How the Senate Lost Its Decorum

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley was 13 words into his introductory remarks when he was interrupted by Harris. She wasn’t being rude. Well, let’s rephrase that: It wasn’t mere rudeness. Harris was less concerned with offending Grassley than in getting the jump on Booker.

Real Clear Politics "It was over so quickly that if you weren’t glued to C-SPAN you surely missed it, but a spontaneous moment of grace took place during the relentlessly partisan confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. It came when Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, asked Kavanaugh how he’d like to be remembered at the end of his life.

"The question seemed to take the nominee by surprise. “A good dad,” Kavanaugh replied haltingly, “a good judge.” As he hesitated, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, prompted the witness: “A good husband.”

"As laughter rippled through the room, Graham quipped, “Thanks, Dianne, you helped him a lot.” Temporarily reprieved, Kavanaugh smiled and told Feinstein, “I owe you.”

"This brief respite was a reminder that those at that hearing -- senators on both sides of the aisle, political advocates on opposite ends of this political fight, even the loudmouth protesters and Capitol Police officers who kept arresting them -- live in one common country. It also offered Americans a brief glimpse into how the Senate once operated, even while grappling with issues of great national import.

"No longer. The Democrats’ stalling tactics, rudeness, grandstanding, demagoguery, and organized disruptions -- aided by demonstrators who shrieked intermittently at the nominee -- reminded Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn of “mob rule.” That’s probably too strong a phrase, but the Democrats’ guerrilla tactics raised questions that go to the heart of self-governance: Is this the new norm on Capitol Hill, and in U.S. politics generally? If so, can the two-party system still function? And how did the confirmation process come to this?" . . .

God Bless Judge Kavanaugh; (Senators Harris and Booker need even more help.)

Ben Stein’s Diary

"So. The hearings of the Democrats versus Trump. Any trick. Any sneering innuendo. Any vile trick will do to try to upset Judge Kavanaugh. My favorites are the idiotic sniping by our California Senator “Kamala” Harris. She’s trying to “trap” Judge K. into saying he either met or did not meet with some unnamed person about the Mueller inquiry into Russian witch craft. There’s no point to the questions and no point is ever dragged forth, except that Kamala Harris is a fool. Then there’s New Jersey’s Cory Booker, who wants to show that he’s even more of a fool than our Senator Harris. He’s got some public papers which he’s trying to show are secret and he’s Martin Luther King, Jr. by revealing papers that are already public. How stupid can you get, Senator? There’s no “there” there and you’re just a big dope.
. . . 
"Well, Kamala Harris never really got to any kind of point. Cory Booker came across as a bully and a fool. But that’s their right as Senators. Still, it’s sad that we as a people aren’t prostrate with gratitude that we have a man as brilliant and learned and fine as Judge Kavanaugh who will take this kind of nonsense day after day for a basically minimum wage job. It’s an act of pure altruism and patriotism as far as I can tell.

"God bless you, Judge. And God bless Mr. Trump for naming such a fine man to the Supreme Court. As far the actors trying out for President in 2020, Senator Harris and Senator Booker… good luck. But I think Americans see right through you." . . .
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RCP: How the Senate Lost Its Decorum  . . . No longer. The Democrats’ stalling tactics, rudeness, grandstanding, demagoguery, and organized disruptions -- aided by demonstrators who shrieked intermittently at the nominee -- reminded Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn of “mob rule.” That’s probably too strong a phrase, but the Democrats’ guerrilla tactics raised questions that go to the heart of self-governance: Is this the new norm on Capitol Hill, and in U.S. politics generally? If so, can the two-party system still function? And how did the confirmation process come to this?

"The answers to those all questions are varied – and certainly not the fault of only one political party. Here are four factors that have helped create legislative chaos:" . . .

Obama Receives Ethics in Government Award

PJ Media Well then, there was the Nobel Peace Prize awarded him for, um......

