Category Archives: Politics on the left

PDT reveals his soul

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I wrote a while ago about being in need of some urgent advice in regard to a high school friend who I was then about to visit who continually sends me anti-Trump material from CNN etc. He is a two-times-over legal migrant, first from the Hungarian workers’ paradise to Canada in 1956, and then second from the Canadian workers’ paradise to not just the workers’ paradise of California, but to Silicon Valley itself in the early 1970s. There he ran his own business enterprise where he would sack willy nilly any excess staff at the mere hint of a downturn in demand but has been successful enough to end up in a $US5 million dollar home, his and hers Mercedes, a Mercedes van so that he can take his sailboard to the coast, not to mention his Porsche which he didn’t actually register for a number of years so that he could evade speed limits on the highways as he powered his way down the road. That is, he is an average and utterly normal member of the Democratic Party. And now he has sent me this which I will share with you in full with no edits: A Trump meltdown for the ages. From CNN, of course, from which everything below the line is found and with nothing left out.

_____

It was like watching a human Twitter feed.

A combative and unrestrained President Donald Trump opened his authentic political soul, in possibly the most memorable news conference in presidential history, that is certain to become a defining moment of his administration.

Trump says both sides to blame amid Charlottesville backlash

Trump says both sides to blame amid Charlottesville backlash
It was supposed to be a routine event at Trump Tower in New York to tout the President’s infrastructure plan.
But the session quickly veered off course into one of the most surreal political moments in years as Trump unloaded about the fallout from the weekend’s protests by “alt-right” activists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Virginia.
Gesticulating with his right hand, Trump blasted what he called the “alt-left,” protested that he had already condemned neo-Nazis and parroted far-right talking points on the Confederacy.
On the substance, it was a performance that quickly emboldened white nationalist groups and appeared certain to heighten racial tensions and fear in the country.
There’s no chance that Trump’s political team can finesse this one, or walk it back.
But the tone and the spectacle of Trump’s unchained performance was equally stunning.
The unapologetic, stream-of-consciousness style of delivery left no doubt at all: This was the real Trump, not the scripted version who appeared in the White House on Monday and tried to clean up his initial failure to condemn white supremacists after the death of a counter-protester in Charlottesville.
His anger emerged in a torrent, as he obliterated any benefit of the doubt he earned on Monday, thought piling on thought, in a style the nation has become accustomed to from his Twitter feed.

How Trump aides watched the news conference

How Trump aides watched the news conference
In the most incredible moment, as he stood at a podium bearing the seal of the President of the United States, Trump tore at the nation’s racial fault lines by appearing to offer a pass to a racist and neo-Nazi movement.
“I think there is blame on both sides,” Trump said, returning to his original position about the protest in Charlottesville, saying that an extreme right demonstration in which marchers held torches and Swastikas and chanted racist and anti-Semitic slogans contained some “bad people …. but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Trump accused counter-demonstrators of being as violent as the white supremacists.
“What about the fact they came charging — that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do,” he said.
“I think there is blame on both sides,” Trump said.
The President’s fury was first sparked when he was challenged by reporters on his handling of Charlottesville, evidence of how Trump’s extreme sensitivity to personal slights sometimes leads him into politically self-destructive behavior.
It was a display that will renew questions about the suitability of Trump’s temperament for the presidency, and at a time of increasing tensions around the world that will exacerbate fears he will be unable to control his emotions at a time of crisis as commander-in-chief.
Trump also condemned efforts to take down statues in southern states dedicated to heroes of the Civil War Confederacy.
“This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?”
“You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”
It did not take long for key figures in the extreme right movement to take comfort in Trump’s remarks, after the news conference appeared to nudge the President closer to an isolated spot on the far right of US politics.
“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa, wrote David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, on Twitter.
Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans were quick to condemn him.
“If you are showing up to a Klan rally you are probably a racist or a bigot,” Texas Rep Will Hurd said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “I think the outrage across the political spectrum about this is maybe the thing that ultimately unites us.”
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was also quick to rebuke Trump.
“Mr. President,you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain,” Rubio said on Twitter.
“These groups today use SAME symbols & same arguments of #Nazi & #KKK, groups responsible for some of worst crimes against humanity ever.”

