It was just a few months before Sen. Elizabeth Warren started running for president that the pleasant fiction that she was a woman of color completely collapsed.

In October 2018, Warren released a DNA test that definitively proved she was between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American — something she was under the impression exonerated her from all of those Fauxcahontas claims that had haunted her political career.

This was, um, a bit of a miscalculation.

Not only has the test provided the right with a solid 16 months of memes, but liberal Native American groups and others on the left were incensed at her use of genetic testing to win a petty argument about her place in POC-dom.

An apology tour gradually attenuated the anger, but it’s never really gone away.

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Whether or not this was somehow indicative of a larger problem with the Warren campaign when it comes to minority voters is a matter of opinion, but the fact is that a problem exists.

An August 2019, Pew Research Center poll found that, of the four top-tier candidates at that time, Warren had the whitest base — 71 percent, compared to 56 percent for Joe Biden and 49 percent for Bernie Sanders. (The fourth “top-tier” candidate then, California Sen. Kamala Harris, has since ended her run after a supernova cluster of bad decisions — but she was at 59 percent for whatever it’s worth.)

And yet, Warren’s made all the right noises. She’s proposed a series of executive actions that she says would boost the wages of women of color.

She’s talked about the dangers of “white nationalism,” whatever that might mean nowadays.

She’s gotten “squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who’s black, to act as a campaign surrogate to the black community. What’s not to like?

Plenty, if you’re a woman of color and working for Warren in Nevada.

Six women of color out of the 70-odd members of Warren’s campaign in the state have quit in recent months because of what they saw as a work culture where they felt marginalized, a Thursday article in Politico revealed.

“During the time I was employed with Nevada for Warren, there was definitely something wrong with the culture,” Megan Lewis, a field organizer who quit in December, said.

“I filed a complaint with HR, but the follow-up I received left me feeling as though I needed to make myself smaller or change who I was to fit into the office culture.”

RELATED: Warren Demands ‘Race-Conscious’ Laws, Officially Abandons Equality Before the Law

“I felt like a problem — like I was there to literally bring color into the space but not the knowledge and voice that comes with it,” another field organizer, who remained anonymous, said.

“We all were routinely silenced and not given a meaningful chance on the campaign. Complaints, comments, advice, and grievances were met with an earnest shake of the head and progressive buzzwords but not much else.”

A third woman of color who had left cosigned these descriptions without going on the record herself, while the other three declined to comment for the piece.

In a reaction that felt like a time-condensed version of its response to the DNA test controversy, the Warren campaign first handled the piece with a non-apology apology, followed by a thoroughly over-the-top apology once they realized how the original reaction sounded to the base.

First, the boilerplate statement that was included in the Politico article, in which a campaign spokeswoman didn’t contradict the claims made by the women but insisted that they didn’t represent the culture on the larger campaign: “We strive for an inclusive environment and work hard to learn and improve,” Kristen Orthman said in a statement.

“We have an organization of more than a thousand people, and whenever we hear concerns, we take them seriously. It’s important that everyone who is part of our team has a voice and can be heard. That’s why we are proud that we have a unionized staff and clear processes for issues to be addressed.”

Between Thursday afternoon, when the piece was published, and Thursday night, someone probably realized how that was going to go down, and the senator herself issued a more full-throated apology after a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire.

“I believe these women completely and without reservation and I apologize that they have had a bad experience on this campaign,” she told reporters, according to CNN.

“I also understand the long legacy of racism in this country and what it means and how it creates power dynamics and inequities that are toxic and dangerous. And that’s why it’s so important that we be constantly vigilant and determined to do better. I take personal responsibility for this and I’m working with my team to address these concerns.”

She also appeared on MSNBC Thursday night, where she similarly prostrated herself before the altar of intersectional regret.

“I believe these women without any equivocation and I apologize personally that they had a bad experience on the campaign,” she said. “I take responsibility for this, and I’m working with my team to address these concerns.”

