Dem activist to working moms: “We need to start our own world with out the white folks.”

“We need to start our own world with out (sic) the white folks.”

With one slight alteration, how would this read in its original German?
 
This individual is a Democrat activist from St. Louis, Missouri, commenting on a New Jersey blog as part of an effort to attack a group of working people from New Jersey – mainly women – whose perspective on the threat to their livelihoods was shared on that blog.  This is who the Trenton Democrats have got to shill for them.
 
What do Senators Fred Madden… Linda Greenstein… Joe Lagana have to say about supporters like the one above?  Are they down with this?
 
Working mothers and others depend on the flexible arrangements that working as an independent contractor provides them.  But such arrangements could soon be illegal in New Jersey, if Senate Democrats have their way.     
 
After Senate Bill S-4204 was passed out of the Senate Labor Committee on a 3 to 1 vote (Three Democrat YES votes – Fred Madden, Joseph Lagana, and Jim Beach – to one Republican NO, Tony Bucco.  The bill has one sponsor – Senate President Steve Sweeney.), a group of working professionals decided to do something to protect their livelihoods. 
 
The group is www.fightforfreelancers.com .  In under two weeks, they have attracted nearly 1,000 activists and its Facebook and web pages feature dozens of stories about the hardships S-4204 will bring. 
 
Other groups have formed as well – all to fight the ruinous provisions of Senate Bill S-4204.  In response, far-Left activists from around the country – from California, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, and so on – have been called in by desperate Democrats in Trenton to attack the New Jersey women who are fighting for their livelihoods.  It is a very questionable reaction by the leadership of the Democrats who control the New Jersey Legislature.  They are attacking the New Jersey women on Facebook and on websites that carry their stories. 
 
You can do something to save the professions chosen by working moms and others.  The Senate Labor Committee is meeting again TODAY in Trenton – at 10am.  You can call or email the Senators responsible for voting for this atrocity and give them a piece of your mind…
 
Senate President Steve Sweeney (D)
856-251-9801
856-339-0808
sensweeney@njleg.org
 
Senator Fred Madden (D)
856-232-6700
856-401-3073
senmadden@njleg.org
 
Senator Linda Greenstein (D)
609-395-9911
sengreenstein@njleg.org
 
Senator Joe Lagana (D)
201-576-9199
senlagana@njleg.org
 
We have been happy to stand with the working moms and others who want to keep the option of working as sub-contractors.  Let it remain their choice. 

Working people in New Jersey are under enough pressure as it is.  Democrats like Governor Phil Murphy and Senate President Sweeney seem bent on turning New Jersey into an outpost of France – with the French-style labor laws that have given that nation high-unemployment and under-employment for generations.  Perhaps we should nickname them Pierre and Jacques and pop little berets on their heads in future?
 
In contrast to the plans Democrats like Murphy and Sweeney have for them:  Working class people prefer to work.  They don’t want to need the government, thank you.
 
This website has always been pro-working class.  That is simply another way of being on the side of the average American.  The working class is historically under-represented in the chambers of our so-called representative democracy. 
 
We recognize the inherent conservative nature of the working class.  People less well-off have always had to depend on each other.  They cleave to family and form extended communities for that purpose.  Only the rich can afford to kick out the pillars of society (safe in the knowledge that there will always be a way to buy oneself out of the consequences).  The working class is a movement that marches in the streets, but kneels in church.  

This is the reason the working class has been left behind by the Democrat Party. It is the reason that the vast majority of voters today have become orphans in our political process.

Writers like Ross Douthat (of the New York Times) and Reihan Salam (formerly of National Review, Slate, and The Atlantic) have suggested that the future of the working class is within the Republican Party. Time will tell. We are not sure about the residual presence of the Christie Whitman class and if it will be sufficient to bar the working class. Time will tell.

The American working class are the “forgotten people” of the global economy. Indeed, this can be said of working classes in post-industrial economies around the world. And we recall how one Democrat legislator, just a couple years ago, pointedly stated that “the New Jersey Legislature does not serve the ‘forgotten people'" in a direct reference to the working class.

We suspect that without knowing it, this Democrat legislator was acknowledging one of the great under-reported facts of American political life. In White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making, Duke University Professor Nick Carnes cites studies showing that while a majority of Americans work in blue-collar employment (and over two-thirds can be described as “working class”), only 2 percent of Congress were blue-collar workers before being elected and only 3 percent of State Legislators are employed as blue-collar workers. Carnes and others hold that this disparity reflects the economic decisions and priorities of legislative bodies in America.

This lack of blue-collar perspective shouldn't surprise anyone looking at the Legislature's agenda. And even when a blue-collar guy does get elected, he or she is one of so few that they are quickly pulled into the maelstrom of identity politics that so dominates and pollutes.

This is why Democrat political leaders in Trenton don't appear to care about New Jersey having the highest property taxes in America, or its highest in America foreclosure rate, or its worst business climate in America (as in… the worst place for job creation). Look at the legislative agenda and you will see what they’re about. It’s all ass, ass, ass… as a distraction to the real business of crony capitalism and wiring the system so that this interest or that can make a buck (and then kick back in the form of campaign contributions and such).

All this provides background to a growing body of academic research that shows, again and again, that we no longer live in a representative democracy, but rather an oligarchy. As a recent Princeton University study reported, "The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

See you at the Committee hearing…

The Reparations Racket is an exercise in vote-buying

Most of those alive today are descendants of slaves. Wikipedia defines slavery as follows:

Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalized, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations. However, and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word, slaves may have some rights and protections according to laws or customs.

Slavery existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations. A person could become enslaved from the time of their birth, capture, or purchase.

Slavery was legal in most societies at some time in the past, but is now outlawed in all recognized countries. The last country to officially abolish slavery was Mauritania in 1981. Nevertheless, there are an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide subject to some form of modern slavery. The most common form of modern slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking. In other areas, slavery (or unfree labour) continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most widespread form of slavery today, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage.

Race doesn’t enter in to it, as all manner of human beings, all colors and creeds, have enslaved their fellow man since the beginning of time. If it is, as some suggest, our original sin (and it is high on the list of sins) then it is a sin shared by all mankind, one that in our humility we must all account for.

The Bible tells us that the Israelites often found themselves enslaved as a people – by the Egyptians, and later, by the Romans. Slavery existed in the Americas at the time of its first contact with Europe. At the start of the American Republic, there were two African-based slave trades. One, out of sub-Saharan Africa, provided human beings to slaveholders in the United States and European colonies in America. The other, based in North Africa, brought European slaves and others to Islamic markets. The United States fought two wars to end the latter (1801-05 and 1815) and a civil war (1861-65) to end the former.

Politically, the Democrat Party was the institutional face of the slavery in America. You need only read the Democrat Party platforms prior to the Civil War to recognize this. Long after the Democrats were forced to give up on slavery, they continued to commemorate their slave-holding heritage. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders… they all have attended Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners and have, by doing so, honored those two slave-owning Democrats.

Slavery in America ended with the advent of the Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, was elected in 1860 with 39.8% of the vote. Lincoln was sworn-in on March 4, 1861. The American Civil War began a month later, on April 12, 1861. By then seven Southern states had seceded from the Union.

At the 1860 census, it was recorded that those in slavery made up 13 percent of the United States’ population. Slavery existed in 14 of the then 33 states (by the end of the war there would be 36 states). 3.9 million people were enslaved, but only 8 percent of American families were slaveholders. Slaveholders did not constitute a majority in any of those 14 states in which slavery was tolerated. But though a minority, slaveholders were an exceedingly rich minority.

All the anti-slavery states (as well as some of the slaveholding ones) produced soldiers and sailors for the holy cause of abolition. New Jersey furnished 76,814 soldiers and sailors – 1,185 of whom were African-American. This was a smaller contribution than neighboring states like Pennsylvania (337,936) and New York (448,850). It was claimed that New Jersey was less enthusiastic than more Republican states. In 1864, in the middle of the war, New Jersey would field the Democrat candidate against Lincoln, who won the state’s 7 electoral votes and a 53% to 47% popular vote win.

Nevertheless, 5,754 New Jersey soldiers/sailors gave their lives in that war to end slavery. Again, neighboring states gave more to the cause. Pennsylvania lost 33,183 of its sons. New York lost 46,534. Regiments were segregated then, so we know that most of those who gave their lives were classified as “white”. But it should be noted that they fought alongside comrades who were classified as “colored” – 36,847 of whom died. In all 178,975 “colored” soldiers and sailors served in the war.

Some Democrats have come up with the ridiculous fable wherein they argue that the parties “switched” ideologies. No, you will not find support for slavery in any Republican Party platform. Unfortunately, the Democrats cannot make that claim. Slavery is the sin of their party. Burdened by such a sin, it is natural that the Democrats wish to deflect the blame for it onto a wider population. And so they have come up with the idea of “reparations”.

What the Democrats propose is a tax (it’s always about a tax with them, isn’t it) on some people – regardless of whether or not their ancestors had slaves, or fought and died to end slavery, or even were in the United States before 1865. Then the Democrats propose that they make a gift of this money to a different group of people.

This satisfies the Democrats’ need to publicly proclaim their “goodness”. It also absolves their party of its unique blame by vastly expanding that blame to others, regardless of whether they have any specific guilt at all or of the sacrifices made by their ancestors. And finally, the Democrats calculate that by taking from Peter and giving it to Paul, Peter will be silenced into submission and Paul will reward the Democrats with his vote. Yes, the Democrats are without shame.

Later today, you can catch this shameless performance at the Assembly Appropriations Committee, Committee Room 11, Fourth Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, New Jersey. The performance is for the benefit of the Democrat Party of Phil Murphy, Steve Sweeney, and Craig Coughlin.

