Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Diversity in American Politics, part 1c


Some of the material on this page was originally on Part 1a of this series.

Both of America's major political parties have factions in them.  Republican factions are named and described on pages 1a, 1b, and this page.  Current factions include the Trump family and its' supporters, conservative groups (including the House Freedom Caucus and the Tea Party), and the Mormon Church.  Most of these groups adhere to a traditional set of principles, including:
  • The Rule of Law, which states that laws are more important than any one man, even the President of the United States
  • The belief that a supreme being exists and because he is influential in the world, he must be worshiped
  • "The right of the people to keep and bear arms", as stated in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
  • support for the U.S. Military
  • capitalism, rather than socialism
  • support for small business, which offers most of the jobs in America
  • support for state and local police forces, including the National Guard

In contrast, the Democrat Party has no unifying principles.  As shown on Parts 2a through 2g of this series, they are little more than a loose collection of special-interest groups.


Gay Republicans are another faction in the GOP.

Link to the Facebook page of a group called the Log Cabin Republicans.

Their logo is on the right.

This is the text of the paragraph labeled "What we believe" on the "About us" page of their website.
We are loyal Republicans.  We believe in limited government, strong national defense, free markets, low taxes, personal responsibility, and individual liberty.  Log Cabin Republicans represents an important part of the American family—taxpaying, hard working people who proudly believe in this nation’s greatness.  We also believe all Americans have the right to liberty and equality.  We believe equality for LGBT Americans is in the finest tradition of the Republican Party.  We educate our Party about why inclusion wins.  Opposing gay and lesbian equality is inconsistent with the GOP’s core principles of smaller government and personal freedom.

A gay Republican in the Pennsylvania state legislature

These are the first five paragraphs of a September 28, 2013 New York Times Op-Ed.
ORBISONIA, Pa. — MIKE FLECK, wholesome country boy, cruised to a second term in the State Legislature in 2008, running unopposed in both the Republican primary and the general election.  He got 100 percent of the vote in a largely rural, religious, conservative district.

It was the same two years later: 100 percent.  And the same again in 2012.

But for 2014, primary opponents are circling.  Some supporters are fleeing.  He’s in trouble.

And while nothing has changed — not his deep roots in the farmland here, not his degree from an evangelical Christian university founded by Jerry Falwell, not his fondness for hunting or his pride in the bear pelt from one of his kills — everything has.  At the end of last year, he announced that his marriage of 10 years was over.  And that he’s gay.

Plenty of people figured that he’d exit state politics after that.  But on Monday he’ll announce his campaign for a fifth term.  This time, it will almost certainly be a campaign, with rivals and an uncertain outcome, hinging on whether he can persuade his constituents that he’s the same politician they embraced before, the same man, apart from a reality owned up to, a truth embraced.

According to this May 27, 2014 story in PennLive, Mike lost the Republican nomination but his name will still be on the ballot because he received a sufficient number of Democrat write-in votes.

These are the first two paragraphs ofa July 21, 2015 article in the Washington Blade, which calls itself "America's LGBT news source".
THREE SPRINGS, Pa. — A gay Republican who served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for nearly a decade has accepted a position in Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration.

Mike Fleck, who represented the state’s rural and conservative 81st House District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 2006 until late last year, in June officially became the director of the Bureau of Workplace Partnerships and Operations within the commonwealth’s Department of Labor and Industry.
Sometimes, a member of one faction will find a reason to join a very different faction.  Professional politicians, especially the ones who have been working as politicians for a long time, have a habit of working with politicians in the other major party on legislation that would benefit both of their constituencies.  This situation happened a lot with this Republican President and this Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives, who were actual friends for most of their lives.



These are the first five paragraphs of a July 14, 2016 CNN story.
Washington (CNN) One of the most influential gay Republican groups says it is furious about what it's calling the "most anti-LGBT Platform" in the Republican Party's history.

"There's no way to sugar-coat this: I'm mad as h*** -- and I know you are, too," Gregory Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, said Tuesday in a fundraising email.  "Moments ago, the Republican Party passed the most anti-LGBT Platform in the Party's 162-year history."

LGBT issues were a popular issue this week as Republicans in Cleveland worked to hammer out a platform representing the heart of the GOP.

A few delegates attending Platform Committee meetings ahead of next week's Republican National Convention repeatedly challenged their peers to moderate provisions affecting gay Americans.

"Opposition to marriage equality, nonsense about bathrooms, an endorsement of the debunked psychological practice of 'pray the gay away' — it's all in there," Angelo said.  "This isn't my GOP, and I know it's not yours either. Heck, it's not even Donald Trump's!"

In order for this group or any other group of people to stay in the Republican Party, they must be willing to live with the traditional Republican values
  • low taxes
  • small, efficient government
  • support for small business so that they can grow into larger businesses
  • support for the police so that they can protect us from our domestic enemies
  • support for the U.S. military so that they can protect us from our international enemies
There's no mention in the news stories in this section of any of these Republican values, so as an organization, the Log Cabin Republicans are rather selfish.  They should be working harder to elect non-gay Republicans and working less to divide the party using issues of sexual politics.


A short-lived gay group within the Republican Party

These are the first four paragraphs of a January 22, 2014 Politico story.
GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia announced last week that he would renounce his affiliation with the Republican Party and become an independent nearly five years after he founded the group aimed at gay conservatives.

“I just came to the realization that the Republican Party doesn’t represent my principles and values,” LaSalvia told POLITICO. “I’m a small government conservative and they’re for big government. They’re happy to have big government as long as they’re in charge, More importantly, I don’t tolerate bigotry of any kind, whether it’s anti-gay bigotry, anti-Muslim bigotry. And they do and that’s just not OK with me.”

Although LaSalvia has spent the time since co-founding GOProud in 2009 working within the Republican Party to focus on the issues he cares most passionately about, he says he’s given up hope.

“I think there’s a cultural problem within the Republican Party that’s beyond fixing. I think the leadership of the Republican Party is so out of touch with life in America today that I just decided that it’s not worth fixing. I don’t think they can win a national election again. Pull the plug on the patient, the party’s brain dead.”
The first paragraph of the previous Politico story says that this group is already threatening to leave the Republican Party.  For that reason, I question their commitment to be Republicans when they formed their group.  The Log Cabin Republicans have a page on their website that has information about them.  This is the first sentence of their "What We Believe" paragraph on their "About Us" page.

We are loyal Republicans.


These are the first six paragraphs of a June 3, 2014 story in The Advocate, a national publication that focuses on gay issues.  The links in the second paragraph were in their story.
After five years in the often precarious space of being a gay conservative group, LGBT Republican organization GOProud is ceasing operations, according to a series of reports at Bilerico. 

Bilerico reporter Andrew Markle initially reported that GOProud was shuttering on Sunday, and following initial denials on social media from members of the group, key organizers confirmed to Bilerico founder Bil Browning Monday that the group is indeed planning to close up shop.

GOProud executive director Matthew Bechstein told Browning that the mixed messages were an attempt to calm members and stave off any problems with fundraising efforts.