The Politico article was the latest episode in the Democrats’ new sketch comedy series, “The Whitest Candidates U Know.”

It wasn’t quite as funny as the last one, in which former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who’s struggled to gain traction with black voters, appeared to corral some of his few black supporters in Iowa to stand in a line behind him during a victory speech (delivered before the vast majority of results come out) in the most obvious and hilarious attempt to make it seem as though his #CandidacySoWhite appealed to anyone outside of wine caves.

It also showed why Joe Biden — a guy who’s worked with legit segregationists on racial issues during his political career — still continues to enjoy the widest swath of African-American support in the Democratic field.

Time is the most valuable resource any Democratic candidate has at this point.

Money and favorable polling numbers can buy access to more time in the media spotlight, but there’s still only so many news cycles major networks can give you.

That’s why this is pretty much an intersectional torpedo to the Warren campaign.

In the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, the last thing her struggling candidacy needs to be talking about is how it treats its minority workers.

She’s almost certainly going to faceplant in the next two contests after New Hampshire — Nevada, where she’s cutting back resources, and South Carolina, where that lack of resonance with minority voters has continued to hurt her.

New Hampshire, therefore, is vitally important to keeping her campaign viable — but time’s running out for her in there, too.

Despite being from an adjacent state and a policy wonk in a contest where that’s generally an advantage, she’s lagging in a distant third-place tie with Joe Biden at 13 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Sanders and Buttigieg are sitting in first and second at 26 percent and 22.5 percent, respectively.

This, in short, is not the time to be offering endless apologies about allegations of a toxic campaign environment for women of color.

If you think she’s going to be talking about anything else during the next few days, your opinion of the situation is as wildly, inappropriately optimistic as that Warren campaign spokeswoman who thought that first “apology” she offered to Politico was really going to fly.

Just like that DNA test in October 2018, this is all Warren’s going to be asked about for quite some time. Unlike then, however, she doesn’t have 16 months before Democrats start voting to patch things up.

Now, they’ve already started casting their ballots and she’s only got a few days before a contest that could thoroughly break her campaign.

Short of a second DNA test just to make sure she wasn’t maybe, possibly 1/32nd Native American, I cannot possibly think of anything Warren needed less than this.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Do you believe Pelosi should be put in prison for her actions?

Convicted sex offenders in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia were granted permission to visit prostitutes in brothels as part of their “therapy”.

The Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) confirmed reports from German media that patients of a psychiatry clinic in the penal system of Lippstadt-Eickelborn were allowed to visit brothels, although the prostitutes themselves were not informed of the programme, Kronen Zeitung reports.

The visits were allegedly allowed in order for the sex offenders to gain experience with women and is not the first time such a policy has been implemented in Germany in the recent past.

According to the paper, the Osnabrück penal system in Lower Saxony tried a similar method in 2001, inviting a prostitute to a psychiatric clinic as part of an experiment to allow intellectually impaired sex offenders practice sexual intercourse without violence.

Both the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Green Party announced they would be submitting inquiries in Lower Saxony over the revelations.

Asylum Seeker Sentenced After Trying to Pay Prostitute with Photocopied Cash
https://t.co/EqkejDewRu

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 1, 2017

Prostitution is a legal practice in Germany but is still largely associated with gang crime and people trafficking.

In October of last year, German police raided gangs suspected of people trafficking in four different states in the Rhineland, Westphalia, Saarland, and Berlin. In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, police say around 10,000 people may be working for Arab clans linked to prostitution and drug trafficking.

Along with people trafficking, prostitution has attracted many asylum seekers in recent years, with Germany seeing a particular problem with underage asylum seekers selling their bodies for cash or for drugs.

In 2017, journalists Natalie Amiri and Anna Tillack spoke to a man in Berlin who claimed that men would engage ins ex acts with asylum seeker children in the asylum home where he stayed for as little as a pack of cigarettes while the asylum home workers would turn the other way.

