The Expansionist: More Maddow Nonsense about Russia; The Real Reasons Trump Won; Welfare for the Rich

Thursday, September 07, 2017

More Maddow Nonsense about Russia; The Real Reasons Trump Won; Welfare for the Rich

Russia, Shmusha, Again. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC keeps ranting and raving about a Russian "attack on our election", without ever explaining why the release of accurate information about Hillary Clinton was somehow "negative". I don't recall ANYthing exposed in the Democratic National Committee's or the Clinton campaign's emails as being "negative", rather than merely informative, such that people hearing of it could make up their own mind as to how to process it. Everything exposed in real sources — not the genuinely Fake News put out over Russian propaganda websites and on "social media" — could be seen as being at least as positive for Hillary as negative. And what idiot gets their news from Facebook and other "social media" rather than reputable news media?
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Maddow says repeatedly that the materials released about Hillary were "denigrating". HOW were those materials "denigrating" to Clinton? Specifics, please.
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And how did the release of DNC and Clinton campaign emails affect voters? I have seen no persuasive proof that those emails played any significant part in voters' attitudes toward Hillary Clinton. Russia apparently did similar things to try to influence French voters to reject Emmanuel Macron, but he won a huge victory (66.1% of the vote), and is now President of France. So much for Russian power to affect elections in Western countries.
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Russia did not "attack" our election. It PARTICIPATED in efforts to influence voters in our election, as any foreign government is entitled to do, for its own national purposes. The only legal issue is if AMERICANS knowingly took foreign money for their campaign. I am absolutely certain that the United States CANNOT control the activities of a sovereign foreign state in regard to taking ads or releasing information or in any other way trying to influence an election in the United States. The applicable legal principle is "sovereign immunity". The United States does NOT control the WORLD, but only the United States. Period. Got that, Maddow?
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The Wikipedia article on sovereign immunity starts with this very clear statement:

Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution. It is a principle of international law which exempts a sovereign state from the jurisdiction of foreign national courts. Sovereign immunity is based on the concept of sovereignty in the sense that a sovereign may not be subjected without its approval to the jurisdiction of another sovereign. [Italics added.]

Lest any American think that it's not fair that we can do nothing if the Russian Government wants to influence our elections, turn it around to see that sovereign immunity protects the United States Government from being punished by Russia if the U.S. works to advance democracy in the Russian Federation, advocate that the people of Russia indict Vladimir Putin for multiple murder, or take ads in Russian media intended to promote the candidacy of a particular person in any Russian election.
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Maddow makes much of Russian intelligence operatives hacking into state boards of elections and such to 'gather information on voters'. Yeah? So what? American hacking experts say that NOT ONE VOTE was altered. NOT ONE VOTE. Not ONE, out of 128,824,833 votes cast. So, Ms. Maddow, how does that constitute an "attack" on our election?
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Why Trump Really Won. The Democrats lost the 2016 election because the Democrats have been seized by madness, a massive delusion that the people of this country HATE this country and want it to change massively in every way. The 'thinking' of the anti-American Left seems to most Americans to be that the United States is a horrible country that has been an unmitigated force for evil in the world; that real Americans want all separate races to disappear into a single HUMAN race, no blacks, no whites, no Orientals; everybody the same color, hair texture, eye shape, etc. That we want separate genders to disappear into a single, unisex world where everybody has a CHOICE as to biology, not just activities and occupations. That no one is entitled to be rich, no matter how long or arduously they prepared for success in life or how hard they worked, and no one should be poor, no matter how much they subverted themselves by refusing to pay attention in school, refusing to "just say no" to drugs, refusing to look for work, refusing to show up on time, refusing to do their job conscientiously, refusing to cooperate with fellow employees, refusing to be courteous to customers, refusing to watch their language on the job, refusing ... you get the picture.
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The Democratic Left plainly does not understand that this is NOT a Radical Feminist society. Hillary Clinton was a TERRIBLE CANDIDATE, in large part because she is a woman, and the bulk of the people in the majority of states (and states are what matters in the Electoral College) DO NOT WANT A WOMAN PRESIDENT, a woman Commander–in-Chief of the military, a woman representing the Nation abroad (no pun intended).
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The bulk of Americans do not accept that whitey is to blame for everything bad that happens to black people, but, rather, believe that this country affords almost unlimited opportunity to people who accept that, at end, they are responsible for themselves. No, we say, you can't control everything around you, but you can persevere against adversity if you do competent analysis, seek good advice, and take appropriate steps to extricate YOURSELF from difficulties posed by other people's acts and by social and economic circumstances you did not create. Nobody says the United States is perfect. But most Americans do a reverse "New York, New York" thinking: if you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere.
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Refusing National Pride. When Donald Trump said "Make America great again", the Democrats did not respond as I said here on Election Day 2016 that Hillary Clinton should have responded:

