Tag Archives: Trump

Democrats: “Nobody move, or we’ll shoot ourselves!”

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Democrats are willing to shut down the government if Republicans refuse to re-negotiate part of the tax bill passed in July. They say the main thing they want re-negotiated are government subsidies for Obamacare.

The Democrats have some leverage here because, while it took only a Senate majority to pass the tax bill, and the Republicans hold that majority, it takes a supra-majority to pass a bill to keep the government from shutting down. A supra-majority cannot be achieved without a handful of Democrats.

There are several principled objections to this strategy by the Democrats, which are worth mentioning before I get to the main point.

First, this isn’t the way legislation is supposed to get done. Once a bill is passed, the losing side is not supposed to get another bite at their losing apple by threatening to shut down the government many months later.

Second, shutting down the government is a little like hostage-taking. The threat is of a different kind and degree from the matter in dispute.

Third, this is stupidly hypocritical by the Democrats. The party of Big Government says that if they don’t get their way, they’ll . . . shut down Big Government.

It reminds me of Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles, when he pointed a gun at his head and warned his pursuers, “Hold it! Next man makes a move, the n***** gets it!” (Note that in what passes for today’s “culture” you can get all manner of porn and snuff films with a few clicks on the internet, but finding that clip takes some effort.)

Fourth, the Republicans are prepared to turn the tables. Trump says that if the government gets shut down, he’ll have no choice but to fire government workers. There’s some logic to that. It’s not fair to employ workers you can’t pay.  

Democrats have shown a talent for political malpractice lately, but this one looks like a real boner. The Democrats can be stupid, but usually not this stupid. So why are they doing it?

The conventional wisdom is that they are captive to their “base,” the far-left kooks. That’s true, but it leaves the question, why are they captive to kooks?

The answer to that question is the same as the answer to the question “Why do you rob banks?” asked of serial bank robber Willie Sutton. He replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Kooks don’t normally have money, but these particular far-left ones do. Billions are funneled to them from unabashed radicals like George Soros and billions more from purportedly philanthropic foundations and leftist non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace, Common Cause and Black Lives Matter that are only slightly less radical. (Imagine entrepreneurs like John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and John D. MacArthur turning in their graves at the sight of how their money is spent today.) The kooks receiving those billions, in turn, are major campaign donors to Democrats.

These monied far-left interests are not really driven by details like Obamacare subsidies. That’s just an excuse. If the Republicans compromised on that, there will be another demand and another. What really drives them is a desire to sow chaos and confusion in American society, culture and government. Shutting down the government, they believe, serves that end. They seek a revolution, by whatever means necessary but preferably through a societal breakdown – by violence.

If the Democrats want to shut down the government in order sow a little chaos and confusion, fine. They’ll lose in the end, and it won’t take long. Let’s not take the bait for a violent confrontation.

Let Chicago destroy itself

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President Trump’s efforts to bring down crime have been successful in Washington, D.C. The rate of murder and other violent crimes is down substantially, and the rate of car-jackings is down dramatically.

Even the Democrat mayor of the city admitted that the crime rate has dropped. Oddly, however, she mumbles in the next breath that the program is “not working,” apparently to mollify national stage Democrats to whom she answers.

Such as Democrat Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. He was asked at the outset whether the initial 30-day period for the effort could be extended. His response was “f*** no!” It will be interesting to see him now choose between enabling murders and climbing down from his vulgar perch. I’m guessing he’ll choose the side of murder, and stay on his vulgar perch.

So, if it worked in D.C., why stop now? We can curtail crime and simultaneously embarrass Democrats around the country. We should next send the troops to Chicago, right? And then Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis and Portland, right?

I don’t think so. My reasons are legal, philosophical and political.

Legally, D.C. is a special case. It’s under the direct jurisdiction of the federal government (notwithstanding the limited “home rule” that Congress legislated some years ago). One federal judge has already ruled that the deployment of troops to Los Angeles to quell the illegal immigration protests was illegal. I don’t have much regard for that particular judge – the bowtie-wearing, San Francisco-residing, 83-year-old little brother of retired liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer – but it is conceivable that his big brother’s former Court will uphold his ruling.

Now the more important reasons – the moral and philosophical ones.

D.C. is the workplace and often the home of over a hundred thousand federal employees who have little choice about their workplace venue.

It’s also the face of America to millions of foreign visitors who reasonably assume that it reflects American values, just as we would assume that Paris reflects French values, London reflects English values, and Berlin reflects German values. (Each of those cities has a lower crime rate than D.C., especially in the category of violent crime.) How America presents itself to the world through its capital city is rightly a national and federal concern. How Chicago presents itself to the world is less so.

Here’s the most important point. The crime in Chicago and other major cities is largely due to ongoing choices they make in law enforcement. Recall that only five years ago, many residents of American cities were calling for the “defunding” – i.e., abolition – of city police forces. Even now, police forces are short-handed because the Democrats ruling these cities are hostile to law enforcement. They hate the cops more than they hate the criminals.

When they’re not short-changing the cops, they’re hand-tying them. Many crimes are simply not investigated or prosecuted. For example, shop-lifting has effectively been de-criminalized. If you want to get fired from your job at a local store, call the cops on a shoplifter or, worse, chase after one.

