Gen X Cartoons

 

As Anonymous admits lying, will the vitriol rage on after the election?

Miles Taylor

I’m going to put my name to this and not say it anonymously: 

The whole flap over the New York Times op-ed by an unnamed author trashing President Trump is now making everyone look bad.

Now that Miles Taylor, who later published a book, has outed himself, he hardly fits the description of “senior administration official” that caused a furor as Washington wondered whether the person describing Trump as “petty and ineffective” was a Cabinet or sub-Cabinet official, or even someone in the White House.

Instead, it was the chief of staff to the secretary of Homeland Security--one of an army of Beltway bureaucrats and hardly part of the Trump inner circle. Even the Times says Taylor’s confession on Medium raises “questions about whether his position in the Trump administration was senior enough to justify the decisions by The Times’s Opinion desk and the book’s publisher to keep his identity secret.”

Had Taylor resigned and put his name on the piece, it would barely have caused a ripple. It was the Times that pumped up the Anonymous mystery by conveying the impression this was some big-shot insider who deserved journalistic protection.
Taylor, who left DHS last year, went public over the summer in TV hits by slamming his ex-boss--but not about his alter ego. In fact, he flatly lied to CNN’s Anderson Cooper when asked if he was Anonymous, saying he only wore masks for pandemics and Halloween.

Now--you can’t make this up--he’s just been hired as a CNN contributor. 

Chris Cuomo, to his credit, confronted Taylor Wednesday night. “You lied to us, Miles. You were asked in August if you were anonymous here with Anderson Cooper, and you said no. Now, why should CNN keep you on the payroll after lying like that?”

Taylor somehow tried to give himself a pass by saying he’d written in his book (and donated most of the proceeds) that he’d “strenuously deny” being the author. He said his original motivation was to avoid Trump’s predilection “to find personal attacks and distractions to pull people away from criticisms of his record.”

The president did just call Taylor a “sleazebag” who “should be prosecuted” (though there’s no evidence he broke any law). But Taylor’s rationale is really that he wanted to use the clout of the Times to whack Trump without being whacked back.

All this got me thinking about the legions of former Trump officials joining the Resistance and the Republican strategists joining forces through the Lincoln Project and other groups. And about how the husband of an actually senior White House official (George Conway) became famous for his scathing attacks on her boss. And how on the other side, the president and his allies have been blistering toward Joe Biden, the Democrats, the media and the administration’s opponents.

I’m not doubting anyone’s society, and politics has always been a rough game. But the president’s harshest critics often wrap their assaults in an aura of righteousness.

In a Times column using his actual name, David Brooks denounces Trump, praises Biden as “the personification of decency”--and raises questions about his own conduct and that of the hate-Trump crowd. 

“Over the past four years we’ve poured out an hourly flow of anti-Trump diatribes and in almost every case they rise to the top of the charts — most liked, most retweeted, most read.”

The problem, Brooks says, is that “permanent indignation is not a healthy emotional state. We’ve become a little addicted to our own umbrage, addicted to that easy feeling of moral superiority, addicted to the easy affirmation bath we get when we repeat what we all believe. Trump-bashing has become a business model.”

“Addicted to our own umbrage” has a certain resonance. The fashionable thing in media circles is to blame the politics of hate on Donald Trump. But if Biden is sworn in next January, will much of the country simply aim its vitriol in different directions?

Will those on the left who have been demanding that the media and Congress hold the president accountable just roll over for Biden and defend everything he does?

Will those on the right who say this president has been victimized by fake news relentlessly attack Biden and the Democrats, castigating the press as lapdogs?

Will people continue to scream at each other on Twitter, sometimes using the Miles Taylor technique of doing it anonymously?

That sounds like a prescription for nonstop ugliness. And remember, it’s not like the pandemic will have magically vanished.

 

Portland councilwoman now backs Mayor Wheeler's opponent in next week's election

 

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, left, has lost the support of City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who now backs Wheeler's opponent in next week's election. (Getty Images)

 

Just days before the mayoral election in Portland, Ore., a former ally of Mayor Ted Wheeler has endorsed his opponent.

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty made her announcement in an online post Wednesday, OregonLive.com reported.

It was the latest political twist in a city that has seen months of riots and vandalism since the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Hardesty’s statement in support of candidate Sarah Iannarone came after the City Council decided to delay a vote on slashing $18 million from the police budget until after Election Day.