Arab and Kurdish Crime Clans ‘Systematically Recruiting’ Refugees in Merkel’s Germany https://t.co/iNcQJwU4lK

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 16, 2018

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

Several members of the youth movement of the Swedish Left Party have accused police of facilitating racism by cracking down on gang crime in no-go areas in the city of Malmö.

Alma Lindén and Leia Wolke Wemmert of the Young Left claimed that police action could not solve the rising gang violence occurring in the city’s no-go suburbs, instead claiming that the current operations to crack down on violent gang crime were racist, Kvällsposten reports.

“The debate on crime is used today as a racist slogan on immigration and integration issues. Politicians blame the people who moved here in the hope of a better life for the problems the politicians themselves create,” the authors wrote.

Sweden PM Claims No Link Between Rising Gang Crime and Mass Migration https://t.co/ovC52Hoxa3

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 19, 2019

They went on to add that Operation Rimfrost, which began late last year to tackle rising gang violence, made ethnic minorities feel insecure and victims of racism, saying, “Many people feel that they can be called suspicious or even violent from the forces of law in their everyday lives, just because of how they look.”

“The police will therefore never contribute to more security in the suburbs, as they play a central role in racial oppression,” they added.

The city of Malmo has seen multiple gang-related shootings over the last year, including in December when a 25-year-old was shot dead. The young man’s older brother is a local gang leader and was previously convicted of murder.

Sweden PM Claims No Link Between Rising Gang Crime and Mass Migration https://t.co/ovC52Hoxa3

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 19, 2019

A poll released in December claimed that just eight per cent of Swedes thought the Social Democrat-led government in Stockholm could solve the rising problem of gang crime across the country, which also has seen more than 250 explosions and bombings in 2019.

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has claimed that there is no link between the rise of gang violence and mass migration.

“The segregation is because there is too low employment and too high unemployment in these areas. But that would have been the same regardless of who had lived there. If you put people born in Sweden under the same conditions, you get the same result,” he said in November.

Sweden: 9 in 10 Car Thefts Carried Out by Foreign Gangs https://t.co/P7N6TCkQIk

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 5, 2019

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

Do you think this virus can be stopped?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is demanding that the city of Austin act to address the issue of violence linked to its growing homeless population.

Austin, with a population of about 950,000, has about 2,500 people who are officially counted as homeless, NPR reported, athough Mayor Steve Adler told Fox News that about 7,000 homeless people pass through Austin at some time during the year. Last June, Austin ended a ban on camping within the city limits, then in October sought to limit the areas where the homeless would be allowed to camp.

However, in recent weeks, homeless individuals have been linked to a number of crimes.

In early January, a homeless man died after committing a series of knife attacks, one of which caused a fatality, according to ABC.

Last week, a fire at a vast camp under a bridge used by homeless individuals shut down the roadway above for hours, KVUE reported.

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Last month, a homeless woman was arrested after a series of stabbing in downtown Austin, KVUE reported. Abbott sounded off after that attack.

“City of Austin leaders have allowed lawlessness throughout the capital city that is resulting in violence against Austin residents, including those who are homeless,” Abbott said then.

“Last night’s tragedy, leaving three injured, is just the most recent instance of this violence. This rise in violence has corresponded with the revocation of the camping ban that the Austin City Council passed in June. Public endangerment and murder can no longer be tolerated because of the actions — and inactions — by City officials. Mayor Adler and the city council should re-instate the camping ban and restore the rule of law in Austin. The City’s gamble on these reckless policies has been a loser and must end now,” he said.

A few days later, another stabbing was reported, and another homeless individual was reportedly responsible, according to KEYE, triggering Abbott to tweet that if the city will not act, he will ask the state legislature to do so when it convenes next year.

“Yet ANOTHER stabbing in downtown Austin. Austin’s policies are not compassionate for the homeless or anyone else. Their policies are dangerous for everyone. You can expect the legislature to once again override Austin’s reckless policies,” he tweeted.

Yet ANOTHER stabbing in downtown Austin.

