After New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton chose a black man to replace another black man as his deputy, a re- porter asked Mayor de Blasio if the replacement “had to be a person of color.”
“No,” the mayor claimed.
That’s not a little white lie. This is a case where whites need not apply.
Across the land, racially charged disputes are grabbing headlines. Broad swaths of life, including school admissions, crime statistics, income and poverty levels, hiring and firing, are seen increasingly through the prism of skin color and ethnicity.
Race riots, that urban staple of the ’60s and ’70s, are making a comeback. They rattled the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., after a white police officer shot a black teenager. More violence is expected if, as seems likely, the officer is not indicted.
Desperate to hold onto power, some Democratic candidates spent election season trying to scare black voters to polls. They claimed shootings like the one in Ferguson and the 2012 Trayvon Martin case in Florida would become common if Republicans prevailed. At the bottom of the barrel was the scurrilous comment by Harlem’s Rep. Charlie Rangel that some in the GOP “believe that slavery isn’t over.”
Something stinks in New Jersey: Cory Booker and ‘Watershed-gate’
By Roger Stone
Published October 29, 2014
FoxNews.com
Not long ago, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker was, according to some Democrats and media talking heads, Obama 2.0. The tall, photogenic Booker was going to be our next African-American president, we were told.
Booker bounded to the U.S. Senate in a special election after Gov. Chris Christie declined to appoint a Republican who would run for the seat, a stunning act of bad faith that conservatives should not forget in 2016.
Booker is Senator for the Facebook age. The Rhodes Scholar and Yale law grad spends more time in Washington, New York and Hollywood than in gritty Newark.
As Dems lose Latinos, Senate could follow October 30, 2014, 06:00 am By Alexandra Jaffe
Democrats have lost their grip on Hispanic voters heading into Election Day—and in turn could lose the Senate because of them.
Even though Latinos split heavily for their party in 2012, mounting evidence suggests Hispanics could sit the midterms out after immigration reform has fallen from the White House agenda.
“There’s no question it’s going to affect Democrats in this midterm. There’s no one to blame but Democrats themselves,” said Arturo Carmona, executive director of Hispanic engagement group Presente Action.
A Pew poll out Wednesday revealed Democrats suffered an eight-point drop in support from Hispanic voters nationwide since 2010, down to 57 percent. Meanwhile, Republicans gained six points over the past four years, with 28 percent now saying they support a generic Republican House candidate.
The new survey provided hard numbers for the anecdotal evidence that President Obama’s delay of executive action to halt deportations of illegal immigrants is coming back to haunt Democrats.
The frustration with the president and his party among Hispanics is palpable and increasingly visible. In recent weeks, Obama has faced multiple hecklers shouting their frustration after the White House punted an executive order until after the November elections.
Carmona said he’s already seeing fallout from the prolonged inaction and broken promises from President Obama and congressional Democrats on immigration reform, and that “the president’s ongoing broken promises have certainly depressed the engagement in the Latino community.”
Democrats on FEC move to regulate Internet campaigns, blogs, Drudge
BY PAUL BEDARD | OCTOBER 24, 2014 | 8:26 PM
In a surprise move late Friday, a key Democrat on the Federal Election Commission called for burdensome new rules on Internet-based campaigning, prompting the Republican chairman to warn that Democrats want to regulate online political sites and even news medialike the Drudge Report.
Democratic FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel announced plans to begin the process to win regulations on Internet-based campaigns and videos, currently free from most of the FEC’s rules. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due,” she said.
The power play followed a deadlocked 3-3 vote on whether an Ohio anti-President Obama Internet campaign featuring two videos violated FEC rules when it did not report its finances or offer a disclosure on the ads. The ads were placed for free on YouTube and were not paid advertising.
Black disappointment with Obama threatens Democrats
BY DAVID LIGHTMAN
McClatchy Washington BureauOctober 23, 2014
MIAMI — Black voters’ disappointment with President Barack Obama, who they so eagerly embraced for so many years, could be costly on Election Day to Democrats, who badly need a big African-American turnout to win Senate and gubernatorial races in key states.
Instead, many African-Americans see an unemployment rate well above the national average, continuing problems with crime in many neighborhoods, and a president more interested in trying to help other voting blocs that didn’t give him such unwavering support.
Related: Rep. John Lewis says he’d ‘vote against’ Obama judicial nominee
He talks about same-sex marriage in a nod to the gay and lesbian community. He discusses immigration and its benefits, an issue particularly important to the Latino community. He fights for equal pay, a vital issue to the women Democrats so avidly court.
New Czar has no background or infectious disease experience?
