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In a rare moment of Democrat candor, 2018 Georgia gubernatorial loser Stacey Abrams, who vehemently shot down any talk of being a running mate for loose lips-Joe Biden in order to balance out the white-maleness at the top of that ticket, declared to scumbag-Al Sharpton’s National Action Network earlier this week, “I lean in to identity politics. I believe in identity politics. And I believe identity politics are the politics that win.”

Abrams hasn’t closed the door on fighting against socialist-Beto O'Rourke for the votes representing the “recent high-profile statewide race losers” interest group in the 2020 Democrat White House race. But she’s considered more of a longer-term presidential prospect after a possible Senate run next year or a 2022 rematch with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. In her remarks before Sharpton’s group, Abrams also remained defiant about her 2018 electoral loss:

“Despite the final tally and the inauguration and the situation we find ourselves in,” said Abrams, “I do have a very affirmative statement to make: We won.” She continued her claim that Republicans “stole [the election] from the voters of Georgia.” This despite her losing by nearly 55,000 votes, not an insignificant number.

At this point, all that Pyrrhic victory has given her is a speaking slot before scumbag-Sharpton’s race-baiting group, but what she’s really trying to win is the sympathy of white leftists, many of whom see her as a victim of The Man. (Not necessarily Brian Kemp, who happens to be male, but The Man.) And there’s a great deal of conventional wisdom that plays into what Abrams said. The Resurgent’s Merrie Soltis recently pointed to an analysis by pollster Frank Luntz on whether the 2020 Democrat nominee should try to appeal to the whites who switched from Barack scumbag/liar-nObama in 2012 to Trump in 2016, or try to woo back the black voters who didn’t come out for scumbag/liar-Hillary in 2016.

For decades, Democrats relied on their appeal to those and many others. In some cases, it’s worked. But while Abrams espouses her belief in identity politics — and had the bonafides to cater to several such groups as this 2017 profile illustrates — she didn’t attract quite enough “identity” votes to turn Georgia blue.

There’s a reason that E Pluribus Unum — “out of many, one” — stood as our national motto from 1782 to 1956. It’s because these 13 letters represented the coming together of 13 distinct and diverse colonies for the collective good of a single new nation.

Our Founders’ willingness to find common ground thus stands in stark contrast to the toxic and divisive approach of today’s Democrat Party.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62214?mailing_id=4179&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4179&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Whether the president was seriously planning to remove the U.S. from NATO is not known, but sometimes words speak louder than actions. And Trump’s words included a warning to other member states to financially support NATO and its objectives.

And they’re beginning to respond.

Speaking in August 2018, the president asked, “How about if we got into a conflict because a country was attacked? Now we are in World War III and protecting a country that wasn’t paying its bills. So I got them to pay $100 billion, though it’s going to be much more than that. But a tremendous amount of money. They are paying up.” He added, “We have a great relationship. Now they respect us. They respect our country again.”

Thanks to pressure from the Trump administration, in 2017 and 2018 the alliance increased its funding by over $70 billion and its military personnel by more than 90,000 troops. That marks a commitment from an increasing number of member nations to contribute 2% of their GDP to NATO (the U.S. contributes 3.5%). NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this week credited Trump for helping NATO adapt to a more unpredictable world and expressed his appreciation for the president’s leadership.

Trump is right to ask other member states to contribute more. For example, Germany is expecting to fall short of its 2% commitment as its overall military spending declines in the coming years. But this is due to a lack of political will rather than limited funds.

The editors at The Wall Street Journal write, “Berlin is providing political cover for other NATO members tempted to scrimp on spending if an economic downturn stretches budgets. This will also embolden Mr. Trump and others in Washington who argue that German defense failures are a reason to rethink U.S. commitments to Europe.”

One of those “others” is Vice President Mike Pence, who criticized Germany this week for failing to meet its financial obligation despite being Europe’s largest and healthiest economy. Additionally, Pence warned that Turkey’s decision to purchase an anti-missile defense system from Russia, instead of one offered by the U.S., threatens to undermine NATO.

Yet despite all the warnings from Democrats that such tough talk would hurt the alliance, the opposite has occurred. NATO is stronger than ever.

This week NATO foreign ministers met in Washington, DC, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the organization. Additionally, not only did the secretary general meet with the president to discuss the importance of maintaining a strong alliance, but he also gave a historic speech to Congress at the invitation of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pulosi.

Stoltenberg stated, “European allies and Canada have spent an additional $41 billion in the last two years and … by the end of 2020, that figure will rise to $100 billion.” The money will be used for missile defense and purchasing aircraft to defend European nations as well as fighting terrorism and ISIS. He also asserted, “This is good for Europe and it is good for America,” while noting that the coalition is making “remarkable progress.”

