53percenter's Blog

Globalist-aligned business organizations with ties to the billionaire Koch brothers, the Bush dynasty, and Republican plutocrat donor class have dominated talks at the White House over a larger legal immigration deal.

Plans to overhaul the legal immigration system — where more than 1.2 million legal immigrants are admitted to the U.S. every year — have been led in the White House by adviser Jared Kushner and Brooke Rollins, formerly of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

As Breitbart News has reported, White House officials have floated two immigration deals in the last month: One that would give amnesty to nearly two million illegal aliens and another that would expand businesses’ ability to import foreign workers instead of hiring qualified Americans.

The groups consulted over the larger immigration deals include:

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• The Heritage Foundation
• Association of Builders and Contractors
• Faith and Freedom Coalition
• Council on National Policy
• George W. Bush Center
• Select Milk Producers
• Texas Public Policy Foundation
• Americans for Prosperity
• Libre Initiative
• League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
• Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

Business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Builders and Contractors, and the Koch brothers’ Koch Industries have opposed any cuts to legal immigration levels to boost Americans’ wages and prefer expanding employment visas so businesses have easy access to cheaper, foreign labor.

The Association of Builders and Contractors, for instance, have supported making it easier for foreign nationals to obtain green cards in the U.S., along with advocating for market-based visas where foreign workers would be allowed to take U.S. jobs so long as American industry claims there are no Americans available to fill working and middle-class jobs.

Advocacy groups like the George W. Bush Center, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and the Libre Initiative, LULAC, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation likewise have backed policy initiatives to make it easier for employers to outsource U.S. jobs to foreign workers, amnesty for illegal aliens, and an expansion of already historically high legal immigration levels.

The George W. Bush Center recently promoted plans that would allow businesses to import foreign workers as they wish, bypassing America’s working and middle-class workforce and depleting growing blue-collar U.S. wages.

GW Bush Center urges WH to open borders for business hiring. Imported labor will rush to fill white & blue-collar labor shortages, says center. IOW, flat wages/salaries for voters plus rising stocks/capital gains for donors. Of course Trump beat Jeb in ’16 https://t.co/1WrYkt2Bi9

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) February 26, 2019

Details of the larger immigration overhaul that White House advisers are reviewing have yet to be hammered out or released. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has hinted that he wants to increase legal immigration to the country — a policy that he has long advocated against.

In 2017, Trump endorsed Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. David Perdue’s (R-GA) RAISE Act to cut legal immigration levels in half to boost the job prospects of Americans out of the labor force and raise wages for the working and middle-class U.S. workers.

Increasing legal immigration would subject at least 13 million working-age Americans who are either unemployed, not in the labor force but want a job, or who are working part-time jobs but want a good-paying full-time job, to additional foreign job competition for lower wages.

The mass importation of legal immigrants — mostly due to President George H.W. Bush’s Immigration Act of 1990, which expanded legal immigration levels — diminishes job opportunities for the roughly four million young American graduates who enter the workforce every year wanting well-paying jobs.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

The latest Gallup Poll on February 22, 2019 has news that ought to be happy for conservatives.  In 43 states, conservatives outnumber liberals and in 6 states — Hawaii, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, and Washington — liberals outnumber conservatives.  California is evenly split.  The title of this article was actually better than most: “Conservatives Greatly Outnumber Liberals in 19 U.S. States.”

Those who have followed my articles over the last ten years know that every single polling organization — and practically all of these are leftist in tilt — show a conservative majority in America, and it has been the same over the last fifty years.  Many conservatives, perversely, find this good news as unlikely as if they were self-deluded leftists, but if the leftist establishment could possibly make the data produce a conservative minority, trust me they would.

Gallup, while it presents the data showing an overwhelming preponderance of conservative strength when the data are looked at on a state-by-state basis, uses the title of its articles announcing the data to downplay the big story.

So when Gallup Poll data in 2009 showed that every single state in America had more conservatives than liberals, surely, that would be the title of the article, but it was not.  Instead, the title of the article with the polling data was this earth-shaking news: “Political Ideology: ‘Conservative’ Label Prevails in the South.”  Wow!  Who would have ever thought that?

In 2010, when Gallup Poll data showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every state but Rhode Island, naturally, the title of the article in which Gallup presented this data was “Wyoming, Mississippi and Utah rank as most conservative states.  The District of Columbia and four New England states rank as most liberal.”  Aside from the fact that three of those four New England states had more conservatives than liberals and that the District of Columbia is not a state…

In 2011, when the Gallup Poll data showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in all of the 50 states, Gallup boldly announced: “Mississippi rates as Most Conservative US State.”  Which title seems to give more information: the one published by Gallup or this: “Conservatives Outnumber Liberals in Every State of the Union”?

In 2013, the Gallup Poll on the ideological composition of states showed that every state except Rhode Island and Massachusetts had more conservatives than liberals.  So, naturally, the title of the Gallup Poll article was: “Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming Most Conservative States.  Americans slightly less conservative, slightly more liberal.”

