The Other Case against Reparations

National Review

They wouldn’t work. And they would go on forever.

"Reparations are an ethical disaster. Proceeding from a doctrine of collective guilt, they are the penalty for slavery and Jim Crow, sins of which few living Americans stand accused. An offense against common sense as well as morality, reparations would take from Bubba and give to Barack, never mind if the former is an insolvent methamphetamine addict or the latter a dweller in near-pharaonic splendor. That reparations are a hopeless cause, supported by only a quarter of Americans, makes them more of an affront to reason rather than less, for it illustrates the enthusiasm with which Democratic politicians will bang their heads against the wall in an attempt to purchase votes.

"Even in pragmatic terms, reparations fail. As Michael Tanner argued on NRO last month, the real-world difficulties that would attend such payments “are obvious enough to suggest that the sudden support for reparations amounts to little more than pandering.” These difficulties are so extraordinarily compelling that one wonders how the call for reparations retains any support at all. Since the money used to pay for them would have to be raised alongside “the taxes needed to finance [Democrats’] grandiose spending plans,” reparations would “totally wreck the economy,” sentencing Americans of all races to a future of “higher unemployment, slower wage growth, and less entrepreneurship.” Because potential awardees would have to prove their eligibility in some manner, reparations would “be an invitation to perpetual litigation” and would subject America to the spectacle of government officials deciding who counts as black. (Rachel Dolezal, your moment has come.)" . . .
. . . 
"To believe that it can, one has to believe that the political apparatus currently pursuing reparations would simply cease to exist upon their being awarded. That no further expiation of the nation’s sins would be necessary. For the Left, however, reparations are merely the icing on the existing cake of admissions preferences, minority-contracting requirements, and an eternally expanding welfare state. Ask a progressive if the $97 trillion would make unnecessary any further gestures in the direction of affirmative action, and he will laugh nervously and pretend not to understand the question. If you’re lucky, that is. These days, he might very well call forth a Twitter mob to smite you."
Emphasis added by TD

Biden: 'I Got 150,000 Troops Out of Iraq.' WaPo Fact-Checker: 'Um, no.'

Stephen Green

"Two Pinocchios. That's what Washington Post fact-checker Salvador Rizzo figured Joe Biden's claim was worth, that the former Veep was personally "responsible" for getting 150,000 combat troops out of Iraq." . . .

. . . "But that's not what happened.

"In 2008, President Bush had made a temporary Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, "with the expectation that the next president would seek an extension that after 2011 would leave in place 40,000 service members for training and logistics." But Obama more or less sabotaged the negotiations on the follow-up agreement. Obama allowed the talks to stall on the single issue of legal immunity for U.S. troops in Iraq, claiming that "there was no support in the Iraqi parliament for that." Immunity is boilerplate stuff, standard issue for our troops in Europe, Korea, Japan, etc, but the Obama Administration refused to press it. In fact, immunity could have been made part of an executive codicil not subject to the whims of the Iraqi parliament.

"But Obama wanted out before his reelection campaign, and sabotaging the Status of Forces Agreement was a underhanded way to get just that. Biden however, Rizzo reports, was "apparently was one of the officials arguing to keep troops in Iraq," but eventually came along to Obama's position." . . .

Attacks on ‘white & male’ Moon landing prove no US achievement is too big for liberals to destroy

RT

"Sea of white: The mission control for Apollo 11 ©  NASA"

"Attempts to diminish the triumph of Apollo 11 and to reassign credit don’t just taint the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, but presage the technological decline of the US if it persists with identity politics.

"With the Founding Fathers now rarely mentioned in the media without side notes about their slave ownership, and the Betsy Ross flag offensive to Colin Kaepernick and Nike, there is nothing new about liberal attempts to strike at the very heart of American identity.

"But – leaving aside the conspiracy theorists – the moment Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969 was objectively such a universal milestone that to qualify it seems a fight against human endeavor itself." . . .

Can you find it in your heart to forgive us...ever?

What’s Kamala Harris’s Real Weakness as a Presidential Candidate?

("comma-la")"Harris will undoubtedly unveil some more applause lines and big promises at the next debate. Any of her rivals ought to respond, “This all sounds great, but we’ll have to wait a few days to see if Senator Harris really means what she’s saying tonight or whether she’s changing her position again.' ”

National Review  . . . "But is Gabbard right that Harris’s weakness is that she has “no background or experience in foreign policy”? Whether or not you think that’s Harris’s biggest weakness, there’s not much sign that Democratic primary voters worry about that much. Barack Obama had limited background and experience in foreign policy, as did Bill Clinton. For that matter, so did Donald Trump and Mitt Romney.

