Here are my observations and opinions on my selected news of the day.
PRESIDENT HICKENLOOPER? – I don’t think so, but former Colorado Democrat Gov. John Hickenlooper has announced that he, too, is in the race.
Hickenlooper won’t win any friends among gun owners. He took on the NRA after those major shootings in his state with legislation that was supposed to make Colorado kids safer in school. However, the resulting bill was a band-aid that didn’t make schools safer and didn’t address mental health issues.
It did result in a decision by number of gun accessories companies to pickup stakes and move to Texas and Wyoming, a loss of hundreds of jobs and associated economic losses.
He has problems in his own party, too. While a fan of clean energy, he promoted hydraulic fracking, and considered to be in the pocket of the gas industry. Some say he isn’t hard over enough on the climate change issue.
HERE WE GO AGAIN – Sen. Bernie Sanders officially announced his candidacy for the presidency again. Already claiming to have an inside track “because of all the work we have done, we are now on the brink of winning not just an election, but transforming our country.”
No. No. We are in the midst of making our country great again with the memories of the Obama’s legacy-defeating statements of 2008 still vivid:
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” – Barack Obama, October 30, 2008
“We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have move into a different place as a nation.” – Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008
ONE OF MY FAVORITE COMMENTATORS, Howie Carr, who writes for the Boston Herald and hosts a syndicated radio program, wrote an insightful piece on how Republicans and Democrats are treated differently in the media.
“Every newsroom in the country used to have what was called the ‘AP Stylebook,’ to use when writing news stories,” Carr begins.
NOTE: The Stylebook was designed to promote consistency in abbreviations, punctuation, capitalization, hyphenating, word selection and a multitude of topics that journalists encounter. I own one and use it rather religiously, using my blogger’s license, to stray occasionally to make a point.
“Now you need two AP Stylebooks,” he writes, “one for Democrats, about whom seldom is heard a discouraging word, and as second for the GOP, with a hundred different pejoratives.”
Here are a few examples Carr cites:
Trump had a fixer (Cohen), but Democrats have lawyers.
Republicans lie, Democrats misspeak
Democrats plan, Republicans scheme.
When Democrats change their position, they have evolved, but Republicans “flip flop.”
Carr points out that if you reach the third paragraph of a story without an individual’s party being identified, you can be certain you are reading about a Democrat miscreant.
A Republican tax cut is a “corporate giveaway” for the rich, the “one percenters.”
A Democrat -proposed tax increase, though, is an ‘investment in the future,” it’s “for the children.”
Republicans “pounce” or “seize,” while Democrats “react.”
When a Democrat pol finds a way to stop some GOP initiative, it’s because the brilliant parliamentarian (Pelosi) has come up with a master stroke.
But when a Republican, like Mitch McConnell, does the same thing, he is invariably called an obstructionist, relying on “arcane” tricks to produce “gridlock” and overturn centuries of “Congressional tradition.”
Kramerontheright thought you would like to know that the words “blockbuster” … “bombshell” … and “explosive” are not included in the Stylebook. Perhaps CNN and MSNBC have one of those Democrat stylebooks Carr mentioned.
THANKS TO BILL MAHER, we “deplorables” in flyover country were again reminded of how the east and west coast elites view us. While discussing how Amazon’s Jeff Bezos courted wealthy cities like New York for his next headquarters, Maher said, “That’s why red state voters are so pissed off. They don’t hate us; they want to be us.” That’s pure elitist pap.
Maher’s live audience, applauding wildly at every insult, didn’t go unnoticed. It reflects how blue state liberal cultural elites view those of us in the red states.
AS A FOLLOW UP to my March 4, 2019 piece on President Trump’s refusal to publicly confront Kim Jung Un on the tortured death of Otto Warmbier, I want to tell you about the thoughts of Kurt Schlichter in his Townhall article, “Dumb And/or Dishonest Liberals Insult Your Intelligence.”
“Who is the guy who really believes that Donald Trump thinks Kim Jung Un is a cool dude? Who is the guy who imagines that Donald Trump really believes that the roly-poly mass murderer had nothing to do with the murder of Otto Warmbier?
“But if you listen to the elite and their panting puppy media, you would get the distinct impression that Donald Trump actually considers this clown a pal.
“This raises an important question – is the elite itself transcendently dumb, or does it imagine us Normal people as so unfathomably dense as to be unable to conceive that maybe Donald Trump’s flattery of a sketchy guy, who has nuclear weapons hanging over the heads of millions, might not have been totally sincere?
AND FINALLY – Leave it to Sen. Ted Cruz to sum up what we are all witnessing with the Democrat party: “Democrats have gone bat-crap crazy. If you go into the dictionary, it’s under ‘B.'”
May God bless the United States of America.
