Not for thee; just for me!

New Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is famous for wanting to offer all parents a choice of where they send their children to school. The Daily Caller did some research, and found that some of the Senators who most loudly opposed the DeVos nomination send their children or grandchildren to elite private schools. Wait til you see the lunch menus at those schools!

No pushback

hat tip Bookworm

Explaining the Left

At One Cosmos Gagdad Bob makes many brilliant points to help us understand those who adhere to a leftist point of view.

Obama and Clinton prove the old adage that lying is the essential quality -- for if you're good at lying, then brother, you're good at everything. Thus, Obama's presidency has been a stunning success, and Clinton is the most qualified candidate for president ever.
Churchill once remarked that it is sometimes necessary for truth to be protected by a bodyguard of lies. In the case of the left it's the other way around: their lies are protected and propagated by a bodyguard of self-styled "truth tellers," AKA the media.

Think about that: our culture has developed a systematic and pervasive megaphone for the propagation of liberal lies, under the guise of being the necessary institution for an informed citizenry. It pretends to be our cognitive immune system on a seek-and-destroy mission against falsehood, when it is really an autoimmune disorder that attacks truth.

A commenter named maineman adds,

I think Obama has kind of upped the ante when it comes to publically displayed deviance, formerly understood as mental illness. When you congratulate yourself while you lie through your teeth, relish the con like Gollum with his precious, give shout-outs to your comrades while talking about the slaughter of innocents, light up the White House in celebration of sodomy, talk about the creation of new life as a punishment, and do something like that almost every time you are in public, you're pretty clearly in Rasputin territory.

And the thing that points to the demonic is the way it normalizes lawlessness and psychopathy and is profoundly disorienting for anyone without enough grounding in reality to want to throw up when they see or hear it.

Long time commenter Julie adds,

Not to mention all the racial healing. Every time he lectures whitey because some black thug got hurt or was mistreated, he pours more venom into the wounds between the races. Ironically, if he had any decency at all he really could have brought about an era of racial healing. He made himself out to be a "father figure" to all the Trayvons in the country; a true father would have told them that being a Trayvon or a Michael Brown is no way to live.

Re. Mrs. Trump, they are trying so hard to manufacture outrage amongst conservatives. This came out a year ago, but they just have to bring it back.

If she were doing those kind of photoshoots today, of course that would be a problem - as much in what it says about a man if his wife does that kind of thing after they're married as anything. But sixteen years ago, and we're supposed to be outraged? Meh. People are capable of change. I'd still rather have her as 1st lady than Bill. At least she didn't rape anyone.

...Incidentally, that's a tactic the left loves to trot out: calling out someone for doing things they think conservatives will get upset about, but which they themselves would celebrate in anyone on their side. When Lena Dunham or Amy Whassername does it, she's so brave. Melania? What a whore! In a bad way! We know a slut when we see one!! Slut shaming is totally appropriate when we do it!!!

Gagdad Bob adds,

Then again, Obama's pathology is so perfectly mirrored by the media and entertainment industries, that it is as if there is a seamless unity between the self-image and its reflection in the world. This would explain how and why he is always so mocking and contemptuous of those who disagree with him, i.e., who fail to mirror him. (In this context, contempt is a defense mechanism, simply the other side of the (self) idealization.)

The specific condition is called Delusional Disorder of the Grandiose subtype, which involves "delusions of inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity, or special relationship to a deity or famous person." Interesting how he is going to have so many famous low-life celebrities and rappers at his birthday party. Must make him feel special.

I would love to conduct a thorough evaluation of him. Otherwise it's difficult to nail down the diagnosis.

...no one here believes Trump is some sort of ideal candidate, only that the alternative is infinitely worse. Yes, there is risk involved with Trump. Conversely, there is no risk with Clinton, rather, certainty that she will be a disaster, especially vis-a-vis the Supreme Court. I don't know about the rest, but that is my gravest concern, as it will fundamentally reshape the nation for decades.

Julie added,

Yup. There is plenty to dislike about Trump, and who knows how much we can trust him? But Hillary is quite trustworthy: we can trust that she will lie, cheat, sell us out to our enemies, backstab, weaken our position in the world, and make all but her closest "friends" miserable for the foreseeable future. America and the world will be far more dangerous than they are even now, and our children's futures will be bleak indeed.

Bob added,

...Moral maturity involves the recognition that we must sometimes choose the lesser of two evils. Doing so is good, even though it doesn't change the evil into a good.

