Democrats

Kamala and the Constitution

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Democrats and never-Trump Republicans assert that Trump must not be reelected because he threatens the Constitution.  Peggy Noonan goes so far as to say, in her most recent WSJ column, that Kamala Harris should move to a more centrist position on a range of issues in order to improve her chances of winning and thereby negating Trump’s perceived threat to Constitutional government.

The problem with this formulation is that the Democrats don’t much like Constitutional government, and indeed don’t much like the Constitution itself.  (And by ‘Democrats’, I mean not only the Democrat officeholders and politicians, but also the larger Party, including the academics, bureaucrats, and media people who are the party’s ideologues and the beneficiaries of its polices and who think themselves entitled to be the kingmakers or prince-electors of America.)

For example, here is Hillary Clinton, calling for Americans to be civilly or even criminally charged for ‘misinformation.’  Here is Kamala herself, asserting that Trump has lost his free speech privileges and that his Twitter account (this is from 2019) should be taken down…and expressing dismay that social media sites can speak directly to millions of people without any level of oversight.  Tim Walz says “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech”…the definitions of which, of course, he surely expects to be edicted by people ideologically aligned with himself.  Democrat Representative Jamie Raskin has been a leading figure in Congress opposing efforts to investigate and curtail massive censorship programs coordinated by the Biden administration.

Many academics and journalists–representing professions that are highly Democrat-aligned–have attacked the very foundations of free speech and constitutional government.  For example:  New York Times book critic Jennifer Szalai scoffs at what she calls “Constitution worship.”  In another New York Times piece, titled “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” two law professors (one from Harvard and one from Yale) call for America to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”  Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, is author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States,” published last month. There are more examples at the link.

Democrats have also called for expanding the membership of the Supreme Court, for purposes of what used to be called court-packing, and been extremely tolerant of the ‘heckler’s veto’…indeed, often now the ‘thug’s veto’…to shut down speech which is considered Badthink.

This is not a matter of a few rhetorical excesses; there is clearly a very broad-based and multi-layered movement against free speech–and toward further centralization of power–among prominent and influential Democrats.

When Democrats cast themselves as defenders of democracy, I am reminded of the phrase ‘guided democracy’ as employed by the Indonesian ruler Sukarno to describe his system.

Ackman’s Choice

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Bill Ackman, founder/CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, has written a long and thoughtful piece (at X)  on his reasons for supporting Donald Trump in the upcoming election. This piece, which may be the first of several, focuses on what Ackman sees as the actions and policies of the Biden/Harris administration and Democratic Party that were the catalysts for his losing total confidence in the administration and the Party.  Since there are many people who are not on X,  I am reproducing his entire post below the break.

Read more

Biden, Hamas, and Israel

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In this rather confused video clip (some of it in text form in this article), Biden seems to be saying that (1) he believes the “30,000 Palestinians killed” number which has been circulating, which most observers believe is bogus, (2) that Israel is violating the international rules of war, which he says “we” changed following WWII, and (3) strongly implying that Israel is conducting carpet bombing, which is false.   He also says that Hamas would like a ceasefire because they would “have a better chance to survive and rebuild.”   He is apparently just fine with this outcome.

He also says he told the Israeli war cabinet:   “Do not make the mistake America made,’… we should not have gone into the whole thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was not necessary. It was not necessary. It caused more problems than it cured.”

Whatever one thinks about the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it requires a special kind of cluelessness to not notice the geographical closeness of Gaza-based Hamas to Israel, and the immediate and murderous nature of the threat that Israel faces.

Or, more likely, he does realize this, but does not consider Israeli lives to be very important when measured against Michigan electoral votes.

Starbucks and Patty Murray

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In Washington State, candidate Tiffany Smiley is running a strong campaign against Democrat incumbent Patty Murray.   WSJ writer Kim Strassel reports that three corporations…the Seattle Times, the Seattle Seahawks, and Starbucks…have sent certified letters to the Smiley campaign with accusations of “trademark infringement” for the appearance of their logos in campaign video ads.   These all look like fair use to me.   In “Cup of Coffee,” Smiley stands in front of a derelict building. Barely visible at the top, and seen backward, is the store’s faded Starbucks sign. Ms. Smiley hits Ms. Murray for rising crime, while the ad flashes two Seattle Times headlines, one of which reads: “Starbucks to Close 5 Seattle Stores Over Safety Concerns.”

This resulted in a complaint from the Seattle Times about “unauthorized use of The Seattle Times logo and two headlines” in violation of the paper’s “copyright and trademark.”   For its part, Starbucks complained the campaign was appropriating its intellectual property, and complaining it might “create an unfounded association in the minds of consumers between Starbucks and your campaign.”   The Seahawks complaint was equally or more ridiculous.

I don’t know how many people outside of Washington State have anything to do with the Seattle Times or the Seahawks, but Starbucks is a national chain with a lot of customers, many of whom are not Democrats and are especially not Democrats of the Patty Murray variety.   The behavior of Starbucks in this matter is not very respectful of those customers, and I’d also question whether it is consistent with SBUX fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders.

There is also the question of whether actions like this represent in-kind contributions to a political campaign.   Indeed:

The Smiley campaign on Thursday filed a Federal Election Commission complaint, charging the paper with providing the Murray campaign a prohibited in-kind contribution. It turns out that Ms. Murray has also used a Seattle Times headline in her ads. Her “First 2016 Ad” sports the newspaper’s logo under the headline: “Patty Murray’s and  Paul Ryan’s Teamwork Is a Model for Congress.” It seems the Times has a different legal standard for candidates it endorses.

As the FEC complaint notes, the Smiley campaign would have to spend an estimated $5,000 to remove and update the ad”costs that Patty Murray does not have to accrue.” It cites FEC regulations that provide “if a corporation makes its resources available for free, it must do so for  all  candidates.”

If you’re not familiar with Patty Murray, she is the individual who, following the 9/11 attacks, said about Osama bin Laden:

He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful.

Michelle Malkin, from 2009: “I’ll never forget interviewing her many years ago when I worked for the Seattle Times editorial board. We were talking about federal entitlement spending. I asked her about FICA taxes. She didn’t know what I was talking about; when I said “payroll taxes,” she still had a frozen blank look on her face.”

Murray has also shown herself to be a nasty bigot. When lobbying against a contract award for an Air Force tanker plane to Northrop Grumman, she said:

“I have stood on the line in Everett, Wash., where we have thousands of workers who go to work every day to build these planes. I would challenge anybody to tell me that they’ve stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody building anything.”

Let’s hope that Tiffany Smiley prevails, despite the forces arrayed in support of Murray.   And you might want to let Starbucks know what you think of their behavior in this matter, and whether it is likely to affect your future patronage of their stores.