The overall impression of Trump’s performance was of a president out of control, who is captive to his whims and instincts and defies any attempt to manage him — including by his new Chief of Staff John Kelly.
“That was all him — this wasn’t our plan,” a senior White House official told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny.
One person who has spent time with Trump over the past 24 hours describes the President as “distracted” and “irritable” in his interactions with top aides. Trump felt pressured into the Monday statement by staff members, the person said. As he went about his day Tuesday, Trump was upset and repeatedly returned to the topic, the person said, culminating in the lobby press conference.
CNN senior political analyst David Axelrod compared Trump to a “runaway truck, there are no brakes, there is no reverse.”
Axelrod also questioned why Kelly and other Trump aides even allowed the President to appear before reporters on Tuesday, given their presumed knowledge of the state of his mood over the Charlottesville coverage.
But ultimately, Tuesday’s stunning appearance will be remembered for the sentiments that passed the lips of a President of the United States.
In the long and tortured history of a nation still trying to work through its complicated story on race, Trump’s meltdown will stand out, as a moment ripped from the darkest pages of history and transposed into the 21st Century.
In the process, he appears to have abdicated any claim to the traditional presidential role as a moral voice for the nation and the world.

 

THE VIDEO OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE: Prompted by OldOzzie, here is the press conference so you can see it for yourself.

His infrastructure statement is pretty good as well!

Member of the American Congress shot

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The main headings at Drudge:

MEMBER OF CONGRESS SHOT
SCALISE IN STABLE
‘WE WERE SITTING DUCKS’ TRAIL OF BLOOD
GUNMAN: ‘KILL AS MANY REPUBLICANS AS POSSIBLE’

And these are the minor ones:

Gunman opens fire at congressional baseball practice…
High-Powered Rifle; More than 50 shots fired…
‘Are Those Republicans or Democrats Out There?’
Kept unloading and reloading…
VIDEO…
SHOOTER NAMED…
“It’s time to Destroy Trump and Co.”
Capitol Police prevented massacre…
Security tightened at White House…
HILL ON EDGE…
Left-Wing TWITTER Celebrates…

And from that final story:

No sooner did news break that a gunman shot Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) were left-wing Twitter users celebrating the attack — in which two Capitol Police were also shot, as well as a congressional staffer, and possibly more.

The next day after the launch

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It was frightening while we waited to hear how Andrew Bolt had survived the attack, and while it was only ten minutes, the impact will not recede soon. A day later we are mostly back to where we were, unlike the two dead Australian women in London. This is Andrew’s take where we find this picture and also at the link Andrew’s presentation.

And this is the report from The Age. The comments thread is actually evenly divided which it being The Age is actually positive news. What no one seems to appreciate is that with the murders in London and here in Brighton just the day before, no one has the time to work out in advance who the attackers are or what they intend to do. This time paint, next time who knows?

Violent thugs attack speaker at Art of the Impossible book launch

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This is taken up from Catallaxy: Violence at Kates’ book launch of my The Art of the Impossible which you can order here. This is how the story was conveyed.

I’ve heard reports of actual fisticuffs at Steve Kates’ book launch. Andrew Bolt was attacked by left-wing thugs. Word is that Andrew fought off his attackers, and has it on tape – expect to see an awesome Bolt Report tonight.

Update: From Andrew’s blog

… masked Left-wing protesters attack me outside a Melbourne book launch. Police are now looking for a Left-wing fascist with a big bruise on his face and another between his legs. They also want to speak to a tubbier protester once he’s stopped running. We’ll show the video tonight.

STEVE NOW ADDS: You hear that Andrew has been attacked and you fear only the worst but while this time they went off worse for wear, it is a true worry that this is our world now. We are people for whom words, argument and reason are what counts, but for the psychopaths on the other side they have nothing to offer but vacuous cliches and violence.

The afternoon, in spite of its start, was fascinating and I enjoyed hearing Andrew’s views on Trump and the massive problems we face. We are in a war, but it is our own modern Thirty Years War which no one today can be certain of its outcome. As for my book, we sold out every copy. But let me just mention this which is a comment from the earlier post advertising the launch:

It’s everything you say it is. I enjoyed it immensely. Good luck with the launch.