"If Donald Trump thinks the United States is no longer great, he is seriously disordered, mentally. The United States is the greatest country in the history of the world. No matter what area of human activity you consider, the United States is the first and best. We have the largest, most dynamic economy; the unchallengeably greatest military; the most inventive technology in every sphere, from robotics to medicine and anything else you might name. We so thoroughly permeate world culture that it is practically American in nature, and not just pop culture but also high culture. Americans dominate music, film, dance, literature, and pretty much every other type of high culture all around this planet. Americans also dominate the Nobel Prizes year after year, racking up 363 Nobel laureates as No. 1 in the world, almost three times as many as the next country, Britain, which has had only 123. By any measure except area and population, the United States is the greatest country in the history of the world, and has contributed more to the advancement of civilization and assistance to people in distress than any other country or empire, by far. We don't generally brag about these things, and I wouldn't brag now except to defend this greatest of all civilizations from Donald Trump's outrageous and contemptible slander that this is no longer a great country. Of course it is, and Donald Trump owes the United States a 'yuge' apology."

In rereading that passage now, I realize I didn't even mention that the United States is the only country in history ever to have landed a man — actually, several men — on the Moon and return them safely to Earth. (We don't know if the Soviet Union landed anyone on the Moon, just that we do know they never RETURNED anyone from the Moon!) But that is not current, and the point in my proposed statement above was that the United States PRESENTLY is beyond question great.
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No, the Democratic Left said instead, in part by NOT saying that the U.S. is now, has always been, and will always be great, "You call this a great country? This sh*hole? What other country doesn't have universal, single-payer healthcare?" — never mind that only a small fraction of the countries on Earth, comprising an elite group of First World countries only, have free universal healthcare. "How can you call 'great' a country of disgraceful income inequality and astronomically disparate levels of wealth [accumultated income]? 43.1 million people, 13.5% of Americans, live in poverty! And how can you call 'great' a country in which almost 7 million people, 1 in 36 adults, are in prison or on probation? in which there are almost 1.2 million violent crimes per year; almost 16,000 murders, and over 90,000 rapes!" And on, and on.
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You know what? The people of this country are very tired of endless harping on faults. We KNOW we have faults, but we also know we're WORKING ON THEM. We are not so naive as to believe in the perfectability of the human creature. We know that Homo sapiens is a killer ape, so there are limits to what we can achieve in reining in bad behavior. But WE'RE WORKING ON IT. And we want CREDIT for working on it.
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Donald Trump is President today for two main reasons. First, in law, is the outrageous Electoral College system, which should long ago have been abolished, in favor of direct Presidential elections in which the popular vote rules. By that standard, even a candidate as crummy as Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016. But you don't hear anybody militating to abolish the Electoral College, even just going forward, not retroactively, do you? Why not? Why, instead of near riots on the streets against racism and in favor of illegal immigration, are there not massive, unending demonstrations and agitation in all realms of publicity and policy to abolish the Electoral College? No, that would make sense, and the Democratic Left never makes any sense!
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The most basic reason Trump won, however, is the feeling in large swaths of the Nation that white people, who created this country and all its institutions, are disrespected and endangered; that everybody but English-speaking white, heterosexual men gets preference. That only nonwhites' problems receive attention, and white people's problems get no sympathy in today's America. Trumpistas do not look with equanimity to a postulated nonwhite majority in the United States by the mid-21st Century, less than 40 years from now. Some Trumpistas even worry that the majority of the population by 2055 won't even speak English! Defenders of the United States' historical demographics and culture do not accept that there is nothing they can do to stop such things from happening. They do not see that we are helpless in controlling our borders, even completely ending immigration save from countries that have contributed the bulk of the white population heretofore. The American majority believes that the United States today has as much right to determine the nature of its population and culture as they are expected to grant other countries' rights to protect their borders and cultures.
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To the Democratic Left, such thoughts are anathema. We must HAVE no borders against people from whatever country, race, or culture who want to come here. We don't own the land! The land, the planet, belongs to EVERYONE, equally! Oh? Where is that written? The Constitution? The Declaration of Independence? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Nope. None of them gives anyone the right to move from one country to another no matter what the government or people of the intended receiving country want. Life in the real world is not about infinite choice, but about choosing among realistic alternatives. And unfettered migration is not a realistic alternative to having people stay put or ask permission to move to another country.
