Marie Harf: “Democrats like Beto because he’s a very good politician.”

Isn’t this special?  Democrats are busy molding and shaping a heretofore unknown and relatively unaccomplished, pretty much random person to be their next presidential puppet hopeful.

Last night, in a segment on Fox News’ “The Story With Martha MacCallum,” this was how radio host and former Obama Administration spokesperson Marie Harf cheerfully explained Democrats’ enthusiasm and giddy presidential aspirations for losing senate candidate, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke:

“Democrats like Beto because he’s a very good politician.”

Well la-de-da!

By all means Marie, let’s make Beto president of the free world!  Because the first quality that America and its 330 million citizens really needs in a great leader is his or her talent as “a good politician.”  After all, Hugo Chavez was a very good politician, and we see how well things worked out for Venezuela.

In less cynical times Harf might have stunned Americans for her unapologetic absence of any pretense that good ol’ Beto is admired for anything other than his talents as a lying politician, and she would be the featured subject of Saturday Night Live; but after successfully electing the empty chair, Barack Obama, to two terms, it seems the Left no longer feels the need to pretend to advocate leadership qualities in a…um…leader, and this is perfectly acceptable.  If the Left gets its wish 2020 will come down to a mere contest of personalities, and any thought of what’s actually good for the country and America’s future will be trivialized to the best extent they can.  This is the Left’s great gift to us, such devoted patriots are they.

It’s a sign of the sad political times we live in that someone like Marie Harf gets handsomely paid to express her childlike opinions and that we, as the audience, are supposed to appreciate the Left’s canned opposition to truth and common sense; but we’ve really fallen deep into the abyss when a commentator can proclaim, on national TV, that a presidential hopeful is attractive because “he’s a very good politician,” and this raises the eyebrows and the conscience of virtually no one.

Meanwhile, Melania put up some Christmas decorations that Democrats took the time to sneer about….

So glad to see they’ve got their priories in line.

~CW

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Karl Rove: Obama’s redistricting idea would benefit Democrats – not democracy

By Karl Rove | Fox News

Since leaving office, former President Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, have made congressional redistricting reform a top priority.  Saying that “protecting” democracy requires “rethinking the way we draw our congressional districts,” President Obama has lashed out at Republicans for supposedly gerrymandering themselves into control of the House of Representatives.

Gerrymandering involves manipulating the boundaries of districts represented by members of the U.S. House, state legislators and local officials to favor one political party over the other in elections.  By this practice, the Democratic former president asserts, the GOP “moves our debate from the rational, reasonable middle, where most Americans are, to the extremes. And that makes commonsense policies that most Americans support less likely.”

Then in a burst of typical self-righteous sanctimony, Obama argues that Republican dominance in redistricting is “not good for our children and regardless of our party affiliations, it’s not good for our democracy.” The former president asserts each party should get representation roughly equal to its share of the congressional popular vote.  To achieve this, Obama and Holder argue, Americans should elect more Democrats (how remarkably convenient) to state legislatures and create appointed states commissions to handle redistricting.

California and Iowa already have commissions like this in place. Voters in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Utah approved creating such commissions in the Nov. 6 midterm elections.  There are more problems with this than just the typical, stale attack on Republicans as “not good for our children” and “not good for our democracy.”  The results of the November midterms show that the former president and his attorney general are inaccurately describing the role of Republicans in redistricting.

As the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman reported this week, Democratic U.S. House candidates received 53 percent of the total midterm popular vote. So if you follow President Obama’s thinking, this should entitle Democrats to 231 House seats, while giving Republicans 204.  As of Tuesday night, Fox News pegs the new House as having 233 Democrats to 199 Republicans, with three seats undecided – all currently held by Republicans. So right now Democrats are holding slightly more seats than their share of the popular vote and will continue doing so even if Republicans win the three seats yet to be decided.

