Not Surprisingly, Populism Is Popular

Posted on | February 9, 2020 | 1 Comment

My post yesterday about the situation in the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte’s right-wing populist government is cracking down on drug dealers, Communists and other troublemakers, got the attention of Australian blogger Adam Piggott:

Duterte has been in office for roughly the same time as Trump has been president, but we can call Duterte the forgotten man. When he first gained power the western press was all over him, how he was a horrible individual who was guilty of “human rights” abuses, blah blah blah, you know the drill. This went on for some time until suddenly it didn’t. From rather a lot of coverage the news went deathly quiet on the subject of the Philippine’s far-right leader.
The reason for the absence of news is down to how effective his policies have been, particularly as regards law and order. . . .
A couple of months ago I spent a few days on a couple of offshore energy support vessels for work. On both vessels the catering crew were Filipino. . . .
I was speaking to one of the Filipinos in a private conversation when he brought up the subject of his president. He was most fulsome in his praise. Under Duterte the streets are now safe. His kids can happily play on the streets. Business is going well, and particularly without the criminal element extorting money from small family concerns. The man was so enthusiastic that I decided to ask a few other of the Filipino crew what they thought. . . .
To a man they love Duterte. One guy said that in the beginning he didn’t like the president; he had not voted for him and he considered him to be a bad guy. But now he was most enthusiastic in his support. Their quality of life has improved immeasurably under their leader’s policies. . . .

You can read the rest. The populist trend has become an international phenomenon — Trump in the U.S., Boris Johnson in the U.K., Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, etc. — to the consternation of the sponsors of the globalist “progressive” agenda. There is a worldwide elite of billionaires, bureaucrats, academics and journalists committed to the vision of a one-size-fits-all world in which ordinary people are powerless to resist whatever policies are favored by the kind of “influential” people who gather annually at Davos and Aspen.

Just as Trump’s success in America has reduced Democrats to deranged impotence, so also has the rise of populism elsewhere frustrated the ambitions of the elite who, just a few short years ago, believed they had created a New World Order, manipulating public opinion to elect their chosen candidates and implement their preferred policies.

Category: Philippines

Obama Was Really the Smart One

Posted on | February 8, 2020 | Comments Off on Obama Was Really the Smart One

During the Obama era, there was a lot of noise about why his student record at Columbia University and Harvard Law was off-limits. Some conservative complaints about the secrecy surrounding Obama’s transcripts may have been intended to suggest he wasn’t all that bright — a beneficiary of Ivy League “diversity” initiatives or whatever. My hunch, however, was that Obama’s transcripts, in terms of the courses and professors he chose, might have given some indication of his early radicalism. At any rate, I avoided impugning Obama’s intelligence not because I feared the accusation of racism — like my friend Barbara Espinosa often said, “I’m not racist; I hate his white half, too!” — but simply because he didn’t seem at all stupid to me.

Arrogant? Yes, but not stupid. In his official public appearances, Obama generally avoided anything that would make him seem too much of a radical extremist. Knowing it would be difficult to persuade middle-class white voters to elect a black man with a Kenyan name, Obama shrewdly recognized that being a Jesse Jackson-style rabble-rouser was not going to get him to the White House. Instead, he maintained a low-key demeanor that inspired the nickname “No Drama Obama.”

Hillary Clinton? Not so smart. Obama didn’t play the race card much — he knew he didn’t have to, as his race was obvious enough — but Hillary and her allies deliberately played the gender card to such an extent that people got fed up with that “First Woman President” business. And the Clintons habitually overestimated their popularity. Most people have forgotten that Bill Clinton got only 43% of the vote in 1992, and in 1996, he still got only 49% — less than a majority of the popular vote. While Hillary did get a popular-vote majority, her support was unusually concentrated in deep-blue Democrat strongholds like California, Illinois and New York, whereas Obama got much broader support.

