Politics – KMZ Digest

Trump Assassination Attempt

itsme — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 21:34:23 +0000

A Wake-Up Call for America

Walker Larson

July 16, 2024

Few actions manifest division and hatred more than an assassination attempt, such as the one targeting Donald Trump that took place last Saturday. Such an incident proclaims to the universe, “I hate this person and what he represents so much that I believe he must be stopped at all costs, including the cost of blood.”

The tragic and harrowing events at the Trump rally do not bode well when it comes to the health of our Republic because they are emblematic of a deep divide in our society. The fact that we’re witnessing political violence shows how polarized we’ve become.

“War is the continuation of politics by other means,” so goes the old saying of Prussian general and military theorist Clausewitz. The aphorism can be applied pretty well to any form of political violence, including riots, terrorism, and assassination attempts. Political violence gives physical manifestation to political differences, and it is inevitable in human history because we are embodied, physical beings, and what we think and say plays out in the physical universe. Ideas Have Consequences is, after all, the famous title of a book by conservative thinker Richard M. Weaver. Ideas are not just figments in an imaginary, intangible world with no bearing on everyday reality: No, they are the deciding factor, and they exist and play out in and through things, including human actions, political movements, and violence. Ideas influence thoughts and words, which influence action, which changes the face of history.

Kinetic wars with real steel and real blood begin, as a rule, as spiritual, intellectual, and rhetorical battles. Stalin’s purges and Mao’s mass starvations had their direct origins in the pages of Marx’s manifesto. Similarly, the transformation of pagan Rome into an epicenter of Christianity began with the faith present in the hearts of martyrs, who had first won an interior battle against themselves, of which their physical deaths in the Colosseum were a mere aftermath.

All of this is to say that the blood spilled at the Trump rally was the result, ultimately, of ideological differences in America (whatever the particular ideologies of the shooter turn out to be—one does not shoot at a presidential candidate without at least some ideological motive). Political violence is an outward manifestation of political difference. But political difference, in turn, is rooted in cultural, moral, and religious difference—matters of the mind and heart. This is the real challenge we face, and it can’t be fixed simply.

To their credit, both Biden and Trump have spoken about the need for both sides to show restraint and solidarity in this moment. Biden said in his Oval Office address, “while we may disagree, we are not enemies … we must stand together.” Trump has called for Americans to “stand united” and “show our True Character as Americans.”

I understand these sentiments. This is a good start, even, and probably is what our leaders ought to be saying right now. But I fear that their calls for unity do not go far enough and do not get at the root of the problem nor provide a full solution to it. I concur with the statement Vivek Ramaswamy recently made on X: “We want real unity. Not some fake, artificial version – but the real thing.”

What is true unity? Unity cannot be accomplished through a few trite phrases, a bit of well-timed rhetoric, a polishing over by media or by political figures. Unity depends upon truth. That is, to be truly united, groups of people must believe in the same things, must understand reality as it is. Unity cannot be accomplished by fiat or by choice words—not by Biden, not by Trump, not by anyone else, especially after both sides have cast so many rhetorical grenades at the other side.

Realistically, which side, upon hearing Biden’s recent Oval Office address, for example, is going to give up its set of values? Will the trans lobby lay down its arms, proclaiming that they’ve seen the light and that, for the sake of unity, they are willing to abandon their cause? Will the pro-lifers sigh and shake their heads, saying that the unborn babies must now be abandoned to their fate, merely because Biden and Trump spoke nicely about each other? To ask these questions is to answer them.

If America is to pull back from the precipice of continued polarization and the political violence that may become more common as a result, it must rediscover a unifying principle. Shared values, morals, and beliefs form the backbone of a nation. America lacks this. The majority of Americans no longer accept a single body of shared values or visions. A nation without a common culture cannot stand any more than a person with a broken back can stand.

Through a corrupted educational system, failed immigration policies, a manipulative media, and a politicized entertainment industry, America has largely abandoned the cultural heritage of the West, a heritage inseparably linked to Christianity. It’s no wonder Americans no longer have a shared vision of the future: We no longer have a shared vision of the past. We were not formed by the same philosophers, the same understanding of history and national identity, the same works of literature, art, music, the same liturgical, moral, and religious tradition.

There are serious questions about the performance of the Secret Service last Saturday, but in addition to asking whether they’ll be able to protect Trump for the rest of the campaign, maybe we should be asking a bigger question: Is there any bulletproof way to prevent political violence and protect candidates other than finding true political unity? I tend to think not. To heal political division, we must rediscover the shared values of our Western heritage, which is founded upon unchanging natural and divine law.

intellectualtakeout.org/2024/07/trump-assassination-attempt-wake-up-call-for-america

Image credit: public domain

CONTRIBUTOR Walker Larson

Walker Larson holds a BA in writing and an MA in English literature. Prior to becoming a writer, he taught literature and history at a private academy in Wisconsin. He is the author of two novels, Hologram and Song of Spheres. When not working on his acreage or spending time with family and friends, he blogs about literature and education on his Substack, The Hazelnut.PROFILE

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Moral Shaming: “You do You”

itsme — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 19:57:44 +0000

By Jill Neimark

November 4, 2022

Airline passengers, one unmasked and one wearing a face mask, await their flight at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after the Biden administration announced in April 2022 that it would no longer enforce a U.S. COVID-19 mask mandate on public transportation, following a federal judge’s ruling that the 14-month-old directive was unlawful. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

When people have different views about health and freedom, they misuse morality to demonize one another, letting policymakers and corporations off the hook.

One evening last September, Gavin Yamey, professor of global health at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, dined indoors and tweeted a selfie of himself and his two tablemates—Chris Beyrer, director of the Duke Global Health Institute, and Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist and global health activist who won a MacArthur genius grant for his work on AIDS, global health, and social justice. Gonsalves has long been a voice for the vulnerable and disabled. Throughout the pandemic he lofted the torch of COVID caution and precautions, including masking, testing, vaccine boosts, and better ventilation indoors. He has been unafraid to critique those he regards as COVID minimizers, including President Biden himself (as in an article for The Nation, “No, Joe Biden, the Pandemic Is Not Over”).

Dining indoors these days certainly isn’t news. But within minutes, Pandora’s box had been flung open—unleashing an online tsunami of calumny directed entirely at Gonsalves. It was a moral condemnation of his life, his decency, his very self, based on this single, public act. Mike Hicks, one of Gregg’s online critics, summed up his view this way: “Does it make sense to engage in low-risk behaviors for 90 or even 95 percent of the time so you feel justified sticking a revolver to your head and pulling the trigger in a game of COVID Russian roulette?”

The reaction reveals a level of moral outrage increasingly entering debates over public health. For Gonsalves, it is concerning. “After three years of a pandemic we have to think about what’s sustainable,” he responds. Expecting responsible behavior from others is reasonable, but asking for totally, completely flawless behavior 100 percent of the time is not. “An absolutist moral framework pits us against each other and takes the public out of public health.”

