Like exercise, but fun!

Foreign Affairs Phil Donahue’s Cold War Legacy The late telejournalist was a pioneer of informal diplomacy between American and Soviet citizens. The recent passing of the American journalist Phil Donahue at the age of 88 marked the end of a unique era in television. Revered for pioneering the daytime talk show format, Donahue’s contribution to American media has been well documented. Yet his lesser-known role as an unofficial diplomat, fostering dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, bears greater relevance today as tensions between the U.S. and Russia once again rise to a boil. Born on December 21, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio, Donahue emerged from a middle-class Irish Catholic background to become one of television’s most influential figures. His show, “The Phil Donahue Show,” debuted in November 1967 on WDTN and was groundbreaking for its format. Donahue’s show was the first to integrate audience participation into the talk show genre, allowing viewers to interact with guests and engage in discussions on pressing social issues. This format not only set a new standard for daytime television but also helped shape the careers of future media icons like Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres. Running until 1996 and encompassing over 6,000 episodes, Donahue’s show became a platform for some of the most significant figures of the 20th century, including Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Carter, and Nelson Mandela. His coverage of the 1992 presidential election,  featuring a conversation between President George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, further cemented his role as a key player in shaping public discourse. Donahue received numerous accolades for his achievements, including nine Emmy Awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which President Joe Biden described as a recognition of his ability to “change hearts and minds through honest and open dialogue.” While Donahue’s daytime television legacy is indelible, his less publicized role as an unofficial Cold-War diplomat offers the most significant lessons for today’s fractured world. At a time when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were locked in a bitter ideological struggle, with mutual distrust and nuclear arsenals at the ready, Donahue, alongside Soviet-American journalist Vladimir Pozner, took a revolutionary step: He helped humanize the supposed “enemy” by bringing ordinary citizens on both sides of the Iron Curtain together  in real-time, televised conversations, known as “space bridges.” The first of these teleconferences, held in December 1985 and dubbed “A Citizens’ Summit” in the U.S. and “Dialogue through Space” in the USSR, was a historical milestone. Produced by the King Broadcasting Company, the Documentary Guild, and the Soviet State Committee for Television and Radio, this event brought 175 Russians in Leningrad and 175 Americans in Seattle together via satellite for a two-and-a-half-hour discussion. Donahue opened the session with an acknowledgement of the prevailing mistrust, stating, “Not a few Americans believe that you are not really able to speak from your soul for fear of reprisal from Soviet Government authority. There are even some people in this country who feel that you will all serve as mouthpieces for the official party line because to do otherwise might earn you a visit to a psychiatric hospital or perhaps a prison. This is not to say that all Americans believe that.” The topics of conversation ranged from the war in Afghanistan and human rights abuses to more mundane matters of daily life. Political issues initially dominated the discussion, but as the dialogue evolved, participants began to focus more on personal experiences and shared concerns. One American participant’s plea for a shift away from politics to personal connection captured the essence of these exchanges: “I would like our conversation to be less political so that we could just get to know each other. I think we started off wrong. We started badly! I wouldn’t have come here if I knew there would be so much politics. Can’t you see that you are being provoked from here? I don’t like this! I want to sit down with you and get to know each other.” The impact of this teleconference was profound. The program was broadcast in prime time on Soviet television, reaching approximately 180 million viewers, while in the United States, where the teleconference was edited down to 40 minutes, it attracted around eight million viewers. This was not merely a television event but a significant step toward humanizing adversaries and fostering mutual understanding. Donahue and Pozner’s initiative was about building bridges between people who had been kept apart by political machinations and ideological rigidity. Their efforts were not limited to one teleconference. Throughout the mid-1980s, Donahue and Pozner facilitated several more, each with its own unique focus and impact. During the July 1986 teleconference between Leningrad and Boston titled “Women Talk to Women,” in one of the more memorable exchanges, Lyudmila Ivanova, a member of the Soviet Women’s Committee, claimed, “We don’t have sex, and we are categorically against it!” Her remark delivered awkwardly, was meant to highlight the difference in how the Soviet Union and the U.S. depicted sexuality in the media. Instead, it became a moment of shared laughter, symbolizing how an unintended joke could reveal our common humanity even in the Cold War’s thick fog of fear and hostility. Later the same year, the teleconference “We Wish You Happiness,” held between Moscow and Minnesota, was dedicated to American schoolgirl and goodwill ambassador Samantha Smith, who symbolized youthful hope for peace. Furthermore, also in 1986, Donahue became the first foreign correspondent to report from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site, further cementing his role as a pioneering figure in international journalism. His coverage of the disaster highlighted not only the scale of the tragedy but also the human stories behind it, reinforcing the idea that despite political differences, people everywhere were bound by everyday concerns. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the very first teleconferences—in 1982, 1983 and 1985— took place without the participation of hosts. In September 1982, an earlier teleconference marked the beginning of a decade-long practice of remote dialogue between Soviet and American citizens. Initiated during the rock festival “We” and spearheaded by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, it used satellite technology to connect Moscow and California. The festival, aimed at showcasing that “America and Russia can get along,” was a symbolic gesture of cooperation, although it was initially limited to musical exchanges. The next time the people of the two countries came into contact was on May 28, 1983,  two and a half months after U.S. President Ronald Reagan called the USSR an “evil empire.”  