In the aftermath of Hillary’s 2016 defeat, her allies resorted to the “Russian collusion” hoax to explain how she lost, and have kept pushing that narrative even after the Mueller investigation failed to find evidence to support their conspiracy theory. Now, after trying to revive that hoax as the “UkraineGate” justification for impeachment, and failing again, Democrats have become completely deranged. Their 2020 presidential candidates are kooky, as James Carville complains:

“We just had an election in 2018. We did great. We talked about everything we needed to talk about and we won,” he said in a Vox interview published on Friday. “And now it’s like we’re losing our damn minds. Someone’s got to step their game up here.” . . .
“They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen,” he said when asked if the party moved too far left. . . .
According to Carville, both Sanders and Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., were pushing “stupid” ideas about higher education.
“Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this s–t. And you saw Warren confronted by an angry voter over this. It’s just not a winning message,” he said. . . .
At one point, Carville took aim at a New York Times writer, who posted a “snarky tweet” about Louisiana State University (LSU) — Carville’s alma mater.
“You know how f—–g patronizing that is to people in the South or in the middle of the country? First, LSU has an unusually high graduation rate, but that’s not the point. It’s the goddamn smugness. This is from a guy who lives in New York and serves on the Times editorial board and there’s not a single person he knows that doesn’t pat him on the back for that kind of tweet. He’s so f—–g smart.
“[Binyamin] Appelbaum doesn’t speak for the Democratic Party, but he does represent the urbanist mindset,” he said. “We can’t win the Senate by looking down at people. The Democratic Party has to drive a narrative that doesn’t give off vapors that we’re smarter than everyone or culturally arrogant.”

One of the smartest things you can do in politics is to play dumb. It is better to let your opponents underestimate you than to act as if you believe you’re superior to ordinary voters. James Carville understands that. Obama understood that. Does any other Democrat understand it?

SUPERCUT!

Humiliation: Media, Dems Lash out as Trump Walks Free pic.twitter.com/k3nRWSvKlh

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 6, 2020

Category: Democrats

Ed Driscoll Misses the Lead

Posted on | February 8, 2020 | 4 Comments

Did you know that the European Union is funding a Communist insurgency in the Philippines? Did you know that more environmental activists were killed in the Philippines than in any other country?

I didn’t know this either, but Ed Driscoll linked an article with the headline, “The climate movement is overwhelmingly white. So I walked away.” And I read that article by Karin Louise Hermes, a mixed-race (German-Filipina) activist who complains about being treated as a token by her fellow Greens in Germany. That’s an interesting angle, but way down in the story, I spotted this paragraph:

In recent years, the Philippines has had the highest number of environmental defenders murdered, where arrests and disappearances have been attributed to combating “communist insurgency.” Targeted groups include the Filipino research NGO I volunteered with during the UN climate conference in Bonn, Germany, and the Filipino women’s collective Gabriela, which I also worked with in Berlin before I stepped back.

Whoa! This is news, and I don’t know how Ed Driscoll missed it, except maybe he was in such a hurry that he didn’t read the whole article.

Communists in the Philippines? A news article from March 2019:

The Philippine government has asked the European Union and Belgium to cut funding for certain groups the Duterte administration alleges are “fronts” of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA).
Posing this plea to European officials was among the objectives of the February 17 to 20 visit of military and Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) officials to Bosnia, Switzerland, and Belgium.
Brigadier General Antonio Parlade Jr, among the members of the delegation, said they asked the EU and the Belgian Foreign Ministry to stop financing around 30 groups claiming their funds are being used to fuel terroristic acts by the CPP-NPA.
“Maybe with the large amount they are getting, the insurgency we wish to end will be prolonged,” Parlade said in Filipino in a Palace press briefing on Wednesday, March 13.
Parlade claimed that the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) was among these CPP fronts receiving EU and Belgian funding. He described it as a group of nuns who supposedly “radicalize” children. . . .
Parlade claimed the EU had released P32 million to the RMP in December 2018 and is set to release another 2 million euros this year.
The Belgian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, supposedly said it was providing funds to 7 Belgian groups who work with groups the military says are CPP-NPA fronts. Among these groups are RMP, Ibon Foundation, Karapatan, and Alcadev (Alternative Learming Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development).
According to Parlade, Belgium has been providing 3 million euros for 5 years to the 7 groups.
The EU and Belgian officials were supposedly “surprised” to hear they were funding supposed “fronts” of the “terrorist” CPP-NPA, said Undersecretary Severo Catura. Catura is the executive director of the Presidential Human Rights Committee Secretariat.

