It’s Wednesday, October 23rd, 2019…but before we begin, consider this rather curious conclusion from the New York Post‘s otherwise-consistently-Conservative Michael Goodwin:
“…This is not an endorsement, certainly not for the general election.Trump’s economic policies are boosting incomes and opportunities for tens of millions of people and his America First agenda is a road map for national renewal. Assuming the president stops shooting himself in the foot, he will be a formidable opponent.
But Americaneeds two viable parties competing for many of the same voters to make our system of checks and balances a governing reality.These days, the Democratic Party is veering too far left under the leadership of arrogant coastal elites who are hostile to free speech, religion and the everyday concerns of working and middle-class citizens…”
To which we can only respond, “So what?!?” Seriously, if the Dimocrats want to walk the Socialist plank, Conservatives should be more than happy to provide them the board!
P.S. Though this sounds ominous, it’s yet anther case of a low-level official who was supposedly told something by someone who’d heard it from somebody else; i.e.:
First up, the heart-tugging intent of the Forbes headline notwithstanding, we’re gonna go out on a limb here and predict, prior to actually reading the article…
“You hear this question from a lot of people, including from colleagues I respect a great deal: “How can Trump voters/Republicans/evangelicals just shrug their shoulders at President Trump and his pressure on Ukraine/abandonment of the Kurds/sordid payoffs to Stormy Daniels/warm and fuzzy talk about Putin and Kim Jong-Un/[insert scandal du jour here]?”
…The reason none of these factions get all that upset about glaring hypocrisy or unethical behavior by their preferred leaders is that as a culture — and perhaps as a species — we’re really good at coming up with reasons as to why the scandals surrounding the leaders we like aren’t that important.
…Alternatively, politicians like to argue that a victory for their opponent is an apocalyptic catastrophe — the moral equivalent of Flight 93 on 9/11. Most modern political rhetoric is designed to emphasize the all-consuming enormity of our stakes. When debating climate change, we’re told the fate of the planet and all of humanity is at stake. When debating gun control, we’re told that our children’s lives are at stake and that if we don’t agree with the other side, we have blood on our hands.
Quite literally,the leaders of both sides of the political spectrum currently contend the other side is trying to destroy the country…”
Yet, the claims of one sideremainessentially correct. Sorry, but we don’t simply object to Mr. Geraghty’s attempt at equivalency between the goals of Socialists and Conservatives…
Think about it: is there ANYTHING Trump and his Trumpeteers envisage which would (again, this is a less-than-complete list):
Socialize the nation’s healthcare system in its entirety.
Overturn the protections of the 1st Amendment.
Eliminate the protections of the 2nd Amendment…which is the only certain safeguard of the 1st.
Use unelected judges as de facto legislators.
Unnecessarily revamp the global energy model.
Surrender global hegemony to the forces of Communism.
Not “no”, but “HELL NO!!!”
Again, we have never defended The Donald’s shortcomings; rather we take the position we set forth in the meme above: he remains infinitely preferableto all possible alternatives!
Since we’re on the subject of lying Leftists, courtesy of the WSJ via Jeff Foutch, John Lott offers a set of startling statistics you won’t get from the MSM:
“Another month, another record number of murders in Mexico. For the first nine months of 2019, Mexico had 25,890 murders—almost six times as many murders per 100,000 people as in the U.S. Does Mexico need stricter gun control?
No. Itsgun laws are among theleast permissive in the world.For decades Mexico has had only one gun store in the entire country, a military-run establishment in Mexico City. The store’s prices are very expensive, and the most powerful rifle that you can buy there is a .22 caliber. There’s no “gun-show loophole”—any person-to-person firearm transfers are illegal without an “extraordinary” permit that never seems to be issued. One may sell a gun only to the government, and then the government has to decide to sell it to someone else.
Getting permission to purchase a gun is a feat in itself. Background checks take six months to complete and require fingerprints and an evaluation of the buyer’s employment history. Only 1% of Mexicans possess a license to own a firearm. When I testified before the Mexican Senate a few years ago, members of the chamber, who have faced death threats, told me that even they found it impossible to get a concealed-handgun permit.
It wasn’t always this way. Mexicans had a right to own guns until 1971, when the constitution was amended to give the federal government total control over firearm access.In 1972 the government passed strict gun-control measures. Now Mexicans can’t transport guns outside their homes without a permit from the Secretariat of National Defense—even if the gun is lawfully registered, unloaded, in a locked container, and going from one residence to another.