The classic case is WW2, when we allied with one of the most vicious monsters in history in order to defeat the other monster.

...the Democrats have become the party of the super wealthy and the low IQ hordes. The former don't
have to eat what the left serves, while the latter are promised better government food in the future.

Read much more here.

Try not to notice

"If I am to upsize my 4-cylinder into a V-8 — provided I can find one nowadays — that is just an appalling offense. But our public officials can fly to faraway places on enormous jets, for no higher goal than a publicity stunt, to rename a mountain, whatever…even, irony of ironies, to give speeches about how we all need to drive smaller cars. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, but there’s something wrong with you if you notice it." House of Eratosthenes

Flipflopping

There's young Bill Clinton with Al Gore and Chuck Schumer proudly standing behind him, as he signed the Religious Freedom Act in 1993. Photo by National Archives
James Taranto reveals how the left has flipflopped and now opposes Indiana signing on to a religious freedom law similar to ones that had been signed by 19 states before Clinton signed it in 1994.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 was passed, with broad bipartisan support, by a Democratic Congress and signed enthusiastically by President Clinton. In 1998 the Illinois Senate passed the state’s own version of RFRA, 56-0, with Sen. Barack Obama not just present but voting “yes.” Connecticut had enacted a RFRA in June 1993, even before the federal government did. As the Washington Post reports, a total of 19 states passed RFRA laws before Indiana did, usually with little controversy.

Yet the left is enraged at Indiana. “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today,” tweets Hillary Clinton, Bill’s better half. “We shouldn’t discriminate against ppl bc of who they love.” The Hill reports that the White House—now occupied by that erstwhile Illinois state senator—“on Tuesday blasted Indiana’s religious freedom law.”

...the left’s hatred of RFRA is about preserving the authority of the cake police—government agencies determined to coerce bakeries, photo studios, florists and other small businesses to participate in same-sex weddings even if the owners have eccentric conscientious objections.

Read more here

Can we nominate Victor Davis Hanson for President?

Victor Davis Hanson wonders

So how hard is it for a Republican simply to say, “I oppose illegal immigration because (1) it is illegal. It undermines the sanctity of the law and discriminates against the law-abiding waiting in line to enter the U.S. legally. (2) It benefits corporate grandees at the expense of working people. (3) It is driven by self-serving elites of the ethnic-grievance industry to enhance their own advantage, rather than to help poor folks struggling to find decent wages and schools.

Cannot a Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union simply say, “Mr. President, you are shamelessly taking credit for gas and oil production that you did all in your power to thwart. The middle class is enjoying a temporary cut in gas prices, despite, not because of, you.”

How hard it is for Republicans to say to liberals, “I accuse! The wealthy have their security details, most of them armed. The underclass has access to illegal weaponry as the armed crime sprees in a Detroit or Chicago attest. Why then go after the middle class, who neither outsource their security nor break the law? Before we issue sweeping edicts aimed at the law-abiding, let us disarm all the security guards of Hollywood and Washington, D.C., and put away for good the criminals who use illegal firearms to hurt the innocent.”

Hanson goes on to show how Obama's policies are hurting the middle class and young people. On fairness:

At some point cannot a conservative make the case that liberalism, as preached by its elites, is a psychological mechanism to shield wealthy progressives from the ramifications of their own ideology?

Cannot a Republican ask Obama at least to forgo Martha’s Vineyard next summer or the next zillionaire golfing outing if he wants to rant about the perks of the 1%?

How liberal was it that a few hundred Bay Area elites went to court over the last few years to divert about 20 million acre-feet of precious irrigation water to flow out to the sea, in vain pursuit of their fantasies about expanding bait fish populations in the delta or in hopes of seeing a salmon jump out of the river by Fresno? Tens of thousands of poor people will lose their jobs this summer, as irrigation water reserves are exhausted and acreage goes out of production.

He includes the green and diversity categories:

Are the heads of Hollywood studios reflective of the rich diversity of California? And if we are going down the diversity and fairness routes, then surely Al Gore needs a sermon — after he unloaded a failed network to an anti-Semitic, carbon-burning medieval sheikdom, in failed efforts to beat the new capital gains tax that he so strenuously supported. How fair, how egalitarian, how diverse is all that? What is the ethnic profile of Sierra Club membership?

Surely there is a populist case to be made — or is the Republican establishment to manage a permanent, sober, and judicious out-party, as it is demagogued to death by the privileged?