The Problem with Bernie

Bernie means it!

President Sanders would attempt to radically remake the United States into a socialist state further to the left, further indebted, and further internationalized than even Western Europe’s most liberal polities. It would be a historical disaster of epic and perhaps irrevocable proportions.

Sanders ideas are so radical that his chances of beating Donald Trump in November appear marginal. It’s assumed he would not bring a heavy Democratic turnout, struggle with blacks, and alienate the critical independent voters who effectively will decide the election.

Relatedly, Sanders offers no “identity advantage” to the Democrats, which might also drive excitement within the party and push turnout. He’s an old white guy from New York (like Trump), plus he’s ethnically Jewish, not a plus with Democrats today.

Wealthy donors, for all their talk of “equality” and pandering to the myriad of “oppressed identities” that form the Party’s base, virtue signal as they do because they are confident that their own core wealth and privilege will either rise or remain unaffected in a Democrat administration. That would not be true under President Sanders. And sitting representatives and senators worry that they’ll be dragged down in a Sanders debacle.

Second Trump term would be ‘positive’ for economy and financial markets: report

That's a given, because electing any of the Democrats running for President would transform the country into Venezuela.

If President Trump wins a second term, the overall impact would be “positive for the domestic economy and financial markets,” according to a new report from Capital Economics.

“With monetary and fiscal policies remaining loose, or potentially being eased further, the economy is likely to continue running hot,” the report noted. “That is clearly a positive backdrop for financial markets.”

Liberal Activist Explains Notion Of Tolerance To Man She Just Called A 'Worthless [Expletive]'

The Babylon Bee presents a pitch-perfect example of the Party of Love and Tolerance

“Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and decency, you [expletive] [expletive]!” she yelled, pumping her balled fist in the direction of the man who had taken issue with her cause. “You do not get to judge or shame people because of their beliefs!”

“Now get the [expletive] out of here, you filthy [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]!”

“[Expletive] [expletive] [expletive]!” agreed some fellow protesters within earshot of Fernandez.

“Love wins, [expletive]!” she added, as the man walked away.

Shortly after this she interviewed for a job at CNN and was hired to anchor their new daytime show.

Remembering World War III -- 30 Days Later

The Babylon Bee explains it all.

Remember the press' storyline was that Trump was starting WWIII?  Here's how it went.

It started when Trump ordered an airstrike just after midnight on 3 January 2020. The strike killed two high-ranking Iranian officials, Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who had definitely started the war by being in American territory in the first place. This left the Iranians helpless, and forced them to surrender. The war was over.

In the aftermath ...

 In the four weeks since World War III, the globe has grown to its safest level on record. Every terrorist in the world has been killed, Iran has been wiped off the map, and the territory previously known as Iran, Trumpsbakistan, is now the hottest tourist destination on the planet. With a world like this, it's hard to imagine another major war anytime soon. Thank you very much, President Trump!

Revelation

When living longer isn't worth it

The News

Corona Beer Changes Their Name

Infamy and Ongar

Mark Steyn remembers Denis Norden as only he can.

Remembrance and Appropriation

Mark Steyn comments on the Holocaust.  Well worth a read.

Civilization Is History at Yale

Yale announced last week that it will stop teaching its famous survey course, “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present.” Taught for decades by Vincent Scully, one of Yale’s most celebrated professors, the course was a riveting introduction to pulse of humanism.

It is being cashiered for all the usual reasons. Its focus is too white, too European, too male, too “problematic,” as Tim Barringer, chairman of the art history department, puts it. Mr. Barringer will substitute a course that challenges such Eurocentrism and promises to be very up-to-date. Mr. Barrginer says he’ll introduce a “global” perspective. Naturally, he writes, the course will consider art in relation to “questions of gender, class and ‘race.’ ” (Why the scare quotes around “race”? Is today one of those days when race is only a social construct?) It will also ponder art’s “involvement with Western capitalism.”

Globalism, gender, class, race, capitalism. Has Mr. Barringer neglected any trendy concern? How about the Greta Thunberg gambit? On it! Art’s “relationship with climate change will be a ‘key theme,’ ” the Yale Daily News reports.

The Daily News adds that the removal of “Introduction to Art History” is “the latest response to student uneasiness over an idealized Western ‘canon’—a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists.”

It is also yet another sign that Yale has succumbed to a life-draining decadence. A decadent institution isn’t necessarily impoverished or licentious. Rather, it is desiccated because it has lost the life-giving pith of its purpose. To a casual observer, a decadent institution may look healthy. The buildings may be expensive, well-kept and plentiful. Tidy, well-heeled people may bustle about. But the animating élan has evaporated. A decadent institution is one that has repudiated itself.

All in all, I'm glad that I never attended Yale, Harvard or any of the other "elite" universities that are busy committing intellectual and political suicide.

The political philosopher James Burnham once observed that “suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization.” As Yale has been demonstrating for some years now, elite institutions are eager to take the lead.

