The Left’s Faux Reality

 

“Trump is a fascist!”

“Trump is a white supremacist!”

“Trump is colluding with the Russians!”

What do you do when the realities of the world don’t conform to your pre-formed prejudices and desires for shaping the world around you?  Well if you’re an honest and reasonable person, you re-adjust your prejudices and desires according to reality.  But if you’re a leftist bent on an agenda that isn’t served by reality, it’s the other way around;  you simply invent your own reality to conform to your prejudices, or as Cory ‘Spartacus’ Booker and other leftists like to put it nowadays, you define your own truth.  When you have the luxury of your own truth you’re spared from engaging in thoughtful debate or justifying your actions, and the real world is no longer an obstacle to your schemes and ignoble ambitions.  Anything is possible if you conjure up an alternate universe, and if you can persuade others to pretend along with you.

Alternate Reality has long been one prong of the Left’s many strategies for forcing its agenda on this nation, but since the election of Barack Obama, who showed the Left the art of how it is done, it has been elevated to center stage.  Obama campaigned on the myth that the economic recession that started in 2008 was entirely the fault of George W. Bush and Republicans.  I can’t recall anyone ever asking Obama to defend his reasoning for such a claim.  Instead, the media talked about thrills up their legs and laughed along with him when he adopted his phony, folksy accent and pushed his pretend broom around the stage to “clean up the messes” supposedly left just by the Republicans.  And so the myth was born and it became the Left’s alt-reality that Bush and the Republicans destroyed the economy and Obama rode in on his white horse and rescued us.  That constitutes “their truth” in the Left’s make-believe universe.

Obama was central to advancing the faux reality that man-made “climate change” is a proven fact, because the clever leftists know that the more you evade debate and speak as though something is a fact, the more some people will accept it as fact and ignore any evidence to the contrary.  Obama unilaterally declared the debate to be over, citing the falsehood that 97% of climate scientists agree, and any dissent by people far more educated on climate science than Obama has no place in the faux reality.  And now, of course, the world is doomed in twelve short years (according to the truth of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) which is why we must put our fates and our money into the hands of….wait for it…leftist politicians.  Funny how that works, eh? 

The Obama years also gave us the faux worlds of Black Lives Matter and Colin Kaepernick in which, in a country of 330 million people, a handful of incidents of overly aggressive policing were parlayed into a phony narrative of widespread, systematic racism and oppression running rampant in our police forces and all through American society.  The reality, according to an article written by Larry Elder and featured on the website RealClearPolitics.com, happens to be just a tad different:

No one doubts the existence of bad cops or of cops who make poor decisions or who use poor judgement. But where's the evidence of "systemic" racism? When black Harvard economist Roland Fryer conducted a 2016 study of police use of force, he expected to find widespread evidence of police officers disproportionately using deadly force against blacks. Instead, he found the opposite. Police, he concluded, were more hesitant to use deadly force against blacks than against whites. "It is," he admitted, "the most surprising result of my career." This tracks another study published in 2014 by researchers at Washington State University, who reached the same conclusion, finding "there was significant bias favoring [emphasis added] blacks where decisions to shoot were concerned."

According to the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald: "In 2016, the police fatally shot 233 blacks, the vast majority armed and dangerous, according to The Washington Post. The paper categorized only 16 black male victims of police shootings as 'unarmed.' That classification masks assaults against officers and violent resistance to arrest. Contrary to the Black Lives Matter narrative, the police have much more to fear from black males than black males have to fear from the police. ... Black males have made up 42 percent of all cop-killers over the last decade, though they are only 6 percent of the population."

The stats don’t lie and Mr. Elder’s information is easy to verify for anyone interested in the truth, but this of course excludes leftists and race hustlers with their own agenda, along with the sheep who so desperately want to believe the hustlers.

A false narrative was used to justify the Left’s shameful partisan rejection of SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh as his accuser was deemed to be entitled to her own truth according to Democrat Senator Corey Booker and his fellow posers, which meant they could simply ignore the abundance of evidence that disproved her story along with the reality of Justice Kavanaugh’s life history that ought to have put a question mark in the mind of anyone who is objective. …Anyone who is objective…..  We the People weren’t supposed to notice the convenient, self-serving connection between Democrats’ faux reality and their political ambitions for that SCOTUS seat; but alas the leftists can’t seem to perfect the art of making everyone bow to their faux realities, though there is no shortage of bullying and demands to observe their rules of political correctness to try and force it to be so. 

The Covington Catholic farce only enjoyed brief success as a faux reality thanks to the marvel of cell phone cameras and the existence of fact-based news outlets to counter the MSM, but the leftists certainly gave it the old college try.

Nowhere is the Left’s faux reality better displayed than in their rabid, delusional hatred of Donald Trump.  The billionaire real estate developer entered politics at the age of 70, when his disgust for what he perceived to be this nation’s misguided and inept leadership finally reached a boiling point.  Despite America’s familiarity with Trump, it was only when he became president that the Left suddenly discovered that this well-known celebrity of 30 years who hob-knobbed with Republicans and Democrats alike was actually a “fascist,” a “white supremacist,” and a “Russian agent.”  Furthermore the wall isn’t a necessary component of border security, it’s purely a “vanity project” to gratify Trump’s ego (in contrast to the walls constructed during the Obama administration which were necessary for our security, apparently).

