DEMOCRATS’ BLUE COLLAR BLUES: Nolan Finley at Detroit News opines, “Democrats’ Handout Strategy is Failing.”

Blue collar white voters believe the Republican Party is better equipped to make the economic system more fair by an overwhelming margin, according to a new Washington Post poll.

In the survey of non-college educated whites, 50 percent had more faith in GOP policies, while 29 percent favored the Democratic strategy.

These are among the workers hit hardest by the economic shifts of the past quarter century, and in particular by the failed polices of the Obama administration.

They’ve seen good paying jobs in Appalachian coal mines become casualties of the president’s war on coal. They’ve lost solid, middle class work on the oil rigs of the Gulf to a president more obsessed with tomorrow’s temperatures than today’s families. And they’ve bid goodbye to Midwestern factory jobs while the president saddles employers with oppressive taxes and regulations. . . .

Mitt Romney, the failed GOP standard bearer in 2012, bemoaned the prospects for selling a message of smaller government when 47 percent of the population is receiving some form of government assistance.

But many of these blue collar whites are among the 47 percenters. They may be getting Obamacare subsidies, or unemployment benefits, or even food stamps.

And that’s not what they want. They’re looking for the opportunity to take care of themselves and their families. They want jobs, not another Big Government giveaway designed to replace the paychecks Democratic policies have killed.

They’ve lost faith — if they ever had any — in the government’s ability to solve their problems. And who can blame them?

All true. Handouts never create opportunity, only dependency. Blue collar workers aren’t hardwired to want handouts; it demeans their humanity and self-sufficiency.  And I should add that blue collar workers comprise 61% of the U.S. working population.

I would also add that Democrats’ incessant demeaning of blue collar workers because of their race (predominantly white), religion, gender (predominantly male), or values isn’t helping a whole lot, either. If you keep suggesting that white, male, Christians who believe in earning a dollar are racist, ignorant, xenophobic, homophobic or otherwise evil, they probably won’t vote for you. 

SOCIAL JUSTICE BULLIES: THE AUTHORITARIANISM OF MILLENNIAL SOCIAL JUSTICE.  A self-confessed liberal engages in some long-overdue reflection on the price society is now paying for political correctness and the self-righteous zeal for “social justice”:

And perhaps it’s my liberal heart speaking, the fact that I grew up in a liberal town, learned US history from a capital-S Socialist, and/or went to one of the most liberal universities in the country, but I view this is a good thing. The idea that societal ills should be remedied such that one group is not given an unfair advantage over another is not, to me, a radical idea.

But millennials are grown up now — and they’re angry. As children, they were told that they could be anything, do anything, and that they were special. As adults, they have formed a unique brand of Identity Politics wherein the groups with which one identifies is paramount. With such a strong narrative that focuses on which group one belongs to, there has been an increasing balkanization of identities. In an attempt to be open-minded toward other groups and to address social justice issues through a lens of intersectionality, clear and distinct lines have been drawn between people. One’s words and actions are inextricable from one’s identities. For example: this is not an article, but an article written by a straight, white, middle-class (etc.) male (and for this reason will be discounted by many on account of how my privilege blinds me — more on this later).

And while that’s well and good (that is — pride in oneself and in one’s identity), the resulting sociopolitical culture among millennials and their slightly older political forerunners is corrosive and destructive to progress in social justice. And herein lies the problem — in attempting to solve pressing and important social issues, millennial social justice advocates are violently sabotaging genuine opportunities for progress by infecting a liberal political narrative with, ironically, hate. . . .

This particular brand of social justice advocacy assaults reason in a particularly frightening way — by outright denying it and utilizing fear-mongering to discourage dissent. There is no gray: only black and white. One must mimic the orthodoxy or be barred forcibly from the chapel and jeered at by the townspeople. To disagree with the millennial social justice orthodoxy is to make a pariah of oneself willingly. Adherence to the narrative is the single litmus test for collegiate (and beyond) social acceptance these days. . . .

To the social justice advocate of our time, conclusions are not contingent on facts; rather, facts are contingent on conclusions. In a global example of confirmation bias, the truth is malleable. The malleable truth is molded around the theoretical viewpoints of social justice. In order to uphold the sanctity of this viewpoint, adherents ostracize dissension. It’s nothing new — it’s a tactic as old as religion itself. Instead of holy texts, though, the millennial social justice advocate bows at the altar of the currently-in-vogue ideological Trinity: Marxism, Feminism, and Post-Colonialism.

Yep. It’s the new religion of the political left, and it insists on rigid orthodoxy. How ironic that a group of post-modern atheists whose entire identity is wrapped around a notion of “social justice” have become the most fervent religious zealots whose primary tactic is bullying and intimidation? There are odd parallels between this western social justice movement and radical jihad of Islam. Is it just something in the water (or the parenting) that is causing the millennial generation to be angry, convinced they are right, and willing to use whatever means necessary to prove it?

And I wonder if we can count on Michelle Obama to help us stop the bullying by these social justice warriors? According to the government’s new website, StopBullying.gov, bullying “includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.” So basically this would include virtually everything SJWs do, plus much of the mainstream media. But it would be interesting for our young people, particularly those in high school and college, to start pushing back against social justice tactics by reframing their behavior as bullying (which it undoubtedly is).

IRAN DEAL IS AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE: So says Andrew McCarthy in his latest NRO post.

The president “must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate.” One can imagine hearing such counsel from a contemporary United States senator on the receiving end of President Obama’s “full disclosure” of the nuclear deal with Iran. But the admonition actually came from James Iredell, a champion of the Constitution’s ratification, who was later appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington.

