Will We Keep Our Republic?

 John Green   "Ben Franklin famously said, "You've got a republic, if you can keep it."  That warning is particularly haunting now, because we seem on the verge of losing it — not from foreign invasion, not from revolution, but because we stopped caring about it.

"America was founded on the principles of individual liberty and equal treatment under the law.  These are the foundational principles required for equality and prosperity.  Yet we've been creeping away from those principles for many years.  In the last 12 years, that creep has become a sprint.  The world's beacon of freedom is dying, and we're acting as if trading liberty for "safe spaces" is a great deal.

"The press has become the propaganda ministry.  These people no longer report the news.  Instead, they craft narratives.  Many of those narratives seem designed to create civil unrest — playing Americans against one another.  Apparently, hatred and riots are good for ratings.  Consumers of this "news" no longer have an accurate picture of what's happening in politics or society.  They're simply pawns playing their parts in the script.

"Our schools have become little more than re-education camps.  They're no longer preparing our children for adult life.  Math, science, and reading have taken a back seat to Critical Race Theory and intersectionality indoctrination — and our children's test scores show it.  Schools don't teach critical thinking or value differing views.  They're demanding conformity with their chosen ideology.  The generation that is just now approaching adulthood, doesn't understand the importance of individual liberties and doesn't seem to care.

"Our Legislative Branch has stopped debating.  Speaker Pelosi would rather tear up speeches than have an open discussion with those she disagrees with.  Her priority is insider trading of Tesla shares, not actual leadership.  Maxine Waters would rather encourage the rioters than talk about the root causes of societal issues.  When it comes to legislation, we're simply told, "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it."  Our rulers just want us to shut up and accept whatever they intend to do.  They're no longer representing their constituents.  Yet somehow, they all manage to become wealthy after a few years in office." . . .

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Abraham Lincoln

Fundraiser for Idaho officer who mocked LeBron James on TikTok gets $200K in donations

Idaho policeman mocks LeBron James tweet after police shooting, gets 3M TikTok views

 Yahoo  Tik Tok video

Portland’s Pusillanimous Mayor; Ted Wheeler and Portland deserve each another.

"In August 2020, then-President Donald Trump offered to assist the Democratic mayor of Portland, Oregon, in putting down the nightly riots that had ravaged his city for more than 90 days. Given this choice between ending the systematic violence and arson that was wreaking havoc throughout his city and publicly signaling his virtue, Mayor Ted Wheeler chose the latter. While the residents of Portland hid in their homes to avoid the violence, he responded to Trump’s offer with a sanctimonious letter that included this delusional passage: “No thanks. We don’t need your politics of division and demagoguery.” A week later, Portland police declared a riot and arrested 59 people.

"Fast forward to last Friday. Mayor Wheeler, having survived countless calls for his resignation and somehow managing to get reelected in November, is still presiding over a continuous wave of riots and is reverting to the same ineffective tactics that failed so spectacularly last summer. One of these brainstorms was to ask the city’s hapless residents to help put a stop to the destruction without offering any suggestions as to how that might be accomplished. Now that the “mostly peaceful protesters” continue their rampage and the city is still aflame, Wheeler is again asking Portland residents to do the job that neither he nor his acting police chief are willing to do. The Oregonian reports:

Portland’s mayor and acting police chief on Friday urged the public to safely stand up to the black bloc group of violent demonstrators who continue to plan “direct actions” around the city that routinely end with shattered windows, fires and other vandalism. Wheeler asked residents to note the license plates of people who drive to the events in various neighborhoods and then don all black clothing and grab shields or weapons from their cars. Share those license numbers with police.

"This is too little, too late, as was Wheeler’s declaration of a citywide “state of emergency.” The man just isn’t taken seriously by Portland’s residents or the rioters. " . . .