So thank you to Mique who has become the first person to have actually read and then comment on the book.

Every day provides an additional example on why we are fortunate Trump is president and how bad things could get without him.

Why does Instapundit cite Ronald Radosh?

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Here is a piece of junk written by Ronald Radosh and put up on Instapundit. In every way possible he is an infiltrator from the left whose word on anything I would never trust. And it seems I am not alone in this belief given the comments that follow the post.

Sorry, but any piece that quotes the execrable David Frum as an authority isn’t worth the time

Good grief. What a load of garbage dressed up for PJ Media’s Never Trump faction. If I wanted to frequent BuzzFeed, I’d do that. This is the equivalent.

Every time you post Radosh, you lose more credibility. He is as lost to reason as Frum in his #nevertrump fever. Radosh has beclowned himself as much as the leftists marching in Berkeley.

So, Trump has our allies worried. Good.

major disagreement over how President Trump’s foreign trip was viewed in Western Europe – If only the US had friends or allies in western Europe that would make US give a damn.

Mr Green: Do you post this drek to make those of us who come to this blog but bypass PJ Media aware of the anti-Trump and Rhino bias of its contributors or do you think that an article such as this has merit?

The real fact is that the Germans need to be slapped around a lot. They’re screwed on energy policy, they are screwed on immigration policy, they are doing almost nothing right these days and they’re contributing peanuts to NATO. The only problem is they are in the middle. Poland and the Eastern European states are much more important to us now but Germany is stuck there in the middle.

The column makes some decent points right up until it sites David Frum and calls Anne Applebaum smart. Applebaum is an idiot and likely on the payroll of any number of foreign governments. The woman is just appallingly stupid and dishonest, but at least she is not Frum, who is even worse. Beyond that, I don’t know what universe these idiots live in where they could think after 8 years of Obama doing nothing but talk and never living up to a single commitment or threat, and spending all of his time attacking American allies and supplicating himself to our enemies that somehow it is Trump that is making America seem unreliable. How do people manage to convince themselves to believe such stupid things?

“Trump seems to have left the impression among our European allies that they might not be able to count on the United States.” You mean, count on us LESS than during the Lightbringer Administration? “When Trump met with the Saudis, he failed to even give a perfunctory statement that the U.S. hoped for improvement in its human rights record, emphasizing instead the country’s creation of a new center for fighting terrorism.” One of the great human rights is to be free from dying because of international terrorism. “….Trump’s apparent move away from our traditional European allies might prove not to be so wise. It certainly does not look like the restoration of American leadership.” It sure does from here. Rather than moving the US in the direction of mindless, self-destructive EuroWeenie Socialism, Trump has reclaimed the US position as Defender of Freedom and Beacon of Liberty; if the EuroWeenies choose not to follow, you can’t accuse the US of not leading. Mr. Radosh needs to get a life. I recommend http://www.getalife.com.

Ron Radosh being against anything Trump does? Now there is a surprise. And Stephen Green pushing a weak article because it confirms his own anti-trump bias? LOL. News alert: we’ve been growing apart from Europe since the fall of the cold war and Trump is just doubling down on Obama’s approach to Europe. We annoy them because we say it’s high time for them to put on their big boy tighty whities and take over more of their own defense instead of riding on the coattails of the exhausted American taxpayer? The horrors! Trump says that the biggest thing confronting the western world is ISIS and we’ll worry about all the other crap later? OMG, the villainy!!! A foreign policy that takes an “enemy of my enemy is my friend approach” and ignores all the bad stuff to succeed in the primary objective is hypocritical? Wow, that’s the first time that’s ever happened in the history of the world! Yeesh, Radosh reads like the hystrionics of a high school social studies essay.

Pundits like this one continue to write stupid BS like this about what Trump actually has or hasn’t done.

“Instead, Trump seems to have left the impression among our European allies that they might not be able to count on the United States.” Bull. Germany and France have bailed on the US at every opportunity since WWII, and they haven’t been paying their share of NATO costs. They don’t like Trump frankly pointing that out, but so what? An alliance is supposed to be a two-way deal, not charity. They’ll get over it.