Iredell was addressing the obligations the new Constitution imposed on the president in the arena of international affairs. Notwithstanding the chief executive’s broad powers to “regulate all intercourse with foreign powers,” it would be the president’s “duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives.” Indeed, among the most egregious offenses a president could commit would be fraudulently inducing senators “to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them.” . . .

After a few days of misdirection, administration officials now admit that there are “side deals” that the administration has not revealed to Congress and does not intend to make public. So far, we know of two “side deals” — who knows how many more there may actually be? As the Center for Security Policy’s Fred Fleitz writes in National Review, they involve (a) a full accounting of Iran’s prior nuclear activities (many of which are believed to have been in blatant violation of international law) and (b) access to the Parchin military base, where Iran has conducted explosive testing related to nuclear missiles. . . .

Now consider this: Under cover of this IAEA ruse, Obama ran to the Security Council and rammed through a resolution commencing implementation of his Iran deal before Congress or the American people could consider it. He thus undermined American sovereignty and the Constitution by scheming to impose an international-law fait accompli. And he thus undermined American national security by transferring his inspection commitments to an international agency that he knows is not close to being capable of executing them — an agency that will be further hampered by notice restrictions that, as Charles Krauthammer concludes, render the inspections “farcical” in any event.

The Constitution forbids providing aid and comfort to America’s enemies. And the Framers’ notion that a president would be punishable for deceiving Congress regarding the conduct of foreign affairs meant that lawmakers would be obliged to use their constitutional powers to protect the United States — not merely shriek on cable television as if they were powerless spectators.

Well?

McCarthy’s right, of course. But as his ending query reveals, no one realistically expects the Republican establishment to call for impeachment, despite the fact that the House GOP could issue articles of impeachment with a simple majority vote, sending the case to the Senate for conviction (which would require 2/3 supermajority).

Why not? Because the GOP leadership has given up, and like a jilted lover, is trying so hard to “look the other way” that it no longer sees the obvious, and has lost all self-confidence in its own power, and the power of the truth. It also is betting the farm–i.e., the country–that the U.S. can survive another 18 months of an Obama presidency, and that the next (hopefully) GOP President can magically “cure” all of the Obama-induced cancers. It’s a risky and stupid gamble.

ANALOGIZING UNIONS TO COMMUNISTS: Dana Milbank at the Washington Post draws an amusing (even if unintended) parallel in his latest column, “Why Scott Walker is so dangerous.”

This is the essence of Walker’s appeal — and why he is so dangerous. He is not as outrageous as Donald Trump and Sen.­­ Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), but his technique of scapegoating unions for the nation’s ills is no less demagogic. Sixty-five years ago, another man from Wisconsin made himself a national reputation by frightening the country about the menace of communists, though the actual danger they represented was negligible. Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy, but his technique is similar: He suggests that the nation’s ills can be cured by fighting labor unions (foremost among the “big government special interests” hurting the United States), even though unions represent just 11 percent of the U.S. workforce and have been at a low ebb. . . .

But deception is the demagogue’s tool. Walker spoke Thursday about “the death threats not just against me and my family but against our lawmakers” and about the nails put in the driveway of one lawmaker to puncture his tires. Such behavior is beyond the pale — though hardly unique to Walker’s opponents. And some of Walker’s claims — including the alleged threat to “gut” his wife “like a deer” and of protesters “beating” and “rocking” a car he was in — could not be substantiated by independent authorities.

Such deception, however, is in the service only of the larger deceit at the core of his candidacy: By scapegoating toothless trade unions as powerful and malign interests, he enlists working people in his cause of aiding the rich and the strong.

Notice how Milbank himself engages in outlandish deception: He insinuates that Walker is somehow lying about the death threats he has received, saying that they “could not be substantiated by independent authorities.” But the threats made by union thugs against Walker and his fellow Wisconsin Republicans do, indeed, appear to have been substantiated, as evidenced here, here, here and here. For Milbank to suggest that Walker is lying because Milbank failed to even conduct a cursory Google search to confirm the validity of the threats tells you everything you need to know about Milbank’s far-left agenda and lack of veracity. 

On the larger level, Milbank is trying to convince the low information reader that Walker’s campaign to end outlandish, expensive, taxpayer-funded perks for public union workers is somehow analogous to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against Communism. The only think McCarthy and Walker have in common is that they’re both from Wisconsin. But Milbank’s unintended analogy between Unions and Communists is on point, as they both encourage working the minimum amount, guaranteed jobs for life (regardless of merit), and redistributing wealth. So maybe Milbank is right, after all: Scott Walker’s willingness to take on public sector unions is dangerous indeed– to these liberal/progressive/Marxist values. No wonder Milbank is afraid.

BECAUSE THEY’RE HYPOCRITES: Ace at Ace of Spades on the Race-Baiting Hypocrisy of Jon Stewart:

Jon Stewart’s Only Black Writer Told Him He Was Uncomfortable With Stewart’s “Black Guy” Impression; Racist Jon Stewart Told Him to “F*** Off,” Angrily.

I kind of understand Stewart’s reaction — it is, in fact, annoying to be accused of bad motives (racism has in fact been defined as the worst possible motive in existence) over things that are, or at least seem, harmless, and without harmful intent.

On the other hand, this jackass is, like Seth Rogen, a reliable cheerleader for SJW attacks so long as they’re directed at other people; only when such attacks are directed at themselves do they suddenly feel that maybe this censorship-by-contrived-hypersensitivity is stultifying, anti-creativity, anti-thought and ultimately anti-human.

But per the rules Jon Stewart inflicts on others: He’s a g*d-damn racist. . . .