I take particular umbrage with the Left’s duplicitous faux narrative that Donald Trump is the “world’s biggest liar” or that he is somehow uniquely immoral among American presidents.  Democrats have used Trump’s sloppiness with the truth to double down on their strategy to manipulate young minds so that liberals and the young are completely incapable of distinguishing between lies of careless speech and exaggeration versus far more destructive lies that are meant to trick them into giving up more and more of their Constitutional rights and their liberty.  Historian Lee Edwards did a great job of putting the reality of Trump’s lies in perspective with those of past presidents in his essay for The Heritage Foundation:  “The Massive Lies Of Past Presidents Make Trump Look Honest;” and esteemed historian Victor Davis Hansen gives perspective on claims about Trump’s “immorality” in his piece, “Democratic presidents behaved a lot worse than Trump in the White House,” wherein he asks us to ponder this salient question: 

“The paradox again raises the question: When any one man can change the lives of 330 million, what exactly is presidential morality after all — private and personal sins, or the transgressions that affect millions of lives for the worse?” 

And finally, yours truly rebutted the laughable myth that Barack Obama was an honest broker when compared to Trump. 

Democrat Senator Tom Udall, in announcing his decision not to seek re-election, cited his ability to concentrate the remainder of his term on “…[getting] so much more done to help reverse the damage done to our planet, end the scourge of war, and to stop this president’s assault on our democracy and our communities.”  In the aftermath of the two-year Mueller investigation during which we learned about corrupt individuals within our FBI, Justice Department and State Department and their efforts to undermine a constitutionally elected president and hinder his administration it is nothing short of surreal to hear Udall’s galling and delusional claim that Trump is the one assaulting our democracy.  Good riddance, Senator Udall.  Be sure to take your faux reality with you when you leave.

Leftwing commenters on Fox News articles, especially those relating to Trump, love to call Fox “faux news” and hurl other insults denoting their low opinion of Fox’s credibility; but with the Mueller report now released and no evidence of collusion found, it turns out that Fox’s coverage was far more in keeping with the truth than their beloved “mainstream” news outlets which fed the Left’s need for validation of what they wanted the truth to be.  Will that change their opinion of Fox?  I doubt it, because – for its own selfish purposes - the Left has spawned a culture that no longer cares what is real and what isn’t.  To understand the destructiveness of this mindset, consider how the refusal to face reality would impact someone’s personal life.  If you refuse to face the truth about poor financial decisions, a bad spouse, a child in need of help or behaviors that destroy one’s health, how does denying reality serve your life in the long run?  It NEVER ends well, and it won’t end well for this nation, but the Left’s elites who mastermind alternate realities don’t care about the future of the country or about their fellow citizens.  They care only about their own grasp on power. 

~CW

This essay is also posted at the blog site The Pesky Truth.  

Gavin Newsom and the Illogic of Liberalism

(CNN) March 13, 2019: 

After signing an executive order that will place a moratorium on the death penalty in California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom gave an emotional explanation of his decision Wednesday, saying he could not morally allow executions in the Golden State to go forward.

"It's a very emotional place that I stand in," he said, noting that the subject was once "an abstract question" for him, but now he is "the backstop" for any execution that takes place in California. "And so I am expressing this is not from (a) paradigm of politics. It's not a situational conversation for me. This is about who I am as a human being. ... To me this is the right thing to do."

Newsom noted that the only thing standing in the way of executions resuming in California is the judicial review of the state's lethal injection procedure, which could be completed soon. Citing a National Academy of Sciences report estimating that 1 out of every 25 people on death row is innocent, Newsom said he could not countenance the odds of putting an innocent person to death.

"If that's the case, that means if we move forward executing 737 people in California, we will have executed roughly 30 people that are innocent," Newsom said. "I don't know about you. I can't sign my name to that. I can't be party to that. I won't be able to sleep at night."

See the full article here.

“….the subject was once "an abstract question" for him,…”

There, in one off the cuff remark – the truth spoken accidentally - is the essence of what’s wrong with liberalism.  Nothing matters until it happens to me.  I find it stunning that a man of Newsom’s age and resume is only just now pondering the weighty question of wrongful conviction and the death penalty,  but I ought to be used to it by now.  How many of our laws, named for the predictable victims of predictable crimes, are born as a consequence of a liberal’s stunned discovery that they too can be a victim?  Too much thinking in the abstract and not enough putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, just like we see with the Left’s nonchalant attitude towards the victims of illegals.  That said, it’s no surprise to me whatsoever that, having had his epiphany about executing “innocent” people who are on death row, California’s Liberal-in-Chief still gets it wrong. 

