Thoughts I don't like having

Yes, it's been a while, but this will take more than a tweet...

I've been reading and watching stories about police and government abuses during the Wuhan Virus outbreak. There are clearly more than a few government functionaries who are enjoying this. This ranges from telling new parents that the infant car seat they need to buy isn't "essential" to police ticketing Christians for going to church on Easter Sunday to police kicking in doors to check for "illegal gatherings". In California, police have sent patrol boats after paddleboarders for not "social distancing".

...alone on a paddleboard.

...100 yards offshore.

The first of those "thoughts I don't like having" is the thought that there's going to be a reckoning for these abuses. And by that, I don't mean people losing their civil service jobs or elective offices. I mean something nastier. There are people who aren't going to forget this and let bygones be bygones. They're going to want some payback. And can you blame them? They're being treated like subjects instead of citizens.

The scarier thought, however, is the thought that there needs to be a nastier reckoning.

As in the earlier case, there are people who aren't going to forget this. But in this case, those people with the long memories are the abusers who will think that they got away with something. The scary thought is that they need to learn a very unpleasant lesson; or more accurately, that they need to become an object lesson for future generations of government officials.

Frederick Douglass stated "A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box". The former two are the normal state of affairs in a representative democracy. The latter box is only opened in extremis, but it has been opened in the past.

This nation was founded after the People's government turned on them and began treating them as subjects rather than as citizens. It took violence to end those abuses. The tyrant refused to have it any other way. He took away the ballot and jury boxes and left the People with one option only.

Let's hope that this episode can end differently. Let's hope that a few lost elections, a few criminal prosecutions, and a few lost pensions are enough of a reckoning to teach aspiring tyrants a lesson.

Let's hope that tree isn't getting a little dry.

The longest tantrum

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.

1984, George Orwell

It's been over a year since Donald Trump won the presidential election; nearly a year since he was sworn into office. And yet, the American far left is still pitching a fit. Why? It's because of who they see themselves as in that quote from 1984. No, in their minds they're not the human face and Trump isn't the boot. In their version, they are the boot and they were to do the stamping -- for ever.

The Left has been pulling the levers of power in the US since the 1930s. Some might argue far longer than that. The election of the occasional Republican or conservative to the White House meant little over the long run. However, the election of Donald Trump is another matter. He's not one of "those" Republicans. You know the type... The respectable kind who think that "go along to get along" will one day get them something. They're the Charlie Brown of politics; perpetually kicking at the football and never suspecting that Lucy will pull it away again. Trump is different.

He kicked Lucy and took the ball away.

And worse yet, now he's going to toss the ball into a wood chipper.

For all of their talk, deep down, the Republicans were never about smaller government. Like their esteemed colleagues on the Left, they wanted to be the boot too. Ultimately, they view government just like the Left does: As a club to hit people with. They feigned outrage when the Left swung that club, but they wanted their turn at bat one day. Or if you prefer Game of Thrones imagery, they were looking forward to the day when their spoke on the wheel would be on top.

Donald Trump may not have long, flowing, silver hair, or access to dragons, but he's out to break the wheel too. To the Left, that's their wheel; it belongs to them; it's always supposed to belong to them; their spoke is supposed to be on top. For ever.

Then along comes President Trump. He doesn't just advocate different policies. He's actually dismantling the government; the Left's Government. He's tearing down what took them decades to build. No wonder they're losing their minds! And no wonder the GOP establishment tried so desperately to stop him. How could their spoke ever reach the top if the wheel is broken? But unlike the Charlie Brown Party, the Left is having a harder time accepting the loss. Hence the year long tantrum.

Why "CalExit" isn't going to be a thing

OK... I know that it's been a while. My attention has been elsewhere. This subject, however, is a good one for this sort of "long form" format...

So here's why "CalExit" isn't going to happen: The national Democrat Party will never allow it.

California is the beating heart and soul of the Democrat Party. Its powerbase is here. Democrat money comes from here. The Democrat-controlled media is based here. When they last controlled Congress, their majority came from here. There's a reason why Nancy Pelosi is still in charge of the House Democrats. Every four years, Democrat presidential candidates start election night with California's 55 electoral college votes in the bag; before a single vote has been cast here. When the votes were cast, Hillary Clinton won 2 votes here for every 1 Donald Trump won. The notion that Clinton won the popular vote exists only because of this disparity.