"The only figures on the Democratic debate stage who have background and experience in foreign policy beyond the usual congressional committees are Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and maybe Seth Moulton and Joe Sestak. (Marianne Williamson’s experience is less with other nations than with other spiritual planes and realms of consciousness.)

"No, the soft underbelly of the Harris campaign is her flip-flops and the general sense that she’ll say whatever she needs to say to please the audience in front of her." . . .

Let's see how President Harris would do with her military:

Shame on Robert Mueller—Again

BEFORE & AFTER THE MUELLER REPORT

Both cartoons by Nitwit Graphics

Conrad Black  . . . "Mueller looked the part: tall, slender, slab-faced, jut-jawed, and unsmiling, all business, and no soft bonhomous weakness for anything but a thorough plumbing of the depths of Trump’s unutterable hucksterism, skullduggery, and larceny. The commentariat, though well gone in the saddle after their long incumbency as the country’s political sages, dressed for the part again and took to the airwaves with the smug confidence of veterans and the zest of those addicted to tearing down administrations they found distasteful.
. . . 

Schiff

"The pitiful attempt by Mueller to leave Trump a live grenade with the pin pulled was made even more absurd by his attempt to run away and hide. He spoke to the press inarticulately from a printed text for less than 10 minutes, took no questions, and said he would have nothing more to say. Finally, the two egregious Democratic committee chairman who still claim to have evidence of impeachable offenses by the president but can’t cite any, Representatives Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)*, both seriously ill-favored men, called Mueller as a witness, and designed a timetable for his appearance clearly intended to prevent the Republican members from really getting at Mueller.

"If his stumbling press statement was indicative of his forensic talents, Mueller will have a real sleigh-ride with a gang of Democrats angry because he couldn’t find anything on the president and Republicans who rightly consider his entire performance an unprofessional and morally corrupt operation." . . .

*Both from NewYork and California: the two states that will elect the first President after Democrats do away with the Electoral College. TD

Five “Woke” Takes on Moonwalk 50th Anniversary

https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/07/five-woke-takes-on-moonwalk-50th-anniversary/

"Why can’t these people ever simply enjoy an American success?"

. . .  4. CNN:  “She endured obscene phone calls, had to use men’s bathrooms, as one of NASA’s first female engineers”Excerpt:During the historic launch of Apollo 11 which put the first men on the moon, rows of men in shirts and ties lined the consoles inside Kennedy Space Center.But one woman stood out — 28-year-old JoAnn Morgan.Morgan, who worked as an instrumentation controller for the mission, was the only woman allowed inside the firing room where NASA employees were locked during Apollo 11’s historic lift off on July 16, 1969.Morgan needed to be in the room to alert the test team if anything went wrong. But she had to get special permission to be there. 

Chip Bok cartoon added by TD

3. The Guardian: “‘Whitey’s on the moon’: why Apollo 11 looked so different to black America”Excerpt:The Apollo programme, motivated by the space race against the Soviet Union, cost $25.4bn, the equivalent of $180bn today; only the Vietnam war hit taxpayers harder. While Nasa warned Congress “No bucks, no Buck Rogers”, polls showed a majority of Americans opposed the “moondoggle”.The black press questioned how the price tag could be justified when millions of African Americans were still mired in poverty. Testifying to the US Senate on race and urban poverty in 1966, King had observed “in a few years we can be assured that we will set a man on the moon and with an adequate telescope he will be able to see the slums on Earth with their intensified congestion, decay and turbulence”.

. . . 

No Raising Hands: CNN Makes It Easier For Democrats To Fool The Public In Next Debate

I&I  "For all of Donald Trump’s moral flaws – the women, the profanities, the routine personal insults, the continual unpresidential conduct – he has raised the moral bar in one all-important area: This president has kept a great many of his promises (even if that wall is nowhere near to being built). And this outsized fact will be a huge advantage next year against whichever conventional politician wins the Democratic nomination.

"CNN’s decision not to allow any “raise your hand” questions in the Democrat candidates’ next round of debates, which the cable news channel will telecast on July 30 and 31 from Detroit, is first and foremost an example of pure media bias. Thanks to those no-escape-hatch questions in NBC’s first round of debates last month, we learned that virtually all of the candidates would extend taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens; most would downgrade illegal entry into the United States to a mere civil offense; plus a number of them, when asked in such direct terms, could not hide from the fact that they would scrap all availability of private health coverage. Trump wasted no time gloating the next day that it meant he had already won his 2020 re-election." . . .