We are now in the “You do you” phase of COVID-19, but that may be nothing new. Medical anthropologist Martha Lincoln of San Francisco State University notes that America has a long tradition of framing individuals as the most influential actors in their own lives, and this lets regulators off the hook. “We are reduced to looking to individuals as the major cause of and culprit for the outcomes that we’re living with,” she explains. “Diverting responsibility from institutions such as the CDC or the White House means that we can’t really locate a common enemy, and so enemies appear to be potentially everywhere. People may experience catharsis from identifying those who seem to be straying from the behaviors we think are correct. But it’s counterproductive.”

Instead of focusing on individuals, adds Gonsalves, “more lives can be saved when we shift the environmental and structural factors of society that throw us into the path of risk. The entire debate about individual interventions deals with downstream effects. Yes, individual interventions save lives, but they leave the larger sources of sickness unaddressed. It’s a ruse.” An analogy he likes to use is this: If you’re standing on the shore of a river watching hordes of people flailing as they drown in a fast current, you can either jump in and save one, or go upstream where you find the bridge has collapsed and needs to be repaired.

In America today, most of us are standing on that metaphorical shore, trying to decide whom to save from or blame for infection, climate change, staggering health care costs—one, two, ourselves, everybody, nobody? Moral frameworks about health can slide into our lives almost unnoticed and ignite self-righteous outrage as well as deeply felt betrayal, grief, or contempt. The result is more than toxic in today’s world, when so many engage in what molecular biophysicist Joseph Osmundson calls “these online clusterfucks of shaming, which never work anyway. Morality is so baked into our language of illness, it is almost the default setting, the language given to us to think about sickness,” he says. “It takes active, thoughtful work every day with every sentence one uses to reframe illness in ways that don’t make it a moral state.”

Mismoralization is exactly what it sounds like—the misapplication of the moral impulse in places where it does not belong and cannot help.

A powerful sense of right and wrong, of justice and injustice, forms early in life. Research has shown that toddlers as young as two are capable of judging what is fair and unfair. We may acquire an internal moral grammar in lockstep with the acquisition of actual language. But when moral frameworks spill into the realm of public health, we end up with what bioethicist Euzebiusz Jamrozik and his collaborator Steven Kraaijeveld have dubbed mismoralization.

Mismoralization is exactly what it sounds like—the misapplication of the moral impulse in places where it does not belong and cannot help. Mismoralization in public health can lead to shaming, blaming, and ultimately the fracturing of society. “Across societies,” write Kraaijeveld and Jamrozik in an August paper in Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, “human beings are inclined to punish norm violations.”

“We as a culture don’t think about how policy makes people sick,” says medical historian Jim Downs, author of the book Maladies of Empire. “We’re much more willing to ask, ‘What did YOU do to become sick?’ As soon as you hear someone has lung cancer, the first question is ‘Do you smoke?’ That’s a moral question.”

At its worst, mismoralization leads to criminal sentences. Thirty-five U.S. states still have laws that criminalize exposing others to HIV, even though AIDS is now a preventable and treatable disease. In some states, the maximum jail sentence is still life in prison.

On the other side of the coin, getting infected with HIV has also been moralized. “I cannot count the times I’ve been told I brought HIV on myself because I couldn’t keep it in my pants,” says Gonsalves. “I deserved what I got.” Even now, he says, he occasionally gets emails and direct messages calling him things like “an AIDS-infected f%#@*t.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, when HIV infection and mortality rose and peaked, there was a kind of moral calculus that went like this, says Osmundson: “Did you get it from a monogamous partner who cheated? Well, that’s bad but not that bad. Did you get it at a sex party? Oh my God, you should be ashamed.”

If you didn’t wear a condom back then, you were seen as killing yourself and others, adds Liz Highleyman, a medical journalist specializing in HIV and other infectious diseases.

Last summer, when monkeypox swept largely through gay communities—most often transmitted, it appeared, during the physical intimacy of sex between men—old stigmas resurfaced. One epidemiologist who caught monkeypox told the Philadelphia Tribune that he was afraid people would think, “If you got monkeypox, you got it in a very slutty way.” Public health officials applied harm reduction principles that had proved effective in the fight against HIV, says Highleyman, but the public response was not so forgiving. As one tweet put it: “So Big Brother shut down your churches and businesses for Cov19, but won’t tell gay men to stop having orgies for monkeypox.”

We have a long tradition in this country of shifting blame to those who don’t deserve it.

When confronting illness or frailty, this tradition of moral outrage does not recognize the systemic failures that are the true drivers of illness. “United States history has often featured the criminalization of infection,” observes medical ethicist Harriet Washington, author of the book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present, which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Pellagra, for instance, was called a Black infectious disease that struck “African Americans because of their supposed penchant for living in filthy conditions.” It was actually a disease of malnutrition that largely afflicted the enslaved. It wasn’t until the 1920s that physician Joseph Goldberger discovered that the illness stemmed from nutritionally inadequate corn-based diets. Later researchers learned that the disease is due to a deficiency of the B vitamin niacin.

When the higher SARS-CoV-2 infection and death rate of African Americans was first documented, many causal theories tended to blame the victim, says Washington. She explains that some health officials asked whether higher drug or alcohol use, disparate genetics, or failure to don masks and shun crowds heightens Black Americans’ risks. Others, she says, invoked Blacks’ high obesity rate, although obesity is an American problem, not a racial one. “In any event,” says Washington, “obesity in African Americans is tied to living in “food swamps” where a dearth of affordable nutritious fare is worsened by saturation of tobacco and alcohol products whose marketing is targeted to racial groups.”

Tuberculosis, a scourge caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, surged in widespread epidemics in Europe and North America during the 18th and 19th centuries. Once it was understood to be an infectious disease, the sickness was moralized. Women and the poor were targeted—the former for apparent failures in keeping their houses clean, thus allowing tuberculosis to spread; the latter for living in squalid conditions that favored transmission and threatened the rest of society.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a hundred Asian Americans were being attacked in this country every day, according to Washington. “People initially shun, exile, and then want to kill others who may be perceived as carrying dangerous infections.” Washington says this is an example of protective prejudice based on the fact that we are indeed more vulnerable to novel pathogens.

The principle is correct, but the application is often misguided. In the late 1800s, for instance, coastal West Africa was called “white man’s grave” because European soldiers and missionaries, exposed to infections to which they had no established immunity, died in high numbers there. Similarly, Native Americans succumbed to the strain of syphilis brought to the New World by European settlers. But where outbreaks of infection are concerned, “majority groups wrongly demonize minority groups,” Washington says, “avoiding them and then expelling them.”

We have a long tradition in this country of shifting blame to those who don’t deserve it. As anthropologist Lincoln points out, in almost every domain in American life where public health is at stake, large industries reflexively move their own responsibility out of view. For instance, nearly 60 years ago, a young lawyer named Ralph Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed, proving that car crashes were not caused only by “bad drivers “ but also by the auto industry’s unwillingness to spend on safety features like antilock brakes and airbags. During their long legal battle with the Justice Department over the opioid epidemic traced to its drug, oxycontin, Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, shifted blame onto the individuals who became unwitting addicts. “Abusers aren’t victims; they are the victimizers,” Richard Sackler stated in one email. And the fossil fuel industry has long popularized the concept of an individual’s “carbon footprint” as a way to shift attention away from its own excesses—while individuals are left homeless from the wildfires, hurricanes, and vicious storm surges that are now commonplace effects of a changing climate.

