The not terribly perceptive ultra-left at The Guardian is getting a bad feeling.

With Donald Trump and this election, it feels ominously like 2016 all over again

We could so easily step into another Electoral College victory for a populist authoritarian clown who loses the popular vote.

This writer is full of foreboding and doubts about Biden's stay-mum strategy, but had Biden spoken up much earlier and attacked the rioters from the start and equally hammered the leftism this writer so loves, where would the support of the Bernie Bros and racist/racial leftists have gone?

He doesn't see that it isn't Trump's entirely fictitious political genius that has made a second term increasingly likely.

Nor some lack of political wit on Biden's part.

He doesn't know to ask himself these questions.

Are the Democrats going to be sunk because their party so heavily depends on ultras whom they cannot get to the polls without embracing or appearing to embrace positions feared and loathed even by most Democrats, let alone the rest of America?

Or is that dependence merely a self-destructive delusion or poor strategic choice from which Democrats may yet hope to recover?

Though not before this election has run its course.

Perhaps losing twice in a row to a naked emperor with nothing at all to commend him but the deplorable talents of a clown might teach them that lesson.

A Democratic turf war is raging — even as progressives try to elect Biden

Is Biden Ceding the Law-and-Order Issue?

"Brutus is an honorable man."

Ari Velshi insists he is "a capitalist" - meaning he favors capitalism over alternatives - even as he vigorously attacks capitalism in America with a fury to make any Marxist proud.

Speaking of capitalism the way Mark Antony speaks of Brutus.

I hate it when they're right.

The NRA uses routine political methods to defend and advance a somewhat overdone gun rights agenda.

This DA is way out there as to means to advance a gun control agenda that is not, so far as I know, at all extreme.

NRA fights back, files its own suit against NY attorney general seeking to disband organization

President Trump slammed AG Letitia James’ suit against the group, calling it 'a very terrible thing'

The surprise would have been if they hadn't fought back and he hadn't deplored the NY suit.

The National Rifle Association is fighting back against a lawsuit filed Thursday by New York’s attorney general by submitting its own civil suit against the state official, accusing her of defamation and violating its rights to free speech.

The NRA’s lawsuit was filed in the federal court of New York and alleges Attorney General Letitia James “made the political prosecution of the NRA a central campaign theme” when she was running for the AG’s office in 2018, and has not treated the association fairly since.

“Despite hopes that playing by the rules would procure a just outcome, the NRA has not been treated fairly by James’s office,” the 19-page suit states. 

“The New York Democratic Party political machine seeks to harass, defund, and dismantle the NRA because of what it believes and what it says.”

The defamation allegations stem from James' public descriptions of the NRA as a "criminal enterprise" and "a terrorist organization."

“James boasted that she would strike foul blows against the NRA and pound the NRA into submission. She vowed that she would use the NYAG’s investigative and enforcement powers for the precise purpose of stanching political speech (‘deadly propaganda),” the lawsuit states. 

“She has begun to deliver on her campaign promises to retaliate against the NRA for constitutionally protected speech on issues that James opposes. As NYAG, James has regrettably succumbed to ‘individual passions, and individual malevolence.’”

All incontestably true.

While the lawsuit accuses all four men of wrongdoing and seeks fines and remuneration, none of them have been charged with a crime.

In turn, NRA President Carolyn Meadows responded by calling the lawsuit a “baseless, premeditated attack” on the group and the Second Amendment.

“You could have set your watch by it: the investigation was going to reach its crescendo as we move into the 2020 election cycle,” Meadows said. 

“It’s a transparent attempt to score political points and attack the leading voice in opposition to the leftist agenda.”

The New York Attorney General Wants to Dissolve the NRA

Letitia James may have a bigger ax to grind than Paul Bunyan; she ran for the office as an outspoken foe of the organization and called it a “terrorist organization.”

But she’ll have an easier time justifying her investigation by pointing at members of the NRA’s leadership publicly accusing each other of inappropriate expenditures. 

Back in 2019, LaPierre claimed then-president Oliver North was trying to extort him and pressure him to resign. 

North claimed that LaPierre had charged more than $200,000 of wardrobe expenses to an NRA vendor, and “told the NRA board’s executive committee of other allegations, including hefty travel expenses charged to a vendor and sexual-harassment allegations against a senior NRA official.” 

