Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Education, Free Markets, Freedom, Health Care, National Security, Politics, Regulation, Taxes | Tags: David Horowitz, Respect for the American People, The Art of Political War
David Horowitz again from The Art of Political War:
The Republican Party claims to be the party of personal responsibility yet it has become a party; that takes no responsibility for the predicaments it finds itself in. Instead, Republicans blame bias in the media or the liar in the White House, or their unprincipled opponents, or even the immorality of the American people to explain their defects.
The greatest political deficiency of the Republican Party today is lack of respect for the common sense of the American people. “Respect” in this context does not mean following polls or focus groups or putting one’s finger slavishly in the winds. It means that what is right politically (whether a constitutional framework and consistent with deeply held principles) produces electoral majorities.
Liberals also fail to understand this. But they were fortunate to have in Bill Clinton a leader who did, who disregarded their advice, and who used his power as the head of their party to force them to pay heed to the voice of the people. The reason Bill Clinton survived his impeachment, riding high in the polls, is that he understood what the electorate wanted and gave it to them (or at least made them think that he had).
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Education, Free Markets, Freedom, History, Politics, The United States
From David Horowitz’ Take No Prisoners:
Politics is always a gamble. No one can be sure about what tactic will succeed, which is why we have to respect each other and keep our coalition strong, even when we disagree.
I said we are not good at politics. Actually we’re pretty terrible at politics. Whenever a Republican and Democrat square off, it’s Godzilla versus Bambi. They call us racists, sexists, homophobes and selfish pigs, and we call them …liberals. Who’s going to win that argument They spend their political dollars calling us names and shredding our reputations; we spend ours explaining why the complicated solutions we propose will work, and why theirs won’t. But when you are being called a racist, an enemy of women and a greedy SOB, who will listen to your ideas about the budget? Who is going to believe you when all your motives are portrayed as vile?
This is the problem that not only Republicans but also Tea Partiers and conservatives in general have failed to address. It is why the Democratic Party, which supports policies that are morally repugnant and have also failed on an epic scale, still win elections. Medicare is bankrupt and a mess; Social Security is bankrupt and a mess; the War on Poverty is a twenty-trillion dollar catastrophe that has created worse poverty than it was designed to cure—and yet Democrats can still propose and pass the biggest socialist entitlement and redistributionist scheme ever and get away with it. Until Republicans and Tea Partiers are willing to fight fire with fire, these circumstances are not going to change. Twenty-five years after the most oppressive empire in human history collapsed because socialist economics don’t work, 49 percent of American youth, according to a recent Pew poll; think socialism is a good system. That’s a political failure on our part. We won the Cold War, but we didn’t drive a stake through the Communist heart. As a result the vampire of “social justice” has risen to fight another day.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economics, Free Markets, Freedom, Law, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism, Regulation, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Google Censorship, Prager University Videos, YouTube Censorship
YouTube has just censored a video criticizing censorship. Yes, the one just below titled “the Dark Art of Political Intimidation.”
Beginning in 2010, the IRS intentionally targeted conservative nonprofit groups and delayed approving their tax-exempt non-profit status an attempt to render them politically impotent during the 2012 election, Strassel explains.
In Wisconsin, a Democratic prosecutor went after conservatives in a shadow campaign finance investigation. The real reason for the pre-dawn raids on conservative activists’ homes and the subsequent gag orders legally compelling them to stay quiet about it all were to enact revenge for their support of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, she says.
These are two of several examples she highlights in this five-minute-long video decrying censorship of one’s political opponents, which YouTube decided to censor by placing it on “restricted mode.”It’s common for schools and parents to place their YouTube account on restricted mode to keep obscene or graphic content away from children. But PragerU’s videos, including the aforementioned one about censorship, are G-rated, so it’s unclear why the video platform is placing these videos on the naughty list.
Goodness, don’t let children see the short educational videos that Prager University creates. Here’s a list of the naughty and salacious videos from which children must be protected. Sound scary?
The Dark Art of Political Intimidation
Are The Police Racist?
Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?
Why Did America Fight the Korean War?
Who’s More Pro-Choice: Europe or America?
What ISIS Wants
Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?
Islamic Terror: What Muslim Americans Can Do
Did Bush Lie About Iraq?
Who NOT to Vote For
Don’t Judge Blacks Differently
Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army
Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology
The Most Important Question About Abortion
Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?
What is the University Diversity Scam?
He Wants You
Israel’s Legal Founding
Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?
YouTube is a Google company. Google had many subsidiaries, and last year reorganized with the parent company becoming Alphabet Inc. Visit Wikipedia.org and search for Alphabet Inc.