These days it is the individual who is just plain tired of our current pandemic. That may be the case, but it does not constitute the basis of a valid public health response. It’s a form of manufactured futility that can be self-fulfilling. “A tired public is not an argument for public health policy,” says Lincoln. “So I understand why individuals are blaming other individuals. We all feel we’re trying to resolve a national public health crisis ourselves at home or online.”

What can we do to cope? First, recognize that “humans are gloriously messy,” says Osmundson. “We make mistakes, and there is no moral failing to wanting to have dinner with friends, eat pie when we’re on a diet, or have sex once without a condom. We have to build systems that are robust enough that these deeply human behaviors don’t lead to bad outcomes.”

If you lower your mask to take sips and bites at a wedding, should you be willing to go to jail for manslaughter, as queried in this tweet? If you insist that everybody wear a mask, are you robbing others of the opportunity to “richly connect, to fall in love, to live a full life”? Or are we shadowboxing to fill the vacuum left by the public health agencies that guide our national decisions—the CDC, the FDA, and the White House that presides over them both? “It’s not rocket science, what people need at a population level,” says Osmundson. “We need free health care, paid sick leave, an infrastructure that tackles public health head-on, and policy that reflects the fact that we function as a global superorganism.”

While we are nowhere close to that nirvana, we can stop hurling the slings and arrows of moral outrage at one another and join hands to demand more of our institutions, now and in the future. In that sense, we do have a moral obligation, for we are, as Gregg Gonsalves often says, “our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Even in our human imperfection, that’s all we’ve got.”

^{Jill Neimark is a writer based in Macon, Georgia, whose work has been featured in Discover, Scientific American, Science, Nautilus, Aeon, NPR, Quartz, Psychology Today, and The New York Times. Her latest book is “The Hugging Tree” (Magination Press).}

https://www.openmindmag.org/articles/the-moral-outrage-of-health-acts

Clubhouse Rules:

itsme — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 21:26:43 +0000

New York’s New Young Republican Leader Eyes the Future

Gavin Wax sits in the “Clubhouse” of the New York Young Republican Club. (Credit: Aidan Kahn)

November 8, 2022

By Asta Kongsted

Gavin Wax sat on one of the many brown leather couches lining the studio apartment that serves as the “Clubhouse” of the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC) on a recent Thursday afternoon. It is thanks to Wax that this group has that Midtown apartment at all – a fact which the 28 year-old Queens native does nothing to hide and which no one does anything to dispute. When Wax took over the presidency of the Club in 2019, it had 50 members and nowhere to host them. These days, membership stands at 1,100, while more than 76,000 have subscribed to their newsletter. With the members came the donors, making it possible to rent the space. Among them are Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, whose sizable donation helped pay for the couches.

Across from Wax, a young and visibly awestruck man settled into a leather seat of his own. He looked around the room, admiring the heavy, crimson curtains, the elaborate hunting trophies and the prominent display of KellyAnne Conway’s book Here’s the Deal on the mantelpiece of a fake fireplace. Žiga Ciglaric, a member of Slovenia’s right wing populist party, Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), had come to receive political advice from Wax, who took on the role of wartime consigliere with ease: “When did you lose the election?” he asked, brow furrowed. “How’s your relationship with the media?” he added and nodded with acknowledgment when Ciglaric complained of a “communist” media elite that is “brainwashing” the minds of the Slovenians, who turned their backs on SDS during a parliamentary election this April.

Under Wax’ leadership, meetings like these are common at the NYYRC clubhouse. Since 2019, the Club has created “coalitions,” as he likes to call them, with far-right youth movements from all over Europe. Meanwhile, Wax is gaining more attention in the United States. Media outlets like Newsweek reported on it when Wax enthusiastically endorsed Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán —whose government the European Parliament recently referred to as an electoral autocracy— in early 2022. When Wax later traveled to Hungary to speak at the first-ever Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Europe, The New Yorker and Arkansas Online made note of his presence.

When Wax finished counseling Ciglaric on this particular October afternoon, he was headed straight to the Taiwanese Embassy.

Wax’ idea is to nurture a global network of young, far-right politicians with a shared ideological framework, which he describes as populist and centered around “opposing free trade, opposing free immigration” and “economic pragmatism.” Ideally, the New York City-based Club will be the movement’s center of gravity.

At the same time, there’s work to be done on a national level, Wax said. Were it up to Wax, the Republican establishment would be on its way out and the remaining party members would adopt what he describes as the populist agenda that former President Donald Trump might have instigated, but of which he is only the beginning.

“The end goal for us is to take over the governing infrastructure that runs the Party. We need to put people that ideologically agree with us in positions of power so they can influence and shift things overnight,” said Wax.

In the future, it may very well be up to him. He’s president of the largest and oldest Young Republican Club in the country, he’s added appearances on alt-right podcasts and Fox News, he has ties to the likes of Steve Bannon and Matt Gaetz, so Wax’ words hold sway. And he intends to put action behind them. Eyeing the midterm election, he’s focused on a bright red future that few others see for true blue New York.

The “Emperor”

By mistake or design, and probably as a result of both, Wax’ origin story somewhat resembles Trump’s. As a former Bayside, Queens-resident with a college degree from Nassau Community College, Wax doesn’t possess the political pedigree of a traditional Republican leader.

Wax was raised by a single mother working shifting office jobs and the two of them moved around New York a lot. He frequently changed schools and found it difficult to fit in among his peers who wore clothes that his mom couldn’t afford. In high school, Wax said that he started selling “weed and mushrooms” to students and parents. He never touched the stuff himself, he said. He was in it to afford the same clothing as his customers.

“I didn’t like the clothes I had, I didn’t like that I was poor. You know, stupid petty shit,” Wax said. It took him a few years – and the political emergence of Trump – to realize that “fitting in” was not going to be the most politically salient strategy in the future.

These days, he’s selling political ideas. And like any good salesman, he easily attunes to the audience he’s trying to reach, weaving himself in and out of different discourses: at times speaking softly on the leather couch, while at others, screaming 140 characters onto Twitter, where he, until recently, called himself “The Emperor.”

At the Club, his leadership seems to agree he’s earned that title.

“Gavin’s problem is that there’s just not enough time in the day,“ said Nathan Berger, vice president of the Club. A sentiment that is echoed nearly word for word by the leaders of the club’s Black and Catholic caucuses, Jude Somefun and Michael Bartels. Perhaps once an outsider, he’s now the center of the world in the Midtown apartment promoting a Trumpian agenda, which may once have seemed fringe but is quickly becoming mainstream within the GOP.

The club’s former leadership is less likely to praise Wax’ talents. Some have claimed that he took over the once liberally Conservative club by way of a coup in 2019, when alumni of the NYYRC enticed Wax and then-associate Vish Burra to replace the presidency.

“We won an election without opposition and it was unanimous,“ said Wax, calling it a coup only “in the metaphorical sense. The club rapidly changed direction, ideologically and otherwise,“ embracing a more divisive profile: Disputing the 2020 election results while embracing a far-right political agenda. The former leadership have since left the club and the five members that were contacted for this story declined to comment on the specific circumstances of their departure.

