Friday December 06, 2019

Latest Poll

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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'DEMOCRATS: November 29, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Harsanyi.gif\" />\nImpeachment is a political process. No sentient being, after all, believes that Adam Schiff or Nancy Pelosi are good-faith guardians of constitutional order. And judging the process strictly on political grounds, it hasn’t been a success for Democrats.\n FOR ONE thing, impeachment, if it happens, will effectively end up being a partisan censure of the president. Democrats haven’t gotten any closer to convincing a single Senate Republican to remove the president. Certainly not Mitch McConnell, who says there will be a quick trial. Not even Mitt Romney, who, at this point, is aptly troubled but uncommitted. \n It’s highly probable that a Senate trial run by Republicans, with new witnesses and evidence, would further corrode the Democrats’ case. Liberals, of course, will pretend that Senate Republicans are members of a reactionary Trump cult, putting party above country, but if there had been incontrovertible proof of “bribery,” a number of them would be compelled to act differently. No such evidence was provided. Adding an obstruction article, based on the Mueller Report, would only make the proceedings even more intractably partisan. Yet, the recent push to force Don McGahn to testify suggests Democrats could be headed in that direction. \n In any case, what we can look forward to in a Senate trial is more Ukrainian drama. Far from weakening Trump in 2020, the story might end up dragging Joe Biden into a defensive posture. Journalists perfunctorily refer to anything related to Ukrainians or the Bidens as a “conspiracy theory,” but it’s clear that Hunter Biden was cashing in on his father’s influence, and it’s still unclear what Joe Biden did about it. Republicans have already requested transcripts of conversations between Biden and then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko over the vice president’s requests to fire Viktor Shokin. It’s going to become a difficult story to ignore. \n So what is the upside? At first, Democrats claimed that polls were irrelevant because impeachment was a moral and patriotic imperative. Once national support spiked, numbers suddenly mattered very much, and the usual suspects couldn’t stop talking about them. What most polls now confirm is that while Americans were paying attention to the breathless media coverage, public support for the inquiry is at best stagnant and probably declining. \n The FiveThirtyEight average for support among independents topped out at 47.7% in late October. It sank to 41% during the hearings. Last week’s Politico/Morning Consult poll found that voter opposition to the impeachment inquiry is at its highest point since it started asking the question: “Today, 47 percent of independents oppose the impeachment inquiry, compared to 37 percent who said the same one week ago.” Put another way, more people — not just independents, but everyone — viewed the construction of Trump’s wall on the Mexican border as a higher priority than impeaching Trump. \n Even the best poll for impeachers, one conducted by CNN, saw no change during the dramatic hearings. The Morning Consult poll “didn’t do much to move the needle,” and still finds support below where it was before the hearings. Will support for impeachment miraculously surge upward in places such as Wisconsin as the election approaches? It seems unlikely.\n IN A deep dive into recent polls for Vanity Fair, Ken Stern summarizes the perspective of independents: “Impeachment reflects the agenda of the political establishment and the media,” and represents “a continuation of the partisan bickering and media excess that began even before his inauguration.” \n Democrats and the media have covered every development of the many investigations into Trump, tending into histrionics. That has, in many ways, obscured legitimate criticism of the president. By constantly overpromising and underdelivering, Democrats have guaranteed not only skepticism but apathy from voters outside their own tribe. \n Take Schiff, who once claimed to be privy to hard evidence — which never materialized — of a criminal conspiracy between Trump and the Russian government. In his closing statement in the impeachment hearings, he argued that Trump’s actions toward Ukraine go “beyond anything Nixon did.” At first Democrats set out to prove a quid pro quo charge, which has since been revised to “bribery.” The rationale was that it was a criminal concept that Americans could more easily grasp. Indeed, most people understand what constitutes “bribery,” but Schiff couldn’t provide the evidence for it. Instead, he offered a slew of witnesses that depicted a self-serving, volatile and impulsive Trump. \n None of that is a surprise to anyone who’s ever heard the president speak. \n If lame-duck Republicans such as Will Hurd, who hasn’t been afraid to be critical of the president, saw no “compelling, overwhelmingly clear, and unambiguous” evidence of “bribery or extortion,” who are you convincing exactly? To be sure, Hurd may change his mind. It’s also possible that vulnerable Democrats will change theirs first. Yesterday, representative Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., said she favored censuring, not impeaching, Trump: “We are so close to an election. I will tell you, sitting here knowing how divided this country is, I don’t see the value of taking him out of office.” \n Today, she backpedaled. But she may have stumbled onto a solution. If Democrats back out of impeachment, they will be scorned by the base as a bunch of simpering cowards. But the anger of the resistance fighter can never be satiated anyway. With censure, Democrats would be able to continue to condemn Trump without putting their vulnerable members in danger.