Yes, of course, the Belgians are up to their eyeballs in this subversive activity, funding Communist front groups in the Philippines. But the thing is, until I read that article yesterday, I had no idea that the Philippines was dealing with a Communist insurgency. Here’s a report from last month:

Anti-communist groups, local government units and other non-government organizations denounced the violence and atrocities committed by the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) and its allies as they staged a rally on Wednesday outside the Mendiola Peace Arc in Manila.
Julius Ursua, League of Parents of the Philippines (LPP) and Liga Independencia Pilipinas member, said protesters marched from the University of Santo Tomas going to Mendiola Peace Arc to condemn the alleged recruitment of minors by the leftist organizations and the killings of the innocent individuals.
The groups also expressed support to Angela Aguilar, a former CPP cadre, after she filed a petition before the poll body in April last year to revoke the registration of members of the Makabayan bloc.
“We are here to call for peace. The long-term violence brought by the communist groups and its allies is too much. We want to end terrorism to achieve a lasting peace because the future generation deserves it,” he added.

Communists! Recruiting minors! Committing violence and atrocities! And the Commies are being bankrolled by the European Union?

How has Fox News missed this story? Why isn’t Rush Limbaugh on it? And what about all those murdered environmentalists?

In 2018, 30 land and environmental defenders were killed in the Philippines, making it the country with the highest number of such killings in the world. As our new investigation shows, despite his election promises, Duterte’s administration is leaving defenders at the mercy of corporate greed.
Mining, agribusiness, logging and coal plants are driving attacks against environmental activists — with household brands such as Del Monte Philippines and Dole Philippines, and Filipino giants like San Miguel Corporation linked to local partners accused of attacks and murders of protestors.
Upon becoming President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte promised to safeguard the country’s rural and indigenous communities, tackle corruption, and protect the environment. Yet our research shows how Duterte has categorically failed to keep these promises, allowing business to continue as usual. And in the Philippines, this means business at all costs. Our report documents a trashing of indigenous rights, endemic corruption, and continued environmental damage — all with impunity
Furthermore, we show how internationally recognised firms including Del Monte Philippines, San Miguel Corporation, Standard Chartered, Dole Philippines, and the World Bank are connected to attacks against defenders through their business activities in the Philippines.

Oh, “corporate greed,” huh? Would it be too much of a stretch to speculate that these “environmental activists” are actually Communists? Because, really, what’s the agenda of environmentalism? In a country where you have a Communist insurgency, on the one hand, and environmentalists getting murdered on the other hand, it’s not a conspiracy theory to suspect there must be some kind of connection. The Philippines are a U.S. ally, a nation of more than 100 million people, and I apologize for neglecting them so long until Ed Driscoll’s link brought this situation to my attention. What can Wikipedia tell us about this?

Rodrigo Roa Duterte . . . is a Filipino politician who is the 16th and incumbent President of the Philippines . . . He is the chairperson of PDP–Laban, the ruling political party. Duterte took office . . . on June 30, 2016 . . .
He . . . was a prosecutor for Davao City, before becoming vice mayor and, subsequently, mayor of the city in the wake of the Philippine Revolution of 1986. Duterte won seven terms and served as mayor of Davao for over 22 years.
Frequently described as a populist and a nationalist, Duterte’s political success has been aided by his vocal support for the extrajudicial killing of drug users and other criminals. Human rights groups have documented over 1,400 killings allegedly by death squads operating in Davao between 1998 and May 2016 . . . A 2009 report by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights confirmed the “systematic practice of extrajudicial killings” by the Davao Death Squad.