Austin’s policies are not compassionate for the homeless or anyone else.

Their policies are dangerous for everyone.

You can expect the legislature to once again override Austin’s reckless policies. #txlege https://t.co/3tsUecpgpv

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) February 1, 2020

Another tweet offered a recipe for fixing the problem.

“Fixing homelessness in ATX is easy. 1. Put public safety first. 2. Open large shelters that can accommodate > 200 people. 3. Provide mental health, drug addiction help + job training skills. 4. Then focus on long term housing. Austin doesn’t have the leadership to do this,” he tweeted.

RELATED: Breaking Report: Gunman Opens Fire in TX Church, Parishioners Respond with Own Weapons

Fixing homelessness in ATX is easy.

1. Put public safety first.

2. Open large shelters that can accommodate > 200 people.

3. Provide mental health, drug addiction help + job training skills.

4. Then focus on long term housing.

Austin doesn’t have the leadership to do this.

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) February 1, 2020

Abbott later tweeted that if the city won’t act, he would have to.

“Next step should be to reinstate the ban on camping and work with non-profit organizations to assist with shelters. That’s exactly what I will ask the Texas Legislature to do,” he wrote.

Next step should be to reinstate the ban on camping and work with non-profit organizations to assist with shelters.

That’s exactly what I will ask the Texas Legislature to do. https://t.co/rHtaDL4eql

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) February 6, 2020

Unsurprisingly, Adler has pushed back against Abbott’s comments.

“It’s similar to making the statement that immigrants are criminals. Neither of things are true. Both of them are false and harmful,” he said, noting that the city will spend $63 million to help the homeless.

“The city has identified dealing with the challenge of homelessness as the number one priority,” Adler said. “A lot of it is money helping to subsidize places for people to be, coming up with vouchers for hotels, providing rental assistance, providing programs to people before they become homeless.”

But one Austin resident said incidents with the homeless happen “all the time.”

“It’s a problem, I think there are definitely things that we need to do to help the situation,” Candace Cooper told Fox.

Fox News identified the Austin resident as both Candace Copper and Candace Cooper. The Western Journal chose to identify her as Cooper, that being the more common last name. — Ed. note

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

President Donald Trump’s campaign strategy came into sharp focus during the State of the Union address, and the Democrats are horrified at the mirror held up to their faces.

The campaign strategy has three components.  The president will tout the incredible record of achievement hidden by the media.  He will engage in sustained and aggressive outreach to minority voters who have been victimized the most by Democrat policies.  Finally, he will force the Democrats to defend the indefensible.  It is those last two components that left the Democrats stuck on stupid.

Frozen Face, whose attempt to be the equivalent of the prepubescent heckler making fart noises behind the teacher’s back was somewhat stymied by her inability to show any emotion, clearly planned her in-kind contribution to the Republicans long before the speech.

She was transformed into the equivalent of a toddler angrily holding her breath on national television because she knows that every lethal word is scoring true while she is powerless to do a thing about it.  The president has an amazing record to run on.  She has her failed impeachment gambit and crazy pen ceremony, ensuring that House Democrats have nothing to run on.

Consider a few of the indefensible Democrat positions that were artfully highlighted:

1. Socialism. One of the best lines in a speech loaded with them was “Socialism destroys nations.  But always remember: Freedom unifies the soul.”  The president’s team will hammer this theme between now and the election.  This issue creates a conundrum for Democrats in 2020.  The younger core of the party, largely indoctrinated at Marxist educational factories, is pining for socialism and will tolerate nothing less.  But many of the older voters they still need with a better understanding of history are horrified at the prospect.  The president needs to drive this issue home in the hopes of reaching history-illiterate younger voters because America is nearing a disastrous tipping point on this issue.  The speech also did a nice job of showing how socialism is an immediate threat to wiping out the private health plans of 180 million Americans.