"For years I’ve been warning about how the media, Hollywood, and academia have been aggressively trying to rewrite Obama’s abominable record in the White House. To hear them recall the Obama years, one can only conclude they believe Obama single-handedly saved this country from economic collapse, saved the planet from environmental calamity, and had a completely scandal-free administration. One might as well claim Obama cured cancer and saved us from an alien invasion—because they’re just as believable.

"Today, we saw just how far academia is going to perpetuate the myth of Obama’s “scandal-free” administration when he was awarded the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government by the University of Illinois. Not since the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize has Obama been so undeserving of an award. But, I submit that this award is even worse than the Nobel Peace Prize he didn’t deserve. In 2009, the Nobel committee was at least ignorant of what Obama’s record would turn out to be. There is simply no excuse in 2018 for Obama to be receiving an Ethics in Government award. The Nobel committee eventually realized their mistake. But, the Paul H. Douglas Award is now forever tainted.

"What, exactly, did the committee at the University of Illinois think Obama did to earn an Ethics in Government award? The Obama years were plagued by scandal and defined by a hyper-partisan government." . . .

Bring Back Shame

Eileen F. Toplansky After opening with the subject of the McCain funeral, Ms. Toplansky adds:

Consider how America has lost an awareness of the value of shame.  As defined, shame is a "painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior."

. . . "Consider the vicious attacks on people and property that are countenanced, certainly rarely stopped as Antifa, and Black Lives Matters and their ilk run roughshod in the country.  This is not an assertion of civil liberties.  It is pure violence, plain and simple.  College administrators watch while their universities are trampled upon. 

"This confirms another Hoffer assertion: "[t]he disconcerting thing is that loss of shame is not confined to juveniles."

"Shame properly used is "how a sense of decency is developed."  It protects the group from the dangers of individual excesses.  It is a balancing tool that keeps people accountable.

"In classical Greek mythology, Aidos was the "goddess of modesty, shame, reverence and respect.  She was a companion of the goddess Nemesis.  As a quality Aidos was the feeling of shame which restrains men from doing wrong, while Nemesis was righteous indignation aroused by the sight of wicked men receiving undeserved good fortune.' "

Do Democrats in Congress ever smile..or just have that permanent scowl?

Rough Beasts Slouching toward the White House  . . . "What has changed, I should think, is any serious notion that Cory Booker or Kamala Harris has a national political future after their outrageous performances this week.  Booker has exposed himself as an idiot, claiming he was like Spartacus in revealing classified information which had already been declassified, and which, in any event, showed that the judge had opposed "profiling." 

"Newt Gingrich said it best:

Cory Booker should study history before he tries to use it.  Calling a Senate publicity stunt his "Spartacus" moment was absurd.  Spartacus was a gladiator slave who rebelled, lost, was crucified.  Booker studied at Stanford, Oxford, Yale Law School.  His only risk is being ridiculed[.]

"Kamala Harris's unsubstantiated charge that the judge had discussed the Mueller investigation with an unnamed lawyer in a private firm at some unnamed date along with bullying the witness again demonstrates that she lacks the character and wit to hold even the senatorial seat, let alone higher office.

"Worse, for the Democrats, the often paid and completely outrageous effort to bully the Judiciary Committee has to drive any moderate even farther from its ranks.  Latest reports say 200 people were arrested for their disruptive tactics.  They include this person who bloodied his crotch for the display, which was supposed to mean what?  And outside the hearing room, nitwits wearing costumes from The Handmaid's Tale – again, for what end? " . . .
Cory Costanza Booker: Bad to the Bone  . . . "In addition, the email Booker released showed Kavanaugh opposed racial profiling. Nevertheless, Booker did his best George Costanza impression throughout the night of trying hard to seem like a "bad to the bone" rebel." . . .