Stay tuned…

NJ Republicans must have the courage to engage on the Second Amendment

There are three kinds of people who favor gun control: (1) Those who do so in reaction to horrific events and the media coverage of those events. (2) Those who emotionally or intuitively dislike guns or the idea of weapons. (3) Those looking for power, whether in the form of votes or other forms of power as would come from the confiscation of firearms.

Conservatives like United States Senator Ted Cruz (Republican-Texas) are taking a lead in the process of finding common ground with the first group and engaging with the second, which represent most of those who say they want stricter gun control. Here, Senator Cruz meets with prominent gun control advocates…

Senator Cruz has given a lot of thought to the Second Amendment and he knows who he is, where he stands, and why he stands there. This is important, because in order to have a conversation with those who hold a different position, you must first have a position of your own.

Most New Jersey Republicans get nervous around the Second Amendment. Most, not all, but most. This is an institutional thing that goes back decades. Sad to say, but even Bernie Sanders had a better voting record on the Second Amendment than did many New Jersey Republicans. When President Bill Clinton pushed a bill through Congress that required a seven-day waiting period for the purchase of a hand gun, Congressman Sanders (Socialist-Vermont) voted “NO”, while all but one of the Republicans in the New Jersey congressional delegation supported the bill.

Forget the Trump Revolution, New Jersey Republicans never really embraced the Reagan Revolution The brain and nervous system of the party tends to reject new stimuli. Nevertheless, the world has moved on, and the body of the party – those who identify or who could identify as Republicans – bears no resemblance to the past. Too often, the brain and nervous system reacts to them as outsiders and actively rejects them, looking, as they often do, like the Democrats of old.

So the Republican Party in New Jersey – the brains and nervous system of it – needs to adjust itself to its new body, for just as the body cannot function without a brain, the brain is fairly useless without a body to command. Step one in this process is an intellectual one. It requires engagement – brain with body – to learn again who it is and what it wants to do.

Before attempting to convince “swing” voters or Undeclared voters or “soft” Democrats… New Jersey Republicans must first know who they are, what they stand for, and what they would do in power. Only then can they engage in a dialog and adjust their message to sell their beliefs more effectively – that’s sell… more effectively, not scrap. And it really does help to get literate about this and to write it down, as an outline or a platform or whatever you wish to call it, so that it may be referred to and passed along.

As for the more tactile branches of the body – the activists – it is good to keep in mind the advice of Benjamin Franklin to the citizen who wished to know the form of government that we’d got. “A Republic,” he answered, “If you can keep it.” By this Franklin was instructing that citizenship is a daily duty. It does not end with a victorious election but begins there. The body sends a continuous flow of messages to the brain. It does not celebrate and then go dormant. Neither can the activist – or the good citizen.

Why is a journalist on a sexual-identity “power” list?

Some people still subscribe to newspapers in the hope of providing themselves with basic information on the current events of the day.  And once upon a time, newspapers did just that.  Older journalists worked very hard to keep their personal opinions, emotions, feelings, and biases away from their job of reporting the news. 

Not anymore.  Now newspaper reporters publicly celebrate their biases – flaunt them – and, as a result, journalism as a career is on life support. 

Readers today expect reportage to be grossly untrue and biased and they are guided accordingly.  More and more, newspapers bore voters.  Most voters can tell you today how the newspapers will report on each and every debate next year between Donald Trump and whoever the Democrat candidate is.  You could place a bet on it if anyone would take a bet on it but nobody will because everybody knows.  So very predictable.

What happened to intellectual curiosity?  Back during the day before yesterday, a reporter approached a story with an open, interested mind – excited by the prospects of where the story might take it.  Not today.  Now it is “time to make the donuts” – the work of drudgery – a fine cabinetmaker reduced to nailing together crates.  Reporters have everything arranged in advance.  The story is written before they write it.  There are those with the white hats and them with the black – with 95 percent of the story slanted against the designated “baddies” and praising the “goodies” – and 5 percent reserved for a “response” from the “baddies” (which, in the course of a conversation with the reporter, is often turned into the worst bit).  Journalism today is like writing while sleepwalking.  A fiction produced through automatic writing.   

Many reporters – the Star-Ledger’s Jonathan Salant comes to mind – cannot get their brains out of their comfortable suburban surroundings, the cozy press club, the shared prejudices and opinions.  Never meeting another soul who is unlike them, they cannot imagine any way but their own.  A machine stuck at one speed, one function, doing the same thing, grinding on until it burns out. 

Then there are the activists.  These are the so-called journalists who think it cool to show that they are compromised from the start, their minds made up.  The Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran laid in out last year when he wrote:  “Voters will be standing in the booth Tuesday, and our core mission is helping them decide which lever to pull.”  Sounds more like the “core mission” of a political operation than of journalism.

Of course, there still are some genuine journalists out there.  A month before Moran wrote that stunning admission, the Atlantic City Press published an editorial which included these reassuring lines:  “Telling readers how to vote, however, is contrary to the mission of newspapers and other media, which is to extend the public’s experience and perspectives.  Newsgathering organizations give the public eyes, ears and memory beyond the capability of an individual.  

People want them to be reliable and credible.  When the media start making judgments, their audiences wonder if they’re altering their content to support that judgment too.”

Which brings us to Matt Arco of… you guessed it, the Star-Ledger.  Why is Matt Arco number 34 on a list of 100 “LGBT Power” brokers?  Why is that kind of self-defining celebrity necessary for a journalist?  We thought he was covering the news, and here he is a power broker making the news.  What is a journalist doing cheek-by-jowl on a list of politicians, lobbyists, and political operatives?  

And why is he described as a “voice” when he should be a conduit of information, which is the heart and soul of journalism.  Is anyone really looking for another celebrity “voice” shouting to be heard, telling us their feelings, thoughts, opinions – or do we want to be informed about what’s really going on?  The title “political reporter” shouldn’t be meant literally. 

How can a journalist who allows himself to be placed on a celebrity “power” list be taken seriously?  As one of the top named members of a political identity group, how can we expect Matt Arco to fairly and honestly cover stories concerning religious groups with theological traditions that don’t line up with the policy agenda of his political identity group?  Groups such as Biblical Christians, Torah Jews, and adherent Muslims. 

How can Matt Arco be expected to fairly and honestly cover a candidate or  political organization whose positions or platform is not in agreement with the positions and platform of his political identity group – of which he is the 34th most powerful operative in the state?  Having Matt Arco cover the Republican Party is like sending Ann Coulter to cover the Democrats.  It’s not fair or honest.

Will Assembly bill require teaching children about famous alcoholics?

Yesterday, the Trenton Democrats voted to send A-1335 (S-1569) to the floor of the Assembly for a vote (this legislation has already been passed in the Senate).  A-1335 (S-1569) MANDATES that local school boards, paid for by local property taxpayers, adopt a new curriculum that is centered on the accomplishments of individuals based on their disabilities and sexual preferences.  Here’s how the bill’s synopsis reads:

“Requires boards of education to include instruction, and adopt instructional materials, that accurately portray political, economic, and social contributions of persons with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.”

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) people suffering from alcoholism and drug abuse can qualify as disabled.  Here, check it out for yourself:

https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/performance-conduct.html#alcohol 

So, are we to expect, say a class on the arts to focus on John Barrymore’s drinking, rather than on his acting?  Was General (and later President) Ulysses S. Grant distinguished by his military victories – or by the amount of whiskey he could down?

Should the writer and historian James Morris (Jan Morris) be remembered firstly for having undergone sexual reassignment surgery in 1972, or rather for writing the Pax Britannica Trilogy, along with more than 50 other books?  What makes a person important?  The loss of a penis?  Or some of the best travel writing in the English language?  No matter how one feels about trans this or that – the writing is brilliant, and it is the writing that will remain long after the mortal husk is gone.

The New Jersey Legislature is about to require schools to teach that the most important thing about E. O. Wilson is that he was blinded in one eye – rather than his work in myrmecology.  Hey, don’t get us wrong, the story of his blindness is worth telling, and may serve a didactic purpose, but the man is a biologist first and foremost.  He should not be defined by a disability.

Once upon a time a voter could count on the Republican Party and its elected officials to defend local citizen control of education and to oppose the mandates of big government.  Now some Republicans are crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats.  This is disappointing, because while the unified Democrats clearly tell the world who they are, the disunified Republicans communicate that they stand for nothing (as a party) and that there is no clear blue water between them and the Democrats.  Not much of a reason to throw the Dems out, is it?

Well, the good news is that someone has already prepared a curriculum that can easily be adopted by local school districts that want to conform with A-1335 (S-1569).  Sure, it’s puerile and prurient, but the focus suits the bill perfectly.  And hey, it’s even called “Drunk History”, so it’s all good.  Judge for yourself…

Welcome to the future of educational instruction in New Jersey!

Pro-Abortion all his career, McCann has been frightened into claiming he's Pro-Life

It is a testament to the power of ideas.  A recognition that the voter base of the Republican Party -- those loyal souls who come out in primaries -- are solidly conservative on SOCIAL issues, solidly PRO-LIFE.

Despite all the nonsense spouted by the GOP establishment about big tents and new technology it is MESSAGE that decides who self-describe as members of a party and who show up on election day.  And so long as the NJGOP uses the word "Republican" in its title, that message is a NATIONAL one.  It does not flow from 150 West State Street in Trenton, but rather it exists in the national ether -- in the brain impulses of every sentient being with a reaction, one way or the other, to the word "Republican". 

The job of state and local leaders is to find a way to sell it.  You don't get to remake the brand.

A case in point:  John McCann.

