Saturday, December 17, 2016

Have Pity on Harvard Students

Some Americans believe that their country is a Republic. Some believe that their country is a Democracy. In our world, the first group is called Republicans, the second Democrats.

Republicans note that we pledge allegiance to the flag and “to the Republic for which it stands.” Democrats applaud Colin Kaepernick when he refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag.

Which can only mean that Republicans are a threat to American democracy? Huh?

At the nation’s onset, Thomas Jefferson founded a political party called the Democratic-Republicans. He did it to oppose the Federalists, led by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Many Republicans today consider themselves to be Jeffersonian. Many Democrats consider themselves to be Hamiltonians. If nothing else, this tells us that the American mind is more than slightly confused.

Anyway, the New York Times has just regaled us with an exemplary instance of muddled thinking. It does not come to us from the moon. It comes from the department of government at Harvard University. Two professors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are terrified that Donald Trump will threaten American democracy. They use the word over and over again, as though they want to make sure that you do not think about the American Republic.

One awaits their fervent argument for abolishing the undemocratic United States Senate. To clarify the question, you know and I know that the Democrats favor open borders because they assume that arriving immigrants will, when they presumably become citizens, vote for Democrats. Apparently, many Republican business leaders favor the same policy because they like cheap labor.

In truth, all of the immigrants did vote Democratic. Unfortunately, they all voted in California… which undermined the Democratic Party policy. The American Republic was designed to protect us from the tyranny of the majority—how could Harvard professors have missed the point?

Better yet, they are so thoroughly blinded by their own ideological bias that they only offer up examples of Republicans who threaten democracy. Of course, they are appalled by Donald Trump. In fact, they echo some criticisms that I have proposed on this blog. And yet, as of now, Trump has done nothing to threaten anything about the nation’s constitution or institutions. Trump has not exercised power at all—so the learned Harvard professors are extrapolating based on some campaign promises that we have all learned not to take very literally.

One recalls the Rob Province tweet about the White House staff in its post-Trump election mode:

screen-shot-2016-11-10-at-6-35-32-pm

In any case, the Harvard authors conflate the best interest of the Democratic Party with democracy itself. I hope that that’s not what they are teaching students at Harvard.

In truth, Trump is not as much of a threat to the Democratic Party as, say, Barack Obama has been. On Obama’s watch the Democratic Party has been reduced to a bunch of whiners and cry babies. Many college students have become basket cases—and not in the basket of deplorables—because they have been educated by great professors who do not know how biased they are.

Obama violated constitutional restraints on executive power, he lied to the nation with impunity and he defied all norms of cooperation with the opposition. It’s rich to read Levitsky and Ziblatt complain about how uncooperative Republicans have been when it was Barack Obama who told them to take a walk on Obamacare: he did not need their votes. 

As for demonizing the opposition, haven’t you noticed that the Democratic Party has spent much of its political capital demonizing Republicans, and especially Tea Party patriots? Whatever do you think that the IRS scandal was about? Keep in mind, the Democratic Party, devoted as it was to covering up the scandal and protecting Lois Lerner, had no interest whatever in full disclosure or justice!

One is even more amused to read the Harvard authors excoriate Trump for having suggested that he might not accept the election results, at a time when Democrats are screaming that they cannot possibly accept the elections results.

What gives, guys?

Surely, the professors are correct to say that democracies—they refuse to use the word republican government—depend on respect for norms:

Democratic institutions must be reinforced by strong informal norms. Like a pickup basketball game without a referee, democracies work best when unwritten rules of the game, known and respected by all players, ensure a minimum of civility and cooperation. Norms serve as the soft guardrails of democracy, preventing political competition from spiraling into a chaotic, no-holds-barred conflict.