F*** you, Jon Stewart. You’re a hypocrite, a liar, and — by your own rules — an unrepentant racist who not only won’t check his privilege, but who uses his privilege to silence any black voices who dissent against you.

Way to speak truth to power, Ace. These liberal/progressives deserve to be called out–every single time–on their hypocrisy. Don’t hold back calling them the “r” word, because they surely would not, if the tables were turned.

MAD AS HELL AND NOT TAKING IT ANYMORE: Matthew Continetti over at the Washington Free Beacon on “Revenge of the Radical Middle: Why Donald Trump Isn’t Going Away.”

Two decades ago, in the spring of 1996,Newsweek magazine described a group of voters it called the “radical middle.” Formerly known as the Silent Majority, then the Reagan Democrats, these voters had supported Ross Perot in 1992, and were hoping the Texas billionaire would run again. Voters in the radical middle, Newsweek wrote, “see the traditional political system itself as the country’s chief problem.”

The radical middle is attracted to populists, outsiders, businessmen such as Perot and Lee Iacocca who have never held office, and to anyone, according to Newsweek, who is the “tribune of anti-insider discontent.” Newt Gingrich rallied the radical middle in 1994—year of the Angry White Male—but his Republican Revolution sputtered to a halt after the government shut down over Medicare in 1995. Once more the radical middle had become estranged from the GOP. “If Perot gets in the race,” a Dole aide told Newsweek, “it will guarantee Clinton’s reelection.”

Well, here we are again, at the beginning of a presidential campaign in which the Republican Party, having lost its hold on the radical middle, is terrified of the electoral consequences. . . .

What Republicans are trying to figure out is not so much how to handle Trump as how to handle his supporters. Ignore or confront? Mock or treat seriously? Insult or persuade? The men and women in the uppermost ranks of the party, who have stood by Trump in the past as he gave them his endorsements and cash, are inclined to condescend to a large portion of the Republican base, to treat base voters’ concerns as unserious, nativist, racist, sexist, anachronistic, or nuts, to apologize for the “crazies” who fail to understand why America can build small cities in Iraq and Afghanistan but not a wall along the southern border, who do not have the education or skills or means to cope when factories move south or abroad, who stare incomprehensibly at the television screen when the media fail to see a “motive” for the Chattanooga shooting, who voted for Perot in ’92 and Buchanan in ’96 and Sarah Palin in ’08 and joined the Tea Party to fight death panels in ’09.

These voters don’t give a whit about corporate tax reform or TPP or the capital gains rate or the fate of Uber, they make a distinction between deserved benefits like Social Security and Medicare and undeserved ones like welfare and food stamps, their patriotism is real and nationalistic and skeptical of foreign entanglement, they wept on 9/11, they want America to be strong, dominant, confident, the America of their youth, their young adulthood, the America of 40 or 30 or even 20 years ago. They do not speak in the cadences or dialect of New York or Washington, their thoughts can be garbled, easily dismissed, or impugned, they are not members of a designated victim group and thus lack moral standing in the eyes of the media, but still they deserve as much attention and sympathy as any of our fellow citizens, still they vote.

Amen. Read the whole thing.

My own preference isn’t to describe this middle as “radical” (because I don’t think they are) but “patriotic.” They abhor the cronyism of Washington elites, and reflect a major “values gap” between DC and Main Street, USA.  The irony, of course, is that Trump does not share their values, really–except perhaps on immigration and a few other patriotism-centric issues upon which he’s wisely capitalizing. But at least Trump is finally giving a voice to the Silent Majority’s deeply felt patriotism. The great middle is craving a leader who is unafraid to be unabashedly patriotic.

The question is: Why aren’t more GOP presidential hopefuls getting a clue and matching Trump’s vigor on these issues? Are they simply too weak, and are waiting for Trump to stop stealing “their” spotlight? Or are they too weak on these issues to really care?

CRAZY LAWS AND OVERREGULATION: I will be on the John Stossel show tonight @ 8pm, Fox Business Channel, talking about an array of crazy laws–most of which will probably surprise you. Tune in if you can!

TRUMP DOES TRUMP:  The Donald has an oped in USA Today taking on Sen. John McCain and other Republicans, “I don’t need to be lectured.”

John McCain has called his own constituents who want a secure border “crazies.”  No one in the news media or the establishment, including the Republican National Committee, criticized the senator for those comments. . . .

Thanks to McCain and his Senate colleague Bernie Sanders, their legislation to cover up the VA scandal, in which 1,000+ veterans died waiting for medical care, made sure no one has been punished, charged, jailed, fined or held responsible. McCain has abandoned our veterans. I will fight for them.

The reality is that John McCain the politician has made America less safe, sent our brave soldiers into wrong-headed foreign adventures, covered up for President Obama with the VA scandal and has spent most of his time in the Senate pushing amnesty. He would rather protect the Iraqi border than Arizona’s. He even voted for the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015, which allows Obama, who McCain lost to in a record defeat, to push his dangerous Iran nuclear agreement through the Senate without a supermajority of votes.

A number of my competitors for the Republican nomination have no business running for president. I do not need to be lectured by any of them. . . .

Trump punches back twice as hard, which is kind of fun to watch. No wonder the GOP Establishment hates him as much as the Democrats.