\n HERE IS a pertinent question someone might want to poll: “Based on everything you have seen, read, or heard about the allegations against President Trump and Ukraine, which of the following is the best way for Democrats to proceed? 1) Impeach. 2) Censure. 3) Nothing.” I suspect there’s a good chance Lawrence’s position would be the most popular.\n', created = 1575619174, expire = 1575705574, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:a177d87e8695f88924e15032085c81eb' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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Stand with Hong Kong.” Even though the GM, regrettably, deleted his tweet, one strongly suspects his grasp of China — where the state is running “reeducation” camps filled with Uighurs — is considerably stronger than any of the NBA’s leading apologists’.\n ONLY LAST year, James, a purported champion of social justice, came out in support of former quarterback Colin Kaepernick with the vacuous platitude, “I stand with anyone who believes in change.” Anyone? Of course, LeBron’s stand, as with most acts of pretend celebrity bravery, resulted in hosannas being thrown at him by the press and, more importantly, never cost him a penny. \n Americans tend to use word like “stand” and “fight” in their political disagreements, although they never really have to stand and fight for anything. Tank Man stood and fought. The Hong Kong protesters stand and fight. We take to social media and argue. Posting a Nike-approved picture of Kaepernick on your Instagram account — adorned with the $40 million market-test slogan — “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything” — is not an act of bravery, LeBron. \n And that’s fine. All of this just speaks to the relative safety afforded dissent and protest in our political life. In the United States, celebrities are free to accuse the president of being a fascist dictator or “bum,” and no one’s coming to knock on their doors. Watching fabulously wealthy men fretting over their words abroad is a useful reminder of the liberalism we have inherited. \n There’s nothing wrong with playing NBA games in China. The Chinese people are the victims of their system, after all, and the more connection they have to the rest of the world the better. There isn’t really even any pressing demand for professional athletes to speak out on geopolitical issues. Once the Hong Kong question was exposed, though, it was deeply revolting to watch those who benefit most in a meritocratic society acquiescing to the illiberal diktats of a foreign regime.\n IT’S ESPECIALLY galling to listen to those who peddle hysteria about contemporary American politics pandering to the Chinese commissars. Apparently, those most prone to calling out pretend Hitlers can’t get themselves to say a negative word about real-world Hitlers. \n Take Warriors coach Steve Kerr, a constant social media commentator, with opinions on seemingly every contemporary political issue. First, Kerr deflected questions about the totalitarian Chinese state by risibly claiming he needed to confer with his brother-in-law, a professor, to get a better handle on the issue. When later asked if he’d ever been confronted about human rights abuses on his previous trips to China, Kerr replied: “No. Nor has (America’s) record of human rights abuses come up either. ... People in China didn’t ask me about, you know, people owning AR-15s and mowing each other down in a mall.” \n Showing contempt for your own country doesn’t erase 70 years of mass murder, famine and incomprehensible hardship for the Chinese people. The Chinese state not only sanctions concentration camps, it subjects countless people to other forms of totalitarianism. Those who shoot AR-15s in American malls are criminals and murderers who are breaking an array of laws in a free country. Not a single politician or organization approves of their actions. The fact that Kerr would compare the two is at best clueless and at worst shamefully unpatriotic. \n “My team and this league just went through a difficult week,” LeBron ludicrously lamented after some well-deserved blowback to his initial comments. “I think people need to understand what a tweet or statement can do to others. And I believe nobody stopped and considered what would happen.” \n What happened? The Chinese Basketball Association cut some ties with the Rockets, and it would probably cut ties with the NBA if players and managers had the decency to speak out.