Category: Popular

Bellicose Exclusions

Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, war, MSM, mainstream media,

“Jones and his Infowars nutritional supplement sales empire are having a bit of a rough moment,” wrote Justin Peters last year at Slate, “since the bellicose conspiracist has recently been banned from several social media and podcast platforms due to his hostile and hateful behavior.”

Like much of the commentary on Alex Jones, as well as on his colleague Paul Joseph Watson, there is something . . . off . . . about the characterization.

Bellicose?

Sure, he pushes bizarre accounts of conspiracies,* and on a personal level Alex Jones shouts and yells and blusters and worse.

But there is one way he is not bellicose. Alex Jones is almost consistently against war in general and America’s world-policing in particular.

And so, too, has been Paul Joseph Watson — who along with Jones was kicked off Facebook last week.**

If you are generally against war, being called “bellicose” and “hostile” must be galling, especially when personalities at CNN and MSNBC stand hand-in-hand with most at Fox in their obvious onscreen lust for actual warfare, drone bombings, and “tough choices.”

Yes, I know: Watson has been a withering critic of First World immigration policies and of the illiberalism he sees in Islamic cultures, and he relentlessly mocks Third Wave Feminism. That must be his “hateful” — and “hostile”? — element.

Yet, this seems less about hate and more about ideological disagreement.

More importantly, just whose interests are being served by social media’s current deliberate policy of marginalization?

The biggest cheers for ousting Jones and Watson — outside major media — echo from the left. But how is cheering on the consolidation of the military-industrial complex in leftists’ interest?

The current “war against Internet freedom” looks very bad for . . . dissent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* One of which he has even confessed to be “psychotic.”

** Others ousted include racial nationalists such as Paul Nehlen and Louis Farrakhan, gay conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and Laura Loomer. Their stances on military interventionism are less clearly anti-.

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Photo Credit: Tyler Merbler from USA

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Tags Alex Jones, mainstream media, MSM, Paul Joseph Watson, war

incumbents political challengers Popular term limits

The Incumbency vs. Progressives

Post author By Redactor
Post date May 2, 2019
No Comments on The Incumbency vs. Progressives

democratic party, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, DCCC, Bill Lipinski, primary challenger,

“The Democratic Party leadership is choosing machine politics,” charged Alexandra Rojas, the young executive director of Justice Democrats, “over ushering in a new generation of leaders and the fundamental idea of democracy.”

She specifically assails the DCCC’s blacklist of political professionals working for Democratic Party candidates who dare to challenge Democratic incumbents in next year’s Democratic primaries.

The Intercept reports that “at least four consultants dropped” challenger Marie Newman’s campaign “under pressure from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s new policy to cut off vendors working with primary challengers.”

Newman is formidable, having come within 2 percentage points of Rep. Dan Lipinski in the 2018 Illinois Democratic Primary. The National Abortion Rights Action League, Democracy for America and other progressive groups are decrying a DCCC “blacklist policy that protects anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, corporate Democrats like Dan Lipinski.”

And progressives have reason for disgust. Lipinski is a protected insider.

For the last 36 years, there has been a Lipinski in Congress. Bill Lipinski, the current congressman’s father, held the seat for 22 years before giving it to his son. And yes, “giving” is correct.

In 2004, two months before the November election, while running unopposed for a 12th term, the incumbent resigned — too late to trigger a special election wherein voters could make a choice. Instead, Bill’s replacement was hand-picked by the Illinois district’s Democratic Party Committee.

Controlled by — you guessed it! — Bill Lipinski.

That insider group chose Bill’s son, Daniel, who was then living in Kentucky.

“It was an open process,” claimed the father.

Today, per the blacklist, “[t]he DCCC says the policy doesn’t discourage primary challengers.”

Well, I guess no one expects truth from a political machine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Bill Lipinski, DCCC, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Party, primary challenger, term limits

media and media people Popular Second Amendment rights

MSNBC Goes Caracas?

Venezuela, guns, 2nd Amendment, self defense. socialism, rights,

Expressing the surprise in some quarters that Venezuelan despot “Maduro is hanging on,” MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell went to reporter Kerry Sanders to make sense of the tense situation in Caracas, that nation’s capital.

“Not only hanging on, but he appears to still control the military,” Sanders replied, explaining: “You have to understand, in Venezuela gun ownership is not something that’s open to everybody. So, if the military have the guns, they have the power, and as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country.”

Oh, I certainly understand. In fact, I’ve never heard a more clear, concise and irrefutable argument for the importance of our Second Amendment right to bear arms.

And this was on MSNBC . . . in broad daylight!

What wasn’t reported on the progressive network, but rather by the Free Beacon, is that Venezuela “banned private gun ownership in 2012 under Maduro’s authoritarian predecessor, Hugo Chavez.”

“Under the new law,” the BBC noted at the time, “only the army, police and certain groups like security companies will be able to buy arms from the state-owned weapons manufacturer and importer.”

That gun ban was described by the BBC as “the latest attempt by the government to improve security.” Indeed, by disarming the public, the security of the socialist dictatorship has obviously been greatly enhanced.