The results of the November midterms show that the former president and his attorney general are inaccurately describing the role of Republicans in redistricting.  That doesn’t mean that gerrymandering isn’t a factor. But if the measure of gerrymandering is one party getting a much bigger share of seats than its share of the popular vote, then it’s Democrats in California and Iowa who are getting more seats than they deserve.  And – irony of ironies – both states have supposedly nonpartisan commissions that draw their congressional district boundaries.

In California, Democrats received 65 percent of the popular vote in congressional races while Republicans received 34 percent. Yet Democrats won 45 of the state’s 53 U.S. House seats and lead in the remaining race not yet declared – for an 87 percent share of the state’s congressional seats.  In contrast, Republicans won only seven seats for a share of 13 percent of California’s U.S. House delegation.  But rather than splitting the delegation between 46 Democrats and seven Republicans (assuming Democrats win the one seat still undecided), President Obama’s popular vote standard would point to split of 35 Democrats and 18 Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation – more than twice the number of Republicans who were elected.

California is not alone. In Iowa, Democrats received 50 percent of the popular vote and Republicans 47 percent, yet Democrats won three – or 75 percent – of the state’s four House seats while Republicans won one seat – or 25 percent of the House delegation.  President Obama’s popular vote standard would suggest that Democrats should get two seats and Republicans should get the other two. A commission also does Iowa’s redistricting.

Here’s a good-faith test for Obama and Holder: Will they now strongly denounce the gerrymandering of California’s congressional seats and urge reforms that lead to Republicans gaining a proper share of the state’s congressional delegations?  If not, Americans can assume that the former president and his attorney general aren’t really trying to improve our democracy – they’re trying to advance the interests of the Democratic Party.

Should we be surprised?

**************************************************************************

No Karl, we definitely should not be surprised.  If the names “Holder” or “Obama” are attached to something you can rest assured that there is evil afoot, because true democracy is the last thing they want. 

Once again our republic is surreptitiously under attack by the wicked Left.  The promise of a “non-partisan commission” to draw redistricting lines probably sounded like a swell idea to unsuspecting Californians and Iowans and to the voters of the other four states that have now tragically doomed themselves to democrat domination, because the average voter sadly still does not understand who leftists really are.  They still believe what the leftists say, rather than learning who they are by what they do.  Too many Americans do not understand that the Obamas and the Holders of the world are criminals at heart.  Their mission is to steal your power in whatever ways they can, whether it be the piece by piece dismemberment of the Constitution (your Constitution!), the brainwashing of America’s youth through their control of our educational institutions, or the creation of “non-partisan commissions” (kind of like the “non-partisan” Mueller investigation) to decide voting districts which – just by coincidence mind you – dilute the voting power of Republicans who are a threat to the Left’s criminal ambitions. 

The leftists count on Americans to be too busy raising their families and trying to make a living to notice that we’re under attack.  It’s guerilla warfare at its best, and the Left is quietly winning.  When Americans wake up and see what’s going on, it will be too late.  Please open your eyes NOW.

~CW

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A Tale of Two Governments

Back in the days when I blogged at Townhall.com I regularly argued with anti-government types who alternately identified themselves as libertarians, anarchists, minarchists and anarcho-libertarians.  They weren’t quite sure what they stood for or precisely what they wanted, but they denounced me as a “grateful slave” to government because I was a conservative Republican.  Despite all of their angry fist-shaking, their attempts at debating me failed because they could not get around this one inarguable fact:  there will be government.

Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”  The anarchists will quibble, pointlessly, about whether government is “necessary,” but this is like arguing over whether mountains are necessary or rocks are necessary.   Why argue whether something is “necessary” when it is going to exist regardless?  Government is a reality.  It is going to exist whether we like it or not, and whether anyone deems it “necessary” or not.  The reason I know this is because it occurs in every society, across geography and across time, from tribal chieftains to Pharaohs to kings and queens to prime ministers to presidents and congresses….. government has existed in one form or another.  This is the nature of the human race.  It’s why ships have captains, corporations have boards and CEOs, schools have principles and towns have mayors.  Society yearns for order and order requires leadership.  And the dirty little secret of the anarchists is that they don’t want to ban order, they want to define it.