NUNS FORCED TO PAY FOR OBAMACARE CONTRACEPTION: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled today that the Little Sisters of the Poor must abide by Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. You may recall that the Little Sisters took their religious liberty objection to the mandate all the way to the Supreme Court last summer–and won an injunction therefrom, pending disposition on the merits by the Tenth Circuit.  But when considering the merits, the Tenth Circuit nonetheless ruled against them:

In response to religious concerns, the Departments implementing the ACA— Health and Human Services (“HHS”), Labor, and Treasury—adopted a regulation that exempts religious employers—churches and their integrated auxiliaries—from covering contraceptives. When religious non-profit organizations complained about their omission from this exemption, the Departments adopted a regulation that allows them to opt out of providing, paying for, or facilitating contraceptive coverage. Under this regulation, a religious non-profit organization can opt out by delivering a form to their group health plan’s health insurance issuer or third-party administrator (“TPA”) or by sending a notification to HHS.

The Plaintiffs in the cases before us are religious non-profit organizations. They contend that complying with the Mandate or the accommodation scheme imposes a substantial burden on their religious exercise. The Plaintiffs argue the Mandate and the accommodation scheme violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) and the Religion and Speech Clauses of the First Amendment.

Although we recognize and respect the sincerity of Plaintiffs’ beliefs and arguments, we conclude the accommodation scheme relieves Plaintiffs of their obligations under the Mandate and does not substantially burden their religious exercise under RFRA or infringe upon their First Amendment rights.

The Tenth Circuit’s contortions to reach this result are remarkable. The court seems to have no recognition of the fact that the Obama Administration’s regulatory “accommodation” is a sleight of hand, allowing the insurer/third party administrator to move the contraceptive coverage “off the books” and “pay” for it themselves. But of course burdening the insurer/administrator in this fashion is merely a shell game, and the cost of contraceptive coverage is ultimately borne by the employer and individual beneficiaries. The coverage is not magically free, no matter how hard the Obama Administration tries to make it “look” free via regulation.

So now we have Catholic nuns who religiously object to paying for certain types of contraception being forced to do so anyway (despite the smoke and mirrors), in contradiction to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The founders would be rolling over in their graves. But hey, what a bunch of dead, old white guys who wrote and ratified the Constitution thought or wanted isn’t relevant anymore anyway, right? We shall see. The Supreme Court may grant review to hear the Little Sisters case again.

THE U.S. SHOULDN’T BE CELEBRATING, EITHER: Michael Oren: Why Israel Won’t be Celebrating the Iran Deal.

Back in 1994, American negotiators promised a “good deal” with North Korea. Its nuclear plants were supposed to be frozen and dismantled. International inspectors would “carefully monitor” North Korea’s compliance with the agreement and ensure the country’s return to the “community of nations.” The world, we were told, would be a safer place. . . .

Iran is not North Korea. It’s far worse. Pyonyang’s dictators never plotted terrorist attacks across five continents and in thirty cities, including Washington, D.C. Tehran’s Ayatollahs did. North Korea is not actively undermining pro-Western governments in its region or planting agents in South America. Iran is.

So why, then, are only Israelis united in opposing this deal? The answer is that we have the most to lose, at least in the short run. We know that the deal allows Iran to break out and create nuclear bombs in as little as three months, too quickly for the world to react. We know that the Ayatollahs, who have secretly constructed fortified nuclear facilities that have no peaceful purpose and have violated all of their international commitments, will break this deal in steps too small to precipitate a powerful global response. And we know that the sanctions, once lifted, cannot be swiftly revived, and that hundreds of billions of dollars Iran will soon receive will not be spent on better roads and schools. That treasure will fund the shedding of blood – of Israelis but also of many others.

Israelis know that, while the world might weather its deception by North Korea, they cannot afford to be duped by Iran. But neither, in fact, can the United States. Just last week, Iran’s President attended a rally in Tehran where tens of thousands of protesters chanted “Death to America.” The deal will better enable them to carry out that attack – if not today, then against future generations. And Iran’s Supreme Leader has publicly pledged to do just that.

I literally feel nauseous about this Iran deal. I feel nauseous because my daughter’s future is being seriously jeopardized by a deal that lifts sanctions that have been well designed to stop a state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining nuclear weapons, in return for virtually nothing. Somehow, President Obama has convinced his fellow Democrats that infusing Iran with billions of dollars will make the world a safer place. But all it will do is exacerbate Iran’s aggression in the Middle East, and perversely enable western civilization to fund terrorism activities aimed at it.

We have given concessions to a country that has repeatedly lied, hidden, deceived, and boldly declared its intention to wipe out both Israel and the United States. Any member of Congress who votes for this deal must have a death wish. But of course Congress, in typical fashion, gave away its constitutional power to ratify this as a treaty (with 2/3 of Senate support) when it passed the Corker legislation. Assuming the Republican-controlled Congress votes down the Iran deal and the President vetoes it, I cannot imagine that there are enough Democrats (13 Democrats in the Senate and 43 in the House) to join the Republicans in overriding Obama’s inevitable veto.

There’s enough political cover and ambiguity in the agreement that the real risks to U.S. and Israel will become known only incrementally, after the passage of years, and most likely only after President Obama leaves office. By the time the western world realizes what a mistake the Obama Administration has made, it will be too late.  I guess that, once again, we have to pass it to really find out what’s in it.

BUT OBAMA WOULD HAVE TO ADMIT THAT OPEN BORDERS ARE DANGEROUS: Marc Thiessen: “Obama’s Silence on Kathyrn Steinle Killing is Deafening.”

After Trayvon Martin was killed, President Obama spoke emotionally about his death, declaring “this could have been my son.”

After Michael Brown was killed, Obama promised to ensure that “justice is done” and declared: “We lost a young man, Michael Brown, in heartbreaking and tragic circumstances. He was 18 years old. His family will never hold Michael in their arms again.” He even sent administration officials to attend Brown’s funeral.