The cabal of local operators who were part of the deal that resulted in the McCann  candidacy were out and about last summer telling anyone who would listen that Steve Lonegan was TOO CONSERVATIVE.  In particular, they targeted those pesky social issues, like abortion, which they claimed were "holding us (the NJGOP) back" and preventing them from winning.

Look, the only Republican candidate to win statewide in New Jersey since 1997 was both solidly Pro-Life and Pro-Second Amendment.  Now we're not saying that Chris Christie wanted to be.  We're not saying that he liked it.  What we're saying is that he knew better than to not to be anything but a social conservative.  That is what "Republican" means, dummy.  You can't wash it off.

Argue until you are blue in the face but you are stuck with it.  All a Republican gets when he or she sucks up to the opposition or its allies is their justifiable contempt and the anger of people who would otherwise turnout out for you because they have been, once again, betrayed.  Keep doing what you are doing and you are on a one way course to extinction. 

So the people who brought you John McCann have put their candidate out there for nine months -- since before McCann left the employ of that pro-Sanctuary State darling, the Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County, the hand of hands... Mikey Saudino.  And in all that time, John McCann has preached a message of how "moderate" he was on abortion. 

Oh, he'd tell some crowds that he was "Pro-Choice" but most of the time he'd say things like how he was "personally opposed" to abortion and a "moderate" on "abortion rights".  After all, this is the same guy who predicated his 2002 campaign for Congress against conservatives Scott Garrett and Gerry Cardinale on his view that they were both "too conservative" on social issues to win a General Election.  McCann is the same candidate who called himself an "Arlen Specter Republican" a few years before Specter ended his career as an Obama Democrat.

Now, over the last ten days, voters in the 5th congressional district have been receiving mailers claiming that John McCann is a Pro-Life conservative.  And not only that, McCann now claims to believe that "life begins at conception". 

Yep, it is late in the campaign.  McCann wants to have a shot at winning.  McCann did a poll and it became obvious that not even having the party "line" in over 70% of the district was going to save him.  Social conservatism trumps county party lines.  Needs must.

Sure enough... the light bulb went on and with it the recognition that you need to be a social conservative to have a chance at attracting a great many Republican voters -- whether you are running in the primary or the General Election.  Take a look at these mailers...

Of course, this is John McCann and being who he is, he's not going to play it straight.  In McCann's not-quite-right brain, he probably believes that avoiding the word "Pro-Life" provides him with an out if he should win the primary and face Democrat Josh Gottheimer in November.

No.  It's not going to work that way.

First, McCann is a Republican.  For most people, that makes him Pro-Life whether he is or he isn't.  All he does by squawking about it is to piss-off people who might have voted for him because they are Pro-Life.

If you believe in abortion, a pro-abortion Democrat is always better than a pro-abortion Republican, because a pro-abortion Democrat votes for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker.  End of story.

Second, McCann is now on record as claiming that he believes a human life is ended if it is interfered with at any time from conception onwards.  For a start, he should check with his wife, an OB-GYN doctor in New York City, to see if any of the offices or hospitals she's been affiliated with hand-out the morning after pill.

How does he think he can walk that back? 

Will he tell voters that yes, he believes that human life begins at conception but that he also believes in women's rights to abortion?  That will make him a worse monster than any pro-abortion Democrat because at least they dispute that they are taking a life.  McCann will end up saying that it is human life but that he doesn't mind if it is being exterminated.  That's quite a place to be.

But these are the kinds of conundrums Republicans place themselves in when they refuse to live up to the values and principles of the political party to which they freely affiliate themselves.  Instead of honesty... you get people like John McCann.

Labor must stand up to Murphy to protect job creation

"Once you get to Wall Street, no matter how you got here, you give up your right to say you are a man of the people." (BBC:  The Last Days Of Lehman Brothers)

Does Phil Murphy have any empathy with New Jersey's working class at all?

During the campaign, his professional spinmeisters made much of his college job washing dishes but let's not confuse that with having a perspective that understands the needs and wants of the working class majority of the state he now leads.  Murphy spent decades in board rooms dedicated to increasing profits at the expense of working men and women.  Murphy fully embraced the globalist philosophy that places profits before all else.

Conservatives -- traditional conservatives -- are conservatives of place.  As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's great advisor Arthur E. Morgan wrote, the small community is the foundation of democratic life and the source of civilization.  The preservation of the small community -- whether a town or a neighborhood -- and the families and individuals within it, is the highest duty of public policy.  This stands in stark contrast to the Darwinian view taken by Phil Murphy.

In Murphy's world there are winners and losers -- and somebody must lose so that people like him can grow monstrously rich.  Murphy views government as an agency by which those in power can choose winners and losers.  It's called crony capitalism.  Murphy doesn't see communities, he just sees consumers -- individuals to be categorized and placed into silos -- the better to market to and to control. 

Like most modern Democrats, Phil Murphy elevates social distinctions above economic ones.  Seeking to divide the working class majority, Murphy and the Democrats focus on such things as the color of your skin, or who you sleep with, and they try to convince you that this is more important than having a job or keeping your home out of foreclosure. 

When a police officer is sent into a community to enforce a law made by the Democrat-controlled Legislature -- and someone is shot during the enforcement of that law -- people like Murphy tell you that it is the fault of the blue collar police officer, not the white collar Legislature.  They tell you it is about race, so that working class black people will distrust working class white people.  Getting people with the same economic interests to distrust each other is a trick that has been used to govern many times over.

From his years at Goldman Sachs -- and especially from his time in Hong Kong, at Goldman Sachs Asia -- Phil Murphy understands the uses of cheap, often illegal, labor to drive down costs and drive up profits.  The fact that these practices destroy small communities and cause economic migration means nothing to someone with homes in Germany and Italy, as well as New Jersey.  Phil Murphy is a citizen of the world, not a person of place. 

Once upon a time, there was balance in America.  The Republican Party was the party of business and represented the interests of business at the bargaining table that is the Legislature.  Back then, the Democrat Party represented the interests of Labor.  That day is long gone.  The Democrats do not nominate labor leaders to statewide office in New Jersey -- they nominate Wall Street millionaires and white collar professionals.  With its record of electing Democrats to the United States Senate, both Senators could easily be of blue collar vintage, but decidedly, they are not. 

Apart from a few individual legislators in both parties, the working class does not have an advocate in New Jersey.  No party is going to place the interests of class above those of the fashion statements and virtue signaling of the day.  The pussy hat brigade are largely professional women and the wives of professional men.  Check out the hands of all those "resisters" and you will find few with indications of ever having done honest labor.  Bring back the draft and the ANTIFA crowd would scoot off to Canada, for few could face the controlled menace of a drill instructor.  The "revolution" is an inverted one -- of, by, and for the Elite (and, as Phil Murphy said of Wall Street:  "We are the Elite...").

That's not to say that there isn't a populist Left.  But it gets stepped on and ignored.  Nobody speaks to its needs.  It says "jobs" and the reply is "more condoms."  And if it doesn't go along with the program of "more condoms" it gets ostracized.   

Labor must pick through the remains of both parties to find people for whom their home town or county still means something.  People who want to see their neighbors and community prosper.  People who understand that charity begins at home and that the false narrative of the "global" community is bullshit marketed to people so that they will welcome the slave labor that will take their jobs.  That narrative destroys two small communities -- that of the migrant willing to work at slave wages and of the neighbor who must agree to work for less to compete.

As the Democrat Party starts down the path of Governor Goldman Sachs 2.0, it is incumbent upon Labor to hold this phony to account.  Labor can do it.  Labor has been in worse places before and had to fight every inch to gain a place at the bargaining table.  It lost its place by not paying attention.  It is time then, to pay close attention.

The Cause of Labor is the Hope of the World.

Will Robert Hugin meet conservatives half way?

It's "the-past-as-future" for the neo-Whitmanites who want to make the New Jersey Republican Party their private, personal playground.  Yep, just like the good-old-days of "pass the cigars" and "let the interns beware."  And that was just what the ladies got up to! 

The current mantra coming from some GOP establishment types in New Jersey is that only a "moderate" can win statewide.  This is, of course, simply an opinion and an opinion that ignores the fact that the only Republican who has won statewide in the last twenty years has been Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and opposed to Same-Sex Marriage.  

Besides, in these very partisan times, merely having an "R" next to your name -- leave out supporting Donald Trump or Chris Christie -- is enough to preclude any significant support from voters who self-identify as Pro-Choice on Abortion, Pro-Gun Control, and Pro-LGBT.  If these are your first tier issues, what floats your boat, you are not voting Republican.  Period.

Despite this, there is a full court press to mint Republican candidates at all levels who intentionally suppress key parts of the GOP base.  And the trend has got worse, with the suppression of actual conservative candidates by key players in the neo-Whitman, "My-Party-Too" crowd.  Like true greedy crony capitalists, it's not in them to share.  But in elections that increasingly depend on identifying and turning out anyone who will even consider voting Republican, this is a disastrous trend. 

Of course, squishy candidates are real popular with the dregs of the GOP's Whitman-era glitterati --  cocktail-party liberals and crony capitalists who still want to show that they run the NJGOP -- and who are increasingly uncomfortable in the knowledge that they make up just a thimbleful of actual Republican voters.  Unfortunately for them, most voters are not looking to transfer more wealth and power to the one-percent, while infantilizing various "groups" deemed worthy of protection. 

Working class Republican voters and working class Democrat voters are really not that different.  They care about being able to have the means to life.  They want jobs, the opportunity to start a small business; to be free from the worry of foreclosure; an education system that balances costs with results; a safety net that hasn't all been spent before they need it, and a justice system that looks on them a free citizens and that keeps safe the places where they live, work, and shop. 