If I were the governor of California, or any state for that matter, and if I believed reports that 1 out of every 25 people on death row is innocent, it might occur to me that there is something seriously wrong with our justice system that requires immediate investigation, because our multi-layered appeals system is supposed to be the fail-safe against wrongful convictions, right?  If everyone is doing their job appropriately and with integrity, there should be virtually NO innocent people sitting on death row after all appeals have been exhausted.  How is it possible that this isn’t the case?  If Gavin Newsom truly believes that 4% of the people on death row are innocent, then he must also believe that our appeals system is broken, and yet in his “emotional” proclamation against the death penalty he proposes to do nothing about it.  No help will be coming for the “1 in 25 innocent people” who are languishing in prison because Gavin Newsom thinks his job is done by sparing them from the death penalty.  This is the Left’s idea of what it means to be heroic.

So what could Newsom do?  As someone keenly interested in the subject of crime and punishment, I’ve seen dozens of cases where people have been wrongfully convicted, though how many are on death row is a separate question (more on that later).  In nearly every case the system failed due to either human error or corruption.  The correction for that is surprisingly simple and yet agonizingly absent.  It’s called “A-C-C-O-U-N-T-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y.”  Every case of wrongful conviction should be thoroughly studied to determine what went wrong, and if there were mistakes or wrongdoing those responsible should be held to account by losing their jobs, their licenses or by legal punishment if that’s appropriate.  But we don’t live in an age of consistent accountability.  Nowadays, when convictions are overturned due to mistakes and malfeasance, the victims are compensated by large payouts from other innocents:  the taxpayers; and all too often the inept and corrupt keep doing what they do.  Where is Gavin Newsom’s outrage about that?  He has no outrage because he’s a voluntary player in that very system.

Do I believe 1 in 25 people on death row are wrongfully convicted?  Actually, no – not on death row.  That’s because I believe prosecutors tend not to seek the death penalty unless they have a mountain of damning evidence and because the system is weighted in favor of the accused.  That doesn’t mean it never happens, but I believe that it’s exceptionally rare, especially in these days of modern science.  But what I believe is irrelevant to my criticism of Gavin Newsom, because his claim is that he believes 4% of people on death row are wrongfully convicted. 

By the way, I am a proponent of the death penalty because it’s what some people deserve.  We shouldn’t have to indefinitely feed, clothe and house people who disregard the rights of others and kill for greed and pleasure.  They voluntarily forfeited their rights to live, in my humble opinion.  But I do believe that wrongful convictions do occur and are a blight on us as a society, and what people need to understand is that there’s no contradiction in supporting the death penalty if you also adhere to the principle that holding people accountable for their actions keeps the system working as it was intended so that “justice” really means justice.

~CW

Why Rand Paul Got It Wrong

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

            ~Oath of office for members of congress

An op-ed by Rand Paul was posted on Fox News today:

In September of 2014,  I had these words to say: "The president acts like he's a king. He ignores the Constitution.  He arrogantly says, 'If Congress will not act, then I must.'  Donald J. Trump agreed with me when he said in November 2014 that President Barack Obama couldn’t make a deal on immigration so “now he has to use executive action, and this is a very, very dangerous thing that should be overridden easily by the Supreme Court.”

I would literally lose my political soul if I decided to treat President Trump different than President Obama. (Although, I’ll note, not one Democrat criticized Obama for his executive orders.)  I support President Trump. I supported his fight to get funding for the wall from Republicans and Democrats alike, and I share his view that we need more and better border security.  However, I cannot support the use of emergency powers to get more funding, so I will be voting to disapprove of his declaration when it comes before the Senate.

Every single Republican I know decried President Obama’s use of executive power to legislate. We were right then. But the only way to be an honest officeholder is to stand up for the same principles no matter who is in power.  I was against foreign aid and foreign intervention without a true national security threat — under Republicans and Democrats.  I’ve stood up and voted against budgets that pile up endless debt and borrow too much — under Republicans and Democrats.  I will stand up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the system of checks and balances we have — under Republicans and Democrats.  Every single Republican I know decried President Obama’s use of executive power to legislate. We were right then. But the only way to be an honest officeholder is to stand up for the same principles no matter who is in power.

There are really two questions involved in the decision about emergency funding. First, does statutory law allow for the president’s emergency orders, and, second, does the Constitution permit these emergency orders?  As far as the statute goes, the answer is maybe — although no president has previously used emergency powers to spend money denied by Congress, and it was clearly not intended to do that.  But there is a much larger question: the question of whether or not this power and therefore this action are constitutional. With regard to the Constitution, the Supreme Court made it very clear in Youngstown Steel in 1952, in a case that is being closely reexamined in the discussion of executive power.  In Youngstown, the Court ruled that there are three kinds of executive order: orders that carry out an expressly voiced congressional position, orders where Congress’ will is unclear, and, finally, orders clearly opposed to the will of Congress.

To my mind, like it or not, we had this conversation.  In fact, the government was shut down in a public battle over how much money would be spent on the wall and border security.  It ended with a deal that Congress passed and the president signed into law, thus determining the amount.  Congress clearly expressed its will not to spend more than $1.3 billion and to restrict how much of that money could go to barriers.  Therefore, President Trump’s emergency order is clearly in opposition to the will of Congress.  Moreover, the broad principle of separation of powers in the Constitution delegates the power of the purse to Congress.  This turns that principle on its head.

