tom Brady, because Tom Brady beat him. You can’t do an end-zone dance if you haven’t scored a touchdown. Your trash-talk license is revoked when yours is the losing side, especially if you happen to be the teammate who fumbled the ball on the goal line. Leave aside the indignity of Hillary Clinton, a former first lady, secretary of state, and presidential candidate, appearing in a cheap throwaway gag at the Grammys during which she reads a bit from the book Fire and Fury about President Trump’s love of junk food. Leave aside the fact that her husband was also once notorious for his love of McDonald’s.

"Leave aside the fact that she and her husband have, like Trump, been the subject of scurrilous, vicious, largely made-up junk-journalism that doesn’t even pass the laugh test, much less a rigorous fact-checking process. She lost; she has no standing to make fun of the man who beat her." . . .

. . . "Clinton should take the advice of J. J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success: “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.” Every time she reappears on the national stage she simply reminds us all that she’s a bad politician — ungainly, unnatural, unctuous, forced — and that it is this lack of political skill that resulted in the Trump presidency. A Christmas-time poll by Gallup put Clinton’s approval rating at an abysmal 36 percent. You’d have to be emotionally invested in her to find stunts such as her Grammy appearance anything but woeful for her image. " . . .

Celebrity Activists Do Not Help  . . . "Genuine good will is not something to hold in contempt, even when it comes from silly people who are lecturing the great wide world from behind a wall of Gucci advertisements, but that kind of sentiment is not as useful as we imagine it is." .  .  .

Apoplectic critics can’t answer Dinesh D’Souza’s ideas

Kalman J. Kaplan  "That the political dialogue in America has become toxic is not a new insight, unfortunately, much if not most of it coming from the so-called “progressive elite.” However, for the most part, it has not centered on artistic work, which we would hope would be judged on its own terms.  However, the recent release of Dinesh D’Souza’s current film Death of a Nation has released a torrent of hate and attempts to poison people’s minds against it. 

"On the face of it, the attempt is ridiculous.  D’Souza, while quite intelligent, is controversial.  So what? we may ask.  People are free to see controversial material and judge for themselves without the creators being shunned and even defamed.  D’Souza is a polemicist, and a quite intelligent one. He is an intelligent Republican who  argues that the Democratic Party has falsified history in ways we will outline below.  If his ideas do not stand the test of scrutiny, they will fall by themselves, but if not, they will slowly enter the main stream of opinion. Is this not the way debate should work in a free society?

"However, the hysteric reaction on the left  to D’Souza’s movie is really beyond the pale. Critics do not want people to see the movie and judge D’Souza’s ideas on their merit. Rather they want to quarantine the movie and D’Souza himself as if he were a virulent toxic disease.  This of course is nothing but fascism, which is the point of D’Souza’s movie itself -- that fascism is a disease of the left.  The over the top attempt to quarantine and silence D’Souza’s movie only serves to support his point: that fascism emerged on the left.

"What does D’Souza say in the movie. Let me list a few points I took from it, all of which can be discussed rationally and calmly between people of good will." . . .

It's Sunday! Are ya ready for some FOOTBALL?

American Thinker