The  needs of working people are pretty straight forward.  If it were an ice cream shop it would be plain vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.  Of course, the oligarchs of the Democrat Party can't provide that -- so they advertise a dozen flavors other than vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry -- while the "My-Party-Too" Whitman Republicans have placed out a sign that says, "Closed for business, we've run out of ideas."

Why this is so was the subject of a study conducted by Princeton University.  Take the time to listen to this video.  This is an issue that unites both Left and Right:

Which brings us to Mr. Robert Hugin of the Celgene corporation.  He is the promising candidate for the United States Senate that has the whole GOP establishment buzzing.  They say this erstwhile Marine is the man to beat Bob Menendez.  And a big reason they are so excited about Hugin is his ability to fund his own campaign.

Hugin earns over $20 million a year -- making him one of the best paid bosses in the pharmaceutical industry.  Before joining Celgene, he worked for Wall Street's J.P. Morgan & Company.  Hugin is a longtime member of Chris Christie's fundraising inner-circle, whose allegiance was transferred to Donald Trump after Christie dropped out of the 2016 presidential contest.  Hugin even served as a Trump delegate.  This biography strongly defines the man, making it hard to see how the average Bernie or Hillary voter could ever mark a ballot for him. 

But sure enough, it has emerged that Hugin is conveying to people the idea that he is "a different kind of Republican" and not one of "them" -- as in Pro-Life, et al.

Hey, you donated six figures to Chris Christie and served as a Trump delegate... so do you think you're going to fool a committed Democrat with that Pro-Choice on Abortion line?  You will only drive away thousands upon thousands of voters who want to vote for you, but for whom you will make it so that they can't, in good conscience.

Could Hugin run as the kind of populist who doesn't need cultural conservatives?  Sure, as a Democrat.  Those chocolate and vanilla "kitchen table" issues are grafted onto a cultural worldview that makes you a Trump populist or a Bernie populist.  Neither could have attracted so many voters had they adopted the other's cultural positions. 

In trying to have it all their own way, the "My-Party-Too" crowd might end up destroying the Republican Party in New Jersey.  Ideas matter to most voters and it is ideas that draw people to identify with a political party in the first place.  But in New Jersey, ideas are merely advertising gimmicks for the lobbyists, vendors, and consultants who increasingly run the GOP.  It is something almost unknown to most Republican voters... but too, too easy to demonstrate.  So few don't have Democrat money in their DNA. 

Many GOP leaders make money off Democrats -- or with Democrats.  Lots of money.  While most Republicans just get taxed by Democrats.  That's the great divide.  So where do you stand?  And would you like to know?

Already, conservative libertarian Dr. Murray Sabrin is thinking about another third party run -- like the one in which he almost sunk Christie Whitman.  Perhaps an even stronger candidate will emerge.  Surrendering cultural issues conservative voters to these candidates would not be a good strategy for Mr. Hugin. 

If cultural conservatives, reform conservatives, good-government conservatives, non-insider/crony capitalist conservatives, were to figure out that the fix was in, and that no matter how hard they worked with the GOP establishment they would never get a break, then who knows  -- in these troubled times of Trumpian rebellion and Bernite reaction -- how this could flower?  Would we see its fruit in the low, low turnout 2019 elections?  Would a third-party, seeking that elusive 10 percent, find its way?

Instead of trying to stand-out and apart from the "usual" Republican through the tired and ultimately unconvincing trope of "a different kind of Republican" when it comes to issues like abortion and LGBT rights, Robert Hugin could act boldly to unify Republicans -- the establishment thimbleful and the conservative majority -- by finding a way to meet both half way. 

Yesterday, Senate Democrats blocked an effort to bring the United States into line with most of the nations on earth in preventing abortions after 20 -weeks, the point at which science has shown that an unborn child is sensitive to the pain of being... killed.  Every other country on earth recognizes this fact except North Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and the Netherlands.  Isn't it time we bring our laws into line with science and the rest of the civilized world?

The Senate's vote was on whether to stop the Democrats’ filibuster of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.  This legislation highlights how unborn children feel intense pain when they are killed in abortions. Fifty-one senators (forty-eight Republicans and three Democrats) voted to take the bill up for debate, but 60 votes were required.  Because Republicans don’t have 60 votes in the chamber to overcome the filibuster, Democrats successfully stopped the bill, which came after President Donald Trump indicated he would sign the bill into law.

Hey, you can still support Roe v. Wade and acknowledge the scientific fact that after 20-weeks, a child should not suffer the kind of death that the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn't apply to serial killers, mass-murder terrorists, and rapists who murder children in the commission of a sexual assault.  That, the Court would argue, is "cruel and unusual" for the worse criminals... but for unborn children... are we supposed to look the other way?

So be "Pro-Choice" on abortion.  But support the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act too.  Give conservatives something.

Is Rendo endorsement the first shot in a GOP civil war?

We were thinking about that stupid statement by that fellow we thought we liked, Carlos Rendo, and who we were prepared to forgive for his anti-religious musings and his work as an immigration attorney.  The statement was made yesterday, by Rendo, in an attack on Republican Steve Lonegan, on behalf of John McCann.

Rendo told InsiderNJ that, of the two, McCann was the "only candidate with an actual record of putting taxpayers first."  

It's funny Rendo put it that way, because "Putting Taxpayers First" is the title of the 2007 book written by Steve Lonegan.  In it, Lonegan provides the blueprint for the conservative movement on how to address New Jersey's worst-in-America business climate and poor record of job creation, the state's highest-in-the-nation property taxes, subsidized COAH housing, the public employees union-dominated education system, and the activist judiciary -- among other things.

We can't expect the younger generation to remember what it was like after party liberals like Christie Whitman and Paulie DiGaetano lost Republicans our majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.  Under Democrats McGreevey and Corzine, the Democrats grew government with tax hikes and new regulations -- and always with Republican support.  Conservatives watched dismayed as the GOP provided the votes to end the death penalty for serial killers, child rapists/ murderers, cop-killers, and terrorists.  

While this was happening, John McCann was threatening to run for Congress, telling GOP leaders that Senator Gerry Cardinale and Assemblyman Scott Garrett were "too conservative" for the 5th District.  McCann's candidacies are cyclical.  Like the cicada, he surfaces from the mud about once a decade.  McCann called himself an "Arlen Specter Republican," going left on the issues, mimicking the Democrats' platform on such issues as abortion and gun-control.

Meanwhile, Steve Lonegan was organizing the modern conservative movement in New Jersey.  He led the fight against the Newark arena taxpayer rip-off, fought  state government borrowing without voter approval all the way to the Supreme Court, winning key concessions and transparency.  The Court's decisions in Lonegan I and Lonegan II paved the way for the (then Senator Leonard) Lance Amendment.  Lonegan organized conservatives to sue to stop eminent domain and taxpayer-funded elections.

Lonegan pulled off the unheard of accomplishment of defeating two statewide ballot questions -- stopping government-funded embryonic stem cell research and a sales tax increase.  Lonegan broke the back of the Corzine administration's plans to hike tolls on state roads and he successfully organized conservatives to stop the RGGI fuel tax.  Again, and again, and again, Steve Lonegan was the essential man -- leading the conservative movement forward, providing hope to the GOP in its darkest days.

Steve Lonegan became the glue that held the conservative movement together in New Jersey.  He took over the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and made it the premier chapter in the nation.  His fundraising prowess saw to it that conservative initiatives had resources.  When the GOP opposed same-sex marriage in 2009-10, it was Lonegan who made the calls to ensure they had the funding.

Because of Steve Lonegan, Chris Christie tacked right in his 2009 campaign for Governor, and New Jersey elected -- and re-elected -- a Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment Governor, something the Whitman/DiGaetano wing of the GOP had long held was an impossibility.  Lonegan held seminars, put together conventions, organized demonstrations and rallies -- a flurry of grassroots activity unheard of in the NJGOP.  He nurtured the careers and helped fund the campaigns of younger conservatives like Mike Doherty, Michael Patrick Carroll, and Alison Littell McHose.

Under Steve Lonegan, AFP became the thing that SRM and ARV have most desperately needed in the last few cycles -- a superPAC able to independently hit the Democrats and hold them to account.  Lonegan's relationships with national conservatives ensured that the efforts of groups like the General Majority PAC would not go unchallenged.  

All this ended abruptly when Steve Lonegan departed New Jersey to work on the national scene.  AFP became a shell of its former self.  Activism died overnight.

And the NJGOP, the SRM, the ARV?  Unprecedented losses over and over again.  You have to go back to the period after the Watergate Scandal (do any YR's or CR's even know what that is?) to find a time when New Jersey Republicans held this few seats in the Legislature.  Next up... the culling of the GOP's congressional delegation in New Jersey.

The Republican Party in New Jersey has been studiously ignoring its conservative base for years.  Meanwhile, its once dominant "country club" crowd has gone Democrat and is now fielding candidates from its ranks against GOP incumbents like Jon Bramnick.  In 2001 there were more so-called "wingers" than "country-clubbers" -- 17 years later, the country-club set is kidding itself if it still believes it counts for more than 20 percent of the party's registered voters. Now it is a discussion between populist "Trump" Republicans and their ideological comrades of the more traditional  "Reagan" right.  It's not your party anymore, Ms. Whitman.

Steve Lonegan's return to New Jersey politics could be a great shot-in-the-arm for the NJGOP, for SRM, and for ARV.  Lonegan has the relationships to bring national conservatives into New Jersey to take on groups like the General Majority PAC.  As we speak, a superPAC composed of medical professionals is forming -- the first of many.  