The teleconference, timed to coincide with Memorial Day, was again held “on the sidelines” of the “We” rock festival, but this time, it focused on the nuclear threat—a pressing concern of the era. Nuclear scientist Evgeny Velikhov’s statement that “people think that nuclear weapons are the muscles of a nation while they are a cancerous tumor on a nation’s body” poignantly captured the shared anxiety about nuclear proliferation. This event underscored the urgency of dialogue in mitigating the risks of a nuclear catastrophe. The space bridges did not always run smoothly. They faced significant challenges, from technical issues to political tensions. For example, a planned teleconference on the topic of the Moscow Book Fair in September 1983 was due to deteriorating relations after the shooting down of a South Korean airliner, only to gain new momentum two years later, when the 1985 teleconference connecting Moscow and San Diego, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Second World War, featured Soviet veterans and prominent figures like director Sergei Bondarchuk. The sentiment from Elliott Roosevelt, who remarked that the forum was “a message from the people to the leaders of the two countries,” encapsulated the hopeful spirit of the time. These space bridges were not merely a product of their time but a bold experiment in media’s potential to bridge international divides. They emerged from a climate of heightened tension, but with perestroika and the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev, they became emblematic of a new era of openness and dialogue. The connection between Moscow State University and Tufts University in 1989, discussing “The Nuclear Age: Culture and the Bomb,” was one of the last major teleconferences of this format, reflecting the ongoing desire for cross-cultural communication even as the Cold War began to wind down. Despite the success of these initiatives, the end of the Cold War and the shifting media landscape of the 1990s brought challenges for Donahue. His outspoken opposition to the Gulf War contributed to the decline of his show’s ratings, culminating in its cancellation in 1996. His return to television in 2002 was short-lived, as the MSNBC network terminated Donahue’s new show in 2003, partly due to his critical stance on the Iraq War. Nevertheless, Donahue’s unwavering commitment to his principles, even at the cost of his career, was a testament to his integrity as a journalist and public figure, as evidenced by his 2007 documentary, “Body of War,” which examined the impact of war on American soldiers. Donahue’s death coincides with a time when the world stands once again on the brink of a new, more dangerous confrontation, this time exacerbated by the ongoing war in Ukraine. NATO is expanding, sanctions are piling up, and the threat of nuclear escalation feels closer than it has in decades. In this context, Donahue’s space bridges seem like a lost relic of a more hopeful time—a reminder that there was once a moment when dialogue was possible, even in the most adversarial relationships. Today’s media landscape, however, offers little room for the kind of citizen diplomacy that Donahue pioneered. In the 1980s, Soviet leaders jammed American-funded radio programs, but that was seen as a repressive tactic of a closed society. Today, Russia’s media outlets are banned or severely restricted in much of the Western world, and American journalists face increasing hostility in Russia. The opportunity for ordinary Americans and Russians to engage in meaningful conversation has all but vanished. This media blockade in both directions only deepens the Cold War 2.0 mentality. The recent indictment of Dimitri K. Simes, a prominent political commentator who once advised both Presidents Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, illustrates the complex and often contentious nature of modern U.S.–Russia relations. Simes, whose Virginia home was raided by the FBI and who has faced charges for allegedly helping a Russian broadcaster, Channel One, circumvent U.S. sanctions, exemplifies the challenges of navigating a media landscape fraught with geopolitical tensions. His case highlights the difficulties faced by journalists and commentators striving to bridge divides in an increasingly polarized environment.  It is worth noting that Simes’s name was mentioned more than 100 times in a 2019 report by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which eventually found no collusion with Moscow. Interestingly, the indictments against Simes and his wife came a day after the Biden administration announced a series of actions over Russia’s alleged efforts to influence U.S. public opinion ahead of the general election in November this year.  As the prominent Russia scholar from the University of Kent in the U.K. and a good friend of mine, Professor Richard Sakwa, rightly pointed out in his 2019 book The Deception: Russiagate and the New Cold War, the current environment is more polarized than even the height of the Reagan-Brezhnev standoff. Sakwa argues that investigations like Russiagate, with their unverified claims and political bias, have deepened divisions within the U.S. and escalated tensions with Russia, making rapprochement nearly impossible. Despite this atmosphere, Donahue’s legacy serves as both a beacon of hope and a call to action. Imagine, for instance, a space bridge today connecting citizens of Washington and Moscow or Washington and Beijing, allowing them to voice their concerns, share their fears, and—most importantly—recognize their shared humanity. Would it solve all of our problems? Of course not. But it would be a start, and right now, we desperately need a start. Phil Donahue’s death, in the comfort of his home surrounded by family and his golden retriever, Charlie, was a quiet end for a man whose life was anything but. In a media landscape dominated by noise, polarization, and fear, we need new Donahues. We need new space bridges. The post Phil Donahue’s Cold War Legacy appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Challenges Remain The bare facts of the Springfield story are enough to explain our political moment; they are ignored at peril. Credit: Rawpixel Before the man-bites-dog stories coming out of Springfield, Ohio, the most fact-checked claim by a Republican presidential candidate was Ronald Reagan and the “welfare queen.” To this day decried as a vile and racist myth illustrative of the conservative movement’s nefarious motives, the woman who was the basis of many of Reagan’s anecdotes did exist and she did commit welfare fraud, which might have been the least of her crimes, even if some of the details were embellished in political speeches. NPR’s “All Things Considered” devoted a 2013 story to the “truth behind the lies,” which, if the network’s ideological commitments were different, might have gone down in history with “alternative facts.” More importantly, by the 1990s there was a bipartisan consensus that the welfare system was incentivizing bad behavior, often to the detriment of the people it was intended to help, and needed reform. In Massachusetts, this was partially driven by the Boston Globe’s reporting on Claribel Ventura, a successor of sorts to Linda Taylor. While there remain prominent dissenters against that consensus even today, relatively few people want to go back to welfare as we knew it. Perhaps a similar consensus reimagining immigration will someday take hold. Briefly, at a similar point in the 1990s, it nearly did before being unraveled by a different bipartisan coalition of big business, labor, and government. That doesn’t mean there will be future documentaries about the real cat consumers of Clark County. The former President Donald Trump is a more prolific apocryphal tale-wagger than Reagan.  One need not accept at face value every urban legend being circulated on the internet to see that the situation in Springfield is suboptimal and created by highly debatable policy choices. My colleague Tiana Lowe Doescher did a deep dive following the money in Springfield, outlining many practices that would not be described as progressive in any other context. “One man with a long relationship with the city government is being paid by migrants to house them in properties he owns and to drive them in vans he owns to jobs for wages that can be artificially lower than the market because federal taxpayers are subsidizing their healthcare and grocery budgets,” she writes. Sometimes, no politically expedient embellishment is required. The reality is troubling enough.  Why is a relatively small, heavily working-class community being asked to bear these costs, a fraction of which would elicit a full-scale freakout in places like Martha’s Vineyard and New York City? “The migrant crisis did not ‘destroy’ New York,” reads a New York Times headline that belongs in the hall of fame beside the one mentioned earlier from NPR. “But challenges remain.” The Gray Lady goes on to quote “advocates” who want city officials to treat the situation as “an opportunity rather than a catastrophe.” What about what the voters in the receiving city want? Dumb and ugly things are often said about race in connection with issues like welfare, crime, immigration, and affirmative action. They should not be. Political leaders who traffic in such rhetoric often do real damage both to their causes and the country at large. The same can be said of those who spread falsehoods, which is wrong in principle and in practice also serves to discredit the problems they wish to draw attention to in the eyes of an unsympathetic media.  