Nevertheless, "We're leaving GOProud behind and re-branding the chapters," Bechstein told Bilerico. 

"The fact is, in order to continue promoting the conservative principles upon which this organization was founded, change is needed," Bechstein wrote in an email to Bilerico.  "One of the changes under discussion is a switch to a different legal type of organization — basic paperwork that requires dissolution and immediate subsequent reorganization.  Technically, as some argue, this would be a legal closure. … But if it were to actually happen, it would only be momentary and certainly not the end of our organization."

Bilerico, however, reports that the government requirement Bechstein cites does not actually exist, explaining that the group is being dissolved and will have to file entirely new paperwork if it reorganizes as a different entity.  If, as Bechstein contends, the group intends to focus on grassroots online activism, it would not be required to file legal paperwork, but if it accepts financial donations, it will be required to formally register with the government, according to Browning.
This is a similar story, dated June 6, 2014, in the Daily Beast.


The relationship between gays and pedophiles

This section was added December 18, 2019.

These are the first six paragraphs of a July 10, 2018 story in Life Site News, a national publication that focuses on Pro-Life issues.  The links in the first and sixth paragraphs were in their story.
July 10, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A pedophile group is trying to destigmatize pedophilia by calling themselves “Minor Attracted Persons” (MAPs) rather than pedophiles.

Gay groups are up in arms because in the process the same pedophile group is claiming to be part of the LGBT community, even having gone so far as to create their own version of the rainbow flag for Gay Pride Month.

This should come as no surprise.

In essence, the MAP group is attempting to re-hitch its wagon to the gay community, which, for the sake of political – and judicial – expediency, distanced themselves from the pedophile cause beginning a few decades ago.

For the last dozen years or so, the gay rights movement has focused the lion’s share of its energy on what appear to many to be conservative issues: winning same-sex marriage and the right to openly serve in the military.

Yet the warm, fuzzy, family-oriented, “American as baseball and apple pie” picture of gay culture presented to the world by gay activists is a far cry from the movement’s origins in the 1960s and 70s when groups like NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) were an integral part of their coalition.

These words are in a section titled "Who we are" on this page of the website for the North American Man-Boy Love Association.
As never before, our society is beginning to recognize the value and richness of human diversity.  The manifold nature of our humanity appears in the emotional, spiritual, and physical attractions between people.  Attractions between men and boys can be found in every society, crossing lines of race, age, temperament and occupation.  They form a sure basis for mentoring and friendship traditions the world over.  Man/boy love is exceptional only for the degree to which it is still misunderstood in cultures derived from Northwestern Europe.  Most man/boy relationships are based on mutual respect and affection, and strongly desired by both partners.  Such relationships do not harm anyone, and often entail many benefits for both man and boy.  Boy-lovers and boys alike respond to the needs of those they love — needs for affection, understanding, and freedom.

Who we are is perhaps best understood from Dr. John Money’s account of two boys, who speak about how they view their adult lovers: Andy – “Just as normal as anybody else.  He is like a second father to me.”  Burt – “He’s neat; and he’s nice, and gives me more respect than anyone ever has ...  he treats me like an adult, not like my parents treat me.  To me, he’s my best friend.”
This video was uploaded on January 3, 2014.  This is the description of this video.

This is a video shot in 1994. It presents a widely vilified & disparaged viewpoint within the LGBT community.  This group was officially banned from marching in the official 1994 Pride Parade in NYC.  Tom Reeves died in either 2013 or 2012.
This video about a man named Harry Hay was uploaded on January 3, 2014.  The description of this video includes this link and these hash-tags.

Please remember that not every gay is pedophile and not every pedophile is gay.http://kinseysyndrome.com - This clip comes from the documentary The Kinsey Syndrome (www.thekinseysyndrome.com). Harry Hay (the father of the homosexual movement) actually supported NAMBLA (The North American Man/Boy Love Association).   Hay also supported the works of atheist and Darwinist Alfred Kinsey. #LGBT #pedogate #pizzagate
This is the last sentence in the sixth paragraph of Harry Hay's biography in the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Both of these links were in their page.
A champion for a diverse homosexual identity, Hay often waded into contentious debates, notably by advocating for such controversial organizations as the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a pro-pederasty group.
Harry also has a page on the Wikipedia website.
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Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Diversity in American politics, part 1b


This page is a continuation of a page published on December 27, 2017 that described some factions within the Republican Party of the United States.

The most effective Republican lobbying groups

These are the first four paragraphs of a September 24, 2018 story in FiveThirtyEight which, according to the introductory paragraph, "was produced in collaboration with ABC News and Ballotpedia.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.
On the afternoon of July 18, President Trump tweeted his “full and total endorsement” of Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a candidate in the state’s closely matched Republican gubernatorial primary runoff.  Kemp’s opponent, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, had strong conservative chops — he enjoyed the endorsement of the National Rifle Association and the support of popular outgoing Republican Gov. Nathan Deal.  But after the president’s tweet, the race began to look very different.  Within days, Kemp surged in the polls and won in a landslide.

The Republican Party is a coalition of overlapping factions — pro-business types, libertarians, evangelicals, populists, single-issue advocates and more — but to whom does it really belong? To many, the answer is clear: Donald J. Trump. And the success of Trump-endorsed candidates in the Republican primaries this year seems to bear that out — but, according to our research, that’s only part of the story.

Between Feb. 27 and Sept. 13,2 774 people appeared on the ballot this year in “open” Republican primaries — those with no Republican incumbent3 — for Senate, House and governor. Like we did with Democrats earlier this year, FiveThirtyEight, Ballotpedia and ABC News teamed up to look at every single one of those candidates and see which GOP-affiliated people and organizations supported which candidates. Using campaigns’ financial filings, endorsement information from various interest groups and, of course, Trump tweets, we attempted to quantify which wing of today’s Republican Party best reflects the preferences and mood of rank-and-file voters.4 Here are some of the biggest takeaways.

Almost all candidates Trump endorsed won their primaries

How candidates endorsed by selected people and groups fared in open Republican primaries for Senate, House and governor in 2018
This is most of the first sentence in the second paragraph, without the link.

"The Republican Party is a coalition of overlapping factions — pro-business types, libertarians, evangelicals, populists, single-issue advocates and more ...."

A chart followed the last quoted paragraph.  It wasn't an image, so it wasn't copyable, but I transcribed it here.  Their article arranged the chart in the order of the most consistent winners.  I copied their arrangement.  Note that the Chamber of Commerce and the Tea Party Express had the same winning percentage, even though the Tea Party endorsed twice as many candidates.


 Total Winners Share That Won
Donald Trump 17 15 88%
Koch Network 21 18 86%
Main Street Partnership 17 11 65%
Chamber of Commerce 8 5 63%
Tea Party Express 16 10 63%
Club for Growth 21 13 62%
National GOP Congressional Cmte. 41 28 62%
National Rifle Association 14 8 57%
Susan B. Anthony List 23 12 52%
House Freedom Fund 14 7 50%
Right to Life 74 33 45%

I found a typo in their table.