Ooh! “Death squads”!

It all makes sense now. The Philippines needed somebody to deal with a Communist insurgency, and so they elected the guy who has expressed “vocal support for . . . extrajudicial killing,” because when it comes to getting rid of Commies, you’re gonna need some “death squads.” And if a few environmental protesters start causing trouble . . .

Look, I’m all about the Rule of Law, due process, etc., but things always get messy when you’re dealing with Communist insurgents. Filipinos have been trying to get rid of these Commies for decades, so if they finally got frustrated enough to elect Mayor Death Squad as president, can you really blame them? Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe we can send some American environmental activists to the Philippines to . . . uh, investigate “human rights” under the Duterte government. Let these campus Antifa types see what real fascism looks like, and if some of them fall afoul of Duterte’s “death squads,” well, that would be bad.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Environmentalism, Philippines

In The Mailbox: 02.07.20

Posted on | February 7, 2020 | 2 Comments

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Germany’s War On Gold
EBL: Trump Acquitted
Twitchy: Occasional Cortex, Omar, & Pressley Become The Butt Of Their Own Joke About Being Radicals
Louder With Crowder: Leftist Student Loses His Mind At Trump Acquittal News
According To Hoyt: Socialism & The Democratic Dictatorship
Vox Popoli: Okay, That Would Be Bad, also, Fake Impeachment Fail

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Friday Hawt Chicks & Links – The Donald Edition
American Conservative: Seattle’s Liberal Reckoning
American Greatness: The Political Genius Behind Trump’s SOTU Theatrics, also, Starbucks Coffee Campaign Promotes Sex Change For Teens
American Power: The Big Winner Of Impeachment – Partisanship
American Thinker: Global Warming’s 50 Years Of Fraud
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Divestment Friday
Babalu Blog: Hundreds Of Chinese Remain Stranded In Cuba Because of Coronavirus
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For February 7
Cafe Hayek: ECON 101 Teaches Humility
CDR Salamander: Even In The Most Autocratic Nations, You Can Find Heroes
Da Tech Guy: Donald Trump & Discovering The Third Book Of Reagan
Don Surber: Highlights Of The News
First Street Journal: Saira Sameera Rao Respects All Races Equally…
Fred On Everything:
The Geller Report: Trump Admin Kills Two More Of The World’s Worst Jihadis, also, #JeSuisMila
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, The Art Of Computer Programming
Hollywood In Toto: Birds of Prey Keeps Its Feisty Feminism On A Leash
JustOneMinute: Don’t Stop Smiling (Unless You Start Laughing)
Legal Insurrection: Van Jones Hits The Panic Button, also, Another One Bites The Dust
The PanAm Post: We Had A Deal
Power Line: Virtue Signaling Carries A Cost, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shark Tank: DeSantis Signs Parental Consent Abortion Bill
Shot In The Dark: Watching The Ivy League Go Full-On Toxic Weed
The Political Hat: Pushing Back Against The Transgender Agenda – Banning Trans Surgery For Juveniles, Quitting Over Violence Against Actual Women, & An Honest Voice, also, Firing Line Friday: Extremism
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, Man Offers Burger For Sex, Gets Neither
Victory Girls: Democrats Have The Worst Week Ever
Volokh Conspiracy: Elizabeth Warren Slanders AIPAC
Weasel Zippers: Joe Walsh Drops Out, Would Rather Help A Socialist Win Than Have A “Dictator”, also, LTC Vindman & Twin Brother Escorted Out Of White House, Reassigned
Mark Steyn: Live Around The Planet

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

‘Blank-Slate Equalism’

Posted on | February 7, 2020 | 1 Comment

“Equality as a moral or political imperative, pursued as an end in itself — Equality, with the capital ‘E’ — is the antonym of every legitimate conservative principle.”
— M.E. Bradford, 1976