Other crimes have also been effectively de-criminalized on the grounds that too many racial minorities were being arrested for committing them.

People who commit crimes are criminals, but they aren’t stupid. They know what they can get away with, and so that’s what they do.

In short, big-city crime is a big-city choice. Specifically, it’s a choice by big city Democrats. They could decide tomorrow not to tolerate crime. So far, with the exception of the D.C. mayor who has had an epiphany on the subject, they have not decided that. We cannot coerce everyone into epiphanies.  

Finally, there’s a legitimate issue about using federal troops for routine law enforcement. From the German Gestapo of a century ago to the Mexican Federales of today, federal law enforcement in local matters has a sordid history. 

To be sure, the crime in American large cities inflicts real harm on the residents who, by and large, are not criminals of any kind. They sometimes get attacked, shot or killed and they often get their property stolen or vandalized. Even in the absence of tangible harm, they live insecure, semi-terrified lives.

But they keep electing those soft-on-crime Democrats. They are entitled to, but I say let these residents see and suffer the consequences of their choices – for years and years, if that’s what it takes.

Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago is widely seen outside of Chicago as the worst mayor in America. Even within Chicago, which is an overwhelmingly Democrat city, his approval rating this summer is down to the mid-20s. Maybe that means the Democrat residents of Chicago will throw the bum out.

But don’t count on it. Especially if he can make political hay by distracting the Democrat residents from his incompetence with a show of “standing up to” the Orange Man that they hate more than the criminals and even more than the cops.

You may ask, “What about the residents of Chicago who do want to throw the bum out? Who do want effective law enforcement? Who do want to reclaim their city from filth and crime? Who do vote with their minds and not with their tribe?”

My answer is, they have an alternative. Unlike federal employees locked into workplaces in D.C., the residents of Chicago who vote with their minds but get outvoted every time can vote with their feet.

My advice to them is to get the hell out of the failing cities. Let the failing cities burn and rot. Maybe then, and probably only then, the residents will insist on effective governance. If they don’t even then, well, at least they’ve self-concentrated in places we can watch and, if necessary, avoid or isolate.

And who knows? Their proclivity toward killing one another might prove to be an unfitness in the Darwinian sense.

Yes, my advice to sane people in insane places is to move to another place. Move to Texas, move to Florida, move to Idaho. Move to Galt’s Gulch.

The policies of the left are outrageous – by design

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George Frederic Watts – Chaos

It’s now a truism that the policies of the left are widely viewed as outrageous – at least the cultural ones such as allowing male voyeurs and exhibitionists into girls’ bathrooms, discriminating to benefit favored races and sexual orientations, grabbing the guns held by hundreds of millions of law-abiding Americans while simultaneously coddling criminals who will never give up theirs, and abolishing the nation’s borders.

Such issues have earned a name – the “80/20 issues” – because something near 80% of Americans oppose the left on such issues.

That 80% figure would probably be even higher if not for some Democrats whose hearts and minds are on the 80% side but whose instinctive tribalism boxes them into the 20% side just because they (correctly) see the 20% side as part of the formal Democratic Party platform.

Yet, the left seems unable to effectuate a course correction on those outrageous policies disfavored by 80% of the people.

One result is that the Democrats lose elections. Who cares about the nuances of tariffs, an issue on which reasonable persons disagree, when they’re putting boys in drag into your daughter’s bathroom at school, an issue on which reasonable persons do not?

My reaction to the Democrats’ truculence is one word: Good. I hope they stay bound to the losing side of those issues. Because I want them to keep losing elections.

But I’m left wondering: Why? Why is the left so bound to the losing side of issues that cost them elections?

I have a theory.

Recognize that the left is not like you and me. At the core, they aren’t trying to solve problems. Instead, they’re trying to provoke ordinary people. What better way to provoke ordinary people than to put messed-up teenage boys into the bathrooms of those people’s daughters?

But that, in turn, leaves a question: Why does the left want to provoke ordinary people?

Here’s where it gets sinister. They hate America. They really do, you know. Polls consistently show that the hard left feels genuine hate for America. Even mere Democrats – as opposed to hard leftists – often feel something less than love for the nation.

Thus, the left is fundamentally different than the right. On the right, neo-Nazis are loathsome and even mere right-wingers are sometimes not very appealing, but I’ve noticed that most of them do not hate America as a nation and an institution and a culture and a people.

The left’s hatred of America is the reason they seek to provoke Americans. Hatred is the mother of provocation and, ultimately, violence.

Did Hitler really want to own Russia? I doubt it. But he certainly hated Russians. He never did succeed in owning Russia – he never even reached Moscow – but his hatred of Russians succeeded in killing 20 million of them.

Do the leftists really want self-proclaimed teenage transexual peeping Toms in the girls’ bathrooms? I doubt it, but what a great way to express the hatred in their dark hearts for our nation, our culture and our people.

And in their dark minds, they hope that maybe the chaos they wreak by ritually torching age-old cultural norms will destroy that culture.

Imagine how things would have been different for Hitler if, prior to his invasion of Russia, he had demoralized them with boys in the bathrooms of Russian girls, if he had grabbed the guns of the Russian civilians, if he had abolished the Russian border, if he had fueled race wars within Russia.