Unfortunately, there is this Rendo endorsement.  Normally, the endorsement of some moe from Hudson County who got elected mayor in Bergen County wouldn't count for much.  But this guy was the establishment's choice for Lt. Governor, so many conservatives are conflating his move with the establishment's wishes.  This misunderstanding could lead to conflict, which could become a very debilitating civil war at a time when resources are thin and the congressional delegation is at stake.

Right now, New Jersey Congressional Republicans are not speaking with a single voice on any issue and they are certainly not following the President in any collective fashion.  There are a lot of GOP messages out there.  Taking back CD05 is going to be a formidable challenge, with holding CD02 perhaps more difficult.  Congressman Frelinghuysen has been taking a terrific beating for months and faces a very attractive opponent.   If Josh Gottheimer doesn't wake up with a sore ass every morning, if Jeff Van Drew isn't sledge-hammered regularly, if Rodney doesn't learn how to punch back... the Democrats with all their money and all their superPACs are going to move on new opportunities.  It is time to stop them.

Does anyone really believe that a candidate like John McCann can even piss straight?  For years he's lived in the moist dirt of county patronage politics, sucking up what the boys -- Republicans and Democrats -- feed him.  McCann is where he is because he threatened to run in a primary against conservative Republican incumbent Gerry Cardinale.  That's right, this asswipe thought it was a good idea to primary Senator Cardinale and make SRM spend money it didn't have, so there would be less to spend fighting the Democrats in November.

Oh, and at the time, McCann was the patronage employee of Democrat Sheriff Michael Saudino, who would have had to sign-off on his antics.  No conflict there, right?

At the time, Bergen County GOP boss Paulie DiGaetano was messing in a divisive primary of his own (one he couldn't raise money for) and dissuaded McCann by promising him the Congressional nomination.  Paulie got crushed in the primary and here we are now.  McCann thinks the nomination is his by gift from a party boss who couldn't raise the money required to fund his own legislative race!  Does anybody think Josh Gottheimer is going to take this clown seriously?  Josh will be able to campaign fulltime in CD11.

Steve Lonegan's presence on the ballot has given new life to the state's conservative movement.  It has energized the base, made them happy, and caused them to think well of the GOP.  Carlos Rendo's stupid move has jeopardized that and the conspiracy theories are already circulating.

John McCann can't raise the money, can't stir the troops, won't rally the base, and will only provide Josh Gottheimer with the leisure to make mischief in another district.  But maybe that's all beside the point.  Perhaps his loyalties are still with Democrat Saudino?  As has been suggested, perhaps he is one of them?

Buck up GOP! Lessons from the Battle of Agincourt

The Battle of Agincourt was a battle of the Hundred Years' War that resulted in an English victory.   The battle took place on Saint Crispin's Day, October 25, 1415.

The English were commanded by their King, Henry V.  The French were under the command of Charles d'Albret, the Constable of France.

Though outnumbered 5 to 1 by the French, the English inflicted as many as 10,000 casualties on the French, with the loss of just 600 of their own men.  The French army was routed and destroyed.

The lesson is in choosing the ground on which to fight a battle.  King Henry picked his ground carefully and made the French fight him on his chosen ground.  The field of battle was condensed into a narrow ground "hemmed in by dense woodland."  The French also had to walk through a great deal of mud to reach the English.  In the end, the French couldn't exploit their superior resources to overwhelm the English.

In 1599, William Shakespeare immortalized the battle in one of his historical plays, Henry V.  The clip below is from a 1989 movie of the same name, based on play:

Democrat Cory Booker says Art makes people unhappy

United States Senator Cory Booker, the great celebrity-politician himself -- the man who tweets more than Donald Trump and who counts his accomplishments in Facebook "friends" -- is proposing legislation to combat "dangerous" and "evil" art.  Using the argument that if it makes some people unhappy, then government has a duty to destroy it, the "honorable" is channeling Fahrenheit 451...

Senator Booker, a Democrat, has suggested removing every piece of art connected with the Democrat Party from the period before 1863.  Prior to 1863, slavery was legal in America and the Democrat Party was the slavery establishment's political face.  Indeed, the Democrat Party's platforms supported slavery --while EVERY Republican Party platform explicitly OPPOSED slavery.  So all the Democrats must come down!

Why?  Because we cannot cope with our past and we mustn't have a remembrance of it.  People's feelings could get hurt...

While we are not big fans of the Democrat Party, we do respect art, and we are concerned with government-sponsored pograms aimed at cleansing public spaces of art that has been labeled "degenerate" or "evil" or "inappropriate" or "politically incorrect."  We agree with Diego Rivera, who argued that art is never inappropriate.

Senator Booker's legislation to destroy works of art is particularly chilling, because it provides government sponsorship for what had heretofore been acts of violence by private individuals or mobs -- rather in the way that the Russian Tsars once encouraged pograms against their Jewish minorities.  It also creates a basis on which to further the persecution of other forms of "objectionable" art -- and not just the plastic arts, but literature, music, and theatre. 

Why not burn every copy of books that glorify the Confederacy?  Lee's Lieutenants, by Douglas Southall Freeman, would be a great place for Senator Booker to begin his campaign of book burning... err, pardon us... social cleansing.  From there, he could move on to Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell.  The need of burning is apparent to politicians like Senator Booker and the books to burn will offer endless employment.

Has McCann been put-up by Democrat Gottheimer?

Liberal Democrats are working overtime this year to damage Republicans' congressional chances next year.   In the 11th congressional district, liberals have found an out-of-district unaffiliated voter to become a Republican in order to challenge incumbent Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen in the GOP primary next June.  According to media reports, lawyer Martin Hewitt is running as a "moderate Republican" in order to challenge the national Republican Party platform.

The same thing looks to be happening in the neighboring 5th congressional district, where lawyer John McCann is also running as a "moderate Republican" in the tradition of Democrat turned Republican turned Democrat Arlen Specter.  McCann is a political patronage holding Republican who is employed by the elected Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County.

It was McCann who helped deliver Bergen County into the hands of the Democrat Party machine, splitting the party and helping to defeat the Republican County Executive there.  After that defeat, McCann responded to the Republican County Executive's claims that it was "traitors" within the GOP who caused Republicans to lose power in Bergen County.

John McCann's candidacy seems designed for failure.  Not only has he dropped out of the last two races he got into, but his recent problems with tax liens and such make him a very dubious choice.  This has led to speculation that he is the favored candidate of the Democrats and the candidate who incumbent liberal Democrat Josh Gottheimer would prefer to face in November 2018.

The Democrats have a real interest in controlling who runs against Congressman Gottheimer next year.  The liberal Democrat's district was carried by President Donald Trump and is decidedly Republican as well as a top target of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).  The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has acknowledged that it will be a challenge to keep Congressman Gottheimer's seat in their column in 2018. 

So it makes all the sense in the world for the Democrats to help "engineer" who becomes Gottheimer's Republican challenger.  McCann, who is actually on the Democrats' payroll, appears to be their perfect choice.

This will be a drama worth watching.  So, as always, stay tuned...

Who are the Red-Shirts?

NJ 101.5 talk radio host Bill Spadea began using the term "Red-Shirt" in association with his campaigns for public office.  Later, he labeled members of his "Building a New Majority" movement as "Red Shirt volunteers."

It will be remembered that Spadea's ideology was on full display when -- in the 1990's, he ran the College Republican National Committee.  In 1995, numerous media outlets reported that the Republican National Committee cut off all funding to Spadea's group after it paid for advertisements that attacked Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and urged the formation of a far-right alternative to the Republican Party.

Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour has written a letter to College Republican National Committee Chairman Bill Spadea, stating that "because of the recent and continuing irresponsible conduct" of the CRNC, "under your leadership, the RNC will cease contributing to your efforts."

"The conduct referred to has been the subject of repeated discussions between our organizations," said Mr. Barbour, ". . . yet you have chosen to continue your irresponsible activities."  (The Washington Times, January 31, 1995) 

RNC Chairman Haley Barbour recently informed the college group that he was cutting off funds, including rent and salaries, and rerouting phone calls to the national party's office because an article in the magazine urged formation of a third party.  

Tense relations between the two groups stem from Spadea's extreme conservative views. RNC members feel he represents only a small, extreme faction, but Spadea says he has national support.  

''What I'm doing is publishing ideas that are raging throughout the party already,'' Spadea said in an interview from his new office in Vienna, Va.  The December issue of the magazine - in addition to advocating creation of a third party with political views to the right of the Republican Party - also contained an advertisement attacking Republican presidents Reagan and Bush.  

The RNC provided 60 percent of the group's $120,000 budget for 1994, but Spadea said he no longer wants that money. (Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 5, 1995)

So from where in American history does the term "Red Shirt" come?  Wikipedia provides this information:

The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were white supremacist[1][2] paramilitary groups that were active in the late 19th century after the end of the Reconstruction era of the United States. They first appeared in Mississippi in 1875, when Democratic Party private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both white and freedmen. Similar groups in the Carolinas also adopted red shirts.

Among the most prominent Red Shirts were the supporters of Democratic Party candidate Wade Hampton during the campaigns for the South Carolina gubernatorial elections of 1876 and 1878.[3] The Red Shirts were one of several paramilitary organizations, such as the White League in Louisiana, arising in the continuing efforts of white Democrats to regain political power in the South in the 1870s. These groups acted as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."[4]

While sometimes engaging in violence, the Red Shirts, the White League and similar groups in the late nineteenth century worked openly and were better organized than the secret vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. They had one goal: the restoration of the Democrats to power by getting rid of Republicans, which usually meant repressing civil rights and voting by freedmen.[5] During the 1876, 1898 and 1900 campaigns in North Carolina, the Red Shirts played prominent roles in intimidating non-Democratic voters.

