Progressives and the Unnecessary Lie

When a kid with cookie all over his face claims he didn’t eat any cookies it’s because he knows he wasn’t supposed to be eating cookies. He’ll eventually fess up, although he may rationalize the behavior. Most adults are the same way. A president with a stain on an intern’s dress may hold out for a while, but he’ll come around eventually.

But today’s progressives are another story. They lie when the truth would suffice, and they hold on to that lie, even doubling down on it, regardless of what evidence to the contrary comes to light.

When President Obama’s “If you like your plan you can keep your plan” lie was finally and irrefutably exposed, he didn’t apologize or explain why he’d lied. He just said he was sorry people got the wrong impression from his words, which, of course, could not have been clearer.

But at least we can understand the rationale for that lie. Lately, we’ve heard lies that are every bit as obvious but completely inexplicable.

When Bowe Bergdahl was traded for five of the worst Taliban terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, the White House unleashed a flurry of lies when none were necessary. They called him a hero who served with “honor and distinction.” They said he was on the verge of death, etc. They even lied to Bergdahl’s father saying he’d forgotten how to speak English, a lie he repeated on camera in the Rose Garden ceremony (lest you think Bob Bergdahl made that up himself and no one in the White House decided to correct him or cruelly decided to let him continue to think his son’s mind was that far gone).

Americans never would support leaving a soldier, even a deserter, in the hands of our enemies. The president made a bad deal, but he brought an American home. If he had stuck with the truth, he would not have been able to jut out his chin in celebratory self-aggrandizement, but he would have put the matter to rest by now – bad deal and all.

People will tolerate bad decisions much more than they will lying. The obvious nature of the Bergdahl lies had to have been clear to the White House. They knew about what his fellow soldiers had said and about the military’s own investigation of Bowe’s desertion. Yet they chose to go with the lie anyway.

Moreover, once confronted with the truth, the White House didn’t admit it or even attempt to finesse it. It doubled down on the lie. Instead of letting it go, which most of us would have understood, the administration now finds itself in the position of fending off Republicans and criticizing the soldiers who actually did serve honorably but refused to stay silent.

Why?

But the Bergdahl lie was hardly an orphan this week in the pantheon of progressive lies. Hillary Clinton, our next president as far the casual observer of mainstream media knows, told a doozy this week.

Speaking to Diane Sawyer of ABC News, Clinton informed the world that she and the future First Man were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001. This was a blatantly transparent attempt at connecting with average voters who are struggling under Barack Obama’s economy. But even in the most technical sense, that proclamation is an easily disprovable lie that serves zero purpose.

Let’s play this out for a minute. When the Clintons left the White House they owed millions in legal bills. One number I’ve seen is $12 million. I doubt it, but I’ll use it. They’re $12 million in debt, but Hillary had signed an $8 million book deal before being sworn in as New York’s senator (a deal she had to close before assuming office to avoid ethics issues). Her husband soon signed a $15 million book deal and started giving high-paying speeches and getting cushy no-show board seat jobs with who knows how many zeros on those checks. Putting those aside, math tells you $23 million is more than $12 million, and even after taxes the Clintons were hardly going hungry.

So why lie when all of this is public record? Why put out obvious untruths when the truth would have sufficed? Are they sociopaths? Are they so insulated from contrary opinions in their sycophantic inner circles that they believe these lies? Or are they just so used to getting away with it that they throw caution to the wind knowing they will ultimately be given a pass because they have the media in their back pocket? Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever the answer, Republicans need to prepare themselves now for boxing a shadow in 2016 because whoever the Democrat nominee is it’s pretty clear he or she won’t be bound by past deeds, words, or even reality.

http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2014/06/15/progressives-and-the-unnecessary-lie-n1851260/page/full

L.M.A,O! This Is How Liberals Really Feel About Conservatives

Forget the talking head progressives. They are, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, spitting into the wind that blows in their face. They can’t abide the thought of any Tea Party victory, because they know that the general values and principles of the Tea Party are held by an overwhelming majority of Americans. It is the like of Bill Maher who are on the fringe; it just doesn’t appear so, because the progressive left own the pulpit in academia, media, pop culture, and federal politics. We, however, have the congregation. We are the congregation.

As a group of liberal talking heads, occasionally interrupted by a lone National Review contributor, discussed House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat on HBO’s “Real Time” Friday night, they revealed just how much they disdain conservatism.

“Eric Cantor helped create the Tea Party, and it killed him,” said guest Richard Clarke, comparing the scenario to that of Frankenstein’s monster.

Host Bill Maher called out the fact that the defeat of Cantor, who is Jewish, leaves the GOP looking pretty homogenous.

“There are 278 Republicans in Congress; they are now all Christian, and all white, except for one black senator who was appointed,” noted Maher. “So this is an entirely Christian, white party… Isn’t that scary that we’re segregating like that, or is it good?”