The hateful left and their naive Democrat enablers are playing the long game of history, not the short game of the next election. In taking the 20% side of these issues – the side of confusion and chaos – the left will certainly lose many battles for elections, but they could well win the war against our civilization.

Democrat betas think the F word will make them alphas

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There’s a Democrat in Texas (yes, really!) who lost a race for senator, and then lost a race for governor. He’s a designated loser.

His name is Robert but he has a nickname. Since he’s proven himself not exactly an Alpha, you might assume his nickname is “Beta.”

Close. It’s “Beto.” Beto has a lot more in common with “Beta” than with “Rambo.”   

Beto/Beta attended elite private boarding schools and then Columbia where he took a degree in English Literature. It was probably Shakespeare that taught him not to be.

But Beto/Beta has a strategy to show his toughness and finally rise to leader of the pack. He says the F word. A lot.

When he lost the senate race, he informed his supporters, “I’m so f***ing proud of you!” He and his supporters promptly regrouped and went on to lose the gubernatorial race.

Offering incisive commentary on Donald Trump, he exclaimed, “What the f***?” Significantly, the object of his invective is now President; Beto/Beta is not.

His brave response to a mass shooting was, “This is f***ed up.” Shooters everywhere scurried.

His recent legal argument in opposition to the Texas rules requiring state legislators to, well, legislate rather than flee the jurisdiction, was, “F*** the rules!” The Democrat lawbreaking lawmakers caved yesterday. Beto/Beta fought the rules, and the rules won.

Other Dems have joined the f-fest. New York Senator Charles Schumer, formerly the Senate Majority Leader and one of the most powerful people in D.C., at least on paper, was asked whether the National Guard would be permitted to keep the peace in D.C. beyond just 30 days.

“No f***ing way” was his response. (But Schumer is already checkmated. Crime will be down during this 30-day period. At the end of the 30 days, Dems will then be in the position of saying they want it to go back up.)

Dems always had potty mouths – LBJ cursed like a Texas roughneck – but the election of Trump really unhinged them. They’re angry and frustrated. Turns out that advocating crime, boys in the girls’ bathrooms, racial quotas and open borders didn’t go over as well as they anticipated.

So . . . drop the f-bombs!

A Dem in New York who says he’s a “former journalist” (of course, there’s no such thing as a current journalist – they’re all former ones) has started a campaign to unseat a Republican Congressman with the erudite slogan “Unf*** our country!” That’s typical of journalistic eruditeness these days.

Another “former journalist” Dem running for Congress – this one a woman – declared in a video clip she posted on X that it was time for the Dems to, “Grow a f***cking spine.” How endearing. They even put the F word into their teleprompter speeches

Back when these potty mouths were future former journalists, I’m sure they were very careful never to let their political leanings get in the way of objective reporting. Uh huh.

A sitting Democrat Congresswoman began with a confession: “I don’t swear in public very well” and then showed that her inability is surely not for lack of practice in declaring, “We have to f*** Trump.”

Lady, who you calling “we”?

Another sitting Congresswoman ejaculated on live TV, “Somebody slap me, and wake me the fuck up!” As for her second request, she seems plenty woke already. But I’d be happy to fulfill her first request.

So, why are Democrats spouting the F word as eagerly as fourth graders who just learned it?

Several reasons. First, they’ve always been just a step from the gutter. While conservative intellectuals like William F. Buckley, Milton Freidman and Thomas Sowell were slicing and dicing the Democrats so eloquently they didn’t know they’d been filleted until they saw their guts on the floor, the mob and their molls were infiltrating the JFK White House and the rest of the Democrat machine, from Chicago to Philly to San Francisco.

It’s all about raw physical power. The Democrats’ idea of intellectual debate for two generations has been, “Nice argument you got there, be a shame if something happened to you.”

Second, the Democrats truly are angry. They’ve lost the White House, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, most state legislatures, most governorships, their lunch money, and their cookies. They’ve lost it all to people they hate, and, in their ignorance, despise and disrespect.

When people get angry, they often get profane. It feels good to express anger.

Third, much of the Dem f-bombing is to rally their filthy f***ed up base. They’re making a show of uncontrolled anger – in a controlled, manipulative sort of way.

This manipulative f-bombing does indeed rally the filthy Dem base, but that base is already rallied. They always are. They wouldn’t be filthy f***ed up Democrats if they weren’t on Adderall.  

It’s the middle-of-the-roaders that the Dems need to rally. Those middle-of-the-roaders who decide elections are not paying much attention (that’s why they’re middle-of-the-roaders) but they don’t like hearing government would-be leaders shouting words that they would not let their children hear or speak.

So, bring it on, Democrats. See if you can f*** your way back into f***ing control of the f***ing government.

An alternative approach might be to change your language, change your tone and change your policies. Nah, f*** that!

Ohh noooo, den-mark is mad at us!

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Nuuk, the capital of Greenland

Turns out, this is an actual country, not the name of a Cub Scout troop. And it’s not den-mark. It’s Denmark. And they don’t call themselves “Denmarkians. They call themselves “Danes.”

Anyway, the Danes are mad as hell. Or at least heck.

You see, back when the Spanish were looting the locals in South and Central America, and the Portuguese were lucratively, if inhumanely, trading slaves in what’s now Brazil, and the English were accidentally planting the seeds of a great republic in North America, the Danes were . . . [drum roll] . . .

