DeSantis replies to Trump

 "Check the scoreboard."

Follow this link:  https://fb.watch/gPF0Y6cq5P/

Fellow Republicans, dump Trump. Please.

If he decides to run for president—as he might (or might not) announce soon—he’ll lose. Not just his own race, but also other GOP candidates up and down the ticket.

 

The evidence is in: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shellacked Charlie Crist and Republicans swept statewide offices for the first time since post-Civil War Reconstruction era, in spite of former President Donald Trump’s shenanigans. In fact, Trump’s effort to discredit DeSantis might even have helped the Republican governor win his second term.

 

Recall how Trump’s endorsement was supposed to be the gold plating of Republican candidates. Well, it helped some of them win the party’s primary election, but not the generation election. According to Sky News Data and ForensicsUnit, Trump officially endorsed 174 of the 430 Republican House candidates. It concluded: “…[I]nitial analysis of their results suggests he didn’t help them very much. Counties with candidates backed by Trump increased Republican vote share by an average of 2.1 percentage points compared with the 2020 election, far less than the 8 percentage points gained by the Republicans in counties where he didn't announce support.” [Emphasis added.]

 

Perhaps not the kiss of death. Yet: Many voters approve of Trump policies, but not Trump. DeSantis’ policies and actions mirrored Trump’s policies, all done without the loathsome Trump’s active backing.  In fact, all done despite Trump’s transparent determination to eliminate DeSantis as a possible competitor in the 2024 presidential election.

 

There’s Trump’s reference to DeSantis as Ron "DeSanctimonious."  Great, just what we Republicans need—a destructive intraparty battle that will ensure a Democratic victory. Even more, there’s Trump’s ominous warning that he would bring up the governor’s “not very flattering” past is he decides to run. 

 

He told Fox News: “I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly. I think he would be making a mistake, I think the base would not like it — I don’t think it would be good for the party….I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife."

 

Typical of a candidate who typically called his fellow Republicans stupid names in the 2016 primary and demanded that Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp t resign. Yes, Trump is very, very popular with some of my Republican friends. But I’ve argued that while Trump will have an excited and supportive base, it’s far from enough to win the moderate and independent vote that any candidate of either party must have to win.

 

Like DeSantis did. 

Related:  Donald Trump is an albatross around the Republican neck: The former president had a bad night while Ron DeSantis is rising

News flash: Liberals are routinely dragged out of bed and killed!

As reported in a major daily newspaper:

"When liberals are being routinely dragged out of their beds at night and killed in the street, decent Americans awaiting their turn will ruefully remember Paul Pelosi"

That's right, routinely. Like a dreaded press gang, hordes of conservatives are descending in the dark on the homes of liberals, knocking down the doors, grabbing who's ever inside, and dragging them out to be shot, lynched or stoned. Think Ku Klux Klan. 

You might think that I'm making that quote up, but I read it in the Chicago Sun-Times in a column written by Neil Steinberg. The headline is "GOP cheers a ghastly crime: Republicans laugh off responsibility for Paul Pelosi being assaulted in his home."

I couldn't find any examples of liberals getting murdered on Google, but you know how those conservatives control the media, so I'm certain that these horrors have been censored. The attack on Pelosi somehow managed to escape the censors. 

But what's worse about all this, wrote Steinberg, is: "The haunting part [of the Pelosi attack] is the reaction after. The gales of GOP laughter, mingled with the lies they immediately, reflexively formed to shrug off responsibility for crime."

Guilty. I gathered (conspired) in secret last night with crazed Republicans to have an uproarious time mocking liberals/Democrats/progressives for whining about Pelosi getting clobbered in the noggin.

Steinberg, a former colleague when I was working at the Sun-Times, surely must be engaging in hyperbole--an exaggeration not meant to be taken seriously but to make a point. As a columnist, I'm sure I've done the same. But...accusing an entire class of people of murder?

I'm not in the business of comparing acts of violence committed by one side against the other. I'll leave that to the Daily Caller, which  has compiled a list  of attacks made against conservatives. There's the assassin who was planning to attack Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And more. Both sides have their share of lunatics. Like the white supremacist who drove his car into a peaceful demonstration in Charlottesville, killing one and injuring 35. Nor do I have any defense for Donald Trump Jr. (Jerk Jr.) and stupid Instagram post mocking the attack.

President Joe Biden warned last night about the "threat to democracy" posed by Republicans who don't agree with him. It was yet again another splitting attempt to gain votes (I don't see how, but his handlers apparently think so). 