When talk turned to voting, Maher said, ”The only way (Republicans) win is they cheat, they stop people from voting.”

Maher and his guests then discussed the feasibility of compulsory voting and letting people vote with their cell phones, with the implication that forcing large swaths of politically-uninterested Americans to vote would benefit liberals.

Maher dug in one more jab at the GOP, saying that ”college professor” is now a slur in the Republican party.

“They hate smart people more than Mexicans!” he said.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/14/this-is-how-liberals-really-feel-about-conservatives/

The Three Liberal Myths About Partisanship Busted By Pew's New Poll

A fascinating new poll out today from the Pew Research Center reports on how they've tracked Americans' beliefs on political issues over time. It's wide-ranging and deep and a fascinating look at what Americans believe. One of the most important parts is how the two coalitions - Republicans and Democrats - have changed over the last twenty years. And it takes a sledgehammer to myths that liberals have been telling themselves.

Myth #1: Polarization is asymmetric

Asymmetric polarization, as espoused by analysts like the Brookings Institute's Thomas Mann, goes something like this: Democrats have created a big tent governming majority that tolerates lots of different views and, as a result, has a kind of "moderate center" that has remained relatively consistent; while Republicans have exiled the centrists in their party as grassroots voters have taken over and made their party more extreme all on their own.

That's flatly not true.

The typical measurement of asymmetric polarization comes from a Congressional metric called DW-NOMINATE, which at its heart measures how often elected representatives in Congress vote with each other. The flaw here is that it doesn't take into account the relative leftness or rightness of a proposal being voted on. If there were a vote in Congress to repeal the 2nd Amendment, for example, with all Republicans voting against and Democrats split evenly between for and against, would be a data point contributing to Republicans becoming more "extreme" and Democrats being relatively centrist. DW-NOMINATE has certain utility in evaluating legislative coalitions, but as an actual measure of how left-wing or right-wing any coalition is, it's severely lacking.

Pew's survey finds a lot of interesting trends in the Republican Party, but one thing is certain: Democrats have gotten much more liberal over the last twenty years. Pew actually measures how people feel about a lot of different issues, not just how their votes cluster. Democrats moved noticably leftward in the late 90s. What is true is that Democrats stagnated throughout the Bush years in how Pew measures how liberal they are - they remained relatively consistent. But in the Obama era, Democrats have veered sharply leftward, as shown in these two images; watch how far the median Democrat jumps from 2010 to 2014:

The softer asymmetric polarization theory would admit that Democrats have moved further leftward, but Republicans have moved a lot further to the right. That might be true, but only if you cherry-pick what time you start measuring from. Which leads us to...

Myth #2: Republicans have consistently gotten more extreme

Pew provided this gif to go along with their survey. What happens to the Republican coalition is absolutely fascinating: contrary to the idea that George W. Bush was some kind of extremist, the Republican coalition moved sharply leftward in the early Bush years, peaking at a point in 2004 where the GOP coalition overlapped considerably with a Democratic one that hadn't changed much:

The median Republican, according to Pew, is only slightly to the right of where they began measuring in 1994. What happened was that the GOP got much more liberal from 1994 to 2004, and came back to the more conservative end of the spectrum after that.

Now, 1994 might also have been a conservative outlier - it's possible that Republicans were a lot more liberal prior to 1994's "Contract With America" and the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives - but what's clear is that the GOP coalition has been a lot more in flux in the last 20 years than the Democratic one - which has simply gotten consistently more liberal.

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Myth #3: Republican views are more monolithic than Democrats

Liberal writers have long believed in the ideological diversity of the Democratic Party and lamented that an entrenched, monolithic Republican machine was what was keeping Democrats from achieving their goals.

Pew has this to say:

There is as much ideological uniformity on the left as the right. The share of Democrats holding consistently liberal views has grown steadily over the past 20 years, quadrupling from 5% in 1994 to 23% today. Social issues like homosexuality and immigration that once drove deep divides within the Democratic Party are now areas of relative consensus. And Democrats have become more uniformly critical of business and more supportive of government.

Much of this trend simply follows from the previous: Democrats have gotten more extreme, they've become a lot more unified ideologically, and therefore they're quite a monolithic party now. What was certainly not conventional wisdom, however, was the diversity of the Republican party in the Bush years. A significant faction of the Republican party was to the left of the median Democrat, and it wasn't because Democrats had been particularly moderate.