When confronted with the fact that some are unwilling to go on the record about him, Wax seemed pleased: “If I’m going to be hated, I’d rather also be feared.“

Meanwhile, a collective amnesia seems to hover over the current members, who all have a hard time remembering the details of the change in leadership, Wax included.

As he walked around the Clubhouse, tidying the already immaculate space, he pointed to pictures of notable alumni, recounting their names and dates of membership. At the same time, he found it hard to remember the name of the former president from whom he took over the Club. It’s Melissa Marovich, a young woman who presided over the Club from 2016-2019 and has since left politics altogether. She, too, declined to comment about her exit.

Wax simply refers to his predecessor and the rest of her former presidency as a group of “no-names,” unable to fulfill the potential of the Club.

Winning on the Margins

Why anyone would want to ascend the throne of a tiny Club of 50 members ruled by a bunch of “no-names” only makes sense if you can spot the political potential that Wax is committed to realizing. Many think of New York as a decidedly Democratic state, but in Wax’ mind nothing is set in stone.

“There is a very fertile ground in New York based on a very populist agenda: crime is up, the economy is a mess, people are fleeing the state in droves, taxes are too high, the services are too bad. The situation is abysmal and I think it’s shifting the political dynamics in favor of the Republicans. That doesn’t have to do with the brilliance of the party. That just has to do with the fact that the average Joe-Schmo, the average Sally-Jane, realizes they’re spending more money and they’re getting less in return,” he said. Wax argues enthusiastically that the key to flipping the state red is getting a third of New York City to vote for a Republican.

Calling the ground “fertile” is an overstatement, at least for now. No polls indicate that the road toward a new golden era for Republicans has been paved.

“Suppose that you were able to convince a third of New York City voters to vote Republican,” said associate professor of Data Journalism and former database journalist at FiveThirtyEight, Dhrumil Mehta. “It still doesn’t make much of a difference to the overall New York State result.”

Wax is, however, convinced that with the right candidate – and the right Democrat to run against – it can be done. Wax gave the example of Democratic Mayor Eric Adams.

“Eric Adams was a former Republican who ran as a cop on an anti-crime agenda. He did not run like a left-winger. Eric Adams kept the margins where they were, but if you get rid of Eric Adams and swap him with a Far-Leftie, you’re talking about 30-40 points for Republicans in the city. So it can happen,” Wax said.

Besides, “politics is about winning on the margins,” and so Wax is committed to keep chipping away at the Democratic majority while they’re looking the other way.

The rivals at the Manhattan Young Democrats (MYD) are indeed looking the other way. But perhaps not for the reasons Wax would like to think.

“I don’t think about Gavin Wax,” was the succinct answer from the president of MYD, Jeremy Berman, when asked about Wax’ political efforts. Berman paused briefly after learning about the recent growth of the Republican Club, but then added:

“They can have as many members as they want, but we are the ones who are electing the elected officials. I’m less concerned with how fancy the venue my banquet is in, and how many Congress members I can meet from outside the state of New York, and I’m more concerned with making people’s lives better.”

Berman said the focus of the MYD is on local politics rather than international relations. He is running for the Democratic State Committee this year.

Meanwhile, Wax is aware that little will come of his aspirations without political power. So he’s got a plan targeting his own party.

“We can take over the local party. We did a test run this year, and we got a few dozen people elected to the county committee,“ he said, referring to a contested Manhattan county committee election, in which the NYYRC was accused of committing ballot fraud – an allegation Wax refuses. “If we committed ballot fraud, we would have been prosecuted.”

So he’ll apply the same strategy going forward, starting with intentional moves to lift up local leaders.

“And slowly but surely, we’ll put our people into positions of power within the party, and have direct political influence and control of the levers of power,” Wax said.

Pace is a recurring theme for Wax. “Slowly,” Wax’ political faction will carve out the GOP establishment through the county committee. “Slowly,”that faction will start to seriously challenge the city Democrats. And slowly, no rush indeed, Wax himself may consider running for office.

With Tweets disputing the recent Brazilian election results and an endorsement of the now-defeated former president Jair Bolsonaro, Wax’ Twitter-presence would surely scare off New York City liberals. His real life persona is less extreme. Compared to characters like former Republican mayoral candidate and Guardian Angels-founder Curtis Sliwa or the underwhelming gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, Wax has a few extra strings to play. He’s traded Queens for the Upper East Side and secured a job as Global Digital Marketing Director of the alt-right tech startup GETTR, a social media platform not unlike Trump’s TRUTH Social. Dressing the part might have been an issue in high school, but these days, the cufflinks on his suit are Gucci.

Wax may be busy, but he’s not in a rush. He recently flew down to Florida to attend the wedding of the Congressman Matt Gaetz to Ginger Luckey; Gaetz has continually made headlines recently for his alleged involvement in a sex trafficking probe. It was an intimate event, Wax said, visibly proud to belong to Gaetz’ inner circle, who celebrated next to punny signs announcing that “Gaetz got Luckey.”

The following Monday, Wax was back at the Club, keeping the leather couches occupied and the NYYRC’s membership growing. He may also be calling his real estate agent soon. The Club is starting to outgrow their current clubhouse. Lucky for him, more private donors – whose identities Wax will not disclose – are lining up to show their support. He’s convinced that, eventually, the voters will too.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Dhrumil Mehta’s surname.

About the author(s)

Asta Kongsted

Asta Kongsted is an M.S. student at Columbia Journalism School. She is the former editor of the Danish media Føljeton.

columbianewsservice.com/2022/11/08/clubhouse-rules-new-yorks-new-young-republican-leader-eyes-the-future

How the ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ Fable Reveals the Folly of Student Loan Forgiveness

itsme — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 21:12:37 +0000

Today, instead of Aesop Fables, we have Government Fables.

Michael Heberling

Michael Heberling is the Chair of Leadership Studies in the Baker College MBA program in Flint, Michigan. Prior to this, he was President of Baker’s Center for Graduate Studies for 16 years. Before Baker, Dr. Heberling was a Senior Policy & Business Analyst with the Anteon Corporation. He also had a career in the Air Force retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. Dr. Heberling has over 75 business and public policy publications. His research interests focus on leadership, military history and the impact of public policy on the business community. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network

Clubhouse Rules: New York’s New Young Republican Leader Eyes the Future

itsme — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 19:25:52 +0000

November 8, 2022

By Asta Kongsted

Gavin Wax sits in the “Clubhouse” of the New York Young Republican Club. (Credit: Aidan Kahn) Nov. 5, 2022

When Wax finished counseling Ciglaric on this particular October afternoon, he was headed straight to the Taiwanese Embassy.

The “Emperor”

At the Club, his leadership seems to agree he’s earned that title.

When confronted with the fact that some are unwilling to go on the record about him, Wax seemed pleased: “If I’m going to be hated, I’d rather also be feared.“

Meanwhile, a collective amnesia seems to hover over the current members, who all have a hard time remembering the details of the change in leadership, Wax included.

Wax simply refers to his predecessor and the rest of her former presidency as a group of “no-names,” unable to fulfill the potential of the Club.

Winning on the Margins

Calling the ground “fertile” is an overstatement, at least for now. No polls indicate that the road toward a new golden era for Republicans has been paved.

