“Everyone is in favor of free speech… but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” ― Winston Churchill
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently flew two plane loads of illegal immigrants (a bare smattering of those flown into Florida in the dead of night by Joe Biden) to Martha’s Vineyard. One of the most affluent places in the US1.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was not pleased. She had this to say on Twitter:
Exploiting vulnerable people for political stunts is repulsive and cruel. Massachusetts is fully capable of handling asylum seekers, and I’ll keep working with local, state, and federal partners to ensure we have the necessary resources to care for people with dignity.
Senator, Governors Desantis and Abbott are providing your constituents with what they voted for when they elected you. DeSantis handed you an opportunity to renew your compassionate commitment to ‘asylum seekers’. And you did. What’s not to like?
Your compassion and the Vineyard’s wealth can now be brought to bear directly on healing the trauma of the volunteers DeSantis accepted from the random people foisted on his state by the leader of your party.
Asylum seekers. Enticed by President Biden’s open borders invitation, exploited by the hives of scum and villainy from which they fled, by the Coyotes who smuggled them to the border, and by random perverts, thieves, and killers they met along the way. There’s nothing DeSantis could do to worsen the conditions they escaped. In fact, he’s bidding to do quite the opposite by commending them to your wealthy and compassionate hands. What I don’t get is why you haven’t been demanding these poor and downtrodden souls to be given into your care immediately upon crossing the border.
Desantis and Abbott are sending exploited people to wealthy places where immigration enforcement is called fascist and border control officers are equated with Auschwitz guards. Certainly that’s Martha’s Vineyard*.*
As someone with Native American heritage, like Senator Warren, will deeply appreciate – Martha’s Vineyard is properly called Noepe in the Wampanoag language of the Algonquian’s. That’s what you should say in your paleface land acknowledgement rituals.
But also Chicago, Washington DC, New York City (where non-citizens can even vote), California (where they are eligible for free health care), and…
Oh, wait. Not California. Coal to Newcastle and all that.
These Governors are performing a public service. And besides, as I always say, “If you are going to exploit vulnerable people for personal or political gain, it’s best not to fake anything.”
Giving sanctuary cities an opportunity to actually exercise the virtue they signal is a creative approach to satisfying a demand by someone who has an excess supply. It is charity to the vulnerable and to the pious.
Here’s a brief portrait of that piety in action from Wikipedia. I know, I know, but Wikipedia’s leftist slant makes this all the more credible to Progs not named Elizabeth Warren. 1
Since the 19th century, the island has had a sizable community of Portuguese-Americans, concentrated primarily in the three down-Island towns of Oak Bluffs, Tisbury, and Edgartown; they have traditionally worked alongside other island residents in whaling and fishing. It also has a large community of Brazilian immigrants who work mainly in the maintenance of the island’s vacation facilities.[98]
The island’s permanent residents were profiled in a London Telegraph article showing “the dark side of Martha’s Vineyard”.[99] In the same month an article titled “Edgartown’s Darker Side” appeared in the Boston Globe detailing the extremely poor working conditions suffered by Irish and Serbian students in a newly built private members club in Edgartown.[100] Concerns over munitions that may be buried on Martha’s Vineyard, most from World War II,[101] have led to an 8.1 million dollar project to remove and rebuild part of a privately owned barrier beach off the Tisbury Great Pond.[102]
The year-round working population of Martha’s Vineyard earns 30 percent less on average than other residents of the state while keeping up with a cost of living that is 60 percent higher than average.[103] Many people are moving to more affordable areas.[citation needed] Schools have seen a successive drop in enrollment over the past few years.[citation needed] Typically home to artists, musicians, and other creative types, the Island has many residents who manage by working several jobs in the summer and taking some time off in the winter.[citation needed] The lack of affordable housing on the island has forced many families to move off-island.[citation needed]
Many high-profile residents, movie stars, politicians, writers, and artists contribute to fundraisers and benefits that raise awareness of the fragile ecosystem of the Vineyard and support community organizations and services. The largest of these is the annual Possible Dreams Auction.[104]
There are, then, acceptable immigrants on Martha’s Vineyard.
Just not any who haven’t had a background employment check. Those are being exploited.
Like MAGA, ‘fascism’ is only two syllables. President Biden can say both reliably. His caretakers took a risk, though, when they handed him “semi-fascist.” Leaving us all to wonder which parts of actual fascism were covered and which were not. Turns out not to matter, because he doesn’t know what the root word means.
AFAIK, he’s been getting that four syllable variation right so far, even if neither he nor his affirmative action press secretary have been willing or able to define it.