After Freddie Gray was killed, Obama walked out to the Rose Garden and declared: “We have some soul-searching to do. This has been going on for a long time. This is not new, and we shouldn’t pretend that it’s new.”

But after Kathryn Steinle was killed July 1, allegedly by an illegal immigrant with seven felony convictions, Obama said . . . nothing.

His silence has been deafening.

As Thiessen points out, “121 times over the past four years, the administration has released an illegal immigrant with prior criminal convictions who went on to be charged with murder. That is one every 12 days.”

Of course, we know why President Obama doesn’t take the time out of his day to express sympathy for the families of such murdered victims. It doesn’t fit the liberal/progressive narrative to acknowledge that looking the other way on illegal immigration presents serious risks to public safety and national security.  President Obama elevates his narrow ideology and party interests over these broader American interests.

THE ICE AGE COMETH:  A ‘mini ice age’ is coming, and could bring freezing temperatures by 2030.

A mini ice age could hit the Earth in the 2030s, the first such event to occur since the early 1700s. New mathematical models of the Sun’s solar cycle developed at Northumbria University suggest solar activity will fall by 60 percent, causing temperatures on Earth to plummet.

The last mini ice age occurred between 1645 and 1715 and caused global temperatures to fall dramatically, with London’s River Thames freezing over during winter and sea ice extending for miles around the UK. The prolonged cold snap, known as the Maunder Minimum, was due to sunspots becoming exceedingly rare, as observed by scientists at the time.

Such periods were thought to be driven by convecting waves of fluids deep within the Sun, but new research suggests a second force — or “wave” — is at play. Two waves, operating at different layers in the Sun’s interior, are now believed to drive solar activity. When these waves are desynchronised, temperatures on Earth fall.

How long until some dimwit liberal/progressive blames this natural phenomenon on “climate change”?  After all, the moniker covers all the bases. Temperatures unusually high? Climate change! Temperatures unusually low? Climate change! Active year for hurricanes? Climate change! Unusually wet/dry year? Climate change! It is increasingly obvious–even to the liberals/progressives–that what was once called “global warming” is not going to happen, so the moniker must change to suit their desired political ends (wealth redistribution).

RELATED: The UK’s Mirror reporter wondered out loud if this new evidence would ruin all the liberal/progressive ability to manipulate gullible people with “climate change” “save us from the ravages of global warming?” and concluded, “Sadly not, according to previous research which found the cooling effect of the ice age is not enough to prevent the planet overheating.”

TRUMP HAS THE LEFT QUAKING: Case in point is Carl Hiaasen’s oped for the Miami Herald, “There will never be a President Trump“:

The man has absolutely no chance of winning.

Zero. Nada.

Write it down. Take it to the bank. Bet the farm.

This preening self-parody of an egomaniac will never, ever be elected president of the United States. He has more baggage than all the Kardashians put together, and less class.

Gosh, I can’t imagine an egomaniac being elected President. That has never happened before! I mean, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton and Obama have all just been meek, self-effacing sweethearts.  Besides, politicians have their jobs because they want to serve the public, not their own narcissistic sense of grandeur, right?  And a President with baggage–impossible! Again, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton come to mind, with their notorious philandering, and let’s not forget President Obama’s Marxist mother, father, pastor and mentor, and his infamous Choom Gang.

But wait, perhaps sensing the ridiculousness of this argument, Hiaasen offers another theory:

Anyone who manages to defame an entire Hispanic nationality on his first day of campaigning will, inevitably, offend practically everybody . The early Republican polls showing Trump in second position behind Jeb Bush are hilarious — and meaningless.

Trump wears thin fast on voters. He isn’t the sharpest tack in the corkboard, but he has brains enough to know he can’t possibly capture his party’s nomination, much less the White House.

Methinks this is just wishful thinking and projection on the part of Hiaasen: that somehow the fact that he is offended by Trump’s recent statements about illegal immigration means that everyone else must be offended, too. But the size and enthusiasm of recent crowds for Trump’s speeches in Phoenix and Nevada suggest otherwise. And this seems to have the political left very nervous that the silent majority may have finally found a voice.

THE RIGHT WAY TO REMEMBER THE CONFEDERACY:

Today, the Confederate battle flag may be going down again, perhaps for good, but it is worth considering what we allow to sink with it.

On Friday morning at 10 a.m., a vestige of a sad epoch faded when that flag was finally taken down from a flagpole in front of the South Carolina State House.  . .  .

This is an old debate electrified by the June 17 massacre of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., a mass shooting that authorities call a racially motivated hate crime. . . .

Symbols matter. They say at a glimpse what words cannot, encapsulating beliefs and aspirations, prejudices and fears. Having no intrinsic value, they take meaning from the way we use them, changing over time along with our actions. The most obvious example is the ancient “gammadion,” which in early Eastern cultures meant “god,” “good luck,” “eternity” and other benign conjurations. We know it today as the swastika, and a quarter-century of usage by the Nazis forever poisoned it in Western culture.

Southern “heritage” groups who oppose removing the battle flag are reluctant to acknowledge that this same dynamic has tainted their cherished emblem. But it has.

Whatever the flag meant from 1865 to 1940, the flag’s misuse by a white minority of outspokenly bigoted and often violent people has indelibly shifted that meaning. . . .

That inevitably raises a question. Our landscape is peppered with monuments, parks, counties, towns, streets and private businesses named for Confederate leaders—not to mention the myriad road signs and markers commemorating the Confederate story. Are all of these to be purged? Where do we stop?