I transcribed the numbers in their article accurately, but there's a typo in the numbers for the National Republican Congressional Committee.  If they endorsed 41 House Candidates, and if 28 of them won their races, then they had a 68% success rate, not 62% as the article states.

Their tweet about the article included the same numbers, including the same typo.



The Chamber of Commerce vs. Donald Trump

This group is one of the more successful lobbying organizations.  They only endorsed eight candidates, but five of the eight won their races.  That gives them a 63% winning percentage according to the chart above.  Their record is equal to the Tea Party Express, slightly higher than the winning record of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and significantly higher than the winning record of the National Rifle Association.

These are the first six paragraphs of a May 31, 2018 CNN-Money story.
President Trump's strict stance on trade could put 2.6 million American jobs at risk, the head of the Chamber of Commerce says.

Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the business organization, issued the forecast in a memo to the board of directors Thursday that was obtained by CNNMoney.

The memo, citing outside studies, adds the possible job losses from tariffs both threatened and enacted by the administration, plus a possible US withdrawal from NAFTA, the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.

A NAFTA withdrawal would kill as many as 1.8 million American jobs in the first year, the memo warned.

In addition, tariffs against China could cost 134,000 US jobs, steel and aluminum tariffs could cost 470,000 jobs, and tariffs on autos and auto parts could cost 157,000 jobs, Donohue warned.

He sent the memo on the same day the administration said it would impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum from three of America's biggest trading partners — Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

These are the first five paragraphs of a July 2, 2018 Reuters story.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday denounced President Donald Trump’s handling of global trade disputes, issuing a report that argued tariffs imposed by Washington and retaliation by its partners would boomerang badly on the American economy.

The Chamber, the nation’s largest business lobbying group and a traditional ally of Trump’s Republican Party, said the White House is risking a global trade war with its push to protect U.S. industry and workers with tariffs.

The group’s analysis of the harm each U.S. state could suffer from retaliation by U.S. trading partners painted a gloomy picture that could bring pressure on the White House from Republicans ahead of congressional elections in November.

For example, nearly $4 billion worth of exports from Texas could be targeted by retaliatory tariffs, the Chamber said, including $321 million in meat the state sends to Mexico each year and $494 million in grain sorghum it exports to China.

Trump has slapped tariffs on billions of dollars worth of steel and aluminum imports from China, the European Union,  Canada and others, prompting retaliation against U.S. products. He is considering extending the levies to the auto sector.

Similar stories were published on the same day by
The New York Post Axios Inc Magazine CNBC
Town Hall Breitbart Zero Hedge

A similar story was published the next day (July 3, 2018) by National Public Radio

 The 6-minute YouTube video on the left was uploaded on the same day by the Fox Business Channel.

It's a report by Neil Cavuto about the new campaign by the Chamber of Commerce.


The last paragraph of the previous story says that America's trading partners retaliated against U.S. tariffs.  The truth is that our trading partners had been imposing high tariffs on U.S.-made goods for decades without any retaliation by America.  President Trump was simply treating them the same way that they had been treating us.

The Chamber was correct in their analysis.  Many of our largest trading partners negotiated trade deals that were more fair.  These are the first two paragraphs of an October 6, 2018 Wall Street Journal story.
WASHINGTON—While the White House is progressing on trade deals with allies including Canada, Mexico, Korea and Europe, its dispute with China looks increasingly intractable, with tariffs between the world’s two largest economies likely cemented in place for years.

In other trade fights, President Trump used tariffs as leverage to reach deals. Threatening car tariffs helped convince Canada and Mexico to concede to U.S. demands for a new North American Free Trade Agreement, the president boasted.  “Without tariffs, we wouldn’t be talking about a deal,” he said Oct. 1 in the Rose Garden.
However, China's trade war with other countries is fought with other economic weapons besides tariffs.  These are the next four paragraphs of the same October 6, 2018 Wall Street Journal story.
China is different. Tariffs aren’t simply a negotiating tactic for the U.S., but a way to change economic incentives.

The Trump trade team believes U.S. firms need protection from a predatory Chinese state, which Mr. Trump says coerces U.S. companies to fork over technologies and subsidizes Chinese firms to expand globally.

Using tariffs to make it more expensive for companies to export from China, Trump trade warriors figure, will encourage foreign firms to take their know-how out of the country.

This isn’t a short-term strategy.

China is targeting areas of the United States for tariffs because these areas voted for Donald Trump.  These are the first paragraphs of a June 15, 2018 editorial by the editorial board of the New York Times, titled Chinese Tariffs Are Already Hitting Trump Voters.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in their editorial.
In Iowa, where farmers raise 40 million to 50 million pigs annually, President Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum from Mexico have already cost producers $560 million, according to an Iowa State University economist. How can that be, you ask. Mexico has threatened countervailing tariffs that include a 20 percent tariff on American pork. That prospect alone sent hog prices tumbling. If you like barbecued ribs, this could be a great summer for you. If you raise the pigs, you may be eating more barbecued beans.

Soybean growers throughout the Midwest are nervously watching as China, which buys a quarter of American soybeans, takes aim at their crop in response to the Trump administration’s announcement that it will move ahead with $50 billion in tariffs on “industrially significant technologies” in more than 1,000 categories. Trade between the two countries has been “very unfair, for a very long time,” the American president said in a statement. Mr. Trump vowed that he would add to that list if China retaliated — which is what most countries do in this situation. Indeed, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has said to expect as much. Oh great, Middle America collectively sighs.

Local newspapers across the heartland are full of similar tales of value destruction and lost income as a result of Trump trade war tweetism. In Great Lakes states, traditional steel makers might benefit from the administration’s 25 percent tariff on foreign steel. But for steel users, it’s an entirely different story. Shortly after tariffs were announced, steel suppliers, no longer as fearful of price competition, began jacking up prices — they’re no fools. That has meant a 40 percent increase since January in the cost of steel for their customers who use it in their finished products, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They can either pass that increase on to you or be less profitable.
The last sentence in the quoted paragraphs makes it sound like there are only two options for the companies that import from other countries with the goal of using this material in their own finished products.  "They can either pass that increase on to you or be less profitable."


The two changes that happen because of tariffs

The tariffs of every nation have a direct effect and an indirect effect.  The direct effect of every tariff is something that the importing nation wants.  The exporting nation pays an extra amount to the importing nation for the privilege of having its' goods sent to the consumers.  This gives the exporter an opportunity to increase its' world-wide revenue.  However, as noted by the June  15, 2018 New York Times editorial, those tariffs do force the importer to either pass along the cost of the tariff to their own consumers or be less profitable.

However, the indirect effect of any tariff is that some consumers will refuse to buy the products because of their higher prices.  These consumers will complain to their government, asking them to lower the tariffs.  If their government is unresponsive to the wishes of the people, perhaps because its' national constitution was recently changed to allow its' leader to remain in office for the rest of his life, then the people may start a revolution.

These are the first two paragraphs of a February 27, 2018 NBC News story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their press release.
BEIJING — It may have looked no different from the past few years’ gatherings — with its rows of suited men and perfectly draped red curtains — but this year’s National People’s Congress delivered one of the most significant shifts in Chinese politics this century.