The point of this tale is to explain the thinking of America’s great Founders.  The anarchists would argue that the Founders weren’t great at all, that they were just self-serving men who wanted to install a government of their own liking, and in doing so they empowered the power-hungry and set us up for the ongoing struggle against big government that has persisted ever since.  But I believe the Founders, knowing and living history as they did, were responding to the reality that there will be overarching government, and if they did not shape it, someone else inevitably would.  So they seized the moment and shaped a Constitution that, if adhered to, promised to protect liberty by limiting the reach and power of the federal government.  In doing so it’s true that they also created the means by which the power-hungry could worm their way in and take control, as we’ve seen others do again and again throughout history.  The fact is, though, the power-hungry are always lurking and would come no matter what.  Just as human nature prescribes that societies will instinctively sort themselves into leaders and followers, it also prescribes that a fraction of the population will be driven by an insatiable quest for power.  The Founders made no claims of having the magic to defeat them.  They could only set up a firewall and hope that we would have the wisdom, the fortitude and the perseverance to preserve it.  I think they would be disappointed, but not surprised, to see how the firewall is crumbling today, and how the power-hungry have seeped into the cracks like water through a compromised dam.

The two governments that I refer to in this tale, therefore, are the government of the Founders (i.e. The People) versus government of the power-hungry, both of which are waging a fierce battle for control of the means to carry out their mission, i.e. our federal government.  The Founder’s government sees itself as defined and limited by the four corners of the Constitution.  It’s job is to provide for the nation’s defense, our common welfare and to be America’s trustee when dealing the rest of the world.  The government of the power-hungry sees itself as limited only by what it can’t get away with.  It sees the federal government as a tool for forcing the American people to bend to the will of the power-hungry and to transfer wealth from one group of Americans to another so as to serve the ultimate interests of the power-hungry.  The government of the power-hungry performs the role required by the Constitution only to the extent that it serves the ultimate interests of the power-hungry.

So whether government is “good” or not all depends on which government you’re talking about:  the Founder’s government (good) or the government of the power-hungry (evil), though the great rub is that the same host makes it possible for either one to exist.  I’ve been accused by some of being “anti-government” and by others of being “a government slave.”  LOL.  They’re both right, and they’re both wrong.  That’s the nature of the times we live in.

~CW

P.S.

Keep an eye on the fight brewing in Florida.  Looks like it could come down to a battle of the Florida constitution versus the power-hungry who are testing the citizens’ will to enforce that constitution.  It may be the perfect micro-study of the battle described above.

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Will Democrats Cut Off Their Noses to Spite Donald Trump?

Have you ever seen a more self-destructive force than today’s Democrat Party?  We’re talking about people who look at the horrific mess and suffering that’s going on in the socialist experiment known as Venezuela and say, “Let’s do some of that!”  Or do CNN, Huffington Post, Mother Jones and The Guardian even cover Venezuela and the predictable destruction brought on by people who were sold on the notion of getting something for nothing?  My guess is that story gets very little play where it would do the most good.

What also gets little play, no doubt, are the economic and foreign policy successes of the Trump Administration.  Instead liberals and leftists are no doubt bombarded with a continuous stream of absurd scaremongering about “fascism” and “racism” as they are led down the path towards a bleak future for themselves and their children.  I might have given up caring by now, given how long this tiring struggle between liberty and tyranny has been going on, except that we are all tethered to the liberals and leftists by virtue of our shared citizenship, and when they foolishly jump into the ocean with the expectation that the strong swimmers will keep them afloat they threaten to drown us all.

The elections today are a proxy fight between Left and Right – between people who believe what they are told vs. people who believe what they can see with their own eyes.  “Fascism, racism, white supremacy, the threat to your healthcare…..”  None of that is real, despite what some would wish you to believe.  None of it passes the smell test.  But your jobs are real.  The want ads are real.  Your 401K’s are real.  And the threat of socialism and all its destruction is very real.

