Tag Archives: #Democrats

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Something I never thought I would see.

I took this photo on June 19, 2016, in Rome:

Italian soldiers on guard near the Arch of Constantine, Roma, June 19, 2016. Photo by Dana R Pico; may be freely used, with attribution.

Then there was this photo, on Twitter, from Michael Tracey:

National Guardsmen, Washington, DC, January 18, 2020.

Mr Tracey said, “Asked the Guardsmen why they are standing around with unloaded rifles. “I don’t know, I’m just doing what I’m told””

Then we had Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN), saying that we just can’t trust anyone who might have voted for Donald Trump:

Had a Republican said something like that about soldiers who voted for a Democrat, the left would be up in arms. But when a Democrat says it? Crickets.

This is the reaction of the left after a couple hundred idiots, out of thousands upon thousands of demonstrators broke into the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

It was only a few months ago that President Trump said he might send federal law enforcement agents to Philadelphia to protect federal property from the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators, whose Mostly Peaceful Protests™ resulted in curfews in 40 cities, hundreds of buildings looted, vandalized and burned. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, on July 21, 2020:

Mayor Jim Kenney on Tuesday dismissed Trump’s stated concerns about public safety as disingenuous given the administration’s inaction in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit urban centers hardest.

“If the Trump administration wanted to help cities, they would have gotten off their rear ends back in March and April,” Kenney said. “This is a game he’s playing to divert attention away from the many crises that are facing this nation, and we’ll oppose it with everything we have.”

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner compared Trump’s threat to fascism.

“My dad volunteered and served in World War II to fight fascism, like most of my uncles, so we would not have an American president brutalizing and kidnapping Americans for exercising their constitutional rights and trying to make America a better place, which is what patriots do,” he said in a statement. “Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office.”

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) dodged the question of whether Trump should send federal officers to Philadelphia and instead joined in attacking the city’s Democratic leaders.

“The rioting, violence, and lawlessness in Portland is a disgrace, and I hope it does not happen in Philadelphia,” Toomey said. “One way to ensure that it does not is for Philadelphia’s mayor and district attorney to actually support the police, enforce the law, and hold criminals accountable.”

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) said Trump’s “secret police are kidnapping and holding citizens without charges for exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed rights.”

“This is totalitarianism,” Casey said. ”Law enforcement should protect the people — not the president’s self-interested political motives. … This unconstitutional paramilitary force has no place anywhere in a healthy democracy and, considering Philadelphia’s historical significance as the birthplace of our Constitution, it would be especially disrespectful and insulting here.”

Yet Democratic Governors all across the country have closed their Capitol buildings, and put up barriers and National Guardsmen, and for what? The pro-Trump rioters who broke into the Capitol assaulted some Capitol police officers, one of whom was killed when struck by a fire extinguisher, but unless I have missed something, the only actual shots fired were by the Capitol police! The rioters broke some windows, trashed a couple of offices, and apparently stole a laptop from Nancy Pelosi’s office. Somehow, this all seems an overreaction.

The Inquirer wound up reporting that In Harrisburg and Trenton, ‘a collective sigh of relief’ as few pro-Trump loyalists show up following FBI warning:

Despite a stark warning from the FBI that state capitals could be targeted by far-right extremists or armed protesters this week, just a handful of demonstrators appeared at government buildings in Harrisburg and Trenton on Sunday as throngs of law enforcement patrolled.

“We are breathing a collective sigh of relief,” Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora said Sunday afternoon. “It appears there are more skateboarders than protesters here.”

The relief rippled across a nation on the edge, still reeling from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that left five dead and set off a massive law enforcement response from coast to coast ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s Wednesday inauguration. Last week, the FBI warned that at least one group that backs President Donald Trump called for supporters to “storm” government buildings, and authorities said some far-right personalities indicated they’d begin their demonstrations Sunday.

In preparation, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf activated hundreds of members of the National Guard, the Capitol was closed, and police fortified the building with barricades. Streets were shut down in Harrisburg and Trenton, and residents hunkered down in their homes.

