Romney is a Republican the same way Turnbull is a Liberal
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Category Archives: Politics – international
Politics of the absolutely lowest common denominator
First this: Americans Waking Up to Fact That Kamala Harris Is an Idiot. The astonishing part is how many still don’t know and will never know.
I am also on some mailing list from the Democrats in Florida. This is the latest note to me. Politics for idiots, that is for sure.
Stephen — this is a hard email to write. But Democrats are about to lose our shot to pass H.R. 1, outlaw Republican cheating… and keep our progressive Senate Majority. Almost no one — seriously, NO ONE — has donated to fund our ads to pass H.R. 1. We’re still 8,401 donations SHORT of our strict budget goal. If we miss this goal, McConnell will BLOCK H.R. 1… we’ll LOSE our Senate Majority. So this is your FINAL chance to do the right thing, Stephen! Generous Democrats are 250%-MATCHING all donations before our strict deadline at 9AM tomorrow.
CAN YOU DONATE TO PASS H.R. 1 AND CEMENT OUR SENATE MAJORITY?
| 250%-MATCH: $5 → |
| 250%-MATCH: $25 → |
| 250%-MATCH: $50 → |
| 250%-MATCH: $100 → |
| 250%-MATCH: $250 → |
| 250%-MATCH: Another Amount → |
Stephen — If we pass H.R. 1, we’ll BAN Republican cheating, BOOST Democratic Voter Turnout, and KEEP our Democratic Senate Majority. It’s that simple. And right now, our expert pressure ads are WORKING! That’s why we need to keep our ads up — but we need 8,401 donations by tomorrow morning to fully fund them. We’ll use that money to prove to McConnell it’ll be a HUGE MISTAKE to block H.R. 1 — he’ll have NO CHOICE but to send H.R. 1 to President Biden’s desk!!
| 250%-MATCH: $5 → |
| 250%-MATCH: $25 → |
| 250%-MATCH: $50 → |
| 250%-MATCH: $100 → |
| 250%-MATCH: $250 → |
| 250%-MATCH: Another Amount → |
Thank you!
The American left is beyond parody
So beyond parody is the American left that it is astonishing to follow what is going on in the US. I have just had this sent to me: The GOP Is a Grave Threat to American Democracy. It begins:
The hope of many conservative critics of Donald Trump was that soon after his defeat, and especially in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party would snap back into its former shape. The Trump presidency would end up being no more than an ugly parenthesis. The GOP would distance itself from Trump and Trumpism, and become a normal party once again. But that dream soon died. The Trump presidency might have been the first act in a longer and even darker political drama, in which the Republican Party is becoming more radicalized. How long this will last is an open question; whether it is happening is not. The radicalization manifests in myriad ways, most notably in Trump’s enduring popularity among Republicans. Trump’s loyalists have launched ferocious attacks against Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him for his role in the insurrection, even as national Republicans eagerly position themselves as his heir. Right-wing media display growing fanaticism, while public-opinion polls show GOP voters embracing Trump’s lie that the election was stolen from him. The Republican Party’s illiberalism, its barely disguised nativism, and its white identity politics are resonating with extremist groups. Slate’s Will Saletan, in an article cataloging recent developments, summarized things this way: “The Republican base is thoroughly infected with sympathies for the insurrection.”
From The Atlantic even which was once a sane publication. Meanwhile, there is a link to another of its articles.
Your guide to life on a warming planet
Discover Atlantic Planet, a new section devoted to climate change and the ways it will reshape our world
These people are re-shaping the world all right. It is hard to believe how lacking in self-awareness most of these people are.
Goodbye Columbus updated
The Hodge Brothers tell it like it is, and there is no one else who can do it quite so well. And just in case you have forgotten what they are talking about, see below.
Whose side are they on?
It’s actually very clear. Israeli Military Officials Unite in Opposition to Biden Admin’s Iran Deal.
The Biden Administration is about to make a catastrophic mistake. They would be wise to consider this: and that is Israel will never allow Iran to manufacture nuclear weapons. No matter what agreement they sign with the terror regime.
The illegitimate administration is bringing the world to the very brink of war.
Related – US willing to lift Trump-era terrorism sanctions ‘not legitimately’ imposed on Iran
Related – ‘Total American collapse’ before Iran in negotiations, say Israeli officials
Related – Iran Rattled As Israel Repeatedly Strikes Key Targets
To which may be added this: How Much Ruin Do We Have Left? . Quite a lot apparently. From Victor Davis Hanson.