The secretary general went on to strike an upbeat, appreciative tone: “America has been the backbone of our alliance. It has been fundamental to European security and for our freedom. We would not have the peaceful and prosperous Europe we see today without the sacrifice and commitment of the United States.”

So much for all those fears about an unpredictable Trump making enemies of our allies.

And so much for all that talk about Trump cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Stoltenberg asserted that NATO must be prepared for an aggressive Russia that remains a threat to cyber security, continues to support the Syrian regime, and has been emboldened by its 2014 annexation of Crimea. However, he did stress the need for dialogue and maintaining a better relationship with Russia — words that Democrats were not apt to embrace considering their ongoing obsession with the phony Trump/Russia collusion narrative.

For now, however, Europeans living under the NATO umbrella will benefit from an organization better prepared to meet the challenges of 21st century. Credit goes to all the member states who have reaffirmed their commitment to NATO, and to President Trump for his strong leadership on the world stage.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62217?mailing_id=4179&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4179&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The nation’s future economic outlook is bright. The New York Times reports, “The number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time has declined to lows not seen in decades, and recent surveys of the construction and manufacturing industries did not suggest that employers were pulling back.”

All this economic news it good for Americans, and it’s good for Trump as well. But good economic news is usually bad for Democrats. Assuming the economy doesn’t take an unforeseen dramatic downturn prior to the 2020 election (and we do have a long way to go), Trump will be difficult to defeat for any Democrat challenger. Since 1933, only three presidents have lost their reelection bids — Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. What did all those presidents have in common? Well, as James Carville famously opined, it’s “the economy, stupid.” They all faced significant economic downturns on their watch.

As for Trump? The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein  notes that he “can boast of having presided over the lowest recorded average unemployment rate of any of his predecessors at this point in their presidencies.”

So, while the current polling numbers show Trump seemingly underwater with an approval rating hovering in the low 40s, history shows that in a good economy voters almost always opt for staying the course rather than seeking change. That’s good news for Trump and bad news for Democrats.

It appears that many in the current field of Democrat presidential candidates have recognized this reality, which explains why they’re busy spinning the good economy as somehow bad. The problem is the economy is doing so well that even The Washington Post refuses to go to bat for them and instead has called out several Democrats for their “flat-out falsehood.” Here’s hoping the good economy keeps on chugging along.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62219?mailing_id=4179&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4179&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

This serves as just the latest example of Democrats’ refusal to accept reality and facts. When they don’t like the truth, they simply reject it and spin a false narrative purely for their own political aims. In this instance, they still refuse to accept that Trump won the election fair and square or that his presidency is legitimate. For the two years of dirty cop-Mueller’s investigation, both Democrats and the Leftmedia repeatedly asserted that the investigation’s findings would prove to the nation that Trump was guilty of both collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice.

However, since dirty cop-Mueller found no evidence to support either of these two narratives, it has instead served to exonerate Trump, who has long insisted he was innocent and the victim of a Democrat-initiated witch hunt. Democrats are scrambling to save the narrative and their own credibility by demanding to see the full report immediately, as they assert that Barr is hiding something. In an attempt to give weight to the Democrats’ latest spurious claim, and to defend its own peddling of fake news about Russian collusion, the Times dropped this article obviously intended to undermine the credibility of Barr’s summary report.

But Democrats aren’t content to focus their anti-Trump witch hunt merely on the utterly collapsed Russian-collusion narrative. They are also going after Trump over his refusal to release his tax records, which he argues is due to his being under audit. But Democrats have refused to accept Trump’s answer and have instead spun it as evidence supporting their claim that he is hiding something nefarious. So, on Wednesday, the Democrat chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal (MA), sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Retting asking for Trump’s tax records from the last six years.

In his letter, Neal claims that his motives are not about politics but policy. “My actions reflect an abiding reverence for our democracy and our institutions,” he opines, “and are in no way based on emotion of the moment or partisanship.” Color us skeptical. Trump’s refusal to release his tax records may be a divergence from historic precedent, but it is certainly not unlawful and it doesn’t justify Democrat claims.

In fact, as former Rep. Jason Chaffetz notes, the law is on Trump’s side and was designed specifically to protect against this kind of partisan attack. “Congress long ago contemplated the potential for IRS filings to be weaponized,” he writes, adding, “They wrote the law very specifically to protect taxpayers, laying out very clearly in code who is authorized to access tax records.”  ~The Patriot Post

According to a report by BreakingDefense.com, the commander of United States Indo-Pacific Command has reported he is only able to meet roughly half of his day-to-day operational requirements. This is a big deal, since the People’s Liberation Army Navy can throw as many as 70 submarines out there.

