“Pro-life people, and Republicans in particular, are on dangerous ground.”

February 4, 2023

The 2024 Presidential Election is Already About Abortion

By James Harden at American Thinker:

The Republican National Convention is placing abortion front and center for the 2024 election cycle, now convinced that being pro-life is a winning political strategy. On August 25, I warned Republicans that refusing to advocate for the preborn would dilute the red wave.  And so it did. The red wave died on the beach of indifference. Where is the confidently anticipated Senate majority? No comfortable majority in the House either. Hidden within the results there is a mandate: killing the preborn up to and after birth is not acceptable and representatives who hedge on protecting all people equally are not desirable to the American people.

On November 9, before the electoral debris field could be accurately assessed, I warned that it will be worse in 2024 if the pro-life Republicans refuse to learn the lesson that, for the electorate, morality trumps money. But don’t just take my word for it. Former Deputy White House Chief of Staff under the Obama administration, Jim Messina, five days later, insisted abortion is a winning strategy that will carry Democrat victories in races nationwide including the Presidency.

Former president Donald Trump weighed in on the midterm results, saying, “It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms… It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions… Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again.”

I corrected President Trump on January 4 when I said candidates didn’t lose because they stood firm on protecting all life equally but because they didn’t stand at all. I remain one of the only voices pushing for no exceptions, which Sean Hannity and I discussed in August. The red wave died on the beach not because Republicans were too pro-life but because Republicans refused to talk about abortion at all, hiding behind inflation and crime. A closer look at which Republicans actually won reveals that being pro-life is a winning political strategy.

As the RNC recently affirmed in their January 30th resolution, the only path to a Republican victory in 2024 is for those who are uncomfortable defending the rights of the preborn to take their political cod liver oil and toughen up. Equally protecting all citizens — especially the preborn ones — must be front and center in every Republican candidate’s campaign, from federal to state. This means Republican candidates need to learn to be pro-life statesmen, able to articulate why they are pro-life and why everyone else should be too — including independent and Democrat voters.

As a pro-life strategist it is clear to me that Republican candidates are uncomfortable with the pro-life debate. Why? Because they talk about being pro-life as a layman, not a statesman. It is one thing for someone to have an opinion about abortion because of science, statistics — or worse — sentiment.  Sure, it tugs on the heartstrings to talk about how much you love your Down’s Syndrome child. But that does not tell the world why government ought to have an interest in protecting preborn boys and girls under the law.

Democrats figured it out. First, they were willing to spend 1/3 of a billion dollars on abortion campaign ads. And second, they were cheeky enough to prioritize abortion in their campaigns. Happily, the pro-life Republicans who stood strong all won their elections even if they were massively outspent. Why? Because being pro-life is a winning political strategy, underscoring once again that morality trumps money.

While the Democrat tactic was to turn up the volume on abortion, it only panned out for them if the Republicans failed to shed light on the propaganda revealing the very unpopular Democrat platform. The Democrat position regarding abortion is unregulated abortion, federally legislated through all nine months of pregnancy and beyond. Look no further than California’s abortion ballot Proposition 1. However, to seduce the votes they needed, pro-abortion politicians shouted bogus claims that overturning Roe created a health crisis, if pro-life Republicans get their way they would outlaw contraception, and women suffering from miscarriage will die on the operating table. Ridiculous, right? Only if the pro-life Republican candidate said so. Qui tacet consentit — silence gives consent.

Pro-life people, and Republicans in particular, are on dangerous ground. The gains typically made in a midterm election cycle were forfeited in 2022 by Republican moral cowards. The pro-abortion politicians in charge of the Democrat party believe they have a winning strategy in abortion. And they do, if pro-life candidates refuse to learn from an honest campaign autopsy. Make no mistake, the lead-up to 2024 will be a slog. But victory awaits if candidates can become principled pro-life statesmen, courageously facing the winds of abortion propaganda. This is the only way they can appeal to independents and ostensibly pro-life Democrats.