After casting his own ballot, a visibly relaxed Xi Jinping looked on as the annual meeting of China's rubber-stamp parliament voted to abolish a two-term limit on the presidency, effectively paving the way for the 64-year old leader to enjoy unchecked rule for life.

All of the countries that export to America, including China, have a need to import goods that they cannot produce within their own borders.  Until recently, America hasn't imposed large tariffs on them, but now we are imposing large tariffs.

These are the first three paragraphs of a September 2018 press release of the United States Trade Representative.  The link in the third paragraph was in their press release.
Washington, DC – As part of the United States’ continuing response to China’s theft of American intellectual property and forced transfer of American technology, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) today released a list of approximately $200 billion worth of Chinese imports that will be subject to additional tariffs.  In accordance with the direction of President Trump, the additional tariffs will be effective starting September 24, 2018, and initially will be in the amount of 10 percent.  Starting January 1, 2019, the level of the additional tariffs will increase to 25 percent.

The list contains 5,745 full or partial lines of the original 6,031 tariff lines that were on a proposed list of Chinese imports announced on July 10, 2018.  Changes to the proposed list were made after USTR and the interagency Section 301 Committee sought and received comments over a six-week period and testimony during a six-day public hearing in August.  USTR engaged in a thorough process to rigorously examine the comments and testimony and, as a result, determined to fully or partially remove 297 tariff lines from the original proposed list.  Included among the products removed from the proposed list are certain consumer electronics products such as smart watches and Bluetooth devices; certain chemical inputs for manufactured goods, textiles and agriculture; certain health and safety products such as bicycle helmets, and child safety furniture such as car seats and playpens.

In March 2018, USTR released the findings of its exhaustive Section 301 investigation that found China’s acts, policies and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation are unreasonable and discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce.

The trade war has few alliances

Now that America is, under President Trump, imposing high tariffs, some of our trading partners have lowered their own tariffs because they fear that their own consumers will rebel at the high price of the goods that are imported into their countries.

These are the first three paragraphs of a September 20, 2018 Reuters story.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China plans to reduce the average tariff rate on imports from most of its trading partners as soon as October, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

In July, China cut import tariffs on almost 1,500 consumer products ranging from cosmetics to home appliances as part of efforts to open up its economy, the world’s second biggest.

The move was in line with Beijing’s pledge to its trading partners - including the United States - that it would take measures to further increase imports.
Link to a similar story, published the same day by the Wall Street Journal.

Link to a similar story, published a week later by Bloomberg after more details about the reduced tariffs were announced by China.

These lowered tariffs by the governments of both countries bring happiness to the consumers of both countries because the tariffs of any country hurt its' own consumers.

The tariffs of any country hurt its' own consumers.

China only wants one revolution.  It cannot afford to have two of them.  The first image is Chinese propaganda that was produced during Mao's Cultural Revolution, which killed more people than World War 2.  The second and third images are photos taken during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.



Dissent among Republicans in Congress

Link to a Wikipedia page called Factions in the U.S. Republican Party.  The first page in my series of blog pages about political factions mentions Republican factions that include the Trump family, the Koch brothers, and two different groups of gays.


Link to an October 31, 2016 story in the Miami Herald.  The Miami chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans decided to endorse presidential candidate Donald Trump.



Link to the webpage for the Miami chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans, which includes a link to their Facebook page.

There is dissent even among gay Republicans.  These are the first three paragraphs of an October 22, 2016 Politico story.
The board of the nation’s largest group of LGBT Republicans has voted to not endorse Donald Trump, in a contentious decision that did not reflect the preference of many of its chapters.

While the Log Cabin Republicans are united against Hillary Clinton, the group’s 14-member national board narrowly voted on Tuesday to “withhold” an endorsement of the Republican nominee, according to Gregory T. Angelo, the organization’s president.

It’s the second time the official national group has chosen not to back the GOP nominee — the prior time was 2004 for George W. Bush.  The move reflects struggles throughout the Republican coalition, though for LGBT conservatives it’s been particularly wrenching.  Trump’s rhetoric, they say, has been more pro-gay than any presidential nominee in history.
"Trump’s rhetoric, they say, has been more pro-gay than any presidential nominee in history."

As stated in my essay, there will always be some overlap among political factions because many voters have multiple interests.  For example, many Democrats want unions to have a voice in the management of the company they work for, yet many of these same Democrats still believe in the basic principles of capitalism, even when their representative in the House or the Senate is an outspoken Socialist.


The March 2018 Spending Bill

... is an example of a difference of opinion among the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Individual Congressmen and -women are, of course, allowed to have an individual opinion, and even when 25 of them disagree with their own leadership, it doesn't make them a true faction, but disagreements like this can be a sign of a future faction.

These are the first four paragraphs of a March 22, 2016 story in The Hill.
Twenty-five House conservatives bucked Republican leadership on Thursday by opposing a procedural motion that was needed to bring a $1.3 trillion government funding package to the floor.

Votes on what are known as rules in the House typically fall along party lines, with leaders viewing defections as a serious offense.

But outraged by the speedy vote on the more than 2,000-page funding bill — the text of which wasn’t released until Thursday night — members of the House Freedom Caucus defied their leadership.

Their stand almost took down the rule, which passed 211-207 after Republicans gaveled it to a close despite several Democrats not having voted.
Rules in the U.S. House of Representatives (and in the U.S..Senate) are decided by a committee within each legislative body.  Once a rule is passed, it cannot be disobeyed during the legislative process.  Legislators who are very familiar with these rules can use them to delay or to speed up a particular piece of legislation.  This is one reason why the Obamacare legislation was passed in 2009 without any Republican votes, and without most of the entire 435 members of Congress ever reading it.

Yes, the rules matter.  This June 25, 2015 Washington Post story summarizes the history of the passage in 2009 of a law with the formal title of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.


The Club for Growth vs. an incumbent Republican

This is a link to their home page.

These are the first five paragraphs of an October 1, 2016 Politico story. The links in the fourth paragraph were in their story.
Last year, back when polls favorable to Donald Trump were still being dismissed and skittish GOP candidates shied from confronting the blustery mogul, one group took him on directly.  The Club for Growth, the deep-pocketed interest group that is feared by Republicans who come into its cross hairs for supporting tax or spending hikes, began running ads decrying Trump’s lack of conservative bona fides.

“There’s nothing conservative about supporting socialized single-payer health care,” intoned a typical TV spot.  “There’s nothing conservative about giving money to the Clintons. There’s nothing conservative about Donald Trump.”

But in seeking to destroy Trump’s mystique, the Club only damaged its own—badly.

Trump gave no indication he was intimidated by a group that over the previous decade had earned a reputation for burying Republicans it considered ideologically impure.  “They did this ad,” Trump said in rambling monologue in October 2015 at a casino on the Las Vegas strip.  “The good news was it had no impact.  The pictures were so beautiful.  I want to find ... Where did they get them?  I was like 20 years younger.  I looked so handsome.  I never knew I was that good looking in a suit.  I looked so good.”