. . . stealing ice from the Eskimos. Here’s the story.

But first, change “Eskimo” to “Inuit.” The word “Eskimo” went extinct in favor of “Inuit” about the time the predecessor word to “Black” went extinct in favor of “Black.” You see, “Eskimo” is the Inuit’s own word for “eater-of-raw-meat.” Which they were. (Have you ever tried to start and build a campfire on a glacier?) But they don’t like to be reminded of that fact.

To, um, engage with the Inuit people, the Danes (back when they were called Vikings – a demographic not known for being kind and gentle – and later the “Norse”) stole the home of the Inuit. They took what’s now Greenland.

The Danes got many of square kilometers that nobody but the Inuit wanted. After all, Greenland is roughly 50 times the size of Denmark. But the land is not exactly the Fertile Crescent. It’s not even the potato farms of Ireland. It’s mostly covered with ice year-round. (See, “eater-of-raw-meat,” above.)

Choosing the name “Greenland” for this icebox-in-need-of-defrosting was a nasty joke. The Danes named it that to encourage their fellow countrymen to colonize the place. Imagine their disappointment after a month at sea in the North Atlantic when their “green” new farms turned out to be glaciers.

Even so, the Danes’ colonies in Greenland survived, due in part to a climate that was warmer than today’s. Like most of the world, Greenland did better back when the climate was warmer, not colder, than today.

All this happened well after the greatest Dane in history, Laurence Olivier, also known as Hamlet, gave the answer, “to be.” (And then, he was. For a little while.)

“To be,” however, was not the fate of Greenland. They were never meant to be, even for a little while. There was no gold rush, no taming of the West or even the North, no railroads, no cattle ranches, no saloons, no nothin’. They didn’t even have slaves.

The icebox cruelly called Greenland still has a population of fewer than 57,000 people. That’s roughly the population of Bothell, Washington. There’s a reason you’ve never heard of Bothell, Washington.

Spread over a landmass, or rather ice mass, that is four times the size of Texas, this place called Greenland is one of the least-inhabited places on earth – second only to Antarctica, which the Danes would also have stolen from the Inuit except there were no Inuit there.

In WWII, Denmark declared itself neutral in an obvious attempt at appeasing Hitler. In a matter of days, Hitler’s armies marched through zero resistance in Denmark on their way to Paris. History tells us more about Danish pastry and Danish collaborators than Danish resistance.

After Denmark was overrun, Greenland was rescued by the Americans from the Nazis and their U-boat submarines. The Americans went on to rescue Europe and the world, then gifted Greenland back to Denmark. The Americans further gifted to Denmark – and the rest of western Europe – a massive rebuilding from the ruins of the war.  

Apart from those few years under the umbrella of America’s protection, it’s fair to say Greenland’s fortunes have been like her winters – endless darkness.

But in Greenland’s latitude above the Arctic Circle, the summer brings endless sun. Greenland may now be embarking on her summer, or at least her spring.

You see, the North Atlantic Ocean was unappealing to yesteryear’s conquistadors, but it is strategically important to today’s would-be conquistadors such as Vladimir Putin. Also, the ice sheets of Greenland show signs of shrinking due to Global whatever-they’re-now-calling-it. Greenland could wind up almost as warm as, oh, northern Alaska, in which case you could do all the things in Greenland that you now do in northern Alaska.

Like eat raw meat.

This literal and metaphorical turning of the seasons in Greenland has not gone unnoticed by the Americans. We have a National Weather Service, you know, which is on the lookout for such things when they’re not asleep at the flood-warning switch.

And so, our Troller-In-Chief told the Greenlanders that maybe he’ll just, you know . . . invade.

President Trump is not afraid to think and talk outside the box. Sometimes it seems like he lives there.

Greenland is still technically part of Denmark, sort of. They’re something like a colony, but without the success of one. So, the Danes took offense to this suggestion that America might liberate and protect the Greenlanders, as we did 84 years ago while Denmark was appeasing the Nazis.

That suggestion sent the popularity of America among the Danes south faster than a thermometer in Nuuk in November. The Wall Street Journal announced that this has “ended Denmark’s love affair with the U.S.”

Sheesh, can we still be good friends?

Building on the media’s typical everyone-hates-America story, the Journal interviewed some Danes who indeed do. They all had names that are unpronounceable and often unspellable. Suffice to say they’re real sad and kinda mad about their unrequited and now undone love for us.

But, they warned, if we make good on our threat to take over Greenland, they’ll . . . they’ll . . . they won’t talk to us anymore.

I admit I’m exaggerating their feebleness, but it’s for the noble purpose of mockery. The Danes’ real warning was more threatening, but just barely. Here’s the actual quote from a Danish military analyst (though I’m a little surprised such a job exists):

“I guess the rules of engagement would be, hand over the keys and take the next plane home, because there is very little we could actually do about it, and it would be sort of pointless to fight it because we have four dog sleds and some civilian police there, that’s it.”

In Greenland itself, they see this as more comedy than tragedy. Many of them have wanted to separate from Denmark for years, much as the Basque want to separate from Spain, the Welsh from Great Britain, and the Californicators from Earth.