Battle of the speeches: Joe Biden and Rep. Tim Scott

 Here’s Why the Left Is Lying and Crying About Tim Scott’s Speech   . . . "Either way, you have probably seen the utter vitriol that the hard left is directing toward Sen. Scott for being depraved enough to be a black conservative lawmaker. And why are these brave and virtuous souls upset with Scott?

"Because he dared to do what far-leftists have found to be overly challenging: Take a sensible approach towards the conversation on race.

"During his rebuttal, Scott savaged the woke theology practiced by too many on the far left. He recounted some of the racism that he experienced even as a sitting United States senator, acknowledging that racial bigotry still exists in the country. He even brought up examples of leftists attacking him with racial slurs. But he also stated that despite this being a reality, America is not an overall racist nation." . . .

"It’s the unspoken Biden formula,” reports Axios. “Talk like a rosy bipartisan; act like a ruthless partisan.”

If anyone truly thinks that Biden is “boring,” it is because, having been intoxicated by the Trump Show, they are looking only at this president’s style. One hundred days into Biden’s presidency, and there is scarcely a single part of American life that the man isn’t trying to change.

Sen. Tim Scott lifts a rock off the Democrats, revealing the evil that dwells in that party

The Ugly Reaction to Tim Scott’s Speech Is Telling 

. . . And Scott never alleged that racism was nonexistent in America. To do so would be absurd. Scott wrote a police-reform bill, in fact, and Democrats such as

Harris, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin shut down debate using the filibuster, which they now call a “relic of Jim Crow.”    More here...

 "View Hag Joy Behar Says She Doesn’t Think A Black Man Understands What Racism Really Is Like In America…"  'The View' Joins the Chorus in Racist Attacks Against Tim Scott  "The ladies of "The View" aren't exactly bastions of unique or intelligent arguments. So when they joined in on the bandwagon going after Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) for being chosen to give the rebuttal to President Joe Biden's joint address before Congress, it wasn't exactly surprising. It never gets less disgusting, though." . . .

Tim Scott Defends Georgia Voting Reforms in the Face of Biden's False Narrative . . . "Scott also correctly pointed out that Democratic outrage about the new law is selective; under Georgia’s reforms, voting is more accessible than in blue states, including New York." . . . 

FL. Rep. Byron Donalds Agrees: The Left is the Enemy of Black People . . . "Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds spoke to the Daily Caller about the Left’s outrage and racist rants against South Carolina Senator Tim Scott’s Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union address.  . . . It still has not gone well, which is why people are apoplectic over Sen. Tim Scott’s response. Scott called out the failure and hypocrisy of the white Leftist packaged within supposed “helps”.

Uncle Tim?  "Historically, giving the out-party’s response to a president’s speech to a joint session of Congress has been a thankless task. That is, in part, because the out-party’s response, typically delivered to a camera in a more or less empty room, looks lame compared to the excitement in the House chamber.

"Last night may have been different, however. Joe Biden’s snoozefest generated no excitement in the near-empty House, and Senator Tim Scott, delivering the GOP’s response, hit back on the central point the Democrats want to press: Scott denied Biden’s claim that America is a “systemically racist” society." . . .

Tim Scott Faces Heinous Racist Attacks For Telling the Truth  . . . Talbert Swan, a Canadian bishop and the president of Greater Springfield NAACP in Massachusetts, delivered perhaps the most nasty attack.“Uncle Tim Scott has perfected the art of sycophantic bootlicking,” Swan tweeted. “He’s a master step n fetch it artist and cunning white supremacy apologist, who demonstrated his buck dancing skills in front of the entire world.” . . .

"Adam Ford, founder of The Babylon Bee, arguably gave the best response to this attack: “As this ‘pastor’ so colorfully illustrates, ‘antiracism’ is nothing more than actual racists discovering a way to shout their racism in civil society without being silenced … because it allows them to accuse anyone who disagrees with them of racism!' ”

Dems Committed To Utterly Destroying Black Man’s Optimism About Race Relations "In the wake of a black man from the South expressing optimism about race in America, outraged liberals across the nation are doing everything in their power to crush that kind of positive thinking before it really gets out of hand.