According to E. Merton Coulter in The South During Reconstruction, the red shirt was adopted in Mississippi in 1875 by "southern brigadiers" opposed to black Republicans. The Red Shirts disrupted Republican rallies, intimidated or assassinated black leaders, and discouraged black voting at the polls.

The red shirt in South Carolina appeared in Charleston on August 25, 1876, during a Democratic torchlight parade. It was to mock the waving of the bloody shirt speech by Senator Oliver Morton in the Senate that was meant to bolster support for the Republicans' Reconstruction policies in South Carolina. The red shirt symbolism quickly spread. The accused in the Hamburg Massacre wore red shirts as they marched on September 5 to their arraignment in Aiken, South Carolina. Martin Gary, the organizer of the Democratic campaign in 1876, mandated that his supporters were to wear red shirts at all party rallies and functions.

Wearing a red shirt became a source of pride and resistance to Republican rule for white Democrats in South Carolina. Women sewed red flannel shirts and made other garments of red. It also became fashionable for women to wear red ribbons in their hair or about their waists. For young men, a red shirt was viewed as compensation for their inability to have contributed to the Southern cause because of their age.[6]

So now you know the rest of the story.

Erickson: The Tea Party is Dead.

Erick Erickson is an author, former editor of Red State, a radio talk show host, and the editor of The Resurgent.

On February 19, 2009, CNBC editor Rick Santelli, stood on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and went on a tirade against the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, which bailed out individuals who had (mostly) knowingly entered terrible mortgages and could not pay them off. Santelli was so outraged he predicted a “Chicago Tea Party” would rise up.

His statement went viral within conservative media. Played over and over on talk radio and reposted on conservative websites, activists who already felt alienated by a Republican Party that had drifted toward corporatism and away from conservatism decided to mobilize. Local talk radio hosts around the country organized tea party protests on tax day. “Taxed Enough Already” signs sprouted up across conservative areas.

Those tea party groups organized and the Washington conservative apparatus stepped in to try to bring some focus, order, and assistance. Donors stepped up and helped fund other groups. Because of Citizens United, small dollar donors suddenly found themselves able to combine resources without a bunch of lawyers and compete against the big guys. Organized tea party groups sprang up, national tea party coalitions sprang up, other groups rose, and the C-Team and D-List celebrity consultants of the right decided to cash in.

Tea party activists were mad at both Republicans and Democrats. They were mad at Democrats for Obamacare and big government and keeping all their promises. They were mad at Republicans for TARP, the General Motors bail out, and breaking all their promises. Over the course of 2009, tea party activists became more and more organized and by 2010 decided to challenge long time Republicans they felt had broken promises while challenging Democrats as well in open seats.

The media portrayed them as racists. They were derisively called “tea baggers” by reporters and left-wing pundits. Republicans really did not know what to make of them. Democrats considered them a hate group. During the 2009 August recess, as Democrats sought to hide from voters, tea party activists showed up at townhall meetings and began embarrassing congressmen by proving these citizens actually knew what they were talking about. Union activists showed up to disrupt the recesses. While the media blamed tea partiers for violence, all but a handful of arrests made at the time were of union activists. Being beset by all sides fostered a lot of unity and solidarity. But then, after the 2010 election, the activists expected the GOP to actually use the power of the purse to hold the President accountable. It did not happen. In the minds of the activists, goal posts were moved by Republican leaders who’d promised action. Excuses were made. The activists got even angrier.

Tea Party activists learned, in the process, what pro-life activists had long known. Many Republicans would tell them they supported their cause, but behind the scenes would mock the tea party activists as hicks and rubes. Their checks were appreciated, but their opinions were not. Pro-life activists had long gotten used to this, but still pushed and cajoled and tried to work from within and without to incrementally advance their agenda. The anger built. Activists began to suspect Republican leaders had no willingness to act and Republican leaders concluded the activists did not understand how the system worked.

As the anger grew within the tea party activists, something vital to their cause never did — discernment. Some activists decided they could make a quick buck. Some consultants learned quickly they could profit off scamPACs and take advantage of tea party activists. The activists could never discern the good from the bad. Sometimes it was because of friendships, but not all the time. It started to become a real problem though and when some began calling out the con-artists and charlatans, they were branded as too Washington friendly. The grassroots tea party activists grew more cynical and distrustful.

The national tea party groups started fighting internally and with each other. The local groups felt like the national groups were of no help. That distrust, over the next few years, would poison the well. With a lack of trust in any group from Washington, no matter the bona fides of the organization, and with a serious lack of discernment, tea party activists finally took a go-it-alone approach in recruitment. They began finding the most socially maladjusted candidates to run for office — people who showed up at all the rallies and who, frankly, had been the volunteers most candidates left in the back of the office putting stamps on envelopes. Now, suddenly, they were the candidates because they had put in the sweat equity and were true believers. In still other cases, candidates sprang up, bought tables at tea party events, threw red meat to the crowd, and got endorsements without ever really believing what they were saying.

Considerations of electability were set aside because these were the people the local activists could trust. When national groups stepped forward, whose core competencies were fielding grassroots conservatives candidates, the tea party activists chose to ignore their advice. Consequently, multiple true-believer conservatives started entering primaries against a conservative who could win and an establishment candidate. The true-believers attacked the conservative who could win as a poseur standing between the tea party and the establishment.

The damage became immense as the Republican establishment struck back. Groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund and Club For Growth were getting blamed for awful candidates running for office who they not only did not fund, but never actually supported and actively tried to dissuade from running.

As this confluence of malevolence, incompetence, and distrust built energy, the tea party began to fracture. Many of its members decided the only way to win was to adopt the tactics of the left.

Unfortunately, they defined those tactics as behaving like thugs and jackasses. The left won, they thought, by being nasty. So they would be nasty too. The face of grassroots conservatism became a face of anger.

When conservatives stepped forward to promote the idea of the happy warrior, the angry activists accused them of surrender and compromise. Eventually, conservatives began stepping back and the angry grew more suspicious of anyone and everyone within a few degrees of Washington, D.C. All the while, the ever more corporatist Republican establishment played on and off these divisions, smearing legitimate conservative organizations as profiteers while continually breaking promises. 

When Jeb Bush entered the Presidential race, the angry and suspicious became the angry and paranoid. They rallied to Donald Trump, not so much because they agreed with him, but because they were desperate. They had become convinced there was no hope, 2016 could mean the end of America, and they must take drastic measures to turn the tide. Drastic measures meant Trump. The conservatives, like Paul, Rubio and Cruz, could not be trusted because they were of Washington. That they had opposed Washington to varying degrees made no difference. The angry and paranoid concluded they were infected by establishmentarianism.

This all finally came to a head on Tuesday night. The angry and paranoid put forward Kelli Ward in Arizona, who believed in chem trails, and Carlos Beruff in Florida. Both reflected the bleak black hearts of the remains of a movement no longer driven by shared believe in limited government and instead driven by crazy town. Both were defeated and deservedly so. A tea party movement that stopped listening to sound advice and turned inward and tribal needed to lose.

After Trump’s loss in November, the angry-paranoid remnant of the tea party movement will not go away. It will still fester and troll. But those who developed the discernment to realize our ways are not the left’s ways and we do not have to proceed as they proceed will be the ones to help pick up the pieces. The others will, for the most part, be ignored.

The tea party began through common cause and it died because too many of its members failed at discernment and, as a result, were betrayed from within and from without only then to grow too angry for anyone to ever want to join their cause except the fringe. One silver lining of the movement was that it found a Republican Party of old white men and left it with younger, more diverse officials. The old white men did not back Allen West, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tim Scott, and others. But the tea party movement did in its early days. Because of the tea party, for the first time since the Civil War, the congressional district wherein Fort Sumter resides had a black congressman and an Indian-American Governor. That congressman is now South Carolina’s Senator and that Governor may be a future Presidential contender. The group portrayed as racist by the media in 2009 and 2010 broadened the color spectrum of the GOP. That is worth remembering.

The time has come for facts. Not rhetoric.

Here is a question for our friends over at AFP and SaveJersey and the Reason Foundation:  How is debt service a part of road construction?  

Debt service isn't caused by the workers, contractors, or engineers who actually build the roads and bridges that we depend on.  Debt service is caused by the political class of both parties. 

Correct us if we are wrong, but wasn't it a Republican-controlled Legislature that in the 1990's uncapped the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) so that spending could spiral out of control?  And then didn't successive administrations extend the life of the debt so they could borrow and spend more?  Didn't they spend more and more while failing to raise the gas tax to pay for it?

Didn't they place us in the position we are in today, where it will take all of the 14 1/2 cents per gallon of gas that we currently pay to fund the TTF and the first 10 1/2 cents of any gas tax increase just to pay the interest on that debt our politicians ran up, year after year? 

It pains us to see lawyer/ politicians like a certain GOP Assemblyman and lobbyist/ politicians like a certain GOP Senator blame blue-collar workers for the high cost of transportation construction and then make as part of that denunciation the high cost of paying interest on the debt that they ran up.  Especially as their choice would be to run up that debt -- and those interest payments -- even further.

Do we really need to go through a very painful re-examination of who did what over the last two decades to put the TTF in the position it is in?  Does anyone really believe that the GOP will come out unscathed once the blame has been apportioned?  Let's depart from the Star-Wars meme for once and paraphrase Shakespeare, who reminds us that no cause, be it ever unspotted, has for it an army of all unspotted men.

Lacking any religious belief worthy of the name, some of the partisans in the TTF battle have imbued in it the stuff of a religious war.  Heretics are called pigs, with some adherents calling for their death.  The salivating gotchas and smell of overworked snark all shields the fact that this is a rather pedestrian debate over a means to an end. 