It turned out that both cities were quiet Sunday. In Harrisburg, a few demonstrators appeared, as did a couple counterprotesters, including one who approached police and denounced white supremacy while clutching his lunch in a Styrofoam container. The largest gathering near the Capitol was likely a scrapbooking convention at a nearby hotel, made up of mostly women armed with scissors and creativity.

The calm was largely the case at state capitals across the country over the weekend and in D.C., where much of the city is being patrolled by about 25,000 National Guard troops, including some from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Tall fencing surrounds the Capitol, and the National Mall is closed to the public in an unprecedented lockdown of the nation’s capital.

Of course, the left will claim that it was this determined show of force which kept the demonstrations from happening in the first place. We have to wait until January 20th, to know for certain what demonstrations will occur, but the Democrats sure didn’t react like this during the Summer of Fire and Hate.

The Democrats have been trashing our First Amendment rights ever since COVID-19 broke out, trying to deny the right of the people peaceably to assemble. They gave last summer’s demonstrators plenty of leeway to loot and burn in our major cities, but now, when the protesters are conservatives, they have automatically assumed that any demonstrations will not be peaceful, and they’ve deployed thousands of troops to stop them.

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Democrisy: It seems that Democrats in government don’t believe the rules they set for others apply to themselves

It was mostly an internet meme, circulating through the evil reich-wing communities, but, eventually, the credentialed media had to take notice; the election being over, it wasn’t as harmful to their causes anyway.

Politicians across U.S. eat own words after dining out, taking trips

by Juliet Williams, Associated Press | December 3, 2020 | 7:00 AM EST

SAN FRANCISCO — Their messaging has been clear: wear a mask; stay 6 feet apart; and, most importantly, stay home!

But their actions aren’t living up to the rhetoric, creating a real political problem for some of the most vocal leaders in California’s fight to contain the coronavirus.

First came Gov. Gavin Newsom, who won plaudits for issuing the first statewide stay-at-home order in the U.S. back in March. He broke the state rules when he and his wife were caught dining with 10 others at the posh French Laundry restaurant in Napa in early November with lobbyists and others from numerous different households, sitting close together, mask-less.

San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, was at the same $350-a-plate restaurant a day later, dining with a San Francisco socialite and six others. Breed has also won accolades for imposing some of the strictest rules in California, keeping coronavirus rates relatively low. Her spokespeople haven’t responded to queries about how many households were there — state rules cap those at three. Her spokesman rubbed salt in the wound by saying she has been trying to support local restaurants. The French Laundry is 60 miles out of town.

The Associated Press article makes it sound like Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) was the first, but he wasn’t. Newsweek posted an article listing some of the others:

  • Mayor Steve Adler (D-Austin)
  • Governor Kevin Stitt (R-OK)
  • Mayor Michael Hancock (D-Denver)
  • Mayor Muriel Bowser (D-Washington DC)
  • Mayor Sam Liccardo (D-San José)
  • Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D-Chicago)

The article also noted that Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) was preparing to break his own rules, but when it became public in advance, he cancelled his plans due to the political backlash.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was caught on tape going to a private hair salon, for which the lovely Mrs Pelosi did not apologize, but simply claimed that she’d been set up by an evil reich-wing activist.

Of course, the people on the list are all over very large areas. I’m guessing that a lot of smaller city mayors and city councilmen, etc, have also violated the rules, but they aren’t important enough to have made the national news.

There is one Republican on the list, but Newsweek also stated that:

Republican governors have faced fewer accusations, largely because they have not implemented as many of the restrictions that public health experts have called for.

Translation: they have had more respect for our constitutional rights.

In his concurring opinion in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote:

Government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis. At a minimum, that Amendment prohibits government officials from treating religious exercises worse than comparable secular activities, unless they are pursuing a compelling interest and using the least restrictive means available. Yet recently, during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles. . . . .