In 2016, when Gallup data showed that only four states — New York, Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts — had more liberals than conservatives, the title of the Gallup article was “Wyoming, North Dakota and Mississippi Most Conservative,” which was hardly a shock to anyone.  Gallup, again, chose to ignore a big story for an essentially meaningless title to an article in which the polling data revealed a story the ordinary American would never have suspected. 

The bottom line is always the same: polling organizations are simply another arm of the leftist establishment, and they employ whatever is needed to marginalize or minimize conservatism.  That is why all of the polls by all the polling organizations downplay what their own data show. 

What is most perverse, though, is how many conservatives scoff  at this data, which, for more than fifty years, in every single poll conducted by many different polling organization, have shown that conservatives greatly outnumber liberals.

The usual response is something like this: “Americans like the goodies they get from Washington and so don’t really know what conservatism means.  The data are meaningless.”  We ought to accept these polls, however, for several different reasons: (1) the polling data stretch back more than half a century and include every poll; (2) these polling organizations are establish leftist, so, if anything, the polling is skewed to find a liberal majority, which it doesn’t; (3) respondents nearly always have the option of “moderate” or “don’t know,” which means that the respondents are specifically selecting conservatism as a choice; (4) conservatism has been demonized during these fifty years, so choosing “conservative” takes courage; and (5) even when conservatism is separated into “social” and “economic” conservatism, the results are the same.

There is no reason, really, to question the fact that, if anything, the conservative advantage is greater than the polling data suggest.  We ought to be happy with the grudgingly given good news in these polls.  When we start seeing ourselves the way the left wants us to be, then we turn victory into defeat.

The latest Gallup Poll on February 22, 2019 has news that ought to be happy for conservatives.  In 43 states, conservatives outnumber liberals and in 6 states — Hawaii, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, and Washington — liberals outnumber conservatives.  California is evenly split.  The title of this article was actually better than most: “Conservatives Greatly Outnumber Liberals in 19 U.S. States.”

Those who have followed my articles over the last ten years know that every single polling organization — and practically all of these are leftist in tilt — show a conservative majority in America, and it has been the same over the last fifty years.  Many conservatives, perversely, find this good news as unlikely as if they were self-deluded leftists, but if the leftist establishment could possibly make the data produce a conservative minority, trust me they would.

Gallup, while it presents the data showing an overwhelming preponderance of conservative strength when the data are looked at on a state-by-state basis, uses the title of its articles announcing the data to downplay the big story.

So when Gallup Poll data in 2009 showed that every single state in America had more conservatives than liberals, surely, that would be the title of the article, but it was not.  Instead, the title of the article with the polling data was this earth-shaking news: “Political Ideology: ‘Conservative’ Label Prevails in the South.”  Wow!  Who would have ever thought that?

In 2010, when Gallup Poll data showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every state but Rhode Island, naturally, the title of the article in which Gallup presented this data was “Wyoming, Mississippi and Utah rank as most conservative states.  The District of Columbia and four New England states rank as most liberal.”  Aside from the fact that three of those four New England states had more conservatives than liberals and that the District of Columbia is not a state…

In 2011, when the Gallup Poll data showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in all of the 50 states, Gallup boldly announced: “Mississippi rates as Most Conservative US State.”  Which title seems to give more information: the one published by Gallup or this: “Conservatives Outnumber Liberals in Every State of the Union”?

In 2013, the Gallup Poll on the ideological composition of states showed that every state except Rhode Island and Massachusetts had more conservatives than liberals.  So, naturally, the title of the Gallup Poll article was: “Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming Most Conservative States.  Americans slightly less conservative, slightly more liberal.”

In 2016, when Gallup data showed that only four states — New York, Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts — had more liberals than conservatives, the title of the Gallup article was “Wyoming, North Dakota and Mississippi Most Conservative,” which was hardly a shock to anyone.  Gallup, again, chose to ignore a big story for an essentially meaningless title to an article in which the polling data revealed a story the ordinary American would never have suspected. 

The bottom line is always the same: polling organizations are simply another arm of the leftist establishment, and they employ whatever is needed to marginalize or minimize conservatism.  That is why all of the polls by all the polling organizations downplay what their own data show. 

What is most perverse, though, is how many conservatives scoff  at this data, which, for more than fifty years, in every single poll conducted by many different polling organization, have shown that conservatives greatly outnumber liberals.

The usual response is something like this: “Americans like the goodies they get from Washington and so don’t really know what conservatism means.  The data are meaningless.”  We ought to accept these polls, however, for several different reasons: (1) the polling data stretch back more than half a century and include every poll; (2) these polling organizations are establish leftist, so, if anything, the polling is skewed to find a liberal majority, which it doesn’t; (3) respondents nearly always have the option of “moderate” or “don’t know,” which means that the respondents are specifically selecting conservatism as a choice; (4) conservatism has been demonized during these fifty years, so choosing “conservative” takes courage; and (5) even when conservatism is separated into “social” and “economic” conservatism, the results are the same.