Ukrainian Prosecutor Demands Ukraine Prosecute Joe Biden

Ukrainian ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has demanded that the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) open criminal proceedings against former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden for illegal influence on him as the prosecutor general of Ukraine....

"During the last months of 2015 and the first of 2016, Joseph Biden, using his official position, personally paid official visits to Ukraine several times with the aim of holding negotiations with the state leaders on my removal from my post. As a result, he curtailed an objective investigation criminal proceedings on the facts of unlawful activities of persons associated with the company Burisma Holdings Limited (Cyprus), including the son of the specified high-ranking official," Shokin said.

Leader Of 'The Base' Militant Group Revealed As Intelligence Contractor, Suspected Federal Agent

Is this how the FBI catches "White Supremacists Nazis?" By creating these groups and having their agents join?

Readers will no doubt be shocked to learn the leader of the "white supremacist neo-Nazi terrorist group" the Base is an intelligence contractor and appears to be a federal agent.

In truth, it'd probably be more shocking to learn he wasn't a fed.

As the KKK was dwindling, it was revealed that more than a few members were FBI agents.

Want to see how to slant the News? Read the AP.

This is called "begging the question" and it means that the conclusion is assumed in the premise.  It's found more and more in the MSM today as they morph into Democrat operatives with bylines.  In this article David Bauder operates as a Democrat shill.

Similarly, those who followed a conservative media diet were much more likely to believe the false narrative that former Vice President Joe Biden called for a Ukrainian prosecutor’s removal to protect his son from being investigated.

First, it is literally true that Biden got a Ukrainian prosecutor removed by threatening to withhold $1 billion in aid unless he was fired within 6 hours.

The prosecutor was fired.

The prosecutor was investigating corruption at Burisma.

Here's a report from The Hill, and one from Big League Politics.

From Fox News:

The fired prosecutor at the center of the Ukraine controversy said during a private interview with President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani earlier this year that he was told to back off an investigation involving a natural gas firm that was linked to Joe Biden’s son, according to details of that interview that were handed over to Congress by the State Department’s inspector general Wednesday.

Fox News obtained a copy of Giuliani’s notes from his January 2019 interview with fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in which he claimed that his “investigations stopped out of fear of the United States.”

“Mr. Shokin attempted to continue the investigations but on or around June or July of 2015, the U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing,” the notes from the interview stated. The notes also claimed Shokin was told Biden had held up U.S. aid to Ukraine over the investigation.

So, who are you going to believe: the prosecutor, Joe Biden when he said he wanted to prosecutor fired, or David Bauder?

This week in pictures

Local Snowflake Resents Being Compared To Fragile College Students

BILLINGS, MT—A local snowflake is speaking out after learning that snowflakes are being used to describe overprotected college students who are easily distressed by ideas that do not align with their worldview, sources confirmed.

“When I first heard the term ‘Generation Snowflake’ I thought it was a compliment,” said the feathery ice crystal, in a statement issued from a snowbank just off Route 318.

“Then I learned more about it, and I was appalled. Just because I’m uniquely designed by God, I’m not entitled to go through life never facing hardship or having my beliefs challenged. Where did that idea come from?”

“I mean, could these young people plummet 10,000 feet in subzero conditions, with style and serenity?” the precipitant went on. “We don’t demand safe spaces from kids’ scalding hot tongues. We don’t ask for trigger warnings every time a dog starts sniffing around. Enough is enough.”

“To call them snowflakes is an insult to snowflakes everywhere,” it added.

In Major Deal, The Babylon Bee Purchases Competing Satire Site CNN

U.S.—The Babylon Bee has been the world's best satire site for thousands of years, spawning dozens of secular knock-offs that just aren't quite as good.

The site announced a new acquisition this week, one that immediately made the site the largest satirical site on the planet: a purchase of competing satire site CNN for $12 billion. The move more than quadrupled the site's catalog of hilarious, satirical articles.

"We've long admired CNN's ability to parody leftist media organizations so effortlessly, and we're thrilled to have them under The Babylon Bee's umbrella," said site CEO Seth Dillon. "When you can't compete with hilarious satire like CNN, you obviously look for ways to get them on your team, and an acquisition seemed to make the most sense."

The Democrat Party is at war with America

Amil Imani, an Iranian immigrant gets to the fundamental truth of our current political and cultural dilemma. Immigrants often have the perspective on reality that natives lack.

President Trump's opponents mostly are from the camp of Hillary Clinton– and Barack Obama–supporters. Both Obama and Clinton were students of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was a self-professed radical, obsessed with leftist ideology. Moreover, the Left, rooted in Marxism, is atheistic and steeped in multicultural moral relativism. Hence, the pro-American nationalism of President Trump — his campaign slogan of "Make America Great Again" — infuriates the Left, which flatters itself as being internationalist or "cosmopolitan" as well as the trend of the future...

It seems the entire liberal world has combined its efforts to take Trump out at all cost. In this devilish process, the left has exposed its true nature.

I have stated many times that multiculturalism and the doctrine of moral relativism are destroying the moral fabric of America. Moral relativism is the core of the social sciences, hence of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science. It corrupts judges, opinion-makers, policymakers, and decision-makers.

