Trump’s political masterstroke [UPDATED] Paul Mirengoff

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/trumps-political-masterstroke.php?
UPDATE: Trump has now signed the Order. The obvious displeasure of The Washington Post is further evidence that Trump has made a smart political move.

President Trump says he will sign an Executive Order to ease the suffering of those harmed by the pandemic-related shutdowns and to stimulate the economy. Congress has failed to agree on a new package to accomplish these things.

Trump’s Executive Order would include these four components: (1) a payroll tax holiday until the end of the year, (2) an extension of enhanced unemployment benefits until the end of the year, (3) an extension of the eviction moratorium for federal subsidized housing, and (4) a suspension of student loan payments until further notice.

Questions surround the legality of accomplishing at least some of these things via executive order. Trump’s response to that might be, “so sue me.”

There are also questions about the fiscal impact of some of the measures, at least for those who still care about the national debt. In addition, there are questions about the efficacy of a payroll tax cut and the wisdom of extended generous unemployment benefits.

An Age of Wretched and Rotten Rhetoric Tristan Heiner

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/free-speech/2020/08/an-age-of-wretched-and-rotten-rhetoric/

“Words are everything, the precursor to fierce ideas and therefore of sound politics. In an era when a misjudged word can and will end a career beneath a social media pile-on, ideas will lack vigour and politics be reduced to the predictably poor. Meanwhile, the town square becomes a bloody battleground, the pursuit of truth a casualty found wrapped in the dead arms of butchered civility.”

Politics becomes wretched when the ideas in circulation turn bad, and ideas degenerate when the rhetoric is rotten. The words are everything. They are the lungs of politics and the foundation upon which parties, factions, fiefdoms and scholarship of all uniforms is built. Regrettably, the poverty of our political discourse is such that it has divided us to the point of conquering us. It would have taken those with the powers of prophesy to predict that the leaders of the Free World – the US – would be ravaged by large-scale civil unrest in 2020. With November’s US presidential election looming it is impossible to envisage a scenario – regardless of the result – where the looting, violence and diabolical dialogue is ameliorated one iota. The discourse is sick with no vaccine being developed and, problematically, this illness has multiple causes.

At some point in the not too distant past, a fissure opened up, irreversibly separating the warring blocs and creating the perfect wasteland for bloody tribalism and rage without sage. The fissure grows wider as the months roll on and the opposing combatants shriek more and listen less.

Far below in the abyss of this political and cultural rupture dwell the everyday people of the world, just trying to get on with their lives. Bewildered and baffled, they stare up and watch the verbal punch-ups, trying to follow the shots being fired as though they were spectators of a tennis match to the death. Up above in the battleground, diplomacy and measured words are muddied corpses being squelched into the trenches by the boots of dogged partisanship and zero-sum tactics. Because this is a war, it is personal. Talk to either sides’ foot soldiers and you quickly see the fire in the belly and the survivalism in the eyes. Incensed, they don’t seek allies, but subordination. Utter and complete victory is the name of the game. Any suggestion of peace talks or compromise would sooner see an individual sacrificed as cannon fodder than moved up the ranks. The biggest casualty in this squalor is, of course, the truth and measured solutions to real problems.

After Burning Police Union, Portland Rioters Threaten Nearby House: ‘We’re Gonna Burn Your Building Down’ By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/08/09/after-burning-police-union-portland-rioters-threaten-nearby-house-were-gonna-burn-your-building-down-n767345

In the wee hours of Sunday morning on the 71st straight night of violent antifa riots in Portland, rioters who had again set a fire inside the police union threatened to burn a civilian’s home apparently because he had the audacity to look outside his window. For the last few nights, rioters have targeted police buildings in a residential neighborhood, harassing Portlanders in the middle of the night.

While multiple protests during the day remained peaceful, a group of protesters that had remained peaceful until that point marched toward the Portland Police Association (PPA) Office, the police union, at around 9:50 p.m. Support vehicles moved alongside the rioters, illegally blocking all other vehicle traffic, Portland Police reported.

Rioters “erected a fence, pushed dumpsters into the street to block traffic, set a dumpster on fire, vandalized the PPA office with spray paint, and destroyed security cameras.” At around 11:35 p.m., antifa rioters broke a police union window, barged in, and started a fire with what looks like burning cardboard or pieces of paper. Police released footage of the fire.

