“The kinds of people we need in government are precisely the kinds of people who are most reluctant to go into government — people who understand the inherent dangers of power and feel a distaste for using it, but who may do so for a few years as a civic duty.” – Thomas Sowell
Trump Haters Wanted: The radical progressive left (and Democrats in general) desperately need Donald Trump and their hatred for Trump to keep their fragile left-wing coalition together. The only thing uniting the left today is their hatred for Trump.
So why give it to them?
On January 20th President Trump ends his presidency and President-Elect Biden is sworn in with a Democratic majority in Congress and will have to govern. The divisions amongst Democrats cannot be overstated. The progressive liberal wing led by AOC, Sanders and Warren are pushing a radical socialist like agenda on multiple fronts. The recycled Obama-crats being brought back by Biden will be pushing their left of center social and international agenda that first gave us cages, Iran’s cash deposits, and Benghazi. Most of their policies are out of the mainstream and will NOT make for good politics.
Republicans will be looking for a “new way” forward. Trump, populism and some form of America First will be in the mix with many Republican activists let alone elected officials. We will be looking for a way to incorporate this new fourth leg of the Republican coalition “stool” into a winning strategy moving forward.
President Trump will continue to have a voice in the party. His influence will depend much on his actions after the election and how much he chooses to engage. His family members clearly have political ambitions and therefore they are NOT going away, at least not soon.
But new leaders will emerge amongst the Republican ranks nationwide. Traditional conservatives, the religious right, neocons, libertarians, isolationists, deficit hawks, free traders and the like will step forward and once again make policy and electoral arguments of why and where we have to go next as a party. Overall, a healthy thing – in my opinion.
Trump and his America First renewal agenda will be around for a while…but much harder to kick around or rally around as the Republican party returns to its broader coalition, which will now include the Trumpian leg of our coalition stool. It would be self-defeating and ignorant to believe or even want to “purge” all vestiges of these new, culturally conservative, America First, patriotic voters who didn’t like either party, but liked Trump and his message of shaking up the Washington establishment.
The party has gone through growing pains in the past. In the 60’s we had the Goldwater era, in 1976-1980 we had the Reagan v Ford era, in 1988 the Robertson religious right emerged, in the late 2004-2010 the Tea Party engaged. I would argue that every challenging and difficult time in our party’s history made us stronger, kept us in better touch with the American electorate and helped us grow an ever-broader coalition. It wasn’t easy, but it has worked.
President Trump accomplished much in his four years in the White House. His judicial appointments, deregulatory efforts, and tax policies alone did more to bring America back than most presidents who had eight years to implement policies.
My efforts moving forward will be to grow the party, learn from our mistakes, integrate the Trump voters into our coalition, and take back the House and Senate in 2022!
Violence Is Not the Answer to Injustice: “Political protest loses moral and constitutional legitimacy as soon as it becomes destructive or violent.”
Please read the op-ed below entitled “US Capitol Attack a Reminder of the Perils of Using Violence in the Name of Fighting Injustice.”
Florida Did It Right: Lets learn from Florida! It was the first large state and battle ground state to announce its results on election night this last year with virtually NO controversy at all!
After the 2000 electoral debacle in Florida that made hanging chads famous, Florida created a bi-partisan commission to review its state laws and procedures to make sure something like that would NEVER happen again. It instituted a set of reforms that today makes Florida a model for the country.
At the very least…all the states that had controversies and confusion with regard to their voting process and procedures that contributed to this year’s electoral fiasco should consider creating a similar commission and passing reforms in their respective state legislatures.
Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada could go a long way towards restoring trust in our system of elections by doing a fair and open assessment of the issues raised and insure they are fairly addressed by new laws and rules where necessary. We have to have a process that EVERY voter in America trusts, win or lose, that continues this great tradition of a constitutional republic.
Sharing from An Anonymous Post I Found Online Which Said It Well:
Dear fellow Americans,
I keep reading and hearing that “we are better than this.” I’m sorry, but we are not. We are exactly this.
We are culpable in creating an environment that rewards hissy fits when we don’t get our way. We created a society that doesn’t want to listen to the other side; and “cancels” those that disagree with us.
We are a society of “Karens” who will cry to social media when the teenager messes up our McDonald’s order, or when the barista doesn’t add enough flavoring to our Grande Vanilla Bullshit drink.
We are a society that will take to social media to point out the flaws in other people; things we call bad parking; bad driving; bad parenting.
We have created a society that is a zero sum game. If I am to gain, the other side must lose. If I am right, the other side must be wrong. If I am good, then the other side must be evil.
We are not better than this. We ARE this.
We elected politicians that continue to divide (all political parties included). We fueled campaigns based on a belief that one side was evil and would destroy the country; and if anyone supported the other side, they were the enemy.
We built a society where we fuel our own confirmation biases with the social media friends we keep, the selected news channels we watch, and tuning out the other side.