Knowing who your enemies are is as important as knowing who are your friends.

The captive and empty minds of the left

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Peter Smith discusses the posturing of the left, giving us a brief list of leftist idiocies, of which, he notes, there are far more to add:

Ever more generous provisions of welfare, health and education are ‘rights’, the denial of which on the basis of affordability is unconscionable.

Taxing the rich is a bottomless wallet for making affordable the unaffordable.

Palestinians are willing to live in peace with Israel, even though their children are taught from infancy to hate, despise and kill Jews.

Islam is a peaceful religion no matter how much godless violence is preached and practised in its name; no matter how clear are the violent riding instructions in the Koran and Sunna.

Our Western past is shameful and we must be penitent in the ways of Obama.

All refugees must be welcomed across our open borders and everything will be fine.

Free speech is a right provided no-one outside of white men is offended; in which case it is hate speech.

Traditional marriage, and male and female demarcations, are dispensable affectations of less enlightened times when gender fluidity was not so de rigueur.

The problem is we are just talking among ourselves. The crucial need is to find some way to get past the sentinels guarding the captive and empty minds of the left from ever having to hear a dissenting word. The question then is whether such minds can be changed which id discussed here. But I do have to say that if watching the news from Manchester doesn’t make someone on the left think again about their political views, I don’t know what will. The closest I can come to a strategy is merely to point out that almost all of the political evils in the world, from the KKK who were uniformly Democrats, to the National SOCIALISTS, to the Italian fascists, to the Stalinists, to the Maoists, to the followers of Castro and Kim, and so on, were people of the left. Wanting a better world is not even the first baby step in knowing how to achieve it, and it is truly the case that no leftist I have ever known has had much of an idea how to go about making this a better world. The aim is always to grab power in the name of the people and the practice is thereafter to keep it for themselves.

Big Brother is monitoring you

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QoL is back up leading off with this: Patriotism, Nationhood and Globalisation. The intro:

Nationalism belongs to the times when humans lived in an associative way and in a familiar and cherished environment, and it has brought mankind to where we are today, god and bad. The future our descendants will have to live in -or survive in- will demand much more from us … and from them.

Even that is more than 140 characters. And somehow related, for those who think they can depend on social media they might want to check out this: Facebook Bans Anti-Migrant Videos After German Woman Shows Beating By Refugees. And you might then like to have a look at Mark Zuckerberg’s desire to become Big Brother.

The Guardian recently published details from a leaked copy of the manual that Facebook gives its thousands of “content moderators,” the people who effectively monitor, police, and determine what we see in our Facebook feeds. What the document revealed is a deeply arbitrary set of guidelines that confuse the moderators who are helping to shape the civil society that millions of people rely on to, as Zuckerberg has put it, find meaning in their lives.

There’s a lot in the specific rules that is problematic, but the biggest problem is that these guidelines were secret at all. In fact, it appears to go against one of the very suggestions Zuckerberg outlined in his manifesto: “The Community Standards should reflect the cultural norms of our community,” he wrote. “The approach is to combine creating a large-scale democratic process to determine standards with AI to help enforce them.”

You will see what he thinks you should see and not see what he doesn’t think you should see. We really should do what we can to protect our own while we still can.

I need some urgent advice

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I am heading off to California and while I am at Stanford for a couple of days I expect I will see the person who I have known longer than anyone else in the whole of my life. But he is now from California and has all the political blindness that comes not just from being on the left coast, but from being right in the heart of Silicon Valley. He knows my political views, but is too obtuse to leave off. And although we are an ocean apart, he never lets up from sending me political junk mail, with the latest torrents about Donald Trump and the disaster he supposedly is. Here are the latest few:

Economic dynamism falls across the US

Donald Trump’s epic betrayal of America’s middle class

Donald Trump’s unpredictability is destabilising the world

Trump Told Russians That Firing ‘Nut Job’ Comey Eased Pressure From Investigation

One a day, sometimes two and today three. I don’t think you can open the first three, but he thoughtfully includes the entire article in the body of the emails for me to read. But you can see from their titles what I mean.