There is no reason, really, to question the fact that, if anything, the conservative advantage is greater than the polling data suggest.  We ought to be happy with the grudgingly given good news in these polls.  When we start seeing ourselves the way the left wants us to be, then we turn victory into defeat.

When most Americans think of lynching, they summon images of the horrific murders of American blacks, particularly in the years of the Jim Crow South.  To describe such murders as “bias-motivated acts of terror,” as Cory Booker has, would certainly be accurate.  ”This bill,” Booker says, “will not undo the damage,” but it “will acknowledge the wrongs in our history.  It will honor the memories of those brutally killed.”

So, when Senate Democrats offered their proposed new law, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018, I had assumed that it would be a symbolic congressional action to recognize these injustices that took place and to honor the victims.  Considering that the act passed the Senate unanimously, that’s likely what most senators also believed.

But that’s not what the act is, and that’s certainly not its intent.  The real purpose of the act appears to be the legal redefining of the word “lynching” to include a include a much broader scope of lesser crimes, and to grow the federal government’s power to prosecute these lesser crimes that it includes in its new definition.

Lynching is not a problem in the United States anymore, and the language of the act affirms that fact unequivocally.  The act cites that at least “4,742 people, predominantly black African-Americans, were reported lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968.”  

The act then goes on to describe efforts by Congress before 1968 to “end lynching,” and it also references its efforts since 1968 to “apologize to the victims of lynching and their descendants.”  But never once does the initial “findings” section of the act suggest that acts of lynching are still prevalent, therefore requiring new powers or correction today, because no data as to lynching in America are provided beyond the year of 1968.

These numbers cited appear to have been drawn from a study by the Tuskegee Institute, which defines lynching thusly: “There must be legal evidence that a person was killed.  That person must have met death illegally.  A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing.  The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race or tradition.”

So even in the definition used by the only study that the act cites, there is admission that “lynching” is not defined explicitly as a race-related crime.  That same study finds that nearly 1,300 whites were lynched in that same timeframe who likely weren’t murdered because they were white.

Consider the lynching of the notorious Ruggles brothers.  In May of 1892, brothers John and Charles Ruggles were captured after robbing a stagecoach in Northern California.  While they were imprisoned in Redding, California, it had become apparent that the two young outlaws were quite the hit with the ladies around town, who brought the men flowers, cakes, and “even offers of marriage.”  That didn’t sit too well with other men around town, so four days before their official trial, a group of masked men grabbed them from their cell in Redding and hanged them from a derrick without trial.

That is a perfectly fitting example of a lynching, albeit not one that most would conjure when hearing the word.  The point is, the word has always had a specific, practical meaning, and it is nothing like the one Senate Democrats are presenting.

Here’s something interesting to consider.  The alleged attack against Jussie Smollett would certainly not, in the commonly understood definition throughout history, be considered a “lynching.”  But it would fit the definition of a “lynching” in the Democrats’ newly proposed law.

The act appropriates for the federal government the right to completely remove the most basic requirements for a crime to be defined as a “lynching,” now declaring that a “lynching” is any act where “2 or more persons willfully cause bodily injury to any other person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person.”  According to this definition, a Hasidic Jew being punched by two black guys is now to be defined by  the same word we’ve used for decades to describe a mob of racist whites hanging an innocent black man.

The language of the act then becomes very careful.  It continues with a separate clause defining lynching to include attacks based upon the “gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person.”  That language mirrors, verbatim, that used in the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.  The only difference is that one or more people committing to such an attack is a “hate crime,” according to the previous legislation’s description of the crime.  Now, when two or more people do the same thing, it’s a “lynching.”

Some Americans took notice of the illogical inclusion of attacks against gays or transgenders as an example of “lynching.”  After all, isn’t this bill ostensibly meant to “honor the victims” of the actual travesty of lynching in America?  And there is not one cited historical precedent in the bill of lynching suffered by homosexuals or transgenders. 

Activist Tariq Nasheed went so far as to suggest that the attack against Jussie Smollett, a black gay man, aligns too perfectly with these added non sequiturs to address the “lynching” of gay Americans.  He suggests that Kamala Harris was involved in Smollett’s orchestrating the hoax, ostensibly to justify the inclusion of language defining any attack “meant to do bodily harm” by “2 or more people” due to the victim’s sexual orientation as a “lynching.”

The coincidences of Jussie Smollett’s alleged attack aligning perfectly with the curious language of Democrats’ proposed anti-lynching law don’t end there.

It is broadly imagined by the proponents of limitless government expansion that regulating crimes of race-related bias is a federally protected power that derives from the Thirteenth Amendment’s allowing Congress the power to eliminate the “badges, incidents, and relics” of slavery.  But the federal power to prosecute crimes motivated by non-race-related bias relies primarily upon the Commerce Clause.

Therefore, the act also includes the same ridiculous caveats as previous federal hate crime legislation to justify such intrusion into the jurisdiction of the states.