We built a society that cannot fathom how someone could vote for the other candidate. In that society, it is no surprise that some view the election as rigged, or stolen. If we cannot begin to see the other side, then our side is the only side – all others must be illegitimate.
We built a society that forgot how to listen; to truly LISTEN. Forgot what it was to be understanding; forgot what it was to have compassion. This is Democrats. This is Republicans. This is all of us. We are all culpable.
This is who we are now. We don’t want to understand what it means to say “Black Lives Matter”. We don’t want to understand why 74 million Americans voted for Trump. We find it easier to simply write them both off as some form of racism, or evil, or some other over-broad stereotype or reason. But never truly understanding.
We should not be surprised at what transpired yesterday.
It’s who we are. Frankly, it’s what we deserve.
But, it’s not who we have to be. We CAN be better. But we must chose to. All of us.
–Saul Anuzis
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60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/facebook-twitter-stock-investors/2021/01/13/id/1005467/
US Capitol Attack a Reminder of the Perils of Using Violence in the Name of Fighting Injustice
The percentage of US adults who say violence is a justifiable means to advance political change has surged in recent years, among both Democrats and Republicans. This should be troubling to all Americans.
Ashli Elizabeth Babbitt served in four tours of duty during her 14-year US Air Force enlistment. A high-level security official, she survived some of the deadliest war zones in the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
Her life came to an abrupt end on Wednesday, not in a foreign country but in the US Capitol, where she was shot and killed by a plainclothes Capitol police officer after she and other rioters sought to breach a barricade in the building.
“I’m numb. I’m devastated. Nobody from DC notified my son and we found out on TV,” Babbitt’s mother-in-law told the New York Post.
Babbitt was one of five people who died during the violence, three others from medical complications including several heart attacks and one police officer who died from injuries inflicted by rioters. The riots, which come on the heels of the most violent summer in American since the 1960s, sought to disrupt Congress’s vote to certify the Electoral College’s vote for Joe Biden as president.
For months, President Trump and many of his supporters claimed Joe Biden’s electoral college victory was illegitimate because of systemic voter fraud, a claim disputed by the Justice Department and multiple Republican state officials in the states where said fraud allegedly took place.
“This is total fraud,” Trump told Fox News following the election. “And how the FBI and Department of Justice — I don’t know, maybe they’re involved. But how people are allowed to get away with this stuff is unbelievable.”
In the days leading up to Congress’s January 6 certification vote, thousands of aggrieved supporters of Trump poured into the nation’s capital believing, as does the president himself, that widespread voter fraud and irregularities mean the November presidential election was “stolen.”
Things quickly spiraled out of control.
Rage at Capitol assault makes excuses for summer riots all the more disgraceful
Wednesday’s mob assault on Capitol Hill was shocking and brazen: Hundreds of MAGA-hat-wearing rioters broke into the seat of American democracy. They stormed the halls, looting property and assaulting law enforcers, all in service of an absurd political demand: reversing the outcome of an election.
Now where had I witnessed such scenes before? The answer: in blue-governed cities in my native Pacific Northwest throughout last summer and into the fall and winter.
The right-wing political violence was met with universal rebuke from politicians of both parties and the media. But many of those who are loudest in condemning the Capitol Hill riot went radio-silent when rioters destroyed and looted in the name of Black Lives Matter.
Last May, thousands of rioters in Minneapolis brought the city to its knees after the police-involved death of George Floyd. Over three days, rioters burned down a police station, looted hundreds of businesses and burned entire neighborhoods to the ground. Mass street violence also broke out in Washington, DC, New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle and dozens of other cities; at least two dozen died in the course of the riots.
REPORT: Far-right, fringe groups stormed the US Capitol, not mainstream Trump supporters
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) at Rutgers has released its findings of the insurrection attempt at the US Capitol, finding that “virtually all violent vanguard elements” of the rioters who stormed the building consisted of members from “predominantly far-right, fringe groups,” not mainstream elements of Donald Trump’s base of supporters.
The study, released on Saturday, analyzed the sequence of events that led to the violence on Wednesday when Congress was in session to certify Joe Biden as the next President of the United States.
According to the NCRI’s findings, a sizable crowd of people who gathered at Trump’s ‘March to Save America’ rally broke off from the main crowd, which had peacefully assembled to see the President, to violently storm the US Capitol building where they overwhelmed police officers who were outnumbered by the mob.
“While a majority of attendees remained peaceful, many participated in the violent storming and looting of the U.S. Capitol building,” the report reads. “These events saw law enforcement evacuate lawmakers, Capitol offices burglarized and left 5 dead and many wounded.”
The report found that virtually all leading elements of the mob appeared to come from “predominantly far-right, fringe groups,” including several white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations. Some members of the group included those present at the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, which saw the death of one counter-protestor.
Brother of Arrested Antifa-BLM Activist John Sullivan Turned Him In! — Says His Brother Was “Somehow in Charge” of US Capitol Riots (VIDEO)
Antifa-Insurgence leader John Earl Sullivan is in custody after being arrested in Utah on Thursday.