Next, let's look at the process itself. There is a procedure to admit a new state, but no mechanism for a State to leave the Union. Before California could secede, the Constitution would have to be amended to include a "divorce" clause. This is where the Confederacy went wrong. They thought that simply demanding to go their own way would be sufficient. Crazy Californians here are making the same mistake.

Now there are some in Red State America that might go along with a CalExit plan. These red States might be tempted to go ahead with plans to take 55 Electoral College votes, 2 Senators, and (at least) 38 Representatives away from the Democrats. However, there aren't enough red States to push through such an amendment. 3/4 of the States must ratify an amendment before it becomes part of the Constitution. Blue States would be needed and those Democrats would never let this happen. The last thing they want is to be members of a permanent minority party. CalExit would guarantee that fate.

Every last Democrat in California might want to leave the US, but every last Democrat in the rest of the country would oppose them.

Have they lost their minds?!

OK, so perhaps Trump won't win in November. Hillary has $1billion in bribes sitting in her bank account, so perhaps no Republican will win. But the solution isn't to undo the results of months of primaries.

The GOP electorate has spoken. They don't want another Bush. They don't want Mittens. They don't want any other member of the GOP Elite. The vast majority of the votes cast in the primaries went to the candidates that the elites didn't want: Trump, Cruz, Paul, and Carson. Slipping in at the last minute with a smoky backroom candidate will destroy the Party. And it should. If the Republican Party cannot abide by the results of elections, then it deserves its place on the ash heap of history.

Move the goal posts? How about erasing them altogether!?

Decius at the Journal of American Greatness writes about Speaker Paul Ryan and his plans for a new GOP initiative on poverty...

But the Trump campaign is vastly superior to Ryan in its core understanding of the core issues most urgent right now. Every new President can focus on three, at most four, such issues. Trump seems to have three: secure borders, economic nationalism, and interests-based foreign policy. We can have a debate about whether those are the most urgent issues just now. Indeed, the whole campaign may be said to be such a debate. We’ll see who wins. 

Obviously, we at JAG think these are the most urgent issues just now. Maybe you agree, maybe you don’t. But does anyone—other than Paul Ryan—believe that developing a new poverty policy is the most urgent issue right now? Perhaps Jack Kemp’s ghost?

The "why" of Ryan's priority has little to do with compassion for the poor. It has everything to do with compassion for his own political career.

The three Trump policy priorities Decius lists above have one thing in common: They can be measured for success or failure. Ryan's cannot. There is no metric by which you can judge an anti-poverty campaign. You can, however, determine whether or not a border is truly secure. You can judge whether or not an economic policy is helping or hurting the economy. You can decide whether or not our foreign policy is advancing or hindering our national interests.

Trump, unlike Paul Ryan or the entire Democrat Party, is putting his political capital where his mouth is. He's advancing policy priorities that can be used to judge his performance. Judging Ryan's performance with regard to the efficacy of his poverty program would be like nailing Jell-O to a tree. Since you can't say that he succeeded, you can't say that he failed.

There's an old Klingon proverb: bItuHlaHbe'chugh bIquvlaHbe'. "If you cannot be shamed, you cannot be honored." Paul Ryan turns that on its ear to become "If you cannot be honored, you cannot be shamed."

It's been a while

I just have to laugh at the GOP establishment (GOPe).

They've spent months battling The Donald. They've been expecting his implosion. They've been expecting the rise of an anointed candidate; preferable one who's the son of a former president and who's name rhymes with "Bush". They've been waiting for those other awful candidates like Cruz and Paul to go away. Everything was supposed to go their way again. They were supposed to get their milquetoast candidate, lose another election, and return to a comfortable life of complaining about the ruling Democrats.

But, none of that happened.

Bush tanked. Rubio tanked. Kasich tanked. Graham tanked. And now their last hope of stopping The Donald is Ted Cruz! The one guy they hate possibly more than they hate Trump is now their last hope.

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