But part of the reason Democrats lost their grip on national political power is they too often refused to deal with real problems associated with welfare, crime, and affirmative action, dismissing genuine popular desires for fairness and safety as racist backlash. By, again, the 1990s, that sentiment made New York City ready to elect Rudy Giuliani. The same is now happening with immigration and related issues. Immigration has always conferred benefits as well as costs. Wealthy countries should within reason afford generosity to immigrants, refugees, and legitimate asylum-seekers. But progressives are ordinarily quick to argue that America’s wealth is not shared equally among all its citizens and that what’s good for corporations isn’t always beneficial to workers. When it comes to immigration (or green-energy subsidies), suddenly they transform from Norma Rae into 1950s Eisenhower Republicans proclaiming that what’s good for General Motors is necessarily good for America. Communities that are spread thin deserve responsible, non-demagogic political leaders who are responsive to their needs and concerns. But, as they say, challenges remain. The post Challenges Remain appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs The U.S. Misadventure in Niger Is a Wake-Up Call Congress owes it to the country to retake its war powers from the executive. Recently, after over two decades of an unnecessary U.S. military presence in Niger, the U.S. finally withdrew from the West African country. I, for one, never believed we should have been there in the first place and warned our presence was doing more harm than good. Congress never authorized sending troops to Niger. Last year, I was right to demand their withdrawal. Why waste our money and risk our troops’ lives for a hostile country? In over a decade, civilian lives were lost, U.S. service members were killed, millions of taxpayer dollars were spent, and we have nothing to show for it. So, what exactly did we do in Niger? I repeat: Congress never voted to send troops there. Congress never authorized the use of military force there. Yet, on multiple occasions, U.S. forces in Niger had to engage with hostile groups and, sadly, American lives were lost.  Some may recall that, on October 4, 2017, four U.S. soldiers—Sergeant 1st Class Jeremiah Johnson, Staff Sergeant Bryan Black, Staff Sergeant Dustin Wright, and Sergeant La David Johnson—were ambushed and killed while on a mission near the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger. This tragic incident was the largest loss of life for U.S. forces in Africa since the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia. At the time, the New York Times reported, in a piece called “An Endless War,” that two senior senators, a Republican and a Democrat, both of whom are still serving, knew little of the American military presence in Niger. They were surprised because Congress had abdicated its constitutional war-making power to the executive branch. They were surprised because Congress is content to allow the President to sidestep the Constitution and unilaterally deploy U.S. forces anywhere in the world, at any time, for any reason, by citing a limitless interpretation of the 9/11 AUMF.  Passed in the days following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the 9/11 AUMF was narrowly tailored to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks. An ever-aggrandizing executive, however, deliberately misinterprets the AUMF as limitless, empowering the President to go to war everywhere, all the time, forever.  Using an AUMF written 23 years ago to justify war today is a perverse abuse of power, yet Congress stands idly by.  These military interventions the U.S. has carried out all across the Middle East and Africa have made us less safe and less prosperous. In many cases, including that of Niger and the surrounding region, our interventions have been counterproductive, destabilizing, and helped create the conditions for Islamic extremism to prosper.  Does anyone remember our intervention in Libya? I know many think this is ancient history, but in 2011, the Obama-led offensive helped destroy that country. The American-led coalition toppled the government of Muammar Gaddafi, killed hundreds of civilians, fomented anarchy throughout the country, and opened the floodgates for widespread extremist terror to spread throughout the region. Gaddafi kept Libya’s tribal rivalries in check, but his U.S-sponsored overthrow exacerbated them. Many tribal members turned to Islamists for guns and training to defend themselves against rivals. In fact, I forced a vote in the Senate in 2011 declaring that President Obama’s decision to intervene militarily in Libya violated the Constitution. Unfortunately, it failed 90-10, and here we are, 13 years later, and not much has changed. During that 2011 floor debate, I stated, “Though I’m new here in the Senate, I am appalled that the Senate has abdicated its responsibility.” Well, I’m now in my third term, and I’m still appalled that Congress refuses to acknowledge its constitutional role on the question of determining when and where the United States goes to war. Libyans today are unambiguously worse off than before we intervened. In 2010, the UN Human Development Index ranked Libya 53rd in the world. This year, Libya is ranked 92nd. The UN Human Rights Office reports that the execution and torture of civilians in Libya is a regular occurrence. The UN has also identified the existence of “open slave markets” where migrants and refugees transiting Libya are bought and sold as slaves. The disaster the Obama administration helped unleash in Libya has had lasting consequences for the region. Libyan arms, including heavy weaponry such as anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles, have been traced to criminals and terrorists across the region, including in Niger, Mali, Tunisia, Syria, Algeria, and Gaza. It is rarely asked if our interminable military interventions create the terrorists we seek to destroy. That’s a question Congress needs to answer. In the 11 years U.S. troops were in Niger, Congress did not once debate the merits of the mission and never authorized the use of military force. As the U.S. was forced out of Niger, Russia was welcomed with open arms, solidifying that our efforts have almost been counterproductive.  After over a decade, lives lost, and hundreds of millions spent, the U.S. didn’t stop the spread of Islamic extremism, didn’t help build or spread democracy in other nations, and has now lost a top ally in the region. At what point will Congress learn that its inaction and reliance on the executive branch is not only a dereliction of its constitutional duty but also worsening global relations? Last year, Niger’s democratically elected leader was ousted in a coup led by Nigerian military officers. With the potential of U.S. service members being caught in the crosshairs, I forced the Senate to vote on a War Powers Resolution. The resolution directed the President to remove all U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities in Niger within 30 days of its enactment, something that should have been done as soon as the Biden administration formally declared that a military coup took place.  Eighty-six Senate Republicans and Democrats voted against my resolution and the removal of U.S. troops in Niger amid the coup, further involving America in another foreign conflict. We owed it to those service members to debate their mission. Not only because it was a new conflict not contemplated by the 9/11 AUMF, but because, if we are asking our young men and women to remain in harm’s way and potentially pay the ultimate sacrifice, Congress should fulfill its duty.  Committing America’s military to fight wars on behalf of the nation is the most consequential and humbling responsibility that Congress is entrusted with. If America’s interest in another country is of such vital importance that we ask our young men and women to fight and potentially pay the ultimate sacrifice to defend it, we at least owe our service members a debate in Congress.  The post The U.S. Misadventure in Niger Is a Wake-Up Call appeared first on The American Conservative.