The National Rifle Association and its primary communications firm, Ackerman McQueen, have been in a lengthy and expensive legal fight since mid-2019, the NRA has been forced to lay off staff this year, and the pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 annual meeting. 

In January, LaPierre reportedly told the board that they had spent $100 million on legal fees.

The kind of PC, at-any-cost ultra-lefty who makes me ashamed to be a Democrat

Not that the GOPsters are not as bad in their own way, with their opposed agenda.

But they haven't used months of riot and violence and destruction all over the country to force their demands, have they?

So is there really a "moral equivalence"?

Cancel culture at its absolute worst.

Make a desert and call it peace.

New York attorney general sues to dissolve NRA

Cuomo and the Democrats generally will be tarred with this brush, but so far as I know he can't fire her, she doesn't work for him, and NY state doesn't have a so-called "unitary executive".

Another symptom of the rising extremism in both parties, both as to ends but also and with more lasting harm and danger as to means.

I have little doubt the charges are true or that the conduct is perhaps even criminal.

But she is seizing on that as an opportunity to destroy a gun rights organization long absolutely hated by, well, the haters of the left.

New York's attorney general has announced a lawsuit aimed at dissolving the powerful National Rifle Association over alleged financial mismanagement.

Letitia James said the NRA had diverted millions of dollars to leaders including its chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, for their personal use.

"For these years of misconduct we are seeking an order to dissolve the NRA in its entirety," she said.

The NRA described the lawsuit as a "baseless, premeditated attack".

. . . .

Responding to questions, Ms James, a Democrat, rejected the notion that the charges against the NRA - closely tied to the Republican party - were at all influenced by her own politics.

"We followed the facts and the law," she said.

"We've come to the conclusion that the NRA unfortunately was serving as a personal piggy bank to four individual defendants."

The case filed by Ms James' office alleges more than $64m (£48.7m) was lost in just three years as a result of the defendants' abuse.

Also on Thursday, the District Attorney for Washington, DC filed a separate lawsuit against the organisation "for misusing charitable funds to support wasteful spending by the NRA and its executives".

The New York lawsuit will almost certainly be contested in court by the NRA. 

The suit will add another strain to an already beleaguered organisation, facing congressional inquiries, investigations in multiple states and internal complaints.

Is Joe B being bullied and shoved to the left?

This ad is all over my TV screen

How is "shifting funds" from the police budget to mental health expenses not defunding the police?

If Trump wanted to shift funds from the Social Security Trust Fund to FEMA hurricane relief wouldn't Democrats be howling about Bozo defunding Social Security?

Ad Watch: Super PAC attacks Biden in misleading ‘defund the police’ ad

Oh?

Is it misleading?

Yes, Joe Biden Said He Wants to Defund the Police

Black Woman Destroys BLM Mural. Here's What Her Motivation Was.

Why does it have to cost taxpayers $ 2 trillion?

Biden plots $2tn green revolution but faces wind and solar backlash

His big spending plans - too big, anyway - predate the virus.

And if he had his way the virus alone would cost us another $ 2 or 3 trillion, for sure.

And these "environmentalists" want to lean on the dirtiest and most dangerous source of energy, nuclear power?

If humans are too stupid to be allowed anything pointy or edgy they are for damned sure too stupid for nuclear power.

The left of and beyond the Democratic Party see this as their chance to steal the tiller and ride roughshod over the center left types who make up the core of the party and by far most of its voters.

Trump is so wildly unpopular the Dems could adopt planks from Trotsky, Pol Pot, and Louis Farrakhan and get away with it.

They think.

And they might be right.

And I think they have.

(Kidding)

"Battle of Seattle"?

How many towns are actually affected by the rioting, and how serious is the mess in those towns?

The Democratic media are siding with Democratic local authorities and changing the subject, attacking the Duce (Trump is Mussolini!) and the federales (Jackbooted thugs! Unconstitutional incursions! Unmarked cars!).

The GOP media (meaning Fox and a bunch of websites) are attacking the Democratic local authorities as so many red (Commie) foxes policing henhouses (The cities are on fire! They're coming to your city! The rioters want to destroy America and the Democrats want the same thing!).

A much worse and more prolonged Battle of Seattle x 50 or a light breeze in a few teacups?

Coverup by the one side and wild exaggeration by the other?

The Lincoln Project's newest ads.

How it starts. The Nazi president.

Trumpfeld. The Alzheimer's president.

(By the way, count back by sevens = count back by ten and add three, each time.)