“Suppose that you were able to convince a third of New York City voters to vote Republican,” said associate professor of Data Journalism and former database journalist at FiveThirtyEight, Dhrumil Metha, “it still doesn’t make much of a difference to the overall New York State result.”

Wax is, however, convinced that with the right candidate – and the right Democrat to run against – it can be done. Wax gave the example of Democratic Mayor Eric Adams.

Besides, “politics is about winning on the margins,” and so Wax is committed to keep chipping away at the Democratic majority while they’re looking the other way.

The rivals at the Manhattan Young Democrats (MYD) are indeed looking the other way. But perhaps not for the reasons Wax would like to think.

Berman said the focus of the MYD is on local politics rather than international relations. He is running for the Democratic State Committee this year.

Meanwhile, Wax is aware that little will come of his aspirations without political power. So he’s got a plan targeting his own party.

So he’ll apply the same strategy going forward, starting with intentional moves to lift up local leaders.

“And slowly but surely, we’ll put our people into positions of power within the party, and have direct political influence and control of the levers of power,” Wax said.

About the author(s)

Asta Kongsted

Asta Kongsted is an M.S. student at Columbia Journalism School. She is the former editor of the Danish media Føljeton.

How “A Bug’s Life” Revealed the Immorality of Socialism

itsme — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:14:34 +0000

June 11, 2022

Emmanuel Rincón

There is no ethical or moral reason why somebody should work tirelessly to support a bunch of bureaucrats, and the 1998 Pixar hit seems to grasp this.

Nowadays it is difficult to find a film that represents good ideals and lays bare the practices of totalitarianism; in recent decades, the major film producers have left aside in good proportion the stories of heroes and role models to focus on the victims and their suffering at the hands of the oppressors, without really offering any positive or hopeful message, other than to enhance the culture of victimhood.

However, in A Bug’s Life this did not happen, although the film also has in Hopper—a grasshopper represented by Kevin Spacey—one of the greatest cartoon villains, it also presents in Flik an innovator who never gives up, who constantly explores new ideas, and who finally decides to confront Hopper’s totalitarianism to free his colony from the exploitation of grasshoppers.

Various media have published articles erroneously claiming that the film presents a criticism of “capitalism,” because according to them, it is about a class struggle of exploited workers. But this has little relation with reality. In capitalist and free market systems, people collaborate mutually without coercion; private property is respected, contrary to what is represented in the film, as the ants are fighting to protect their production (private) from the hands of some grasshoppers (militarists) who through force try to take away (expropriate) the fruit of their labor.

Curiously, Flik, who only thinks of liberating his community from oppression, is constantly repudiated and rejected by other ants due to his lack of obedience and respect for the grasshoppers’ authority; in this, we can find great parallels with today’s societies, increasingly servile before the inclement power of the States on steroids and their refined bureaucrats. However, Flik is convinced that he will be able to save his colony from slavery and he will not rest until he achieves it.

Hopper: The Ultimate Representation of Socialism

Hopper, the villain of this story, is the closest thing to the collectivist dictators we have known in the last 100 years. Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, anyone could be identified with Hopper, because in his conception of the world the ants are scum that must work to sustain the grasshoppers. It is basically the same logic followed by socialist regimes: the people must work to feed the bureaucrats. The supposed “redistribution of wealth” is nothing more than an excuse to appropriate the production of “the people” so that the bureaucrats can dispose of it, leaving only crumbs for its producers.

In one of his impassioned dialogues Hopper addresses the princess of the colony: “It’s a bug-eat-bug world out there, princess. One of those Circle of Life kind of things. Now let me tell you how things are supposed to work: The sun grows the food, the ants pick the food, the grasshoppers eat the food…”

The ant princess is completely intimidated by Hopper’s threats, and he exerts his control over the little insects through fear of violence and demands absolute obedience, in the purest Castro style.

In another part of the film, the grasshoppers closest to the leader stand up to him when he says they have to go and exert more pressure on the ants to get their food, so Hopper responds with some anger: “You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up! Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one and if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life! It’s not about food, it’s about keeping those ants in line.”

Clearly, Hopper understands that it is necessary to keep the collective fear of the ants at bay, for if they were to think they could be free, the grasshoppers’ lives of privilege and idleness would end immediately, and they would have to work for their food themselves.

Flik’s Hope and Yearning for Freedom

Flik, like the rest of the colony, is just a little ant who is not strong enough to take on Hopper and the grasshoppers, but he has big ideas and a lot of courage.

After traveling long distances trying to find help for his colony and recruiting a band of circus bugs, Flik returns to the colony to end Hopper’s plans to keep them enslaved until the last of their days. Unfortunately, Flik’s plan fails; however, his courage remains intact, and that manages to inspire the rest of the ants.

In the last part of the film, as a confrontation approaches, Hopper shouts at Flik: “You piece of dirt! No, I’m wrong. You’re lower than dirt. You’re an ant! Let this be a lesson to all you ants! Ideas are very dangerous things! You are mindless, soil-shoving losers, put on this Earth to serve us!”

Then Flik replies, “You’re wrong, Hopper. Ants are not made to serve grasshoppers. I’ve seen these ants do great things. And year after year, they somehow manage to pick food for themselves and you. So who is the weaker species? The ants are of no use to the grasshoppers. It is you who need us. We are much stronger than you say we are. And you know that, don’t you?

After Flik’s words the grasshoppers start to get restless, the ants start to advance against their slavers, Hopper stands his ground, but his army starts to disperse. The leader of the grasshoppers gives the order to counterattack, but the ants have already realized that they are more and that they don’t need the grasshoppers. Finally the ants overwhelm their captors, and the princess says to the villain: “You see, Hopper, nature has a certain order. The ants gather the food, the ants keep the food, and the grasshoppers leave!”

In the end, all the ants needed was a little courage to break free from their captors, and Flik gave them the inspiration to defeat the grasshopper army.

The message that A Bug’s Life leaves us with is quite hopeful, and we should all follow the example of Flik and his colony; there is no ethical or moral reason why somebody should work tirelessly to support a bunch of bureaucrats.

The wealth created should belong to its creators, not to those who dictate the laws of unjust societies and intimidate citizens with the use of force.

If you haven’t seen A Bug’s Life, I assure you that you have missed one of the best movies ever. Indeed, that animated classic produced by Pixar that saw the light of day in 1998, and that probably doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, is probably one of the most libertarian productions ever seen.

Emmanuel Rincón

This El American article was republished with permission.

Emmanuel Rincón is a lawyer, writer, novelist and essayist. He has won several international literary awards. He is Editor-at-large at El American

A Teachers Union Shaped CDC School Guidance. Is That a Problem?

itsme — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 20:31:31 +0000

The influence of the union has prompted debate over its role in scientific decision making.

BY HANNAH THOMASY June 10, 2021

WHEN THE U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued much-anticipated guidelines for school reopening in February, some critics argued that the nation’s premier health agency had set unreasonably strict standards for schools to follow.

But the two largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, long hesitant about reopening schools amid the Covid-19 pandemic, rallied in support of the document. “For the first time since the start of this pandemic, we have a rigorous road map, based on science, that our members can use to fight for a safe reopening,” AFT president Randi Weingarten wrote in a statement released that day.