From the moment Trump announced his candidacy in the summer of 2015 until he clinched the Republican nomination a year later, the Club for Growth waged a nonstop, $7 million campaign against him.  Only one outside political organization spent more to advertise against Trump in the primaries—a Super PAC formed explicitly to defeat him.  Yet, as Trump foresaw, the Club for Growth had little impact.

These are the first three paragraphs of a May 23, 2019 Politico story.
A prominent conservative group is trying to lure a staunch ally of President Donald Trump into a primary race against Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, threatening to inflame intra-party tensions in a state crucial to the party’s 2020 strategy.

The Club for Growth is attempting to nudge Rep. Mark Walker, a third-term evangelical pastor, into the 2020 Senate race.  This week, it completed a poll suggesting that Tillis would be vulnerable to a challenge from the right — particularly against Walker.

It’s a striking break for a group that had ceased backing primary challenges to establishment-aligned lawmakers, a posture that put it squarely against party leadership.  Five years after its last attempt to topple a sitting senator, the organization is once again signaling its interest in taking on incumbents.
This January 23, 2020 Politico story is about a campaign by the Club for Growth to help a primary challenger to an incumbent Republican in the U.S. House named Kay Granger.

These are the first two paragraphs of a January 3, 20 Politico story. The links in the fourth paragraph were in their story.
The conservative Club for Growth plans to air a massive ad campaign attacking Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), adding fuel to the intraparty battle that kicked off after the GOP congressman launched a Senate campaign this week.

Collins announced Wednesday he is challenging Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who was sworn in this month to replace Sen. Johnny Isakson after he resigned due to health issues.  Collins is a top ally to President Donald Trump, but his decision to run for Senate sparked significant blowback among some Republicans who expressed concern it could jeopardize their hold on the seat and cause problems elsewhere on the Senate map.
Link to the official U.S. House website for Doug Collins.


The two largest GOP influencers have disagreements

The stories in this section are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.

These are the first four paragraphs of a July 31, 2018 New York Times story. The links in the fourth paragraph were in their story.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has given Republicans good reason to tolerate his unruly leadership style. His tax cuts, deregulation push and nomination of conservative judges amount to the most orthodox Republican agenda any president has pursued since Ronald Reagan.

Few had better reason to appreciate Mr. Trump’s results than Charles G. Koch, a billionaire industrialist who is one of the Republican Party’s biggest donors.

Yet Mr. Koch’s simmering frustrations with the president over trade and immigration have now spilled over into an ugly public feud with Mr. Trump and candidates who side with him. By calling Mr. Trump’s trade policies “detrimental” and denouncing divisive leadership, Mr. Koch is making a provocative political move that — be it hardball strategy or more of a ploy — threatens to complicate Republican efforts to hold on to their slim congressional majorities in the November midterm elections.

Mr. Trump hit back on Tuesday by attacking Mr. Koch; his ailing brother and business partner, David; and the powerful political network they founded as “totally overrated” and “a total joke in real Republican circles.

These are the first two paragraphs of an August 2, 2018 article in The Economist.
CHARLES KOCH (pronounced “coke”) and his brother David have built one of America’s most powerful political machines. The donor network they founded is one of the most influential groups in conservative politics, rivalling the Republican National Committee. Earlier this year it said it planned to spend $400m in the mid-terms to help preserve the Republican majority in both Congressional chambers. But that did not stop President Donald Trump giving the billionaire brothers an astonishingly insulting ticking off this week.

“Charles Koch of Koch Brothers, who claims to be giving away millions of dollars to politicians even though I know very few who have seen this (?), now makes the ridiculous statement that what President Trump is doing is unfair to 'foreign workers'” the president tweeted on August 2nd. “He is correct, AMERICA FIRST!”

These are the first five paragraphs of an August 6, 2018 article in The Atlantic.  The links in these paragraphs were in their article.
It’s plausible to dismiss the current feud between Donald Trump and the mogul Charles Koch as merely an alpha-male ego-fest—in the words of the journalist and Koch-watcher Jane Mayer, “a plutocratic pissing match” for control of the Republican Party.  Trump turned up the heat last week when he tweeted that the scion of the conservative donor network was “overrated,” which may be the first time that a president has used the same word to insult Koch and Meryl Streep.

But seasoned Republicans recognize that the feud is symptomatic of broader tensions within the party—Trump’s trade wars clash with the Koch network’s traditional free-market support for open trade—and that the last thing the party needs, in this tough midterm-election year, is to have Koch turn off the money spigot.  Particularly at a time when dozens of House Republican incumbents are raising less than their Democratic challengers.

Granted, the Koch brothers (the ailing brother David has ceded the fight to Charles) never liked Trump.  Two years ago, they deemed him the sole unacceptable candidate in the GOP field. Trump had no conservative pedigree, and Charles Koch clearly laments that the party’s elected lawmakers—many of them beneficiaries of Koch largesse—have embraced Trump’s heresies, thus betraying the core conservative principles that his fundraising network has lavishly financed since its founding in 2003.

That’s why Koch lashed out, at his network’s annual retreat on the last weekend in July, against the “rise in [trade] protectionism,” which is “perverting the key institutions of our society” and heightening the risk of a recession.  Koch denounced the Trump GOP’s deepening of the budget deficit, as evidenced by the recent $1.3 trillion spending deal, and Trump’s plan to throw $12 billion in emergency federal aid to the farmers hurt by his trade wars.  Koch also dislikes Trump’s immigrant bashing and build-a-wall rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the Koch network co-chair Brian Hooks singled out Trump (“The divisiveness of this White House is causing long-term damage”), and he has been seconded by Republicans who share Charles Koch’s displeasure with the party’s pro-Trump tilt.  Rick Tyler, a GOP strategist and a former spokesman for Senator Ted Cruz, says Trump’s party rejects free-market economics. Tyler told me:  “It’s not an ideologically driven party anymore.  It has no ideological coherence.  It now has the characteristics of a cult following.”

I described Donald Trump in similar words in the essay I published on another blog in 2016.  These are the headings of the sections in that essay.
  • His lack of knowledge of the U.S. Constitution
  • His lack of respect for American values
  • Donald loves his family but hates his party
  • He has flexible principles
  • He wants to increase the minimum wage. (Based on this July 27, 2016 Wall Street Journal story.  I also linked to three other sources for the same news.)
  • His sister is an abortion advocate.
  • His wife is unfit to be a goodwill ambassador to many foreign countries. (Based on the nude modeling photos.)
  • He thinks like a dictator.
  • He thinks like a pervert.  (This section includes a video of his own voice.)
  • He encourages cult behavior in his fans.  (This section has one quoted news story and links to nine other publications with similar stories.  They all reported that he said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and not lose voters.  This section also includes videos from five different news organizations of him saying those words.)
  • He is dishonest and manipulative.
  • I saw this on Twitter August 20th.  This section has a graphic that compares Donald with a small child.)
  • I don't like Hillary or Donald.  This section includes a link to my May 26, 2018 article in American Thinker.
  • For the first time in 128 years ... (The Harvard Republican Club will not endorse the Republican Party's presidential nomineé).