PORTLAND DELAYS VOTE ON $18M IN POLICE CUTS: REPORT

Wheeler, who also serves as the city’s police commissioner, was among three commissioners voting to delay action on the matter at the conclusion of a five-hour council meeting that drew public comments from more than 150 residents.

Hardesty skipped the council’s 3-1, leaving the meeting early and saying she was “disgusted by the lack of courage” from Wheeler and commissioners Amanda Fritz and Dan Ryan, who also supported delaying the budget vote.

The sole dissenter was Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who has supported the proposed $18 million cut along with Hardesty.

Hardesty initially backed Wheeler for reelection, supporting him in a May primary, but she announced in September that she could no longer do so because of the way he has responded to the nightly rioting in the city, OregonLive.com reported.

After pulling her support for Wheeler, Hardesty said she would not endorse any candidate but on Wednesday she said via Facebook that she would back Wheeler opponent Sarah Iannarone for the mayor’s job.

Fritz has endorsed Wheeler but Ryan hasn’t publicly supported either mayoral candidate, the news outlet reported.

Eudaly is facing her own challenge Tuesday, from candidate Mingus Mapps.

Hardesty is backing Eudaly while Fritz and Ryan haven’t endorsed a candidate in that race, OregonLive.com reported.

Millennials, Gen Z increasingly comfortable with socialism, Marxism

Be aware of what you wish for! They're comfortable with it because the dumb asses have been born, raised, and protected from it in America, wait till they get a taste of the real thing.

Millennials and Gen Z-ers are becoming increasingly comfortable with socialism, according to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), which conducts an annual poll assessing Americans' attitudes toward socialism.

VOC Executive Director Marion Smith attributes this trend shown in VOC's poll, as well as in other national polls, to a failure of American educational institutions, definitional misunderstandings and a double standard in media and on social media.

"We are seeing the high watermark, politically, of socialism [and] Marxism in the United States," Smith told Fox News. "Never before in history has the United States seen positive opinions of these ideologies to the extent that we’re seeing today. That's just a fact."

Support for progressive, self-identified democratic-socialist politicians including former 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has increased among young voters.

Supporters arrive for Sen. Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign event at Navy Pier in Chicago, March 3, 2019. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

The national Black Lives Matter group, part of a political and social movement against racism and police violence that many American citizens and corporations have endorsed, was co-founded by Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza, who have called themselves "trained Marxists," and Opal Tometi, who observed Venezuela's 2015 election at the invitation of the socialist government.

Tometi was swarmed by government critics during the election on Twitter after posting about the relief she felt being "in a place where there is intelligent political discourse."

BLM's website previously stated in the "What We Believe" section of its website that the group disrupts "the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and 'villages'..."

The group did not respond to a request for comment.

"We live in a world where, over the last few years, Venezuela has turned from a market economy and a very prosperous country into a humanitarian disaster through, in their words ... democratic socialism, supported by the Cuban Communist Party and supported by loans from the People’s Republic of China. That’s the world we live in," Smith said.

Pedestrians walk past a mural depicting the late President Hugo Chavez, in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Leonardo Fernandez)

He continued: "For many years, when self-described socialists or democratic socialists in the United States have been asked, ‘What kind of society do you think is headed in the right direction?’ -- until it became untenable to say ‘Venezuela,’ they fully embraced the [Hugo] Chavez and Maduro direction of Venezuela."

More young Americans are unaware that some 100 million people have been killed by communist parties in power over the last century, and many are unaware that the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for more deaths than Nazi Germany, according to the VOC.

There has also been a decrease in the number of young Americans who believe Friedrich Engels' and Karl Marx's "The Communist Manifesto" secures liberty better than the Declaration of Independence, the VOC found.

"We’ve definitely had a double standard, both in scholarship and education, and popular culture -- journalism -- between the crimes of Nazism and the crimes of communist regimes," Smith said. "You combine that lack of a moral reckoning about the legacy of communism with a failure of education to teach basic 20th-century history, and you add on ... a normalization of the term 'socialism' -- of Marxist rhetoric -- and that leads to a dangerous normalization of socialism as a path forward."