The winning script for the pro-life statesman goes something like this: “’We are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights.’ The right of first importance, the one upon which liberty and the pursuit of happiness stand, is the right to life. And because we are made in the image of God, all people are equally valuable, deserving of protection and blessing, without qualification, from the womb to the tomb.” Even in the midst of the high-decibel din of abortion campaign ads, the people will begin to understand why protecting a preborn baby transcends mere opinion and is the purview of government for the safeguarding of civil order.

That is what pro-life candidates need to learn to say in so many words between now and 2024. Then comes victory and maybe even another chance at civilized order.

Rev. James R. Harden, M.Div. is the CEO of CompassCare Pregnancy Services and pioneered the first measurable and repeatable medical model in the pregnancy center movement. He has written extensively on medical ethics, executive leadership, and pro-life policy. 

How Bill Maher, CHIEF OBNOXIOUS, Collects His Money?

FEBRUARY 4, 2023 BY STEVEN HAYWARD at Power Line:

BILL MAHER CRUSHES IT AGAIN

There is something drastically wrong when the most prominent voice in popular culture on behalf of common sense about our runaway wokery is Bill Maher. And yet he keeps killing it, once again on last night’s broadcast ratifying what we’ve reported here several times—that today’s woke climate and cancel culture resembles nothing so much as Mao’s infamous (and murderous) “Cultural Revolution.” Chinese liberals (in the old and correct sense of the term) have been pointing this out for a while now, in amazement that this can be happening in America, and, to the incredulity of the New York Times, embracing Donald Trump.

Anyway, here’s Maher from last night, with the usual language warnings:

“A vicious cycle may occur as the IQs of college students continue to decline”

February 4, 2023

American Students — Dumber and More Woke

By Robert Weissberg at American Thinker:

Professors often complain about the current crop of students being less intellectually talented than when they began their careers decades back. Such griping is, of course, easy to dismiss — it has occurred for millennia. Unfortunately, this time around the grumbling may be true and not the usual nostalgia for “the good old days.”  The anecdotal evidence from textbook reading levels, shortened college syllabi, scrapbook-like research assignments, proliferating college remedial classes, grade inflation, and the popularity of “gut” college majors such as Gender Studies, is indisputable. We have also invested hundreds of millions in our schools yet test results such as the SAT are flat over the past half century. Add the countless stories of illiteracy among high school “graduates” despite falling class size and expensive reforms. Judged by the standards of evolution, Americans may be going backwards.

The best evidence of this decline are data from the highly respected General Social Survey on mean IQ by decade among graduate students, undergraduates, and high school students (a tip of the hat to Charles Murray on Twitter). This is a complicated subject given how America’s demography has altered, and measuring IQ via surveys might be iffy, but the numbers, even if a bit unsure, are alarming.

These data are divided into three groups: those with high school diplomas, undergraduate degrees, and graduate degrees. Then the data are then divided by decades beginning in the 1960s through to the 2010 onward decade. The overall pattern is a steady decline in IQ scores for each group from decade to decade. For example, high school graduates in the 1960s had an average IQ of 99.3 but this figure declined so by 2010 and onward, it was 93.5. A similar drop occurred among college graduates — from 113.3 in the 60s to 100.4 in the 2010 decade. For those with graduate degrees, the fall was from 114.0 to 105.8.          

These are depressing numbers. That in 2010 the average college student had an IQ of 100.4 (almost exactly our national average) signifies that we are miles away from trying to educate the brightest youngsters. Worse, with an average of about 100, many of those enrolled must score below 100 and thus suitable only for low-skill occupations. This picture may even be worse than these numbers suggest if we subtract out the many smart international students now enrolled in U.S. higher education.  

This decline has wide-ranging implications for college teachers. Save at the most selective schools, many undergraduates are incapable of grasping complicated arguments, even unable to distinguish what the teacher explained as opposed to what the teacher personally believes. The statement “Many Germans thought Hitler a savior” becomes “the Professor said that Hitler was a savior.”  Nor can many of these intellectually challenged youngsters grasp the idea that something can simultaneously be both good and bad. Try explaining that for a statement to be scientifically correct, it must in principle be amenable to falsification. Even a lame joke about affirmative action may be misunderstood as a hostile remark. And be careful about using supposedly racist words like “master bedroom” or “blacklist” that may offend some students unfamiliar with the non-racial origins of these terms. The upshot of these IQ-related limitations — and there are more — is that complicated, nuanced lectures are easily misconstrued, and with this confusion, professors run the risk of running afoul of the PC police. 

