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Accountability meme national politics & policies Popular

Awful Aspirations

Nancy Pelosi, New Green Deal, aspirations,

A funny thing happened on the way to voting on the Democrats’ Green New Deal (GND). With ‘earth in the balance,’ the proposal for fixing climate change — and so much more! — was granted its first procedural vote in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.

It failed, 0-57.

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the Senate sponsor, along with 41 other Democrats* and independent Bernie Sanders, voted “present” to protest what he called “sabotage,” claiming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “wants to silence your voice.” 

Au contraire! McConnell longed to hear Democrats sing the bill’s praises — loud, proud, and on the record.

After the vote, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) absurdly made the opposite accusation: Republicans were “climate delaying . . . costing us lives + destroying communities.”  

Meanwhile, “If the Green New Deal came up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled House,” USA Today reports, “it would have trouble passing.”

“It’s a list of aspirations,” says Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who does not plan to bring it to a vote. Though Democrats want to address climate change, the speaker points out that the “bill has many things that have nothing to do with climate.”

Rep. Elaine Luria, (D-Va.) echoes Pelosi: “[T]he Green New Deal is aspirational.” Rep. Sean Casten, (D-Ill.) adds, “The aspirations of the Green New Deal are great.”**

But is the GND something “great” to which Americans should aspire? 

Only if they yearn for government-monopolized healthcare, free college tuition, micro-management of the economy, and government providing everyone a job, except those who don’t want one . . . who would get a guaranteed income, regardless. 

I aspire to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * In the Senate, three Democrats — Sens. Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — and independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) joined all 53 Republicans in voting No.

** All four House co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition’s Climate Change Task Force — Casten and Luria as well as Don Beyer, (D-Va.) and Susan Wild, (D-Pa.) — have come out in opposition to the GND. 

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Nancy Pelosi, New Green Deal, aspirations,

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ideological culture media and media people meme national politics & policies Popular

The Anti-Orange Man Cult

Rachel Maddow, Russia, investigation, Mueller Report,

How do you know you are in an end-time cult?

When you won’t accept the complete and utter failure of your prophecies when they come a cropper.

So, am I talking about the classic Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter study in social psychology, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World? In that work, social scientists infiltrated an eschatological cult to see how they would react when their prophecy of end times failed.

What did the cultists do?

Many doubled down, tweaked their original prophecy, and continued in their previous beliefs but with greater fervor.

But no. I am not talking about that, not directly. 

I refer to the Mueller Report.

“For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in,” writes Matt Taibbi in “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD?” Noting that while the story as it was hyped from the beginning was about espionage, a “secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election,” the biggest thing to come of it has been “Donald Trump paying off a porn star.”

Now that the Mueller Report has come to a fizzle, proving nothing very interesting or relevant, our reaction to the news that the President is not Putin’s puppet should be jubilation.

To shed a tear and get all choked up, like Rachel Maddow? That should signal the end time for the cult.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Rachel Maddow, Russia, investigation, Mueller Report,

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Green New Extremism

Bernie Sanders, climate change, global warming, extremism

Citation is here.

And here.

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meme The Draft

Ronald Reagan on the Draft

draft, selective service, registration, slavery, servitude, Ronald Reagan
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Why Do You Want People to Starve?

In the 20th century, 100 million people were killed by “caring” socialist ideologues who were certain they knew exactly what everybody else “deserved” and who were eager to use government violence to enforce those opinions.

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Common Sense links meme

The Uncommon Author of Common Sense

Tom Paine, Thomas Paine, quote, quotation, wrong, right, meme, illustration

Last week we noted the 243rd anniversary of the publication of Common Sense — Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, that is.

The importance of this document for the formation of the United States of America can hardly be over-estimated. And the general good . . . sense . . . of the pamphlet still impresses. It is, in fact, one of the classics of Western literature, political polemics, and social philosophy. And it radicalized Americans to dare declare their independence from King George III.

We here at ThisIsCommonSense.com can hardly be more emphatic: if you have not read the pamphlet, you really should. If your spouse, or children, or neighbors have not read it, please send them a copy. We provide one in our Library, as a webpage.

And, also in our Library, we offer something else by Tom Paine, his essay against slavery. It seems to be one of the first anti-slavery pamphlets published in America. Read our webpage or download the PDF. And send it to your friends.

And enemies.

The fight against slavery is inextricably linked, in American history, to the fight for freedom. Slavery is one of freedom’s most stark opposites.

“One of?” we hear you protest. Well, tyranny is slavery’s twin. But we grant you, maybe they are the same thing: tyranny is the slavery of a populace, slavery the tyranny over an individual person.

Paine wrote even more controversial works. He also went to France to aid in the French Revolution only to get put in prison for his trouble. And he came back to America, for refuge, and was forsaken by its people, dying in poverty.

His ideas are not impoverished though. And not dead. Not so long as we keep them alive.

This is Common Sense. And he was Tom Paine, American hero.