This content is for members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read.The post Sweetwater first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

It must be fun to be a Democrat. You can advocate wounding or killing Donald J. Trump. And, when a sharp-eyed Secret Service agent stops a man minutes before he would have aimed an AK-47 at the GOP presidential nominee, you blame Trump for nearly getting himself killed, demand that the Right watch its words, and take zero responsibility for inciting mayhem. MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who knows better, insidiously claimed that Trump’s shooter and alleged would-be assassin are members of MAGA Nation. Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Wesley Routh, Reid argued on Sept. 17, “are white American Trump-supporting men with guns.” (RELATED: Ryan Wesley Routh, Do-Gooder) Reid, either sloppily mendacious or totally psychotic, claims that Cooks and Routh love Trump so much that one shot him on July 13, and the other came within minutes of slaying him on Sept. 15. Does anything say “Love” more than gunfire? Nice try, Joy. Would-Be Trump Assassins Were Anything But Trump Supporters Crooks was a registered Republican. However, if he ever supported Trump, such evidence remains undisclosed. Crooks donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, via Act Blue. That’s hardly a high-dollar gift. Nonetheless, it made Crooks a Democrat donor. Meanwhile, Oran Routh, the son of the accused attempted assassin, said that his father hates Trump, as “every reasonable person does.” Routh, the younger, also told the Daily Mail: “I don’t like Trump either.” Presumably, Oran Routh knows his father better than Joy Reid does. Rather than a MAGA hat, Routh’s truck is decorated with a Biden-Harris bumper sticker. Photographs from the driveway in Routh’s Kaaawa, Hawaii, home confirm this. Routh is a 19-time donor to Democrat candidates. Via ActBlue, between September 2019 and March 2020, he contributed between $1 and $25 to contenders ranging from presidential rivals Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang to senatorial wannabe Robert Francis O’Rourke of Texas and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Routh’s donations were small and numerous, and they all benefited Democrats. (READ MORE: RFK Jr.’s Fight for Principle) Routh voted for Trump in 2016 but eventually alighted the Trump Train. As Routh shabbily stated on June 11, 2020, via Twitter, now X: “@realDonaldTrump While you were my choice in 2106 [sic], I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment [sic] and it seems you are getting worse and devolving; are you retarded; I will be glad when you [sic] gone.” Routh’s rhetoric grew more aggressive in his self-published e-book, Ukraine’s Unwinnable War. Routh wrote last year that Iran’s mullahs should feel “free to assassinate” Trump. The Left Blames Trump for the Atmosphere of Political Violence Never mind, the Left insists. It’s all Trump’s fault. “Donald Trump, he created this specter of political violence that we all now live under, and he lives under it, too,” Sarah Longwell, host of The Focus Group podcast, said on CNN. “And so, it is his rhetoric that has been creating this environment for the last eight years.” Trump’s critics repeat the same exhausted talking points about Trump’s alleged violent rhetoric: “Charlottesville!” No. After the August 2017 race riot in that Virginia city, Trump did not refer to neo-Nazis and white nationalists as “very fine people.” He said that “they should be condemned totally.” No less than the Left-leaning Snopes fact-checked this oft-echoed lie and ruled it “False” last June 20. Nonetheless, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris keep repeating this lie. “Election denial!” Trump challenged the results of the 2020 election, alleging vote fraud, which he had every right to do. Hillary Clinton questioned the outcome of the 2016 election, screaming: “Russian collusion!” Stacy Abrams likewise denied the conclusion of Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election, which she still has not conceded. Losing candidates contest their losses all the time and have every legal right to do so. This includes Trump. “January 6!” Trump addressed his supporters at midday on the National Mall on Jan. 6, 2021. He repeated his suspicions of election fraud, which tens of millions of his voters still share. Trump never called for violence. In fact, he urged his supporters to make their voices heard on Capitol Hill “peacefully and patriotically.” If Trump wanted his backers to storm the Capitol, why would he authorize 10,000 National Guard troops to keep Washington, D.C. tranquil that day? If Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had not rejected National Guard personnel, the ensuing violence never would have started. “Bloodbath!” In her Sept. 10 debate with Trump, Kamala parroted the Left’s lie that Trump predicted “a bloodbath” if he loses the Nov. 5 election. On March 16, Trump did forecast that a Democrat victory in November would prompt “a bloodbath”… in the auto industry, not in the streets. “Bomb threats!” The Left now claims that Trump’s words about pet-eating Haitian illegal aliens overwhelming Springfield, Ohio, inspired bomb threats, presumably from his frenzied supporters. Alas, for Democrats, Republican Governor Mike DeWine revealed that these threats were all hoaxes phoned in from an unidentified U.S. adversary abroad. Why? To foment confusion and discord among Americans. Mission accomplished. “We have people, unfortunately overseas, who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country,” DeWine said on Sept. 16. “We think that this is one more opportunity to mess with the United States, and they’re continuing to do that. So we cannot let the bad guys win.” “Existential threat!” By the Trump campaign’s count, at least a half-dozen House Democrats have called the Republican standard-bearer “an existential threat to democracy,” as if they were reading from a Xeroxed script. Neither Trump nor any other American should be lectured about “democracy” by the political party that just disenfranchised 14.3 million of their own voters who chose Biden as their nominee in 55 of 56 primary competitions. A cabal of putschists ousted Biden in a coup d’état and installed Kamala as their nominee. You — yeah, you — earned as many votes for that honor as she did: Zero. Democrats Have Called for Trump’s Assassination Numerous Times While Donald J. Trump’s prose never will be mistaken for the poetry of Robert Frost, the former president does not discuss injuring and killing his opponents. Over and over and over and over again, Democrats and other Trump haters fantasize aloud about wounding and murdering him. And then — as the weapons-grade psychological projectionists that they are — they accuse Trump of doing precisely that which they perpetrate against him. (READ MORE: The Weekend Spectator Ep. 12: RFK Jr. and Trump Unite Against The Radical Left) “I’d like to punch him in the face,” actor Robert DeNiro said about Trump in October 2016. “If I were in high school,” Biden said in March 2018, “I’d take him [Trump] behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.” In October 2018, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace recalled her conversation after one of the 2016 debates between Trump and his Republican competitors. “I told Jeb Bush after that debate that I thought he should have punched [Trump] in the face. You would have been a hero.” Donald J. Trump, Jr. responded via Twitter: “Is anyone shocked that the left wants people to resort to violence?” Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Trump-hating “Republican” Lincoln Project, spoke with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in 2015. Even before Trump had been elected, Wilson said of the GOP donor class: “They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump. And that’s a fact.” One day after Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, singer/actress Madonna told the Women’s March rally in Washington: “I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” Snoop Dogg shoots a clown dressed as Donald Trump in music video Lavender (Jesse/YouTube) In a March 2017 music video, rapper Snoop Dogg aims a gun, point-blank, into the temple of a clown dressed like Trump (red tie, white shirt, dark-blue suit). The weapon fires, and out pops a flag that says: “BANG.” Comedienne and former CNN New Year’s Eve co-host Kathy Griffin posed before cameras in May 2017 while holding a mock-up of Trump’s severed head, complete with fake blood dripping down the sides of its face. Kathy Griffin “beheads” Trump in gory photo https://t.co/3fOLnVyf2x pic.twitter.com/wEPvjWFdVM — The Hill (@thehill) May 31, 2017 “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” Johnny Depp asked a cheering crowd at England’s Glastonbury Festival in June 2017. He added “[I]t’s been a while. And maybe it’s time.” New York’s Public Theater staged a June 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar in which the Roman emperor wore Trump-like attire, sported dramatic blond hair, and displayed similar gestures and swagger. Caesar’s stabbing death in the Roman Senate looked eerily like Trump’s ritual assassination by knives. State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D–Mo.) wrote on Facebook in August 2017: “I hope Trump is assassinated!” “I will go and take Trump out tonight,” Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D–Calif.) announced in October 2017. Ellen DeGeneres asked Kamala in April 2018, “If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?” Kamala replied: “Does one of us have to come out alive?” and then exploded into her signature cackle attack. When TMZ interviewed actress Carole Cook in September 2018, she wondered: “Where is John Wilkes Booth when you need him?” (The Secret Service then spoke with her. Cook told them, “I can’t go to prison. The stripes are horizontal, and they don’t look good on me.”) After the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling on presidential immunity, BBC host David Aaronovitch wrote, “If I was [sic] Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security.” “We’re done talking about the debate,” Biden told donors by phone on July 8. “It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.” Former Harris-Biden aide Kate Bedingfield told CNN on July 16 that Democrats should “turn their fire on Donald Trump.” Rachel Vindman, the wife of Trump impeachment no. 1 figure Alexander Vindman, laughed off assassination attempt no. 2. Within two hours of Trump’s encore brush with death, she declared: “No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon.” Congressman Dan Goldman (D–N.Y.) said this about Trump on Sept. 18 to MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, Biden’s former press secretary: “It is just unquestionable at this point that that man cannot see public office again. He is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy, and … he has to be eliminated.” This lust for Trump’s blood is not just common among prominent Democrats, it’s prominent among common Democrats. After the second attempt on Trump’s life, Napolitan News Service surveyed 1,000 registered voters from Sept. 16 to 17. Pollster Scott Rasmussen asked, “While it is always difficult to wish ill of another human being, would America be better off if Donald Trump had been killed last weekend?” 28% of Democrats say that America would have been better off if Trump had been assassinated. Democrats are the most vile, evil, subhumans alive. pic.twitter.com/Sev0cCE1dN — Sara Rose (@saras76) September 19, 2024 Overall, 17 percent of respondents agreed that America would be a better place had Routh assassinated Trump. While 92 percent of Republicans disagreed, 28 percent of Democrats thought rubbing out Trump would have been a plus, and 25 percent of Democrats were not sure. So, 53 percent of Democrats could not denounce whacking Trump. This is from the so-called “Party of Democracy.” RMG Research President Scott Rasmussen observed: “It is hard to imagine a greater threat to democracy than expressing a desire to have your political opponent murdered.” After not one, but two assassination attempts against Trump, will Democrats cool their homicidal Trump-hating statements? Not bloody likely. Alas, Donald J. Trump was probably right when he said: “Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor. The post Democrats’ Homicidal Rhetoric Inspires Trump-Hating Gunmen appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I was going to use today’s column to ruminate on Scott Pinsker’s interesting essay over at PJ Media yesterday entitled, “Is MAGA a Political Movement or Is It a Revolution? Here’s Your Sneak Peak Into America’s Future,” but I decided there’s something bigger out there I should write on. Pinsker’s answer to his own question is that MAGA is a movement that needs to become a revolution, and I’m not saying he’s wrong about that. I think I would use different terminology, because what MAGA generally encompasses is a counterrevolution. The revolution already happened. Pinsker says that it happened as a response to Donald Trump winning the 2016 election. That isn’t quite right. The revolution was Barack Obama’s takeover of the Democrat Party and forcing its conversion from liberalism to outright neocommunism — Obamunism, if you will — and then doing the same to the country at large. And this was such a comprehensive redirection of the political marketplace that here we are, the better part of 20 years later, and it’s actually still very much possible that Kamala Harris — a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of Obama, lacking any perceptible political skill or insight, much less leadership qualities of any note — could be elected president. Harris is a cipher. She’s a puppet of a shadowy regime that has seized control of the institutions of power in this country. That regime is bipartisan — sort of. There are “Republicans” who used to call themselves conservatives who are now backing her — at my site The Hayride on Friday, I talked about the despicable swamp rat Charles Boustany, one of former House Speaker John Boehner’s little minions, who joined a letter crafted by his fellow establishment power pimps to support a candidate who favors (despite what lies she currently tells in an effort to cover her tracks) a ban on hydraulic fracturing, free sex-change operations for prison inmates and illegal aliens, a tax on unrealized capital gains, banning plastic straws, and banning deportation of criminals from other countries. It’s bizarre. More to the point, as I keep saying here in this space, it’s villainous. We’re increasingly beset by villains in our cultural and political life in America. Consider the unfurling story of one Ryan Routh, a sicko would-be assassin who laid in wait for Trump for some 12 hours near the fifth green at Trump International Gold Club in Palm Beach, and who missed the opportunity to take out the former president only because a Secret