Guess this guy didn’t get the memo: Where do we stop? We stop when we stop offending liberals/progressives, of course. The fact that there is no stopping point with these microaggression-paranoid, politically correct totalitarians doesn’t matter. We don’t stop altering our “offensive” ways of life and accoutrements until they say so. You want to keep Confederate statues?  Forget about it.

Besides, statues are small potatoes. Think big. Time to take a stick of dynamite and blow up Stone Mountain, so the delicate flowers don’t have to cast their eyes on Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

Or better yet, as with the movement to alter Mount Rushmore, get someone to re-carve it into our Dear Leader’s visage and maybe some other equally politically correct historical figures, such as Martin Luther King, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks and Al Sharpton.

NO APOLOGY NECESSARY:  Greg Jones at The Federalist: “Sorry, Everyone, America Isn’t That Racist.”

It’s called “proof by example,” and it happens all the time. We take one event and point to it as evidence of a trend or, even worse, a universal fact—a dog attacked my child, therefore all dogs are vicious and should be put down. Despite its popularity, particularly in political debate, proof by example is a logical fallacy. But logic is officially an endangered species in today’s hyperpartisan political environment.

Recent events nationwide, particularly the cold-blooded murder of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, at the hands of a revoltingly racist white supremacist, have propelled this faulty reasoning to new heights. Dangerous ones, in fact: the conversation surrounding race in America has rapidly evolved into a hyperbolic echo chamber into which today’s pundits, politicians, and professors repeatedly shout their false narrative. . . .

The most serious accusation, however, was lobbed from what has become the most ridiculously reactionary arena in all of American cultural and political life: academia. In response to the Charleston slayings, Occidental College Professor Caroline Heldman labeled America a “white supremacist society.” You hear that? Constant racism; America is a sewer; we are all white supremacists. Apparently the America of 2015 is identical to the America of 1860.

News to me, and if I had to guess to 99 percent of the other 300-plus million Americans that peacefully coexist with members of all races day in and day out. Unless, of course, I am so lucky as to “exist in a vacuum” of peace and tranquility light years beyond what most Americans experience. Judging from my neighborhood, and a few commonly ignored statistics, I highly doubt it.

America is a lot of things; racist isn’t one of them.

Consider, for example, that in 1958 a mere 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. By 2013, that number had grown to 87 percent. In 2012 these once-taboo unions hit an all-time high. . . . In fact, just a little more than two years ago The Washington Post, the same paper that featured Robinson’s editorial, found that America was in fact among the least-racist nations in the world.Ku Klux Klan membership has shrunk drastically from millions a century ago to fewer than 5,000 today. . . .

Most of us interact with people of numerous races daily without conflict or incident. Our friends, and even spouses, have skin colors different than ours, as do our teachers, doctors, and nurses. That’s because proof by example isn’t reality, and the actions of one man or three cops do not define a society of more than 300 million.

The heightened liberal/progressive cry of “racism!” has caused me to start disregarding the appellation. It’s now just background noise that I tune out, rather than taking seriously. Perhaps more significantly, it has started to make me look at blacks with trepidation and less comfort, because now I wonder if they always think such bad things about me regardless of how I behave toward them. I am even beginning to look at old friends and colleagues differently, because I wonder if they think of me as “white,” and “privileged,” rather than just a person who has faced struggles just like everyone else.  That’s not progress, folks; it’s regression.

Thanks so much for all the racial healing, President Obama. You have really used the “first black President” title to help heal past wounds and move this country forward to a happier, more unified place.

THE PRICE OF LAWLESSNESS: Victor Davis Hanson cogently argues that the dwindling respect for the rule of law marks the demise of the U.S.:

Barbarians at the gate usually don’t bring down once-successful civilizations. Nor does climate change. Even mass epidemics such as the plague that decimated sixth-century Byzantium do not necessarily destroy a culture.

Far more dangerous are institutionalized corruption, a lack of transparency, and creeping neglect of existing laws. All the German euros in the world will not save Greece if Greeks continue to dodge taxes, featherbed government, and see corruption as a business model.

Even obeying so-called minor laws counts. It is no coincidence that a country where drivers routinely flout traffic laws and throw trash out the window is also a country that cooks its books and lies to its creditors. Everything from littering to speeding seems negotiable in Athens in a way not true of Munich, Zurich, or London.  . . .

Americans, too, should worry about these age-old symptoms of internal decay.

The frightening thing about disgraced IRS bureaucrat Lois Lerner’s knowledge of selective audits of groups on the basis of their politics is not just that she seemed to ignore it, but that she seemingly assumed no one would find out, or perhaps even mind. . . .

Ultimately, no nation can continue to thrive if its government refuses to enforce its own laws. Liberal “sanctuary cities” such as San Francisco choose to ignore immigration laws. Imagine the outcry if a town in Utah or Montana arbitrarily declared that federal affirmative action or gay marriage laws were null and void within its municipal borders.

Indeed. Every time I read a story on Greece, I can’t help but think of Classical Greece in its glory, which became glorious, in part, because of its strong respect for the rule of law, most notably the development of Solonic, Platonic, and Socratic notions of law. Modern Greece is just a shadow of its ancient cousin, devolved to a country of entitled, whiny wards of the state who cannot pay their debts, and refuse to sacrifice in order to do so. Greece has become corrupt, and its laws or contracts mean only what the Greeks say they mean at the moment, and no more.

Sound familiar? The Obama Administration has been utterly brazen in its contempt for the rule of law. But hey, a majority of Americans voted for Obama twice, knowing full well (or they should have, it they’d paid only a modicum of attention) that he was promising them a “fundamental transformation” of America.  Well, it’s here.