(Or, count back by sevens = [100 - (7 x n)], starting with n = 1. But that seems harder rather than easier.)

Ask yourself what is the agenda so many Democrats seem to agree rioting, weeks of rioting, can be legitimately used to advance?

Because while lots of Democrats are defending it, some officials are actually enabling and even to a degree participating in the rioting.

To advance that agenda.

Probably most Democrats are not on board for all that radical racial stuff, and independents certainly aren't.

In a very real sense, the party has been hijacked by lots of people, including loads way more radical than the Bernie Bros.

And the Bros, starting with Bernie, have been pretty clear all along what they think of Democrats.

The ideological commitments of the leaders of the movement for law enforcement reform are way left of those of its sympathizers and supporters

Think about Mitt Romney marching for BLM.

Does anyone seriously think Mitt Romney has gone all Red Guard on us?

It’s Political Power That Really Matters To Black Lives Matter.

But maybe not that far to the left of some nickel and dime Democratic office holders across the country.

Maybe it's not just the mayor of New York who is out there.

BTW, the Human Events site seems to have come a long way from the days when it was Ann Coulter's personal archive.

"Our city is under siege by rioters."

There is some truth to the conservative claim that Democratic office holders and party leaders are being shoved further to the left on race and other issues than the party as a whole, than registered Democrats, and than independents who lean Democratic.

It is a nice question how far the Democrats have become the captives of their own extremists, and another which party is more its own extremists' captive.

But fifty days of chaos are pretty good evidence of local officials' criminal unwillingness or pitiful inability to restore peace and order to their cities.

The Republicans have been pushed by the stupidity of their extremists, the worst of whom is in the White House, to pour gasoline on the Coronavirus wild fire.

The Democrats have allowed chaos, destruction, and violence in the cities.

The country is a mess largely thanks to the horrific polarization of our politics.

I have generally favored closed primaries and opposed open primaries.

But maybe those who argue closed primaries help put both parties too much at the mercy of their own extremists have a point.

Portland Police Union Head Slams City Officials: They ‘Have Condoned the Destruction and Chaos’

Fifty days of increasing insanity.

Portland Police Association president Daryl Turner slammed elected officials at a press conference on Sunday, a day after the union’s offices were set on fire amid continuing riots in the city.

Since the death of George Floyd, an African American man killed during his arrest by Minneapolis police officers, Portland has seen 50 days of protests and riots. 

Federal law enforcement officers have deployed to the city over the past several weeks, clashing with protesters.

Turner alleged that Oregon officials have allowed the violence to continue unabated.

“The elected officials have condoned the destruction and chaos,” Turner said on Sunday, standing with 20 faith and business leaders from Portland. 

“They have placed their political agenda ahead [of the] safety and welfare of the community. This must stop.”

Turner continued, “This is no longer about George Floyd, racial equity, social justice reform or the evolution of policing,” Turner said. 

“This is about violence, rioting and destruction. Our city is under siege by rioters.”

Perhaps a little over the top

The panic is excessive and likely more than a little faux.

From the same folks who assured us O was a Marxist and a Communist (or anyway a communist) in 2008 and again in 2012.

And said the same of his agenda.

And, really, this should remind us all of Sarah Palin attacking O for "palling around with terrorists".

Radical Marxist and communist Obama gave us Ocare and TARP and, with a nudge from Joe Biden, today's rabid revolutionary, support for gay marriage.

And encomia on the joys and glories of "democratic capitalism", as I recall.

He did occasionally nod toward the further left, as he did when he spoke (wrote?) of Ho Chi Minh's alleged admiration for the American Revolution showing how not a red he was.

And his links with Rev. Wright and the racial/racist left were certainly problematic.

But he also personally ridiculed the extremists as "the professional left".

Anyway, these guys always say stuff like that about Democrats and even their most tamely progressive agenda commitments.

And leaders of massive political demonstrations are always way further out ideologically than the folks who follow them into the street in support of specific causes or demands.

Hey, ask Bill Ayers how the revolution went after Nixon stopped using draftees in Vietnam.

The Revolution Is Winning

Trump versus Biden on the "Cultural Revolutionaries"

MSNBC this morning says the Duce's weekend, 4th of July speeches were American Carnage all over again.

They were racist and divisive instead of healing and celebratory and uniting.

They were wrong and harmful and wicked altogether.

The network showed videos of excerpts.