In this June 5, 1989 file photo, a Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Changan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener, File )

As historian Lee Edwards, Ph.D., notes, "What most millennials mean by 'socialism' seems to be a mix of our welfare state and what they perceive to be Swedish democratic socialism. But Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries including Denmark favor the free market and are content with private rather than government ownership of their major industries."

Americans can blame the normalization of socialist rhetoric not only on definitional misunderstandings and the failures of educational institutions and media to give proportional attention to history and today’s current events, but on social media, as well. Smith says there is a double standard on social media to suppress fascist rhetoric and promote socialist and Marxist rhetoric.

"The best policy is to embrace free speech. The worst policy is to ban certain things and elevate Marxist rhetoric and allow for the denial of the victims of communism, and that is the policy that Facebook and other social media platforms have embraced as of today," he said.

THE WORLD'S REMAINING COMMUNIST PARTIES COUNTRIES AND HOW THEY'RE FAIRING ECONOMICALLY

Support for a transition away from a capitalist economic system has also increased, in part because of a misunderstanding of the word and the differences between big business and free enterprise, Smith said.

"There certainly is a difference between big business and economic freedom, and I think that a lot of younger people especially view the excesses of mega-corporations as somehow being related to free enterprise," he said. "A more realistic assessment is that corporate boardrooms and the Chinese Communist Party have basically been collaborating to take manufacturing out of the U.S. and rely on coercive labor in China, and ... that hurts the little guy in China and the American worker."

Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China September 4, 2018. (REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo - RC112C876810)

He added that if Americans understood the correlation between free enterprise and the "exercise of liberty in the economic realm, we would understand that we have a joint cause."

There was a positive takeaway from the poll, however, that also appears to be an oxymoron: While there is an increasingly positive attitude toward socialism and an increasingly negative attitude toward capitalism among younger generations, there is also distrust in government to take care of individual interests.

"I think there’s also a hopeful set of findings in our poll, which is that when asked basic questions about who do you trust most to look after your own interests, the government, the community of yourself? … Overwhelmingly, but also the majority of Millennials and Gen-Zers, would trust themselves by far, secondly then their community, and last and by far, the government," Smith said.

He added later that it remains to be seen whether Millenials and Gen Z-ers "will moderate their opinions" of if the positive trend toward socialism will continue as "older generations -- who are much more pro-American, anti-communist, anti-fascist, appreciative of democracy, free speech, free enterprise" die off.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Biden and Trump hold dueling rallies in battleground Minnesota Friday

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Trump cross paths for a second straight day in a crucial battleground state.

On Thursday they faced off in Florida. Friday – with just four days to go until the general election on Nov. 3, the showdown takes place in Minnesota, which suggests that a state long carried by Democrats in presidential elections may be in play.

President Richard Nixon was the last Republican to win the state – during his 1972 landslide re-election.

President Donald Trump dances as he walks off stage after speaking during a campaign rally at Bemidji Regional Airport, Friday, Sept. 18, 2020, in Bemidji, Minn. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

But four years ago Trump narrowly lost Minnesota and its 10 electoral votes to 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and for over a year the president and his re-election campaign have been eyeing the state in hopes of breaking the losing streak and flipping it from blue to red.

An average of the latest public opinion polls in the state indicate the former vice president with a mid-single digit advantage over Trump, but the surveys suggest that Trump’s gained ground over the past month. Biden’s strength is concentrated in the Twin Cities and the surrounding suburban counties, while Trump polls best in the more rural areas across the rest of the state, which is known as Greater Minnesota.

The president’s event – which has been planned for a few days – is being held at 5pm local time at the airport in the southeastern city of Rochester, although the location of the event was moved twice due to the state’s coronavirus restrictions on large crowds. And the event will be dramatically smaller than the president's typical rallies, where supporters are packed together with out social distancing, and there's limited wearing of masks.

Taking aim at the state's Democratic governor and attorney general, the Trump campaign said Thursday night that "thanks to the free speech-stifling dictates of Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney Gen. Keith Ellison, only the first 250 people will be admitted."

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden greets firefighters as he makes a stop in Duluth, Minn., Friday, Sept. 18, 2020. Second from left is the Mayor of Duluth Emily Larson. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

On Thursday afternoon, the Biden campaign announced that the former vice president would hold a socially distanced drive-in car rally in the capital city of St. Paul at 3:30pm local time, just 90 minutes before the start of Trump’s event.