Consider, for example, the potential tribulations if a professor tried to explain to students that while slavery was a horrible institution and slaves were grievously mistreated, the plantation-based cotton economy was nevertheless highly profitable. Slaveowners were, in fact, often savvy capitalists in a world market using the latest agricultural technology to achieve a productivity not matched until a century post-Civil War. Moreover, slaves were so valuable that cheaper recent immigrants, often White Irish, not slaves, were instead hired for life-threatening jobs.  

Unfortunately, explicating these complications can easily be misconstrued as defending slavery. To explain that the Constitution’s ban on importing slaves (Article I, section 9) when implemented in 1808 increased the monetary value of slaves and thus mitigated the most horrific treatment easily becomes “the professor said that slave owners were not entirely evil.” That is, he endorsed slavery. Sadly, this is a hard-to-win dispute on a campus where a student’s misinformed feelings often outweigh hard historical evidence. Better to avoid anything about the economics of slavery than risk a visit from a functionary anxious to root out racism. Political analysis becomes a damage limiting enterprise and thus misleading and cartoonish.

Such examples of easily misconstrued truths abound. So good luck to any professor who, for the sake of lively discussion, suggests that by enrolling women to college you lower the birthrate and thus underfunds the social welfare state as fewer workers pay taxes to support an aging population. Sexism! Or that eliminating fossil fuels to combat global warming might hurt millions of poor Americans whose jobs depend on cheap energy. Destroying the planet! Or that tough anti-discrimination laws encourage more automation or firms relocating abroad versus a Utopian workplace free of racial unfairness. Racism! 

More generally, it is better to avoid anything that might possibly make anyone uncomfortable even if this discomfort results from misunderstanding. Challenging a student’s cherished beliefs by raising the inevitable trade-offs and the possibility of unanticipated negative outcomes is just too risky. While smart students typically enjoy the lively debate, even a professor playing devil’s advocate with thought provoking illustrations, the less able will often just be confused. Such students are likely more comfortable with simplistic good vs. evil. Woe to those who point out that a “good idea” might be less good if all the costs are included. In this simple-minded setting, no professor will ever get in trouble by denouncing evil and praising good provided that the easily offended agree on this moral universe.

The parallel is mass entertainment. Blockbuster movies and novels avoid ethical nuances and audiences refuse to be lectured about life’s painful trade-offs.  Nor does the public want to hear about the problems when assessing conflicting evidence and the inherent uncertainty of today’s knowledge. Movies like the art house favorite Rashomon that dwell on complexities are far less popular than Top Gun.  After all, movies are entertainment, not a college course requiring serious thinking. Better to leave the theater feeling good after watching a Tom Cruise action flick than have a head filled with the logic of international conflict.

A vicious cycle may occur as the IQs of college students continue to decline. Colleges need warm bodies to survive, and if intellectually marginal applicants can pay tuition, welcome aboard. Now, faced with students who are unable to grasp subtle distinctions and challenging material, professors will reasonably dumb down their courses and relax standards. As colleges increasingly resemble high schools, high IQ youngsters will avoid them, schools will be forced to dig deeper into the cognitive talent pool, and high schools may soon teach at grade-school levels. Who would hire such “college graduates”?  

The upshot of this decline will be that many Americans enter adulthood without having been intellectually challenged. The phrase “mind expanding” will exclusively apply to psychedelic drugs, not higher education. Professors for their own survival will play it safe and avoid anything that might, somehow and in some way, offend those who complain when their cherished beliefs are disputed. The triumph of woke dullness. Absent this exposure to the give and take of competing ideas and all else that defines intellectual debate, honest disagreement will become “hate.” It all adds up to a perfect recipe for killing serious public discussions.