I, and many of my fellow members, called out President Obama for abusing executive authority. President Obama famously said that if Congress wouldn’t do what he wanted, he had his pen and his phone ready.  That was wrong.  Many of those voting now spent a good portion of their campaigns running ads against these words and actions of President Obama.  They will and should be condemned for hypocrisy if they vote to allow this because they want the policy or want to stand with the president in a partisan fight.

Some are attempting to say that there isn’t a good analogy between President Obama’s orders or the Youngstown case. I disagree. Not only are the issues similar, but I think Youngstown Steel implications are even more profound in the case of emergency appropriations. We spent the last two months debating how much money should be spent on a wall, and Congress came to a clear conclusion: $1.3 billion. Without question, the president’s order for more wall money contradicts the will of Congress and will, in all likelihood, be struck down by the Supreme Court.  In fact, I think the president’s own picks to the Supreme Court may rebuke him on this.

Regardless, I must vote how my principles dictate. My oath is to the Constitution, not to any man or political party. I stand with the president often, and I do so with a loud voice. Today, I think he’s wrong, not on policy, but in seeking to expand the powers of the presidency beyond their constitutional limits. I understand his frustration. Dealing with Congress can be pretty difficult sometimes. But Congress appropriates money, and his only constitutional recourse, if he does not like the amount they appropriate, is to veto the bill.  I look forward to working for a constitutional way to deal with our border security issue.

~Senator Rand Paul

Rand Paul makes some very valid points, but the flaw in his argument is this:  we are dealing with a rogue majority in congress that has made no secret of the fact that their actions are solely motivated by “resistance” to Donald Trump.  The definitive proof of this is that the very same members of congress who refuse to give this president the requested money for the border wall were fine and dandy with giving Barack Obama money for erecting walls at the border when Obama was POTUS.  The facts belie Democrats’ phony claims about walls being “immoral” or that “walls don’t work;” their blatant, spite-based use of our tax dollars as political weaponry is absolutely not how our government was intended to work, and it’s precisely why we have a crises at our border that’s led to a frustrated president’s declaration of emergency.

I’ve often written with outrage about Obama’s unconstitutional “pen and phone” actions that were a not-so-cleverly-veiled means of bypassing the legitimate will of congress, just as Senator Paul suggests; however, there’s no question that the Republican majority’s objections to DACA were consistent with their long-standing platform against illegal immigration.  At no time could anyone have ever made the case that Republicans had done an about-face on prior positions and misused their legislative powers for the simple purpose of spiting a president they disliked or for cynical political gain.

For the sake of “resistance” to Donald Trump, Democrats are selling our country out to people of other nations who disrespect our sovereignty and our inalienable rights to decide who enters our country and who does not.  What form will “resistance” take next?  Will they refuse to let Trump defend us militarily if we come under attack by hostile nations so as to deprive him of a “win,” the fate of the American people be damned?  Will they reject well-qualified, Trump-appointed patriots to posts within our government and compromise our protection and prosperity all in the name of childish “resistance?”  In fact, they already have.

Let me suggest, Senator Paul, that the fight over border wall money is just a symptom of the real emergency:  Democrats who are all-in on “resistance” at the expense of this nation and their fellow citizens.  Democrats have forsaken their oaths of office, and become enemies of the Constitution and all Americans who still embrace it.  This is just one more instance in which their side demands that we abide by the rule of law while giving themselves a pass to ignore it.  If it requires a declaration of emergency to fight back against such an enemy, then so be it.  This nation is truly in crisis.

~CW

This post can also be viewed that the conservative website, The Pesky Truth.

The Treacherous Culture of Liberalism

Culture:  “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group”    

                    ~Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

First let me clarify that when I refer to “liberalism” I am lumping together liberals, leftists, “progressives,” socialists and “democratic socialists.”  In the future I’m sure we’ll have to add more terms as those on the Left adopt yet more labels to avoid being tainted with the stink that becomes inevitably associated with their most recent label, but for the time being – and for ease of understanding – I’ll just lump them all under “liberalism.”

What is liberalism, really?  Forget your dictionary definitions.  Those haven’t been applicable for perhaps a century now, so let’s talk about reality.  Liberalism is a mentality.  It is a culture unto itself, quite distinct from Americanism, which Merriam-Webster’s defines as, “attachment or allegiance to the traditions, interests, or ideals of the U.S.”  Any assertion that today’s liberals have any “attachment or allegiance to the traditions, interests, or ideals of the U.S.” is laughable, to say the least. 

In my humble opinion there are two elements that distinguish liberals from other Americans.  The first is a shared immersion in adolescent thinking and behavior, a.k.a. the infamous “mental disorder of liberalism” that conservatives have long paid witness to.  The evidence is overwhelming.  We’re talking about adults who can’t grasp or won’t honor simple tenets of fairness, such as due process, as we saw during the Kavanaugh hearings farce, because liberals have no appreciation for what it means to the country to preserve that sacred tenet.  They cannot resist the impulse to follow what serves their own interests in the moment, regardless of what it means for themselves and everyone else in the long term, just like a child who runs into a busy street to chase a ball. 