No he is not a Doctor
By David McCabe – 10/17/14 12:24 PM EDT
No sooner had the White House announced that it had selected Ron Klain to coordinate the administration’s response to concerns about the Ebola virus than several congressional Republicans were expressing anger about the pick.
Most highlighted Klain’s past as a political operative. He is a former chief of staff to Vice President Biden and a longtime aide to Democratic campaigns. Those criticizing Klain included Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), who chaired Thursday’s hearing on the response to the virus.
BROKEN DREAM: EMOTIONAL AD HITS DEMOCRATS FOR YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
A dramatic new political advertisement underscoring the plight of unemployed Millennial voters is taking aim at vulnerable Democratic senators who aligned themselves with President Barack Obama’s economic policies.
The ad, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, takes a striking new approach to economic messaging, one that replaces the usual blizzard of statistics and jargon with the forlorn faces and emotional angst younger voters—and, by extension, their parents—are experiencing in today’s hostile jobs market.
Al Franken Misrepresents the Censorship Power Democrats Are Demanding
Jacob Sullum|Sep. 9, 2014 7:26 pm
MSNBC During today’s debate about SJR 19, a proposed constitutional amendment that would restrict freedom of speech in the name of “democratic self-government and political equality,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.)claimed the measure would merely “restore the law to what it was before Citizens Unitedwas decided.” Not so. True, the amendment would allow Congress to re-enact the speech restrictions overturned in that case, which barred unions and corporations, including nonprofit advocacy groups, from criticizing federal politicians on TV or radio close to an election. But as I noted yesterday, the amendment would go a lot further than that.
The amendment would allow Congress and state legislatures to “regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.” That means it would overturn Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 decision in which the Supreme Court upheld limits on donations to candidates but rejected limits on spending by candidates, reasoning that such caps amount to restrictions on speech, since communicating with a mass audience requires money.
The amendment that Franken and at least 48 of his colleagues favor also would allow legislators to impose limits on independent spending by individuals, which the Court has never upheld. Section 2 says legislators “may distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law,” but there is no requirement that they do so. Congress might decide, in the interest of “political equality,” that opinionated billionaires such as George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Sheldon Adelson, and the Koch Brothers should shut the hell up and let other people have a turn. It could even ban political ads featuring celebrities, on the theory that they have an unwarranted influence on voters.
Given the breadth of this authority, the examples of possible censorship listed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece—including bans on the distribution of voter guides by the National Rifle Association, on pro-life or pro-choice advocacy close to an election, on get-out-the-vote efforts by churches or unions, and on documentaries critical of politicians running for office—are not at all fanciful. In fact, that last example is exactly what Citizens United involved. Under this amendment, such a documentary could be squelched even if it were the work of an independent filmmaker unaffiliated with any group organized as a corporation.
Networks Ignore Rick Perry Indictment Group Received $500k From Soros IN NEWS, POLITICS / BY BRANDON WALKER / ON AUGUST 20, 2014 AT 10:42 AM
It seems that the mainstream media is leaving out the fact that George Soros gave Texans for Public Justice, one of the main groups behind the Rick Perry indictment charge, $500k for their push for “social justice.”
In a case that even MSNBC mocked as weak, Governor Rick Perry was indicted by a Texas Grand Jury on charges of abuse of power. The grand jury used the fact that he vetoed a bill, saying it was politically motivated. The charges were he threatened to veto state funding for the public integrity unit unless the lead prosecutor, who was busted for drunk driving, resigned. The MSM has been broadcasting their opinions on this since it broke, but isn’t it funny they have failed to mention this being spearheaded by the liberal progressive group Texans for Public Justice and being funded by none other then George Soros?
According to the local Austin NBC affiliated KXAN, Texans for Public Justice filed their complaint last year. The day the indictment broke, Texans for Public Justice praised the indictment as their hard work coming to fruition. Although it may seem to them as politically motivated to demand a lead prosecutor who was arrested for drunk driving to step down for violating the law, the public integrity, and the terms of her job of being in charge of the public integrity unit, it is not illegal to veto funding to any project. It is the governor’s job to veto and even line item veto legislation.
According to Soros’s Open Society Institute’s own news release, they gave $500,000 to help form a coalition that “could change the way the progressive community engages public policy in Texas.” The coalition they helped fund includes the media ignored Texans for Public Justice. It also includes Texans Together, the Sierra Club, Texas Legal Services, La Fe Policy Research and Education Center, Public Citizen, and the Center for Public Policy Priorities. They even admit to utilizing The Texas Observer as a willing participant for their media services. This coalition has also funded Wendy Davis and is part of the “Turn Texas Blue” movement in doing anything and everything to elect liberal law makers in charge of Texas.
