Posts Tagged ‘Robert Byrd’

Cornyn in the Klan? Bullshit.

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015

The latest MSM rumor in the “too good to check as long as it smears a Republican” file is the accusation (supposedly from the hacker group Anonymous) that four Republican Senators, including Texas’ John Cornyn, are secretly members of the Klan.

Bullshit.

I’m not a huge fan of Cornyn, whose turned into bit of a squish, but I’m not even remotely buying that a guy who was born in 1952, and who went to school at Trinity University and St. Mary’s Law, got anywhere near the Klan, which was already a joke by the 1970s. Even assuming Cornyn was An Evil Racist (he’s not), unlike West Virginia in the early 1940s, the Klan was not on any ambitious politician or lawyer’s plans by the 1970s, and the only people joining by then were strictly white trash rural losers.

Moreover, we’re given to understand that these names were culled from email membership lists, which suggest that Cornyn joined, when, 1995 or so? When he was already on the Texas Supreme Court? Because joining a bunch of white trash losers was totally more important than avoiding scandals and winning elections.

Double bullshit.

Mediaite further debunks the idea:

To begin with, the Ku Klux Klan is pathetically small compared to the overall white male population of the South and Midwest. Membership estimates range from 3,000 to 5,000. The likelihood that four separate members of the Klan could find their way into the ranks of the Senate are astronomically low, even if you assume that your average Klansman is coherent enough to manage it (spoilers: they aren’t).

Or to put another way, you’d have to believe that a Klansman is roughly 10,000 times more likely to become a senator than the average American. Or, put even another way, there are supposedly twice as many Klansmen as Princeton grads in the Senate. Now that’s an alumni network.

But even a cursory look at the lives and voting records of the accused should have clued people in. One, for example, voted for Martin Luther King Jr. Day to become a national holiday, a proposal that a sizeable minority actually opposed back in 1983. Why would a Klansman go out of his way to vote for a holiday that promotes racial harmony, instead of joining the 90 Congressmen who voted against it?

Another of the accused senators is Catholic. While the Klan’s anti-black activities are much more rampant and widespread, they are also virulently anti-Catholic.

Oh, and did I mention one of the accused mayors is openly gay? I don’t think that’s the kind of “flaming crosses” the Klan has in mind.

As Ayn Rand once noted: “The Ku Klux Klan is not a Republican issue or problem; its members, traditionally, are Democrats; for the Republicans to repudiate their vote would be like repudiating the vote of Tammany Hall, which is not theirs to repudiate.” As far as the historical record shows, Sen. Robert Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia) is the only U.S. Senator elected after World War II to have been a member of the Klan.

Even the most base liberal propagandist should be ashamed to spread such pathetically laughable bullshit…

LinkSwarm for May 12, 2014

Monday, May 12th, 2014
  • Health care costs up most since 1980. Thanks, ObamaCare!
  • And low wage workers are the ones hurt worst by the employer mandate.
  • Adventures in Liberal Racism:

    The late Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., a former leader of the KKK, twice was elected the majority leader in the U.S. Senate and served a 6-year stint as, ironically, minority leader in between. Add Harry Reid, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and countless others to the list of elected Democrats who’ve said things just as racist as Sterling, yet faced no consequences.

    To liberals, people are their skin color first, and that should dictate their thoughts and behavior. To stray from that is somehow a betrayal. It’s the basest form of racism, even if the victim and the perpetrator share the same melanin.

    To progressives, you aren’t an individual, you’re your skin. Clarence Thomas isn’t a man, he’s a black man. He isn’t an American, he’s an African American. It’s the prefix, not the person, that matters. That, at its core, is racism.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “There’s no getting around the fact that people who reject everything the West stands for are guaranteed to live in poverty with a boot on their neck.”
  • Democrats doing as bad as they were in 2010? Nope. Worse.
  • Even the Washington Post has Republican chances of retaking Senate up to 82%.
  • They also admit that Obama’s ratings are hitting new lows.
  • Mark Steyn slams #BringBackOurGirls: “The wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama’s hashtag is just a form of moral preening.”.
  • Democrats can’t find anyone to run as a Democratic against David Jolly in FL-13 race. And the “independent” they endorsed doesn’t live in the district…
  • In Illinois, little things like being a convicted felon won’t keep you from overseeing millions of “anti-violence” program dollars.
  • Alan Derschowitz gets it right: “I don’t think we want the thought police to be intruding on people’s private conversations.”
  • Is China’s military a paper dragon?
  • Missed this: Defeated Democratic congressman (and Stupak-bloc flip-flopper) James Oberstar dead.
  • What is hereditary in the United States is not wealth but poverty.”