For any of these attacks against a homosexual or transgender person to be deemed a “lynching,” and therefore federally prosecutable under the new law, the defendant or victim must be traveling “across State or national lines” or utilize a “channel, facility, or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce in connection” to the crime, or using a “a firearm, dangerous weapon, explosive or incendiary device,” or interfering “with commercial or other economic activity in which the victim is engaged at the time” of the attack.

That same language, again, exists almost verbatim in the 2009 Hate Crime Prevention Act.  Here’s what’s new: according to the “Justice for the Victims of Lynching Act,” if the attack occurs “during the course of, or as a result of,” the “defendant or the victim … using a phone, the internet,” or “the mail,” then the crime might now be subject to federal prosecution under the new law.

Jussie Smollett claimed to be on the phone with his manager when he was allegedly attacked.  Since he claimed that he was attacked for his race, this crime would be subject to federal prosecution under the new law for that alone — again, due to law’s assumption of federal jurisdiction by the Thirteenth Amendment.  But the fact that he was on the phone, and that the alleged attackers could be seen as interfering with his “economic activity,” would make the fact that he was allegedly attacked for his sexual orientation also federally prosecutable for that reason.

While it may signify nothing more, there are marvelous coincidences in the circumstances of Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax and the circumstances described in the language of the act, which would legally deem it the “modern day lynching” that Kamala Harris immediately claimed it was. 

It is not hyperbole to say that this language in the Democrats’ proposed law makes a mockery of every victim of an actual lynching in America’s history.  They are using the horrific legacy of lynching against blacks in the Jim Crow South to advance a political agenda that has nothing to do with honoring the murdered victims of historical racism and everything to do with advancing federal power and identity politics at the expense of the memory of the true historical victims of racism.

But I have to admit, it’s pretty brilliant of them, politically.  It has become sadly apparent that Congress doesn’t read the legislation it considers.  Since no one will read the bill, how could anyone possibly be against a “Justice for the Victims of Lynching Act”?

William Sullivan blogs at Political Palaver and can be followed on Twitter.

When most Americans think of lynching, they summon images of the horrific murders of American blacks, particularly in the years of the Jim Crow South.  To describe such murders as “bias-motivated acts of terror,” as Cory Booker has, would certainly be accurate.  ”This bill,” Booker says, “will not undo the damage,” but it “will acknowledge the wrongs in our history.  It will honor the memories of those brutally killed.”

So, when Senate Democrats offered their proposed new law, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018, I had assumed that it would be a symbolic congressional action to recognize these injustices that took place and to honor the victims.  Considering that the act passed the Senate unanimously, that’s likely what most senators also believed.

But that’s not what the act is, and that’s certainly not its intent.  The real purpose of the act appears to be the legal redefining of the word “lynching” to include a include a much broader scope of lesser crimes, and to grow the federal government’s power to prosecute these lesser crimes that it includes in its new definition.

Lynching is not a problem in the United States anymore, and the language of the act affirms that fact unequivocally.  The act cites that at least “4,742 people, predominantly black African-Americans, were reported lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968.”  

The act then goes on to describe efforts by Congress before 1968 to “end lynching,” and it also references its efforts since 1968 to “apologize to the victims of lynching and their descendants.”  But never once does the initial “findings” section of the act suggest that acts of lynching are still prevalent, therefore requiring new powers or correction today, because no data as to lynching in America are provided beyond the year of 1968.

These numbers cited appear to have been drawn from a study by the Tuskegee Institute, which defines lynching thusly: “There must be legal evidence that a person was killed.  That person must have met death illegally.  A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing.  The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race or tradition.”

So even in the definition used by the only study that the act cites, there is admission that “lynching” is not defined explicitly as a race-related crime.  That same study finds that nearly 1,300 whites were lynched in that same timeframe who likely weren’t murdered because they were white.

Consider the lynching of the notorious Ruggles brothers.  In May of 1892, brothers John and Charles Ruggles were captured after robbing a stagecoach in Northern California.  While they were imprisoned in Redding, California, it had become apparent that the two young outlaws were quite the hit with the ladies around town, who brought the men flowers, cakes, and “even offers of marriage.”  That didn’t sit too well with other men around town, so four days before their official trial, a group of masked men grabbed them from their cell in Redding and hanged them from a derrick without trial.

That is a perfectly fitting example of a lynching, albeit not one that most would conjure when hearing the word.  The point is, the word has always had a specific, practical meaning, and it is nothing like the one Senate Democrats are presenting.

Here’s something interesting to consider.  The alleged attack against Jussie Smollett would certainly not, in the commonly understood definition throughout history, be considered a “lynching.”  But it would fit the definition of a “lynching” in the Democrats’ newly proposed law.

The act appropriates for the federal government the right to completely remove the most basic requirements for a crime to be defined as a “lynching,” now declaring that a “lynching” is any act where “2 or more persons willfully cause bodily injury to any other person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person.”  According to this definition, a Hasidic Jew being punched by two black guys is now to be defined by  the same word we’ve used for decades to describe a mob of racist whites hanging an innocent black man.