Willy-nilly throwing out the word fascist and vilifying half the population of the United States in a political speech is his idea of unifying the country: Last Thursday, our President could be found driving his message home by posing before shadowy Marines (Think about that. It was a political speech.) before a background of dim blood-red lighting shining on Independence Hall. Anyone see projection here? Or, an historical reference?
In keeping with the carefully constructed atmosphere, the President delivered a speech worthy of the Italian socialist who invented Fascism. Mussolini was a better speaker, and a more accomplished and erudite man than the President.
Imitation. Flattery.
The President should ask Karine Jean-Pierre to read Angelo M. Codevilla’s 2020 article to him. Then they’d both have a better understanding of what they’re playing at:
I’d recommend reading it yourself. An excellent history lesson. A fantastic insight into how we came to have a President calling everyone who doesn’t vote for “Our Democracyts” a fascist.
A slice from Codevilla:
“Socioeconomic organization was fascism’s defining feature. Only employers’ and employees’ organizations approved by the government were allowed. They represented and collected dues from any and all in their category and territory, whether these had signed up with them or not. [Like taxpayers and student loans.] In 1925 these had agreed “voluntarily” to recognize each other as “exclusive representatives,” to subordinate interactions at the local level to central organizations, and to draw up procedures for their cooperation under government supervision. The Law of Corporations of April 3, 1926, codified this political-economic order. No longer would corporations be responsible to owners. Thenceforth, they would answer to higher duties as defined in the law. As Mussolini put it, “In a world of social and economic interdependence…the watchword must be cooperation or misery.” “Labor and capital have the same rights and duties. Both must cooperate, and their disputes are regulated by law and decided by courts, which punish any violation.” This resulted in the orderly servicing of interest groups, fascism’s daily preoccupation.”
What is the word to describe the fact that the FBI ‘advises’ Silicon Valley crony-capitalists on censorship, just days before a Presidential election, as news damaging to their preferred candidate is breaking? What is that word when the White House makes lists of “problematic posts,” then threatens those same corporations with: “Root out misleading speech or be held accountable?”
One might assume these left wing corporations are merely following their natural inclinations to help a sympathetic government suppress stories they both don’t want publicized. It’s “like minded” fascism: Simple cloth masks retard CCP virus transmission. The vaccine prevents disease transmission. Natural immunity is not as good as a vaccine. Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian agitprop. Trump paid Russian prostitutes to piss on a mattress. Shutting schools won’t harm children. The United States didn’t fund gain of function research by the Chinese. Trans “women” are biologically identcal to males for every purpose, but especially sports and incarceration. If you disagree, you are a fascist. Ipso facto.
What do you call a government which seeds the same outlets they suppress with a fantasy dossier, and then uses the news coverage generated by that leak as a basis for secret surveillance warrants? Is that “like minded” fascism, “collusion” fascism, “conspiracy” fascism?
The White House and the FBI are prevaricating about these stories, but what do you call a government which tries to regularize corporate censorship at state direction by creating a “Disinformation Governance Board”
The Disinformation Governance Board was so outrageous an idea they had to rename it. Ministry of Truth had already been taken, so now it’s an ‘internet policy task force’ led by Kamala Harris, “with goals including “developing programs and policies” to protect “political figures” and journalists from “disinformation,” “abuse” and “harassment.””
Used to be that ferreting out “disinformation,” and “harassing politicians” was the job journalists did.
So what’s the word for this set of corporatist rules? Here’s a hint: it takes the ‘semi’ out of “semi-fascist.”
That Italian I mentioned provided the rationale in the 1930s:
-1-:
The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.
and -2-:
The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State–a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values–interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. (p. 14)
The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.
-1- Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: ‘Ardita’ Publishers, (pp. 135-136), and -2- The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze: Vallecchi Editore, (p. 41).
One more piece of Codevilla’s article is worth looking at in thinking about the history of Fascism in the United States.
The initial impetus came from a man who disdained the Constitution and got the transfer of power into the hands of the the Executive Branch rolling: Woodrow Wilson.
A cursory look at Wilson’s comments will demonstrate this, as well as the fact that he was a racist of the first water.
But the ball really got rolling under another President, a contemporary and admirer of Mussolini, Franklin Roosevelt:
“The view that the New Deal was “fascism without the billy clubs” was well-nigh universal among FDR’s opponents on the Left (e.g. Norman Thomas), as well as on the Right (Herbert Hoover). It could hardly have been otherwise since the essence of the National Industrial Recovery Act—the involuntary inclusion of all participants in categories of economic activity and their subjection to government-dictated prices, wages, and working conditions—was at least as detailed as those in fascism’s corporate law. The U.S. government had brushed aside the Supreme Court’s objections to the National Recovery Administration in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935). By 1942, in Wickard v. Filburn (still “good law” today), the Court approved regulation of all manner of enterprise with reasoning stricter than any Mussolini had used in 1926. Today, by the same token, Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s proposed “Accountable Capitalism Act” would also force corporations to enroll into a legal scheme in which the government would force them to service various stakeholders as government regulators would decide from time to time. Such tools are far more powerful than billy clubs.