 

2. Opposition to School Choice.  Poorer Americans, many of them minorities, are harmed disproportionately when forced to send their children to failing schools.  The Democrats, buried in the pockets of the teachers’ unions, have no room to maneuver on this issue.  The fiscal argument also strongly favors school choice since it is costing more by the year to send kids to public schools.  In the Northern Virginia area, where I live, it costs between $15,000 and close to $20,000, depending on the county, to educate each student every year.  To spend that much to send students into often unsafe environments where they are certain to fail is ludicrous.  As the president noted, “no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school.”  My only quibble is that schools are failing only when examined from an American perspective, since they are doing exactly what Democrats want, which is cranking out postmodern anti-American anti-religious future Democrat voters by the truckload.

 

3. Favoring noncitizens over Americans.  I’m not sure any issue so clearly illustrates Democrat extremism as this one.  In a country where we are already borrowing at an obscenely unsustainable rate, the idea of committing to “free” health care for noncitizens is the very definition of asinine.  Yet the Democrats fell over each other to box themselves into this corner during the earlier debates.  There is now a fundamental divide between Republicans and Democrats, best viewed as pro-American and anti-American.  One side views America as the greatest sovereign nation in the world, a beacon of liberty and freedom.  The other side views it as an abomination, a patriarchal, colonial, and racist toxic brew that can be remedied only through apology tours, elevating foreigners over Americans, and having no borders.  Thanks to academia’s influence, that message now reverberates beyond university faculty lounges.  In the Democrat-dominated suburbs in Northern Virginia, there is barely an American flag in sight.  In small towns in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, it is almost an anomaly to drive by a house that doesn’t display a flag.

 

4. Late-term abortions.  In my younger years, when I watched many of my close friends become Democrats, horror at abortion was the anchor that ensured I could never follow suit.  Nobody could convince me that abortion was anything other than the murder of an unborn child, which by its nature denies Americans their lives and liberty.  In a country where ultrasounds abound, there is no excuse for anyone not realizing that a third-term abortion is a horrible evil.  President Trump has emerged, to the surprise of many, as America’s greatest president in espousing and advancing a culture of life.  But running on the issue is also good politics.  The Democrats’ position here is beyond extreme, which is why they howl whenever it is highlighted.  Credit to the president’s team for pointing out the wonder of life in a child born at 21 weeks.

 

5. Support for “sanctuary” lawlessness.  Favoring hardened criminals over citizens isn’t just radical; it is also stupid.  As I’ve noted before, this is the issue that Republicans should be pounding in the suburbs.  Suburbanites who may be uneasy at the tone of some of the president’s comments or tweets, particularly as spun by the media, will be horrified when they realize that their families are being put in real danger by a party that is for tossing rapists, drug-dealers, and murderers back into their midst.  I live in one of these jurisdictions, so I’ve had a front-row seat to observe how quickly this can damage what were once model communities.  Elections are binary propositions.  There are plenty of people who don’t personally like the president who will vote for him when the other choice is somebody promising to put their families in danger.

 

6. Destruction of America’s Energy Industry.  The president pointed to the incredible achievement of energy independence under his watch, a reality once thought impossible.  This was a game-changer in that it provided a powerful economic boost to all Americans while also delivering a profound national security advantage, ensuring that America is no longer reliant on hostile regimes while weakening those regimes.  Left unsaid was that the Democrats have all promised to destroy this industry, gutting the economy and returning America to the equivalent of an addict under the sway of malevolent drug-pushers.

 

This brilliant State of the Union address was bristling with optimism and was unabashedly pro-American.  My vote for best line: ”In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny.”  It was the perfect contrast between a party that believes that America’s best days are in front of it and a party that thinks it needs to accelerate and manage America’s decline for the good of the world.

The speech signaled the president will tout his record while going on the attack on these six key vulnerabilities for the Democrats.  This is where the adoring Democrat media cocoon is about to smother them.  Because national media members applauded and egged on these positions instead of challenging them, Democrat candidates raced to become Bernie-lite and left themselves out on an anti-American limb.  It’s a little late to realize that voters won’t go for an inauthentic facsimile when a true believer is offering the same failed recipe.