The language of the act then becomes very careful.  It continues with a separate clause defining lynching to include attacks based upon the “gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person.”  That language mirrors, verbatim, that used in the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.  The only difference is that one or more people committing to such an attack is a “hate crime,” according to the previous legislation’s description of the crime.  Now, when two or more people do the same thing, it’s a “lynching.”

Some Americans took notice of the illogical inclusion of attacks against gays or transgenders as an example of “lynching.”  After all, isn’t this bill ostensibly meant to “honor the victims” of the actual travesty of lynching in America?  And there is not one cited historical precedent in the bill of lynching suffered by homosexuals or transgenders. 

Activist Tariq Nasheed went so far as to suggest that the attack against Jussie Smollett, a black gay man, aligns too perfectly with these added non sequiturs to address the “lynching” of gay Americans.  He suggests that Kamala Harris was involved in Smollett’s orchestrating the hoax, ostensibly to justify the inclusion of language defining any attack “meant to do bodily harm” by “2 or more people” due to the victim’s sexual orientation as a “lynching.”

The coincidences of Jussie Smollett’s alleged attack aligning perfectly with the curious language of Democrats’ proposed anti-lynching law don’t end there.

It is broadly imagined by the proponents of limitless government expansion that regulating crimes of race-related bias is a federally protected power that derives from the Thirteenth Amendment’s allowing Congress the power to eliminate the “badges, incidents, and relics” of slavery.  But the federal power to prosecute crimes motivated by non-race-related bias relies primarily upon the Commerce Clause.

Therefore, the act also includes the same ridiculous caveats as previous federal hate crime legislation to justify such intrusion into the jurisdiction of the states.

For any of these attacks against a homosexual or transgender person to be deemed a “lynching,” and therefore federally prosecutable under the new law, the defendant or victim must be traveling “across State or national lines” or utilize a “channel, facility, or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce in connection” to the crime, or using a “a firearm, dangerous weapon, explosive or incendiary device,” or interfering “with commercial or other economic activity in which the victim is engaged at the time” of the attack.

That same language, again, exists almost verbatim in the 2009 Hate Crime Prevention Act.  Here’s what’s new: according to the “Justice for the Victims of Lynching Act,” if the attack occurs “during the course of, or as a result of,” the “defendant or the victim … using a phone, the internet,” or “the mail,” then the crime might now be subject to federal prosecution under the new law.

Jussie Smollett claimed to be on the phone with his manager when he was allegedly attacked.  Since he claimed that he was attacked for his race, this crime would be subject to federal prosecution under the new law for that alone — again, due to law’s assumption of federal jurisdiction by the Thirteenth Amendment.  But the fact that he was on the phone, and that the alleged attackers could be seen as interfering with his “economic activity,” would make the fact that he was allegedly attacked for his sexual orientation also federally prosecutable for that reason.

While it may signify nothing more, there are marvelous coincidences in the circumstances of Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax and the circumstances described in the language of the act, which would legally deem it the “modern day lynching” that Kamala Harris immediately claimed it was. 

It is not hyperbole to say that this language in the Democrats’ proposed law makes a mockery of every victim of an actual lynching in America’s history.  They are using the horrific legacy of lynching against blacks in the Jim Crow South to advance a political agenda that has nothing to do with honoring the murdered victims of historical racism and everything to do with advancing federal power and identity politics at the expense of the memory of the true historical victims of racism.

But I have to admit, it’s pretty brilliant of them, politically.  It has become sadly apparent that Congress doesn’t read the legislation it considers.  Since no one will read the bill, how could anyone possibly be against a “Justice for the Victims of Lynching Act”?

William Sullivan blogs at Political Palaver and can be followed on Twitter.

Wait, I thought colonization was imperial, racist, and white and was wrong because it denied the people residing in those lands their right to self-determination?  Oh, I see. It’s okay just as long as progressive, imperious, white guys do it to sub-human conservatives who have tilled the land and run their ranches for generations. 

It should make anyone pretty uncomfortable that one class of people in a country has the hubris to believe they need to rescue poor, uneducated, toothless, MAGA-infected, Tea Party troglodytes and turn them into enlightened, tolerant, intellectually superior beings made in their progressive image. 

In his own words (and I apologize for any typos in this transcript, but I just couldn’t keep listening to this drivel over and over to ensure perfection), Bill lays out, in all seriousness, that America has a “spatial geographic inequality” problem.   

[This] means that the most affluent and educated people are clustered in just a few cities…. The blue parts of America are having a big prosperity party while that big sea of red feels like their invitation got lost in the mail. And they still use the mail.  They turn on the TV and all the shows take place in a few hip cities. There’s no Real Housewives of Toledo or CSI Lubbock.  There are no red carpets in Wyoming and no one ever asks you “Who are you wearing”?  Because the answer is always “Target.” 