What could justify so radical a departure from the First Amendment’s terms and long-settled rules about its application? Our colleagues offer two possible answers. Initially, some point to a solo concurrence in South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, in which the Chief Justice expressed willingness to defer to executive orders in the pandemic’s early stages based on the newness of the emergency and how little was then known about the disease. At that time, COVID had been with us, in earnest, for just three months. Now, as we round out 2020 and face the prospect of entering a second calendar year living in the pandemic’s shadow, that rationale has expired according to its own terms. Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical. Rather than apply a nonbinding and expired concurrence from South Bay, courts must resume applying the Free Exercise Clause. . . . .

In the end, I can only surmise that much of the answer lies in a particular judicial impulse to stay out of the way in times of crisis. But if that impulse may be understandable or even admirable in other circumstances, we may not shelter in place when the Constitution is under attack. Things never go well when we do.

COVID-19 is serious, a highly contagious disease that can be, and is, fatal, though in only about 1% of the cases. Hospitalization rates are much higher than that.

But the damage being done to our constitutional rights is far, far greater. The precedent being set, that government can set down rules which would otherwise be unconstitutional because of some ’emergency’ simply leaves it to elected officials to decide just what emergencies outweigh our constitutional rights. Many are already wanting to abridge our constitutional rights under the Second Amendment because some bad people are wrongly using firearms. The New York Times published an OpEd by Parker Malloy, himself a male who thinks he is female, claiming that “Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.” There will always be such very good reasons to suspend or restrict our constitutional rights, when those rights are left for other people to decide. If the left can somehow ban ‘hate speech,’ what other speech can they ban? The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act actually sought to ban political speech in favor of one candidate or another prior to an election, because, well just because.

Brave men fought, and died, for our rights. At least six of my known ancestors fought in our Revolution, for the rights they were denied by King George and his Parliament. At least twenty-one of my known ancestors came to these shores, risking their lives on the open ocean in small wooden ships, for the right to worship God as they chose, and not be oppressed by King James and King Charles for not being Anglicans. Can I really support governors restricting our freedom of religion over a disease far less deadly than an ocean voyage to an untamed continent in the 1620s and 1630s?[1]Fifty-one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower either died at sea or in that first New England winter and spring.

Our great country was founded in danger, by people fleeing tyranny in England, and by brave men and women who risked their lives on the frontier, and in war, yet our political leaders today, primarily but not exclusively Democrats, would have us quaking in fear and trashing the freedoms and liberties for which our ancestors fought and died. We dishonor our ancestors when we allow their sacrifices to be wasted.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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↑1 Fifty-one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower either died at sea or in that first New England winter and spring.
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Social Justice Warrior vs Social Justice Warrior

Despite today’s Democrats not being working class friendly at all, labor unions have been a Democratic Party mainstay for decades. But it seems that the left’s having gone all-out #SocialJustice is putting them in conflict with labor unions. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Controversial tax abatement bill pits Philly building trades unions against concerns for immigrant workers

by Sean Collins Walsh | November 30, 2020 | 7:03 PM EST

Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez (D-Philadelphia) Public Domain, Link

A City Council bill designed to prevent unscrupulous contractors from receiving construction tax benefits sparked a debate about whether it could also open the door for a crackdown on undocumented workers in an unusually contentious committee hearing on Monday.At issue was a bill by Councilmember Bobby Henon that would prohibit projects using construction firms that improperly classify workers as independent contractors from qualifying for the city’s residential property tax abatement, which provides 10 years of tax benefits on the value of new construction and renovations.

“How do we ensure that the application of this isn’t discriminatory toward undocumented workers who have no recourse?” City Councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez said during a Finance Committee hearing on the bill. “There’s no other way for the communities that I represent to see it any other way than they are potentially being targeted.”

After heated debate, the committee eventually approved the bill in a rare divided vote of 6-3, but not before Henon was forced to provide assurances that, before the bill comes to the Council floor for final passage, he would work to identify regulations that would ensure it does not endanger immigrant workers.