Trump and His Enemies

. . . "With Speaker Paul Ryan and Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake departing, the only prominent Never Trumper in Congress who is visible to the public is Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who finesses it at times, indicating that even some of those Republican officeholders with a strong aversion to Trump will at least vote with the administration as long as the president is winning." . . .

Brit Hume hammers ‘dishonest’ CNN for spreading out-of-context Dem talking point on Kavanaugh

Twitchy
"Congressional Democrats quickly started spreading a brief clip of Brett Kavanaugh answering a question to sound the alarm about the SCOTUS nominee. Among them was Sen. Kamala Harris:  Video here.

Kamala Harris

✔@SenKamalaHarris

Kavanaugh chooses his words very carefully, and this is a dog whistle for going after birth control. He was nominated for the purpose of taking away a woman’s constitutionally protected right to make her own health care decisions. Make no mistake - this is about punishing women.

Twitter Ads info and privacy

"The clip leaves out some important context, but CNN helped the Dems out by not exactly concerning themselves with that:" . . .

        CNN Politics

‏Verified account

 @CNNPolitics 1h1 hour ago1 hour agoMoreBrett Kavanaugh's views on birth control drew scrutiny after he referred to contraceptives as "abortion-inducing drugs" https://cnn.it/2QekzrI 

             

Fox News’ Brit Hume threw a bushel of apples & bananas at CNN over that approach:

Brit Hume

✔@brithume

He was stating the position of a party to a case. How dishonest can a news organization be? Fact check much?

Indoctrination Saturation

Victor Davis Hanson

The all-seeing social-justice eye penetrates every aspect of our lives: sports, movies, public monuments, social media, funerals . . .

"A definition of totalitarianism might be the saturation of every facet of daily life by political agendas and social-justice messaging.

"At the present rate, America will soon resemble the dystopias of novels such as 1984 and Brave New World in which all aspects of life are warped by an all-encompassing ideology of coerced sameness. Or rather, the prevailing orthodoxy in America is the omnipresent attempt of an elite — exempt from the consequences of its own ideology thanks to its supposed superior virtue and intelligence — to mandate an equality of result. 

"We expect their 24/7 political messaging on cable-channel news networks, talk radio, or print and online media. And we concede that long ago an NPR, CNN, MSNBC, or New York Times ceased being journalistic entities as much as obsequious megaphones of the progressive itinerary. 

"But increasingly we cannot escape anywhere the lidless gaze of our progressive lords, all-seeing, all-knowing from high up in their dark towers.

. . . 

"Language is especially enlisted to disguise bothersome reality. During the Obama administration, no one would ever have known from “overseas contingency operations,” “mancaused disasters,” “workplace disasters,” and “holy struggles” that radical Islamic terrorists were seeking to kill Westerners from San Bernardino to Paris. As in the case of illegal aliens, undocumented aliens, illegal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, immigrants migrants, the progressive rationale is that anyone killed or harmed by a terrorist or migrant is usually a nobody and so an acceptable casualty in the greater war against incorrect speech and attitude.

. . . 

"Americans have long accepted that Hollywood movies no longer seek just to entertain or inform, but to indoctrinate audiences by pushing progressive agendas. That commandment also demands that America be portrayed negatively — or better yet simply written out of history. Take the new film First Man, about the first moon landing. Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became famous when he emerged from The Eagle, the two-man lunar module, and planted an American flag on the moon’s surface. Yet that iconic act disappears from the movie version. (At least Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong, does not walk out of the space capsule to string up a U.N. banner.)" . . .

The all-seeing eye of political correctness:

UK Independent

Transgender Pronouns Are Just the Beginning. How Coerced Speech Could Erode Liberty for Everyone.

Daily Signal  

"During the past decade, transgender ideology has gained significant ground in society and culture. And, as its demands have been translated into public policy, it threatens not only the livelihood of public employees who don’t conform to speech codes, but also the free and democratic nature of American society.