While Barack Obama has always appeared to be perfectly civil, he and his Democratic cohorts have certainly not spent their time figuring out how to cooperate with Republicans. When the filibuster rule was proving an obstacle to the confirmation of Obama’s judges, Harry Reid simply suspended it. When Congress failed to do what Obama wanted it to do on immigration, the president simply signed an executive order. He declared that since Congress did not act, he had to. Where do you find that in the Constitution, professors? If you are worrying about judicial overreach and authoritarian tendencies, look first at the Obama administration.

Let’s not forget, when Obama signed a treaty with his friends in Teheran, he refused to call it a treaty because then he would have had to submit it to the Senate for ratification. So much for respecting the constitution.

One appreciates the call for non-partisanship, but has there ever been a more partisan administration than the Obama administration. After all, at the risk of repeating myself, Obama issued executive actions on immigration in order to increase the number of Democratic voters. How much more partisan can you get?

One understands that Trump supporters believed that Hillary Clinton was corrupt and ought to be locked up. One also understands that her use of a private email server might have caused her to run afoul of the espionage act. And one understands that when a foreign government paid her husband enormous speaking fees after her State Department did the bidding of said government, people might think that some corruption was involved.

But then again, how many Democrats accepted the George W. Bush presidency with equanimity and respect? And how many of them thought that he had lied and cheated his way to the presidency? How many of them thought that he had to be defeated at any cost? For the past years Democrats have blamed everything that went wrong in the world on George W. Bush.

In truth, as I mentioned in a recent post, when Trump started appointing generals and CEOs to his cabinet and administration, he was selecting people who were NOT associated with party politics.

If Democrats are worried about Trump, the reason must be that they have spent so much time and effort trampling on the Constitution that now they fear what will happen when Republicans are in charge.

In truth, Barack Obama’s Democratic Party was soundly repudiated in this and in the last three elections. With the exception of the election of Obama himself, Democrats have lost just about everything. If they want to put their party back together again—assuming that they are not the Humpty Dumpty party—they would do well to reflect on their own failures and not blame everything on Republicans. In truth, the moral cowardice that makes it impossible to accept responsibility for one's own mistakes, the moral degeneracy that always wants to shift the blame... these are the reasons why Democrats keep losing elections.

25 comments:

  1. Many Democrats consider themselves Hamiltonians because they liked the play.

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  2. Both professors are employed by Harvard in the discipline of "Government". The product of this particular discipline is Narrative Engineering.

    Using classical inductive logic, Narrative Engineers begin with a conclusion, and go on to marshal facts to support the conclusion, much as opposing barristers do in court. And, as we all know, the guilty and the innocent are not always "proven" so. Which is why English Common Law has a strong bias (beyond doubt) in favor of innocence.

    So, until incontrovertible evidence is in, the inductive Narrative of Levitsky and Ziblatt can be safely ignored, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

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  3. Stuart: The American Republic was designed to protect us from the tyranny of the majority—how could Harvard professors have missed the point?

    Actually I believe it is the Bill of Rights and the Courts that exist to override the "tyranny of the majority". The electoral college can be said to protect smaller states from bigger states I suppose, and there's lots of fun experiments of challenges between state's rights, and federal rights. The most fun experiment is called Nullification where a state decides a federal law is unconstitutional and refuses to follow it, while the U.S. Supreme Court still gets to decide. Libertarians love this stuff. I learned it from Tom Woods.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_(U.S._Constitution)

    And back to the election there's no majority anyway. Trump's 46.2% is a minority, and Clinton's 48.2% is a minority, and some 6 million voters didn't vote for either up them, although that 5.6% itself the smallest minority has no representation at all in the electoral college vote on Monday.

    And one of the failures of the electoral college is that it assigns electors on a winner-take-all basis on state popular votes, again, even if the "winner" has less than 50% of the vote.

    In 2016, 7 states gave victory to Clinton without a majority: New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Minnesota, New Hampshire. And 6 states had Trump winning without a majority: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina. But in fact Maine and Nebraska use a slightly different system, giving 2 electors to the state plurality winner, and 1 elector to the plurality winner in each congressional district. And Trump got one of Maine's congressional district votes this year.