Mexico’s murder rate is about twice what it was in 1972.Mexican officials blame America, with its relatively strong gun rights. But the fully automatic guns often used to commit murders in Mexico are strictly limited on U.S. soil. Between 2005 and 2014, more than 13,000 grenades were seized by the Mexican government, and these simply can’t be bought in the U.S. A 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report complained of limited collaboration with Mexican authorities on tracing guns.
So where do Mexican criminals get their guns? “Most cartels buy in bulk, and the weapons are coming from places like Nicaragua and other South American countries. Also Asia and some from the Middle East,” a Tijuana-based police authority who requested anonymity recently toldFox News.
…“These kinds of guns—the auto versions of these guns—they are not coming from El Paso,” Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, told Fox News. “They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don’t get these guns from the U.S.”
Strict gun-control laws and high homicide ratesoften go together. Other developed countries that fit this pattern include Brazil and Russia. If you look across all countries or all developed countries, the ones with the highest gun-ownership rates tend to have the lowest homicide rates and the lowest murder rates from mass shootings.
Gun laws, no matter how draconian, don’t solve crime problems.It’s pretty simple—the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. Disarming the latter emboldens the former.“
Any questions?!?
Meanwhile, courtesy of Richard Colt, as one Jacob Asmussen recently recorded at the Texas Scorecard, just north of murderous mayhem immediately south of the border…
“As Austinites continue to face an alarming public safety risk, one of the city’s top officials tasked with solving it is quitting after only a month on the job. Lori Pampilo Harris, Austin’s new Homelessness Strategy Officer, is leaving her job because of “family obligations.”
…After a yearlong search, Harris was hired as the city’s highly anticipated “homelessness czar.” Many city council members, including Jimmy Flannigan, set high expectations for the position, looking to Harris to work towards solving the homelessness problem…
…Homelessness in Austin has steadily been on the rise for the past several years, but the situation drastically worsened over the summer after the city council passed a controversial camping law. In June, the city council made it legal for vagrants to camp, sit, and lie down in public spaces across the city (but not outside city hall). Since then, Austinites have witnessed a predictable outbreak of campsites and tent cities on sidewalks and streets, and underneath overpasses…”
As George Santayana so accurately observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Though we know it pales in comparison to Santayana’s brilliance, we’d offer Magoo’s Progressive Political Corollary: “Those in positions of power who lack common sense condemn the rest of us to live with the fruits of the problems they planted.”
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s this stream of Conservative consciousness forwarded by Balls Cotton:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the Sports Section, brought to us today by Tobias Hoonhout writing at NRO, as he relates how a…
“Biological-male cyclist Rachel McKinnon won the women’s world championship on Saturday, and set a women’s world record in the qualifying event.
McKinnon, a Canadian philosophy professor at the College of Charleston, won the same event in 2018. In a Friday interview with Sky News, McKinnon said that attempts to level the playing field for women’s sports by discriminating against transgender athletes was the equivalent of “denying their human rights.”
“All my medical records say female,” McKinnon said.(But NOT your BIRTH CERTIFICATE, boyo!)“My doctor treats me as a female person, my racing license says female, but people who oppose my existence still want to think of me as male…So, if we want to say, that I believe you’re a woman for all of society, except for this massive central part that is sport, then that’s not fair.” (Those last three words need to be read in the voice of a petulant, raging…well…in a voice like that of Alice in Dirty Harry.)
Victoria Hood, a former cycling champion and manager of a British all-female cycling team, challenged McKinnon, telling Sky that “it is not complicated, the science is there and it says that it is unfair. The male body, which has been through male puberty, still retains its advantage, that doesn’t go away. I have sympathy with them. They have a right to do sportbut not a right to go into any category they want.”
On Saturday, McKinnon issued a press release denouncing Hood for having “an irrational fear of trans women.”After the victory, McKinnon took to Twitter to challenge critics.
On Sunday, McKinnon tweeted “I have yet to meet a real champion who has a problem with trans women.Real champions want stronger competition. If you win because bigotry got your competition banned… you’re a loser.”’“
Which of course fairly screams the question the Press should have been asking McKinnon: “If ‘real champions want stronger competition’, how come you’re not competing against men?!?”
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