" 'Look, black people are great and all, but they aren't allowed to disagree with us," explained Senator Chuck Schumer. "It's pretty simple. Any black person who has the nerve to disagree with us is just a dumb puppet for white people. Or, as our great President once said, they aren't even black! Now, we need liberals everywhere to remind Senator Scott that America is terrible and there is simply no way for black people to succeed without the graces of kindly Democrats. Leftist mob - assembllllllllle!"

"White progressives answered the bell, crashing the airwaves with messages touting their unmatched racism. "How could a silly Senator say something like that?" laughed Jimmy Kimmel as he finished cleaning off his blackface. "I know so much more about racism than a black man from the South, especially one whose grandparents picked cotton. Don't worry, I'll perform a hilarious monologue for white liberals about how dumb it is for a black man to think our country is good - that will really put him back in his place!"

Arsonist Gets Four Years And $12 Million Fine For Helping To Torch Minneapolis Police Station

 

iOTW Report  "

Coo-Coo, Mr. Robinson

A Minnesota man has been fined $12 million for helping set fire to a police station during a protest last summer following the death of George Floyd.

 December to one count of conspiracy to commit arson. He was accused of lighting a Molotov cocktail that another person threw at the Third Precinct headquarters in Minneapolis.

"He now faces four years in prison and a whopping fine for the damages to the police station — a penalty Robinson’s lawyer argues he will never be able to pay. More

"Maybe Kamala should encourage WH staff to contribute to this guy’s defense fund. – Dr. Tar"  . . .

Media: the only good Republican is one who becomes a Democrat

Image by Marcus Aurelius.

 Sneaky little media tricks: Presenting Joe Biden's tax-and-spend speech as a hit with the public . . . "The problem is that the CBS/YouGov poll sampled an audience that was hugely skewed Democrat.  Fifty-four percent of the audience was Democrat, while only 34% of American voters identify as Democrats, as CBS noted lower, way lower, down in the story.

"A president's political base is always going to have a positive response to its leader.  If it doesn't, then that becomes actual news.  Biden's leftist base loves him is the story here, although they didn't put it that way.  What exactly was news about this?

"Oversampling of Democrats is a growing problem with publicly released polls (not internals, of course, where party operatives privately need to know the actual truth of things).  That has led to continuous reports about Democrats and their bad proposals being far more popular than they are.  These slanted polls amount to propaganda for the Democrats rather than news." . . .

Ian Macfarlane

Media Enamored with Biden’s Speech, Disgusted by Tim Scott’s  "The media's adulation of President Biden was in full display after his first joint address to Congress Wednesday night. MSNBC's Brian Williams drew attention multiple times to the president's "extraordinary use of voice modulation." CNN's David Axelrod equated the speech to President Roosevelt's fireside chats." . . . And MSNBC's Nicole Wallace along with the always upbeat Joy Reid both condemned the address.

Meghan McCain calls out ‘rigged’ media, throws ‘The View’ under the bus for burying Hunter Biden scandal  . . . "Almost sounding like she’s joined up with Team MAGA despite her animosity toward the ex-president, McCain went on to imply that The View was among the many corporate media outlets that buried the various sketchy activities of Hunter Biden, with slack that they never would have given to the Trump siblings.

“ 'What I have found interesting working in what I consider liberal media is not the stories we talk about, but the stories that we don’t talk about. There’s been a lot of stories — like, for example, we’ve never talked about Hunter Biden as a hot topic on this show, whereas Ivanka Trump or Donald Trump Jr. coughed in the wrong direction, it probably would have taken up the first two blocks.

"She then touted The Federalist website co-founded by her husband Ben Domenech (who is getting a tryout as host of Fox News Primetime) because it provides some degree of ideological diversity." . . .