    A more fair system of allocating electors would be based on a proportion of the popular vote by state. So like in Minnesota, we have 10 electoral votes, and Trump and Clinton would both get 5 votes each, rounding up, since no third party hit a threshold to be rounded up to a full vote.

    So that would be much better on "fairness", while in effect is "weakens" a state's influence, while a winner-take-all encourages a state to get more attention, at least if it's close, thus the magical "swing states" which can go for one party or the other depending on small shifts of votes. So a swing-state, giving electors proportionally would give candidates less incentive to pander to that state. And for states that are solid-red or solid-blue, there's even less motivation to share and give electors proportionally - the strong party wants it all.

    The vote totals are not quite complete online, but using the latest numbers I calculated a proportional assignment of elections. So this means smaller states get slightly more influence per capita.

    Calculating fractionally it came out as: Clinton 256.59, Trump 250.08, others 31.32. And if we round up to whole numbers on the largest remainders, we get Clinton 259, Trump 253, and 26 for others. So Clintons 2.8 million lead (mostly coming from California) doesn't help directly, but she was the unlucky losing side of some swing states, so she still ends up ahead. Yet NO CANDIDATE has the magic 270 to win, and it would go to the U.S. House to pick a winner.

    The U.S. House election is also state-focused, so there's 50 states, 50 votes, and Republicans control 33 state congressional delegations. So this is even more "unfair" than the Electoral college. The State of California has one vote, and low population Alaska has one vote. You'd think it would be better to just allow the whole House a direct vote, 438 seats.

    Perhaps we'll get to see the U.S. House vote in action if 37 electors defect from Trump? It would be fun to see, even if the House Republicans vote him in anyway.

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  4. Excellent post, Mr. Schneiderman. One of you best of 2016.

    These professors say these things because they have nothing to fear. It's pure cowardice because they need to courage to say these things. They attack with no concern about being held to task.

    You see, they have the correct beliefs. In the unaccountable academic world, they can say whatever they want and effectively do whatever they want in their classrooms and in their writings. That righteousness and power is the foundation of political correctness in our ideological seminary (university) life. The monolithic beliefs system of today's academy means that your ideological proselytizing is pure hubris... it is self-congratulation.

    We all like to be popular and have people agree with us. What better profession to be in where you get to preach to your own peers without risk? How brave. But today's university and Lefty world is where we have departed from tolerance and mandated universal celebration of every peripheral, arcane, and antisocial desire. It is a large, absurdly expensive Oprah-like support group of aggrieved, angry, bitter ideologues getting their emotional needs met by validating each others' willful suspension of disbelief. They believe in mythical enemies like Russian hackers, racist working class whites and autonomous voting machines in key electoral states.

    And then there's the moral conceit and condescension at the center of their tone and content. We're smarter than you because our SAT scores, degrees and friends tell us so. We're not just better than you, we're gooder than you... because you're MEAN. That's the center of the Democrat conceit: it is self-evident that their political opponents and MEAN and just want to hurt other people who are not like them. Republicans aren't wrong, they're bad people.

    And let's be clear: inside-the-Beltway Republicans believe this, too. They don't like the media associating them with the MEAN Republican base. After all, these Republican legislators and advocates have to be able to attend cocktail parties and mix with their liberal friends. Who wants to be thought of as MEAN? So the GOP Establishment buys into the Democrat moral argument, too. More echo chamber. More self-congratulation. More sniveling. More Ivy League friends and staffers. Better to be reasonable and respectable than to win.

    Donald Trump is going to change a lot of this. He's going to expose the ideological priests, experts and activists of the for who they really are: cowardly Leftist zealots and activists controlling the levers power in service of the globalist Leftist agenda. Jonathan Gruber comes to mind.

    This is why not one of the 16 other GOP candidates for the Republican presidential nomination could have beat Hillary Clinton. Not a chance. Too timid, too ideological constricted, and too much in step with the Left's self-congratulation and moral magnificence. The GOPe buys the Left's core premise. Especially our wise druids over at National Review and the Weekly Standard. Hopefully Trump can change that. If not, you can kiss the traditional idea of the American republic goodbye.