“We’re getting presidential visits four days out. That means we’re in play,” Minnesota based GOP strategist Amy Koch told Fox News.

Koch, the first and only woman elected as the state senate majority leader in Minnesota, emphasized that Democrats “always take Minnesota for granted. No one can ever believe that Minnesota’s in play and that was a mistake that Hillary Clinton’s camp made in 2016 and it very nearly cost them. Biden’s camp at least seems to be heeding that, but they always seem to be playing catch up.”

But Democratic strategist Mike Erlandson said that the trips Friday by the two national party standard bearers “tells me that the Trump campaign is a little bit desperate and that Biden is feeling good enough that he can come to a state that looks to be pretty blue at the moment.”

The former state Democratic Party chair told Fox News that “it’s close,” but that “all the early voting indicates that it’s going very well in Minnesota” for Biden. Erlandson said that Biden adding his trip at the last minute after Trump’s stop was already planned suggests that Biden may be attempting to “undo whatever the president is trying to do.”

Friday evening’s rally will be the president’s fourth campaign stop in Minnesota this year. And Biden’s Twin Cities visit will be his second to the state since formally becoming his party’s nominee at the Democratic Convention in August.

The events on Friday will be the second time both Biden and Trump will be in the state on the same day. Both campaigned in northern Minnesota on Sept. 18, with Biden in Duluth and Trump in Bemidji.

The Trump campaign started building resources in Minnesota early in the 2020 cycle. Biden’s campaign has been catching up in recent months and both teams have shelled out big bucks to run ads in the state in the closing two months of the campaign.

Before arriving in Minnesota, Biden campaigns in neighboring Iowa, another swing state. And following his Twin Cities stop, the former vice president campaigns in another neighboring battleground, Wisconsin.

The president also campaigns Friday in Wisconsin, as well as the battleground of Michigan.

 

Twitter & Facebook Covering for Biden Cartoons

 

Jim Biden refuses to answer questions about family’s business dealings

Jim Biden, the brother of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, refused to answer questions Wednesday when approached by Fox News outside a house in Maryland about claims the former vice president had knowledge about the family’s overseas business ventures.

 

Approached at a residence on the Eastern Shore, Jim Biden repeatedly rebuffed questions in his driveway as Fox News asked questions from a distance in the street.

“I don’t want to comment about anything,” Jim Biden said.

Asked if he cared to answer questions, Biden said: “Nope.”

Two sources confirmed the person was Jim Biden, including a neighbor who viewed a picture of the footage. The Eastern Shore house is linked to Jim Biden in public records.

BIDEN STAYS SILENT ON BOBULINSKI CLAIMS ABOUT FAMILY'S BUSINESS VENTURES

It comes a day after Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, told Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" in an exclusive interview, that the former vice president's denials of knowledge or involvement in his son's foreign dealings are "a blatant lie."

Asked why he and Hunter Biden allegedly wanted to meet with Bobulinski, Jim Biden replied: “What are you talking about?”

He added: “Would you please stop bothering me?”

Bobulinski said he raised concerns in 2017 to the former vice president's brother Jim Biden, about Joe Biden’s alleged ties to a possible joint venture with a Chinese energy firm.

Bobulinski, a retired lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, was the former CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, which he said was the partnership between the CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and the two Biden family members.

'PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY': TONY BOBULINSKI CLAIMS BIDEN FAMILY SHRUGGED OFF CONCERNS ABOUT RISK TO 2020 BID 

“I remember saying, ‘How are you guys getting away with this?’ ‘Aren't you concerned?’” he told Carlson.

He claims that Jim Biden chuckled. "'Plausible Deniability.' He said it directly to me in a cabana at the Peninsula Hotel,” Bobulinski said.

Asked about the “plausible deniability” claim on Wednesday, Jim Biden did not answer and walked inside the home.

Joe Biden himself is staying mum about Bobulinski's claims. On Wednesday, the Biden campaign declined to comment on the meeting Biden allegedly had with Bobulinski. Biden himself has not yet directly addressed Bobulinski's claims from "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

 

House GOP Leader McCarthy: I’m voting for President Trump. Here’s why he deserves 4 more years

Every four years, Americans have the opportunity to choose the leader of the free world and other elected officials, including members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. This year, estimates are that a record number will vote — some casting ballots early and others on Election Day. 