As those who read my posts will know, I am an easy going person, highly tolerant of different opinions, and especially welcome the views of leftist ideologues and economic ignoramuses. Nevertheless, I worry that I might inadvertently say something on this last time we may meet, along the lines of you are the stupidest, dumbest nit-f’n-wit I have ever met in my life, which might mean we sever this lifelong friendship. We managed to make it through eight years of George Bush Jr, eight years of Obama, including the 2008 election where his wife asked, but surely you don’t support Sarah Palin (addressed to my wife, of all things, who is the hardliner in the family). But this time it’s different, specially having written a book and all (Melbourne launch at 12:00 noon on June 6) which I have naturally never mentioned to him. Nor does he even know I blog.

Other than major trancs and a crash course in Zen, is there any advice on what I should do to get through these days?

Fake news trolling

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What shall we say about this which is a comment from OK, but what have you done for me lately??

As well as having a cool Christian name, ‘Malcolm’ is right to slam Kates’ simplistic rants – such as ‘you either agree with my view that Trump is omniscient, or you are a deluded leftist dunce’ etc etc. Let’s not forget Kates’ idiotic worshipping of probably the worst conservative leader – in terms of completely discrediting a small government agenda – Australia has had for some time: Tony Abbott. Kates’ political commentary is so absurd and juvenile that it really belongs in a MAD comic book.

Or this?

Steve Kates used to be a sound economist. Recently he has embraced crony capitalism and protectionism / mercantalism. He no longer deserves to be called an economist. He is a polemic writer that’s all.

Or this which is yet another:

By the way, since Trump’s victory, I have become even more convinced that he was the wrong person for the job. The world would have been better off with Hillary Clinton, even though she is terrible.

Or finally this:

If you are grateful that Trump is president, you are, whatever you may personally believe about yoursefl, a non-card carrying member of the left.

Exactly. The only difference between Trump and Obama is that Obama was ideologically coherent while Trump has no political ideas of any kind and just swings left by default as most people who don’t know anything about politics do.

These are, to put it mildly, inane. Let me start with the last of these. What my post actually says is this:

If you are not grateful that Trump is president, you are, whatever you may personally believe about yourself, a non-card-carrying member of the left.

Not quite “exactly” is it. This is just trolling, and my guess is that these are quite possibly people who visit sites like this as part of whatever line of work they do. They are filled with empty clichéd parody statements purporting to be representative of what someone on our side of politics ought to believe. These are “fake news” comments. It is a form of Alinsky Rule #4:

“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

They make up quotes and spray accusations but never provide a principled statement of what they mean. In particular, they do not add specifics about what Trump should or should not be doing. If I have actually “embraced crony capitalism and protectionism/mercantalism [sp!!!]” it’s news to me. But since these are apparently boo-words, even if they don’t know how to spell them, off they go.

Trump is not perfect, and not everything he does is what I would do myself. But if you are not pleased to see him President given the real-life would-have-been actual alternative, you really have nothing of value to say. I am forever sent things from friends and relations from the NYT, WAPO or whatever which I almost always read since I am interested in the kinds of things that convince others. But this inane juvenile trolling feels insincere. It is like the fake news you see everywhere in the MSM, with the core aim to cause doubt among those who really do like Trump’s agenda. Reading these people is like reading the American press.

Why Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals won’t work for the right

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Here are a selection from Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals that only work for the left and cannot be applied by the right. And the reason they don’t work is that the left by and large have no principles, only an empty sentimentality that allows them to line up behind their power-hungry leaders without any ability to see the consequences of what their leaders actually do. These people are unteachable. They have learned nothing from all of the revolutions that have gone wrong which have imprisoned and impoverished all of their supporters while making their handful of leaders wealthy and powerful beyond any other possibility they might originally had. Look t this list and try to find any leverage at all in dealing with the left.

4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.

5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

11. “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.

12.”The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.

13. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

The problem:

1. The left have no principles, only tactics.

2. The mentality of the left is founded on the self-righteous belief that everything they do is pure good based on their pure intentions, and will therefore never listen to or accept they have ever done harm or are at fault about anything.

3. Violence is the prime tactic of the left.

4. No member of the left is ever embarrassed about anything done on its behalf by any of its leaders.