One detail not disclosed at the time: The AFT had a hand in crafting the guidelines. On May 1, The New York Post broke the news of emails between the union and the CDC, obtained by the conservative watchdog group Americans for Public Trust, showing that the CDC had consulted with the teachers union, and that two suggestions from the AFT had been incorporated, almost verbatim, into the final document.

Debates over school reopening have pitted the unions against some advocates and parents clamoring for reopening, and the revelation sparked accusations of undue political influence over CDC decision-making.

The mingling of politics and science has been a heated issue during a pandemic that has, so far, claimed the lives of around 600,000 Americans. On dozens of occasions, the Trump administration attempted to silence scientists and influence health policy, preventing an effective pandemic response, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

But the Biden administration assured Americans that it would be different, promising that policies would be based on evidence and that science would be separated from political influence. In early May, the administration announced a panel to investigate past political meddling in government science.

Now, some Republicans are claiming that the AFT emails show that even under the new administration, the CDC is subject to political influence. These emails, wrote Republican Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Morgan Griffith, and Brett Guthrie in a joint letter to CDC director Rochelle Walensky, “raise significant concerns about whether you, as the Director of the CDC, are putting politics over science and Biden-Harris campaign donors over children.”

The issue has sparked an inquiry into the CDC from Congressional Republicans. And it has raised pointed questions about political pressures at an agency that, since the beginning of the pandemic, has been subject to heightened national scrutiny.

But divisions remain over whether the union exercised undue influence — or if, as several policy experts told Undark, the CDC was simply doing the routine work of consulting stakeholders.

“What we saw last year were clear examples” of “politicians or people on the political level changing the interpretation of science,” said Richard Besser, who served as acting director of the CDC in 2009. “And that is very different than affected parties being able to provide input.”

WHEN THE CDC’S guidelines arrived in February, less than half of U.S. public school students were attending full-time in-person school. At the time, there was substantial disagreement about whether the benefits of in-person schooling outweighed the risks of reopening. Some parents and pediatricians argued that the evidence showed reopening could be done safely, and cited concerns about children’s development and mental health. Teachers unions argued that many schools did not have the resources to safely control transmission.

The CDC’s guidance was mixed. The agency recommended reopening schools. But it also set standards that placed more than 90 percent of counties in the “high community transmission category,” meaning that schools there would have to implement strict — some said prohibitively strict — measures if they wanted to hold in-person classes. For all schools, the CDC recommended maintaining a distance of 6 feet between students.

Some researchers thought the February guidelines were too strict, and that the available scientific evidence indicated that schools could be safely reopened with less prohibitive measures.

“The fact that they said that students needed to be 6 feet apart from each other — there was no evidence showing that that was necessary,” said Tracy Høeg, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at Northern California Orthopaedic Associates, and co-author of an often-referenced study of Covid-19 transmission in Wisconsin public schools. Six feet, she added, “was just not achievable for really any school district.”

Daniel Benjamin, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Duke University, also questioned the science behind the guidelines. “There’s a lot of stuff in that February guidance that’s entirely made up, and written as though it’s factual, when in fact it’s opinion, or is a hypothesis,” he said in a recent interview with Undark.

For example, Benjamin questioned the logic of recommending stricter measures or remote learning in areas with high community transmission rates. “If you mask, and community transmission rates are high or low, people do not give each other Covid at school,” he said. In a February interview with CNN, Walensky stated that unreliable masking “is among the reasons that we have transmission within schools when it happens.”

Benjamin’s own research on 11 North Carolina school districts found that transmission within schools was “extremely limited,” and that instances of Covid-19 in schools seemed to have little to do with rates of community transmission. (Those schools maintained 6 feet of distancing.)

“There’s a lot of stuff in that February guidance that’s entirely made up, and written as though it’s factual, when in fact it’s opinion, or is a hypothesis,” Benjamin said.

Not all epidemiologists agree, though, that the February guidelines departed from the science — or even that the science is especially clear. Sten Vermund, a pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist at Yale University, said the guidelines were reasonable, if a bit on the conservative side. “There you were, in the middle of respiratory virus season, with school outbreaks all over the country,” Vermund said. At that time, he added, it did not seem that “CDC felt comfortable radically altering guidelines.”

Justin Lessler, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, said he thinks there is still uncertainty in the debate over school distancing guidelines and whether students should be 3 feet or 6 feet apart. “I do think it is an area where we are maybe not on the strongest evidentiary footing either way,” he said.

In a recent paper, Lessler and several colleagues found that the parents of children participating in in-person schooling had an increased risk of testing positive for Covid-19. For the CDC guidelines, Lessler said, it was “perfectly reasonable” to implement stricter measures in areas of high community spread. The evidence, he said, suggests schools “can play a role and help drive a wider community epidemic.”

THE THORNIER POINT, perhaps, is how those guidelines came about — and whether the AFT’s involvement crossed some line.

In the press release for the February guidelines, Walensky stated that, in addition to reviewing scientific evidence, “we have also engaged with many education and public health partners, to hear firsthand from parents and teachers directly about their experiences and concerns. These sessions were so informative, and direct changes to the guidance were made as a result of them.” The statement didn’t offer specifics.

In May, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the CDC engaged with about 50 different organizations while drawing up the guidelines. CDC spokesperson Jasmine Reed sent Undark this list, which includes the Department of Education, as well as other education groups and public health organizations. (The AFT did not respond to requests for comment from Undark.)

The emails obtained by Americans for Public Trust reference meetings between individuals from the AFT, the CDC, and the White House Covid-19 response team shortly before the school reopening guidelines were released. In the emails, Kelly Trautner, the AFT’s senior director of health issues, thanked Walensky for her “continued openness to our suggestions and input.” The New York Post reported that two elements discussed in the emails were incorporated “nearly verbatim” into the guidelines: First, that guidelines might need to be updated in the case of high community transmission of variants; and, second, that remote work concessions be made for teachers with high-risk conditions.

The evidence, Lesser said, suggests schools “can play a role and help drive a wider community epidemic.”

Not everyone found those suggestions especially controversial. But the AFT gives millions of dollars to Democratic candidates each election cycle, and, for some researchers skeptical of the guidelines, the emails seemed to confirm that the process had been murky. “I think it would be important to know more details about that, like who did they consult, and what was the timing of it, and which group did they give more weight to, and preference to, in terms of rewriting it?” said Høeg.

Asked why he thought the CDC chose these more conservative guidelines, Benjamin, the Duke epidemiologist said, “The CDC tends to look at research, and they listen to stakeholders, and sometimes they listen to some stakeholders more closely than others.”

Some experts, including Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, say that all CDC guidance should be based solely on the science. “You do want to get feedback from stakeholders,” he said. “But you want the feedback to be based upon what are the relevant considerations for health and safety. Not pure political pressure.”

Others say that guidance like this, where the health and well-being of different groups may be at odds, is inherently political. “I think what made the school opening guidelines difficult was, it wasn’t just about science,” said Vladimir Kogan, a political scientist at Ohio State University. “Unfortunately, at the time until now, some of the science remains unsettled. It really got into the policy space of balancing competing demands and competing interests.”

After the CDC guidelines came out, Kogan co-authored an influential op-ed accusing the agency of failing “to follow the science” that suggested reopenings could be done safely.