The president will now serve Democrats the hemlock tea they ordered up with a smile, and no amount of robotically tearing up papers will save them.

Fletch Daniels can be found on Twitter at @fletchdaniels. 

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

President Donald Trump’s campaign strategy came into sharp focus during the State of the Union address, and the Democrats are horrified at the mirror held up to their faces.

The campaign strategy has three components.  The president will tout the incredible record of achievement hidden by the media.  He will engage in sustained and aggressive outreach to minority voters who have been victimized the most by Democrat policies.  Finally, he will force the Democrats to defend the indefensible.  It is those last two components that left the Democrats stuck on stupid.

Frozen Face, whose attempt to be the equivalent of the prepubescent heckler making fart noises behind the teacher’s back was somewhat stymied by her inability to show any emotion, clearly planned her in-kind contribution to the Republicans long before the speech.

She was transformed into the equivalent of a toddler angrily holding her breath on national television because she knows that every lethal word is scoring true while she is powerless to do a thing about it.  The president has an amazing record to run on.  She has her failed impeachment gambit and crazy pen ceremony, ensuring that House Democrats have nothing to run on.

Consider a few of the indefensible Democrat positions that were artfully highlighted:

1. Socialism. One of the best lines in a speech loaded with them was “Socialism destroys nations.  But always remember: Freedom unifies the soul.”  The president’s team will hammer this theme between now and the election.  This issue creates a conundrum for Democrats in 2020.  The younger core of the party, largely indoctrinated at Marxist educational factories, is pining for socialism and will tolerate nothing less.  But many of the older voters they still need with a better understanding of history are horrified at the prospect.  The president needs to drive this issue home in the hopes of reaching history-illiterate younger voters because America is nearing a disastrous tipping point on this issue.  The speech also did a nice job of showing how socialism is an immediate threat to wiping out the private health plans of 180 million Americans.

 

2. Opposition to School Choice.  Poorer Americans, many of them minorities, are harmed disproportionately when forced to send their children to failing schools.  The Democrats, buried in the pockets of the teachers’ unions, have no room to maneuver on this issue.  The fiscal argument also strongly favors school choice since it is costing more by the year to send kids to public schools.  In the Northern Virginia area, where I live, it costs between $15,000 and close to $20,000, depending on the county, to educate each student every year.  To spend that much to send students into often unsafe environments where they are certain to fail is ludicrous.  As the president noted, “no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school.”  My only quibble is that schools are failing only when examined from an American perspective, since they are doing exactly what Democrats want, which is cranking out postmodern anti-American anti-religious future Democrat voters by the truckload.

 

3. Favoring noncitizens over Americans.  I’m not sure any issue so clearly illustrates Democrat extremism as this one.  In a country where we are already borrowing at an obscenely unsustainable rate, the idea of committing to “free” health care for noncitizens is the very definition of asinine.  Yet the Democrats fell over each other to box themselves into this corner during the earlier debates.  There is now a fundamental divide between Republicans and Democrats, best viewed as pro-American and anti-American.  One side views America as the greatest sovereign nation in the world, a beacon of liberty and freedom.  The other side views it as an abomination, a patriarchal, colonial, and racist toxic brew that can be remedied only through apology tours, elevating foreigners over Americans, and having no borders.  Thanks to academia’s influence, that message now reverberates beyond university faculty lounges.  In the Democrat-dominated suburbs in Northern Virginia, there is barely an American flag in sight.  In small towns in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, it is almost an anomaly to drive by a house that doesn’t display a flag.