""These are not idle fears. Consider that in the United Kingdom, a Reformed Baptist doctor was recently fired by the National Health Service for his belief that a person’s sex is biologically determined rather than “assigned” at birth. A Christian math teacher was suspended and is under investigation for saying, “Well done, girls” to a group of students that included a transgender student who identifies as a boy.

"Similarly, in the United States, the University of Minnesota recently introduced a draft policy that would coerce faculty, staff, and students to use pronouns such as “ze,” “sie,” “zir,” “hir,” “co,” “ev,” “xe,” and “thon.” Students who defy this draft would risk expulsion, while faculty and staff would risk disciplinary action—or termination." . . .

DEMOCRATS’ HOSTILITY TO THE CONSTITUTION LAID BARE

Power Line  "One of the more revealing moments in the Democrats’ Judiciary Committee clown show was when Kamala Harris sneeringly referred to the Constitution as “that book that you [Judge Kavanaugh] carry.” Harris is her generation’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: ridiculously far-left, quite good-looking, and utterly ill-informed.

"Here is the exchange:

. . . How much of this Kamala Harris understands I don’t know, but the childish leftism that she embodies, along with many others of her party, is one of the greatest threats to our democracy."

Harris swore to this oath of office when becoming a Senator:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution* of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

*Also called "that book" by Kamala Harris

Obama attacks President Trump. Round One, roughly

J. Marsolo: Obama cracks up with Trump Derangement Syndrome  "On September 7, Barack Obama gave a speech in Illinois bitterly attacking President Trump and talking about his favorite subjects: himself and slavery.

"Obama is angry.  He called on his followers to get out and vote in November to defeat Trump.  He is angry that the voters rejected him in 2016 by electing Trump instead of Hillary.  He knows that this was a rejection of his policies, and more importantly, it was a rejection of Obama personally.  Obama cannot accept this.  He and Joe Biden campaigned for Hillary daily, and Obama even said he would take it as a personal insult if black voters didn't vote for Hillary.

"Black voters and Hispanic voters ignored Obama's orders. Trump got more blackand Hispanic voters than Romney in 2012.

"Obama cannot stand the success of President Trump.  The economy is booming, the stock market is booming, and unemployment is down, but Obama does not care that our country is doing well.  Obama has to give a speech to again try to divide us." . . .

The bottom line is that Obama is angry.  He did all he could to defeat Trump and elect Hillary.  His corrupt FBI/DOJ whitewashed the Hillary email scandal and used the unverified, Hillary-paid-for Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, which led to the Mueller investigation.  But Obama's efforts failed to elect Hillary. . . .

HE’S BACK! Obama refers to himself 102 times during 64-minute speech

Obama: Trump Is ‘Capitalizing’ on Americans’ ‘Resentment’  . . . "Obama has subtly directed a number of criticisms at Trump in the few public statements he’s made since leaving office, but he appears to be adopting a more direct approach as he begins to stump for Democratic office-seekers across the country, rebuking the president by name. " . . .

Obama's bitter sore spot: The Trump economy  . . . "Trump gave us tax cuts, deregulation, and an equalization of international trade terms.  Net result: Jobs are up, and black employment is reaching record highs, as is youth, Hispanic, and female employment.  Those 3% unemployment numbers are good news for everyone.

"Instead of admitting that and promising to go Trump one better the next time around, Obama described this tired scenario going on, as if it were still 2008: . . ."

Obama Touts Record of Support for Free Press Despite Criticism  . . . "While Obama has refrained from characterizing the media as “the enemy of the people,” Department of Justice during his presidency monitored the phone records of journalists considered hostile to the administration and tried to compel a New York Times reporter to release the name of a confidential source. The administration also labeled another a Fox News reporter an “un-indicted coconspirator” in prosecuting a government official for leaking classified information under the Espionage Act.
"When pressed on his record of dealing confrontationally with the press, Obama has defended his administration’s efforts as being vital to national security." . . .