In fact, I suspect the Greenlanders are pleased with the inordinate and unusual attention they’re receiving. On a per-person basis, Greenland’s icy escapade is more attention than Americans received when our 1980 hockey team performed the Miracle on Ice.

Maybe now we should troll the Greenlanders with a tweet and a smirk that we’ve found some other country, a younger and warmer one – maybe Fiji – to invade. But we can still be friends.

NPR goes down in flames

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“When Pierre goes down, he goes down in flames”

— Punch line to old aviation joke

The Republicans finally did something great that I thought they never would have the stones to do. They reduced the funding for the government-controlled media outfit called The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hallelujah!

CPB was established half a century ago with the good intention of providing television and radio services to rural America in a day long before cable TV and megawatt radio stations made television and radio ubiquitous, and long, long before the internet made them obsolete.

Fine.

Then they expanded into children’s programming like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, to give children an alternative to Saturday morning cartoons.

Fine. But notice the inevitable expansion. Taxpayer-funded enterprises have a way of doing that.

Then they expanded into cultural offerings like Masterpiece Theater and British comedy.

Not so fine. Why do the wealthy elites who watch Masterpiece Theater and British comedy (or is it “comedy”?) need taxpayer subsidies? And why do we allow cultural offerings selected by semi-government bureaucrats and apparatchiks to use taxpayer money to undermine the competing cultural offerings on commercial TV and the internet?

Then they went woke.

Everyone knew CPR was woke, and then a long-time editor wrote a piece for The Free Press (you should check out TFP, by the way) that amounted to a full blown exposé. He revealed their conscious attempt to bury the Hunter laptop story, to trumpet the false Russian collusion story, to dismiss the lab-origins of COVID, and so on. NPR had become a Democratic government mouthpiece.

He reported that at the headquarters of their radio arm, NPR, there were 87 registered Democrats and 0 Republicans. Unsurprisingly, Democrats were staunch supporters of NPR, and vice versa. Republicans, not so much.

For that exposé, NPR suspended the editor temporarily and ostracized him permanently. Consider the Pravda-esk irony that a government organization charged with reporting news punishes an employee for doing exactly that, because the particular news he dares to report is that the organization is biased in reporting the news. He ultimately resigned.

This week, the Republican Senate voted to claw back about a billion dollars in taxpayer-money allocated to CPB over the next two years. All Democrats voted against the claw-back. Two purported Republicans joined them, but the measure passed the Senate and later passed the House. It’s now on President Trump’s desk for signature.

So, what will happen? CPB and its labyrinth of entities have always simultaneously maintained that (1) they receive hardly any taxpayer money, and (2) taking away their taxpayer money will cripple them.

Both are lies. They do receive a lot of taxpayer money – a billion dollars over two years isn’t chicken feed – and they will not be crippled by losing it. If nothing else, the Democratic National Committee will toss them a few hundred million, directly or laundered through George Soros and his minions.

The CEO of NPR had a few choice words:


“I’m so done with late-stage capitalism.”
“America is addicted to white supremacy.”
“White silence is complicity.”
“I’m grateful those who have pointed out my phrasing could be understood as trans-erasure.”
“Horses inspire awe and foster a sense of identity. More kids should have access to these incredible animals. But most horse spaces are white spaces.”
“I know that hysteric, white woman voice. I was taught to do it. I’ve done it. That’s whiteness”
“What is the deranged racist sociopath ranting about today? I truly don’t understand.”
“Donald Trump is a racist.”

Oops, those are her tweets over the years. Gee, how could anyone accuse them of bias?

Mamdani terrifies the Democrats

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After losing to the one guy they were certain they could beat, Democrats are making a show of puzzling over how to win elections.

It’s not really much of a puzzle. They simply need to get on the right side of some easy 80/20 issues. Like illegal immigration. Like men competing in women’s sports. Like catching and punishing criminals. Like the First Amendment. Like disclaiming Marxism.

Why can’t the Democrats see this?

Well, they can. Democrats are just pretending they can’t because they don’t want to alienate . . .  Democrats.

Do the math. If only 20% of voters are on the liberal side of an issue, and essentially all of those 20% are Democrats, and registered Democrats comprise about 37% of the voters (the other 63% being Republicans and Independents), that means that, among Democrats, about 54% are on the 20 side of those 80/20 issues. (54% of the 37% of voters who are registered Democrats equals about 20% of the total voters.)

Most Democrat politicians can do this math. And so, they understand that getting on the winning side of these 80/20 issues would cost them over half of registered Democrats – the kind that vote, donate money, speak out, and get CNN spots.

Even the Democrats who can’t do this math (here’s looking at you, AOC) can sense it from their interactions with their base, which is about the only kind of interactions they have with the public.

One solution is for Democrats to trick their base into believing they are still on the 20 side of these 80/20 issues while actually migrating to the 80 side in order to get some of the 80 side voters.

But it’s hard for politicians to trick their base. That’s because the base tends to be passionate and aware. Moderates, on the other hand, are easier to trick. Moderates are moderates because they aren’t paying much attention.

So, what do you do if you’re a Democrat?

You trick the people who can be tricked – the moderates. You put on an insincere, hand-wringing act pretending that you’re considering switching to the 80 side on the 80/20 issues, all while winking and nodding to your hard-left base to tell them you’re really not.