Service agent happened upon Routh’s rifle barrel as it stuck out from a chain-link fence. Nobody bothered to secure the perimeter of that golf course, a suspicious bit of incompetence that miraculously wasn’t fatal to Trump. Routh was perhaps an over-flamboyant version of the common modern Democrat, whose Trump Derangement Syndrome has broken the meter. In a manifesto/suicide letter that surfaced over the weekend and echoed most of the rhetoric of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over the last three years plus, Routh claimed the mantle of kindness and gentility in defending his intended murder of the GOP presidential candidate — something that is shockingly prevalent among outwardly respectable and upscale pretenders to cultural power. You can find his attitude quite often among shoppers at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, dog-walkers in nice blue-city neighborhoods, and on selective and expensive college campuses. And you can find it in government and media circles, too. Something else that showed up in Routh’s manifesto letter was a $150,000 bounty offered to anyone who could “complete the job” of slaughtering Trump. Now, it isn’t in evidence that Routh has the resources to make good on that figure, though there was apparently a GoFundMe someone was running on his behalf in order that he would succeed in recruiting mercenaries for the Ukraine war effort. But the amazing thing, as Donald Trump Jr. noted, was that the FBI released the letter with the bounty offer unredacted. And then the mainstream media ran with the story! So now there is a public price on Trump’s head for the next would-be assassin to seek. That the payoff of the bounty is specious at best is not particularly material; not long ago it would have been regarded as outrageous to circulate such dangerous information regarding a candidate in a presidential race. Now? It’s as par for the course as assassination attempts themselves. And when Elon Musk notes that, by contrast, nobody is pushing Harris’ assassination, he’s attacked by dunderheads like Keith Olbermann as stoking political violence. No sooner did Routh’s bounty letter make the news cycle that it was further revealed that he had a list of places Trump was scheduled to be for the next several weeks. And then his son was arrested for kiddie porn. Which is an awfully good way to ensure he doesn’t dish on his father, isn’t it? Or, going in the opposite direction, maybe somebody motivated Routh into serving as a would-be assassin with a threat of his son’s exposure. Though I’m sure Ryan Routh, international nut of mystery, was simply a well-informed lone wolf. That arrest of Oran Routh could be a nice segue into the Sean Combs story, on the eve of what are likely a set of revelations that expose a great deal of the entertainment industry as a massive sex-exploitation factory that makes Harvey Weinstein look like a wayward Presbyterian deacon out on the town. But I’ll hold off on that cancer, other than to note that the singer Pink sure did give an impassioned performance at the Democrats’ convention in Chicago just a few weeks before she had to trash the bulk of her social media posts as the Combs scandal burgeoned last week. Government shares the morals of Hollywood, you know; though not necessarily their good looks. We’re awash in sexual abuse of minors, just as we’re awash in sex trafficking as a whole. Nearly 300,000 migrant children are unaccounted for by the border authorities on the watch of Harris and the Biden administration and the cabal that pulls their strings; what percentage of those do you think were dragged into “sex work?” You know as well as I do that it isn’t a small fraction. In a decent country this would be a scandal so big we’d talk about little else. Instead, it gets meager coverage from a news media whose members every once and again will get pinched for their own contributions to the kiddie sex trade and child sex trafficking that is run away from by a Democrat Party (with Republican co-conspirators, to be sure) shot through with pedophiles (or at least the pedo-adjacent), including the current puppet in the White House. Villainy is a very good word to describe this horror. But when they’re not importing migrants to sex them up, the current crowd in charge are bringing them in to drive you down economically. J.D. Vance’s brilliant promotion of cat-eater memes was actually a light touch in bringing to light the societal problems caused by mass migration of Haitians, Venezuelans, and others among the global poor — as we saw in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a little town being deluged with migrants to work in local food-processing factories and thus displacing Americans and depressing wages… And when ordinary Americans object, you get this sort of out-of-touch nonsense. Bloomberg: Bloomberg News analyzed immigration court data obtained by researchers at Syracuse University that show where the 1.8 million asylum seekers and refugees who landed in the US in 2023 have taken up residence… Migrants landing in swing states, and across the country, are gravitating to counties that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. In the battleground states that will decide this November’s election, about 72% of migrants in 2023 went to Biden counties while less than a third went to Trump counties, the Bloomberg analysis found. Counties that voted for Biden four years ago are home to roughly 60% of the overall US population. Swing states received 12% of all migrants, with most going to blue counties like Philadelphia, home to Pennsylvania’s largest city, and Gwinnett, which is outside Atlanta. Much like in previous generations, migrants are headed to places with growing local economies, bolstering the labor force in places that are already thriving. In swing states, 85% of migrants settled in places that saw GDP growth from 2019 to 2022, according to the latest available data…. These newcomers are unlikely to become US citizens before the election, so they won’t be casting ballots of their own. Ace of Spades had the correct response to this… This is an especially sick thing to demand, when the town you’re talking about has had a collapse of local employment due to deindustrialization, that is, outsourcing manufacturing jobs to the third world. But let’s flood this already low-employment town with lots of illegals willing to work for dirt wages. That’ll really help the locals to thrive! How much more obvious could Bloomberg be that they are making a case for liberals getting what they want politically — a never-ending flood of third world “new voters” — so long as those dirty foreigners are penned up with Dirty White Working Class. We also find out that the Biden administration is busy fast-tracking George Soros’ takeover of the talk radio market, one more milepost along the road to a stifled national discussion. And once again a mismanaged supply chain lies exposed as dockworkers are ready to strike. Meanwhile, the Biden administration now wants to send troops to the Middle East that will somehow keep the Israel-Iran war (can we finally call it what it really is?) contained; there is no reason to believe that won’t backfire, and perhaps intentionally. All of these things fit a pattern, which is to create, through action and inaction, a demoralized and despairing society that is poorer, more ignorant, unhappier and more desperate than ever. And when the people driving that pattern then tell you “we can’t go back” to an America not under their thumb, with the not-so-implicit