George Orwell and the Struggle against Inevitable Bias written by Adam Wakeling

https://quillette.com/2020/08/08/george-orwell-and-the-struggle-against-inevitable-bias/

In the bleak post-war Britain of October 1945, an essay by George Orwell appeared in the first edition of Polemic. Edited by abstract artist and ex-Communist Hugh Slater, the new journal was marketed as a “magazine of philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics.” Orwell was not yet famous—Animal Farm had only just started appearing on shelves—but he had a high enough profile for his name to be a boon to a new publication. His contribution to the October 1945 Polemic was “Notes on Nationalism,” one of his best and most important pieces of writing. Amidst the de-Nazification of Germany, the alarmingly rapid slide into the Cold War, and the trials of German and Japanese war criminals, Orwell set out to answer a question which had occupied his mind for most of the past seven years—why do otherwise rational people embrace irrational or even contradictory beliefs about politics?

As a junior colonial official in Burma, the young Eric Blair (he had not yet adopted the name by which he would be known to posterity) had been disgusted by his peers and superiors talking up the British liberty of Magna Carta and Rule Britannia while excusing acts of repression like the massacre of Indian protestors at Amritsar in 1919. As a committed socialist in the late 1930s, he openly ridiculed those who claimed to be champions of the working class while holding actual working-class people in open contempt. And he had watched the British Communist Party insist that the Second World War was nothing more than an imperialist adventure right up until the moment when the first German soldier crossed the Soviet frontier, at which point it instantly became a noble struggle for human freedom.

Orwell’s most personally searing experience, though, had come in Barcelona in 1937. The previous year, he had travelled to Spain to fight in the Civil War on the Republican side. His poor relationship with the British Communist Party led him to enlist in the militia of an anti-Stalinist socialist party, the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, or Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification). Even while it was fighting a bitter winter campaign in the Aragon mountains, the POUM was subject to a relentless propaganda campaign by pro-Soviet Republicans who insisted it was a secret front for fascism.

The Man Who Wasn’t There By Matthew Continetti

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/joe-biden-campaign-basement-strategy-carries-risks/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The risks of Joe Biden’s basement strategy.

At first glance, Joe Biden’s strategy of avoiding the spotlight is paying off. He maintains his consistent lead over Donald Trump in national polls. In June, in the aftermath of the Lafayette Park fiasco, his advantage in the RealClearPolitics average expanded to ten points. The critical swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida are trending his way. His lead gives him the freedom to mollify the progressive wing of his party by shifting leftward on policy. The Democrats smell victory and dream of unified control of government for the first time in a decade.

There is no question that President Trump is in trouble. But look again at the polls. The national race has tightened. Biden is still ahead, but by a six-point margin. Michael Goodwin of the New York Post observes that Hillary Clinton enjoyed a similar lead at this point in the 2016 campaign. The CNBC poll conducted in late July found a much closer race in the battlegrounds. Biden’s leads in Arizona and Pennsylvania were within the margin of error. His greatest advantage was a five-point spread in Wisconsin. Recent days have brought news of GOP gains in registration in Pennsylvania and of the Trump campaign’s huge lead in voter contacts. The 2016 election was decided by a relatively small number of voters across a tiny number of states. If a similar scenario plays out in 2020, then Donald Trump may well emerge the winner.

“Wokeness – An American Cultural Revolution?”Sydney Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

It may seem hyperbolic and overly provocative to refer to the “wokeness” that has permeated our society as a cultural revolution; for it brings to mind China’s Cultural Revolution that lasted ten years and caused, perhaps, twenty million lives. On the other hand, it may prove to be longer lasting but less deadly, more like the Romanticists of the 19th Century, who questioned the intellectual foundations of Enlightenment-derived, reason-based western culture. Like then, todays “woke” have abandoned liberalism and objective truth for narratives and stories based on the belief we live in a Marxian world of oppressors and oppressed.

Wokeness: noun, a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality. (Definition provided by the Cambridge English Dictionary.) That definition sounds harmless. We should all be concerned about social problems, helping the needy, playing fair, being respectful and applying the Golden Rule. But wokeness steps across the line. It takes its ideology from “critical theory,” a social philosophy that stems from Karl Marx and the 1930s Frankfurt School. Critical theory offers social justice in place of real justice. It challenges traditional power centers; though it does not permit challenges to its own structure. To be woke, in this sense, is to be awake to the concept that what matters is diversity of identities, not ideas – that, for example, all blacks, all gays, all women should express ideas based on identity, not individual thought. Individual opinions are seen as oppressive. Black conservatives are anomalous, in that it is claimed they support white oppression. (I suspect, however, if one asked Condoleezza Rice, Thomas Sowell, Alveda King, Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, Tim Scott or scores of other Black conservatives if that were true, the accusation would be denied.)