    So what we have in today's politicized academy, media, bureaucracy, advocacy and activist is the self-congratulation of the morally magnificent. That is what the Left has become. All you have to do is say the right things. A dogmatic echo chamber-cum-support group. You don't make a difference, you don't make inroads, you don't grow, but you sure feel great because lots of people tell you you're great. After all, Donald Trump IS evil, right?

    Their biases are obvious to those of us on the outside. Yet on the inside, they all agree. Lots of smart people talk about bias but they neglect their own. Smart, secular, objective people like... Ares Olympus.

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  5. Ares, if Hillary won the Electoral College, you wouldn't be saying a thing. Take your Alt-Left ideas elsewhere. Go find those 33,000 emails the Russians were holding on to blackmail Hillary after she was elected.

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  6. IAC: That's nonsense. I thought I was being so kind, suggesting my state of Minnesota give 5 electors to Clinton, 5 electors to Trump, rather than winner-take-all. Of course that's a lot easier to say when you're not giving the election away to an asshole and norm-breaker like Trump.

    Stuart: With the exception of the election of Obama himself, Democrats have lost just about everything. If they want to put their party back together again—assuming that they are not the Humpty Dumpty party—they would do well to reflect on their own failures and not blame everything on Republicans.

    I 100% agree the Democrats have taken a terrible shellacking, gaining back 6 House Seats, and 2 Senate seats, but still far behind in the House, and a minority in the Senate.

    I can see the country doesn't hold much gratitude for a President who has largely kept us out of war, and helped us recovered 15 million jobs since the 2009 low, while reducing the deficit to a tolerable $600 billion. Unfortunately Obama did absolutely nothing serious to "punish" the excesses within the fraudulent banking practices and wall street tricksters who sliced and diced low-grade debt into triple A garbage. A few large fines were paid, but no one went to jail. Now if you're looking for setting a bad example, there it is.

    We might look on the bright side and see his approval rating in the mid-to-low 50's which is about the best you can do in these partisan days, while we can remember GW Bush spent the second term below 50% and barely hanging on around 30% at the end. And yet, that's spectacularly good compared to Congress's approval rating of 18%.

    Perhaps Trump's honeymoon approval ratings of 46% is a good sign that he's on clear probation and will work diligently to improve that, hopefully without needing to bribe too many more companies with tax breaks in exchange for not exporting jobs to Mexico. But maybe cutting the 35% corporate tax rates will help reduce the number of companies leaving the country? The republicans have nothing to stop them now.

    But back to the Democrats, I admit I don't know what they should do. The national Congressional district map is almost entirely red. The Democrats goal of becoming the party of immigrants and upper class professionals is a weird combination. And really the professionals don't need the Democrats, and their health care plans are great. So its only the immigrants who will be homeless with a floundering democratic party.

    I don't think the democrats can win back the House and Senate in 2018 simply by letting the republicans run everything into the ground. And really I have to think a new economic crisis is close after 6 years of a bull market and 2 years of floundering. You have to think there's going to be a huge "correction", and boomers are going to panic and pull out investments, and make an even larger correction, and Trump will throw free money to everyone who has money to see if that helps.

    The problem I imagined is Clinton getting blamed for a poor economy over the next 4 years, but now the republicans can do it. And now they can go for 2 trillion dollar deficit infrastructure budgets to keep the economy rolling. Deficits are only bad when there are Democratic presidents. So maybe we'll have 4 good years, at the cost of a $28 trillion dollar deficit in 2020? Maybe that's what we need?

    I'm still hoping the #NeverTrump Republicans oust Donald Trump. I guess I don't like surprises, and I like people who have attention spans over 2 minutes when bad things happen. Pence may be a Young Earth Creationist, but at least I trust he'll listen to expert before believing his own thoughts.

    Impeachment 2018? Maybe that's what will save the Republicans from their own disaster? We just need to give Trump the rope.

