Muda69

Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff might have broken campaign finance laws: https://nypost.com/2019/03/02/ocasio-cortezs-chief-of-staff-might-have-broken-campaign-finance-laws/

? Please elaborate.

As I'm sure you did your "20 seconds of research."

As did I. Before I posted a link to said article.

I'm sure you were as well.

A story along this vein: Popular Defiance Will Kneecap Gun Laws in New Mexico, As It Has in Other States: http://reason.com/archives/2019/03/04/defiance-will-kneecap-new-mexico-gun-law In each state, noncompliance was a result of widespread local opposition to the law. Spurred by their communities, sheriffs in Washington also refused to enforce the background check requirement, and more than half have vowed to ignore new gun laws passed last year. And the rebellion among Colorado sheriffs, who are elected to office there as in most states, came in response to local sentiment of the sort that turfed-out lawmakers who supported gun restrictions. Which is to say, the "low compliance" in both Colorado and Washington was the result of grassroots defiance, with local officials following their rebellious constituents, not leading the way. Sheriffs in rural New York counties also responded to constituents' hostility to tightened gun laws—in their case, registration of semiautomatic rifles. "The New York State Sheriffs Association and five individual sheriffs have joined a court effort to block enforcement of new bullet limits for magazines and firearms restrictions," the Daily Star reported in 2013. "Schoharie County Sheriff Tony Desmond said he has no intention of enforcing the law, and that his office won't do anything that would cause law-abiding citizens to turn in their weapons or arrest them for possessing firearms." Compliance with the state's registration law topped out at about five percent, with the tiny law-abiding minority heavily concentrated in the New York City area. Interestingly, local defiance of state and federal gun restrictions appears to reflect a desire for freedom from unpopular legislation that extends across the political spectrum. The specifics of the laws to be defied vary from place to place, but the desire to be left unmolested by other people's rules seems nearly universal. "The 'Second Amendment sanctuary county' concept … was borrowed from activists who for several years have convinced some local governments to declare themselves 'sanctuary cities' for undocumented immigrants — meaning local law enforcement won't help federal officers arrest those whose only crime is being in the country illegally," accordingto the Santa Fe New Mexican. Definitions of "sanctuary cities" vary, but "there are over 200 jurisdictions, including some of the largest in the country, that refuse to honor [Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)] detainers," ICE Director Sarah Saldaña told Congressin 2015. Some of us remember, with particular fondness, Norman Vroman, who served time for failing to pay income taxes before being elected, as a Libertarian, to the office of district attorney for Mendocino County, California. Because of his hands-off policy towards marijuana and guns, Vroman "was endorsed by such disparate groups as the National Rifle Assn. and the Green Party" as reported in his Los Angeles Times obituary. Vroman's battles with state and federal officials (the feds were planning a raid on his home at the time of his death) were made possible by a local culture contemptuous of legal restrictions imposed from above—especially those on marijuana. Restrictive laws can be unenforceable even if sentiment isn't sufficiently monolithic to drive local officials to butt heads with officeholders further up the political food chain. In the absence of registration lists of guns and gun owners, which don't exist in most of the United States (and failed from popular defiance in New York, as mentioned above), the background checks causing so much fuss in New Mexico depend entirely on voluntary compliance. If only two people in a jurisdiction oppose such requirements, those two can safely buy and sell guns to each other so long as they conduct their transactions out of sight of law enforcement. Expand the population of eager scofflaws and you're bound to see widespread noncompliance, as in Colorado, New York, and Washington. New Mexicans seem poised to demonstrate, once again, just how powerless politicians are over defiant people.

Yes NightHawk, I am aware of Mr. Moore's history. Can you please provide me a list of your reputable news sources? BTW, congratulations to Tiny Argos for winning it's basketball sectional this past Saturday night.

Comedian Trevor Noah slammed as ‘racist’ for India-Pakistan joke: https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/comedian-trevor-noah-slammed-as-racist-for-india-pakistan-joke

Greenpeace co-founder tears into Ocasio-Cortez, Green New Deal: ‘Pompous little twit’: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/greenpeace-co-founder-tears-into-ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal-pompous-little-twit

And another, they are like flies to potential honey: Ex-Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper enters presidential race: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-colorado-gov-hickenlooper-joins-presidential-race/2019/03/04/4cce1e90-3e71-11e9-85ad-779ef05fd9d8_story.html?utm_term=.2a29450aa90f

No Magic Bullet for Trump/Russia Investigation: http://reason.com/archives/2019/03/02/no-magic-bullet-for-trumprussia-investig#comment

Are you 100% sure about that?

Possibly. Probably not that much different as when Mr. Reagan ran for his second term.

Oh sorry. GNS = Green New Swindle.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/1/18246297/china-transportation-people-banned-poor-social-credit-planes-trains-2018 Scary stuff. Kind of reminds of the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" starting to come to life.

Another soon also-ran throws his hat in the Democratic ring: https://www.cato.org/blog/governor-inslee-announces-president Yeah, sounds like a real winner.