Please, no more. From any side.

In this light I recommend this Wall Street Journal editorial that suggests what Biden should have said if he truly--as he has endlessly said--wants to unite the nation. Here's a sample:

“My fellow Americans, I’ve mentioned the MAGA threat. But to preserve democracy, it will take the efforts and honesty of both political parties. And we Democrats need to acknowledge that most Republicans feel as strongly and sincerely about fair elections as we do. After the 2020 election, hundreds of Republicans were the most important obstacle to Trump’s false claims of a stolen election."

He should have mentioned, for example, the heroism of former Vice President Mike Pence who refused to participate in Donald Trump's harebrained and dangerous attempt to prevent the transfer power to Biden. 

I guess it would have been too much to hope for. Just as it is too much to hope that Trump would leave the stage, quietly.

Musk's takeover of Twitter energizes battalions of Chicken Lickens, Ducky Luckies, Henny Pennys, Goosey Looseys and Turkey Lurkies

 "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" The left is reliving the folk tale with Elon Musk's buyout of Twitter. 

For some, quitting Twitter is a moral choice because good people can't contribute to evil by posting or even reading those posts. "Those posts" of course mean not just the whacky and extremists on the far right, but also just about anyone who disagrees with the woke pledges of allegiance. That means people who legitimately disagreed with Dr. Fauci's stream of misinformation and had the science to back up their disagreement.

Mostly Republicans, I should add.

High and mighty, the left would, if it could, drive Twitter out of business because it is in the hands of someone who is a free speech advocate. They don't see the problem of saying that they can and ought to make the judgment of what speech is allowed while saying that Musk or his appointees have no such right or ability.

As if to signal anti-left times to come, they point to how Musk has fired the top executives and is taking a closer look at the business plan. But that kind of complaint is just more evidence of the left's naivety. I don't know how many takeovers, senior management changes (e.g. publisher, editor-in-chief, etc.) had been made by new owners at the Chicago Sun-Times while I worked there. Same thing as I worked for The Signal Companies when it was taken over by Allied Chemical. As a PR director, I was one of the first to go.

The masters of irony are so, so upset by a multi-billionaire taking over a company, but not so much when the company adheres to woke dogma. Never mind the billionaires who a spending million on their left and far-left causes.

Are they so dense that they can't see the irony? Or do they see it but are so committed to their party and ideology that they can't be honest enough to admit it?

No, Vlad.We are not with you.

 The balls on that guy, Vladimir Putin. In his big deal speech today, he said American conservatives are on his side. He said as reported by the New York Times:

The nearly four-hour speech and question-and-answer session, with reference to “dozens of genders,” “gay parades’’ and “neoliberal elites,’’ relied on arguments used to animate the culture wars in the United States and Europe, an apparent effort to sway global public opinion in favor of Russia at a time when his army is losing ground in Ukraine.“

In the United States there’s a very strong part of the public who maintain traditional values, and they’re with us,” Mr. Putin said. “We know about this.” 

Give the Russian dictator his due for contributing to the deep divide in the United States. I anticipate that the left-leaning media will give this big play, arguing that cultural conservatives are on his side.

Nothing further from the truth. There's no alliance of freedom-loving Americans with the corrupt dictatorship that Putin heads. 

Oops, the name of Kathy Salvi, GOP challenger to Senator Tammy Duckworth, was left off the ballot.

 

Just a mistake, didn't mean to do it, no ill intent meant. 

Oh sure, you bet.

Thanks to the "mistake," Kathy Salvi's name on "hundreds" of ballots mailed out to voters in downstate  Illinois Schuyler County was replaced by Peggy Hubbard, whom Salvi beat in the Republican primary. 

Apparently the error was discovered after voters began returning completed ballots, prompting Schuyler County Clerk Mindy Garrett (who just happens to be a Democrat) to rule out any nasty stuff. Any votes without Salvi's name will be "set aside," yet still will be counted, she said.

Wait. What? Why aren't the ballots considered to be spoiled and discarded? I suppose that the logic is that no one meant to vote for Salvi, so the votes for Duckworth can't be discarded. And yet, any possible votes for Salvi have been cancelled. 

Salvi is demanding a better and more transparent  explanation from Garrett, which so far hasn't been made. As well she should. Illinois has a reputation as a corruption cesspool where one would expect every election to be legit. 

(Read the complete story here in the Chicago Tribune.)