There are two Americas and it seems like one is where all the cool jobs are, where people drive Teslas and eat artisanal ice cream.  We have orchestras and theater districts and world class shopping.  We have Chef Wolfgang Puck.   They have Chef Boyardee.  Our roofs have solar panels.  Theirs have last year’s Christmas lights.  We’ve got legal bud.  They’ve got Bud….  The flyover states have become the passed over states.  That’s why red state voters are so pissed off.  They don’t hate us.  They want to be us….  How do I know this? Because 238 cities and regions submitted proposals to Amazon for the company to locate in their area; all desperate for jobs that don’t involve guarding prisons and murdering chickens.  And Amazon picked two places that didn’t need them at all [That would be Virginia and New York].  Places where prosperity already was.  Bezos:  you’re worth $130 billion. Take one for the team. Stop playing cities off against one another and help a dying one come back to life….

But if liberals are serious about winning elections, they have to start recolonizing the parts of the country they’ve abandoned.  Mississippi is the poorest state in the country.  Amazon could buy the whole state and rename it Amazippi.  If we keep leaving the red states behind, they’re going to keep getting angrier and crazier…. When Amazon moves to West Virginia, people get better jobs that don’t give them black lung.  The locals meet people of different races and backgrounds and sexual orientations.  None of whom kill them.  They find out gays don’t ruin anyone’s marriage but they do improve the karaoke scene.  A yoga studio opens up.  Then an art gallery.  A gym that admits women.  Then one of those trendy bars….  Asians come and open a Chinese Restaurant.  Then the Jews come because there is a Chinese Restaurant and before you know it there is legal weed and decent health care and the schools are teaching science again.

Where to begin?  Aside from the fact there is some good ole stereotyping about gays, Jews, and Asians that only guys like Bill Maher and Joe Biden can get away with and the rest of us can’t, there’s a whole lotta stereotyping about Middle America and, I don’t think Bill is up on his stats.  The states he sees as the most prosperous — like California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois — aren’t doing so well these days.  Businesses are leaving traditional blue states in droves and taking their tax dollars and jobs to the nearest red states.  [Sadly, they bring with them a lot of employees who embrace blue state policies, the same ones that got them into trouble “back home” in the first place. It doesn’t take long for them to infect the body politic in the red states they now inhabit with their failed liberalism.] 

The fact is, New York was dying for that Amazon pick-me-up. Long Island City needed those high-paying jobs and the collateral businesses that would spring up to meet consumer demands — like gas stations so we can kill the Earth, dentists to replace our missing teeth, affordable stores like Target so we can dress up for the Red Carpet, fancy coffee shops where we can talk about “who we wore on the Red Carpet,” and grocery stores that sell pantry staples like Chef Boyardee because we can’t afford to eat at any of Wolfie Puck’s restaurants. 

New York is prosperous only for the wealthiest, the most elite — like you, Bill.  Maybe if you got out of your Tesla bubble every once-in-a-while and drove upstate in New York or downstate in Illinois or in the Central Valley of California, you’d see the economic and cultural devastation.  Those smart states are actually pretty stupid, dying under the weight of trillions in unfunded pension liabilities.  The major cities you laud?  Even the major cities in traditionally red states are riddled with crime, drugs, poverty, and cultural decline.  That education you want to impose on the putrid masses stuck in the corn fields, doesn’t exist in any major city in the country — unless you are extraordinarily wealthy or extremely lucky and win the school lottery. 

You might not feel it or see it because your life is so cushy, Bill, but those states and cities that are so progressive (and broken) are exclusively run by your people.  Y’all have become the colonizers, the imperialists, the totalitarians-in-training. 

And let’s talk about “cool” jobs.  Not everyone wants to be a hipster tech drone tip-toeing through piles of human feces on the way to work in San Francisco.  A lot of people want to farm.  They want to work with their hands.  The want to own small businesses in their small towns where everybody knows their name.  Millions of Americans shy away from the corporate urban grind and long for the simplicity Small Town USA has to offer.  I know for you that’s just a silly euphemism for the “basket of deplorables” they really are, clinging to their guns and Bible propaganda, but who is to say your propaganda will be any better?

Bill, get rid of Middle America, get rid of the MAGA chapeaus, re-colonize the blue states, and who will build your Tesla?  Who will fuel your energy needs?  Who will install your solar panels?  Who will truck your wine in from Napa?  Who will teach your children, mow your lawn, build your pool, and paint your house? 

Ya like that artisanal ice cream?  If we gotta ax the farting cows and keep driving farmers out of business — the bulk of whom, even in California, are conservatives — who will provide you with the ingredients to make your yuppie foods?  Ya ain’t gonna git much in the way of orchestras and theatrical productions in your thee-ater districts, without the men and women who do all of the unsexy stuff — the electricians, the stage hands, the folks who actually build the sets, the little people who work in the ticket booths, the make-up artists, the faceless musicians in the pit.  The waiters and kitchen help in any restaurant are average people, Bill.  You want your food cooked up jest raight, ye bitter keep yer pie hole closed.  Someone who hears this shtick just maght spit in yer high-falutin’ grub. 

Yes, there are people in the rural areas of even your blue states, who work in prisons and slaughter houses.  They should be applauded, not ridiculed and denigrated.  They keep us safe and feed us. 