Readers know that I’ve recommended Rollo Tomassi’s book The Rational Male as the basic text of a “Red Pill” understanding of male-female differences, and I make that recommendation knowing that many will find some aspects of Rollo’s worldview offensive. Of course, it’s impossible to find anyone who ever agrees with me 100% — no two people ever have exactly the same opinions — but Rollo deserves credit for his willingness to criticize directly the errors of egalitarianism. As I’ve been saying for more than a decade, insofar as men and women are different, they are not equal, because equality implies fungibility, i.e., that one can be substituted for the other without loss of value.

Why is this obvious truth so difficult for some people to accept? In this video, you’ll find Rollo discussing with Rich Cooper how our culture is influenced by what he calls “blank-slate equalism.”

If you’ll watch the video, you’ll see that Rollo recommends Steven Pinker’s 2002 bestseller The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Here is an excerpt from that book:

Our theory of human nature is the wellspring of much in our lives. We consult it when we want to persuade or threaten, inform or deceive. It advises us on how to nurture our marriages, bring up our children, and control our own behavior. Its assumptions about learning drive our educational policy; its assumptions about motivation drive our policies on economics, law, and crime. And because it delineates what people can achieve easily, what they can achieve only with sacrifice or pain, and what they cannot achieve at all, it affects our values: what we believe we can reasonably strive for as individuals and as a society. Rival theories of human nature are entwined in different ways of life and different political systems, and have been a source of much conflict over the course of history. . . .
Bertrand Russell wrote, “Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.” For intellectuals today, many of those convictions are about psychology and social relations. I will refer to those convictions as the Blank Slate: the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves.
That theory of human nature — namely, that it barely exists — is the topic of this book. Just as religions contain a theory of human nature, so theories of human nature take on some of the functions of religion, and the Blank Slate has become the secular religion of modern intellectual life. It is seen as a source of values, so the fact that it is based on a miracle — a complex mind arising out of nothing — is not held against it. Challenges to the doctrine from skeptics and scientists have plunged some believers into a crisis of faith and have led others to mount the kinds of bitter attacks ordinarily aimed at heretics and infidels.

As a description of egalitarianism’s influence in our culture, “the secular religion of modern intellectual life” is dead on-target, and I’ve been among the “heretics and infidels” for more than 20 years.

The dogma of egalitarianism, its denial of human nature, has the effect of devaluing the actual differences between us, as if we all are (and should be) identical cookie-cutter replicas of each other. This is absurd and insulting, but if you try to argue against this “secular religion,” you’ll find yourself accused of hate. Instead of denying such an accusation — trying to convince your liberal accuser how much you agree with his egalitarian worldview — you might wish to try asking, “Why?” To say that a Norwegian is different than a Nigerian does not imply hatred of either, nor are you guilty of hate (“misogyny”) for saying that men and women are different. The amazing thing, of course, is that the typical Nigerian is more likely to agree with me than to agree with the liberal because, like me, the Nigerian is typically more traditional than modern.

Liberalism is the political shadow of modernism, and the conservative must acknowledge that his belief system involves loyalty to ancient values that existed long before the Industrial Revolution.

Category: The Red Pill

Trump Does Impeachment Victory Dance, Slams Democrats, Media as Liars

Posted on | February 7, 2020 | 2 Comments

Like he just won the Super Bowl:

President Trump, commanding a triumphant scene at the White House complete with the playing of “Hail to the Chief,” railed against what he called an “evil” impeachment process on Thursday hours after his historic acquittal in the Senate.
Greeted by thunderous applause and a standing ovation by his supporters, the president declared “we went through hell” but described the moment as a “celebration” — while maintaining as he did throughout the impeachment inquiry and trial that he “did nothing wrong.”
And on a day when he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were trading shots in deeply personal terms, Trump turned fire on those who prosecuted the case and other investigations against him. He called Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff “horrible” and “vicious” people.
“It was evil. It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars. This should never, ever happen to another president, ever,” Trump said. “It was a disgrace.”
He detailed the timeline of investigations, remarking of the Russia probe: “It was all bulls—.”
And as he did earlier Thursday at a prayer breakfast, Trump brandished a copy of the day’s Washington Post with a blaring headline: “Trump acquitted.”
“We can take that home, honey. Maybe we’ll frame it,” he joked to first lady Melania Trump, saying that it was the “best” headline he’s ever received from the outlet.

