“Bill Clinton’s example of success after legislative defeat is not one progressives are interested in learning from..Clinton’s comeback involved moving rightward and scaling back his ambitions. Let’s see if throwing tantrums works instead.”
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“Regarding the West Virginia “deplorables,” how about this: West Virginia has a higher literacy rate than California or New York. 87 percent to 78 percent to 77 percent. A ten-point lead.
“Plus, West Virginia is a lot friendlier to business and jobs than New York is. The Tax Foundation’s new index for state business “tax climates” shows that West Virginia ranks 21st out of 50, and New York ranks 49th out of 50.
“So, New Yorkers, not only can’t you read, but you hate business! That there is a bad combination. West Virginia, by the way, has way lower taxes than New York state. So, I'm giving three cheers to the Deplorables. The Democrats have abandoned them.”
https://www.nysun.com/national/now-a-blame-game-erupts-inside-the-democratic/91843/
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“My name is Brandon. Brandon Brown, to be specific. Yes, that Brandon. I am Brandon, the NASCAR driver and unlikely meme. A 28-year-old who now finds himself in the middle of the American political conversation. As a pro driver, I never expected to be in the passenger seat of my own viral moment.
“To my fans, to NASCAR fans and to everyone who has chanted my name: I dedicate myself this upcoming season to compete hard on the racetrack and to spotlight issues that are important to me and to millions of Americans across the country. "Let's Go America.””
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“Their desire is to be disruptive. What am I going to do? I’m going to ignore them. I’m going to stay committed, undistracted and I’m going to grind. If they like it or not, I'm the mayor."
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2021/12/22/rikers-island-solitary-confinement-nyc-jails-punitive-segregation-eric-adams-lashes-out-city-council?fbclid=IwAR3xZEPgpqO07AdWTBCsWJ1MCyAIdV_JI9QBuWEV2ZoB1J-AFvx4YUPQuRc
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“The State Department designated Hezbollah a Foreign Terrorist Organization back in August 10, 1997. So why does America still pour cash into Lebanon, the Hezbollah-controlled failed state?…why do we insist on financially supporting a country under Hezbollah’s thumb, rather than sanctioning it?”
https://www.nysun.com/foreign/why-is-american-still-pouring-cash-into-lebanon/91846/
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“The de facto pincer movement by the wildly different Democrats from wildly different parts of the country — San Francisco is roughly 19 times as large as the biggest city in West Virginia — shows that the progressive tide that built in the Trump years is finally colliding with political reality and the real-world consequences of progressive extravagance….a growing backlash against progressive excess has found expression in two notable acts of Democratic defiance.”
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“….no one doubts the sincerity of those who dislike their bodies so much that they want doctors to permanently damage them. What is in serious doubt is whether this kind of severe transition does anything at all to address deep-rooted mental-health problems.
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“…the conditions that are pushing Hispanic voters toward the GOP are the exact inverse of the strategy laid out by the RNC autopsy. The autopsy argued that Hispanic voters saw “our Party’s position on immigration [as] a litmus test” and advocated instead for a focus on free-market economics and opportunity — i.e., the traditional Reaganite economic message — repackaged with more emphasis on “diversity” and “inclusion.” But Republicans in the Trump era have leaned in to the culture war, and new cultural issues such as transgenderism and critical race theory have proved to be potent political mobilizers — not least among relatively socially conservative demographics like Latinos….Contrary to conventional wisdom, this realignment of priorities actually better reflects the views of Hispanics themselves.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/republicans-dont-need-to-abandon-immigration-hawkishness-to-win-hispanics/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202021-12-21&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Democrats have seriously erred by lumping Hispanics in with “people of color” and assuming they embraced the activism around racial issues that dominated so much of the political scene in 2020, particularly in the summer. This was a flawed assumption. The reality of the Hispanic population is that they are, broadly speaking, an overwhelmingly working class, economically progressive, socially moderate constituency that cares above all, about jobs, the economy and health care.”
https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-hispanic-voter-problem-dfc
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“Clegg is too good a historian to be an uncritical fanboy like the many journalists who forfeited their professionalism during the Obama years. He grasps the hopeful ambivalence with which many black Americans responded to the “boundless ambition” of Obama’s self-created life-story, noting how the comedian Chris Rock called him “our zebra president. …We ignore the president’s whiteness, but it’s there.” Likewise, the distinguished actor Morgan Freeman bluntly observed that “He’s not America’s first black president, he’s America’s first mixed-race president.” Clegg also grapples forthrightly with the reluctant yet widespread recognition that Obama’s presidency failed black Americans to a painfully surprising degree.”
https://spectatorworld.com/book-and-art/how-black-was-the-obama-presidency/
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“The legate of Sixties political violence and an accomplished lawyer, Chesa Boudin is an avatar of the revolutionary left. His election in 2019 followed upon that of Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner in 2018 and Kim Foxx in Chicago in 2016. The nation’s progressive prosecutors seek to eliminate cash bail, reduce “tough on crime” prosecutions and jail sentences, overturn convictions, hold police accountable for misconduct, and decarcerate.