threat that any attempt to do so will be met with even more violence than that continuously threatened to Trump, you ought to be quite clear that they’re villains. And act accordingly to stop them. We hope to see you at the ballot box on or before Nov. 5. READ MORE: Further Examinations: From Hellmarsh With Love Ep. 3 Five Quick Things: The SAVE Act Mess The Spectacle Ep. 147: Netflix’s Rebel Ridge Calls Out the Injustice of Civil Asset Forfeiture The post Villains, Villains Everywhere appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Sean McNamara’s biopic about former President Ronald Reagan, now in movie theaters across the country, provides a timely occasion to reflect on some essential principles lost in today’s world, marked by the confrontation between left-wing wokeism and right-wing nationalism, two forms of collectivist interventionism. It would benefit the Republican Party to rediscover these principles, and benefit the country if it did. The film is one-dimensional, more impressionistic than thought-provoking, and would have been more effective if it had concentrated on certain defining moments, rather than sail through decades of personal and historical material. But it is stirringly timely. The traits of Reagan’s personality are largely absent from today’s political landscape — the old-fashioned gentlemanliness, the bonhomie, the humor, the ability to inspire through idealism instead of hatred, the appeal beyond party lines, and the tendency to define the enemy in terms of anecdotes, images, and ideas, rather than name-calling and epithets. Just as important, if not more, was Reagan’s devotion to principle. This did not come from his intellect, but from his intuition, which was, like his powers of communication, mighty effective. His convictions can be reduced to two overriding ideas: that communism was evil and that government should be limited. And herein lies the contradiction of Reagan’s presidency. Although there is a logical coherence between these two goals, they turned out to be incompatible; the administration sacrificed one in pursuit of the other. The fragility of the Soviet system was the ultimate cause of its demise, but Reagan administration pressure accelerated the process. In doing so, however, Reagan’s effort to reduce the size of government gradually lost impetus and was eventually nullified. Two factors contributed to this. First, the fact that Reagan had to contend with a split Congress in which the idea of undoing the big-government legacy of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal (to which, ironically, Reagan himself had adhered in the past) and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society enjoyed minimal support. Second, a school of thought known as “Lafferism” (after Arthur Laffer) gained traction in the administration and the GOP, according to which lower taxes would unleash an economic torrent that would produce so much new tax revenue that government deficits would become a thing of the past, reducing the federal debt as well. While tax revenues did increase significantly during Reagan’s years in office, from approximately $618 billion in fiscal year 1982 to $991 billion in fiscal 1989, government spending also took off. The result was a tripling of the deficit and the national debt (which increased from $995 billion to $2.9 trillion). By the time the Gipper left office, federal spending as a proportion of the GDP was not much different than it had been under Jimmy Carter, who in turn had failed to reverse the profligacy of the Richard Nixon–Gerald Ford years.  A significant part of the spending increase had to do with the primary objective of boosting U.S. defense capabilities. Raising military spending from almost $400 billion to $530 billion fueled a deficit that averaged 4 percent of GDP in the 12 years of the Reagan administration and his vice president and successor, George H. W. Bush. On the domestic front, there were achievements, including some years of economic growth once the recession of the early part of Reagan’s presidency passed. Part of it was unleashed, no doubt, by lowering taxes, but, as some critics contend, another part had to do with the government’s deficit spending, with its deceiving and temporary effect, and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s lax monetary policy. Regardless, some of the Reagan years were undoubtedly economically successful. But reducing the size of government, a major goal at the beginning of the Reagan presidency, was not part of the Gipper’s legacy. The force of principle and the power of ideas can be so effective in politics as to survive their advocates’ inability to live up to them and still maintain their relevance. That was the case of the ideas espoused by some of the slave-owning Founding Fathers who legated to future generations tools with which to combat that and other evils. In the case of Ronald Reagan, not fulfilling, and even abandoning, the stated goal of reducing the size of government did not detract from the inspiring effect his relentless defense of individual freedom from government intervention had on the nation and on millions across the world. Which is why some of the sobering statistics of his domestic legacy have paradoxically not diminished his standing as a symbol of limited government.          Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a Senior Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, Calif. His latest book is Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization and America. READ MORE: Yes, Ronald Reagan Did Win the Cold War My Response to the Reagan Critics and Haters Critics Be Damned: The Reagan Film Is Wonderful The post Revisiting Reagan: He Won the Cold War, But Lost the War Against Big Government appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

As progressives continue celebrating their victory last year that enshrined abortion into Ohio’s constitution, their latest efforts could turn Ohio’s congressional and legislative districts into a much bigger problem for conservatives. The group known as Citizens Not Politicians (CNP) has successfully secured ballot access for its proposed amendment, Issue One, to Ohio’s constitution, which the group claims will “end gerrymandering” once and for all in Ohio. Despite those claims, the backers and supporters of Issue One are not coming to this state to end gerrymandering; rather, they seek to exploit Ohio’s system to impose their radical progressive agenda further.  Ohio’s New Issue One Will Confuse Voters In a few weeks, Ohioans will vote on whether to approve Issue One (not to be confused with last year’s amendments seeking to increase the threshold for approving an amendment or enshrining the right to abortion into Ohio’s Constitution). Issue One, also called the Citizens Not Politicians Amendment by its advocates, seeks to create an “Independent” redistricting commission intending to make “fair and impartial” districts for the Ohio General Assembly as well as assist with the redistricting plans for Ohio’s congressional districts for the U.S. House of Representatives. On their webpage, the amendment’s advocates argue that the amendment would do the following: Create the 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission made up of Democratic, Republican, and Independent citizens who broadly represent the different geographic areas and demographics of the state.  