Perry Grand Juror Was An Active Democratic Party Delegate During Jury Proceedings By: Brian Sikma | August 20, 2014
Rho Chalmers, who disclosed to the Houston Chronicle yesterday that she was a member of the grand jury that indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry, was an active delegate to the Texas Democratic Party convention during grand jury proceedings. Chalmers’ active participation in Democratic state politics is important because she claimed yesterday to the Houston Chronicle that her decision to indict Perry, a Republican, was not based on politics.
“For me, it’s not a political decision,” Chalmers told the newspaper. “That’s what a grand jury is about – take the emotion out of it and look at the facts and make your best decision based on your life experience.”
More troubling, however, is the fact that Chalmers attended, photographed, and commented on an event with Democratic state Sen. Kirk Watson while grand jury proceedings were ongoing.
Democrats counting on Bergen voters to unseat Garrett By Myles Ma/NJ.com
RIDGEWOOD — Scott Garrett has handily won every race he’s run for New Jersey’s 5th Congressional District since 2002.
Garrett has vastly outspent his opponent in every election year, with the exception of 2008, when he outspent Dennis G. Shulman, but not vastly.
But Roy Cho, his Democratic opponent, believes Garrett can be beaten. So too, does rapper Ghostface Killah.
It was Killah’s (Ghostface’s?) endorsement over Twitter last year that first put Cho and his campaign on the map. But it is the new math in the 5th that Cho believes will put his campaign over the top.
Redistricting in 2010 added Democratic-leaning Fair Lawn, Lodi, Hackensack and Bogota, and parts of Teaneck to the 5th. By population, Bergen County makes up almost three-quarters of the district.
Rob Esposito, Cho’s campaign manager, said these towns have turned the 5th from a safe Republican stronghold dominated by Sussex and Warren voters into a competitive district.
Why Democrats insist on lying about how ‘poor’ they are
By Kyle Smith
June 28, 2014 | 10:22am
Modal TriggerHillary Clinton claimed that, at the moment she and her husband were signing up for $18 million in book deals, that they were “dead broke.”
Harry Reid (who lives in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel) said liberals are getting bullied by Republican billionaires but the Democratic Party “doesn’t have many billionaires” behind it.
Joe Biden (family earnings: $407,000 last year plus a free house, driver, meals, etc.) claims he “I don’t own a single stock or bond. . . . I have no savings accounts . . . I’m the poorest man in Congress.” (Triple fail: Joe isn’t poor, isn’t in Congress and wouldn’t be the poorest member of it if he were.)
Right here in New York, we’ve learned that City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the daughter of a wealthy doctor who left a $6.7 million inheritance, took advantage of a no-interest loan intended for underprivileged New Yorkers to buy a Harlem townhouse. Then she forgot to declare the rental income on required city disclosure forms. The townhouse you and I helped buy her for $240,000 is today worth $1.2 million.
The more Democrats insist on their proletarian cred, the more absurd it gets. They’re no longer just holier than thou: Now they’re prolier than thou.
Reid is worth about $3 million to $6 million and declined to release his tax returns even as he was screaming about Mitt Romney’s. His statement that “we don’t have many billionaires” was wrong too. Politifact dug up 22 billionaires who have made campaign donations to super PACs lately. Most of them — 13 — sent their checks to liberal and Democratic groups.
WHY DO ALL THESE EXCEEDINGLY WELL-OFF PEOPLE KEEP TRYING TO CONVINCE US WE’LL SEE THEM AT THE DOLLAR STORE?
Biden may have been the poorest member of the Senate (not all of Congress) when he was there, but his net worth is still somewhere in the $39,000 to $800,000 range, reported the Center for Responsive Politics.
Why do all these exceedingly well-off people keep trying to convince us we’ll see them at the dollar store?
It’s all part of the increasingly delusional myth Democrats tell themselves that they are the tribunes of the middle class. In fact, their party is a strange two-headed beast — picture a Cerberus featuring the faces of Barbra Streisand and Lois Lerner.
The Dems are a coalition of ultra-rich cultural-elite donors on the one hand and government employees and their clients on the other. In 2012, President Obama carried those earning under $50,000 by a wide margin. But Romney easily bested him among those over that threshold.
Ever wonder why the Democrats seem to want to keep people poor?
But there’s another reason Democrats can’t talk about their wealth. It’s because they can’t say, “I made it big. Follow me and you can, too.”