These 2020 Democrats Have Their Preferred Gender Pronouns In Their Twitter Bios

Good grief! If there are enough voters in America who want these people to govern us, I fear for this nation. TD

Daily Caller  "Three prominent Democratic presidential candidates have their preferred gender pronouns in their Twitter bios as of Monday.

"Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro’s bio declares “He/Him/Él,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s bio says “He/him” and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bio says “She/her.”

. . . "Preferred gender pronouns include, but are not limited to, gender-binary terms like “he” and “she.” Groups like Amnesty International recommend introducing yourself with your preferred gender pronouns and asking new people what pronouns they use, remembering not to “assume how they identify or what their pronouns are.” 

"De Blasio’s city adopted a law in 2015 that protects individuals from discrimination based on gender expression or identity." . . .

Bowdoin Orient

Mitt Romney: John McCain reprised

Richard Jack Rail  "In a tweet, President Trump famously said that if Ilhan Omar doesn't like America, she can go back where she came from.  Followers immediately started chanting, "Send her back!" in the way they once chanted, "Lock her up!" about another vicious, ugly female lefty officeholder.

"The Left came unglued, and so did Mitt Romney.  Mitt finds the new chant offensive, you see, and immediately blamed Donald Trump.  Perhaps, curiously, Mitt found nothing offensive in anything Ilhan Omar had said, but then he probably also finds nothing objectionable in her character as he does in the Trump character.

"Making ordinary sense of Mitt Romney is a fool's errand.  Nobody can make sense of Mitt Romney.  He interviewed to be Donald Trump's secretary of state, then promptly went to Europe and spoke ill of the president.  He published a scathing editorial about Trump in the Wall Street Journal.  He claims to be Republican but has done his best to obstruct the Trump agenda.

"Most of all, he just keeps running his hate-Trump mouth.  For one who talks and writes about character, Mitt hasn't shown much of it.  For sure, he's shown no spirit of generosity, no manly sense of put-it-behind-us or graciousness toward a president who gave him a chance after all the mutual slashes and cuts during the 2016 primaries.  Mitt seems unaware that his own actions have repeatedly revealed him to be petty and spiteful.

"America once thought Mitt somewhat godly, with his ties to the Mormon church and all.  He isn't; he's just another backstabbing Republican.  We really didn't need another John McCain."

Back in 2012: A jubilant Rick Santorum is leveraging victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri to increase pressure on Mitt Romney, labeling him "a well-oiled weather vane" who often shifts his positions.

Tlaib isn't 'of color'

American Thinker  "Racist.  As the definition goes, that's what they call somebody who wins an argument with a liberal.  Sounds like a lot of liberals are losing the argument to President Trump this last week, as the media and the Democrats have rocked the heavens with cries of "racist," for Trump suggesting that certain far-left congresswomen might be happier in another country.

"Trump's rhetoric may be ham-fisted, but his timing, as always, is spot on.  The walls are closing in on Ilhan Omar, the most enthusiastically hateful member of Congress.  Evidence of her immigration fraud is overwhelming and will only intensify as more media outlets have to cover the story.  She will be an enormous lingering embarrassment to her party.  The only question is, how will the U.S. attorney in the Twin Cities, Erica McDonald, proceed?  She is definitely plugged into the GOP establishment of that state and is well aware of the need for a grand jury to look into this.  But will she have the guts to follow the law, or just wimp out, in another case of Minnesota nice?  I am not hopeful.

"Perhaps we can be more optimistic about another guy screaming the loudest about racist Trump: Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose wife's charity received millions in a pay-to-play scheme.  Baltimore Democrats are not only corrupt, but so sloppy that they often leave the feds no choice but to prosecute." . . .

. . . "For Palestinian Arabs, though, fantasy politics is a way of life, and they are good at it.  Palestinian wingnut Linda Sarsour admits that everyone considered her white growing up in New York City, so she started wearing a hijab and insisting she was "of color" as a basic element of her political shtick.  This play-pretend has some really determined hucksters pushing it." . . .

Trump only cares about "straits"

Rich Terrell

Marianne Williamson Has White People Apologize to Black People

Dr. Etiquette 


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