An update to Part 1a of this series, written on July 26, 2018 said that Donald Trump was unprofessional, especially when the professionalism of other jobs is expected and sometimes required by the organizations that give them a license to work.


Sometimes, however, there's a lot of Republican unity

... especially when the Republican President campaigns in person for his closest rival during the 2016 election, and especially when that rival accepts the result of the 2016 election.

These are the first six paragraphs of an October 15, 2018 Dallas Morning News story.
SAN ANTONIO -- President Donald Trump will star at a rally in Houston on Oct. 22 to help Sen. Ted Cruz, the president's campaign announced Monday night.

The president announced last month that he would hold a "major rally" for Cruz at "the biggest stadium in Texas we can find."

That turned out to be the 8,000-seat NRG Arena, which isn't close to the biggest event site even in Houston.

Nearby NRG Stadium, home to the NFL Houston Texans, holds around 80,000 people.  The Toyota Center, home to the Houston Rockets basketball franchise, seats 18,000.

Those seemed to be the sorts of venues Trump had in mind when he announced that he would come to the rescue of a man he derided as "Lyin' Ted" during the 2016 presidential campaign.

"I'm picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find.  As you know, Ted has my complete and total Endorsement.  His opponent is a disaster for Texas -- weak on Second Amendment, Crime, Borders, Military, and Vets!" Trump tweeted last month.
Although the President did campaign for the Senator, he didn't try to help him as much as he could've helped him.






 The video on the left was uploaded October 20, 2018 by Fox10 in Phoenix, AZ.

Link to a similar video published October 22, 2018 by the NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas.
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Friday, August 17, 2018

Diversity in American politics, part 2g


Radicals in the DNC lost some of their power

The centrists in the Democrat Party are making a comeback, and the reason may be their reasonable assessment that Socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not win their elections.

These are the first four paragraphs of an August 8, 2018 Fox News story. The links in these paragraphs and the photographs were all in their story.

Across the country, far-left progressives and democratic socialists suffered decisive electoral defeats in Tuesday's primaries, despite high-profile barnstorming efforts by left-leaning leaders like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The routs were a sign not only that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders may lack the star power necessary to bolster candidates, but also that national enthusiasm for socialism is generally weak as the U.S. economy posts strong unemployment numbers and sustained growth.

Earlier this month, former President Barack Obama pointedly declined to endorse Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist candidate in New York's 14th Congressional District, in a snub that underscored the challenges facing progressives campaigning to the left of the Democratic Party establishment in hopes of taking their views mainstream.

For Sanders, who vied for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2016 presidential race and may run again in 2020, the defeats Tuesday were a continuation of his recent losing streak.   Over the past two years, several candidates he has backed in several important races -- including in gubernatorial primaries in Virginia and Ohio, and in several House races in Iowa and New Jersey -- have come up short.

Bernie tries to regain the popularity that he had in 2016.

Senator Sanders thought that his personal popularity when he was a presidential candidate would be leveraged into a winning amount of political support for other candidates.  The special elections that were held on August 8, 2018 proved that he was wrong, yet he is still courageously trying to help other Socialists win their races.

These are the first four paragraphs of an August 17, 2018 story on the website of the NBC affiliate in Tampa, Florida.
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and former presidential candidate, will be in Tampa Friday to campaign for Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum.

The event is scheduled for 11 a.m. at Armature Works.  Doors open at 10 a.m., Gillum's campaign said in a statement.

The democratic mayor of Tallahassee hopes the star power helps push him over the top.

"We're excited by the ground game we got moving.  Excited to have Bernie Sanders coming in, into this area.  I know what that will do to help us get the plurality of the votes that we need in order to win," Gillum told News Channel 8.
Link to a similar story in the Tampa Bay Times.

Link to a similar story in the ABC-TV affiliate in Tampa, Florida.

Link to a similar story on the One America News Network.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is losing her popularity.

She is in a different situation.  She made headlines when she won her primary election in late June 2018, but she still has to beat the Republican who won his own primary race that same night, and she is not as good a candidate as she thinks.  The first five paragraphs of a July 27, 2018 Washington Examiner story show this.  The links in these paragraphs were in their story.
Progressives would do well not to pin their hopes and dreams on congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and not just because she’s the kind of person to mistake obvious political satire for a targeted smear job.

The rising Democratic star has shown she is ignorant on a great many issues, including her own campaign platform, which obviously is not a good look for a would-be standard bearer.

Consider, for example, how she responded this week when she was asked on "The Daily Show" to explain how she intends to pay for her Democratic Socialism-friendly policies, including her Medicare for All agenda.

“If people pay their fair share,” Ocasio-Cortez responded, “if corporations paid — if we reverse the tax bill, raised our corporate tax rate to 28 percent … if we do those two things and also close some of those loopholes, that’s $2 trillion right there. That’s $2 trillion in ten years.”

She should probably confer with Democratic Socialist-in-arms Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., whose most optimistic projections ( $1.38 trillion per year) place the cost of Medicare for All at roughly $14 trillion over a ten-year period. Two trillion in ten years obviously puts Ocasio-Cortez a long way away from realistically financing a Medicare for All program, which is why she also proposes carbon taxes. How much she expects to raise from this tax she didn't say.
The next part of this story shows that she thought that a $700 billion Defense budget was instead a $700 billion annual increase.  She's trying to become a member of Congress?  She's trying to earn a seat on a Congressional committee that could have oversight on the Department of Defense?

This August 8, 2018 Wall Street Journal story mentions the result of some primary elections that took place that day.   Most of the candidates who were endorsed by Bernie and Alexandria lost their races.  In contrast, most of the Democrat candidates who were endorsed by a Democrat-friendly organization called Emily's List won their primary elections and will now face some Republicans in the November final election.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is losing her love for the media.



These are the first four paragraphs of an August 16, 2018 Queen's Chronicle story, whose readership is mostly that part of New York City.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Monday that stops on her “listening tour” throughout the district, like the one held a day earlier in Corona, are “intended for lively, compassionate discourse with a diversity of viewpoints.”

According to the Democratic nominee in the 14th Congressional District, she and the dozens of area residents who attended the event “talked about race, immigration, healthcare, disability rights and housing.”

But unless you were in the room on Sunday, you won’t know what specific community problems were mentioned or how Ocasio-Cortez planned to address them once she is sworn in.

That’s because her campaign banned members of the media from attending the event, which was otherwise open to the public.

Similar stories, published the next same day, August 17, 2018.
The Washington Examiner CNN ABC News
The New York Post Fox News The Hill
The New York Times Daily Wire Town Hall


This is very old advice, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should consider listening to it.
She wants to be a Congresswoman, so she should learn to accept and even answer questions from reporters when she's attending a public event that is part of her election campaign.


The Blue Dog Democrats are making a comeback

This section originally appeared in Part 2c of this series.