“Tech and finance oligarchs led by speculator George Soros provide essential money and media. Soros is the right’s favorite devil. But in Gascón’s case, the founders of Netflix, Instagram, and Google and their families also have deep pockets. These are not stupid people, and their companies’ success in channeling suggestible minds is remarkable. Woke billionaires want to live in sovereignties responsive to their interests. Their self-conviction as bishops of good is untempered and complete.
“Whatever the motivation, Soros’ initiatives to legalize marijuana and elect radical district attorneys have been extremely effective. The communications complex known as Hollywood and Silicon Valley can work the unicorn crowd and it is getting better at it all the time. Why these oligarchs wish to wreck municipal legal systems and societies that have been good to them remains unclear, but it feels like well-orchestrated sedition.”
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/unicorns-crime-wave-woke-california/
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“…perhaps Brooks’s “modern conservatism” naturally led him to drift leftward because it is simply modern. Modern thought, after all, needs the most help from the pre-modern past precisely on the questions of family and community that Brooks cares about, and Brooks here shows little interest in the pre-modern past.”
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“When Penguin Random House announced plans to publish [Jordan Peterson’s] new book, protesters within the Canadian office forced them to hold what was described as an “emotional” meeting. One junior employee explained that publishing the book would “negatively affect their non-binary friend”. PRH went ahead, perhaps foreseeing the difficulties in consulting all the non-binary friends of junior employees about proposed signings and publications….There are, then, reasons to be hopeful.”
https://unherd.com/2021/12/what-books-have-we-been-denied/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=c85a041381&mc_eid=22e9ae4a48
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“Democrats don't understand Latinos because they seem disinterested in the economic challenges of working-class people. Restoring economic security, access to affordable and quality healthcare, and allowing for localism in various communities to determine the fortunes of their lives are what a working-class agenda that benefits all would look like… instead of offering Latinos things they actually care about, understanding large parts of this community as sharing the concerns of the middle and working classes to which they belong, Democratic strategists ignore the concerns of the Latino community, and then rebrand it in a language foreign to its self-conception, and even lecture struggling American Hispanics about people living in other countries.”
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“Of course, racism matters. But color is not the same as "race," even though it has become a proxy. Yet, practices associated with anti-racism and critical race theory (CRT) that double down on "race" to undo racism are misguided. They make us see racism everywhere because we've come to learn to see "race" everywhere…That's why adopting practices inspired by Black Lives Matter, Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo, for example, ensure the continuation and proliferation of racism. All seem to accept and encourage race thinking. There's an intentional upholding of the idea of "race," which maintains racism, and conflation of "race" with culture and ethnicity.”
https://www.newsweek.com/undoing-racism-means-undoing-race-opinion-1656598
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“Sinema and Manchin represent their states' small towns, suburbs, and cities. And rather than overruling their constituents, they've listened to them. Which means they know that President Biden is political dogmeat in their states, thanks to a host of Administration screw ups: Afghanistan, the crisis at the border, the embrace of a far-Left cultural ideology and a diffidence when it comes to inflation…Biden seems unfamiliar with much of the country outside the Northeast Corridor and coastal West. A third of his cabinet went to Harvard and seems fine with the progressive push for essentially open borders, defunding the police and decriminalizing crimes. But as we saw last month, these stances are not popular even in blue areas like New York City, Buffalo, Minneapolis and Seattle, where progressives were all soundly defeated. And perhaps most ominously, they don't play well with border state Hispanics, who are now shifting to the GOP.”
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“…make no mistake, what’s happening with the January 6 Committee is the latest episode that signifies the quite dangerous rise of the New American Fascism. To borrow from von Mises, Cheney and fellow GOPer and Committee member Kinzinger, not to mention the rest of the Committee and Pelosi herself, epitomize: … utterly … intolerant zealots.… They advocate enlightened despotism … convinced that the enlightened despot will in every detail comply with their own opinion.… They are utterly intolerant and are not prepared to allow any discussion…Make no mistake. … — this is the New American Fascism in action. With Republicans Cheney and Kinzinger as collaborationists.”
https://spectator.org/liz-cheney-adam-kinzinger-and-the-new-american-fascism/
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“Jen Psaki, smart woman, sometimes: When an EWTN reporter asked Psaki why Biden, who calls himself a Catholic (of the Judas persuasion, I suspect), so gleefully supported the killing of babies, the spokeswoman scorned the reporter by saying, “You’ve never been pregnant.” … it strikes me as terribly homophobic of her to insinuate that the journalist, because of the mere and insignificant fact of being a man, could never have been pregnant. How very backwards and fascist!