But now the jig is up. Zohran Kwame Mamdani (if you’re a Republican, you couldn’t wish for a better name for him) has put the Democrats on the spot.

He wants government-owned grocery stores because he thinks (or just believes) they’ll be less expensive and more equitable. He wants government control over rent and real estate prices. He wants government-paid public transportation. He wants government child care. He wants, well, you get the picture.

He has lots of wants, and he wants those wants to be satisfied by the government.

Except the police. His only want from the police is that they cease to exist.  

He let slip – nah, he bragged – that the government should seize control over “the means of production.” It’s not clear where he learned that phrase, but it was in fact coined by Karl Marx.

He’s an actual, registered socialist. And he’s not a European-style one. He’s more like a Cuban-style one or Venezuelan-style one or Soviet Union-style one.

Democrats, who have crept, slouched, and sometimes flown toward socialism like bats into hell over the last 25 years since Bill Clinton left office, are mortified. Not because Mamdani favors socialism – they all do – but because he says it out loud.

By saying it out loud, Mamdani smokes out those fellow Democrats. They have to either agree or disagree. They can no longer pretend moderation in order to garner votes from unengaged moderates while winking and nodding to their hard-left base.

Mamdani is forcing socialist Democrats into the thing that socialists abhor most – honesty.

He’s currently the favorite to be elected. The result will be a disaster for New York City. But it will also be a disaster for the Democrats. I’m willing to accept both disasters if it’s a package deal.

“Veni, vidi, vici,” sayeth the Orange One?

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The first to say that was Julius Caesar. After his crushing win over a Persian/Greek king in what is now Turkey, Caesar reported to the Roman Senate with characteristic immodesty and uncharacteristic brevity: “Veni, vidi, vici.”

I came, I saw, I conquered. Caesar had a flair for drama.

He similarly came, saw and conquered most of Gaul – what is now France – in an era well before the invention of B2 stealth bombers. Travelling from Rome to Gaul was an arduous multi-month sea and land adventure. Conquering the barbarians there was a crazy idea for anyone but Caesar.

He laid the foundation for the greatest and longest-lasting empire the world has ever seen. It’s impossible to travel in Europe without marveling at ubiquitous, still-majestic two-thousand-year-old ruins of that empire.

Caesar came from a privileged but not powerful family. Ambitious from the outset, he clawed his way up the political ladder of the Roman republic, a place with a governing structure that we vaguely recognize.

Indeed, we should. Aspects of our own republic consciously imitate Rome, such as the naming of our Senate after the Roman Senatus and even the Greco-Roman architecture of our capital.

Caesar’s foreign exploits were not just to conquer foreign lands. They were to conquer his homeland, Rome. He wanted conquests because he wanted attention because he wanted power – in Rome.

But he also did want to conquer those foreign lands. The Romans were keenly aware of their legendary cousins across the Ionian Sea, and Caesar knew all about the astonishing conquests of Alexander the Great.

When Ceasar was still relatively young (but, he was painfully aware, already older than the age of Alexander when he’d conquered much of the world) he was chosen to be something akin to a prime minister.

Later, during a period of increasing social turmoil in an unwieldy republic deteriorating toward civil war, Caesar was named dictator for life and offered a crown.

He made a show of publicly refusing the crown, but he did not refuse the powers that went with it.

After five years as dictator, at age 56, Caesar was stabbed 23 times by senators. Brutus, too, was one of those senators.

Myth has it that this assassination was because Rome wanted to reclaim its republic from the dictator. The truth is more prosaic – particular senators opposed particular policies of Caesar.

Indeed, the dictatorship, itself, survived and thrived after Caesar’s death. Rome became an empire ruled by a succession of emperors.

That sounds terrible, right?

It wasn’t. It was the best thing that ever happened in the ancient world. For the next centuries, the Pax Romana ensured relative peace, prosperity and enlightenment. There’s a reason that what followed the ultimate crumbling of the Roman Empire is called the Dark Ages and the subsequent period is called the Renaissance or “rebirth” of the civilization that preceded that dark age.

Some Roman emperors were great and good, such as Augustus, Trajan and Hadrian. Rome was at its biggest and best as an empire ruled by emperors, notwithstanding the occasional lunatics like Caligula and Nero. Similarly, Britain achieved the most when it was ruled by kings and queens. Same for Spain and France. There’s a lot to be said for benevolent dictators, so long as they aren’t crazy.

But Americans are taught, or at least used to be taught, that democracy is the ultimate and natural evolution of political governance. Isn’t it wonderful and equitable, say the propagandists, that everyone gets one vote, regardless of what they contribute, what they know, and what they merit?  

Isn’t it genius that we rely on ordinary Americans, 50% of whom are stupider than average, to select our leaders?

To ask those questions plainly stated is to answer them. So why have America and other western democracies been so successful?

Arguably, their success is not so much because democracy works well, but despite the fact that it doesn’t. What has worked well instead is something quite different.

It’s technology. The last two hundred years entailed the industrial revolution, the electronics age, and the ongoing computer revolution. Productivity is through the roof, even as people work far less than ever before.

Today’s average westerner is consequently much richer than the kings and queens of yesteryear. He has air conditioning, a house, one or two cars that take him anywhere he wants, only 1.7 children to feed, and a gadget in his pocket to get all the information in the world – and entertainment too – on a magical screen.