HUMA TO MOVE IN WITH HILLARY: The double entendres in this story are most entertaining. “If Hillary makes it to the White House, so will Huma Abedin.” Apparently, Huma’s getting her own bedroom if Clinton wins. Wonder if her husband, Anthony Weiner, will be allowed to sleep over? Somehow I doubt it.

I’M GLAD I WENT TO COLLEGE WHEN I DID: We had a lot more fun. Heather Wilhelm explains “The Sexual Train Wreck Behind ‘Yes Means Yes'”:

On Tuesday, in that spirit, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a sweeping “yes means yes” bill into law, expanding the state’s sexual consent rules to include private colleges and universities. Both Nancy Pelosi and Lady Gaga love the concept—Ms. Gaga even co-authored a “yes means yes” op-ed with Cuomo—so you probably already know that it, just like passing bills you haven’t read and wearing dresses made entirely out of raw meat, is a really good idea.

“The so-called ‘yes means yes’ standard,” Reuters reports, “defines sexual consent between people as an affirmative, conscious, and voluntary understanding to engage in sexual activity.” Anything that falls outside of the nebulous concept of “consent”—a gratuitous touch on the elbow, perhaps, as opposed to the formally agreed-upon nudge of the right lower kneecap—could be labeled sexual assault. . . .

“Yes means yes” policies, at their heart, imply that it is normal, healthy, and a good idea to have sex with complete strangers. (Controversial point from yours truly: Unless you are a fictional member of a fictional band, it is generally not.) But they also imply that it is normal and healthy to have sex with people you don’t trust. Why else would you have to draw up a sex contract? Why else would you need Andrew Cuomo to write your sexual rules for you? Despite years of “feminist” marketing, that’s not empowered in any way. It’s just creepy, and also kind of insane.

The ideology behind “yes means yes” is strange in another way: It implies, through its list of rules, prescriptions, and penalties, that sex is a clinical experience; that it is perfunctory, mechanical, and best overseen by bureaucrats.

This liberal/progressive vision of sex is simply bizarre. It reveals a male-female (or male-male, or female-female, or transgender-male, or whatever– you get the drift) relationship that is barren of feelings, of intimacy, or even basic friendship. It is a mirror into the liberal/progressive mindset that trusts no one and sees trauma, offense, and microaggressions lurking around every corner.

Indeed, it makes one wonder if those who are ardently pushing these “yes means yes” bills weren’t, themselves, the victim of childhood sexual abuse, since they seem so traumatized by sex, and present a means of “fixing” a problem that, frankly, most people don’t find problematic at all. Do these individuals just need therapy, to work out their hostility? If not, why are they trying to transform one of life’s simplest pleasures into something so clinical? It is truly bizarre, and appears to reflect the adage, “The inmates are running the asylum.”

IT’S NOT FUNNY, AND YOU MUST AGREE: Robert George explains the latest progressive/liberal/totalitarian temper tantrum over humor they don’t like by comedian Amy Schumer:

The UK Guardian went after the native New Yorker’s “blind spot on race” last month, citing standup jokes like, “Nothing works 100 percent of the time, except Mexicans,” and “I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual.”

It reached a fever pitch Tuesday. In The Washington Post, Stacey Patton and David Leonard called Schumer a racist on par with Donald Trump. They closed with this haymaker:

“While black families are burying their dead, churches are burning, black women church pastors are receiving death threats and the KKK is planning rallies in South Carolina, Schumer is ‘playing’ with race. While Latinos are being deported in record numbers, while ‘80 percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped,’ while children are languishing in camps in the Southwest, Schumer has got jokes, and only white America is laughing.”

Isn’t that just a bit . . . dramatic?

Why yes, yet it is dramatic. But this objection is coming from the same delicate snowflakes who incessantly search for  “micro” aggressions, require explicit consent before kissing, and need “safe spaces” to complain that everyone else is a bigoted hater.  As I noted yesterday, this is not authoritarianism, it’s totalitarianism, and they won’t be happy with just stopping practices they deem offensive. No, they want you to agree with them.  As George Orwell put it in 1984,“We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.” 

THEY’RE NOT JUST HERE, THEY’RE IN CHARGE: Tom Nichols at The Federalist: “The New Totalitarians are Here.“

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SLAPDOWN! IN IMMIGRATION CASE: Federal trial judge Andrew Hanen on Tuesday issued an order directing the defendants–including Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson–to appear personally before him on August 19 to explain why they should not be held in contempt. The basis for possible contempt is DOJ’s willful violation of Hanen’s injunction against further enforcement of President Obama’s unilateral executive actions on immigration:

WELL, YES, THIS IS WHAT PUTIN DOES: Is Putin playing puppetmaster in Greece?

Rumors of Russian money and influence calling the shots in Athens—or at least playing an outsized role—are no secret in NATO security circles. That Putin wants to harm Greece’s already precarious links with the EU and NATO is plain to see, and it seems to be getting close to fruition as the Greek crisis worsens.

“They’re only technically on our side,” explained a retired CIA officer with long experience in Greek matters. U.S. intelligence has never fully trusted the Greeks, with the CIA especially having misgivings stemming from the 1975 murder of Richard Welch, the agency’s station chief in Athens. While Langley blamed Phil Agee, a former CIA officer who went over to the Cubans and Soviets—think of Agee as the Ed Snowden of the mid-1970s—for Welch’s death, it was long obvious that Athens was never very eager to catch Welch’s killers. Neither did the 1988 terrorist assassination of the U.S. naval attaché to Greece, Capt. Bill Nordeen, promote trust.

