Archive for 2019

OOPS:

CARACAS-BY-THE-LAKE: Chicago’s Democratic socialists on brink of transforming city’s politics.

Eric Lutz says this like it’s a good thing:

Democratic socialist Rossana Rodriguez never thought she would run for office, let alone win.

But the Chicago educator and community activist may be poised to do just that after forcing a runoff in her 33rd ward aldermanic race against incumbent Deb Mell last month, making her one of six democratic socialists who could potentially join city council this year.

That shock number of openly declared socialists set to join Chicago politics comes at a time when socialism is increasingly visible in national US politics, led by the socialist senator Bernie Sanders running for president and socialist New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez becoming one the most high-profile politicians in the House of Representatives.

But the trend is happening at a local level, too, with the emergence of socialists in Chicago politics a reflection of the progressive momentum Rodriguez and other socialist candidates say could “transform” the way this city operates.

The results should prove… instructive.

WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING IS GETTING THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE DOCTOR-PATIENT LOOP, NOT INSERT MORE OF IT IN.  GIVING THE GOVERNMENT POWER OVER HEALTH IS LIKE PERFORMING BRAIN SURGERY ON THE KITCHEN TABLE, USING A WOODEN SPOON: The War on Pain Medication.

THE HILL: As [alleged] Russia collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges.

After nearly three years and millions of tax dollars, the Trump-Russia collusion probe is about to be resolved. Emerging in its place is newly unearthed evidence suggesting another foreign effort to influence the 2016 election — this time, in favor of the Democrats.

Ukraine’s top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country’s law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton. . . .

In our interview, Lutsenko accused the Obama-era U.S. Embassy in 2016 of interfering in his ability to prosecute corruption cases, saying the U.S. ambassador gave him a list of defendants that he would not be allowed to pursue and then refused to cooperate in an early investigation into the alleged misappropriation of U.S. aid in Ukraine.

Name an independent prosecutor! (I added the [alleged] to the headline, since so far there’s nothing but allegations where the Russian collusion is involved.)

FREE SPEECH WIN: Amherst College backs down on PC ‘language guide.’

Related: Adriana Cohen: A couple of wins for free speech. “For far too long colleges and universities have been stifling free speech on campus, contrary to the notion that higher education is supposed to promote a free flow of ideas. Thanks to political correctness spreading like a noxious weed from one liberal campus to the next, free speech has been under assault. The good guys — College Republicans and everyone else who values the free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution — notched a victory this week at Amherst College when its president shot down its own Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s ‘Common Language Guide’ it emailed to students which laid out PC definitions for everything from capitalism to transgenderism to how to address illegal immigrants, or as they prefer it, ‘undocumented persons.'”

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