Trump Just Might Have Won the 2020 Election Today The president's speech at CPAC was a bedazzling mix of bravado, B.S., humor, and positive vision no Democrat will be able to top.: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/02/trump-just-might-have-won-the-2020-elect 109 people are talking about this You can cover a huge amount of material in two-hours-plus, and Trump certainly did that. After speaking sympathetically of immigrants who want to come to the United States and saying that we need more people because the economy (well, his economy, as he takes credit for it) is doing so well, he immediately dismissed the Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans traveling north in caravans across Mexico. In a bizarre display of simultaneous empathy and contempt, he talked at length about how female migrants are being systematically "raped" but also how the caravans were filled with criminals and drug dealers. It was "sad to see how stupid we've become" to think that the caravans are filled with good people. As he has been doing since his State of the Union address, he has been laying out a partial, inchoate case for a skills-based immigration program. He explained walking away from the table with North Korea even as he noted yet again that he has a great relationship with the dictator Kim Jong Un. In a long riff on trade policy, he invoked the "Great Tariff Debate of 1888" and how China "and everyone else" had been taking advantage of us until he started pushing back. He took time to talk about how no, really, the crowd at his inauguration was in fact historically large despite all publicly available evidence. All in all, it was, in the words of Daniel Dale, the Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, "one of the least-hinged speeches Trump has given in a long time." It was indeed all over the place but like the weirdly wide-ranging and digressive speech in which he declared a national emergency, it was also an absolute tour de force, laying out every major point of disagreement between Republicans and Democrats (abortion, the Second Amendment, and taxes, among other things) while tagging the latter aggressively as socialists who will not only end the private provision of health care but take over the energy sector too. Those charges take on new life in the wake of the announcement of the GND and comments, however short-lived, by Democrats such as Kamala Harris, who at one point recently called for an end to private health care. And over 100 House Democrats have signed on to a plan that would end private health insurance in two years. For all the biting criticism and dark humor in today's speech, Trump has mostly ditched the "American Carnage" rhetoric that marked his first Inaugural Address, pushing onto liberals and Democrats all the negativity and anger that used to surround him like the dust cloud surrounds Pigpen in the old Peanuts cartoons. "We have people in Congress right now who hate our country," he said. "We can name every one of them. Sad, very, very sad." At moments, he seemed to be workshopping his themes and slogans for 2020. "We believe in the American Dream, not the socialist nightmare," he averred at one point. "Now you have a president who finally standing up for America." The future, he said "does not belong to those who believe in socialism. The future belongs to those who believe in freedom. I've said it before and will say it again: America will never be a socialist country." That's a line that may not work forever, but it will almost certainly get the job done in 2020. None of this is to suggest that this speech wasn't as fact-challenged as almost every utterance Trump has given since announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination (go to Daniel Dale's Twitter thread for a running count of misstatements of fact). He hammered trade deficits in a way that will remind anyone with an undergrad economics course under their belt that he fundamentally doesn't know what he's talking about. He misrepresented both NAFTA and the new trade bill he crafted with Mexico and Canada, and at the exact moment that hundreds of wearied listeners started leaving the ballroom at The Gaylord Resort and Convention Center, he claimed that not a single person had left their seat. But the 2020 presidential race is not going to be decided based on which candidate is more tightly moored to reality. It's going to be decided, like these things always are, by the relative health of the economy and the large vision of the future the different candidates put forward. As the economy continues to expand (however anemically compared to historical averages) and he continues to avoid credible charges of impeachable offenses, Trump is becoming sunnier and sunnier while the Democrats are painting contemporary America as a late-capitalist hellhole riven by growing racial, ethnic, and other tensions. Trump isn't the creator of post-factual politics in America, he is merely currently its most-gifted practitioner (oddly, his ideological and demographic counterpart and fellow New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may become a challenger to him on precisely this score). Trump may have next to no credibility in profoundly disturbing ways, but American politics has been drifting away from reality for the entire 21st century, when the 2000 election was essentially decided by a coin flip, the United States entered the Iraq War under false premises, and Barack Obama took home Politifact's 2013 "Lie of the Year" award and dissembled unconvincingly in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations. That Trump didn't invent the current situation doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about it, but if he can continue to perform the way he did today at CPAC, it remains to be seen what Democratic rival can rise to that challenge. Mr. Trump will never have get my vote, but I tend to agree with Mr. Gillespie here. Mr. Trump is doing a masterful job at solidifying his base, a base that took him to victory in 2016. And unless the other side of the uni-party finds a way to sway that conservative base or bring independents into it's fold I'm afraid 2020 is a foregone conclusion.

I can't speak for all libertarians, so no. Do you believe Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is intimidating the masses? Are progressive liberals, with their GNS, intimidating the masses?

Bill Gates on unreliable Wind and Solar energy: No, nuclear energy is still where it is at..

Disdain <> intimidation.

Portrait of an obsession, from a couple of NightHawk's favorite websites: ,

And of course the King, a position that you appear to personally covet, stays fat and happy. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin

Again, at what cost to personal freedom and liberty?

You are welcome. It seems that I do belong to a cult, with myself as the only member. Would you like to join? Also I have never heard of the Mr. Molyneux you refer to in #10. He appears to espouse a flavor of libertariansim that I don't personally agree with, but to each his own. Do you personally have the exact same opinions and beliefs as every other progressive liberal/democrat?

Dear NightHawk, I found a cult check list below. Please explain in detail how libertarianism fits into all of these: 1.The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. ‪2. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. ‪3. Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s). ‪4. The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth). ‪5. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar of the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity). ‪6. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society. ‪7. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations). ‪8. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities). ‪9. The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt iin order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion. ‪10. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group. ‪11. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members. ‪12. The group is preoccupied with making money. ‪13. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities. ‪14. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members. ‪15. The most loyal members (the true believers) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.