“Unfortunately in the last few months all of those centuries-old reasons to be confident in American strength and resiliency have now been put into doubt.
“The challenge is not just enemies abroad such as China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran. Instead, the greater problem lies within us—as we erode the inherited and acquired strengths that made us singular, both materially and spiritually.
“We are now witnessing a concentrated effort to alter the constitutional order and centuries of custom and tradition. Only that way, the Left believes, can it retain its transient power given the unpopularity of most of its current agenda.”
The United States is now a rogue state and cannot be counted on by any of its old friends.
Ontario is a police province
It used to be home, now it’s a foreign country, very foreign! The whole country seems to be like this but the vid is about Ontario alone. Ontario is Canada’s largest province and when I was growing up the city I was born in was known as Tory Toronto. Nothing stays the same, and usually becomes much worse. This is unbelievable, although unfortunately very believable.
Victoria was almost like that except we have had zero cases of the Chinese flu for days (weeks) on end, so they eventually persuaded the premier to stand aside.** Oddly this is mostly about the Canadian health system which is a catastrophe although, so far as I can tell, Canadians are really proud of the virtually entirely provincially-run medical system which is worse than even the English system.
But no doubt this decision was poll-tested and in spite of the amount of resistance, you may be sure there is a solid majority who favour these measures. It’s not about the health system, it’s about personal valuation of freedom and human rights.
See also Ontario Announces Virus Restrictions That Cause Such a Huge Backlash, Even Police Won’t Enforce Them where this tweet may be found.
https://twitter.com/CanAditude/status/1383163526710185985?
** Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is walking around and could be back at work soon, a month after a nasty fall on wet stairs landed him in hospital with spinal injuries. Acting Premier James Merlino said Mr Andrews’ doctors were happy with his progress and confirmed he was walking around. The Premier suffered broken ribs and spinal damage after falling at a holiday home on the Mornington Peninsula on March 9.
Home of the scared and land of the compliant
A security fence topped with razor wire surrounds the US Capitol in Washington.
Is this the best journalist in Australia, the one who wrote this: Plague panic chills reason and chokes liberalism. Who else says anything like this anywhere?
“Once the capital of the land of the free and home of the brave, the compliant and scared have taken their place in Washington, DC….
Deaths are sad, but COVID-19 has taken far more than loved ones. Conventions going back centuries restraining democratic governments have been dumped….
A few weeks ago former British Supreme Court judge and historian Jonathan Sumption gave the most eloquent and cogent critique of the “despotic and irrational” lockdown and mask obsessions that have “deprived everyone of what makes life worth living” and “thrown science out the window”….
Please watch it before Facebook, Twitter and Google remove it from the internet as part of a worrying trend towards censorship by firms that once praised free speech online….
A year on from the start of lockdowns around the world, we have learned three lessons. Foremost, we are far more compliant than we thought….
The pandemic also has revealed levels of intellectual laziness and credulity we might not have expected from ever higher spending on education….
Finally, despite decades of globalisation and internationalism, both Australians and Americans have evinced profoundly parochial sentiments….
Freedom and democracy aren’t the same. In the 19th century, the liberal John Stuart Mill worried that the gyrations of public sentiment would erode the individual rights of free association, movement, protest and speech.
His contemporary, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous observations on the US, said democracy unchecked would tend to “reduce each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd”. COVID is proving them right.
If he’s not the best, he is certainly the bravest. This is the Best Comment found at The Oz where the article appeared.
Adam [Creighton], love your work (I mean all of your articles on this bender of public fear called COVID 19). I’ve always found it odd that myself and four of my siblings, now middle aged and over, reacted with anger and outrage the moment governments here started implementing COVID policies that curtailed personal liberties. We didn’t argue amongst ourselves, or cajole, bully or debate each other on the issue – we all saw red collectively. I see a similar outrage from some commenters here in the Australian (but more seem to argue for restrictions), and I don’t see any outrage or indignation in my workplace or amongst friends and acquaintances on the subject. The recent Qld election rout shows just how many are happy to be kept safe by Big Bro, too. The vast majority of Queenslanders are compliantly wearing masks – even when not required – while myself and fam avoid public places and seethe with anger and frustration behind our masks when we have to. I guess I’m confused as to why something that comes naturally to me and mine doesn’t come naturally to the majority, but Adam, I’m happy that we have you and your eloquence in our court.