As reported previously Antifa protester John Sullivan was caught on video posing as a Trump supporter during the rioting at the US Capitol last week.
Footage obtained by the Gateway Pundit from militant Black Lives Matter and Antifa activist John Sullivan’s Discord server shows the so-called “civil rights activist” reveling inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6 as he damaged federal property.
Chat Logs Reveal Alleged Plan To Turn Trump Rally Into Violent Riot
Screenshots from a Discord chat channel allegedly hosted by John Sullivan – a far-left, anti-Trump activist who appears to have incited violence at the U.S. Capitol while posing as a journalist – reveal he and his followers infiltrated the January 6th Save America March in Washington, D.C.
The unearthed screenshots follow Sullivan’s arrest for his role in the Capitol riot, which included calls to violence such as “we gotta get this shit burned” and “it’s our house motherf*ckers,” an affidavit can reveal.
The Discord chat channel is allegedly affiliated with Sullivan’s Insurgence USA group, which describes itself as “forming a rainbow coalition to unite all people under one banner to fight for liberation and freedom for all people.”
“We are the revolution, lets [sic] show them the power of the people united,” the group’s page adds.
The chat logs corroborate the recent federal charge against Sullivan, noting he didn’t attend the riot to “report” but rather to serve as an agent provocateur. Sullivan – who uses the name Jayden X – can be seen sending an image of himself in a Trump 2020 hat captioned with “counter intel” on January 6th:
Crying ‘whataboutism’ doesn’t make the left’s support for rioting go away
“Whataboutism is the last refuge for someone who can’t admit they’re wrong,” says journalist Tod Perry, who demands that we “stop equating Trump’s Capitol insurrection to Black Lives Matter protests.” The Atlantic’s David A. Graham likewise declares that conservatives’ “complaints about double standards are mostly whataboutism.” Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times scolded the right for responses that were “full of whataboutism.”
What’s going on here? The left has come to embrace whataboutism as an all-purpose shield against any attempt to put events in a social, moral and historical context.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “whataboutism” as “the practice of raising a supposedly analogous issue in response to a perceived hypocrisy or inconsistency.” The term came into use in the 20th century, often describing a Soviet rhetorical gambit where any criticism of the USSR’s rights record elicited an objection about the West’s sins.
Are conservatives’ complaints about rioting double standards — lenient for Antifa, severe for MAGA — whataboutism? Graham dismisses the “superficial parallels” and Peters disparages “false equivalencies.”
Jack Dorsey warns Twitter crackdown will be ‘much bigger’ than Trump ban in leaked video
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey warned staffers that the social media giant’s recent crackdown after the US Capitol riots will be “much bigger” than just banning President Trump’s account.
Dorsey’s message during the meeting last Friday was leaked to Project Veritas, and a Twitter spokesperson has confirmed it is authentic.
“We are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration,” Dorsey said in the video meeting published by the conservative outlet on Thursday.
“So, the focus is certainly on this account and how it ties to real-world violence. But also, we need to think much longer term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don’t believe this is going away anytime soon.”
GOP Veers Toward Years of Feuding as Trump Grip Starts to Crack
President Donald Trump’s iron grip over the Republican Party slipped on Wednesday, as a small but vocal group of his fellow party members — including No. 3 House Republican Liz Cheney — voted to impeach him in a historic rebuke that drew battle lines in the coming war for the soul of the GOP.
As the party plots a course to regain control of Congress in two years — and the White House in 2024 — some senior elected officials see value in purging its once-unquestioned leader.
But walking away from Trump and his followers might not be as easy as that, especially when no new standard-bearer for the GOP has yet emerged. That poses a dilemma for Republican senators who must decide if they’re prepared to level the ultimate sanction on Trump and effectively excommunicate him from a party whose base remains remarkably loyal to him.
Even if Trump loses his political influence out of office and without the bullhorn of social media, the party’s leadership at the national and state levels is controlled by his allies. Some 74 million Americans voted for him in November. The question now is how many of those voters will remain loyal to him — and simply retreat from politics — or to the Republican Party, and remain a force.
NRA Dumps New York to Reincorporate in Texas
From Wayne LaPierre: Today, the NRA announced a restructuring plan that positions us for the long-term and ensures our continued success as the nation’s leading advocate for constitutional freedom – free from the toxic political environment of New York.
The plan can be summed up quite simply: We are DUMPING New York, and we are pursuing plans to reincorporate the NRA in Texas.
To facilitate the strategic plan and restructuring, the NRA and one of its subsidiaries have filed voluntary chapter 11 petitions in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. As you may know, chapter 11 proceedings are often utilized by businesses, nonprofits and organizations of all kinds to streamline legal and financial affairs.
Under the plan, the NRA will continue what we’ve always done – confronting anti-gun, anti-self-defense and anti-hunting activities and promoting constitutional advocacy that helps law-abiding Americans. Our work will continue as it always has. No major changes are expected to the NRA’s operations or workforce.