\n I SUPPOSE it’s too much to expect NBA stars to back Hong Kong freedom fighters rather than agonize over rounding errors in their banking accounts. The NBA wants to make money in China. There’s nothing wrong with exporting capitalism. But if the NBA is going to start adopting and enforcing the illiberalism of the Chinese state to make money, it becomes a huge ethical problem.\n', created = 1575619174, expire = 1575705574, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:f85b61e519fa1f95f37a03216cbff38c' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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Trump can abruptly pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria because Congress, having abdicated its foreign policy responsibilities long ago, has no leverage to stop him.\n WHEN CONGRESS passed the War Powers Resolution as the Vietnam War was winding down, it gave the president the power to send troops abroad for 60 days in response to any “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” If the president failed to gain congressional support for the deployment, he would have another 30 days to pull back troops. \n Congress is the institution vested with the power to declare wars, debate where we send troops and decide which conflicts will be funded. Presidents have been ignoring this arrangement, abusing authorizations for the use of military force (AUMFs) and imbuing themselves with the power to engage in conflicts wherever they like, without any coherent endgame and without any buy-in from Congress. \n Congress, in turn, has shown no interest in genuinely challenging executive power. Its members are far more concerned with political self-preservation. Ignoring abuse shields them from tough choices and ensuing criticism — even as they use war as a partisan cudgel. \n Even if you don’t believe all these conflicts rise to an Article I declaration — and I don’t — the more accountability there is in foreign entanglements the better. Right now, we have little genuine debate or consensus building — in a nation that already exhibits exceptionally little interest in foreign policy — regarding the deployment of our troops, almost always in perpetuity, around the world. \n It’s a bipartisan problem. Barack Obama, whose political star rose due to his opposition to the Iraq War, was perhaps our worst offender, circumventing Congress and relying on a decade-old AUMF, which he invoked 19 times during his presidency, to justify a halfhearted intervention against ISIS (not al-Qaida) in Syria (not Afghanistan.) \n Trump could bomb Iran tomorrow, use Obama’s reasoning and have a far stronger legal defense for his actions.\n IT WAS ALSO Obama who joined Europeans in the failed intervention in Libya, where he worked under NATO goals rather than U.S. law. There was hardly a peep from Democrats fretting over the corrosion of the Constitution. \n Republicans were also given ample chance to sign off on Syrian intervention in 2013 when Obama, fully aware of congressional aversion to accountability, asked for a new AUMF to get out of bombing Assad. It would have been a great time for senators to dictate long-term goals in Syria. It’s not too late. If they believe Trump’s strategy is wrong, they can still force his hand by explaining the mission with a new AUMF. Let’s see if voters agree. \n Right now, I imagine only a sliver of Americans fully understand the situation in Syria. I’m definitely not one of them. Yes, Trump’s haphazard abandonment of Syrian Kurds and empowering of Turkey seems like a bad idea for several reasons. I’m hawkish about destroying the remnants of JV-team ISIS and sympathetic toward the idea of protecting civilians from Assad’s chemical attacks and shielding the Kurds from Turkish aggression. But now we’re talking about an open-ended military commitment that keeps evolving. And anyone who claims to know with any certitude how these events will shake out is lying to you. \n The only thing we can be certain of is that there few good options in the Syria mess, and that includes our allies. Although the Kurds have endured much as a people and deserve our support, the Kurdish PKK, our allies in northern Syria, aren’t chaste freedom fighters but Maoists with ties to terrorist organizations. \n In other words, we face few good options mired in perhaps the most volatile situation in the world. Under these conditions, our foreign policy shouldn’t be driven by the arbitrary “great and unmatched wisdom” of any single person. This brand of unilateral power was problematic when the well-mannered Obama sold out Syria to coddle the Iranian terror state, and it’s problematic when an impulsive Trump acquiesces to the wishes of Erdogan. (But Washington seems to freak out only when the word “withdrawal” is mentioned.)\n WHOEVER’S president, the founders clearly foresaw Congress taking far more responsibility for conflicts we enter. So, who knows? Maybe next intervention it will.\n', created = 1575619174, expire = 1575705574, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:0cfa651bbae46b69094ab40c467b36b7' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'This Week's Conservative Focus . . . China\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Harsanyi.gif\" />\nIt’s one thing to engage in diplomacy. It’s another to praise evil. \n This week, Donald Trump tweeted, “Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China!” For diplomatic reasons, it’s become customary for American presidents to praise and commend this depraved totalitarian regime. In a just world, the president would be sending his sympathies to the Chinese people, who have endured inconceivable sufferings under the communist regime since 1949.