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    Replies
    1. You are obsessed with Trump and the EC, Ares. Get a life, kid.

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    2. Asshole, huh? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! It sucks to lose, doesn't it, Ares? After all the years of "it's okay to cry" and "everyone gets a trophy" and "it's not about winning, but your effort that counts," Angér all those empty words, after all that crap, we see the truth. We see that Lefties cry, whine and moan that they didn't get their way. They didn't win. The truth hurts. Losing hurts. But what's worse is a sore loser who takes absolutely no responsibility for the loss. That's your lousy candidate, Ares.

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  7. "Anyway, the New York Times has just regaled us with an exemplary instance of muddled thinking." A daily occurrence, it seems.

    " The American Republic was designed to protect us from the tyranny of the majority—how could Harvard professors have missed the point?" Ignored it; doesn't fit "The Narrative".

    "For the past years Democrats have blamed everything that went wrong in the world on George W. Bush." That was usually spelled "BUSHHITLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111!!!!!!"

    I'm with IAC's 6:51 commment 100%.

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  9. Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said... Asshole, huh? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

    Your sense of pleasure is so peculiar. This isn't about crying. This isn't name-calling for the sake of trying to piss someone off. This is a descriptive term for actual behavior. A bully might be another term, but we've not seen his power wielded yet. Anyone who thinks of Trump as Leader is a fool.

    Not everyone agrees America should be lead by the biggest asshole, and many republicans agree this is a bad idea.

    I'll betting on 7 Republican elector defections against Trump, getting Trump below 300 Electoral votes. Its a small goal, and a useless protest in actual power. It is a useful one in part to see what retribution is weilded against them, formally, or by vigilantes.

    What's most curious is the number of people who not only want a republican president, which is understandable, but they want Donald Trump AS THEIR president over any other Republican. That does surprise me, while I still have to think its a small minority.

    I have NO REAL IDEA if you're on the "Only Trump" bandwagon, or if you just like the show, and are simply just not worried that real world unintended consequences happen when you give power to someone who has no idea what he's doing, or what is real, and doesn't care who is harmed in the process of his muddling.

    And perhaps that explains your resentment. That's how you see President Obama's 8 years, so now its your turn to inflict pain against liberal interests. Its all about payback.

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  10. "Payback..."

    "We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends..."
    --- Barack Obama

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  11. "Payback..."

    "I don’t regret that at all. Romney didn’t win did he?"
    --- Harry Reid (on lying)

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  12. Oh no, I'm not resentful. Not one bit. Given what I've seen of Trump since November 8, I'm ecstatic. Thrilled. Truly. You think Hillary would've gone on a "thank you" tour? It's refreshing.

    So now perhaps you have a REAL IDEA. And if it's irksome to you, perhaps you should look in the mirror. Test your ideas. You haven't been concerned about the consolidation of power in an unlawful presidency for 8 years, or as long as you've been commenting here. Paybacks are a bitch, huh? After all your snide and sniveling comments, you want others to be magnanimous? That's hilarious. And pathetic.

    I don't care what "everyone" in the country thinks. And I've made it very clear that I don't care what many Republicans think. "Many Republicans" would be happy with President Hillary, and their reasons for that are largely the reason I distrust the GOP Establishment. I don't believe the GOPe cares about its base, and I'm confident most globalists don't care about their fellow citizens. That's no way to lead a nation!

    Keep digging, Ares. You're making an ass of yourself. I am certainly not going to take the shovel from you. By all means, continue.