Ban current or former politicians, political party officials and lobbyists from sitting on the Commission. Require fair and impartial districts by making it unconstitutional to draw voting districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or individual politician. Require the commission to operate under an open and independent process. Despite optimism from the amendment’s proponents, the language approved by the Ohio Ballot Board in a 3-2 vote is now being challenged by the CNP for what the group argues are “misleading descriptions” of the amendment. A statement from Don McTigue, the lawyer representing CNP, states: “I’ve never seen ballot language this dishonest and so blatantly illegal… [i]t’s insulting to voters, and I’m embarrassed for the Secretary of State.” (READ MORE: Springfield, Ohio Is About More Than Cats and Dogs) Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, responded to the accusations saying, “It is what I genuinely believe to be our best effort to faithfully summarize, truthfully summarize, a very long amendment for the voters to consider.” On Sept. 17, the Ohio Supreme Court sided with LaRose and the Ohio Ballot Board, ordering that only minor changes were needed but that most of the language was accurate.  While proponents have claimed that such an amendment would “fix” Ohio’s voting districts, their arguments fall flat when looking at their prized example: The bordering state of Michigan. Michigan Passed a Similar Proposal. Gerrymandering Didn’t Go Away. In 2018, Michigan passed its own amendment (Proposal 2) by an overwhelming majority of Michigan voters. Voters Not Politicians (VNP), the group responsible for changing Michigan’s redistricting model, received major funding and endorsements from national far-left organizations, including many of the groups currently funding and supporting Issue One in Ohio. Left-wing organizations including Action Now Initiative, The Sixteen Thirty Fund, and the National Education Association were among the key endorsers and financial backers of VNP.  What became of Michigan in the following years? Unsurprisingly gerrymandering didn’t go away; instead, it was ramped up to a whole new level. Using the language of Proposal 2, progressives managed to use the independent commission to redraw the districts across Michigan in a way that enabled Democrats to secure both chambers of the state’s legislature in the 2022 midterms. Democrats didn’t hide the fact that the commission’s redistricting helped create the Democrats’ trifecta over Michigan’s government, allowing them to pass their extreme progressive agenda in Michigan. As if regular gerrymandering wasn’t enough, things got worse after Michigan’s commission was found making unconstitutional districts by engaging in racial gerrymandering. Michigan’s Independent Citizen’s Redistricting Commission (MICRC) and the Secretary of State of Michigan were sued in 2022 for applying race for redistricting purposes. The federal lawsuit (Agee v. Benson) was brought by 19 African American Detroiters to the United States District Court Western District of Michigan Southern Division, arguing that the efforts to reduce the black voting age from 80 percent to 50 percent in 13 districts violated both U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. The three federal judge panel sided with the plaintiffs in 2023, and affirmed that “All the districts were drawn in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.” Besides the ramped-up gerrymandering, the process itself has been a complete disaster. Accusations of bullying and inappropriate behavior amongst the members of the commission led to shouting matches, a failed effort to censure the commission’s chair, and a public apology. (READ MORE: Immigration Control Is Smart, Not Un-Christian) The tension within the MICRC got so bad that, in 2022, the commission’s top attorney resigned, which pushed the commission further into chaos. The commission’s inconsistent approach towards redistricting has led to numerous lawsuits and court orders to redraw their proposals. Nancy Wang, executive director and one of the founding members of VNP, admitted that Michigan’s model is far from perfect and still faces many unresolved problems. During a policy talk in 2022, Wang said that “This is not a perfect process. It’s not perfect maps. People have concerns and they’re very real.” Those Backing Ohio’s Issue One Are Hardly Bipartisan Those behind the initiative to pass Issue One in Ohio are not as bipartisan as they appear. No different from the backers and supporters of VNP in 2018, CNP has received major funding from many out-of-state left-wing organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Tides Foundation, and Our American Future Foundation. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, the top contributor to the VNP in 2018, is once again the top contributor to the CNP, giving over $6.6 million in total contributions.  Besides the clear partisan effort by progressives to take control over Ohio’s redistricting, the entire idea of simply “ending gerrymandering” is deeply flawed. The idea sounds great on paper, but it usually ends in complete catastrophe. Issue One sounds promising, after all, who doesn’t want to combat corruption with the hope of attaining a fairer system? But there lies the key problem of Issue One and Michigan’s model: It’s predicated on a notion of reform that dwells in the theoretical, without recognizing limits set forth by reality. The fact is that, regardless of who draws the districts, someone will be dissatisfied. The task of redrawing districts is purely one of trade-offs, and there will always be some who don’t believe that the trade-offs made were fair or advantageous to them. Groups like VNP and CNP ignore this reality and ultimately do nothing to stop gerrymandering. As Galen Druke pointed out: “If ending gerrymandering means creating maps that simultaneously enhance competition, don’t benefit either party, promote minority representation and keep cities, counties and communities whole, then it is impossible to end gerrymandering.” (READ MORE: It’s Not About the Cats. It’s About America.) Regardless of the rhetoric, the idea of creating an “independent” commission begs the question, who is the commission independent of? According to the VNP and CNP, the answer is politicians and lobbyists. But, according to the language of Issue One, the commission won’t be elected or chosen by the people, rather it will be created by unelected bureaucrats from the Department of Administration Services and a bipartisan panel of “four retired judges.” Despite the CNP’s claim that its amendment would put the people over politicians and lobbyists, the proposal itself makes it quite clear that the commission is not independent from “the politicians and lobbyists,” but the people. The harsh truth is that it’s impossible to remove politics from something that is inherently a political affair. As Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, notes, “You can’t take politics out of redistricting.” As a native Ohioan, hearing the words “Ohio is becoming more like Michigan” is beyond insulting. Unfortunately, that might just be the case. If Ohioans take the misfortunate step of approving Issue One, then there will be nothing stopping left-wing Democrats from gerrymandering Ohio and pushing forward their extreme progressive agenda. If progressives have their way and are successful in Michiganizing Ohio, it won’t be long until the entirety of the United States has been Michgianzied, and our voices silenced.  The post Progressives Are Trying to Make Ohio More Like Michigan appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.