It wasn’t democracy that got him all that. It was technology.

If democracy is so great, then why aren’t companies managed by democracies? Shouldn’t we have employees elect their boss by popular vote, just as we elect our political representatives? Shouldn’t there be company-wide referendums by the employees to vote on how hard they have to work and what they get paid for that work?

Again, to ask those questions is to answer them. That system just wouldn’t work. So, what makes us think that such a system works in political governance?

I submit that democracy is not the ultimate evolution of political governance. “One man, one vote,” regardless of merit, does not work over the long run any better now than it did in Athens or Rome – and now we’ve corrupted it still further with universal suffrage and voting by mail.  

In the end, this democratic feel-goodery conflicts with meritorious substance. Almost by definition, the meritorious will win that conflict one way or another. Veni, vidi, vici.

Cat fight at the Supreme Court!

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Girls don’t usually fight. There are sound reasons for this – reasons of general decorum, biology, hormones, jewelry, dresses and hairdos. 

But when they do, boy oh boy, it can be a doozy. It happened yesterday at the Supreme Court.

The case was an appeal of a district court order issuing a “universal injunction” against President Trump’s executive order seeking to abolish “birthright citizenship.”

Birthright citizenship is the kind you get if you’re born in America even if your parents are here illegally. The 14th Amendment seems to provide for it, although there is a non-frivolous argument that it does not.

A universal injunction is one that binds the enjoined party even against persons not involved in the lawsuit.

The district court judge in this case found Trump’s executive order against birthright citizenship to be in violation of the 14th Amendment, and issued an injunction forbidding its enforcement against the plaintiff in the case.

Here’s where it gets dicey. The judge’s injunction applied not just for the benefit of the named plaintiff, but for the benefit of all other people in the country even though they weren’t parties to the case. It was a universal injunction.

Trump appealed the universal injunction on two grounds: (1) you should not get citizenship merely by being born in America if your mother was here illegally – in other words, the 14th Amendment does not provide for birthright citizenship – and (2) the universal injunction barring enforcement of the executive order even against people who were not parties to the case was an unconstitutional overreach by the judge.

The Supreme Court heard the latter argument on universal injunctions, and reserved the substantive birthright citizenship issue for another day.

It was a typical 6-3 political decision, meaning the six Republican-appointed Justices beat the three Democrat-appointed ones. (Elections have consequences, as President Obama once pointed out.)

The opinion for the Court was by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She walked through the history of universal injunctions, noting that they scarcely existed until recent times.

Now that they do exist, they are prone to abuse. A political plaintiff can choose to file his suit in a district that is notoriously favorable to his politics. Then he gets a favorable decision – typically without even a trial but instead on a preliminary basis – that applies for the benefit of all potential plaintiffs everywhere.

In theory, the district court’s decision could be reversed after a trial, but that’s years away, and, in reality, the trial decision from the same judge will be the same anyway. (On many of these issues, there’s no right to a jury trial.)

It’s actually even worse than that. Say for a moment that the plaintiff somehow loses his bid for a universal preliminary injunction in a favorable district. There’s nothing to stop another plaintiff from filing the same suit in a different favorable district. If the second plaintiff wins in that second case in that second district, he can expect to get the universal preliminary injunction that the first plaintiff was denied.

The defendant – the government in this case – is thus not only required to win in one district favorable to the other side, but is required to win every case in every district where every plaintiff files. One loss, and all are lost.

Weirdly, the universal preliminary injunction obtained by the second plaintiff – or third or fourth – who prevailed could even have the effect of reversing the loss by all earlier plaintiffs. The earlier, losing plaintiffs wind up getting unlimited bites at the apple by enjoying the repeated re-litigation of the matter by later plaintiffs.

The Supreme Court via yesterday’s opinion by Justice Barrett finally put a stop to routinely issued universal injunctions. Trump is doing well at the Supreme Court, and this was his biggest win. Our system in largely working.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Issued a peptic dissenting opinion. You’ll recall Jackson. She is the woman who was asked at her Senate confirmation hearing, “Can you define the word ‘woman’?”

It was obviously a gotcha question which Jackson wanted to avoid answering. A smart and articulate woman — not too much to ask for in a Supreme Court Justice — could have dodged the question with a little BS such as, “Well, that word is used in many different ways, Senator. There’s a biological way, a social way, a behavioral way, a gender way, and . . . blah blah blah . . . mumble mumble . . . ”

Instead, Jackson gave the Republicans a sound bite for the ages: “I can’t . . . Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”

Bob Dylan said you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. He never met Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Questioner: Can you tell me which way the wind blows, Ms. Jackson?

Jackson: I can’t. I’m not a weatherman.

In another recent dissent by Jackson (thankfully, she appears to specialize in dissents) she lamented that the Supreme Court’s decision “comes at a reputational cost for this Court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests.”

Say what? A Justice of the Supreme Court is openly worrying, or pretending to, that their decisions might be viewed as sympathetic to “corporate interests”?

First, the Court is supposed to apply the law to the facts, public perception be damned. Second, the allusion to “corporate interests” is amateur activism. Is the Court supposed to disfavor corporations? What about large partnerships? What about LLCs? Non-governmental organizations? Charitable foundations? Sole proprietorships?