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  13. IAC,

    This is really a test for democrats. How many of them are going to be honorable people, like Doug Schoen and Pat Cadell, who remember why they became democrats or be the party that was taken over by Progressives? I would suggest that there may be a number of democrats who are tired of the disingenuous drivel emanating from a once great party who now will vote agains't Hillary and the corruptions she represents and cast their vote in the Electoral College for Trump.
    Way too much of an assumption that "faithless" electors are republican when it is the democrats who are watching the slow loss of power in this country. With the Republicans gaining enough power to control a significant portion of the country and the Demoocrats having so many senators up for reelection I would suggest that they have reason to worry about their leadership and a backward looking party that does not represents the "Deplorables" or a large growing number of voters.
    I would also suggest that there are still democrats who do not like the intensional undermining of the electoral system by their putative party. It would seem that those representing the democrat party are making the same mistake they made during the election by ignoring the revolution that was taking place in their own party,
    Please keep alienating larger numbers of voters and one might find that they have become a regional party vice a national party.

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  14. IAC's FAKE Anonymous Olympus Ares said... "Payback..." "We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends..." --- Barack Obama

    Let's see about that quote:
    http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/in-appeal-to-hispanics-obama-promises-to-push-immigration-reform
    ----
    In a radio interview that aired on Univision on Monday, Mr. Obama sought to assure Hispanics that he would push an immigration overhaul after the midterm elections, even though he has not been able to attract Republican support.

    “If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s going to be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”
    ----
    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-explains-his-remark-about-punishing-enemies/
    ---
    Mr. Obama told Baisden that he should have used the word, "opponents," rather than "enemies" (see below). According to his language parsing, presumably some Republicans candidates are "opponents," not "enemies," of provisions, such as comprehensive immigration reform.
    ---

    So the context of the quote is the idea that Hispanics might choose to vote in 2010 as a way to "punish" Democrats for not making progress on a promised issue, while that just rewards those who blocked action. So from the "punishment" logic, not voting is helping someone who doesn't have your best interest, while VOTING for the party promoting reform is "punishing" those who want to block action.

    And Obama was right in 2010, losing the House, and the Republicans won big, because Democrats stayed home, and now even in a presidential year, the Democrats failed to retake even the Senate, with so many Republicans up for re-election.

    So now we can be sure Donald Trump won't build a $50 billion dollar wall, but the "law and order" candidate has won (if the EC republicans agree tomorrow), and Republicans can do whatever they like. I'm sure there's lots of small things that can make a small difference.

    And in some ways this is good, the party that wants to punish families for being born in the wrong country, and Obama's 3.2 million deports will be dwarfed by Trump and the Republicans.
    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-deported-record-number-immigrants-trump-claim-article-1.2774180

    And it'll be a good experiment, to see what means, like whether the border patrol checkpoints can catch more, without accosting ordinary Americans. It's not like it's going to affect me.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_interior_checkpoints

    Perhaps in 2017 the daily news will be filled with "body counts", as in "This week immigration officials deported 24,434 illegals, with 177 criminals killed trying to escape." If we're reminded daily of this progress, everyone will cheer that we're finally becoming a country of law and order.

    It might just work, to keep the illusion of progress, creating jobs to terrorize Mexican American families, and guarantee Hispanics ever devotion to the Democrats, who have to do nothing but complain that the Republicans are the enemy.

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  15. IAC's FAKR Olympus Ares said..."Payback..." "I don’t regret that at all. Romney didn’t win did he?" --- Harry Reid (on lying)

    Let's see about this quote:
    http://time.com/3765158/harry-reid-mitt-romney-no-taxes/
    ---
    Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has no regrets with falsely accusing Mitt Romney of paying zero taxes for ten years during the 2012 presidential elections.

    “So the word is out that he has not paid any taxes for ten years,” Reid said on the Senate floor in August 2012. “Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.”

    Under criticism and repeated denials by Romney, Reid later put out a statement backed by an “extremely credible source,” which turned out to be billionaire Jon Huntsman, Sr, the father of the former Utah governor and Romney rival, according to Double Down by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. PolitiFact rated Reid’s allegation “Pants on Fire.”

    When asked about his comments in a new interview by CNN’s Dana Bash, Reid, who recently announced he would retire in 2017 after his term is up, rebuffed those who said his attacks were “McCarthyite.”