Like children, liberals don’t engage in thoughtful debate.  Instead they play word games, they simply declare themselves the winner (Barack Obama:  “The debate is over!”), and they gang up on people like schoolyard bullies (just ask the kids of Covington Catholic).  They behave like high-schoolers in social cliques, ridiculing and ostracizing those who dare to be different, as when they marginalize anyone who challenges their beliefs on climate change and label them as “deniers” rather than respond respectfully to legitimate concerns and criticisms. 

The culture of liberalism has intensified in recent years following the election of Barack Obama, due to cleverly subtle messaging that has emboldened the Left and shown them that there is little consequence to openly spitting on the basic rules of our democracy.  It has become increasingly acceptable to engage in tantrums and violence when a liberal doesn’t get his way.  That’s what Antifa is all about, their laughable claims of fighting “fascism” notwithstanding.  Anymore it is an everyday occurrence to see news stories of people attacking others in restaurants – and feeling perfectly entitled to do so - or behaving outrageously on airplanes, with no regard for the harm or inconvenience to everyone else.  The epidemic of selfishness and self-centeredness is mindboggling.  The hostility and aggression are alarming.  And it’s all part of today’s culture of liberalism.

Then there is the ease with which liberals are persuaded to blindly embrace any cause that promises to gratify their insatiable need for attention and superiority, whether it be “climate change,” #MeToo, Colin Kaepernick’s anti-flag silliness, and whatever latest nonsense is being drummed into their impressionable brains by the leftists who now run our schools, universities and news media.  I could fill a tome with example after example to demonstrate how liberalism has turned adults into perpetual adolescents (and bratty ones at that), but to speed things up let me sum it up in three words:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

No one personifies liberalism’s further regression into infantilism better than this ceaselessly-yapping, cartoon character whose hubris knows no bounds.  The 29-year old democratic socialist possesses the typical leftist’s arrogance of believing that she’s smarter than anyone else who’s ever existed, as evidenced by her constant scolding and lecturing of those who have achieved far more in life than she has.  Her wisdom is superior to the brilliant men who authored this nation’s Constitution.  She knows more than tested economists.  And she’s smarter than all the PhD’s who dispute the so-called “consensus” opinion of the oh-so-conveniently-named bogeyman, “climate change.”  But isn’t that often the case with children, that despite having little life experience of their own, they always know better than the adults?  AOC is going to solve all of this country’s problems by simply tearing up the Constitution and handing out free money that she thinks she can rightfully take from whomever she pleases.  She is too dumb, the way a small child or an animal is dumb, to consider that all of these ideas she believes she’s discovered have long been tried, failed and rejected.  She thinks she can stick her hand in the fire and not get burned, because that’s how special she is.  That is the mentality of liberalism.

The second distinguishing characteristic of the culture of liberalism is the complete absence of any deeply held commitment to overarching principles.  Liberals like the protection of free speech, but only when the protection applies just to them, as evidenced by their repeated refusals to let conservatives be heard on college campuses and elsewhere.  They like due process, but only when it applies just to them (just ask Jussie Smollett, but first ask Brett Kavanaugh).  Bill Clinton did not need to set a moral example when he was president, but now Donald Trump does.  They are either obnoxiously gleeful or completely unphased at the unequal application of law for Hillary Clinton et al vs. Donald Trump et al.  Ditto for the media’s rampant bias for Obama (favorably) vs. Trump (negatively).  They swear on the Bible to uphold the Constitution, then spend their political careers trying to circumvent it.  Truth - a necessary element for a healthy society – only matters when it furthers their agenda.  They reject the principles of personal responsibility, and their cynical devotion to identity politics belies their phony claims of wanting “equality for all.”  I really cannot think of a single principle sincerely held by liberals that their own actions do not negate. 

So what we have now is a dangerously festering subculture of Americans with a child’s selfishness, absence of conscience and disconnection from moral principles; and yet these children can vote and hold powerful positions within our government.  America is truly in a scary place right now, and it will remain so and get much worse unless and until we can rid ourselves of the culture of liberalism.  Given all of the safety nets the Left has devised to ensure the culture stays alive, that’s going to require a miracle.  Let’s hope that miracle comes in the form of the Left’s own arrogance.

~CW

This post can also be viewed at the blog site, The Pesky Truth.  

Out of the Mouths of Billionaires and Leftists…

I was flipping through an old (June 2005) issue of Architectural Digest today when I came across a fascinating article on a property owned by billionaire Democrat, Ted Turner.  Although the writer, Nancy Collins, coos about the “25 properties” billionaire Turner had amassed around the world, this particular piece was about Vermejo Park Ranch, a 591,000-acre “spectacular” spread of land in New Mexico purchased by billionaire Turner. 

“As far as I know, Vermejo is the largest contiguous piece of private land in the United States,” boasted billionaire Turner, who was interviewed alongside his ex-wife, the radical leftist, Jane Fonda. 

“If it hadn’t been for Ted, the land would’ve been chopped up and sold off,” the leftist Fonda proudly chirped. 