Trump actually made two speeches on the same themes, one at the White House and one at Mt. Rushmore.

Two points.

First, in both speeches Trump made no reference to the Confederacy, instead defending public honors for the Founders, defending the revolution of 1776, celebrating our nation's founding and our history, and by name celebrating Christopher Columbus at the White House, tracing back to him the story of the building of America.

Tammy Duckworth's public charge that Trump's spent his entire Rushmore speech defending "dead traitors", an apparent allusion to the debate about public honors for the Confederacy and Confederate leaders, was a ridiculous lie.

Those things could all have appeared in a speech by Joe Biden, as they reflect what we know of his rarely mentioned and all but concealed official position.

But none of that was in any weekend message or speech of Biden's, so far as I can tell from media reporting.

[Biden's near silence on these matters invites conservative "interpretation".]

Second, the Duce characterized the vandals tearing down and destroying monuments as radical leftists with a divisive and destructive program who want to "overthrow the American Revolution" and tear down America and replace it with a repressive regime featuring massive levels of indoctrination of the whole population, particularly of the young in schools.

The actions and words of the cultural revolutionaries increasingly, daily, bear that out.

Recall the statue of Columbus was wrecked by a white anarchist.

Recall Kaepernick's tweet deliberately echoing and going beyond the bitter but entirely justified remarks of Frederick Douglass about what Independence Day means to the slave before the Civil War, repudiating the revolution, the Founders, the republic, and the history of the nation from that day to this.

Neither he nor anyone of the racial left ever mentions Douglass's utter reversal when at last Lincoln and his allies ended slavery at so massive a cost in lives and treasure.

This is one the country would have been better off not seeing.

Talk about race hate.

Talk about black skin privilege.

Kaepernick denounces 4th of July as ‘celebration of white supremacy’

Along with a video showing images of the Ku Klux Klan, police brutality, slavery and lynchings, Kaepernick wrote: “Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of ‘independence’, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all.”

Letting his Rev. Wright flag fly.

Sometimes you push "send" when you should just push "delete".

For sure, the alt.right will be using this tweet as recruiting material.

Maybe now it's Trump's turn to play Biden and sit tight while these endless demonstrations of hatred for America, black and white, wear on.

But, nope, he's still out there defending honors for the Confederacy and its leaders, as well as all the rest.

Asked about honors for Washington today Tammy Duckworth, whom I never liked for the job, anyway, stammered and stumbled and gave no answer.

The Democratic sympathizing media are still calling them protesters and even peaceful protesters but now they seem to be mostly vandals looking for more to destroy in the name of their politics, and to hell with everybody else's.

38 days of disorder now in some cities.

Considerably more than three minutes hate

was visited on Kevin McCarthy for a rather anodyne campaign tweet.

The abuse, heavily obscene, focused on racial fury, the Russia connection, and Putin in particular.

'Dear Kevin,' 'Dear Republicans' Trend, As GOPLeader Impugns Democrats' Patriotism

To the immense joy of Kevin Scarce.

Do American blacks hate whites and white America the way Arabs hate Jews and Israel?

No doubt.

More than seventy years of liberal shouting about white racism and black rage and about how they, too, would riot and destroy and hate white people have had a marked impact, encouraging black rage and black belief in white racism.

As was intended, all that time.

White people are aware.

And the hate propaganda becomes earsplitting during election years, especially presidential years.

Why do you suppose so many whites think black hatred of them, "reverse racism", is the biggest problem in American today, bigger than white hatred of blacks?

All those decades of left wing hate propaganda had an impact on whites, too.

And yet they (we) put Obama in the White House, twice, though we knew he had very sore toes about race.

Twice.

And to this day those whites think he may have been the finest president in a long time.

The most presidential in a very, very long time.

Cancel culture, BLM ideology, and Krugman's Red Guards

Don't recall seeing much, if any, of this on CNN or MSNBC.

Or BBC News, for that matter.

All of them too busy as cheerleaders and megaphones for the mob and the key mob propaganda points of BLM.

Not being a Fox viewer or regular reader I didn't know Krugman has lost his mind, for example.

(But I have noticed the long articles on their site are often exceptionally information rich.)

Paul Krugman, professors seek top economist's removal from influential job for criticizing Black Lives Matter

Quite a lot of information in this story.

Gregg Re doesn't like what Herr Krugman and these Cultural Revolutionaries are doing.

Neither does Andrew Sullivan, a well-known political moderate.