Moral relativism denies the existence of evil. This doctrine is evident in the writings and pro-Palestinian attitude of former President Barack Obama. It was evident in the American policy of détente vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

This Democrat Party no longer hides its agenda. They now openly encourage millions of illegal aliens to violate our laws and break into our country, and they want to sign them up for free welfare, free health care, and free education — and the right to vote with the help of their ace in the hole, the "Fake News" media....

The radical left enjoys controlling people from cradle to grave. (Sounds like Muslims.) They want socialism. They want to be in charge for eternity. The leftist agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and fosters government reliance, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, promotes sharia law, denigrates the sanctity of marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship and much more.

What kind of idiot brings a sword to a gunfight?

Despite what Richard Weaver so eloquently tells us, ideas don't matter, not at all. What matters is power. And power, indeed, has consequences.

"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” Orwell

There is no need to debate ideas when all the Right Ideas are already known, already catalogued, indexed, memorized, and endlessly regurgitated. Argument is pointless when you simply OWN all the right answers. True Believers in the very best Eric Hoffer sense, the Truth the Progressive Left preaches is one revealed only by Dogma.

Climate change burns Australia, mudslides California, and endlessly tornadoes the Plains. Men can become women and women men; they simply have to think it so. Of course ALL restrooms should contain tampon dispensers (only a bigot would believe otherwise). A kiss is not just a kiss -- it is a sexual assault. The best way to end racial discrmination (pardon me Chief Justice!) is absolutely to continue to discriminate on the basis of race. Guilt is blood-borne; equally victimhood. Merit is a lie. Quality is injustice. Inclusivity is everything (save for all those bad racist, sexist, patriarchal, male, cis-gendered, heteronormative capitalists -- them we MUST exclude: "Lean Back All You Evil People, and SHUT-UP!" (Senator Hirono sez so!).

Go down the list. Pull the Chatty Cathy cord. The answers come out embossed, and stamped indelibly on every Progressive talking head: homosexuality is just a more likable form of normal (did we mention the higher lesbian orgasm rate?) Can we start a Drag Queen reading hour? Disparate Impact reveals always systemic, micro-aggressive, subconcsious bias (and there's nothing you can do about it). To be colorblind is to be racist. Fossil Fuels are sins. Logic is oppression. Standards are hatred. These lists of Correct Thoughts are endless.

And everything's a litmus test. Tell us how you feel about Colin Kapernick's knee....Al Franken's tongue....the number of Black headcoaches in the NFL today.... and the fact that the American College Quad is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman. Tell us if you went to see Little Women. Tell us about Affirmative Consent. Tell us what is NOT toxic about masculinity (be careful, that's a trick question!).

Ideas? Hell, ideas have absolutely nothing to do with anything in the socio-political swamp.
But being a card-carrying Progressive Party member who can recite chapter and verse (Trump is the Devil! Say it again!)....that's priceless.

Media Stupidity Is Uniting Left and Right

Matt Taibbi is partly wrong and partly right.  He has the Left's misunderstanding about Trump and his beliefs.  But he understands, like no one else in the Liberal Press understands, that the media are committing political suicide.

When Trump jumped into the presidential race in 2015, it would have been easy enough for members of the media to decry his ignorance, personal and professional venality, and racism.

But they couldn’t help themselves, declaring every word out of his mouth a Satanic lie. This made the occasional things that he said that were true, like that Jeb Bush was a puppet for corporate donors or NATO was a bloated and outdated organization, pack significantly more punch.

The transparent full-of-shitness of the corporate press reaction to Trump was probably the leading argument for his credibility. Trump wrongly pushed voters to blame minorities and foreigners, and when he did identify correct targets for public opprobrium, like Goldman Sachs, it wasn’t believable that he would oppose them in office. But media figures gave his “drain the swamp” message a huge boost by scoffing at it with their inimical obnoxiousness.

They then spent years doubling down, backing conspiracy theories about espionage with Russia, mis-predicting the end of the Trump presidency, and, yes, employing tactics like body–language analysis to say all sorts of silly things (“What is Donald Trump hiding? His body language says it all,” wrote Newsweek, interviewing an analyst who’d made “interesting observations about Hitler’s salutes”).

People in the media business underestimate, by a lot, the damage the last three years have done to their ability to reach not just Trump fans but non-Trump Republicans, independents, libertarians, Greens, and other groups. The latest fiascoes with Sanders double as confirmation for these people of their worst conclusions about media, and an additional insult that such goofball messaging is only now attracting the notice of some on the “other side. “

Sanders now looks poised to receive the same kind of bump Trump got in 2016 from media stupidity. As was the case this past summer when the Bezos-owned Washington Post went so far as to put the term “corporate media” in quotation marks while denouncing Bernie’s “bogus media beef,” the institutional dismissal has been so over-the-top that it’s likely to earn him sympathy even with disinterested parties. Is there a word for propaganda in reverse?