They keep you safe and feed you.

When the SHTF, Bill — whether an EMP, a natural disaster, an epidemic or you don’t win an Emmy and go wah wah wah all the way home (please, don’t come back to New Jersey; stay in La La Land) —  how are you going to survive?  The people you make fun of?  They know how to grow crops and raise animals.  They know how to make a fire, how electricity works, how to plumb.   They can build a house, make a table, craft a wagon.  Without the very people you mock, you would starve or freeze to death.

“Who” you wear, what you drive, where you eat, and how much you think of yourself isn’t as important to the people you despise, as it is to you and your pals.  You have become the very aloof, self-absorbed kind of aristocrats, who care more about their food, drink, dress and baubles than the miserable masses they claim to want to uplift.  Yet, your kind denies them the very jobs and opportunities for prosperity from which you yourselves have benefitted. One wonders, when you re-colonize the red zones, will you lop off the heads of those of us who resist?

A small word of advice from one of little brain.  You shouldn’t underestimate the people you try to re-colonize.  We have backbone.  We have grit.  We are tenacious. We are the kind of people who will fight for our rights, our freedoms, our individuality, our families, our religion, and our culture.  And most of all, our country.  We will never give up.  We will never give in.  

Keep smoking all that weed, Bill.  One thing about stoners is once they stop munching and start talking, they truly believe they are brilliantly pontificating on a topic, when in fact they just sound really dumb. 

(And I’m not sure you really want schools to start teaching science in school again, Bill, because then all of these really screwed up, anxiety-ridden millennials will find out — shhh! — there really are only two genders.)

On his HBO show Real Time last Friday, Bill Maher viciously took down red cities, red counties, red states, and red MAGA hat-wearing Americans in his shtick criticizing Amazon for telling New York State to take the 20,000+ jobs it would have brought to the Big Apple and shove ‘em.  Instead, he wants Amazon to turn needy red states like Nebraska into the next Silicon Valley — because it would bring them jobs and prosperity and…would eventually turn those states blue by “re-colonizing” them. 

Wait, I thought colonization was imperial, racist, and white and was wrong because it denied the people residing in those lands their right to self-determination?  Oh, I see. It’s okay just as long as progressive, imperious, white guys do it to sub-human conservatives who have tilled the land and run their ranches for generations. 

It should make anyone pretty uncomfortable that one class of people in a country has the hubris to believe they need to rescue poor, uneducated, toothless, MAGA-infected, Tea Party troglodytes and turn them into enlightened, tolerant, intellectually superior beings made in their progressive image. 

In his own words (and I apologize for any typos in this transcript, but I just couldn’t keep listening to this drivel over and over to ensure perfection), Bill lays out, in all seriousness, that America has a “spatial geographic inequality” problem.   

[This] means that the most affluent and educated people are clustered in just a few cities…. The blue parts of America are having a big prosperity party while that big sea of red feels like their invitation got lost in the mail. And they still use the mail.  They turn on the TV and all the shows take place in a few hip cities. There’s no Real Housewives of Toledo or CSI Lubbock.  There are no red carpets in Wyoming and no one ever asks you “Who are you wearing”?  Because the answer is always “Target.” 

There are two Americas and it seems like one is where all the cool jobs are, where people drive Teslas and eat artisanal ice cream.  We have orchestras and theater districts and world class shopping.  We have Chef Wolfgang Puck.   They have Chef Boyardee.  Our roofs have solar panels.  Theirs have last year’s Christmas lights.  We’ve got legal bud.  They’ve got Bud….  The flyover states have become the passed over states.  That’s why red state voters are so pissed off.  They don’t hate us.  They want to be us….  How do I know this? Because 238 cities and regions submitted proposals to Amazon for the company to locate in their area; all desperate for jobs that don’t involve guarding prisons and murdering chickens.  And Amazon picked two places that didn’t need them at all [That would be Virginia and New York].  Places where prosperity already was.  Bezos:  you’re worth $130 billion. Take one for the team. Stop playing cities off against one another and help a dying one come back to life….

But if liberals are serious about winning elections, they have to start recolonizing the parts of the country they’ve abandoned.  Mississippi is the poorest state in the country.  Amazon could buy the whole state and rename it Amazippi.  If we keep leaving the red states behind, they’re going to keep getting angrier and crazier…. When Amazon moves to West Virginia, people get better jobs that don’t give them black lung.  The locals meet people of different races and backgrounds and sexual orientations.  None of whom kill them.  They find out gays don’t ruin anyone’s marriage but they do improve the karaoke scene.  A yoga studio opens up.  Then an art gallery.  A gym that admits women.  Then one of those trendy bars….  Asians come and open a Chinese Restaurant.  Then the Jews come because there is a Chinese Restaurant and before you know it there is legal weed and decent health care and the schools are teaching science again.