That Red Chinese Balloon Over America

 FEBRUARY 4, 2023 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

SPY BALLOON KEEPS A ROLLIN’

The Chinese spy balloon keeps a rollin’ across the United States. Relying on the reporting of Bloomberg (which has to be stripped of its credulity over the White House spin) and the Associated Press, I wanted compile the facts roughly making out what we know as of this morning while adding a few comments of my own.

• The observant Mr. Chase Doak spotted the spy balloon traversing Montana on Wednesday. “Not gonna lie,” tweeted Doak as his video went viral. “First, I thought this was a #ufo. Then, I thought it was @elonmusk in a Wizard of Oz cosplay scenario. But it was just a run-of-the mill Chinese spy balloon!”

• On Thursday afternoon, the Billings Gazette published a photo of the balloon. The cat was out of the bag.

• “As it turns out, US authorities were well aware of the unidentified object that had entered American airspace on Jan. 28, that had then left and re-entered over North Idaho on Tuesday. But with such a high-profile trip at stake, keeping it on the down-low was key.”

• Bloomberg does not state when the authorities determined it was a Chinese spy balloon. However, in other words, the Biden administration knew all about it and intended to remain mum. They intended to remain mum to preserve the viability of Secretary Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing this weekend.

• LOL, as though this is a coincidence: “The gravity of the situation was only exacerbated by Montana being home to Malmstrom Air Force Base, which houses a large portion of the US’s Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

• LOL: China claims an innocent misunderstanding. Their Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a statement that the balloon was merely a weather research “airship” that had blown off course.

• The Pentagon rejected that out of hand — as well as China’s contention that the balloon, about the size of two school buses, was not being used for surveillance and had only limited navigational ability.

• Biden’s daycare minders in the White House want it to be known that Biden “ultimately decided to let the balloon continue on its way as the US sought answers from the Chinese embassy in Washington, but they struggled to obtain satisfactory responses. US officials said they were baffled by China, which itself appeared to be caught off-guard by the bizarre [sic] incident.”

• The Chinese side (to borrow their term) has invested in the family business and otherwise taken Biden’s measure. They think Biden is a chump. They think have him in their pocket. They have nothing but contempt for him.

• This is the best they’ve got: “The airship is from China.” However: “It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.”

• And this: “The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure,” the statement said, citing a legal term used to refer to events beyond one’s control.

• No word on whether the Chinese side regrets entry of “a second balloon flying over Latin America.”

• “We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement, declining to offer further information such as where it was spotted.

• Per the AP this morning, “China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a question about the second balloon.”

• LOL: Also per the AP this morning, as to the spy balloon traversing the United States, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs again emphasized that the balloon’s journey was out of its control and urged the U.S. not to “smear” it based on the balloon.

Allow President Trump TO BE PRESIDENT WITHOUT THOSE FALSE ABUSES FROM DEM NANCY PELOSI AND HIS GOP LOONS!

February 3, 2023

President Trump vs. the Swamp

By MWG

There are two groups of Trump haters.

The first are what this writer terms, “The Weak Sister Crowd.” These are the whiners and crybabies who got their noses out of joint when Trump released a “mean” tweet that brought tears to their eyes. They’re the, “Trump said boo to the _____ (insert target group here), and I’m not going vote for him ever again” brainiacs.

The second group of NeverTrumpers are the Deep Swamp critters who benefit off the U.S. Feral Gruberment’s largesse. The Corrupocrats like Nancy Pelosi, who start wars and crises and then profit off them via their military-industrial complex stock portfolios. “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” President Trump came in, kicked over their rice bowls full of MIC cash, and instant hate erupted! This American hopes that 2024 will be Trump’s Revenge Tour.

H.L. Mencken wrote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” COVID hoax anyone? Make sure you mask up! Keep getting those boosters!

It should be noted that from Bush 41 to Biden, (really going back to the days of Woodrow Wilson) with the exception of Donald J. Trump, this nation has been subjected to one hobgoblin after another, one war after another, and one domestic crisis after another. It begs the question, Why?