Speaking of Salvi, she's being treated shamefully by state and nation Republican leadership. Turns out that party big wigs have decided that spending money to support Salvi would be wasted because, they must think, that Salvi is a sure loser in the deep blue state of Illinois.

(Read "Salvi stiffed by national and state Republican donors" in Illinois Review.)

Once more, the Illinois Republican party--if it can honestly be said that there is one--is worse than pathetic. Sure, Democrats dominate Illinois, but giving up on Salvi like this is disgraceful.

I know Salvi and she is exactly the kind of candidate party needs if it wants to no longer be comatose. She's smart, decent, independent and honest. She'd be vastly better than the go-along-to-get along Duckworth. 

Even if you think that Duckworth is a sure winner, voters must mark for Salvi to demonstrate that the party has quality candidates whom Republicans care enough about to support.

Here's a puzzle: Why haven't progressives demanded that J. Edgar Hoover's name be sandblasted off the FBI building in D.C.?

Today's FBI has become the mirror image of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's founder who politicized the agency as his personal police force.  

 

Progressives have demanded all kinds of removals--from statues of Washington and Lincoln on down--for every imagined offensive and deviation from moral precepts imposed by the woke. Yet, progressive have been mysteriously silent about why this honorarium to Hoover should remain.

The entrance to the FBI headquarters building in Washington D.C. is proudly displayed with the name of the agency's founder--J. Edgar Hoover. If there ever was someone who violated contemporary progressive rules in spades it was Hoover. 

Sure, he couldn't own slaves, but his secret activities assaulted some of those very laws that the FBI was supposed in enforce. You can get a taste of them here, in History.com. A summary (to list them all would be too longish.) would include his spying and keeping a dossier on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jk, Hoover believed King was a communist and a threat to national security, but more likely  was a threat to Hoover's rigid, right-wing beliefs. Hoover didn't keep King's dossier in his desk, but distributed to the media (to which I can personally attest). 

He compiled a long list of civil rights offenses and used the agency's investigators to blackmail officials  and others he didn't like. For example, he recorded details of President John F. Kennedy's extra-marital affairs.

His power was so complete that he died in office, without ever being subjected to the statuary 10-year-term limit. No one had the guts to confront this autocrat. 

So where are the progressives? If statues of Lincoln meet the woke's cancellation standards, surely Hoover should stand near the head of the line of the deserving to be rubbed out. Or maybe the Hoover-like corruption of the FBI mirrors the corruption and politicization that mars the agency today. Practices that fed the progressive agenda.

In Hoover-like practice, the FBI today is headed by political loyalists who have engineered campaigns to discredit the likes of Donald Trump and parents who want to exercise their right to raise their children as they wish. And a lot more. 

The latest example has been the trial of Igor Danchenko of lying to the FBI. He was acquitted, but durning the trial the FBI's politicization and corruption was on full display. 

Here's a taste of what was revealed as reported by the New York Post:

"Despite Danchenko’s acquittal, the trial produced a series of revelations about the FBI — including testimony from a bureau analyst that it had offered Christopher Steele, the former MI6 spy who compiled the dossier, $1 million in October 2016 to make its outrageous claims against Trump stick.

"Court documents filed by Durham last month also indicated the FBI employed Danchenko as a paid confidential source for more than three-and-a-half years — hiring him even as he was being investigated for his role in compiling the dossier. 

"In court testimony last week, Danchenko’s FBI handler revealed the Russian national was paid more than $200,000 for his source work — including up to $3,000 for conducting a single meeting. The handler, Kevin Helson, added that he had requested Danchenko receive a $346,000 farewell payment when the bureau dropped him as a source in October 2020. That request was denied."

Now, FBI whistleblowers are turning up to detail just how corrupt the agency as become

There is hardly any question that Democrats, Hilary Clinton's campaign and other partisans have corrupted the FBI, at least at the leadership level, to defeat Trump's 2020 election and when that failed to launch a years-long, false campaign to discredit the former president.

I have no interest in defending Trump, who should be occupying a loony bin. But the FBI campaign--now established as fact--to use against Democrats' political enemies is no less a corruption of a government agency that is as corrupt as it was under Hoover.

Could that be the explanation of why Hoover has escaped the attention of progressives? Do they want to do anything that would demonstrate to today's Americans just how politically corrupt the FBI can become?

I have no other explanation than the possibility that progressives are so ignorant of history that they don't know that history can repeat itself.