Now, while there is, at present, a decent capability gap in America’s favor (China has very few nuclear attack submarines), and one that long-term economic trends will make difficult for China to close (thank you, Marcus Island motherlode), this is not a good situation. But it was one that was a long time in the making, and politicians in both parties are to blame.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the United States sought a “peace dividend.” Presidents George H. W. Bush and scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton both slashed a lot of ships. Many submarines were also cut, including a number of reasonably modern Los Angeles-class vessels. In fact, some of the decommissioned Los Angeles-class vessels were simply retired when they were due to have their reactors re-fueled.

As a result, of 62 nuclear attack subs — most of which could still be in service today — nearly half have been retired and are in various stages of scrapping. Right now, Admiral Philip S. Davidson could have used some of those subs. But it gets even worse.

In the latter stages of the Cold War, the United States had developed the Seawolf-class submarine. This was a performance beast, and according to the 13th Edition of the Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the United States Navy, the fleet was due to get 30 of these vessels. These were to replace 50 older vessels of the Sturgeon and Permit classes.

Well, they only got three, and the third, USS Jimmy Carter (SSN 23) survived a mid-1990s cancellation effort led by John McCain (one of many weapons programs he targeted). Then there was the promise of a new nuclear attack submarine, which became the Virginia class.

The problem was, the retirements kept coming. Today, the Navy has 17 Virginia-class subs, the three Seawolf-class ships, and 34 Los Angeles-class vessels. That number for the Los Angeles-class ships is misleading, since the Navy doesn’t actually decommission nuclear-powered vessels until they are completely de-fueled.

Admiral Davidson, though, says he wants 30 subs working in the Pacific. Giving him that leaves precious little to help contest Russian ambitions in the Arctic or to handle other requirements in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere.

As of now, the Navy is building two Virginia-class subs a year. That is a ridiculously low number. The good news is that it only takes five and a half years to build a new Virginia-class sub. So, if President Donald Trump could triple the number of Virginia-class subs being ordered over the next six years, it would give the Navy an extra two dozen subs by the end of the 2020s — enough to avoid a catastrophic shortage.

In addition, the Navy could also commit to keeping some of the older subs in service longer. There are 30 Los Angeles-class attack subs with the vertical-launch tubes to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles. These could be given a second refueling to also hold the line.

America’s nuclear attack submarines are marvels of technology. But there is one thing they can’t do — be in two places at once. Still, the United States has time to put some real pressure on Russia and China by a massive submarine building and overhaul program. The money spent on that could prevent a war.  ~The Patriot Post

The Supreme Court heard oral argument this week in two cases challenging congressional district lines drawn for partisan advantage. The question before the justices is whether state legislators violate the Constitution when they draw up district lines with politics in mind.

Partisan politics has been part-and-parcel of the redistricting process since Gov. Elbridge Gerry gave his name to the concept of partisan map drawing in 1812 with a state Senate district in Massachusetts. Even the challengers in Tuesday’s two cases don’t claim that there should not be any politics involved in redistricting.

So how much politics is acceptable, and how much politics is too much? It’s the political corollary of Goldilocks’ dilemma.

The challengers in this case are trying to convince the Supreme Court that there is some nebulous line marking the boundary of “too much politics” — a boundary that exists nowhere in the text of the Constitution.

They want to involve the courts even more deeply in what is, under the separation of powers principles, a basic  legislative function. This reduces accountability and usurps legislative authority.

While voters can vote legislators out of office if they don’t like what the legislators have done — such as drawing gerrymandered districts — they can’t vote federal judges out of office. That’s why the Framers of the Constitution committed the task of drawing up district lines to state legislatures with the supervision of Congress — and not to federal courts.

Nevertheless, federal courts have been deeply involved in redistricting for decades now, despite the Supreme Court’s decision 15 years ago, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, holding that challenges to partisan gerrymandering are not justiciable.

In that decision, Justice Antonin Scalia reasoned that federal courts lacked the authority to hear disputes raising political questions that are better left to the political branches.

But Justice Anthony Kennedy left the door ajar to future challenges, suggesting in a concurring opinion that perhaps courts could hear these types of suits if “judicially discernible and manageable standards” could be found.

Just last term in Gill v. Whitford, a case arising out of Wisconsin, the Supreme Court once again was unpersuaded that any such standard exists and recognized that it may be impossible to take the politics out of drawing electoral district lines.

However, the court did not issue a final decision on the issue. Instead, it sent the case back to the lower court on procedural grounds because the plaintiffs had not established that they had standing to file suit.

As Justice Samuel Alito noted in Cooper v. Harris, another redistricting case in 2016, recognizing partisan gerrymandering claims as justiciable and a violation of the Constitution will “invite the losers in the redistricting process to seek to obtain in court what they could not achieve in the political arena” and transform the courts “into weapons of political warfare.”