    “Well, they can call it whatever they want,” Reid said. “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
    ---

    All I can say is "Thank god for fact checkers", and I heard now Reid will retire.

    So if we need "payback" for that, let's hope the Electoral Republicans throw in some solid votes for Mitt Romney on Monday.

    That seems very fair to me.

    The democrats were very very wrong to demonize multimillionaire Romney, and perhaps if they had been nicer to him in 2012, he would have tried again in 2016, although I admit it looks like the Republican primary voters had no patience for compromise candidates like Romney. And he did his best to call out Trump early, to no avail.

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    1. "I heard now Reid will retire..."

      Right on top of things, are you?

      "After a brutal eye injury, the 75-year-old Senate Democratic leader decides to forgo another grueling campaign for reelection."
      --- Politico, 3/15

      The Obama Rule: punish our enemies.

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  16. IAC: I don't care what "everyone" in the country thinks. And I've made it very clear that I don't care what many Republicans think. "Many Republicans" would be happy with President Hillary, and their reasons for that are largely the reason I distrust the GOP Establishment. I don't believe the GOPe cares about its base, and I'm confident most globalists don't care about their fellow citizens. That's no way to lead a nation!

    I appreciate you stating your solid support for President Donald Trump, over all alternatives. And expressing your distrust of the Republican party.

    So it's really true. Republicans still think they have a party, but its now the party of Donald Trump, and it will rise or crash and burn on the wisdom and skills of Donald Trump to make the Republican Party Great Again.

    So it is what it really looks like. Or it looks like Donald Trump is giving the Republican leadership what they want, a sort of standard corporate-centric leadership that seeks to privatize America to the highest bidder.

    But if Trump really does listen to the anger of the people, eventually he'll have to stop all the corruption he's putting in place right now, and pretend to start cleaning it up, but he'll need more power to take out the powerful enemies, and because Trump is the only one we can trust, we need to give him absolute power, so he'll save us from the bad people. And the more enemies he makes, the more he can justify any means to stop them, because he's the good guy.

    It's a plan, a simple world view that has all its bases covered. Give the people credit, it's a plan.

    I just don't think there are sufficient number of people who see the world this way and who trust a single man to take on the world, and save them.

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  17. Ares Olympus @December 18, 2016 at 9:19 AM:

    "I just don't think there are sufficient number of people who see the world this way and who trust a single man to take on the world, and save them."

    That's what you think I believe?

    I see you received your Jump-to-Conclusions Mat for Christmas last year. You've gotten good use out of it. What will you ask Santa for this year?

    I don't look to a man to take on the world and save me. Your allegations of Trump's corruption are entirely speculative, with Hillary Clinton they are proven. Yet you were with her. I'll take my chances. And Trump has not offered to privatize anything. In fact, he bucked most of his GOP opponents, saying he wouldn't mess with Social Security. Get your head out of your lower GI.

    As for Obama, I suppose he needs to give Putin a "red line" to stop messing with our democracy... which is about the level of attention and seriousness this Russian hacking conspiracy theory is worth. At least we know nothing will happen. After all, in 2012, the most senior Democrat officials -- Obama, Biden, Clinton and Kerry -- mocked Romney for his concerns over Russia:
    http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/25/5-times-liberals-mocked-mitt-romney-for-warning-about-russia/

    Sounds like the Bear is back now. How scary. I'm shuddering.

    I'd rather have someone who pledges to "Make America Great Again" rather than pandering to the ignorant and dependent, while selling America out to the highest bidder, a la Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    Keep playing with lead in your chemistry set, Ares. Eventually you'll find some gold...

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  18. Ares Olympus @December 18, 2016 at 7:29 AM & December 18, 2016 at 7:46 AM:

    By the way, what's your deal with "IAC's FAKE Anonymous Olympus Ares"???

    That's not me, dude.

    I would never stoop so low as to waste my time to establish a Google alias to mock your stupidity. I've always done it straight up.

    Maybe Olympus Ares is a Russian hacker and member of the Alt-Something, but it ain't me.