\n AS HELEN RALEIGH, whose family experienced Maoist-driven deprivations, aptly noted, the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China marks one of the darkest days in Chinese history. It’s also one of the darkest days in mankind’s history. Of all the planned utopian economies of the 20th century, none was more deadly or dehumanizing. No government has murdered, tortured, imprisoned and terrorized more of its own people than communist China. \n The most infamous disaster of those 70 years began with 1959’s Great Leap Forward, a manmade starvation that Mao called “grassroots socialism” — one of a number that Marxism inflicted on the world — which was responsible for the death of 40 million or more Chinese. “It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill,” Mao rationalized. \n But it wasn’t merely famine. Millions of innocent people were tortured to death or summarily executed on the spot for arbitrary crimes against the state.\n MANY OF those lucky enough to survive this hell would soon be thrust into the Cultural Revolution, where gangs of Red Guards, many of them mere teens, roamed the streets targeting anyone they deemed enemies of Maoism. No one was spared as these grassroots murderers rooted out ideological crimes (often over trivial grievances) and the authorities sat and watched. Millions more would be compelled to participate in struggle sessions to come to terms with their counterrevolutionary thinking. Thousands more would commit suicide to avoid all of it. \n “All of it” included the largest penal system ever known to man. The communists would operate at least 1,000 large-scale concentration camps and forced labor camps over the 70-year span. For decades, an average of about 10 million Chinese were imprisoned every year in this gulag — a majority of them for political crimes. Slave labor and torture ensured an estimated 5% mortality rate, which means more than 20 million Chinese perished in camps by the early 1990s. The mass internment of their own people is nothing new. Today, Xinjiang reeducation camps are brimming with more than 1 million (and perhaps up to 3 million) ethnic Muslim Uighurs. \n There has never been religious freedom in communist China. Catholics, Falun Gong, Buddhists, Muslims and others have been harassed, thrown into prison, tortured and forced to renounce their beliefs and adopt the state-sponsored faiths of Maoism and atheism. \n Even in the latter years of the 20th century, the communists would continue a policy of family destruction through forced abortion, mandatory sterilization and the discouragement of adoption, resulting in the abandonment of an estimated 2 million children, mostly girls. \n Let’s not forget the Chinese communists also exported their malicious ideology. After 1950, the communists murdered somewhere between 10% and 20% of the Tibetan population — many of whom bravely fought against the Red Army with muskets and swords. In 1984, the Dalai Lama estimated that, to that point, 173,000 of his countrymen had died in captivity. Tibet is still occupied territory but is little advocating for its cause on college campuses or in the U.N. \n We won’t even dive into the murderous communist regimes Red China propped up in Cambodia or Vietnam or how it instigated world conflict and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. But let’s remember that China still props up the massive concentration camp known as North Korea — not to mention that, all the time, the vast majority of Chinese lived in poverty. \n The free capitalistic enclaves of Taiwan and Hong Kong would be constant reminders of both the amazing ingenuity of the Chinese people and the crimes of China’s government. Even today, the brave protesters in Hong Kong won’t relent to the communists’ arbitrary rule. They deserve more from us. \n In an age in which some Americans act as if losing an election is tantamount to totalitarianism, the staggering death and poverty caused by the People’s Republic of China can be difficult to wrap one’s mind around. Reading the history of China’s regime, which is taking an excruciatingly long time to wind down, even as capitalism takes hold, is numbing in its unremitting inhumanity.\n YET, this week, “President” Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials visited Mao’s mausoleum — located in Tiananmen Square, where thousands of protesters were murdered by the state in 1989 — and bowed three times to embalmed remains of the world’s greatest mass murderer. It will be a day worth celebrating when the rest of the Chinese government meets the same fate.\n October 4, 2019\n', created = 1575619175, expire = 1575705575, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:265f76386228547234bfbbe8739fd53f' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'CHINA: October 4, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Harsanyi.