As I pondered Fonda’s evident relief that billionaire Turner’s massive acquisition had rescued this great piece of land from the trajedy of being divided into the dirty clutches of less-deserving, non-billionaires, I couldn’t help but wonder how this sniffy celebration of private land ownership squares with the Left’s usual insistence on preserving public lands for the enjoyment of all (though always at the expense of taxpayers or other land owners, naturally).  Had billionaire Turner not swooped in and hoarded all this land and beauty for himself, the land might have been divided into smaller parcels for people of lesser means willing to settle for a small slice of heaven as well as to entrepreneurs hoping to share in some of the same economic benefits that billionaire Turner and his pampered ex-wife – the leftist Jane Fonda – enjoy.  But no, this mustn’t be allowed.  Lowly commoners don’t know how to properly take care of the land.  They aren’t capable of appreciating its beauty and its bounty the way elites like billionaire Turner and leftist Fonda do. 

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” – Animal Farm

“Fortunately, America’s most notorious cowboy rode in and saved the day…” drooled Ms. Collins (whether or not Ms. Collins understands the terms “notorious” and “cowboy” is a question yet to be determined)…turning Vermejo into a mecca of ‘recreational opportunities for sportsmen who, though they can’t afford a ranch of their own,’ explains [billionaire] Turner, ‘can afford a week here.’”

Billionaire Turner truly is a saint, isn’t he?  You can’t have your own ranch because he’s bought up all the land, but for a small fee you can come for a week and he will allow you to admire all that he possesses.  And how affordable is a week at Vermejo Park Ranch?  According to its website, “Rates [start] at $1,050 double occupancy, all meals and non-guided activities included.”  So a week would cost you a mere $7,350….minimum.  That billionaire Turner has a heart of gold, don’t you think? 

Now let’s talk about the billionaire, the leftist and the environment.  The purchase of Vermejo Park Ranch included a 25,000 square foot main house (Casa Grande), an adjacent lodge and six cottages.  Per the article, “Fonda was appalled by what she initially encountered” upon seeing the buildings for the first time.  There was wall-to-wall carpeting and blue velvet furniture, for heaven’s sake.  Naturally all this had to be ripped out and delivered to the landfill.  The restoration/redecoration is admittedly beautiful, but I can’t help but wonder at what cost to the environment.  How much pollution was created as crews of workmen travelled back and forth to the ranch with their materials?  And, of course, how much pollution was created in the making of these materials?  The ornate fireplace pictured in the article featured a lovely, roaring fire.  Was this necessary to heat this massive building or was the carbon-emitting fire made solely for the purpose of an aesthetically-pleasing photo? 

I’ll cut to the chase.  I find the barefaced hypocrisy of billionaire Turner and leftist Fonda to be as stunning as their ranch.  These are the very same people who work so hard to elect leftist politicians whose mission is to force ordinary Americans to limit their “carbon footprints” by restricting our access to fuel sources, vehicles, lumber, and anything else that THEY deem off-limits.  These are the very same people who whine about the absence of affordable housing, even while they drive up the cost of land by indulging themselves in lavish purchases of hundreds of thousands of acres.  Part way into the article Fonda cheerfully notes that Turner owns four ranches in Montana alone. 

“We’d eat breakfast and early-morning fish at one, and drive two hours to the next for lunch and more fishing.  Then on – an (sic) – another couple of hours to a third for dinner,” laughed the leftist, Jane Fonda.

Isn’t that charming?  Presumably all this driving from one ranch to another occurred after the billionaire and the leftist flew in to Montana from one of their many other properties located elsewhere in the country, perhaps on the private jet owned by billionaire Turner.  And I think we can assume that some employee(s) had to drive to these ranches to cook for the pampered pair, as it’s hardly likely that they would have stooped to such a lowly chore themselves. 

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

I’m a conservative who believes in free-market capitalism, so I don’t mind if billionaire Turner and leftist Fonda make money and spend it as they please; but I certainly mind when they live like capitalists while influencing our politics like communist dictators.  When are we going to have laws that limit people like billionaire Turner and leftist Fonda to the same small carbon footprints that they would like to see the rest of us relegated to?  The first time we enact such laws will be the last time billionaire Turner or leftist Fonda supports a Democrat for political office.

~CW

This and other posts by CW can also be found at the website The Pesky Truth.  Please visit me there to join the conversation.

Leslie Marshall Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Should be Praised, not Criticized

In an Op-ed in Fox News yesterday, nationally syndicated liberal radio show host and Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall tries to tell us that we should praise, not criticize, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).  Here are her remarks.  The responses in blue italics are mine.  ~CW

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also now known as “AOC,” is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Normally, a person who is first at something is admired, revered, respected; but in the case of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, it’s been quite the opposite.

By Ms. Marshall’s logic we should admire the youngest serial killer and the youngest known rapist.  They were, after all, “first at something.”  In reality, Ocasio-Cortez did what all socialists do and she bought votes with other people’s money, so I am not impressed, nor do I “admire, revere or respect” her or the tiny fraction of New Yorkers who put her in congress.

She’s been attacked not just from the right and members of the GOP, but even from some in her own party. She’s charismatic (Adolf Hitler was “charismatic.”), favors very progressive policies (i.e. she’s a radical), and refers to herself as a Democratic Socialist (that’s the Left’s non-threatening term for “we’re going to rob you blind”).  Yet despite her accomplishments (Um, what exactly has she accomplished other than getting elected?), here’s what is being said about her. And keep in mind, she’s only been in office one week.

