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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