What will happen when Biden withdraws from the Presidential Race?

https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/what-will-happen-when-biden-withdraws-from-the-presidential-race-131409/

The Democrats’ plan is to shove Former V.P. Joe Biden over the finish line and then use the 447-member Democrat National Committee to pick a new candidate without any voter input at all. This leaves two questions.  Who will rise to the podium and will Democrats sigh with relief?  Or anger?

What will happen when Biden withdraws from the #2020 Election?This year’s Democrat primary can be summed up this way… “in a country made up of midgets, the tallest midget is king.”

This year’s crop of Democrat candidates was so devoid of talent, and the media coverage was so biased, that the few candidates with an ounce of sense were quickly dispatched. While the survivors stumbled onward to gain delegates.  At the end of the primary season, we were left with just two aging white guys in the “party of diversity.”

So why did the Democrat Party put the screws to their second-tier candidates to drop out and endorse Biden before “Super Thursday?”

Did they really think Biden could serve as President?

Democrats’ primary goal was simply to stop Bernie.

A QUESTION FOR DOCTOR FAUCI

Like many of America’s “seniores” and senioras” I take medications. Dr. Fauci is debatedly billed as our top public health czar.

Why does he not warn us about the locus of many of our therapeutics and supplements – prescribed and otherwise?

How many are still manufactured  in China and other ares of limited quality control?

Our lives depend on it…..rsk

6 Questions an Honest, Intelligent Reporter Would Ask Dr. Fauci About COVID-19 By Stacey Lennox,

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/stacey-lennox/2020/08/08/6-questions-an-honest-intelligent-reporter-would-ask-dr-fauci-about-covid-19-n760478

If you had been going down the rabbit hole of COVID-19 research for long enough, a few things would be astounding to you. First, how uninformed, uncurious, or deceptive reporters in the corporate media are on a matter of life and death. Second, how much publicly available information about COVID-19 is on the internet contradicts what is reported and said by Health Experts™on cable news. Finally, it is impossible to believe Dr. Anthony Fauci enjoys a 62% approval rating.

Of course, part of the reason Dr. Fauci enjoys this level of trust is that reporters who interview him put a sort of religious faith in every word he utters. Having worked with doctors for years, I don’t suffer from any such affliction. There are some great ones, some awful ones, and some who are great at one thing and not another.

It is also quite reasonable for doctors to disagree. Medicine is the art of applying science and it is rarely “settled.” This healthy tension is why patients get second opinions. Yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, only one doctor has had almost no pushback in any public interview. This is journalistic malpractice, but not surprising. Most of the corporate media agree with his recommendations or can use panic porn clicks.

However, if there were a courageous and intelligent reporter who could score an interview with Dr. Fauci, here is a list of questions I would suggest.

Defending ‘New Europe’ from Old Europe’s Woke In the name of “strengthening democracy” in Central Europe, Joe Biden’s clueless policies would undermine democracy and NATO, too. By Clark S. Judge

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/08/defending-new-europe-from-old-europes-woke/

All but ignored on this side of the Atlantic, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán recently summed up one of the presidential campaign’s most critical and least-discussed issues—U.S. support for the frontline NATO states of Hungary and Poland against political assaults from their allies and ours in the European Union. Our national security is at stake in the outcome.

“American Democrats [and] the American Left, together with the elites of Western Europe,” Mr. Orbán observed, are working to impose their “world vision, choice of values and concepts—including . . . views on families . . . migration . . . work . . . unemployment—on countries that have a different thinking.” He meant Hungary and Poland. 

These countries, he continued, have been targets of the European Union’s “liberal [in the radical woke sense] imperialism,” that is, the EU’s hostility to what Americans would call socially conservative and economically populist governments that are, as Americans are, jealous of their sovereignty.

The strength of the NATO Alliance will turn on America’s choice on this question. Does the United States support the corrosive assault by what might be called “Big Europe” (Germany, France, and Eurocrats in Brussels) on “New Europe” (Hungary, Poland, and the continent’s other nation-state supporters)? Or should we help build up New Europe’s economic robustness and sovereign vitality, so these countries remain full and vibrant partners—for both the EU and us—in defending the still-challenged frontiers of freedom?