    I demand you apologize for associating me as your Bizzaro.

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  19. Dennis @December 18, 2016 at 6:43 AM:

    Don't worry, Dennis. Once the Electoral College does its job tomorrow, the Proglodytes will move onto their next vehicle to deny reality and prove there are "dark, powerful forces" working against them.

    But you do point to something very important: the utter destruction that Obama and his Progressive armies have left the Democrat Party in.

    I'm a proud Deplorable, especially if hating me helps them to continue taking their eye off the ball and taking swings at the ideological phantoms that haunt them.

    Progressives hate America, Dennis. They create nothing, they construct nothing, they offer nothing. They are destroyers.

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  20. IAC,

    It does appear that you have taken up residence in Ares mind. I have no idea who Olympus Ares is, but I like his/her style of forcing the removal of the "mask." There is a hint of a wry sense of humor that intrigues me.

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  21. Dennis @December 19, 2016 at 5:43 AM:

    Indeed, it is a pleasure. I've been quite restrained. I said nary a peep in the week following the election. And then people like Ares come out of the woodwork with all kinds of wacky theories to justify their own shock and bitterness. I find it hilarious.

    One thing about the Electoral College... they are correct, it is not democratic at all. Our Constitutional system is not democratic. We are a constitutionally-limited federal republic. And it is a brilliant system, one that we ruin just about every time we tinker with it. The Electoral College makes it so we have a national president, not California's. This year was case-in-point.

    What is instructive here is how the Left operates. They are destroyers, crybabies and subjective lunatics who expect the world to conform to the spellbinding, lofty words they utter. They hate structure, except when it suits them. They hate rules, except when they suit them. This Electoral College nonsense is more of it. You don't win a basketball game because you score the most baskets, you win a basketball game by scoring the most points. The number of points per basket is determined in the rules of the game. Democrats complaining about winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college is like listening to them complain that they scored more baskets, even though many of them were free throws. Yes, the basketball went through the basket and net, but there are different points assigned for different athletic feats. A free throw does not count for as many points as a field goal. And sometimes, a field goal is from so far away from the basket that it counts for 3 points. So it's not about baskets, it's about points. The same is true of the operation of our Electoral College.

    Furthermore, amidst all this hyperbole, hyperventilating and hysteria, I have heard no talk at all about Washington, D.C. getting 3 electoral votes in our elections. D.C. is 68 square miles, with an estimated population of 672K. It follows custom of having 1 electoral vote to reflect a population-based seat allocation in the House of Representatives (which it does not have a representative), and then it gets 2 electoral votes based on being a state (which it is not) with 2 Senators (which it does not have). All the Lefties in D.C. whine about their status, with "Taxation without representation" emblazoned on their license plates, but they chose to live in a special place. They chose to live in the federal district, set up as the federal city. This is the way the rules work. No one MADE them move or live there. So why does D.C. get 3 electoral votes? D.C.'s electoral status is part of our Constitution, as set by the 23rd Amendment. Yes, it passed under the Amendment process. But is it democratic? No, it is not. And neither is our constitutionally-limited federal republic.

    Democrats and Lefties may or may not have passed civics class, but it certainly does not matter to them. All they want is to win, by any means necessary. And now that the powers of Obama's imperial presidency are passing to Trump, they are frightened. They should be. Karma's a bitch.

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  22. One more thing on this whole mess...

    I said that Leftism is all about self-congratulation for their own moral magnificence. This, brought to you by the people who say "Whose morals?"

    I stand by those remarks But there is something more here, and it is laid plain on this blog on a consistent basis...

    Leftism hates masculinity and masculine values. We see this time and again. It hates femininity and feminine values as well. Leftism says we are all the same and should be the same, despite all natural evidence to the contrary. We are, and ought to be, equal, even though nothing in nature is equal. Therefore, since it hates the masculine and the feminine -- man and woman alike -- it demonstrates its true hatred: toward that of humanity itself. It is important that we all see this before we make choices that will further its ends.

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