 

4. Late-term abortions.  In my younger years, when I watched many of my close friends become Democrats, horror at abortion was the anchor that ensured I could never follow suit.  Nobody could convince me that abortion was anything other than the murder of an unborn child, which by its nature denies Americans their lives and liberty.  In a country where ultrasounds abound, there is no excuse for anyone not realizing that a third-term abortion is a horrible evil.  President Trump has emerged, to the surprise of many, as America’s greatest president in espousing and advancing a culture of life.  But running on the issue is also good politics.  The Democrats’ position here is beyond extreme, which is why they howl whenever it is highlighted.  Credit to the president’s team for pointing out the wonder of life in a child born at 21 weeks.

 

5. Support for “sanctuary” lawlessness.  Favoring hardened criminals over citizens isn’t just radical; it is also stupid.  As I’ve noted before, this is the issue that Republicans should be pounding in the suburbs.  Suburbanites who may be uneasy at the tone of some of the president’s comments or tweets, particularly as spun by the media, will be horrified when they realize that their families are being put in real danger by a party that is for tossing rapists, drug-dealers, and murderers back into their midst.  I live in one of these jurisdictions, so I’ve had a front-row seat to observe how quickly this can damage what were once model communities.  Elections are binary propositions.  There are plenty of people who don’t personally like the president who will vote for him when the other choice is somebody promising to put their families in danger.

 

6. Destruction of America’s Energy Industry.  The president pointed to the incredible achievement of energy independence under his watch, a reality once thought impossible.  This was a game-changer in that it provided a powerful economic boost to all Americans while also delivering a profound national security advantage, ensuring that America is no longer reliant on hostile regimes while weakening those regimes.  Left unsaid was that the Democrats have all promised to destroy this industry, gutting the economy and returning America to the equivalent of an addict under the sway of malevolent drug-pushers.

 

This brilliant State of the Union address was bristling with optimism and was unabashedly pro-American.  My vote for best line: ”In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny.”  It was the perfect contrast between a party that believes that America’s best days are in front of it and a party that thinks it needs to accelerate and manage America’s decline for the good of the world.

The speech signaled the president will tout his record while going on the attack on these six key vulnerabilities for the Democrats.  This is where the adoring Democrat media cocoon is about to smother them.  Because national media members applauded and egged on these positions instead of challenging them, Democrat candidates raced to become Bernie-lite and left themselves out on an anti-American limb.  It’s a little late to realize that voters won’t go for an inauthentic facsimile when a true believer is offering the same failed recipe.

The president will now serve Democrats the hemlock tea they ordered up with a smile, and no amount of robotically tearing up papers will save them.

Fletch Daniels can be found on Twitter at @fletchdaniels. 

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

In contrast to the U.S. citizens who may have been exposed to the coronavirus, transported by the U.S. from China to U.S. military bases in California, willingly coming to isolation units and then being given humane care to ensure recovery, (and speaking gratefully for it) China is conducting mass arrests of anyone exposed to the coronavirus and taking them to camps. According to the Daily Mail:

Officials in protective suits are seen holding onto two people by their arms before a third more resistive man is picked up from the floor and carried away in one shocking clip shared online.

The footage, filmed in Wuhan, comes after China‘s Vice Premier Sun Chunlan called on a ‘people’s war’ against the fast-spreading epidemic.

Last week the country’s central government ordered the city – which is the epicentre of the virus – to round up all suspected patients as well as their close contacts in mass quarantine camps. 

You can see now why the exposed Americans have been so grateful to have been transported from Wuhan to here.

Video shared on social media show white-clad goons in hazmat suits dragging people by force, literally kicking and screaming, and tossing them in big pens together to wait it out. They’re treated like livestock, like videos of New Zealand farmers grabbing and tossing sheep for the shearing.

 

Another video of #China residents going very happily admitting themselves at the new state of the art hospital in #Wuhan. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Everything is under control, right? #coronaviruspic.twitter.com/cfeXcGE9hs

— Montana🕊Agent Applebutt (@AgentApplebutt2) February 8, 2020

 

It’s disturbing, because after all, these are sick people who’ve done nothing wrong, yet they’re being treated like criminals.