Enter Donald J. Trump.

The NeverTrumpers (ex: Lincoln Project) readily, nay, eagerly joined forces with the Democrats who themselves fear being exposed as the criminals they are. It should be noted that it was Donald Trump who (this is an extremely short list), did more for America and Americans in his four years, than any other recent occupant of the Oval Office, while fighting a hostile and corrupt Congress staffed with idiots like Hank “Guam” Johnson and corrupt inside traders like Nancy Pelosi, a hostile Deep Swamp of MIC, CIA, lobbyists, and FBI bums, a horrendously morally bankrupt and evil Fake News crowd, the greedy and ignorant UN/NATO Euros, and a legion of D.C. politicians so steeped in corruption, lies, and overt scumbaggery that our Founding Fathers  would be in despair. No one from Bush 41 to the massively corrupt Biden Regime could ever have achieved the success story that was President Trump. Indeed, President Trump is responsible for:

1.  More Americans were employed during his tenure than ever before in our history. In fact, jobless claims were at their lowest level in almost fifty years!

2.  African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American unemployment rates all reached record lows while Trump was in office.

3.  Median household income rose to $61,372 in 2017, a post-recession high, while wages were soaring at their fastest rate since 2009 (pre-Obomination days). Moreover, and more important to working Americans, their paychecks rose by a whopping 3.3 percent between 2016 and 2017, the most in a decade.

That is what we the people, who work for a living and are not subsisting on the largesse provided by the middle class, are interested in. Not having EV’s (souped-up golf carts) crammed down our throats, not the climate hoax or the scamdemic, and not fighting for some corrupt nation like Ukraine. We want America first!

President Trump put America First — and the clowns in D.C. couldn’t stand that.

4.  Even more important to small businesses and the American People was President Trump’s slaying of governmentally imposed red tape. President Trump’s massive deregulation deregulated twenty-two actions for every one regulatory action during his first year in office alone. No wonder the Deep Swamp hates him.

5.  President Trump signed into law the biggest tax cuts and reforms in U.S. history. (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act)

6.  President Trump followed through on a campaign promise and secured $1.6 billion for border wall construction. (Congress later couldn’t find the money for that but they did find over 100 billion U.S. tax dollars to protect Ukraine’s borders.

7.  No new wars. President Trump is the most military and veteran-friendly President that we have had since President Ronald Reagan. Bush 41 basically threw us under the bus with his 96-hour war, ended prematurely by Colin Powell, which basically guaranteed that we’d be back. Clinton couldn’t wait to start wars in order to profit by them, Obama’s drone wars, Arab Springs, and other idiocy was a joke that resulted in Americans dying, and of course, Biden’s failure in Afghanistan ($85+ billion dollars-worth of gear… gone), and Ukraine only serves to enrich the politicians in D.C.

It should be noted that President Trump was the first president to not only refuse a salary, but donate it to various charities.

Did President Trump make mistakes? You bet. He’s human, after all. He did fail to understand just how deep the Swamp critters were entrenched. He was the commander-in-chief but instead of the truth, instead of helpful suggestions for America, instead of aiding the President, he got nothing but lies, wrong answers, and pure bullsh*t from Congress, the Vichy GOPe, the Demsheviks, who care more about keeping the graft coming and filling their rice bowls, than in keeping with their oaths of office and serving America and Americans.

In closing, this writer hopes that President Trump gets his third term (the second one was stolen via fraud), and his chance to go after the Deep Swamp, the UN/WHO/NATO Globalist bloc, and illegal immigration, as well as draining the Swamp once and for all.

That would be Justice served after Justice denied.

Getting To Know The Bidens Better…

The ever-shifting excuses about Hunter Biden’s laptop

First it was a Russian plant, now it is protected personal information

February 3, 2023 | 12:03 pm

Joe and Hunter Biden (Getty Images)

Written by:

Charles Lipson at the Spectator:

Hunter Biden’s defense about his incriminating laptop sounds like an old joke about a trial lawyer who was accused of letting his dog bite a stranger. The lawyer’s first line of defense was that “it couldn’t happen because my dog was tied up that night.” When told there were witnesses who had seen him walking the dog, he said, “Okay, we were out walking but my dog doesn’t bite.” If that fails, then, “Well, yes, my dog did give you a little nip, but it wasn’t a bad one.” Then, “Granted, you had to go to the hospital for surgery, but you provoked my sweet pup.” If all else fails, “What do you mean I own a dog?”