Until 1935 New Dealers, though careful not to add to their opponents’ ammunition, did not hide their administration’s kinship with what the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists were doing to redirect the societies over which they ruled. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes thought that “what we are doing in this country is analogous to what is being done in Russia and even under Hitler in Germany. The only thing is that we do it methodically.” FDR himself referred to Mussolini and Stalin as “blood brothers,” and spoke of having private contacts with Mussolini. “Mussolini,” he said, “is interested in what we are doing, and I am struck by how much of his doubtless honest programs to reform Italy he has accomplished.” Brain-truster Rexford Tugwell thought that the fascists had done…”
many of the things which seem necessary to me. At any rate, Italy has been rebuilt materially in a systematic manner. Mussolini has the same opponents as FDR, but he controls the press, which prevents them from daily spreading their nonsense. He governs a compact, disciplined country, despite insufficient resources. At least on the surface, he has achieved enormous progress.
So, for a man of limited intelligence, and even less erudition, tossing the word fascist about as if it were anything but a convenient epithet is a mistake. That is not to say that such men do not have a long tradition here. Mostly they are Democrats. Whose Blackshirts, Antifa, are anything but anti-fascist.
Think of fascism today as the administrative state. The “swamp.” Who are its standard bearers?
Tonight’s State of The Union address is an appropriate time to examine how POTUS and VPOTUS developed their elocutionary skills.
It’s fairly certain you’ve never wondered what it would be like listening to the legendary Roman orator Cicero after he’d had a hit of the brown acid. A) He died before the brown acid was circulating, and B) he spoke Latin.
But that does not mean the experience can’t be simulated. For most people Cicero’s imaginary acid laced oratory wouldn’t differ much in intelligible content from the off-teleprompter efforts of our President and Vice President.
They story of how they honed their natural abilities with diligent study is not well known. Their role models were not who you might think.
They had tried studying legendary orators and logicians, but this ceased when the President’s handler’s realized that he misunderstood the apocryphal example of Demosthenes learning to speak with marbles in his mouth; and when the Vice President’s staff realized she thought “Syllogism” was the name of Aristotle Onassis’s yacht.
Instead, Biden and Harris spent months studying the skills of two men whose Presidential campaigns are the stuff of legend: Irwin “The World’s Foremost Authority” Corey, and Pat “We Can Be Decisive… Probably” Paulsen.
Corey campaigned for President in 1960 on Hugh Hefner’s Playboy ticket. His campaign slogans included, “Vote for Irwin and get on the dole” and, “Corey will run for any party, with a bottle in his hand.” Notable quote: “I don’t believe Spiro Agnew is a crook. If he was a crook, he’d still be in office.”
Corey was a talented comedian and actor for over 50 years. He lived to be 102, which attracted the President’s attention.
In the persona of a dowdy, wild-haired professor, his schtick was non-stop streams of nonsense peppered with physical comedy. His routines sound like today’s soft “sciences” academic papers.
Corey was a nearly perfect model for Biden. Nearly, because while Corey was a master of sesquipedalian nonsense, he didn’t make up polysyllabic nonsense words. For example, he would have considered that last sentence insufficiently confusing. This deficiency will bring us to Paulsen in a moment.
Corey’s appeal to Harris was a little different. It is exemplified by this post’s title, “I feel more like I do now than when I first got here.” (the title of an LP he recorded). This convinced Kamala Harris he was a man to emulate, as demonstrated when she said “It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day.”
Here is Corey when he was 79, Joe Biden’s age, talking about his album. For Corey, it’s an act.
But, something was missing for Biden. He needed a larger degree of freedom, outside the bounds of the English language, to exploit his propensity to create incomprehensible neologisms. Enter Pat Paulsen.
Paulsen’s Presidential campaigns spanned 40 years, starting in the 60s. Shut Up And Get Off Your Butt! was the theme of his 1988 campaign. He was famous for incisive analysis of our immigration problems early in his career: “All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.”
Paulsen was also a talented comedian. His stage presence combined studied affectlessness, mistimed gesturing, deliberate mispronunciation, and brief excursions into garbled strings of vaguely English sounding phonemes.
Harris and Biden both found these skills compelling, though they emphasize different aspects of Paulsen’s persona in their own rhetorical flourishes.