Obama Prosecuted Staff Leakers, Gave Lie-Detector Tests, ‘Paranoid’ 
So stop using it all for your anti-Trump propaganda.

What, exactly, did the committee at the University of Illinois think Obama did to earn an Ethics in Government award?  "The Obama years were plagued by scandal and defined by a hyper-partisan government."

Obama said, "How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad."
. . . "So it is pretty easy to call Nazis bad.
"Deporting them takes courage, morals, and brains.
"I know that because President Trump just deported one that Obama refused to deport for eight years, and Bush 43 failed to deport for four years."  Robert J. O'Neill tweeted: "

Nazis are bad. Now try saying “Radical Islam...' ”

The Character Assassination of Brett Kavanaugh

National Review

There are honorable ways to oppose a nominee with whom you disagree. Kavanaugh’s Democratic critics have chosen to go the dishonorable route, instead.

. . . "But it’s low and dishonorable to skip the principled opposition and simply smear a good man, engaging in cheap character assassination as Judge Kavanaugh’s Democratic opponents have this week.

"For those keeping score at home, millions of Americans have now been exposed to false and ridiculous claims that Kavanaugh is a slippery perjurer who surrounds himself with racists and a cold, dark soul who deliberately snubbed a murdered child’s father.

"The latter two claims date back to the first day of his hearing, when the online Left erupted with claims that former Kavanaugh clerk Zina Bash had flashed a white-power symbol during the hearing. It turns out that Bash is a Mexican-American immigrant with a Jewish father, a descendant of Holocaust survivors. So, no, she’s not a white nationalist.

"The same day, activists claimed that Kavanaugh actively refused to shake Fred Guttenberg’s hand. Guttenberg is the father of a student murdered in February’s Parkland, Fla. school shooting, and he approached Kavanaugh in the scrum following a break in the hearing. Just as Guttenberg, a complete stranger to Kavanaugh, stuck out his hand, security arrived and ushered Kavanaugh away. This was then cravenly spun into an outrage by the progressive Internet." . . .  By David French

We must not - repeat NOT - give these Democrats rule over the Senate, the House, nor the White House. See California for a lesson in what the left can do to a once stable, prosperous state. TD

"Ocasio Gets Knocked Out"

Steve Feinstein "In June 2018, young 28-year-old "Socialist Democrat" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated 10-term Democrat Joe Crowley in what was considered a major upset. Crowley – a tried-and-true Democratic congressman with 20 years of loyal party service, proved no match for Ocasio-Cortez and her embodiment of the new brand of über-liberal progressivism. In the new paradigm of Democratic Party politics, there is no such thing as social policies that are too liberal, no education, healthcare, or assistance initiatives that are too generous with government-funded payouts, no position on illegal immigration or gender identity that is too lenient or accommodating." . . .

. . . "This country is based on a market economy. It is capitalistic, driven by the profit motive. Virtually all economic activity in the private sector – whether it's retail or pharmaceutical/healthcare or energy or manufacturing or entertainment or communications/information services and devices or transportation or real estate/construction or law – is predicated on generating a profit. Government policies that discourage profit-oriented activity – indeed, punish it – will serve only to slow the growth of the national economic pie – the very pie that Democratic Socialists intend on cutting into slices and giving away to those they've deemed "deserving" or "underserved" or "disadvantaged."

"Diminishing private sector profits will result in a continually-contracting downward spiral, in which economic activity is restricted, companies shrink, hiring decreases, and the general standard of living – across all demographic sectors, including the "deserving" – is reduced.

"Democratic Socialism – a fraudulent idea based on fraudulent assumptions, foisted either by callous hypocrites like Sanders and Warren (who already have "theirs" and therefore can easily weather any economic downturn) or stunningly ignorant neophytes like Ocasio-Cortez (who simply don't know any better) – will collapse from the illegitimacy of its own weight, as did Ossie Ocasio from the unapologetic power of champion Holmes' inescapably real punches." . . .

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