Ties between U.S. intelligence and the Greek security services suffered for years, and things are getting unpleasant again. “We’re back to square one,” rued the former CIA case officer. “It’s like the bad old days when we didn’t trust the Greeks and they didn’t trust us. Only now Putin’s in the middle of the game.”

Reagan won the Cold War, in part, by playing a long game designed to bankrupt the Soviet Union. It seems Putin now has similar aims, using the profligacy of European socialist countries such as Greece as a long-term weapon. Such profligacy holds the potential to bankrupt the EU if it continues to cave to political pressure to bailout Greece and similar entitlement-driven economies.  And if EU resists the pressure and refuses further bailouts, Russia will undoubtedly swoop in with offers of “assistance” to leaders more interested in keeping entitlements flowing than defending and preserving their countries’ freedom and democracy.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we hand out “free” (tax-supported) stuff and get citizens addicted. This is why the founders’ philosophy of individualism, not socialist communitarianism, works to sustain freedom and democracy.

YA THINK?: The Washington Post editorializes, “U.S. Response to Iran’s Cheating is a Worrying Omen.”

If it is reached in the coming days, a nuclear deal with Iran will be, at best, an unsatisfying and risky compromise. Iran’s emergence as a threshold nuclear power, with the ability to produce a weapon quickly, will not be prevented; it will be postponed, by 10 to 15 years. In exchange, Tehran will reap hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief it can use to revive its economy and fund the wars it is waging around the Middle East. . . .

That’s why a recent controversy over Iran’s compliance with the interim accord now governing its nuclear work is troubling. The deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium, but required that amounts over a specified ceiling be converted into an oxide powder that cannot easily be further enriched. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran met the requirement for the total size of its stockpile on June 30, but it did so by converting some of its enriched uranium into a different oxide form, apparently because of problems with a plant set up to carry out the powder conversion.

Rather than publicly report this departure from the accord, the Obama administration chose to quietly accept it. When a respected independent think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, began pointing out the problem, the administration’s response was to rush to Iran’s defense — and heatedly attack the institute as well as a report in the New York Times.

When the United States is more interested in protecting and defending Iran and its nuclear “deal” than confronting Iran’s cheating behavior, it acts like an insecure, vulnerable spouse making excuses for a cheating husband/wife because fear prevents him/her from confronting the sad reality. If the U.S. looks the other way now, the precedent will be set, the cheating will continue, and predictably will become more brazen. No good can come from the Obama Administration’s tactic of sweeping such transgressions under the rug, and certainly not from attacking experts and officials who report the transgressions.

THOSE RACIST MINNESOTANS:  Professor says Minnesota’s flag is racist, too.

As the campaign to tear down the Confederate flag from statehouses, shops, and memorials continues to be waged across the country, one professor has chosen to weigh in on a flag she says is similarly offensive: Specifically, the state flag of Minnesota.

At a glance, Minnesota’s flag seems pretty bland. Like many states, it simply has its state seal on a blue field. Said seal shows a pioneer working his fields, while a Native American rides southward in the background. But Judith Harrington, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, published an argument shortly before the July 4th holiday complaining that the flag creates a racist contrast between peaceful whites and supposedly violent American Indians.

Professor Harrington says the flag must go. Of course she does. Because, you know, academics.

While we’re on the subject, I think all good thinking liberals/progressives should call for Massachusetts to immediately take down all state flags, which portray an Algonquian Native American with bow and arrow.

It’s all very Washington Redskins-y, and I’m sure must equally deeply offend Native Americans, including Elizabeth Warren and UC-Riverside “Indian” scholar, Professor Andrea Smith.

THE COMING DARK AGES: Obama’s Renewable Energy Fantasy.

On June 30, one day after the Supreme Court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of mercury emissions from power plants, President Obama committed the United States to the goal of generating 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. This would nearly triple the amount of wind- and solar-generated electricity on the national grid.

The EPA ran afoul of the law by failing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before it acted to reduce mercury emissions from coal-power plants. There is no objective cost-benefit analysis that could justify the president’s target for renewable energy.

Recently Bill Gates explained in an interview with the Financial Times why current renewables are dead-end technologies. They are unreliable. Battery storage is inadequate. Wind and solar output depends on the weather. The cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is “beyond astronomical,” Mr. Gates concluded.

Google engineers came to a similar conclusion last year. After seven years of investigation, they found no way to get the cost of renewables competitive with coal. “Unfortunately,” the engineers reported, “most of today’s clean generation sources can’t provide power that is both distributed and dispatchable”—that is, electricity that can be ramped up and down quickly. “Solar panels, for example, can be put on every rooftop, but can’t provide power if the sun isn’t shining.”

If Mr. Obama gets his way, the U.S. will go down the rocky road traveled by the European Union. . . .

It’s not just the costs–which are substantial by any measure–of President Obama’s war on coal and other fossil fuels. It’s the negative impact on daily lives. When I lived in Ireland as a Fulbright scholar in the winter/spring of 2011, one of the most shocking things was the inability to buy a real and bright lightbulb. I looked literally everywhere–hardware stores, home improvement stores, grocery stores. But there were no bright bulbs to be bought, at any price. They were all these “energy efficient” bulbs– no brighter than 60 watts, and even those did not strike me as providing as much light as the incandescent 60w bulbs I had known back home.  It was so dark in our house–even with all the lights on–that I had to buy a little desk lamp with a halogen bulb, so that I could have sufficient light for reading.

So if President Obama’s agenda is to force the U.S. to go the way of the EU, energy-wise–with or without our legislative branch’s approval–be prepared for (literal) darkness.