Of course, it’s true there is a deadly epidemic in China that has killed more than 700 people. It’s also true that victims who’ve been exposed do need to be moved to isolation units. There is a state interest in this, particularly in light of China being internationally isolated as a result of the epidemic. It’s also possible that some Chinese citizens, conditioned by socialism and dependent on the state for everything, don’t take it upon themselves to spare other people from contamination. There’s no civic culture in China.

One thing we do know, though, based on the videos, is that the Chinese don’t trust their government with their care. That would explain the resistance. As people exposed to illness, they also have an interest in getting well, just as the Chinese state has an interest in ending the impact of the epidemic. 

Who knows if these people will get care or a cure penned up together in camps, nominally to keep them from infecting others? How does throwing them all in together help each sufferer individually get well? Can you get well in a room full of other victims of an epidemic, coughing and transmitting? That may be the basis of the resistance to going to them – that the people aren’t convinced they’re going to get any sort of cure, and penned up with other sufferers, they might actually get sicker. Maybe they are reading this forced encampment as the state letting them all die together for the sake of the collective. After all, if anyone gets sick or dies in one of those places due to bad care, the state isn’t going to be held accountable.

It’s pretty chilling. Totalitarian states have little mercy for the sick and dying. 

Image credit: Twitter screen shot

 

 

In contrast to the U.S. citizens who may have been exposed to the coronavirus, transported by the U.S. from China to U.S. military bases in California, willingly coming to isolation units and then being given humane care to ensure recovery, (and speaking gratefully for it) China is conducting mass arrests of anyone exposed to the coronavirus and taking them to camps. According to the Daily Mail:

Officials in protective suits are seen holding onto two people by their arms before a third more resistive man is picked up from the floor and carried away in one shocking clip shared online.

The footage, filmed in Wuhan, comes after China‘s Vice Premier Sun Chunlan called on a ‘people’s war’ against the fast-spreading epidemic.

Last week the country’s central government ordered the city – which is the epicentre of the virus – to round up all suspected patients as well as their close contacts in mass quarantine camps. 

You can see now why the exposed Americans have been so grateful to have been transported from Wuhan to here.

Video shared on social media show white-clad goons in hazmat suits dragging people by force, literally kicking and screaming, and tossing them in big pens together to wait it out. They’re treated like livestock, like videos of New Zealand farmers grabbing and tossing sheep for the shearing.

 

Another video of #China residents going very happily admitting themselves at the new state of the art hospital in #Wuhan. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Everything is under control, right? #coronaviruspic.twitter.com/cfeXcGE9hs

— Montana🕊Agent Applebutt (@AgentApplebutt2) February 8, 2020

 

It’s disturbing, because after all, these are sick people who’ve done nothing wrong, yet they’re being treated like criminals.

Of course, it’s true there is a deadly epidemic in China that has killed more than 700 people. It’s also true that victims who’ve been exposed do need to be moved to isolation units. There is a state interest in this, particularly in light of China being internationally isolated as a result of the epidemic. It’s also possible that some Chinese citizens, conditioned by socialism and dependent on the state for everything, don’t take it upon themselves to spare other people from contamination. There’s no civic culture in China.

One thing we do know, though, based on the videos, is that the Chinese don’t trust their government with their care. That would explain the resistance. As people exposed to illness, they also have an interest in getting well, just as the Chinese state has an interest in ending the impact of the epidemic. 

Who knows if these people will get care or a cure penned up together in camps, nominally to keep them from infecting others? How does throwing them all in together help each sufferer individually get well? Can you get well in a room full of other victims of an epidemic, coughing and transmitting? That may be the basis of the resistance to going to them – that the people aren’t convinced they’re going to get any sort of cure, and penned up with other sufferers, they might actually get sicker. Maybe they are reading this forced encampment as the state letting them all die together for the sake of the collective. After all, if anyone gets sick or dies in one of those places due to bad care, the state isn’t going to be held accountable.

It’s pretty chilling. Totalitarian states have little mercy for the sick and dying. 

Image credit: Twitter screen shot