The contrast between the two men running for president is crystal clear. 

I am voting for President Trump because his record is the difference between four years of results and four decades of rhetoric.

President Trump took office at a time when wages for the middle class had been stagnant for years, when good-paying jobs and cutting-edge technology had been offshored or stolen by China, and when terrorists in the Middle East controlled territory the size of Great Britain. The so-called experts predicted this decline would be the “new normal.” 

But Republicans and President Trump understand that managed decline is unacceptable. Together, our policies reversed it. And despite unprecedented, unending and unfounded attacks on his presidency, he delivered historic results in the economy, national security, energy and the courts. 

For three years until the coronavirus pandemic hit, job openings increased, small business closures fell, and wages rose — including for the lowest earners — because Republicans cut taxes, slashed regulations, and renegotiated bad trade deals. 

America also achieved energy independence by increasing energy production, and we did it cleanly and safely. In 2019, we generated the largest decline of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the world, while also becoming the largest oil and gas producer.

We built the greatest economy in a generation and we will do it again. Despite economic troubles singularly caused by the pandemic, the president and Republicans got right to work to get the economy back on solid footing. Through the most aggressive relief package in history, we saved 51 million jobs — and half of the jobs lost have been regained. 

We are well on our way to getting the American economy back to where it was just nine months ago.

As for the coronavirus itself, a safe and effective vaccine will be available to Americans in record time because President Trump unleashed the brightest minds in the public and private sectors. 

The ISIS physical caliphate has been destroyed. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Iranian terrorist Gen. Qassem Soleimani are dead. And the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan are normalizing relations with Israel.

Other presidents promised to move the American Embassy in Israel to its rightful home in Jerusalem, but only President Trump had the fortitude to do it.

The president’s courageous actions have built confidence in America at home and on the world stage.

President Trump’s reelection is the difference between the most pro-life administration in history and taxpayer-funded abortion on demand. It is the difference between a solid, originalist majority on the Supreme Court that interprets the law as written and a liberal, “living Constitution” majority that would chip away at our rights as citizens.

After four years, the results are clear: America is safer, stronger and more prosperous. Some 56 percent of Americans told Gallup in September that they are better off today than they were four years ago. The coronavirus, the lockdowns, and riots can’t overturn the reality that conservative policies have paved the path to a Great American Comeback.

By contrast, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been in office for 47 years. He was vice president, a powerful Senate committee chairman, and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination twice before. He accomplished nothing.

When asked about the Gallup poll, Biden said Americans who believe they are better off today should not vote for him because “their memory is not very good.” 

If there is a defining aspect of Biden’s career, it’s that he’s been wrong on almost every issue of public importance. 

Yet radical Democrats embrace Biden today because they know they can manipulate him to pass an extreme agenda that would dismantle our institutions, “reimagine” capitalism, and divide our nation.

On the bread-and-butter issue of jobs and the economy, Biden’s tax hikes would raise taxes on the middle class. Additionally, his plan to “transition” from fracking and phase out the oil and natural gas industries would eliminate thousands of jobs, raise costs for families, and leave us more dependent on China and other foreign countries for energy.

On constitutional questions, Biden once opposed court packing, but now wants to set up a left-wing commission to change our institutions. He supports the most extreme pro-abortion agenda in history: taxpayer-funded abortions, repealing the Hyde Amendment, and making abortion on demand the law of the land.

And beyond these disastrous policies, Biden has rushed to embrace a toxic left-wing ideology that rejects our founding principles and reduces individuals to their racial identity. “America was an idea,” he says. “We’ve never lived up to it.” 

In other words, Biden thinks America is fundamentally and fatally flawed.

But of course, the opposite is true. 

America is the freest nation in human history. Our people are creative, kind, and the most generous in the world. No nation is perfect, but America is the only one “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

If you believe in those sacred principles, the choice in this election could not be clearer. Forward in freedom or backward in socialism. Forward in prosperity or backward in poverty. Forward in personal liberty or backward in government control.

As Republicans, it is our mission to restore our American way of life, rebuild the greatest economy in a generation, and renew the American Dream. That is why House Republicans have released our Commitment to America, and it’s why I’m voting for President Trump and why he deserves four more years in office.