These are the first four paragraphs of a March 18, 2018 CNN story, written by the CNN Senior Congressional Producer.
(CNN) National Democrats have turned to the centrist members of their party to reach far, wide and early to identify and bolster candidates beyond their urban strongholds.

Conor Lamb's performance in Pennsylvania's 18th District Tuesday showed that Democrats can win in areas not recently receptive to the party by focusing on issues important to the local communities and by staking out more centrist positions.

The committee responsible for supporting the election of House Democrats began an effort to target candidates like Lamb last spring after losing a high profile special election in suburban Atlanta, according to multiple Democratic party strategists who detailed the effort to CNN.  The effort ramped up in the fall, when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee invited a group of moderate Democrats that put them in the majority in 2006 to talk through a winning strategy.

The committee gave the "Blue Dog mafia," as some call them, free rein to work with candidates on campaign operations in some of the toughest districts on the expanded Democratic target list.
The only people who would call "centrist members of their party" (quoting from the first paragraph of the previous story) the "Blue Dog Mafia" (quoting from the fourth paragraph of the same story are Democrats who are far from the political or economic center of their party.

These non-centrist Democrats approve of street demonstrations (a political tactic that some of them hope will lead to a violent revolution) and Socialism (pooling private money into a public fund, administered by a governmental body), which some hope becomes Communism (which eliminates the concept of private property in favor of an all-powerful government.

Communism fits the often-quoted definition a "haves-and-have-nots" economy.  The government owns homes, farms, and businesses while the majority of the people must beg for enough economic assistance to feed their families.
This is the situation now in every country, like China, that practices Communism and which uses secret police, quick trials, and quick executions to enforce it's economic policies.

These are the first two paragraphs of an April 10, 2017 CNN news story titled "China's deadly secret: More executions than all other countries put together."  The graphic after the story was included in the story.
Hong Kong (CNN)Every year, the Chinese state carries out several thousand judicial executions -- more than the rest of the world combined. For the most part, the names of those executed remain secret, known only to their families.

All figures about the death penalty, as well as most details about executions, remain classified as "state secrets," part of a deliberate effort by China's rulers to hide from public view the horrifying scale of the country's capital punishment system.


The non-centrist Democrats that are mentioned in the previous CNN news story are complaining bitterly because centrist Democrats have an increasing amount of political power, even when they win elections, as Conor Lamb did earlier this month in a Pennsylvania special election for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Future link to a page in this series published in August 2018.



Jonathan van Ness asks for peace in 2018.


Jonathan is one of the stars of the Netflix show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.



These are the first two paragraphs of an August 16, 2018 article in The Federalist.
“Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness angered liberals Wednesday in a tweet urging the Democrat Party not to go “too left.”

According to Van Ness, Democrats need to push moderate candidates in the 2018 midterms that will win over undecided voters, or the party is “done for.”
The article then quoted the first of the two tweets above.

These are the next three paragraphs of the same Federalist article.
The popular Netflix show features five gay men who help other men reform themselves by changing their habits.  The series has a 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been called “earnest and endearing.”  For his part, Van Ness focuses on self-care — teaching men how to take care of their hair and skin.

Some of Van Ness’s followers pushed back on his tweet, saying that going centrist with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2018 resulted in Donald Trump winning the presidency.  Van Ness responded by saying that “demanding all or nothing” is what elected Trump.

Shortly afterwards, Van Ness posted a video explaining his positions.  He opens saying, “[The Left and the Right] are really being played by people in newsrooms who are just writing things for headlines.”

This is the tweet that is referenced in the article.


These are the first three paragraphs of a similar article, also dated August 16, 2018 in the Fox News website.
"Queer Eye" star Jonathan Van Ness was forced to defend himself against fans who were upset with the hair guru's message of trying to bridge the gap between Democrats and Republicans in today's polarized political climate.

"Not all republicans are racist. Just like not all [democrats] are evil, we have to stop demonizing eachother (sic)," Van Ness tweeted to his nearly half-a-million followers.

But the 31-year-old drew the line at Trump, adding, "Unless you’re actually racist then you suck, Trump is Racist - not all his voters are necessarily we gotta remember we are all in this together."

These are the first three paragraphs of a similar article, also dated August 16, 2018 in the Washington Examiner.  The link in these paragraphs were in their article.
Pragmatism is unfashionable.

"Queer Eye" "breakout" star Jonathan Van Ness waded into political analysis on Wednesday with this reaction to Tuesday's primary results:  "Luckily a lot to extreme right people won yesterday, meaning that if we can come up w center left candidates we can take back the house & senate, not to mention many state legislatures.  It is so important for the left to not go too left or we are done for."

That plunged Van Ness into a heated debate against progressives who want the Democrats to move to the fringe.  In a string of subsequent tweets, he defended himself well, arguing that "being able to compromise is what’s missing from both sides of the American political situation."  Van Ness is from Quincy, Ill., located just across the Mississippi River from Missouri, and at one point told a detractor,  "I’m just born and raised in Trump country and I know what it takes to calm that type of person and it’s not this."
His message, according to all three of the quoted articles, is "We are all in this together."  This is the basic principle of people who are taught by God to love one another on the grounds that we are all the children of God.

There is another group of people who ask for peace.  This group asked for war (or whose actions encouraged a war to begin) and then regretted the death and destruction that was caused by the war.


Rodney King asked for peace and brotherhood

This is the first paragraph of his page on the website of the Biography Channel. The link was included on their page.
Born in Sacramento, California, on April 2, 1965, Rodney King was caught by the Los Angeles police after a high-speed chase on March 3, 1991.  The officers pulled him out of the car and beat him brutally, while amateur cameraman George Holliday caught it all on videotape.  The four L.A.P.D. officers involved were indicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer.  However, after a three-month trial, a predominantly white jury acquitted the officers, inflaming citizens and sparking the violent 1992 Los Angeles riots.  Two decades after the riots, King told CNN that he had forgiven the officers.  King was found dead in his swimming pool on June 17, 2012, in Rialto, California, at the age of 47.

This is the first paragraph of a chronological summary of some riots that occurred in Los Angeles in April 1992.
On the afternoon of April 29, 1992, a jury in Ventura County acquitted four LAPD officers of beating Rodney G. King.  The incident, caught on amateur videotape, had sparked national debate about police brutality and racial injustice.  The verdict stunned Los Angeles, where angry crowds gathered on street corners across the city.  The flash point was a single intersection in South L.A., but it was a scene eerily repeated in many parts of the city in the hours that followed.
"The incident, caught on amateur videotape, had sparked national debate about police brutality and racial injustice."

This is not true. There was no debate.  Formal debates have moderators.  Even informal debates have manners.  This was a destructive riot caused by a mob whose emotions were out of control.