In an interview with Undark, Kogan suggested that the teachers union involvement had some parallels to other cases in which special interest groups shaped government legislation. “I think the concern here is very similar to the concerns that people had during the Trump era, like coal interests writing environmental regulations, right?” Kogan said. “That it’s not obvious that the people involved have broader society’s interests at heart.

“I think that one thing that rubs people the wrong way is the extent of AFT involvement,” said Kogan. “I think, it’s one thing to consult with somebody. I think it’s another thing to copy and paste their preferred language.”

THOSE KINDS OF CLAIMS have been swiftly weaponized by Congressional Republicans and conservative groups. Walensky was questioned about the involvement of the teachers union in Congress on May 11. A week later, Americans for Public Trust, the group that acquired the emails via Freedom of Information Act requests, launched a $1 million advertising campaign criticizing Biden and the CDC for working with teachers unions. The campaign accuses policymakers of “sacrificing kids, keeping them out of school, to pay back liberal dark money groups.” Just a few days later, Republican senators wrote a letter to the leaders of the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services asking for more details about the CDC’s communications with the AFT and other non-governmental organizations.

But, in interviews, several public policy experts and former CDC officials said that soliciting and incorporating feedback from various stakeholders was an essential part of making useful public health recommendations amid a crisis, and that AFT’s involvement seemed to fall within those boundaries.

“I would have been surprised, and frankly disappointed, if in drafting guidance that affects schools, CDC wasn’t engaging with teacher groups, parent groups, local public health,” said Besser, the former CDC acting director, who now runs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “One of the challenges in emergency response when you’re dealing with an emerging infectious agent,” like the U.S. did with the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, “is that you’re always making guidance based on limited science,” he said.

“I think, it’s one thing to consult with somebody. I think it’s another thing to copy and paste their preferred language,” Kogan said.

Erin Sauber-Schatz, a CDC injury prevention specialist, said consulting with many different organizations is routine. In her work with the CDC’s transportation safety team, she said, she regularly consults both governmental and non-governmental groups. “We really try to pull in information from all different groups when we’re thinking about any public health problem,” she said, “because that allows us to provide the best answers and the best guidance regardless of the public health topic.”

Lloyd Kolbe, who ran the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health from 1985 to 2003, described using a similar process when designing school-based education programs to prevent the spread of HIV. During that process, Kolbe said, they were advised by various groups, including a major teachers union.

Public health experts outside the CDC, including Georges Benjamin, director of the American Public Health Association, and David Michaels, an epidemiologist at the George Washington University School of Public Health, didn’t find the AFT emails surprising, either.

“I think agencies do have to rely on stakeholders to understand,” said Michaels, who is also the former assistant secretary of labor at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The CDC, he added, should judge those outside comments with a critical eye. But, he said, “that doesn’t mean that they should reject them.”

Hannah Thomasy is a freelance science writer splitting time between Toronto and Seattle. Her work has appeared in Hakai Magazine, OneZero, and NPR.

The Trump Card

KMZ — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 20:19:06 +0000

Donald Trump takes the oath of office to be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.
January 20, 2017

by Gene Myers

January 22, 2017

The following essay is not intended to either sway opinion, insult, or convert anyone to my thought process. It is simply an unfiltered opinion relating to recent national issues as analyzed by me. And who among humanity doesn’t want to hear my opinion? If not, read no further. Easy, huh?

So, here we are months after the presidential vote, and a new leader has been installed. Still, most of what I see and hear on television / radio news shows, NPR, and read in print has to do with sobbing, complaining, swearing, and hand-wringing over the results.

As much as I enjoy the asinine far left meltdown, come on, folks, grow up. Time to get over it and look ahead. The real irony is that the biggest whiners are the same people and organizations who finger-waggingly lectured that “Trump must accept the results of the election”. Well, guess what? He did! Now would you please have the same courtesy? More irony is that the same holier-than-thou sources looked the other way when the DNC rigged the Democrat primary in Clinton’s favor. Talk about galling hypocrites.

BTW, as much as I dislike name-calling, I do enjoy the “snowflake” label being applied to the protesting, hating whiners. It psychologically keeps them from being taken seriously. The DC rioters dressed ISIS-like, and destroyed property. Don’t they realize that kind of behavior wins moderate Democrats for Trump? I also found it amusing that the snowflakes smashed the windows of Bank of America and Starbucks, both big Hillary donors.

And the inauguration speech? According to news commentator, Greg Gutfeld, most politicians, including Obama, orate with the flavor of a Pina Colada, but Trump’s inauguration speech was like a shot of whiskey. If Gutfeld meant direct and not meaningless political-mumbo-jumbo-speak, I agree. Here’s an example of the latter, which is typical of inauguration and graduation speeches: “We must move forward, united for this great nation now and for generations to come. Today we…blah, blah, blah…zzz”

I do not wish our outgoing president anything but the best. However, he DID say during the campaign that repudiation of Hillary Clinton would be repudiation of his legacy. Unfortunately, the Clinton and Obama dynasties permitted their party, the party of FDR, Truman, and JFK, to be hijacked by the far left, which was a major factor in the election results. The original working man’s party is now the party of condescending academia and Hollywood elites. With that in mind, Obama’s legacy can be sadly described in two words: Donald Trump.

As for me, I’ve decided to trust the system (executive, legislative, and judicial branches) of our government to be an effective check-and-balance, and to err on the side of the American people as they administrate our Republic under law of the Constitution. No, folks the US was not formed to be a democracy, and personally I’m tired of hearing politicians and media describe our system that way. Democracy is mob rule where the squeaky wheel always gets the grease, and eventually falls under its own consequence. I’m not suggesting that we’re not morphing in that direction what with all the self-interest groups and lobbyists trying to sway public opinion; and for the most part, it’s working. Sad to watch. Jefferson said once we make that turn, we’ve maybe 50 years left.

Meanwhile, I intend to hope Trump is successful, and trust what’s left of the system. Recall Obama had both houses of the legislature for two years, and was reined-in still. it will be the same for Trump because his party is not in lockstep with him—not at all. In fact, I consider him a third-party candidate. (Of course, there is the reality that congress consists of an enigmatic and ineffective herd of humanity. Now I’ve depressed myself.)

The biggest con foisted upon us (for years) is that political experience by people who have political science and law degrees is somehow paramount to running a country. What a load of fiction that is. The only thing experience in politics gains one is experience in being a politician—not in getting anything done. See, the idea is: Once you’re “in”; to get reelected, which is what they spend their time doing. Until we mandate term limits for congress, nothing will change. It wasn’t always that way. People in government used to have “real” jobs before running for office, and returned to the private sector once they went home.

Now this “in” crowd NEVER leaves. If they don’t hang around for years (voting themselves new perks), they become lobbyists. Our so-called Republic is becoming a falling body. Want more proof? Take a hard look at the House of Representatives’ top Democrat, the vacuous Nancy Pelosi. Then there’s the GOP’s top Senator, the oblivious Mitch McConnell. I’m surprised that either has the ability to form words. Warning: A “hard look” requires you to be objective, and check your emotions at the door. Can you do that? Do you have intellectual honesty? Many of you with an “us vs. them” attitude will probably have difficulty; and are therefore, responsible for putting the country in the present day Kafka-esque mess we “enjoy”. The only reasonable solution is to bring in a total outsider; one who understands a republic system of government under law of a constitution.