The Republican coalition has shifted in interesting ways in the last twenty years - going from conservative to liberal and back again. The Democratic coalition, on the other hand, has pretty consistently gotten more liberal - and that's a reality that analysts need to grapple with.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2014/06/12/the-three-liberal-myths-about-partisanship-busted-by-pews-new-poll-n1850762?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm

What Is Wrong With This Picture? WHAT? Chris Matthews Defends The Tea Party, Praises “Sophisticated” Dave Brat? Enjoy this version of Chris Matthews while you can. I’m sure he’ll be back to his ignorant fire-breathing self, blaming the Tea Party

In a shocking segment on “Ronan Farrow Daily,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews defended the Tea Party (yeah, you read that right) and praised Virginia’s 7th District Republican primary upset victor, Dave Brat.

Matthews said Dave Brat is “very sophisticated for a politician. He’s certainly up to the ranks of most politicians I’ve ever dealt with,” and “he can handle any debate on this program or my program.”

(I can’t believe I’m actually typing this).

But Matthews was just getting started. He then launched into a tirade where he defended grassroots conservatives, saying liberals have to stop “looking down our noses” at the Tea Party. “They have a message, they’re as American as any liberal is, and they’re really angry of the failure of the system.”

Matthew even backed the main frustrations of the Tea Party, saying “we can’t control the deficit, we can’t control the debt, we can’t control the border. What good is government good at? That’s the question that’s happened on every issue we’ve covered on our show.”

Enjoy this version of Chris Matthews 
while you can. I’m sure he’ll be back to his ignorant fire-breathing self, blaming the Tea Party of all kinds of racism, much sooner rather than later.

Read more at http://dailysurge.com/2014/06/chris-matthews/#FirVK3q5IBybLI1...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjoHGz3RXEk

COLLEGES BECOME THE VICTIMS OF PROGRESSIVISM

Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.

Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.” Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was in her room with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months”:

“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then he said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.’”

Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped. Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of “sexual assault” victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults.

The administration’s crucial and contradictory statistics are validated the usual way, by official repetition; Joe Biden has been heard from. The statistics are: One in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, and only 12 percent of assaults are reported. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12 percent reporting rate is correct, the 20 percent assault rate is preposterous. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute notes, for example, that in the four years 2009 to 2012 there were 98 reported sexual assaults at Ohio State. That would be 12 percent of 817 total out of a female student population of approximately 28,000, for a sexual assault rate of approximately 2.9 percent — too high but nowhere near 20 percent.

Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process. Threatening to withdraw federal funding, the department mandates adoption of a minimal “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating sexual assault charges between males and the female “survivors” — note the language of prejudgment. Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of afemale who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape. Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies.

Now academia is unhappy about the Education Department’s plan for government to rate every institution’s educational product. But the professors need not worry. A department official says this assessment will be easy: “It’s like rating a blender.” Education, gadgets — what’s the difference?

Meanwhile, the newest campus idea for preventing victimizations — an idea certain to multiply claims of them — is “trigger warnings.” They would be placed on assigned readings or announced before lectures. Otherwise, traumas could be triggered in students whose tender sensibilities would be lacerated by unexpected encounters with racism, sexism, violence (dammit, Hamlet, put down that sword!) or any other facet of reality that might violate a student’s entitlement to serenity. This entitlement has already bred campus speech codes that punish unpopular speech. Now the codes are begetting the soft censorship of trigger warnings to swaddle students in a “safe,” “supportive,” “unthreatening” environment, intellectual comfort for the intellectually dormant.

It is salutary that academia, with its adversarial stance toward limited government and cultural common sense, is making itself ludicrous. Academia is learning that its attempts to create victim-free campuses — by making everyone hypersensitive, even delusional, about victimizations — brings increasing supervision by the regulatory state that progressivism celebrates.

What government is inflicting on colleges and universities, and what they are inflicting on themselves, diminishes their autonomy, resources, prestige and comity. Which serves them right. They have asked for this by asking for progressivism.

http://www.humanevents.com/2014/06/09/colleges-become-the-victims-of-progressivism/

Creationists vs. Evolutionists: Here’s Where Americans Stand on God’s Role in Creation

PRINCETON, NJ -- More than four in 10 Americans continue to believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, a view that has changed little over the past three decades. Half of Americans believe humans evolved, with the majority of these saying God guided the evolutionary process. However, the percentage who say God was not involved is rising.

This latest update is from Gallup's Values and Beliefs survey conducted May 8-11. Gallup first asked the three-part question about human origins in 1982.

The percentage of the U.S. population choosing the creationist perspective as closest to their own view has fluctuated in a narrow range between 40% and 47% since the question's inception. There is little indication of a sustained downward trend in the proportion of the U.S. population who hold a creationist view of human origins. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who adhere to a strict secularist viewpoint -- that humans evolved over time, with God having no part in this process -- has doubled since 1999.

Religiousness, Age, Education Related to Americans' Views

Historically, Americans' views on the origin of humans have been related to their religiousness, education, and age.