Democrats earn their money in ways that aren’t available to most Americans. Yet even for Democrats, the Clintons got rich in an exotic way. They accumulated something like $100 million not by building a business or inventing something or even writing some hit songs. Their entire fortune came from political celebrity. (Their daughter has even accumulated $15 million by being the offspring of political celebrities. Or did you think NBC News paid her $600,000 a year because of her obvious broadcasting ability?)
If the Clintons had gotten rich inventing Facebook, that fortune would have spawned many others. But celebrity honoraria don’t work that way.
Modal Trigger
Drug dealers create more middle-class jobs than these people do.
Moreover, both Clintons have given so many speeches to big-bucks interest groups that there are legions of fat cats who think Hillary owes them a favor should she reach the White House.
No, Hillary, contra your interview in The Guardian, you didn’t strike it rich by “hard work.” Swanning around the world staying in five-star hotels, reading speeches drafted by someone else and signing your name to books written by someone else is not exactly quarry labor.
Hillary would have been better off admitting she has done well and then pivoted gracefully to how her ideas might benefit struggling Americans. Instead, by getting tetchy, she made her vast wealth the thing people are talking about. Her approval rating last week hit 52%, down from as high as 70%.
Her miscues in talking about money, though, like many political gaffes, are symptoms of an underlying problem: her likability.
Like Mitt Romney, she seems disconnected from ordinary American life. The more she tries to seem normal, the more she comes across as Lady Hillary.
By following her lead, her party risks becoming more and more alien to the middle class whose interest it purports to protect..
NJ Democrats keep fighting on civil service changes
New Jersey Democrats are seeking to invalidate new rules adopted by the Christie administration that they say threaten to upend the foundation of the state’s civil service system. (Seidman/The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Democrat Congressman: ‘We’ve Proved That Communism Works’
Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia — fresh off being caught eating his own earwax on camera — was caught red-handed (or is it yellow-fingered?) in another gaffe this week, claiming that low crime rates in border cities with lots of federal immigration workers is proof that “Communism works.”
Garcia made the comment during a Google hangout he convened last week to talk about comprehensive immigration reform with supporters. The Democrat attempted to point out how, for all their talk about limited government, many Republicans are fine spending loads of government money on border security.
“Let me give you an example, the kind of money we’ve poured in,” he said. “So the most dangerous — sorry, the safest city in America is El Paso, Texas. It happens to be across the border from the most dangerous city in the Americas, which is Juarez. Right?”
“And two of the safest cities in America, two of them are on the border with Mexico,” Garcia continued. “And of course, the reason is we’ve proved that Communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.”
Obama Grapples With Growing Dissent From Democrats on Capitol Hill
Disunity Grows in Run-Up to Midterm Elections
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is encountering an increasingly resistant Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers in his party break with him on a series of issues in the run-up to the November elections.
On issues such as judicial nominees, the Keystone XL pipeline, taxes and trade, the fraying party unity is a sign that individual Democrats have reached a point where their own re-election needs take precedence over Mr. Obama’s goals.
It is a common election-year posture for lawmakers from the same party as the sitting president, especially one whose popularity has waned, as Mr. Obama’s has. But Democrats’ recent moves to demonstrate their independence are forcing Mr. Obama to compromise on an agenda already largely opposed by Republicans. And it comes at a point in his presidency when time is running short to accomplish his goals.
In the past week, Democrats have diverged from the White House over its insistence that the cost of extending certain tax breaks due to expire should be offset with tax increases and other measures, so as not to add to the deficit.
Codey slams DiVincenzo, over Norcross controlled Assembly comments
TRENTON — What’s that? Did state Sen. Richard Codey saying something nice about George Norcross, the state’s most influential Democrat and the lawmaker’s political nemesis?
Well, kind of — but at the expense of another frequent target of his, Joseph DiVincenzo, the Essex County executive and fellow Democrat.
In a profile of Gov. Chris Christie that appeared in last week’s New Yorker magazine, DiVincenzo longingly described Norcross’ considerable clout, noting that the South Jersey insurance executive and newspaper owner could count on the votes of seven senators and 12 Assembly members.
“I don’t have what George has,” DiVincenzo whined to the reporter. “George has seven and 12! I have two senators and five Assembly people.”
To Codey, DiVincenzo wasn’t just saying those legislators were his allies. He was saying he controlled them.
“I think it’s disgraceful,” Codey said. “It’s belittling those senators and those Assembly people. … To say that is so demeaning, and shows you not only is he corrupt and unethical, he’s also dumb as dumb can be.”
Codey then gave Norcross credit. (This is where the reader asks to be pinched.) “I’ve never seen George say that he controls them,” he said. “He has a brain. Joe doesn’t.”
DiVincenzo aimed his own barbs at the veteran lawmaker. (The Auditor/Star-Ledger)