When Trump called Pelosi a “horrible person,” do you think any white working-class “swing” voter in Michigan or Iowa disagreed? It cannot be repeated enough that Trump’s approval rating went up during this impeachment, which Democrats ought to see as a foreboding omen. Despite everything that the liberal media did to incite this impeachment — frankly, they’ve been working on it since Nov. 8, 2016 — the American people could still see through this partisan hoax. Guess which Democrat sees what’s coming down the road? James Carville:

Democratic strategist James Carville expressed his concerns as the Democratic primary race is officially underway, saying he’s “scared to death” of the direction his party is going.
Appearing on MSNBC, Carville began by pointing to the success Democrats had during the 2018 midterm elections and stressed that it “matters” who the candidates are and what the party chooses to talk about.
“I’m 75 years old, why am I here doing this? Because I’m scared to death, that’s why,” Carville exclaimed. “Let’s get relevant here … all the Sanders people are taking pictures wishing Jeremy Corbyn the best. … I don’t want to go down that path.” . ..
“We’ve got to decide what we want to be. Do we want to be an ideological cult? Or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party?” Carville continued. “What we need is power, you understand? That’s what this is about. Without power, you have nothing. You just have talking points.”
Carville . . . insisted that Democratic donors “will not give a popsicle to the DNC” with the current state of the 2020 field.

Trump Derangement Syndrome — a psychiatric disorder rooted in a refusal to accept the verdict of the 2016 election — has put the Democrats so badly off-balance they cannot recover their equilibrium.

"Come on, that’s not a strategy, that’s a temper tantrum. Holding your breath while the other side enjoys watching you turn blue, is not a strategy."

https://t.co/QHd7aJDaN0 via @BreitbartNews

— John Ocasio-Nolte (@NolteNC) February 1, 2020

BREAKING—> Trump Administration Removes Anti-Trump Deep State Operative Alex Vindman from NSC Following His Role in Sham Impeachment https://t.co/10r7B2ze8e via @gatewaypundit

— Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) February 7, 2020

Category: Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi

$300 by 5 p.m.

Posted on | February 7, 2020 | Comments Off on $300 by 5 p.m.

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is, my wife and I went to get our taxes done Thursday, and we’ll be getting a refund next week. The bad news is, the cable bill is $300 and I’ve got to have that paid by 5 p.m. today or I won’t have Internet access. So while the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is in sight, there is a short-term emergency, and so I’m compelled yet again to rattle the tip jar. Regular readers know how this crowdfunding thing works — if 100 readers give $3 each, or 20 readers give $15 each — the arithmetic works either way. So whatever amount you can afford — $5, $10, $20 — would be appreciated.

PayPal doesn’t provide a tax form, so when we were getting ready to go see the tax preparer, I had to go through pages of last year’s transactions, adding up the totals. It was interesting to see the patterns. For weeks at a time, the contributions came irregularly, but then suddenly — BOOM! — there would be a day or two where the receipts totaled $500 or more, and I was trying to remember what caused those surges.

One such surge was when I went down to cover Marianne Williamson’s campaign in South Carolina, and another was when I went to Orlando for the “Red Pill” conference. So tax time for me is like a walk down Memory Lane, visiting the pleasant Ghosts of Tip-Jar Rattles Past, recalling that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

UPDATE: The cable company got their money, and I’ll be taking my brother out to dinner later. Thanks to all who contributed.