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nIt’s one thing to engage in diplomacy. It’s another to praise evil. \n This week, Donald Trump tweeted, “Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China!” For diplomatic reasons, it’s become customary for American presidents to praise and commend this depraved totalitarian regime. In a just world, the president would be sending his sympathies to the Chinese people, who have endured inconceivable sufferings under the communist regime since 1949.\n AS HELEN RALEIGH, whose family experienced Maoist-driven deprivations, aptly noted, the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China marks one of the darkest days in Chinese history. It’s also one of the darkest days in mankind’s history. Of all the planned utopian economies of the 20th century, none was more deadly or dehumanizing. No government has murdered, tortured, imprisoned and terrorized more of its own people than communist China. \n The most infamous disaster of those 70 years began with 1959’s Great Leap Forward, a manmade starvation that Mao called “grassroots socialism” — one of a number that Marxism inflicted on the world — which was responsible for the death of 40 million or more Chinese. “It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill,” Mao rationalized. \n But it wasn’t merely famine. Millions of innocent people were tortured to death or summarily executed on the spot for arbitrary crimes against the state. \n Many of those lucky enough to survive this hell would soon be thrust into the Cultural Revolution, where gangs of Red Guards, many of them mere teens, roamed the streets targeting anyone they deemed enemies of Maoism. No one was spared as these grassroots murderers rooted out ideological crimes (often over trivial grievances) and the authorities sat and watched. Millions more would be compelled to participate in struggle sessions to come to terms with their counterrevolutionary thinking. Thousands more would commit suicide to avoid all of it. \n “All of it” included the largest penal system ever known to man. The communists would operate at least 1,000 large-scale concentration camps and forced labor camps over the 70-year span. For decades, an average of about 10 million Chinese were imprisoned every year in this gulag — a majority of them for political crimes. Slave labor and torture ensured an estimated 5% mortality rate, which means more than 20 million Chinese perished in camps by the early 1990s. The mass internment of their own people is nothing new. Today, Xinjiang reeducation camps are brimming with more than 1 million (and perhaps up to 3 million) ethnic Muslim Uighurs. \n There has never been religious freedom in communist China. Catholics, Falun Gong, Buddhists, Muslims and others have been harassed, thrown into prison, tortured and forced to renounce their beliefs and adopt the state-sponsored faiths of Maoism and atheism. \n Even in the latter years of the 20th century, the communists would continue a policy of family destruction through forced abortion, mandatory sterilization and the discouragement of adoption, resulting in the abandonment of an estimated 2 million children, mostly girls.\n LET’S NOT forget the Chinese communists also exported their malicious ideology. After 1950, the communists murdered somewhere between 10% and 20% of the Tibetan population — many of whom bravely fought against the Red Army with muskets and swords. In 1984, the Dalai Lama estimated that, to that point, 173,000 of his countrymen had died in captivity. Tibet is still occupied territory but is little advocating for its cause on college campuses or in the U.N. \n We won’t even dive into the murderous communist regimes Red China propped up in Cambodia or Vietnam or how it instigated world conflict and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. But let’s remember that China still props up the massive concentration camp known as North Korea — not to mention that, all the time, the vast majority of Chinese lived in poverty. \n The free capitalistic enclaves of Taiwan and Hong Kong would be constant reminders of both the amazing ingenuity of the Chinese people and the crimes of China’s government. Even today, the brave protesters in Hong Kong won’t relent to the communists’ arbitrary rule. They deserve more from us. \n In an age in which some Americans act as if losing an election is tantamount to totalitarianism, the staggering death and poverty caused by the People’s Republic of China can be difficult to wrap one’s mind around. Reading the history of China’s regime, which is taking an excruciatingly long time to wind down, even as capitalism takes hold, is numbing in its unremitting inhumanity.\n YET, this week, “President” Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials visited Mao’s mausoleum — located in Tiananmen Square, where thousands of protesters were murdered by the state in 1989 — and bowed three times to embalmed remains of the world’s greatest mass murderer. It will be a day worth celebrating when the rest of the Chinese government meets the same fate.\n', created = 1575619175, expire = 1575705575, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:fd5f109ad687ea3af4939b8372254ab2' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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David Harsanyi