Does anyone believe that we don't need roads and bridges?  Does anyone not believe in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the universal law of decay -- that everything ultimately falls apart and disintegrates over time?  Does anyone dispute that material things are not eternal?

So if we believe these things, then the question becomes how to pay for them.  That is a question of the most mundane sort. 

And yet it is with a religious fervor that SaveJersey would like to claim that the Reason Foundation is infallible, that its pronouncements are "confirmed." This on a day when any person paying attention to the Senate Budget Committee hearing would have seen the Reason Foundation embarrass itself by attempting to compare a dirt road in Texas to a highway in New Jersey. 

If how we pay for roads and bridges has now become as religious a divide as transubstantiation, facts will not matter.  It will all come down to belief and to which priest or priestess you follow.  If, however, rational science still plays a role, we suggest bringing together those researchers from the Reason Foundation, with those from Rutgers University and elsewhere, to have them present their methods, discuss their differences, and using rational science, come to some useful conclusion -- more useful than a mere rhetorical device in some bizarre new liturgy. 

Stuart Stevens is what's wrong with politics

Stuart Stevens has grown very fat off the system.  Year after year, campaign upon campaign, he's gotten rich off the Republican Party as one of the most inside of insider political consultants to the Washington, DC party bosses.  Stuart always gets his cut of whatever is going down.

Usually everything goes his way.  Some tame, docile, member of the GOP political establishment get's nominated and Stuart makes a bundle.  The candidate loses of course -- but the grease machine of corporate cronyism, lobbyists, wads of money, and consultants like Stuart, it keeps going on and on.  Winning and losing matters less than it did because not only does Stuart have corporate clients who are fully participating members of the grease machine, but he has foreign clients too.

Stuart Stevens ran Republican Mitt Romney's lackluster campaign for President four years ago.  Romney spent a lot of money but lost to a bigger insider, President Barack Obama.  This year finds Stuart upset because he doesn't have a seat at the table and isn't getting his cut.  The candidacies of anti-establishment outsiders like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have completely undone Stuart, who is now threatening to help the campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton by getting Republicans to vote for a throw-away third-party candidate.

Stuart Stevens is having a hissy fit because the citizens are refusing to do as they are told.  Democracy doesn't matter to Stuart, getting paid matters, and Stuart is willing to take a dump in the picnic basket if he doesn't get his own way.  More than a few establishment Republicans are applauding Stuart, not thinking about what would happen if we all adopted this attitude. Think of all the unmitigated bear shat you serve up as candidates and think of all the times we have dutifully supported them "for the good of the party"  -- and you don't even pay us like you do Stuart.

Stuart Stevens claims that he's betraying his party because he doesn't agree with what someone like Donald Trump "stands for," that he doesn't like Trump's "tone."  It's rather amusing, coming from someone who has worked for the political operations of foreign thugs.  One such thug, the former President of Albania, actually had his "special forces" shoot protesters at a rally.

That's right, some political consulting businesses are no longer American enterprises but instead work for the interests of foreign potentates wherever there is lots of money to be made. Take Stuart Stevens' client Sali Berisha, the former President of Albania.  This guy is a real piece of work, as Wikipedia reports:

Sali Berisha was elected President on 9 April 1992... Berisha introduced Islam to the Albanian political scene, pursued re-Islamisation of the country to reverse decades of anti-religious policy under Communism. Non-Governmental Organisations from Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Muslim world were invited in to build mosques and schools and provide other aid, and introduce Wahhabi or Salafi Islam to Albania.

...The collapse of the Ponzi schemes towards the end of 1996, into which it is alleged that Albanians invested $1 billion worth of life savings from 1994, recapped the crisis. The schemes failed, one by one, from December 1996, and demonstrators took to the streets accusing the government of having stolen the money. Those demonstrations were then taken over by the opposition.

During the first ten days of March, the situation deteriorated, culminating in the desertion of large numbers of police and military, leaving their arsenals unlocked. These were promptly looted, mostly by militias and some criminal gangs, and for a time it looked like civil war would erupt between the government and rebels. Although the Prime Minister resigned immediately, Berisha refused opposition demands to step down, claiming he had to ensure continuity, and UN and European Multinational Forces were required to step in and take the situation under control. After their intervention in Albania, early elections were held in June 1997, leading to the victory of a socialist-led coalition of parties. On 24 July 1997, a month after the DP lost the 1997 elections to the left coalition, Berisha stepped down as President...

On 3 July 2005, Sali Berisha was able to lead a coalition of five right center parties into the 2005 parliamentary elections, which eventually won a majority of 74 MPs from a total of 140. He was appointed Prime Minister of Albania on 8 September 2005...

The 2009 elections were flawed and have been called as such by the socialist opposition, who have asked for a recount of the ballots. Berisha refused any recount of the votes... The political crisis between government and opposition worsened over time, with the Socialists abandoning parliamentary debates for months and staging hunger strikes to ask for internal and international support. The EU attempted a conciliation, which failed. The ongoing political crisis was one of the reasons for the EU's refusal to grant Albania official candidate status in late 2010.

On 21 January 2011, clashes broke out between police and protesters in an anti-government rally in front of the Government building in Tirana. Four people were shot dead from government special forces. The EU issued a statement to Albanian politicians, warning both sides to refrain from violence, while Berisha defined the protests and the subsequent charges by judges upon policemen as stages of an attempted coup against him - consequently using this to his advantage to further attempt to consolidate his grip on the state institutions. He accused the then President of having been part of the coup after the relations had soured between the two and he embraced his perceived victim status to install his own 'yes man' in the office.

...After his party's defeat in the 2013 parliamentary election, Berisha resigned as party leader, but he remained in parliament.

Another foreign politician who Stuart Stevens worked for is Joseph Kabila, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since January 2001.  He became President after his father, the dictator Laurent Kabila, was assassinated by his bodyguards.  The Kabila family has a long association with such memorable figures as Che Guevara, who worked with the elder Kabila in a 1965 coup attempt.  As a youth leader for Patrice Lumumba, the elder Kabila was present for the orgy of rape and murder that followed.

The younger Kabila (Stuart's client) received his military training in China at the Peoples Liberation Army National Defense University, in Beijing.  He became the commander of the "infamous" army of children -- taken from their families and conscripted -- known as the kadogos.  Up to 10,000 children, some as young as seven years old, were abused in this way.     The International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague has condemned the use of children in combat, calling it a violation of human rights as well as a war crime.

One of Kabila's first acts as president was to round up 135 people -- including 4 children -- and try them for the assassination of his father.  Dozens were executed and others faced torture and abuse.  President Kabila stood for election in December 2011.  We'll let Wikipedia take it from here: 

After the results were announced on 9 December, there was violent unrest in Kinshasa and Mbuji-Mayi, where official tallies showed that a strong majority had voted for the opposition candidate Etienne Tshisekedi.  Official observers from the Carter Center reported that returns from almost 2,000 polling stations in areas where support for Tshisekedi was strong had been lost and not included in the official results. They described the election as lacking credibility.  On 20 December, Kabila was sworn in for a second term, promising to invest in infrastructure and public services. However, Tshisekedi maintained that the result of the election was illegitimate and said that he intended also to "swear himself in" as president.

In January 2012, Catholic Bishops in DR Congo also condemned the elections, complaining of "treachery, lies and terror", and calling on the election commission to correct "serious errors".

On 19 January 2015 protests led by students at the University of Kinshasa broke out. The protests began following the announcement of a proposed law that would allow Kabila to remain in power until a national census can be conducted (elections had been planned for 2016).  By Wednesday 21 January clashes between police and protesters had claimed at least 42 lives (although the government claimed only 15 people had been killed). 

How after working for these monsters, after pocketing their bloody money, how does Stuart Stevens call a Republican like Donald Trump a "thug"?  It's a little ridiculous, isn't it?

The GOP donor class vs. working-class Republicans

Two stories from this month's The Week illustrate the battle brewing within the Republican Party between its numerically tiny donor class and the much larger voting block for whom good jobs and traditional values matter.  The battle has its roots in the 1980 presidential election when the GOP, with a ticket led by Ronald Reagan, made a deal to get the votes of social conservatives and the working class (those Reagan Democrats we heard so much about).  The deal went like this:  Give us your votes and we will maintain the traditional values of society and work that make for a genuine safety net. 

Now it's a generation later and the rich who fund the GOP have never had it so good.  But instead of keeping their deal, they used their new profits to undermine traditional values -- supporting groups like Planned Parenthood and underwriting campaigns to overturn traditional marriage.  Economically, they have lied and lied again about doing anything on illegal immigration, because it helps to force down the price of labor and they want cheap labor.  They don't mind that the family wage has been replaced by the two-income necessity.  They look on American workers as a commodity -- not as citizens who have a share in the governance of the nation.  They shout them down with campaign cash, while exporting their jobs overseas -- screwing the very people they count on to wear a uniform and defend them, just to make a fast buck.

To add insult to these injuries, many Chamber of Commerce Republicans have made the ultimate fashion statement and have crossed over to the Democrats, whose donor class is now at least as rich and insulated as the GOP's.   Social conservatives and the working class are beginning to understand that they got screwed on the deal.  What's next is anyone's guess, but don't be surprised if their opposition to things like a millionaires' tax turns to support -- and why would they support a gas tax hike on commuting workers just to please a Chamber of Commerce that consistently screws them?

By-the-way, is there a Republican politician anywhere in America who can hope to win an election without support from social conservatives and the working class?  Without the muscles of this electorate, the GOP -- for all its money -- really is just a numerically weak and tiny group. 