Where to begin?  Aside from the fact there is some good ole stereotyping about gays, Jews, and Asians that only guys like Bill Maher and Joe Biden can get away with and the rest of us can’t, there’s a whole lotta stereotyping about Middle America and, I don’t think Bill is up on his stats.  The states he sees as the most prosperous — like California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois — aren’t doing so well these days.  Businesses are leaving traditional blue states in droves and taking their tax dollars and jobs to the nearest red states.  [Sadly, they bring with them a lot of employees who embrace blue state policies, the same ones that got them into trouble “back home” in the first place. It doesn’t take long for them to infect the body politic in the red states they now inhabit with their failed liberalism.] 

The fact is, New York was dying for that Amazon pick-me-up. Long Island City needed those high-paying jobs and the collateral businesses that would spring up to meet consumer demands — like gas stations so we can kill the Earth, dentists to replace our missing teeth, affordable stores like Target so we can dress up for the Red Carpet, fancy coffee shops where we can talk about “who we wore on the Red Carpet,” and grocery stores that sell pantry staples like Chef Boyardee because we can’t afford to eat at any of Wolfie Puck’s restaurants. 

New York is prosperous only for the wealthiest, the most elite — like you, Bill.  Maybe if you got out of your Tesla bubble every once-in-a-while and drove upstate in New York or downstate in Illinois or in the Central Valley of California, you’d see the economic and cultural devastation.  Those smart states are actually pretty stupid, dying under the weight of trillions in unfunded pension liabilities.  The major cities you laud?  Even the major cities in traditionally red states are riddled with crime, drugs, poverty, and cultural decline.  That education you want to impose on the putrid masses stuck in the corn fields, doesn’t exist in any major city in the country — unless you are extraordinarily wealthy or extremely lucky and win the school lottery. 

You might not feel it or see it because your life is so cushy, Bill, but those states and cities that are so progressive (and broken) are exclusively run by your people.  Y’all have become the colonizers, the imperialists, the totalitarians-in-training. 

And let’s talk about “cool” jobs.  Not everyone wants to be a hipster tech drone tip-toeing through piles of human feces on the way to work in San Francisco.  A lot of people want to farm.  They want to work with their hands.  The want to own small businesses in their small towns where everybody knows their name.  Millions of Americans shy away from the corporate urban grind and long for the simplicity Small Town USA has to offer.  I know for you that’s just a silly euphemism for the “basket of deplorables” they really are, clinging to their guns and Bible propaganda, but who is to say your propaganda will be any better?

Bill, get rid of Middle America, get rid of the MAGA chapeaus, re-colonize the blue states, and who will build your Tesla?  Who will fuel your energy needs?  Who will install your solar panels?  Who will truck your wine in from Napa?  Who will teach your children, mow your lawn, build your pool, and paint your house? 

Ya like that artisanal ice cream?  If we gotta ax the farting cows and keep driving farmers out of business — the bulk of whom, even in California, are conservatives — who will provide you with the ingredients to make your yuppie foods?  Ya ain’t gonna git much in the way of orchestras and theatrical productions in your thee-ater districts, without the men and women who do all of the unsexy stuff — the electricians, the stage hands, the folks who actually build the sets, the little people who work in the ticket booths, the make-up artists, the faceless musicians in the pit.  The waiters and kitchen help in any restaurant are average people, Bill.  You want your food cooked up jest raight, ye bitter keep yer pie hole closed.  Someone who hears this shtick just maght spit in yer high-falutin’ grub. 

Yes, there are people in the rural areas of even your blue states, who work in prisons and slaughter houses.  They should be applauded, not ridiculed and denigrated.  They keep us safe and feed us. 

They keep you safe and feed you.

When the SHTF, Bill — whether an EMP, a natural disaster, an epidemic or you don’t win an Emmy and go wah wah wah all the way home (please, don’t come back to New Jersey; stay in La La Land) —  how are you going to survive?  The people you make fun of?  They know how to grow crops and raise animals.  They know how to make a fire, how electricity works, how to plumb.   They can build a house, make a table, craft a wagon.  Without the very people you mock, you would starve or freeze to death.

“Who” you wear, what you drive, where you eat, and how much you think of yourself isn’t as important to the people you despise, as it is to you and your pals.  You have become the very aloof, self-absorbed kind of aristocrats, who care more about their food, drink, dress and baubles than the miserable masses they claim to want to uplift.  Yet, your kind denies them the very jobs and opportunities for prosperity from which you yourselves have benefitted. One wonders, when you re-colonize the red zones, will you lop off the heads of those of us who resist?

A small word of advice from one of little brain.  You shouldn’t underestimate the people you try to re-colonize.  We have backbone.  We have grit.  We are tenacious. We are the kind of people who will fight for our rights, our freedoms, our individuality, our families, our religion, and our culture.  And most of all, our country.  We will never give up.  We will never give in.  

Keep smoking all that weed, Bill.  One thing about stoners is once they stop munching and start talking, they truly believe they are brilliantly pontificating on a topic, when in fact they just sound really dumb. 

(And I’m not sure you really want schools to start teaching science in school again, Bill, because then all of these really screwed up, anxiety-ridden millennials will find out — shhh! — there really are only two genders.)