Is impeachment backfiring on the Democrats?

12/01/2019 - 8:23pm

David Harsanyi

DEMOCRATS: November 29, 2019 Impeachment is a political process. No sentient being, after all, believes that Adam Schiff or Nancy Pelosi are good-faith guardians of constitutional order. And judging the process strictly on political grounds, it hasn’t been a success for Democrats. FOR ONE thing, impeachment, if it happens, will effectively end up being a partisan censure of the president...

The fall of Skywalker

By: David Harsanyi 10/28/2019 - 11:30pm

ENTERTAINMENT: October 25, 2019 Who knows? Maybe “The Rise of Skywalker” will bind all the tedious storylines of the first two “Star Wars” sequels into a cohesive and rewarding coda. Then again, if the new trailer offers any clues — and as I understand it, this is point of trailers — the movie looks like it...

LeBron James is a coward

By: David Harsanyi 10/21/2019 - 4:44pm

NBA: October 18, 2019 NBA superstar LeBron James says Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey was “misinformed” and “wasn’t educated on the situation at hand” when he tweeted in support of Hong Kong’s freedom demonstrations. Morey’s sin was sharing an image of a slogan that read: “Fight for...

Hey, Congress; Take back your war powers

By: David Harsanyi 10/13/2019 - 12:25am

WAR POWERS: October 11, 2019 If you want to stop Donald Trump from making unilateral decisions regarding war and peace, then stop letting all presidents make unilateral decisions about war and peace. It’s really quite simple. Trump can abruptly pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria because Congress, having abdicated its foreign policy...

China’s anniversary is a dark day for mankind

By: David Harsanyi 10/09/2019 - 12:36pm

This Week's Conservative Focus . . . China It’s one thing to engage in diplomacy. It’s another to praise evil. This week, Donald Trump tweeted, “Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China!” For diplomatic reasons, it’s become customary...

The anniversary of the People’s Republic of China is a dark day for mankind

By: David Harsanyi 10/07/2019 - 5:23pm

CHINA: October 4, 2019 It’s one thing to engage in diplomacy. It’s another to praise evil. This week, Donald Trump tweeted, “Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China!” For diplomatic reasons, it’s become customary for American presidents...

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