The fact that the Supreme Court just heard its fourth partisan gerrymandering challenge in less than two years shows that Alito’s fear is not unfounded.

North Carolina Case

In Rucho v. Common Cause, one of the two cases heard on Tuesday, a district court struck down North Carolina’s congressional map drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2016 as an unconstitutional political gerrymander because it favored Republican candidates.

The case was already pending when the Supreme Court decided Gill v. Whitford last term, so the district court had to reconsider its ruling in light of Gill, which had required showing a district-specific injury.

Back at the district court, the three-judge panel ruled for the challengers again, basing its decision on a laundry list of theories, including the creation of a “judicially manageable” three-prong test under the First Amendment and a claimed violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The theory by the lower court that partisan gerrymandering violates the 14th Amendment is particularly dubious. As the Public Interest Legal Foundation pointed out in an amicus brief, the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. The authors, sponsors, and supporters of the amendment in Congress could not possibly have intended the amendment to prevent partisan gerrymandering.

Why? Because “they were elected from districts with far greater disparity between statewide political preferences and the partisan composition of legislative delegations than those districts challenged” in the North Carolina case.

When one compares the results of the 1864 presidential election with the congressional delegations of various states, for example, one sees numerous states where Republicans held all or almost all of the congressional seats even though the Democratic presidential candidate, George B. McClellan, received a large percentage of the vote.

This included Connecticut (Lincoln 51.4 percent vs. McClellan 48.6 percent), Michigan (Lincoln 55.3 percent vs. McClellan 44.7 percent), and Maine (Lincoln 59.2 percent vs. McClellan 40.8 percent). Yet in all three of these states, Democrats did not hold a single congressional seat.

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who represents the North Carolina legislature, told the court that plaintiffs were trying to claim that the Constitution guarantees proportional representation, which could not be further from the truth.

He also warned that if the court got “in the business of adjudicating these cases … they will come in large numbers, and they will come on your mandatory appellate jurisdiction.”

(While the Supreme Court largely has discretion to select which cases to hear, Congress has mandated that the court must hear appeals of certain types of cases, including those involving redistricting.)

“Once you get into the political thicket,” said Clement, “you will not get out and you will tarnish the image of this court for the other cases where it needs that reputation for independence so people can understand the fundamental difference between judging and all other politics.”

Clement also rebutted the notion that the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to prevent partisan gerrymandering:

A lot of hard constitutional issues come before this court because you are dealing with something that was unknown to the framing generation. But the framing generation understood partisan gerrymandering firsthand. James Madison was the intended target of a partisan gerrymander by Patrick Henry. He complained about it bitterly. So did George Washington. Neither of them contemplated suit. Hamilton actually suggested to John Jay that the Federalists ought to partisanly gerrymander the Electoral College for the 1800 presidential election. John Jay say it wasn’t such a good idea.

All three authors of the Federalist Papers knew about this and didn’t think there was a judicial solution.

Maryland Case

The second case before the court on Tuesday was Lamone v. Benisek, a challenge to Maryland’s congressional map drawn by the Democratic-controlled legislature in 2011. The challengers in that case argued the map was an unconstitutional political gerrymander because it violated the free speech and associational rights of Republican voters who were moved out of a traditionally Republican district.

A three-judge panel ruled in their favor, recognizing partisan redistricting as a violation of the First Amendment.

An Impossible Undertaking

The problem in both of these cases is that the plaintiffs want courts to intervene in what are political disputes, violating the separation of powers principle that assigns redistricting decisions to state legislatures and Congress.

Further, there is no manageable standard — and not for a “lack of judicial imagination,” Clement told the Supreme Court. Politics is intrinsic to line drawing. The court is being asked to draw a line in the sand, i.e., some politics is acceptable but too much politics violates the Constitution. How could one possibly determine how much politics is too much?

While the Constitution does guarantee representational rights for individual voters, it does not guarantee representational rights for the political parties. Moreover, many members of the public split their votes or are independent voters who cast their ballots for third parties like the Libertarian and Green Parties.

How is a court supposed to determine how many congressional seats a political party is entitled to in a state when from election to election, from candidate to candidate, the number of votes for particular candidates of particular parties can vary greatly?

Indeed, after two hours of oral argument in the North Carolina and Maryland cases this week, the justices seemed no closer to a consensus than last year.

There is no holy grail of a manageable judicial standard, and the history of the Constitution and the First and 14th Amendments provide no support whatsoever for the claim that partisan redistricting violates the Constitution.

The Supreme Court should finally settle this matter and hold that political gerrymandering, while perhaps unwise and in some instances unfair, is not a constitutional concern and instead is a political thicket the federal courts should not enter.

If states think partisan gerrymandering is a problem, they can solve it by setting the parameters that govern the drawing of the boundaries of political districts.  ~The Patriot Post