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The Democratic Left is lost in fantasy, a world in which anything is possible. If you want rocks to fall up, they will fall UP! If you are born a boy, you can grow up to be a woman! No. The world does not work that way. You can't reverse gravity, nor change gender, race, or species. It might be wonderful if we could fly like the birds, but people don't have wings, so cannot fly without some external mechanism. The best we can do is glide in special aerodynamic clothing if we can find a cliff or skyscraper high enough to leap from. Even then, we can't fully control the direction or rate of descent, but can be killed if something goes wrong. So put aside dreams of flying above all the problems we face, and come down to Earth.
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What people can do, however, is govern themselves — not others without those others' consent, but themselves. That means that Americans are entitled to say "yes" to some would-be immigrants and "no" to others, for ANY REASON WE WANT. That principle, or, as the Democratic Left might term it, "sentiment" or "prejudice", is behind Donald Trump's recent statement that the United States should change its immigration laws to favor people who speak English. He did not say "white people", but he did say people who speak English. The Democratic Left objects to such a stance. On what basis? Do they really want to see the United States fragmented, Balkanized by language? I don't. The Democratic Party overall does not. The Republican Party certainly does not. And the American people do not. But where is the leadership of the Democratic Party on this issue? Opposed! Let's just admit people without regard to language or culture, and if the Nation breaks up, it breaks up.
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The claim is made that all controls on immigration would harm our economy. Ridiculous. The assertion that wage rates would NOT be undercut by a vast inpouring of foreigners is also contemptible nonsense. Supply-and-demand is one of the most basic of all rules in economics. The more there is of something, the lower the price. That includes labor. The more people there are to fill a job, the less an employer has to pay. So how could it possibly NOT be true that flooding the Nation with foreigners will undercut wages and benefits? It CANNOT be anything but true.
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Again and again we see the Democratic Left lost in delusion. It has no grasp on reality. It does not understand the people of the United States AT ALL. That is why Trump is President. That is why the entire Federal Government is under the control of Rightwing Republicans: because the Republican Right is NOT lost in delusion, and DOES understand the people of this country, who do NOT want everything to change. Some things? Sure. Most things, NO.
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I am an unabashed Liberal — forget about the noxious, cowardly euphemism "Progressive"; "Liberal" is not a dirty word, so does not need a euphemism. But I want to defend the values traditionally associated with Liberalism: fairness and open-mindedness, but not empty-headedness. I understand that freedom can go only so far before it becomes anarchy, and anarchy is always bad. I believe in the basic principles set out in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, JFK's Inaugural Address (a much better, more globally comprehensive speech than I had remembered and astonishingly relevant to today's exigencies), and other key statements of American civilization (except that I reject the preposterous religious references).
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And I believe that no one knows how much we can change about this country before the entire structure comes crashing down on our heads. One half-inch chip in a granite column will not make it fall. A million half-inch chips, all around its circumference at the same height and increasing depth with each circuit, however, might well cause it to collapse. Better safe than sorry. The Democratic Party's Far Left does not believe in gravity, so does not believe that any combination of forces can destroy this country. I do believe in gravity, so understand that no country can withstand endless, grave strains. I know something of history. The Roman Empire was destroyed by barbarian invasions. The political unity of Roman civilization was destroyed by conquests both at the center and farther afield. The cultural unity was destroyed over time, and Latin broke up into a large number of "Roman"ce languages. If it could happen to Rome, it can happen to US. In which descendant country of a Balkanized America would the magnificent Roman building that is now the United States Capitol then be located?
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Welfare for the Rich and Upper Middle Class. Public schools in New York City reopen today, and the idiots in City government have decided to offer free lunches to EVERY CHILD, no matter their family resources. So a program designed to help the poor will now help the RICH and upper middle class, who can perfectly well pay for their own children's lunch. What is WRONG with this country? The excuse given is that in order to reach the truly needy, the "stigma" associated with free lunch for the poor prevents some poor kids from getting the help they need. Bull!
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What lesson does that teach? — and, remember, we're talking about schools here, so must realize that what the school system DOES, teaches more powerfully than what it SAYS. Don't ask for what you are entitled to? Don't speak up in defense of your rights? This crazy measure should be reversed, immediately. Why should poor and working-class New Yorkers have to pay for the children of families better off than they are? Remember, these lunches are not really free, but are paid for by taxes, including sales taxes. So even if poor and working-class taxpayers do not pay significant income taxes (and New York does have a state income tax), they still pay high sales taxes (8.875%, of which more than half, 4.5%, goes to the City). So everybody has to subsidize the children of the rich and upper middle class! What madness is this? How did this country get so crazy?
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It's like Bernie Sanders' proposal to provide taxpayer-funded single-payer healthcare to everyone, including BILLIONAIRES. No, fairness does not require the less-fortunate to subsidize the more-fortunate. Quite the contrary. The less-fortunate should NEVER have to pay for the more-fortunate, EVER, in regard to ANYTHING.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:24 AM

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