She’s dumb.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said that Ocasio-Cortez is a “29-year-old who doesn’t seem to know much about anything.” And that seems to be the opinion of many.

Maybe you should listen to those “many,” Leslie.  AOC is making radical – oops, I mean progressive – proposals which she purportedly has no idea how to finance.  I say “purportedly” because I think she knows very well how her plan will be funded, at least until the socialists run out of other people’s money.  The money will be stolen, via the government’s power to tax, from wealthy Americans (and the definition of who’s “wealthy” will change as the money gets tight).  It’s not exactly a secret.  We all know that taking away other people’s wealth and property by force is how socialism works.  AOC and other socialists just have to be careful about saying it out loud, lest it finally sink in with people that we’re talking about simple theft, albeit on a massive scale.

Is AOC a political scholar? No. In an interview on PBS’s “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover,” she admitted her own weakness on Middle East politics: “I am not the expert [laughing] at geopolitics on this issue.”

This is like saying, “General Custer wasn’t a perfect leader.  He even admitted to not shining his boots properly!”

Ms. Marshall not only understates the problem, she deliberately misses the bigger point.  AOC was elected, and is idolized by many on the Left, for her promises of socialistic bliss.  Apparently Ms. Marshall, who’s supposed to be politically informed, missed the infamous CNN interview in which AOC couldn’t – or wouldn’t – answer the “$40 trillion question” about how she plans to deliver this socialist utopia.  And of course no one ever asks the “charismatic” AOC the most important question of all:  What gives you the right to redistribute the wealth of the American people? 

I don’t know about the rest of you but I never signed up for this.

In my opinion, AOC is anything but dumb. She attended Boston University – not an easy school to get into. While working as a bartender, she decided to run for Congress and unseated the 10-term Democratic incumbent, Joe Crowley, who was not holding a vulnerable Congressional seat at that time. She won 57 percent of the vote. She saw what her district wanted and was lacking, and offered an alternative. And she won.

From a barmaid to a congresswoman? That’s no dummy.

She didn’t really earn her win, she just got lucky.

Ocasio-Cortez’s victory has been chalked up to a lot of factors, like “gentrification” and “changing demographics” in her district. In fact, she won because she gained the confidence of the majority of the voters with an old-fashioned tactic called hard work. This is a woman who pounded the pavement of New York’s 14th congressional district so much that she had holes in her shoes, literally. She admits that one reason she won was she worked harder than her opponent, and that’s true.

There is an extraordinary difference between book smarts and wisdom.  Just because someone can read and write and please the liberals who run Boston University doesn’t by any means guarantee that they are wise.  More importantly it doesn’t guarantee that they believe in the principles of the Constitution on which this nation is founded, and yet this is the one thing that all of our elected representatives should understand.  There are plenty of leftists who are clever.  There are none who are principled and who respect the individual’s right to what he or she has earned.

One of my favorite songs is by Don Henley, “How bad do you want it?” The refrain says, “How bad do you want it? Not bad enough.” Crowley didn’t want it bad enough, didn’t fight hard enough, didn’t work hard enough. AOC did. And this I know from personal experience. I was the youngest person to be syndicated on national radio back in 1992, and many thought I must have done something less than legitimate to get there. Trust me, I got there on nothing but hard work and merit.

So she worked hard.  Donald Trump works very hard too, by all accounts.  I don’t hear anyone on the Left singing his praises.

She’s an imposter.

AOC likes to call herself “Alex from the Bronx,” but her critics argue she’s an imposter because she grew up in Westchester County. Some say that makes her privileged. The fact is, she grew up in Yorktown, a very middle-class neighborhood, and currently lives in the Bronx.

Jim Hoft, a Gateway pundit, even entitled one of his pieces: “Exclusive: Yorktown Elitist and Bronx Hoaxer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Went by ‘Sandy’ Well into College at Boston U….”

Seriously? She’s not Alex from the Bronx because she was Sandy in college? I wonder if Flounder from “Animal House” used that nickname once he left college? And for the record, I was “Fletch” in college. Am I an imposter too?

The average person doesn’t refer to themselves as, “Mary from the bay area” or “John from the panhandle.”  AOC is making a statement when she calls herself “Alex from the Bronx,” so it’s fair for people to judge the fairness of the image that she’s intending to portray.   That certainly was the attitude adopted by the Left when ‘Joe the Plumber’ confronted Barack Obama.

Her clothes.

Despite the #MeToo movement, women still are constantly judged for our appearance, and AOC is no exception. The Washington Examiner posted to Twitter a photo it snuck of her in the halls of Congress. The caption read, “Hill staffer sent me this pic of Ocasio-Cortez they took just now. I’ll tell you something: that jacket and coat don’t look like a girl who struggles.”

If it weren’t for the way in which the Left viciously attacks Melania Trump for the way she dresses I’d say Ms. Marshall has a point, but meh, who cares.

Her facts.  (Her “facts?”  Don’t you mean her non-facts, or her absence of facts?)