    The Left’s focus on the status of wealthy and high-income Americans is precisely backward — backward if improving the lives and opportunities of those born into poverty is your goal. If your goal is to increase the income and power of the public sector for your own economic and political ends, then of course it makes more sense to focus on the rich: That’s where the money is, and the perverse reality of the Left is that it cannot fortify its own interests by improving the lives of the poor but can do so by pillaging the rich.”

  • GOP establishment leader Eric cantor booed in his own district.
  • Nothing says “liberal tolerance” quite like a UC Santa Barbara teacher threatening to send Ted Cruz supporters home in a body bag.
  • Russia passes a “bloggers law.”
  • 2013 Walter Duranty awards for media liars were given out. Seymour Hirsch received a lifetime achievement award…
  • Egyptian Muslim group declares that democracy must be eliminated because ”it does not allow to save Muslims and theorizes the equality of Jews, Copts and Muslims and must therefore be condemned”.
  • Three girls fined $3,500 for wearing bikinis. In Italy. [Edited to add: Jihad Watch has updated the story as a hoax.]
  • Democratic trial lawyer and Wendy Davis backer Linda Blue Baron is leaving Texas. Tort reform just keeps paying dividends…
  • Jeeze, you commit one or two little axe murders, and suddenly you’re not dating material.
  • The novel is dead yet again. Or: Will Self implores those uncouth striplings to vacate his sward.
  • Crazy spider gymnast.
  • BattleSwarm Blog’s Election Prediction for 2010: GOP Gains 67 House Seats, 10 Senate Seats

    Monday, November 1st, 2010

    With the election tomorrow, I thought it was high time to offer up my own election predictions.

    I have carefully and scientifically evaluated each and every House and Senate race, taking into account length of incumbency, previous voting trends for each district and state, fund-raising advantage, the most recent polls, and the fact that every preceding clause in this sentence prior to this one has been a complete and utter lie.

    I have looked at a lot of polls and data but damn, there are only so many hours in the day. My predictions are based on general national mood, gut-feeling, and detailed looks at trends for select races.

    This is going to be worse for the Democrats than 1994. The rise of the Netroots and the overwhelming support among the traditional news media dangerously blinded liberal insiders from how badly out-of-sync with the rest of the country they had become, and their insistence to push onward with ObamaCare despite widespread opposition and a lousy economy turned what was already going to be a bad year for them into a once-in-a-lifetime political slaughter.

    I predict that the Democrats will lose 67 House seats.

    As I admitted above, that’s not a wild-assed guess, but a guestimate based on current polling data and news on individual races. I don’t see Republicans gaining less than 50 seats, and there’s an outside possibility they could get 100. To my mind, it’s much more likely they’ll gain more than 67 than less than 50.

    Among the individual House races, I predict all the Stupak-bloc flippers except Marcy Kaptur (who had the luck to draw Nazi Uniform Guy as her opponent) and Jerry Costello (much as I appreciate GOP candidate Teri Newman popping in to say the race is tied, I just don’t see any traction at all in a 54% Obama district; I’d love to be surprised) will lose, including:

    1. Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana
    2. Indiana’s open 8th congressional district (formerly held by Brad Ellsworth)
    3. Michigan’s open 1st congressional seat (formerly held by Bart Stupak)
    4. James Oberstar of Minnesota
    5. Steve Driehaus of Ohio
    6. Charles Wilson of Ohio
    7. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania
    8. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania
    9. Solomon Ortiz of Texas

    Additionally, I’m predicting that all of the following Democrats representing districts that voted for McCain in 2008 lose their jobs:

    1. Bobby Bright of Alabama
    2. Arkansas’ open 1st congressional district (formerly held by Marion Barry (AKA “the other Marion Barry”))
    3. Arkansas’ open 2nd congressional district (formerly held by Vic Snyder)
    4. Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona
    5. Harry Mitchell of Arizona
    6. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona
    7. John Salazar of Colorado
    8. Betsy Markey of Colorado
    9. Allen Boyd of Florida
    10. Suzanne Kosmas of Florida
    11. Jim Marshall of Georgia
    12. Baron Hill of Indiana
    13. Ben Chandler of Kentucky
    14. Louisiana’s open 3rd congressional district (formerly held by Charlie Melancon)
    15. Frank Kratovil of Maryland
    16. Ike Skelton of Missouri
    17. Travis Childers of Mississippi
    18. Gene Taylor of Mississippi
    19. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina
    20. Heath Schuler of North Carolina
    21. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota
    22. Harry Teague of New Mexico
    23. Michael McMahon of New York
    24. New York’s open 29th congressional district (formerly held by Eric Massa)
    25. John Boccieri of Ohio
    26. Zack Space of Ohio
    27. Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania
    28. Mark Critz of Pennsylvania (serving the remainder of the late John P. Murtha’s term)
    29. John Spratt of South Carolina
    30. Stephanie Sandlin of South Dakota
    31. Lincoln Davis of Tennessee
    32. Tennessee’s open 6th congressional district (formerly held by Bart Gordon)
    33. Tennessee’s open 8th congressional district (formerly held by John Tanner)
    34. Chet Edwards of Texas
    35. Tom Perriello of Virginia
    36. Rick Boucher of Virginia
    37. West Virgina’s first district (held by Allan Mollohan, who was defeated in the Democratic primaries)

    That’s 46 seats right there, and I think there’s easily another 21 seats to be had in districts that went narrowly for Obama in 2008 to provide the final margin of victory.

    I predict that the Democrats will lose 10 Senate seats.

    The Senate is a tougher nut to flip this year, and as I set down to gauge Republican chances, I was shocked to find that, despite insider predictions, I actually had them winning ten seats to take control of the Senate. Running down the Senate races that Real Clear Politics shows as tossups I was only getting nine seats, but then I remembered that Blanche Lincoln is losing so badly in Arkansas that they had that down as a safe Republican flip.

    Republicans should take over the following ten Senate seats:

    1. Arkansas
    2. Colorado
    3. Illinois
    4. Indiana
    5. Kentucky
    6. Nevada
    7. Pennsylvania
    8. Washington
    9. West Virginia
    10. Wisconsin

    Much as I’d like to see an upset in California, I don’t see Carly Fiorina getting any traction in an overwhelmingly blue state; I think the out-migration of California’s best and brightest due to the high tax rates, crummy economy, the overwhelmingly powerful public sector unions and a near-bankrupt government (all related phenomena) has, ironically, made Californian even bluer.

    The two races of the ten that will be most difficult for Republicans to pull off are Washington and West Virginia. Washington may be the tightest, simply because the Left Coast is so blue, but Rossi has been steadily gaining on Murray, and actually pulled ahead in the latest PPP poll. And PPP usually has a Democratic bias, so in a wave election, you have to give it to the Republican if polling is within the margin of error.

    In West Virginia, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a victory for Republican John Raese even though Joe Manchin is up four points in the most recent poll, for the following reasons:

    • McCain won West Virginia by 13.1 points in 2008, which was four points above the poll RCP average. Asking Manchin to run 14 points better in 2010 than Obama did in 2008 is a pretty tall order.
    • The state has been trending Republican for years. It went for Clinton over both Bush41 and Dole, but for Bush43 over Gore by 6.3%, and Bush43 over Kerry by 12.9%.
    • West Virginia fits the classic demographic pattern for “Reagan Democrats”: It’s 94.4% white, and is relatively rural and blue collar, and with a household income significantly below the national average. Those are the very voters that are abandoning Democrats this year.
    • Along those same lines, Hillary Clinton beat Obama handily here in 2008, even though Obama had all but clinched the nomination at the time. West Virginia voters fit the classic “Jacksonian” profile, the portions of the Democratic base that has been most alienated by Obama’s policies.
    • Say what you will about the late Senator Robert Byrd, but he was extraordinarily popular in his home state right up to the end. But his name isn’t on the top of the ballot this time around, and without that reminder of their old “born and bred” Democratic allegiance to remind them, 2010 may finally be the year when remaining West Virginia conservative Democrats make the switch to the GOP.
    • The areas that have been most fruitful for Democratic fraud efforts in the past have been urban enclaves with strong Democratic minority machine politics, which are pretty much absent here.
    • Logic dictates that if that this truly is a nationalized “wave” election, it will show up strongly here.

    Honestly, I think the Democrats taking the Washington senate seat is more likely that West Virginia.

    So the Republicans take both House and Senate in an electoral slaughter unprecedented in modern times. So I have foretold, and so it shall be!

    And if you disagree, post your own predictions below.