We spoke with a conservative activist who made this prediction:  "Over the next few years, every state party is going to have a fight between its rich, wannabe cosmopolitan Whigs and the blue-collar traditionalists who count for a big hunk of the Republican Party's electoral base.  It will come down to how you take your coffee.  The always fashion-conscious Whigs hang at expensive coffee houses and some have even adopted the cult of the coffee enema.  The traditionalists, we like average joe and we'll continue to sip ours, thank you very much." 

Both columns are the work of journalist Michael Brendan Doherty of the U.S. edition of The Week news magazine.  So here is his take on the showdown brewing between the patricians and the plebs:

The conservative movement has a lot of ideas for improving the life of a typical coke-sniffer in Westport, Connecticut. Let's call that man Jeffrey.

The movement wants to lower Jeffrey's capital gains taxes. It also wants to lower corporate taxation, which intersects with his interests at several points. It wants to free up dollars marked for Social Security so they can be handed, temporarily, to Jeffrey's fund-manager in-law, who works in nearby Darien. The movement has sometimes proposed giving Jeffrey a voucher to offset some of the cost of sending his daughter to school at Simon's Rock. If his household income falls below $400,000, Marco Rubio would give him a generous tax credit for each of his offspring. The movement also constantly hectors universities and media outlets to consider ideological diversity. Jeffrey reads these agitations and thinks of his libertarian-leaning daughter.

And, if Jeffrey gives some money to conservative causes, figures in the movement will at least pretend to cheerfully listen to him as he says that the problem with Republicans is all these religious wackos and their pro-life nonsense. That stuff bothers his daughter. Privately, many of them would like to take Jeffrey's advice.

The conservative movement has next to zero ideas for improving the life of the typical opioid dependent who lives in Garbutt, New York, outside of Rochester. Let's call him Mike.

Maybe they will make a child tax credit refundable against payroll taxes for Mike. He could get a voucher for a private school, but there aren't many around and he can't make up the difference in tuition costs anyway. In truth, the conservative movement has more ideas for making Mike's life more desperate, like cutting off the Social Security Disability check he's been shamefacedly receiving. It's fibromyalgia fraud, probably. Movement spokesmen might consent to a relaxation of laws against gambling near Mike's congressional district, so that Mike can get a job dealing at a blackjack table. More likely Mike ends up on the wrong side of the table, losing a portion of the SSD check to Sheldon Adelson. Finally, the movement's favorite presidential candidate would like to put American armed forces ahead of a Sunni army outside of Homs, Syria, to fight Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, and al Nusra simultaneously. Russia too, if they don't respect a no-fly zone. Mike's daughter will be among the first round of American women to get a draft card. Mike reads this news and thinks, "Your momma wears combat boots" used to be an insult.

If the conservative movement has any advice for Mike, it's to move out of Garbutt and maybe "learn computers." Any investments he made in himself previously are for naught. People rooted in their hometowns? That sentimentalism is for effete readers of Edmund Burke. Join the hyper-mobile world.

Continue reading:  http://theweek.com/articles/603701/how-conservative-elites-disdain-workingclass-republicans

And for the second column:

I recently suggested that the Republican Party, and the conservative movement, offer next to nothing to working-class Trump supporters. There are no obvious conservative policies that will generate the sort of growth needed to raise the standard of living for these working-class voters. Instead, the GOP's Powers That Be make a great show of obedience and deference to the center-right donor class, even when that donor class' preferred policies — endless war, unlimited immigration, and slashing tax burdens on the wealthy — have almost no relation to conservative ideas or even popular opinion.

Continue reading:  http://theweek.com/articles/605312/conservatives-have-failed-donald-trumps-supporters

The dishonest attacks on Congressman Garrett

Guest Columnist:  V. Rubashov

The reason America's politicians are so dishonest is because establishment opinion DEMANDS that they be dishonest.  Look at what happened to Congressman Scott Garrett when he raised the question as to why a party that opposes same-sex marriage actively recruits candidates who support same-sex marriage.  You can read for yourself here the official position of the Republican Party of the United States of America:

"Congressional Republicans took the lead in enacting the Defense of Marriage Act, affirming the right of States and the federal government not to recognize same-sex relationships licensed in other jurisdictions. The current Administration's open defiance of this constitutional principle--in its handling of immigration cases, in federal personnel benefits, in allowing a same-sex marriage at a military base, and in refusing to defend DOMA in the courts--makes a mockery of the President's inaugural oath. We commend the United States House of Representatives and State Attorneys General who have defended these laws when they have been attacked in the courts. We reaffirm our support for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. We applaud the citizens of the majority of States which have enshrined in their constitutions the traditional concept of marriage, and we support the campaigns underway in several other States to do so."

2012 Republican Party Platform , Aug 27, 2012

As we can see, it wasn't really out of line for an inquiring mind to ask why a political party that adopted the position above would be activity recruiting candidates who opposed that position.  The Defense of Marriage Act, around which the Republican Party organized its position was passed in the United States House of Representatives with 342 members of congress -- 224 Republicans and 118 Democrats -- voting yes.  Only 65 Democrats and 1 Republican voted against it.  In the Senate it passed with the support of 84 Senators.  32 Democrats joined every Republican in voting for it.  Only 14 Democrats opposed it.  Bernie Sanders, then an Independent Socialist member of Congress voted against the Defense of Marriage Act.  President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, proudly signed it into law.

First Lady Hillary Clinton stood by her man.  A few years later, when she was an elected official herself, the beautifully coiffed United States Senator from New York took an unmistakably conservative position on same-sex marriage.

"I believe marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman. I have had occasion in my life to defend marriage, to stand up for marriage, to believe in the hard work and challenge of marriage.

We wonder which Clinton speechwriter wrote those words?  Was it the one who is now running for Congress against Scott Garrett?  The one filling his campaign coffers with money from what Vermont's Senator Bernie Sanders calls "corrupt Wall Street operators"?

If you are a supporter of this Clinton speechwriter or of Clinton for President don't think that you are going to get away with criticizing Congressman Scott Garrett for holding the same position you held until you collected millions in contributions from pro-LGBT corporations and lobbyists who commissioned  polling to show that you could safely execute a flip-flop on the issue.  That's not being a statesman.  That's just allowing yourself to be bribed.  Think Steve Sweeney:  New Jersey's Senate President, south Jersey political machine apparatchik, sometime lobbyist for the Ironworkers Union (also known as "the church burners"), and flip-flopper extraordinaire -- when the price is right.

The ONLY people who have the intellectual honesty to criticize Congressman Garrett are those who support the United States Senator from the great State of Vermont, the former Mayor of Burlington and Chairman of the Liberty Union Party, Bernie Sanders.  THEY have the standing to criticize Congressman Garrett -- not the imperial Clintons or their paid mouthpiece.

The hypocrisy of those who support the imperial Clintons and their speechwriter is beginning to show signs of wear.  Supporters of the Clinton speechwriter recently went on line to criticize Congressman Garrett's attempt to make nice to the LGBT community.  One such creature claimed to be a college professor and advanced an argument both illogical and illiberal.  He says that because Garrett holds today the same view that Bill and Hillary and Barack and most elected Democrats held yesterday, he has no right to even hold office and should resign immediately and not run again.  Who would want to be in his class?  You know this so-called "educator" would likely fail you if you disagreed with him, even if he was disagreeing with the position he held only yesterday.

The imperial Clintons and their lackeys must not be allowed to advance their hypocritical line of attack against an honorable public servant like Congressman Scott Garrett.  Hold them to account.

Poll: Voters Support Trumps' Muslim Ban

How tone-deaf is the American political establishment?

If his candidacy does nothing else, it will vividly illustrate for the public just how cowed by establishment opinion the Republican Party has become.  It seems that Mr. Trump has once again, albeit clumsily, said what was on everyone's mind but nobody dared say.

Rasmussen released a poll today of 1,000 likely voters.  The poll was conducted on Tuesday evening and through Wednesday of this week (December 8-9, 2015).  It asked this question: "Do you favor or oppose a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists from coming here?"

Rasmussen's polling memo states: "Despite an international uproar and condemnation by President Obama and nearly all of those running for the presidency, Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims coming to the United States has the support of a sizable majority of Republicans – and a plurality of all voters.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 66% of Likely Republican Voters favor a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists from coming here. Just 24% oppose the plan, with 10% undecided.

Among all voters, 46% favor a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, while 40% are opposed. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided."

The poll also found that "Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters believe it is too easy for foreigners to legally enter the United States. Only 10% believe it is too hard, while 23% say the level of difficulty is about right."

And get this...

Back in April 1980, then President Jimmy Carter issued a blanket ban on visas from Iran, in an effort to secure America's borders from Islamic terrorists.  The Washington Post reported (April 9, 1980):

Iranians holding visas to enter the United States were turned away from planes at London airports yesterday, following President Carter's latest crackdown in response to the hostage crisis...

Carter announced Monday he was canceling all visas issued to Iranians for entry into the United States and warned that they would be revalidated only for "compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest requires."

...Since the 50 American hostages were seized Nov. 4, more than 14,000 Iranians have been admitted to the United States -- about half of them religious minorities who fear persecution under the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, officials have said. About 14,700 Iranians have left the United States in the same period, according to figures from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

More than 200 students have left the country since their visas were found invalid last fall.

Some 2,500 more have been ordered out and 7,700 face deportation hearings, an INS spokesman said.

State Department spokesman Hodding Carter said in a separate briefing that the administration would take a close look at Iranian students trying to renew visas, with the view that "we're not interested in prolonging essentially frivolous stays in the United States."

While the administration's public posture has been a hard line against Iranian visa holders, its unstated policy has aimed at trying to help the religious minorities who have fled Iran, several officials said.

So shouldn't former President Carter have some sympathy with Trump's position?