Bobby Henon used to be political director of Local 98 of the powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Philadelphia is a union town. Unions have tried to retain a stranglehold on all construction in the city, and they make projects more difficult for non-union contractors. [1]This is something I have seen first hand, having jobsite experience while working for a non-union ready-mixed concrete supplier in the Philadelphia suburbs, while providing concrete for a few … Continue reading Kensington, where Maria Quiñones-Sánchez’s[2]While the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was, according to the Democrats, completely free of fraud, Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez herself said that “the ward leaders opposing her have a history of … Continue reading district is based, was 38.9% Hispanic according to the 2010 census. While the exact percentage of the population which is in the United States illegally isn’t known, in 2016, the Rev John Olenick, then pastor of Visitation Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) Roman Catholic Parish in Kensington, said that his “parish consists of many undocumented people from places like Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, [the] Dominican Republic, and other countries.” Visitation BVM Church celebrates one Mass in English on Sundays, but three Masses in Spanish, which lets you know just how busy the parish is.[3]According to the church bulletin, the church has a Pastor, two Associate Pastors, another Redemptorist priest in residence, and a deacon. That’s more staffing than any parish of which I have … Continue reading We may not know the exact percentage of legal vs illegal immigrants are in Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez’s district, but it’s clear that there are a lot of them.

Henon said the bill was not meant to target immigrants and that it was merely meant to ensure construction firms were following employment law.

“This is not penalizing workers in anyway. This is protecting workers,” he said. “I am always open to having a conversation to try to work out some of the unintended consequences with our Revenue Department.”

But Quiñones-Sánchez said that filing as an independent contractor is the only option available to undocumented immigrants — who make up between 15% and 25% of the local construction workforce, according to a 2018 estimate by the city controller — aside from working completely off the books.

Quiñones-Sánchez said if Henon was primarily interested in safety, he would propose a bill aimed at ensuring undocumented workers are protected by safety rules, not one that would keep them off job sites.

Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez has just pointed out, though I doubt she meant to do so, that the illegal immigrants haven’t broken the law only by having crossed into the United States illegally, but continue breaking the law, every day, because they have to work for a living, but they have to violate our employment and tax laws to do so. Either they are presenting forged documents to employers to work on the books, which is a felony, or they are working off the books, for cash, meaning that they are breaking our income tax laws, another felony.

Economically, labor unions bargain for higher wages through the law of supply and demand. If they can force a company or an industry to use only unionized workers, they have effectively reduced the supply of potential workers to the population of union members. For non-unionized workers, allowing illegal immigrants[4]I do not use the mealy-mouthed adjective “undocumented” to soft-peddle the fact that such immigrants are here illegally. to compete for jobs is to increase the supply of workers vis a vis the demand for them, which exerts negative pressure on wages in general.

Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez, a liberal Democrat, opposes the ideas of Mr Henon, another liberal Democrat, because, as will inevitably be the case, the goals of the #SocialJusticeWarriors are inevitably contradictory. I just enjoy watching them fighting with each other.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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↑1 This is something I have seen first hand, having jobsite experience while working for a non-union ready-mixed concrete supplier in the Philadelphia suburbs, while providing concrete for a few projects in the city itself. Unions can make it difficult for non-union workers to get to the jobsite, and concrete is a perishable product.
↑2 While the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was, according to the Democrats, completely free of fraud, Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez herself said that “the ward leaders opposing her have a history of Election Day shenanigans and campaign finance violations.” WHYY, the NPR station in Philadelphia, reported: “After the election, the city’s Board of Ethics found that the 7th Ward/Friends of Angel Cruz and Quiñones-Sánchez campaign committee had committed campaign finance violations for accepting excess contributions from other political committees.” Both campaigns, and Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez personally, had to pay fines levied by the city’s Ethics Board. Who knew that there were ever ethics in Philadelphia?
↑3 According to the church bulletin, the church has a Pastor, two Associate Pastors, another Redemptorist priest in residence, and a deacon. That’s more staffing than any parish of which I have been a member.
↑4 I do not use the mealy-mouthed adjective “undocumented” to soft-peddle the fact that such immigrants are here illegally.