So, with that in mind, I’ve decided to give Trump a chance to succeed. The law in a republic is specifically intended to limit the power of government over people. The Democrats (and I suspect most Republicans) want bigger, more-intrusive government, not restricted government. Nuff said.

As a Truman / JFK advocate, it pains me to see that the far left has become the mainstream of the Democratic Party. I categorically do not believe the leftwing bomb-throwers’ campaign exaggerated rhetoric about Trump; and all one has to do is look at the makeup of his business empire, and ask his people how they’re treated. Plus, I do want open borders closed, and illegals who commit crimes removed—and I don’t care how. In addition, I want Islamic terrorists eliminated. How is that racist?

For those Hillary supporters who do believe their party’s acerbic verbosity, recall what the Wikileak’s hack into the DNC revealed. Mainly, that venerable DNC staffers’ communiques were replete with anti-gay, sexist, and racist remarks. Then there is Bill Clinton’s ongoing history with women. Those of you who remember the man getting caught with his hand-in-the-cookie-jar during his term will also recall what his supporters and the media lectured us, to wit: CHARACTER DOESN’T MATTER! Then there is Ted Kennedy drowning a young lady, and not mentioning it until the next day; the same Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd bragging about their “waitress sandwiches”; and Joe Biden twice getting busted for plagiarism.

I am not suggesting Trump is a knight in shining armor, but Democrats CANNOT have it both ways no matter how often the self-serving media looks the other way. That, and the unrelenting name-calling of ALL Trump supporters, is what irritated voters and got a guy like Trump elected. Geez, folks, learn from it for crying out loud! Still, they persist…(sigh)

I prefer to consider Trump’s assets since he’s going to be around for a while. No matter what one thinks of the guy, he is an astute businessman. He knows what a balance sheet is and how to run an organization by interpreting the numbers. He also knows how to make a deal, and administrate assets and people. Since World War I, and maybe before, the US is renowned in the international community for being terrible at diplomacy. My tenth grade history teacher even taught us, through examples, how our country has been snookered time and again at the international bargaining table. The Europeans, in particular, have been laughing up their sleeves at us for years. John “Lerch” Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and most of their Secretary of State predecessors have been inept, and that’s being kind. The only respected and adequate Secretary of State I can recall in my lifetime is Henry Kissinger, and he was lumbered with Tricky Dick Nixon. (Aside: Hey, do any of you remember when Nixon ran against JFK that people would intentionally put Nixon bumper stickers upside down on their cars so it read, NOXIN?)

Therefore, I intend to look at the new president’s positive attributes, and totally and completely ignore the allegations of his opponents. They have zero credibility in my world.

As Hillary Clinton infamously said, “Besides, at this point, what difference does it make?”

Your working boy, Yosemite Sam, a registered and disappointed Democrat.

The Freeway Flag

itsme — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 19:40:52 +0000

I was driving home today and saw a faded American flag hanging on a freeway bridge near Rancho Cucamonga. I figured it was probably from one of the local Marines that was killed last year in Kabul during our shameful exit from Afghanistan.

So here’s my question:

Why hasn’t anyone who played a part in this foreign policy disaster been fired? None of the high ranking military officers, cabinet secretaries, and other experienced officials were really held accountable for this debacle.

Our military left billions of dollars in military equipment behind, abandoned a valuable airport, left Americans in Afghanistan, and the marines were killed on their watch.

Nothing.

I wonder how long the flag will hang above the freeway.

Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

itsme — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 20:36:23 +0000

June 21, 2022

The rapid gains Republican women have made since 2018 could be a signal for how the party fares in this year’s midterms

Mayra Flores was sworn in on Tuesday, becoming Texas’ first Republican Latina to join Congress. Flores’ victory also sets a new milestone: A historic high of 147 women overall and a record 41 Republican women now hold congressional seats, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University.

Born in Mexico to migrant farmworkers, Flores is a first-time candidate who defeated her Democratic opponent this month in Texas’s 34th congressional district, which is historically Democratic. Flores’ addition to Congress underscores the growing visibility of Republican Latinx candidates and rising numbers of GOP women in the legislative branch.

That number has seen a sharp increase from 2018, when the number of Republican women in Congress dropped from 23 to 13. The gains women candidates have made since then reflect greater support and investments among Republican party leadership and outside conservative groups, experts told The 19th.

“I think 2018 was a bit of a yet another wake-up call to the Republican Party about women’s under-representation within the party,” CAWP Director Debbie Walsh told The 19th. “Republican women are following the playbook in many ways that we’ve seen on the Democratic side of women raising money for women candidates.”

Flores’ swearing-in comes on the heels of newly elected Republican Rep. Connie Conway, who won the open seat special election to replace former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes in California’s 22nd congressional district. Conway, whose election set the previous record for the number of women in Congress at 146, was sworn in on June 14. The rapid gains Republican women have made in just a few short years could be a signal for this year’s midterms when historically the president’s party loses seats.

Two groups founded within the last six years — Winning for Women and E-PAC, founded by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik — have helped to boost conservative women candidates alongside VIEW PAC, a more established organization for Republican women. These groups, in addition to growing enthusiasm from the Republican establishment, are helping Republican women candidates get critical support early on in their races.

After 2018, candidates experienced challenges winning their primaries, but they saw more success in 2020.

“In 2020, the party saw that of the seats that they won, especially the seats that they took away from Democrats, most of them were won by a woman, a person of color or both,” said Michele Swers, a professor of American government at Georgetown University who focuses her research on women’s representation in politics.

Those 2020 victories include Michelle Steel and Young Kim, Korean American women who both flipped House seats in California. That same year Maria Elvira Salazar, the daughter of Cuban immigrants, defeated Democratic incumbent Donna Shalala in Florida’s 27th congressional district.

Democratic groups have more robust infrastructure for funding women candidates with organizations like the PAC Emily’s List, though Democratic women of color have still struggled to gain access to party and financial support during their political campaigns. Democratic party leaders and voters have also historically demonstrated more interest in diversity among candidates, Swers said.

Flores’ victory in a Democratic stronghold captures another nuance: an increase in Latinx candidates running as Republicans. Other Republican Latinas are getting national attention in their races, including Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump will compete in November for Texas’ 15th congressional district, and Cassy Garcia, who is running in the fall for Texas’ 28th congressional district, facing off against nine-term Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.

“In this cycle, you are seeing more women stepping up, particularly more Latina women that we’re seeing run on the Republican side, and they have a good amount of party resources behind them,” Swers said.

Flores’ June victory came during a special House election after the 34th congressional seat became vacant when incumbent Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela Jr. resigned in March. Flores significantly outraised her Democratic opponent and focused ads on her marriage to a border patrol agent and the need for border security and legal immigration.

Flores will serve an abbreviated term until January, but she is also the Republican nominee for the 34th district in November — the race Vela Jr. would have competed in had he run for reelection. But that race won’t be an exact repeat of the special election: In November the 34th congressional district will fall under newly redrawn district parameters that make it much more friendly to Democrats, and Flores will face a different opponent.