AOC pointed out in a recent tweet that PolitiFact has fact-checked her the same number of times as White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

Sarah Sanders doesn’t get a vote in the Congress.  Sarah Sanders isn’t the newest star of the Democrat Party.   But not to worry, AOC.  Barack Obama misrepresented the facts all the time, and look how far he got.  

Her vote.

When she rose to vote for Nancy Pelosi for House speaker, some Republican members booed – treatment her Democratic colleagues did not receive. “Over 200 members voted for Nancy Pelosi today, yet the GOP only booed one: me,” Ocasio-Cortez later tweeted.

Oh please.  Being booed by the GOP is probably a badge of honor for a leftist like AOC.  In fact, she should feel honored.  They probably booed because they thought she might be the one Democrat who was sincere in her rejection of Pelosi.  

She danced!

There was almost more fuss, in my opinion, over a video that surfaced of AOC dancing in college than over the treatment of children being separated from their families at the border.

In the first place, Ms. Marshall’s assertion is false.  There was mass hysteria over family separations at the border.  The headlines went on for days.  Democrats and their cohorts in the leftwing media made certain of that.  The dancing fuss was just a blip.  But since she brought it up, let’s talk about those children.  Remind me, please, of how they came to be crossing the U.S. border illegally?  Leftist logic says that if you commit a crime (or your parents drag you along as they commit one), and there are consequences to that, the people who must impose the consequences are the bad guys, not the people who committed the crime.  This kind of childish reasoning is why leftists should never, ever be elected to positions of importance inside our government.

The bottom line is, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is someone who can be a role model for young girls everywhere. She had a goal, worked hard and achieved it. We should be applauding her accomplishments, not tearing her down and constantly criticizing her.

Hitler had a goal.  Hitler had achievements.  I’m not saying AOC is Hitler.  I’m saying that the morality of the goal matters, and there is nothing noble or moral about forced socialism, which is what AOC is promoting.  If I had a daughter the last person I would want her to emulate would be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  She is a fool and a threat to her fellow citizens whose rights she doesn’t respect and whose futures she wantonly jeopardizes.  She has the hubris to believe that she’s smarter and wiser than the Founders of this nation, so much so that she is unmoved by the realities of the man-made disaster playing out right now in Venezuela.  Leslie Marshall, in a fashion so tragically typical of the Left, ignores the substance and celebrates the fluff.  Her op-ed gives us insight into what’s wrong with the liberal mind.

~CW

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Where Was Mitt Romney When Barack Obama Was Lowering the Bar on American Character??

Yesterday Utah senator-elect Mitt Romney published what’s been described as a “scathing” anti-Trump op-ed in The Washington Post.  In the piece Romney opines that “…[Trump’s] conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.”

Romney went on to say:

“A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.”

Regular readers here know that I am not the greatest fan of Donald Trump.  I believe it would be a far better thing if, in addition to the many things he’s done right, Trump could do his “winning” with class and grace which, for the record, I DO NOT define as allowing the attacks of the Left to go unanswered.  That said, I am greatly angered by Mitt Romney’s opinion piece for a number of reasons, first and foremost being the oh-so typical cluelessness of the self-righteous ‘moral conservative.’  If Mr. Romney is so concerned about the moral tone and character set by the president, where in the hell was he when Barack Obama was teaching Americans that it’s perfectly okay to saddle their neighbors with what is supposed to be their responsibility to take care of the needs of themselves and their families?  Where was Romney’s moral outrage when Obama and Democrats LIED in order to shove Obamacare down the throats of Americans?  Where was Romney’s moral outrage when Obama advocated stealing from taxpayers to “forgive” student loan debt?  Where was Romney’s moral outrage when Obama stole from taxpayers to put half the country on food stamps, or when taxpayers were stolen from to give bigger and bigger “refunds” to people who never paid one dime in taxes?  On the scale of what’s bad for the character of the country, making us a nation of thieves ought to far outweigh petty name-calling, and yet I don’t recall ever hearing Romney scolding Barack Obama or calling his character into question in an op-ed.

And let’s talk about the president’s imperative to “unite” us, since that was on Mitt’s scornful list of complaints against Trump.  Despite what the leftwing-dominated “mainstream” media would have the world believe, Barack Obama was the most divisive president in modern American history.  Without looking up the stats yet again, Americans who believed that race relations in this country were good plummeted by just about half during the reign of Barack Obama.  He and Democrats intentionally pitted blacks against whites, females against males, poor against rich – all as part of their political strategy.  That should have been obvious to anyone paying attention.  So where was Mr. Romney’s op-ed denouncing the failure of Obama to bring us together?  And maybe Mr. Romney, in his infinite wisdom, can advise Donald Trump as to precisely how he’s supposed to unite the country when he’s up against blind “resistance,” the sole purpose of which is to keep us as disunited as possible.  Please enlighten us, oh moral one!

It takes very little courage to criticize a president who is almost uniformly detested by the “mainstream” media, so color me unimpressed by Romney’s “bold” editorial.  I consider it the equivalent to kicking a person who’s already been ganged up on and isolated.  Oh, and how brave of you to speak up after you were safely elected, Mr. Romney.  That took real guts – not.     

~CW

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