• Religiousness relates most strongly to these views, which is not surprising, given that this question deals directly with God's role in human origins. The percentage of Americans who accept the creationist viewpoint ranges from 69% among those who attend religious services weekly to 23% among those who seldom or never attend.
• Educational attainment is also related to these attitudes, with belief in the creationist perspective dropping from 57% among Americans with no more than a high school education to less than half that (27%) among those with a college degree. Those with college degrees are, accordingly, much more likely to choose one of the two evolutionary explanations.
• Younger Americans -- who are typically less religious than their elders -- are less likely to choose the creationist perspective than are older Americans. Americans aged 65 and older -- the most religious of any age group -- are most likely to choose the creationist perspective.

Americans Less Familiar With "Creationism" Now Than in 2007

Americans' self-reported familiarity with evolution as an explanation for the origin and development of life on Earth has stayed roughly the same over the past seven years. Seventy-nine percent of Americans say they are very or somewhat familiar with it, leaving 19% not too or not at all familiar.

However, significantly fewer Americans claim familiarity with "creationism" than did so seven years ago. In 2007, 86% were familiar, including 50% who were very familiar. Now, 76% are familiar, with just 38% very familiar. In short, even though the adherence to the creationist view has not changed over time, familiarity with the term "creationism" has diminished.

Sixty-four percent of those who are very familiar with the theory of evolution choose one of the two evolutionary explanations for the origin of humans, compared with 28% among the smaller group of Americans who report being not too or not at all familiar with it. The majority of those not familiar with evolution choose the creationist viewpoint.

These relationships do not necessarily prove that if Americans were to learn more about evolution they would be more likely to believe in it. Those with less education are most likely to espouse the creationist view and to be least familiar with evolution, but it's not clear that gaining more education per se would shift their perspectives. Many religious Americans accept creationism mostly on the basis of their religious convictions. Whether their beliefs would change if they became more familiar with evolution is an open question.

Implications

Between 40% and 47% of Americans over the past 32 years have said the creationist explanation for the origin of human life best fits their personal views. These Americans tend to be highly religious, underscoring the degree to which many Americans view the world around them through the lens of their religious beliefs. Those who adopt the creationist view also tend to have lower education levels, but given the strong influence of religious beliefs, it is not clear to what degree having more education or different types of education might affect their views.

A number of states have been embroiled in fights in recent years over the degree to which evolution and creationism should be included in their public school curricula. Residents in the South are more likely to believe in the creationist view of the origin of humans than are those living in other regions, making it clear why the fights to have creationism addressed in the public schools might be an important political issue in that region.

Still, few scientists would agree that humans were created pretty much in their present form at one time 10,000 years ago, underscoring the ongoing discontinuity between the beliefs that many Americans hold and the general scientific consensus on this important issue.

The progressive worship of mediocrity and equality Latest Progressive Buffoonery: “Hurt Feelings” Trump Excellence!

Competition and excellence are as American as baseball and apple pie. The idea is that one should take optimum advantage of God-given talents and abilities by striving to be the best possible so as to achieve important goals and objectives.

That notion, so the story goes, will help prepare one for the rigors and challenges of the real world where one’s abilities and performance are carefully scrutinized in order to select the “best candidates” for employment and for promotion and salary opportunities.

Indeed, when employers look to hire, the object is to find the most qualified prospective employee.  Scant little time is spent in HR offices or corporate board rooms fretting over “hurt feeling

The business of professional sports is an excellent example. Baseball scouts search high and low for young players who can run the fastest, throw the ball the furthest, and whom can hit a baseball with the greatest power and accurac

Rarely does a big-league baseball manager take a budding superstar aside and counsel the young man:“Your batting average and home run production is depressing to some of the other players with more average talents.  You should strike out more often, hit with less power, and stop running so damn fast! Do it for the team!”

Likewise, a high-tech team leader in Silicone Valley is unlikely to say the following to “techies”  assigned to develop an innovative, new product line:

Unfortunately, this sort of progressive buffoonery is creeping into our education system.

For instance, concerns about the “exclusive nature” of the annual honors night at Archie R. Cole Middle School in Rhode Island have caused school officials to scrap the tradition.

Instead, students who would normally be recognized at the annual spring tradition will be honored during team-based recognition ceremonies and graduation.

Thus, out-of-touch liberals at the school have implemented the progressive worship of mediocrity and equality, especially at the expense of excellence.

Parents with children who attend Archie R. Cole Middle School should move, with haste, to transfer their offspring to schools that will encourage and reward excellence.

Perhaps equality-driven progressives could level the playing field a bit by having a “Hurt Feelings” awards ceremony for the less accomplished students?  Call it a gathering of “Future Democrats!”

John W. Lillpop
San Jose, California

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/63446?utm_source=CFP+Mailout&utm_campaign=43fb19cf04-Call_to_Champions&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d8f503f036-43fb19cf04-297703129