According to Wikipedia, Larry Page, Google CEO, said that “the establishment of Alphabet was prompted by a desire to make the core Google Internet services business “cleaner and more accountable” while allowing greater autonomy to group companies that operate in businesses other than internet services.”
A new study from SEO Competitive Analysis Company CanIRank finds that, confirming many conservatives suspicions, Google searches favor left-wing content.
It finds that top search results are almost 40 percent more likely to contain pages with a “Left” or “Far Left” slant than they are to contain pages from the right. Searchers are 65 percent more likely to encounter liberal search results than conservative search results among the five first returns to their inquiry.
Moreover, 16 percent of political keywords contain no right-leaning pages at all within the first page of results.
Are these findings the result of politically neutral rules for determining which results appear first? The study concludes they are not.
Google highlights two key determinants for ranking content: (1) the number and quality of links pointing to a page and (2) the content (i.e., relevancy and comprehensiveness). According to the study, pages demonstrating a left or far left political slant made it into the top results with significantly fewer external links compared to pages rated balanced. And pages with a right-leaning slant needed still more links to make it into the top results.
In the case of actual content, conservative websites were more comprehensive, which they measured by number of words, yet they were less highly ranked. The study also considered the secondary factors in Google ranking. Both sides of the political spectrum agreed on where sites ranked in the study. Google appears to be biased towards the left. Voters get much of their information from search engines about elections and campaigns. This is not a minor thing, though many of us know to just keep going down the list until we reach a reliable website.
Go here to sign the petition to Stop YouTube from Blocking Prager U Videos.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Education, Energy, Environment, Law, National Security, Politics, The United States | Tags: Censorship, Kimberly Strassel, Political Intimidation
Here’s Prager University’s latest video featuring the Wall Street Journal columnist, Kimberly Strassel explaining political intimidation, a feature of Leftist tactics. The Left is quite serious with the whole thing, and they want to eliminate those who might disagree with them —permanently. They’ve talked about concentration camps, but laugh it off as jokes. But underneath, that’s what they believe.
This is only a brief introduction to Strassel’s book on the subject, a very serious subject indeed. The hard Left wants to eliminate dissension, disagreement and essentially—any opposing party. Or didn’t you notice their attempts to silence what they call “climate deniers” — the ordinary folks who think all the panic about climate seems to reside in the programs of the climate scientists in their university labs, not out in the real world. Ask any farmer.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Election 2016, Freedom, Junk Science, Liberalism, Politics, Progressives, Taxes | Tags: Fooling the Voters, SEIU, Washington State Ballot Issues
Washington State voters have just received their ballots and the Voter’s Guide. It tells you something when we have already made the national news. The above Venn Diagram comes from economist Mark Perry, writing at AEI.
Over at the Wall Street Journal, we got a full article on “The SEIU’s Ballot Fraud: The union tries to hoodwink voters into protecting its dues.”
That’s the story in Washington state, where the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is funding a ballot measure that advertises itself as the Seniors and Vulnerable Individuals’ Safety and Financial Crimes Prevention Act. What the ballot measure would really do is prevent home-care workers from being informed that they have the right to opt out of the union.
In Harris v. Quinn in 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that home-care workers have a First Amendment right not to pay fees to a union they don’t wish to join. In Washington state the ruling was taken up by the Freedom Foundation, which sought to inform the members of two unions representing child-care and home health-care workers that they could opt out. …
Under the ballot measure, the Freedom Foundation or other outsiders would be blocked from obtaining the list of union members’ names. The unions know that when workers know they have a right not to pay union dues, they often don’t. According to the Freedom Foundation, of the roughly 7,000 unionized child-care providers notified by the Freedom Foundation, well over 60% have dropped their union membership.
National Review targeted the same ballot measure.
“In Washington State, Unions Advance a Ballot Measure to Keep Members in the Dark.” It is disguised as a measure to protect the elderly from abuse but is simply an aggressive effort to keep home care providers from knowing that they don’t have to belong to the union, nor do they have to pay union dues.
Also on the ballot, but unaddressed at the national level is a state attempt to invalidate the (much hated by the Left) Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, the aforementioned minimum wage issue, a gun bill that attempts to remove guns from the mentally ill or depressed in an ineffective suicide prevention idea. And to top it all off, there’s an attempt to pass a carbon tax that would accomplish nothing, nothing at all, except an increase in taxes.
The Wall Street Journal also points out that “State government revenues have swelled 30% in the last five years. That’s a bigger raise than most workers have received, but public unions and their friends are asking voters for more at the ballot box on November eighth.
So they are, and we should not give them a cent.
American Elephants 