Is the law different depending on the choice of entity that one party made when they set up their organization?

Back to yesterday’s universal injunction case. Jackson’s dissent warned that the decision was “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

That’s a serious allegation. Her allegation is that the Supreme Court whose job is to interpret the law is threatening its very existence.

I have three responses to Jackson’s allegation. One, yawn. Two, notice how people who aren’t very smart like to use the phrase “existential threat” as if it makes them a French philosopher or something. Three, if abolishing universal injunctions threatens the rule of law, then how did the rule of law survive for two centuries without them?

Justice Barrett in response wrote that Jackson’s dissent “is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.” She observed that Jackson “decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

Barrett wasn’t done: “Observing the limits on judicial authority – including, as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789 – is required by a judge’s oath.”

Finally came Barrett’s knockout punch: “Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘Everyone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ That goes for judges too.”

In the cloistered confines of the Supreme Court, that constitutes a beating. Jackson was rightly condemned in a written opinion joined by six of the Justices for advocating a position contrary to two centuries of precedent and the Constitution itself, endorsing an imperial judiciary, violating the judge’s oath, and refusing to be bound by law even as she wildly accuses the Court of threatening the very existence of law.

Justice Barrett as the author of that take-down put to rest any doubts. She’s all woman, and she’s got a pair.

The federal judiciary still works

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You’ll recall that a federal judge in California ruled against Trump in the dispute over his use of the National Guard to protect federal buildings in Los Angeles from rioters who demand a permanent open border.

That judge happened to be the 83-year-old semi-retired little brother of 86-year-old liberal retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Big Brother must have been so proud.

First, a word about federal judges that most people are not aware of. Federal judges can go on “Senior Status” as they get old. That means they get full pay and benefits including perks such as secretaries, beautiful offices, and young and attractive law school graduates to do their research and listen to their genuflections.

Oh, and a palatial courtroom for their exclusive use (though it sits empty 90% of the time), a fancy black robe, and a guy to shout “ALL RISE” when they walk in. (You’re supposed to remain standing until the judge mutters, “Be seated.” That’s one of many, many things they don’t teach in law school, but you quickly learn it on the job.)

These Senior Status judges are expected to do a bit of work. But only as much work as they feel like doing. They can work 35 hours a week, or 15.  Unlike ordinary judges, they can turn down any case. The cases they turn down go back into the hopper to be assigned randomly to another judge.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that most federal cases are very boring matters. Senior Status judges turn them down left and right.

Did I mention that they get full pay, benefits and perks fit for a king including a guy to shout “ALL RISE”?

It’s a good gig. So much so that in the federal district covering Colorado, for example, 9 of the 17 judges have elected “Senior Status.” In other words, over half of the federal District Court judges in Colorado are part-time but receiving full pay, benefits and perks.

There was a day when federal District Court judges didn’t exploit Senior Status. After all, they had to share the elevator and lunchroom with full-time colleagues who were tasked with the boring cases that the Seniors had turned down. And they were cognizant of the financial burden they and their entourage and appurtenances imposed on taxpayers.

That day seems to have passed.

Back to California. The Little Brother who ruled against Trump in the federal District Court there has been on “Senior Status” for the last 14 years. As a Senior Status judge, Little Brother could have turned down this case. He didn’t. He took it, heard it, and issued a decision against Trump.

Ah, but not all is lost. Even this case is not lost. The Trump administration appealed Little Brother’s order. Unfortunately, the appeals court covering Little Brother’s district court is the liberal Ninth Circuit. But fortunately, the liberal Ninth Circuit overturned Little Brother’s order. Trump won his appeal.

Appeals are heard by a three-judge panel of appellate judges selected at random from the sitting judges of that circuit. Trump was very lucky in that two of the three were Trump appointees. Before you conclude that the fix was in for Trump, be aware that the third was a Biden appointee and he, too, ruled in favor of Trump.

The decision was not a close call. The appellate judges noted that the President does not have wholly unfettered authority to call out the National Guard – there are statutes limiting that – but in general the President is entitled to some deference.

In this particular case, there was rioting in the streets. That’s enough.

The case now could be re-heard by the Ninth Circuit in an “en banc” hearing of 11 appellate judges randomly selected from the 29 active appellate judges in the Circuit.

Then, or even before then, the losing party can appeal to the Supreme Court where six of the nine Justices are Republican appointees. It’s likely that Trump will win there.

Apart from the merits or demerits of this particular case, here’s the point I want to make. The American federal judiciary still works.

It’s true that some of the judges don’t work as well, or as hard, as they could, or they should, but as a general rule they do indeed work in every sense of the word. Virtually all of them are very bright men and women with outstanding credentials, though some are too old for the job.

One more related point. The inflammatory allegation that federal court judges are “bought off” or otherwise corrupt is utterly unsubstantiated and, in my personal experience, unfounded. Despite the abuse of Senior Status, and despite the age-related limitations of some judges, never once in my career did I see the slightest evidence of corruption in any of them.

Justice Breyer’s Little Brother may be an ideologue, and that’s bad, but there’s no evidence that he’s corrupt. There’s a remedy when a judge is an ideologue. It’s called an appeal. It works.

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.