(Whose job may be in jeopardy.)

Nor does Michael Walzer, a much honored leftist intellectual.

An interesting story about a white radical destroyer of statues, described as "antifa".

One about the leader of the Times' extraordinary weaponization of history, The 1619 Project. 

Think Howard Zinn, but with a lot more vitriol.

NRO on the project. As history, it's worthless propaganda.

I have the impression the position of the right on racism in law enforcement under Trump is much as it has been for decades, that there is little or no racial bias in law enforcement and no institutional racism in America.

That view seems not to be shared even by most whites, these days.

Very likely, when Americans say they agree with the ideas of BLM this is what they mean.

Very likely, they otherwise have no idea what those ideas are.

CNN and MSNBC using indigenista- and other racial - ire to bash Trump's Rushmore super-spreader

Tiresome, and as we get ever closer to the election you can be sure CNN and MSNBC with grow ever more shrill and ever more focused on themes of the racial left.

Presidential elections bring out the worst in both parties: the most extremist views of their activist outliers.

For Democrats, that includes lefties of all sorts who actually despise the party and most of its voters, and especially its white voters, for their politics and many also for their white race.

Yes, the Democrats are a majority white party, and absolutely need white money and white votes to have a chance.

The closer we get to a presidential election the less you would know that, from the propaganda.

Who has not noticed the increasingly vocal urging of the moral necessity of reparations and the utter racist immorality of opposing them or refusing them, on both networks?

In the present case, Rushmore is now denounced by CNN and MSNBC opinionators according to two lines dear the left who swear by Zinn and for whom A People's History of the United States is just true history rather than an essay in anti-American hatred virtually inventing the weaponization of history.

First, as racist in that the sculptor is alleged to have had some sympathy with the Klan, though never a member in an era when membership was without social or political cost.

And second, as a sin against sacred Indian lands (but the tribes agreed with the project at the time) and a evil validation of the also racist European settling and rise to dominance in the Americas.

Let the orgy of oppo research begin!

Expect it when the radical left put forward their list of heroes and heroines to replace the ones it rejects.

The statue celebrates this fellow for being a hero of press freedom under Mussolini.

Protesters target statue of famed Italian journalist who married a 12-year-old in Eritrea

A statue of famed Italian journalist Indro Montanelli in Milan has been painted red and sprayed with the words "racist" and "rapist," while a petition has called for its removal.

While serving in the army in 1935-1936, during Italy's war in Eritrea, the 26-year-old Montanelli bought and married a 12-year-old girl.

During a 1969 interview with Italian journalist and activist Elvira Banotti, Montanelli said he was married to the child because he "bought" her, which he said was part of the region's tradition and common among Eritrean soldiers.

When Banotti pressed Montanelli on whether he had raped the girl, named Desta, the journalist did not answer the question directly but defended himself by saying that he was married and that the issue of rape was out of the question.

. . . .

Milan's mayor, Beppe Sala, said Sunday that although he had seen the video in which Montanelli admitted he had bought the girl, he believed Montanelli was a "great journalist" who fought for press freedom, and that the statue should remain where it is.

"Now I invite all of us, I invite our community to reflect on two issues. The first question I ask myself and you is what do we ask of personalities we want to remember with a statue, with a plaque, with the name of a street or a square, or a garden? 

"Do we ask for a spotless life? For a life in which everything was absolutely right? It is possible. However, few would remain to remember," he said in a video posted to Facebook.

"And the second question that I ask myself and you is: When we judge our lives, can we say that our own is spotless? And without things that we wouldn't do again?" he said.

"I put my hands up, my life is not. I made mistakes, I did things I wish I hadn't done, but lives must be judged in their complexity. 

"For all these reasons, I think that the statue must remain there. I am nevertheless available to discuss the issue of racism and Montanelli whenever you want," the mayor added.

Red Guards in the UK try to take over higher education

Only fifth of UK universities have said they will 'decolonise' curriculum

And evident approval of these demands by The Guardian is part of why I never contributed money to The Guardian.

The Guardian is too far left for me on race issues.

Well, identity issues in general, actually.

Didn't like their stand on the Elgin Marbles, either.

Die-hards haven't all died, yet

Ted Rall.

If Trump Wins, Don’t Blame Progressives. This Is on You, Centrists.

It's not Sanders. It's the Bernie Bros.

The too far left.

Is wealth immoral?