That, in essence, is how Hunter Biden and his family have defended themselves against the damning information on the laptop that he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Or, as his lawyers might say, “allegedly abandoned in the alleged state of Delaware.” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine has aptly labeled the computer the “laptop from hell,” and Hunter is none too eager to admit ownership or culpability. Neither is his family, who see both legal and political peril in the computer’s contents.

Just look at this long list of Hunter’s defenses, one crumbling after the other, like the lawyer with a dog.

Shoot down the balloon!

• Democracy in Peru is under attack
• The FBI descends on Biden’s beach house
• How to stop politicians from taking classified documents
• Biden is the war president Ukraine needs

• It’s not my computer. That was Hunter’s original defense, and he still hasn’t completely abandoned it.
• I’m not sure if it’s my computer. That was his backup defense.
• I have no idea if I left any computer at that repair shop. Who knows? I’m not admitting that’s my signature on the shop’s release form. It could be a forgery. More scrambling for alternative defenses.
• What about the chain of custody for that computer’s hard drive? It’s very fishy. The information could well be fake. Lots of news media went with that defense for not reporting it: “we’re just not sure.” Of course, that’s not a defense for refusing to investigate it. That was their job, and they didn’t do it.
• The Post story about the computer is worthless because they got it from unreliable sources. Years later, CBS News confirmed that the computer’s contents were authentic.
• This stuff about Hunter’s computer has all the earmarks of a classic Russian disinformation campaign. So said 51 former US intelligence agents, many of them high-ranking and still closely connected to the intel community. Even today, they won’t admit they were wrong. Their weaselly defense is that “we didn’t actually say it was Russian disinformation, only that it had all the earmarks.” By that metric, it has all the earmarks of a classic CIA disinformation campaign.
• It definitely is Russian disinformation. That was Joe Biden’s public statement when the Post broke the story. He didn’t bother to mention “earmarks.”
• Okay, it really is Hunter’s computer. That’s what his lawyers finally seemed to say only to be called out and retract it. The lawyers managed to tie themselves in knots thanks to their scorched-earth PR campaign in anticipation of Hunter’s indictment. One of their stratagems is to threaten media outlets with lawsuits if they disclose anything on the laptop, claiming that information is private and belongs to Hunter. Unfortunately for Hunter’s team, that very threat seemed to acknowledge, for the first time, that the computer really was Hunter’s. “Oops. Not so fast,” said the lawyers. “We admit nothing. We’re not saying the computer belonged to Hunter. We’re just saying that any information on it is his personal information and you don’t have any right to share it.” Pretzel makers were embarrassed by these legal contortions.

Does the sleazy information on Hunter’s computer really matter? Only if it reveals something important about how the Biden family grifting operation worked and especially how Joe Biden contributed to it. What role did he play as vice president (and perhaps earlier as senator)? What did he know about Hunter’s contacts with foreign businesses? How did Joe’s actions in office contribute to the lucrative arrangements made by Hunter and Joe’s brothers? How were the profits shared? Remember, Joe has denied all knowledge of Hunter’s business affairs and, of course, denied profiting from them.

Hunter’s computer matters in another way, too. It reveals how deeply partisan the media has been, how determined they were to protect Joe Biden during the 2020 president campaign against an opponent they reviled. The mainstream media suppressed the laptop story after the New York Post broke it, two weeks before the election. Social media companies pitched in and did their part to kill the story. Together, they helped drag Joe Biden out of his basement lair and across the finish line.

It’s a sordid tale. And unlike the trial lawyer’s story about a dog bite, the joke seems to be on us.

By Charles Lipson

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma professor of political science emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security, and a Spectator contributing writer.