“You think Jim Acosta isn’t an activist. I don’t have any trust in people on CNN anymore. So I take such umbrage at this entire concept that liberal media which runs all of media, all of tech, all of entertainment, all of music, all of culture, all of politics, all three branches of government — I’m supposed to feel bad because there’s two things from Fox News that have been inaccurate.

Viewership for Biden’s SOTU Way Down From All Four of Trump’s Addresses  "President Joe Biden gave his first address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night. But, as expected, he filled it with hollow “unity” rhetoric, promises of an even bigger federal government, higher taxes, stifling regulations, and pretty much everything you’d expect from a President whose strings are being pulled by the radical left." . . .

Kamala Harris and Tim Scott Agree U.S. Not a ‘Racist Country.’ Only One Is Treated Like a Complete Idiot 

 . . . "The concept both he and the vice president are speaking to draws a basic distinction: acts of racism can run through a country’s history and still demand attention – and condemnation – today, without the country itself being fundamentally racist in character. That’s one opinion, arrived at earnestly, and it shouldn’t be mercilessly mocked. But because Senator Tim Scott said it first, he was treated like a rube, a wretch, and, if the “Uncle Tim” phrase trending overnight on Twitter is any gauge, a race traitor.

Black Supremacy; The hate that dare not speak its name.

Frontpage

. . . "Patrisse Cullors is a racist whose sociopathic premise is: all cops are guilty and all black criminals are innocent. This is also the premise and rationale of all the riots and protests of the year just passed: White cops are racists, and blacks their innocent targets, even if they happen to be armed criminals resisting arrest. Through these ideological blinders, the Ohio event - a white cop rescuing an unarmed black teen about to be murdered by a knife-wielding black teen – was simply impossible. The fact that the knife-wielding black teen was shouting “I’m going to stab the fuck out of you, bitch” as she thrust a butcher knife towards her intended victim’s chest was just inconceivable. If white cops protected black victims from black criminals, the goal of abolishing the police could not be justified." . . .

Iran and John Kerry: the evil and the weasel

 Zarif Had No Knowledge of Israeli Strikes Until Kerry Told Him, Translation Reveals . . . "These details are likely to further fuel calls from leading Republicans for Kerry's firing or resignation. The New York Times reported that Zarif said on the tape that Kerry told him Israel launched 200 airstrikes against Iranian interests in Syria. The Times did not provide further details on that issue. But an independent translation of the audiotape commissioned by the Washington Free Beacon shows that Zarif went on to clarify that he had no prior knowledge of these Israeli strikes before Kerry told him.

" 'Kerry told me that Israel had launched 200 airstrikes against you [Iran]," said Zarif. "You didn't know?" asked his interviewer. "No, no," he replied.

"These new details contradict top State Department officials, who have repeatedly said the information was already in the public domain and not classified.

If you go back and look at press reporting from the time, this certainly was not secret, and governments that were involved were speaking to this publicly on the record," State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Monday during a press briefing.  . . .

 Iran's foreign minister's leaked revelations are eye-opening  "On Sunday, news broke that a private interview that Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had with an economist had been leaked to a London-based Persian news service, which then shared it with the New York Times.  There are several interesting points to the conversation, with two of the most striking being (a) Javad's acknowledging that Trump's decision to assassinate Qassem Soleimani was a powerful strike against Iran and (b) a reminder of why the Biden administration is making a terrible mistake when it politicizes the American military.

"Regarding General Soleimani, Zarif effectively says Trump could scarcely have come up with a better way to damage Iran:

In the portions that were leaked, Mr. Zarif does praise the general and says they worked productively together in the prelude to the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. He also says that by assassinating him in Iraq, the United States delivered a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack. . . .