“Pedro Castillo, friend of terrorists: After many years of experience as a zoologist analyzing political life, I have come to a conclusion: there is only one thing worse than a terrorist, the one who presumes to be the friend of a terrorist. So many members of Castillo’s government are being investigated for their connections with the terrorist-Marxist-Leninist-Maoist band Sendero Luminoso, that the president, who is used to wearing large sombreros, is nicknamed Sombrero Luminoso by his compatriots. The pinnacle of political humor. My respects to that country kidnapped by idiots.
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Beautiful and Rich: Ocasio-Cortez is verbose with her nonsense, sparing us not a single one of the stupidities that run through her head, which provides great fodder for columnists, for which I feel indebted. A few months ago she went to a lavish gala, whose ticket cost $35,000, wearing a gaudy dress with the letters “Tax the Rich”; I have since thanked her heartily for that photograph, which I have had printed and hung in my living room as a work of art that I have entitled “Allegory of Socialism.”
“Kim Jong Un — Missing: I have included him in this list of idiots just to see if anyone can help answer a question about the only communist leader who looks like a meatball: Is he still alive?”
https://spectator.org/2nd-edition-of-the-idiot-of-the-year-awards/
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“This movement to put allies of criminals in charge of prosecuting crime, something which comes straight out of a Christopher Nolan Batman movie [] directly slaughtering what little quality of life remained in America’s cities [] is Larry Krasner’s fault, and it’s George Soros’ fault. That those cities have not yet devolved into American Baghdads in which private militias rule street corner by street corner is surprising.
“It’s no longer plausible to blame this on incompetence. Larry Krasner is no liberal. He’s a leftist, a Marxist. He isn’t for civil rights. This is how you keep the [people] impoverished, miserable, and dependent. It’s how you keep beleaguered people under your thumb and begging for what little relief you might afford them.
“Or worse, it’s how you condition them to see crime as normal and acceptable to participate in. Then they’ve got criminal records and they’ll never escape the cycle…You can’t get rid of Larry Krasner. Even if you did, he’ll be replaced by somebody just as bad. Soros will make sure of it.”
https://spectator.org/fighting-crime-the-soros-way/
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“What has the Left been doing with all of the cultural aggressions it has engaged in for the past couple of decades? In nearly every case those can be boiled down to taking a wrecking ball to the civil society — the critical mass of voluntary associations, fraternal organizations and cultural institutions which make up the space between the individual and the state. Boy Scouts become Trans Scouts. Lesbians become bishops. Even dating is politicized. They’ve done everything they could to take the joy out of like-minded people getting together to solve problems or just to recreate ourselves away from politics. And the bowling alleys, movie houses, and American Legion halls are empty. COVID has been the best asset they’ve ever had in this pursuit.”
https://spectator.org/five-quick-things-a-presidency-built-for-festivus/
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“Somewhere along the line, the urban Democrat machine politicians realized that running cities badly enough would chase off the middle class and leave them with a thin crust of wealthy people over a large mass of the poor. And a city thus populated would never elect Republicans, or even reform-minded Democrats. Accountability would disappear.
“The rich know better than to kick up much of a fuss about bad government. They don’t need to. Most of what they need they pay for out of pocket…And the poor? The poor can be bought off cheaply with crumbs from the table. They don’t expect much and are given even less than that.
“But the problem with middle-class people is that, while they bring a good deal of money in taxes, they also want lots of things for that money….That doesn’t leave a lot of room for the pigs to feed at the trough. When the potholes in the streets have to be filled, it’s harder to steal the pothole budget. And a city full of middle-class people will quite often turn out incompetent demagogue politicians like Keisha Bottoms, even in favor of a Republican. That, simply, will not do.”
https://spectator.org/tucker-carlson-buckhead-cities/
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“Since working in D.C. Public Schools, Jurkowski has struck an ultra-partisan combative tone online. Her Twitter account is filled with retweets of calls to abolish the police and defend Palestinian terrorism. One Al Jazeera post she shared claims that a Palestinian terrorist named Ahmad Erekat was killed by Israeli police but fails to mention that he was shot after ramming his car into Israelis…Watkins Elementary School is located just outside a city ward represented by a Democratic lawmaker who claimed that Jews control the weather.”