They say this election is a referendum on Trump – a judgment, if you will.  That’s only partly true, because judgment implies reason.  Judgment implies rationality and objectivity.  All of these things have been driven out of the Democrat Party and they’ve been supplanted by mindless rage, and thus we have not a referendum but a tantrum of monstrous proportions.

Will you be a child on election day?  Will you march to the polls and defiantly hack off your own nose to spite Donald Trump?  Will you “resist” the restoration of prosperity and strength for all Americans – yourself and your children included – for such empty and foolish satisfaction?  I have a better idea.  Why don’t you switch sides so we can all be winners?

Please restore the sanity.  Vote RED today.

~CW

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This is Why Democrats Will NEVER Solve the Healthcare Crisis

Chart by Evercore ISI

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/30/chart-of-surging-us-health-care-costs-explains-why-buffett-getting-involved.html

Comforting chart, eh?

When I lived in Texas a local radio station would often play commercials for a “healthcare sharing ministry” called Medi-Share.  It was advertised as a way for Christian members to lower their insurance premiums by “[sharing] their money to pay for each other’s eligible medical bills.”¹  One commercial featured a member who thankfully boasted that Medi-Share members had “shared” something like $150,000 in medical bills associated with an illness or procedure that had come on suddenly.  Upon hearing that ad I would always wonder to myself:  “Why would anyone who anticipates having minimal healthcare expenses himself want to potentially “share” in the outrageously large medical bills of others?”  It just seemed like an odd advertising strategy, even if the basic concept is essentially what the insurance industry is all about.  You pay monthly premiums, which often add up to a large amount of money over time, and you might not use your benefits at all or you may hit the benefit lottery, so to speak, if you have the misfortune of needing expensive medical care. 

What bothered me about the commercial is the same thing that bothers me whenever I hear Democrats’ ideas for “fixing” the healthcare crisis, namely the absence of appropriate outrage for the fact that routine procedures now cost thousands of dollars and often tens of thousands, and more complicated procedures can easily get into the hundreds of thousands even if we’re only talking about a week’s hospital stay or an illness that isn’t chronic. 

Democrats’ great solutions for ‘solving’ the healthcare crisis never address the real problem of spiraling costs.  Instead their plans focus solely on transferring the cost to someone else using the muscle of the federal government to extort the money.  Make your wealthy neighbor pay for it, that’s the ticket.  Nice, eh?

Putting aside how morally corrupt this great plan is and how inconsistent it is with the concept of individual liberty upon which America was founded, their plan has zero chance of “working” long term because it does nothing to address the systemic problem of price inflation.  Margaret Thatcher famously quipped that the trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money, but even she probably could not have envisioned how fast the money could be sucked away when routine care starts costing thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and then millions.  If the socialists truly believe that those who’ve spent their lives building their wealth are going to sit quietly by while it’s siphoned away for the benefit of freeloading strangers, better think again.  The scam might “work” for a little while, but eventually it will blow up in our faces like the scams of the socialists running Venezuela.  The socialists will do what they always do (it’s instinctive) and propose to solve the problem of runaway costs by imposing price controls, but we’ve seen how well such schemes work.  No thank you.

Republicans, at least the free-market conservatives, have a different idea for fixing the healthcare crisis in America and that idea is to bring prices back to sanity naturally through competition and reduced government interference.  That would make healthcare and insurance affordable, so that people could pay for their own healthcare.  With everyone sharing the burden (as it should be), each person’s share is light, and there is no need for the class warfare that socialists like Bernie Sanders are so desperately trying to gin up, and that can’t possibly end well even if a few can profit in the short term.  Voters, especially those who care about the futures of their children, would be well-advised to embrace the inarguable truth of the famous idiom:  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Really, there isn’t.  What terrible price will you or your children pay for the lure of trying to get something for nothing? 

If healthcare truly matters to you, vote “R” this election. 

~CW

¹ https://mychristiancare.org/medi-share/what-is-medishare/

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