This is another paragraph of the same Los Angeles Times chronological summary. The last sentence encourages violence by dividing people into two groups who have an exaggerated reason to hate each other.
Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Officers Laurence M. Powell, Theodore J. Briseno and Timothy E. Wind are acquitted of the March 3, 1991, beating of Rodney G. King.  Jurors were not convinced that a 81-second videotape of the incident represented the entire story.  The video, filmed by George Holliday, showed officers delivering repeated baton blows and kicks as King rolled on the ground.  Its images have been seared into the minds of viewers the world over who have watched the tape broadcast repeatedly.
The previous paragraph is not arranged chronologically because this newspaper wants the last impression of the reader to be the video, not the verdict.  The video can be used to divide people, so because the newspaper (and other news organizations) wanted to sell their product, this newspaper (and other news media) showed the video repeatedly, claimed that "its images have been seared into the minds of viewers the world over", and then downplayed the jury's reasons for making the verdict that they did as well as the legally-required impartiality of the jury-selection process.

These are the first two paragraphs of the section titled "Right to Trial by an Impartial Jury" on the page in the Free Dictionary about the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Many words on this page are clickable links to other pages in their dictionary.
In both England and the American colonies, the Crown retained the prerogative to interfere with jury deliberations and to overturn verdicts that embarrassed, harmed, or otherwise challenged the authority of the royal government.  Finding such interference unjust, the Founding Fathers created a constitutional right to trial by an impartial jury.  This Sixth Amendment right, which can be traced back to the Magna Charta in 1215, does not apply to juvenile delinquency proceedings (McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528, 91 S. Ct. 1976, 29 L. Ed. 2d 647 [1971]), or to petty criminal offenses, which consist of crimes punishable by imprisonment of six months or less (Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66, 90 S. Ct. 1886, 26 L. Ed. 2d 437 [1970]).

The Sixth Amendment entitles defendants to a jury pool that represents a fair cross section of the community.  From the jury pool, also known as a venire, a panel of jurors is selected to hear the case through a process called Voir Dire.  During voir dire, the presiding judge, the prose cution, and attorneys for the defense are allowed to ask members of the jury pool a variety of questions intended to reveal any latent biases, prejudices, or other influences that might affect their impartiality.  The jurors who are ultimately impaneled for trial need not represent a cross section of the community as long as each juror maintains impartiality throughout the proceedings.  The presence of even one biased juror is not permitted under the Sixth Amendment (United States v. Aguon, 813 F.2d 1413 [9th Cir. 1987]).
This is the last quoted sentence.

"The presence of even one biased juror is not permitted under the Sixth Amendment."

This is another paragraph of the same Los Angeles Times chronological summary, which proves that there was no debate because the rioters didn't listen to any peaceful voices and didn't respect the jury's decision (which is what newspapers and television stations wanted (because they wanted to sell newspapers and ads on television news broadcasts).
By sunrise, it is clear the riots have disrupted life across a wide path — from downtown to the Westside, from South Los Angeles to Pasadena. By day’s end, bus service is canceled citywide. Many employers tell workers to stay home. Mail delivery is halted throughout South Los Angeles. Professional baseball and basketball games are canceled. Schools are closed throughout L.A.— and in Inglewood, Compton and Lynwood.

Some people don't want peace, but other people do.

The rioters didn't listen to any peaceful voices, so they made the emotional decision to hurt their own neighborhood and the lives of their friends and neighbors.

They hurt the ability of the public to watch a baseball game in the stadium.  They hurt the ability of people to go to work safely.  They hurt the ability of children to go to school safely.  They damaged the neighborhood buildings where people bought food, medicine, and other necessities.

A similar riot took place, encouraged by newspapers and fliers like the one on the left, in 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri.  Riots were also encouraged by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who traveled to the city and gave divisive speeches.  I wrote this blog page about the riot, which includes the flyer and the last of the three videos immediately below.

These are the first two paragraphs of an October 27, 2014 KTVI story. They are the Fox News affiliate in St. Louis, Missouri.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO (KTVI) - A lawsuit was filed against five major entities Monday after the Ferguson protests.  The suit filed by Swiish Bar and Grill owners Chantelle and Corey Nixon-Clark lists everyone from Governor Jay Nixon to St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley and city mayors.

The suit is against the state of Missouri, St. Louis County, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the City of Ferguson and Jennings.  Owners say they lost more than $25,000 in revenue because they were forced to close their doors for weeks during the Ferguson unrest while a law enforcement command post set-up shop at a Jennings shopping center.  The post was stationed about one mile from where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed.

This is the description of this video that was submitted by the person who uploaded the video on February 21, 2010.

Rodney King appeals for calm after his people use the verdict in the police brutality trial to go on a rampage that cost the city of L.A. over 2 BILLION dollars.
A teenager who robbed a small variety store in Ferguson, Missouri and who then assaulted a uniformed police officer was shot and killed by the officer.

A self-destructive riot happened in that city, helped and encouraged by a secret stand-down order issued by President Obama.

In this video, Michael Brown's father appeals for calm prior to his funeral.
A pastor in Ferguson, Missouri asked for peace by asking divisive racial agitators, including Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, to leave.

This video was uploaded on October 23, 2014.  It is included in my October 2014 blog page about the Ferguson riot.

In the fall of 2014, the Governor of Missouri allowed death and destruction in Ferguson, Missouri by ordering the National Guard to leave the city.  Link to a January 2015 World News Daily report.

People who want a true debate will benefit from knowing the facts of any disputed issue.  These are the first five paragraphs of an October 22, 2014 St. Louis Post-Dispatch story. The link in the third paragraph was in their story.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY • The official autopsy on Michael Brown shows that he was shot in the hand at close range, according to an analysis of the findings by two experts not involved directly in the case.

The accompanying toxicology report shows he had been using marijuana.

Those documents, prepared by the St. Louis County medical examiner and obtained by the Post-Dispatch, provide the most detailed description to date of the wounds Brown sustained in a confrontation Aug. 9 with Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson.

A source with knowledge of Wilson’s statements said the officer had told investigators that Brown had struggled for Wilson’s pistol inside a police SUV and that Wilson had fired the gun twice, hitting Brown once in the hand.  Later, Wilson fired additional shots that killed Brown and ignited a national controversy.

The St. Louis medical examiner, Dr. Michael Graham, who is not part of the official investigation, reviewed the autopsy report for the newspaper.  He said Tuesday that it “does support that there was a significant altercation at the car.”
There was "a significant altercation at the car".  Michael Brown, who was inside of the official police car driven by Officer Darren Wilson, attempted to grab the service weapon of the officer, who used it to shoot him.

Rodney King asked for peace and brotherhood in 2010.  The father of Michael Brown asked for peace and brotherhood in 2014.  Jonathan van Ness is asking for peace and brotherhood in 2018.  All three men are obeying a little-known Biblical commandment.

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another even as I have loved you. By this, all men shall know that you are my disciples."

- Jesus, speaking to the Apostles during the Last Supper, quoted in John 13:34-35


This command from God demands that people treat each other with love and respect.  Those who want to divide each other with hatred do not love each other and do not respect each other's right to express a different opinion on a political subject.  God expects that many people who live in Boston will like the Red Sox and that many people who live in New York City will like the Yankees.  A difference of opinion about each team's future success is acceptable.  A wish to hurt the other team and its' fans is not acceptable.
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