Here, Paulsen anticipates the message we may well hear tonight,
I predict that based on Biden’s recent assertion that Americans’ dissatisfaction with his regime can all be laid at the feet of the CCP virus:
“As Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, points out, I think one of the significant things we are going to find ten years from now is a phenomenal negative psychological impact that CoViD has had on the public psyche.
And so you have an awful lot of people who are, notwithstanding the fact that things have gotten so much better for them economically, that they are thinking, but how do you get up in the morning feeling happy – happy that everything is alright?
Even though your job is better, even though you have more income.”
Joe Biden has not forgotten Demonsthenes’ marbles, but he has managed to learn to channel Paulsen with a touch of Corey. His intuitive grasp of Paulsen’s syllababble is a natural fit, and his attention span mimics Corey’s.
For example, Biden’s “trunalimunumaprzure” (sometimes rendered “true ninternuvidu presher”, or “true inder nah ma preh zer”) is pure Paulsen.
Corey’s primary contribution to the President’s affect was a standard bit where Corey appears to forget where he is.
Corey’s influence on Kamala Harris is made obvious at the Munich Security Conference, where she had been dispatched to deter Vlad Putin with sanctions…
“[W]e strongly believe – and remember also that the sanctions are a product not only of our perspective as the United States, but a shared perspective among our allies, and the allied relationship is such that we have agreed that the deterrence effect of these sanctions is still a meaningful one, especially because remember also, we still sincerely hope that there is a diplomatic path out of this moment. And within the context, then, of the fact that that window is still opening – open, although it is absolutely narrowing, but within the context of a diplomatic path still being open, the deterrence effect we believe has merit.”
Harris doesn’t have Professor Corey’s vocabulary, but she absolutely nails his concept.
It’s worth noting that we could do worse than electing a comedian as President. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been criticized because he was a successful comedian. He seems to have turned out alright.
Sadly, neither Biden nor Harris are funny. Well ‘funny peculiar’, perhaps, but not “funny Ha, Ha.”
President Biden’s FDA is preparing to ban menthol cigarettes.
According to NBC, 85% of black smokers use menthol cigarettes. The public health nannies are going to make sure that blacks can’t make that mistake any longer. Or, they’ll have to do it illegally.
It’s for their own good: Properly Conducted Black Lives Enforcement Matters. And it’s not like over-regulation of cigarettes can bring people into unfortunate interaction with police.
Nobody is going to figure out some home based method of flavoring cigarettes, and selling untaxed cigarettes is already against the law. Eric Garner is a perfect example. You may recall, he died when a cop used a choke hold while arresting him for selling single cigarettes, depriving the State of New York of badly need tax revenue.
Garner said “I can’t breathe,” long before George Floyd, probably as a result of selling menthol cigarettes.
Democrats are complaining that the “transition” to the putative Biden administration is being obstructed. They claim the transition from Obama to Trump was free of such drama. It was “smooth.”
This is a myth. But, never mind the petty obstructionism from the Obama administration: It’s at about this stage of the Obama/Trump transition that the Russiagate plot got well and truly underway, though preparation had begun long before the election.
In Oct 2016, then FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe presented the Steele report (to be totally discredited almost 4 years later) to the FISA court for the first time – as verified intelligence. McCabe was investigating election interference under operation “Crossfire Hurricane,” which began in July of 2016. McCabe has admitted leaking the document and lying TO HIS OWN agency about it.
That plot was pretty smooth, we haven’t yet got to the bottom of it.
Until Friday the word “mandate” meant a clear and convincing, if not resounding, message from an electorate. It meant full-throated approval of a candidate’s policies by a significant majority. Biden claims his “mandate” includes “action on COVID, the economy, climate change, and systemic racism.”
With Joe Biden’s assertion that he has a mandate – though not a single state has yet certified a result and margins in key states are fractions of a percent; though his party experienced dismal results in the House contests; though control of the Senate won’t be decided until Georgia’s runoff election in December; though not a single state legislature changed hands – we are being treated to yet another Orwellian attempt to shift the meaning of a word 180 degrees.
Despite a years long investigation intended to prove Donald Trump is a Russian agent, despite an impeachment predicated on Trump asking a foreign government to investigate corruption involving prominent American politicians, for which compelling evidence was suppressed by the same media which waged unrelenting war on the President for four years, despite the Democrats’ refusal to ever accept the results of the 2016 election, despite corporate censorship by Big Tech, despite a politicized pandemic and associated massive unregulated vote by mail: Donald Trump received the second highest total popular vote in history, and increased the proportion of minority voters for the GOP.