Liberal celebrities hold Kerry's coat tail and suck their thumbs; ‘Please don’t kill us’: Rose McGowan apologizes to Iran for Soleimani death, backpedals, still gets roasted 

Michael Moore sends a message to a dead Ayatollah begging him not to hurt us   Moore's begging did not go over well in Iran: 

The imam of peace wrote on Twitter, “Also, you address your message to Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. That guy died on the 3rd of June 1989. Your whole tweet and message is a mess from start to finish. The current Ayatollah is Khamenei and he has a Fatwa against Music—which you play for him at the start. What a fail…”

The Era of Limbaugh; Why Rush Limbaugh matters

 Matthew Continetti

This post was originally published on Feb. 7, 2020. The Washington Free Beacon is reposting on the occasion of Rush Limbaugh's death Feb. 17, 2021.

 "I had to learn how to take being hated as a measure of success," he told a Boy Scouts awards dinner in 2009.

 . . . "More than a decade later, after the Republican defeat in 2008, Limbaugh once again stepped into the breach. The media likened Barack Obama to FDR. Republicans wavered. Should they cooperate with President Obama in building a "New Foundation" for America? Limbaugh gave his answer on January 16, 2009. "I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half," he said. "I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed." Limbaugh said he hoped Obama failed. "Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it?" The monologue, and the speech he delivered to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., a month later, became a sensation. They set the tone for the Tea Party and Republican victories in 2010 and 2014.

"Limbaugh did not mock Trump when the businessman announced his presidential campaign in June 2015. "This is going to resonate with a lot of people, I guarantee you, and the Drive-Bys are going to pooh-pooh it," he said. He spent the primary reminding listeners of the importance of defeating Hillary Clinton. Trump was not an ideological candidate, he said. Trump was a missile aimed at the establishment. If ideology matters, then you should vote for Ted Cruz. "If conservatism is your bag, if conservatism is the dominating factor in how you vote," Limbaugh said in February 2016, "there is no other choice for you in this campaign than Ted Cruz, because you are exactly right: This is the closest in our lifetimes we have ever been to Ronald Reagan." But, Limbaugh added, the feeling in the country might be so anti-establishment that Trump's unusual coalition could win the presidency. It did.

"To say that Limbaugh supports the president would be an understatement. Last December he introduced the president at a Turning Point USA summit. He mentioned a recent encounter on a golf course. Someone told him it is hard to defend President Trump. "I said, ‘What? Hard to defend the president? It's one of the easiest things in the world to do.' President Trump does not need to be defended." The crowd cheered. A few seconds later Limbaugh said, "How do you defend Donald Trump? You attack the people who are attempting to destroy him. They're trying to destroy you. They're trying to transform this country into something that it was not founded to be.' " . . .

 

Chauvin: The Case Against the Mob

 Ann Coulter  "One of the main arguments being advanced by Eric Nelson, sole attorney for Derek Chauvin in his trial for the murder of George Floyd, is that the hostile crowd itself prevented the officers from attempting to perform CPR in the last minutes of Floyd’s life.

"Even the prosecution’s “use of force” experts admitted repeatedly on cross-examination that a hostile crowd would justify Chauvin keeping Floyd restrained until an ambulance arrived. An officer’s duty to provide care is overridden by his duty to keep himself, the suspect and the bystanders safe.

"As was evident from the videos (and admitted to by the bystander witnesses), they were shouting obscenities at the police, threatening them with bodily harm and, in a few instances, had to be held back from rushing the officers.

"And of course, because of the presence of the angry crowd, the EMTs themselves did not stick around to provide care, but did a “load and scoot,” heaving Floyd into the back of the ambulance and driving three blocks to get away from the mob on the street. They didn’t even want to work inside an ambulance near this feisty group.

"As it becomes increasingly obvious that the belligerent onlookers themselves may have gotten George Floyd killed by creating a dangerous situation for the officers, media commentators leap in to do backup work for the prosecutors by sneering at the idea that the officers might have felt threatened by a few rowdy teenagers.

"     Oh, the big pansies! So, a few teenagers yelled at the officers. Show me just ONE example of disaffected urban youth going from agitation to brawling!

"Here’s one! . . ."