Later in the day, the Spanish-language La Noche NTN24 tweeted a video of a government armored vehicle running over protesters — or, as MSNBC might remind us: unarmed protesters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credit: Diariocritico de Venezuela

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Tags 2nd Amendment, guns, rights, self-defense, socialism, Venezuela

A Fake Mystery

Gavin Newsom, Governor, California, gas, tax, prices, folly,

California’s new top banana is playing politics the old-fashioned way: passing the buck.

Last week Governor Gavin Newsom directed the California Energy Commission (CEC) to look into the state’s higher-than-average gasoline prices.

“Independent analysis suggests that an unaccounted-for price differential exists in California’s gas prices and that this price differential may stem in part from inappropriate industry practices,” he wrote in an official letter to the CEC. “These are all important reasons for the Commission to help shed light on what’s going on in our gasoline market.”

Ah, shed light!

We are not talking about the bulb in your outbuilding.

Californians understandably grumble about having to pay higher taxes than elsewhere in the U.S. So Newsom pretends to suspect “inappropriate industry practices.” But what is inappropriate is Newsom’s directive to the CEC. As Christian Britschgi drolly informs us at Reason, Newsom, while lieutenant governor, had “supported a 2017 bill increasing the state’s gas taxes,” which looks like all we really need to know. Raise taxes, and businesses tend to increase prices rather than eat the extra cost. Higher gas prices are the result of higher taxes.

Duh.

But there’s more.

“When running for governor in 2018,” Britschgi explains, “he opposed a ballot initiative that would have repealed that same increase.”

So, is Newsom truly clueless of the obvious?

Hardly. And neither are “17 legislators who voted for the tax hike” who joined the governor in “wanting answers to this difficult headscratcher.” They are doing what pols usually do: deflect; misdirect; blame others . . . hoping that voters don’t pay close enough attention, or remember recent history. And busy people often do not.

Finding a bogeyman helps, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags California, folly, gas, Gavin Newsom, governor, prices, tax

general freedom national politics & policies Popular The Draft

No Need

Post author By CS Admin
Post date April 25, 2019
3 Comments on No Need

“So, my bottom line is there is no need to continue to register people for a draft that will not come; no need to fight the battle over registering women, and no military need to retain the MSSA.”

The MSSA is the Military Selective Service Act. It authorizes the Selective Service System (SSS) to register young men for a possible draft and, should conscription resume, manage that process. The law allows the government to imprison those who do not register.* I know, I violated the Act 38 years ago by refusing to sign my name on a draft registration form.

But the quoted statement, above, wasn’t mine. No sirree. That was testimony from Dr. Bernard Rostker, the director of Selective Service back in 1980, when President Carter re-instituted mandatory registration.

Rostker made two cogent points at yesterday’s National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service hearing:

First, the modern military neither needs nor wants a massive manpower infusion, which would only dilute the quality of the All-Volunteer Force.
Second, the list of young men registered with SSS is woefully inadequate, “systematically lack[ing] large segments of the eligible male population and for those that are included, the currency of information contained is questionable.”

Come some future emergency, the former director contends that a draft could be instituted just as quickly without this ongoing registration program. Sure, but that misses the bigger picture: This country has never needed conscription to raise an army. Americans — from Pearl Harbor to 911 — have always stepped up voluntarily.

Mr. Rostker advises “suspending draft registration.”

He took the words right out of my mouth — though I prefer “abolish.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but no one has been prosecuted for decades. Most of the enforcement effort comes in denying driver’s licenses, college loans and government jobs to men who don’t register. Commission Chairman Joe Heck explained at yesterday’s hearing that 75 percent of registrants do so in order to complete a license or college application.

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Tags 1980, and Public Service, Dr. Bernard Rostker, Jimmy Carter, selective service

initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies Popular

The Cost of Reparations

slavery, reparations, blacks, guilt, white

Nearly 180 years ago, the Jesuits who ran Georgetown University sold 272 enslaved persons to save the institution from insolvency. In a non-binding referendum earlier this month, the university’s undergraduate students voted to impose a student fee of $27.20 per semester to fund reparations for the descendants of those slaves.

Small potatoes? Well, when the slavery reparations idea catches fire outside of a student body, the dollar amounts talked about expand beyond mere double digits.

Which can be awkward. The leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), complains that slavery reparations are often “used . . . to ridicule African-Americans, as if what black people are interested in is a check.”

Nonetheless, White House aspirant Rep. Julián Castro (D-Tex.) reminds Democrats that “when it comes to Medicare for All” as well as “tuition-free or debt-free college, the answer has been, ‘We need to write a big check.’” Castro contends Uncle Sam ought not skimp on “compensating the descendants of slaves.”

The slicker Democratic contenders for the 2020 presidential race have conveniently embraced legislation introduced in the House by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) to establish a commission to study the idea — allowing presidential aspirants to talk up the proposal to black audiences while assuring less enthusiastic audiences that they are merely committed to studying it.

One lesser known candidate, author Marianne Williamson, didn’t get the memo, however. She proposed “a $100 billion plan of reparations to be paid over 10 years,” to be disbursed for purposes of “economic and educational revitalization to be achieved within the black community.”

By federal spending standards, a tiny figure. But even at ten times that figure, check-propelled revitalization seems unlikely.

Students of politics take note.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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