Biden calls this narrow result a mandate. Despite, in addition to all the above, the highest number of suspect ballots in history, and secretive, irregular vote counting in solid blue Democrat cities with a long history of electoral fraud. Tammany Hall springs to mind.
Can it be proven that the fraud this year was sufficient to swing the election? Probably not.
Still, mailed ballots were discarded, and there are several witnesses claiming ballots which would have been ineligible were backdated. GOP poll watchers were prevented from observing ballot counting, even so far as blocking windows so the process couldn’t be observed at all.
We have the Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar’s tweet, “Using the title ‘President’ before the word ‘Trump’ really demeans the office of the presidency…” And the fact that “Election officials in Pennsylvania allegedly told Democrat operatives the names and contact information of voters whose ballots were rejected before the end of Election Day, which Republicans say violates state election laws.” They did that so Democrat ballots with errors could be ‘fixed.’
Then there’s the Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s thumb on the scale advice, “Need help with your mail in ballot, finding out where to vote, or something else?” Shapiro wrote on social media. “Call the @PADems Voter Assistance Hotline.” He also said, “If all the votes are added up in PA, @realDonaldTrump is going to lose..”
He would have been well advised, as the chief law enforcement officer, to have inserted the word “legal” before the word “vote,” because the non-obvious part of that statement is the definition of “a vote.”
If there is a mandate from this election, it is to raise the integrity of our voting process at least to the level of Iraq in 2005.
As I say, the evidence is probably not sufficient across half a dozen or more states to prevent a Biden Presidency, but the damage done to confidence in the integrity of our political system is immense – and it’s Democrats who did it. They abandoned the appearance of propriety. And after their relentless, hysterical, false vilification of President Trump, who believes they wouldn’t cheat?
For the far left of that Party, chaos was the objective. Destroying the foundations of the Republic is the announced goal.
If Joe Biden does not forcefully make correcting this mess his number one priority, we will have a full answer about how he will govern.
Update: I forgot to add that this is why Trump’s suit(s) should go forward, to drag this walled section of the swamp into the sunlight. Yes, these will suits be further disruptive, but absent a correction we will be absent a Republic.
Never mind that a Joe Biden Presidency would significantly raise middle class taxes. Don’t worry about a return to the living conditions of 1850 because Joe’s puppeteers embrace the Green Ordeal and intend to socialize health care. Ignore the fact that the DOJ, FBI, CIA, certain senior members of the House and Senate, and Obama White House insiders will never face consequences for their seditious collusion. Forget said collusion was enabled by Democrat Party opposition research leaked by the FBI in order to install a Special Counsel whose multi year investigation of Donald Trump turned up nothing. Overlook the fact that the Democrats still push the Russiagate story.
Be sanguine about erasure of the Second Amendment and demolition of the First. Celebrate the prospect of a 15 member Supreme Court. Be happy for the prospect of national holidays celebrating Statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. Revel in the abolition of the Electoral College. Accept the idea of federal abortion funding, up to the day of birth. Welcome 11 million new voters who entered the country illegally.
Pay no mind to the idea that Antifa is just an idea. Or that Biden’s mental capacity is a glass half full. Don’t think about the fact that you’d really be voting for a President Harris.
Discount the effect of reimposing the regulatory statism Trump has rolled back.
Never mind eyewitness evidence of Hunter Biden’s footsie playing with the ChiComs, Ukrainians and Kazakhs. Take at face value Hunter’s father’s denial of those activities, and his denial he ever discussed them with his son at all; despite the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Hunter over money laundering. Brush off the documentation that Joe, while he was Vice President, ignored State Department concerns over Hunter’s activities, and reject the first party account of Joe Biden meeting with Tony Bobulinski for high level discussions of a deal with the ChiComs.
Worry not that the “right” for men to compete in womens’ sports will be solidified, or that vilification of Israel by the likes of Rashida Tlaib, AOC, and Ilhan Omar will wriggle its way into foreign policy planning – that Trump’s so far successful Middle East Peace successes will be nullified. Serenely prepare for an apology to Iran.
Forget all that, and more.
The foremost reason to vote against Joe Biden is to ensure he can’t appoint Gretchen Whitmer to ANY cabinet position. Particularly the Department of Health and Human Services, to which the CDC reports.
Biden’s already threatened a national mask mandate, and Gretchen is just the martinet to impose it. She already has experience with ignoring Michigan Supreme Court decisions, by shifting her unconstitutional executive orders to unelected bureaucrats.
Giving sanctuary cities an opportunity to actually exercise the virtue they signal is a creative approach to satisfying a demand by someone who has an excess supply. It is charity to the vulnerable and to the pious.