And just below that comment was this:
Watching the West hand a decisive, overwhelming economic and industrial advantage to a huge dictatorship on the rise, China, over the last decade and more, by crippling ourselves with our Left’s insistence on industrially prohibitive expensive and unreliable energy, has been enough to cause many astute observers to conclude that the classical liberal ascendancy’s time is likely running out. Watching the West implode with Covid put it beyond any doubt. For so many years we thought, in our complacency, that giving China an easy run in the WTO and in trade & climate agreements would make China more liberal, more like us. After Covid, we’re more like them, except that the downsides of Western modern ‘liberalism’ – the loss of social cohesion, the attacks on our long-standing institutions, the loss of cultural identity, the poison of identity politics and the demonisation of our historical legitimacy have only gotten worse. All the attacks on our societies by our Left are now harnessed by the CCP. Observe the speechlessness of the new left-wing administration in the US in the face of CCP criticism at Anchorage. How could the US representative contradict China’s charges when the charges came straight from the US Dem’s political playbook? Our cultural self-loathing has become our adversaries’ most potent weapon. We can now either learn from our extreme over-reaction to a ‘pandemic’ which doesn’t even come anywhere near as serious as those of the past such as the Spanish Flu of 1918-20, or we can continue down the path of totalitarianism towards the CCP model. Given the relentless denigration of our culture and history by the left-wing educators and media that dominate, however, it’s unlikely we’ll have the motivation to fight for what is being lost. Worst of all, China remains free of the self-demonisation we have to endure, while we won’t be, under the increasingly censorious and illiberal trend of our governments, MSM and big tech. I don’t envy the Western young.
Understanding why Covid case numbers have been rising in the United States
From Hospitals in COVID-19 hotspots to receive $10 billion more in federal aid. The report is dated July 20, 2020.
The new round will pay $50,000 per COVID-19 admission, compared with $77,000 in the earlier high-impact round.
A senior HHS official said on a media call that the reduced funding is due to the number of such admissions surging from about 50,000 in the first round to more than 400,000 by the time of the second round.
Covid has been a financial bonanza for hospitals across the US.
And this from April 2021, from the Washington Post even: “A year after passage of Cares Act, watchdogs struggle to oversee trillions in coronavirus spending”.
One year later, the conversation in Washington over how to oversee a new, nearly $2 trillion relief package administered by the Biden administration is decidedly more muted. The latest legislation, called the American Rescue Plan, created no new oversight bodies, although it appropriated more than $200 million in new funding for existing ones.
To date, more than $5 trillion in government spending has been appropriated to respond to the pandemic and ensuing economic calamity. Yet, over the past year, oversight from three separate watchdog entities has been either undermined by partisan disagreements, slowed by bureaucratic hurdles or constrained by funding, according to interviews with those tasked with carrying out oversight, outside experts and advocates. One of the watchdogs created by the Cares Act has yet to receive a chair, hampering its work. Another watchdog faces budget constraints with just three dozen full-time staff so far.
Oversight or not, you may be sure the money has flowed everywhere. Under Trump, the amounts allocated were an already astonishing $10 billion. This time it is more than $5 trillion! With virtually no oversight, just flowing everywhere with not a moment of accountability anywhere to be seen.
Dealing with Nazis – Part 2
From ‘Absolute legend’: Man sends the lockdown police on a walk of shame out of his church (video). I hope that’s not the high watermark of the resistance to the coming tyranny.
“Why Vaccine Passports Equal Slavery Forever”
Naomi Wolf!
AND NOW THIS AS WELL: From CNN “Expert” – Government should give you freedom only if you get the COVID vaccine
This is what Naomi Wolf is worrying about.
CNN host Chris Cuomo interviewed George Washington University Public Health Policy Professor Laura Wen.
The interview was most illuminating, and it looks like she hopes the current administration will maximize connections between vaccination status to the resumption of life in a post-pandemic world. It’s clear to them that the vaccine is the ticket to pre-pandemic life….and the window to do that is really narrowing. You were mentioning, Chris, about how all these states were reopening.
They are reopening at 100 percent….and we have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status. Because, otherwise, if everything is reopen, then what’s the carrot going to be? How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine?
So that’s why I think the CDC and the Biden administration needs to come out a lot bolder and say, “If you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things…here’s all these freedoms that you have.” Because, otherwise, people are going to go out and enjoy those freedoms anyway.” [emphasis added]
Law of Markets 