It seems there is a belief on the right that “the media and some politicians are playing up the threat of coronavirus to hurt President Trump.”

Wherever would these citizens get such an idea?

As a result, Americans didn’t flock to the cause of removing the president after [...]]]> Speaker Pelosi can’t be happy about how 2019 has turned out for the Democrats. She was hoping for a boffo impeachment spectacle, but it was dull as cardboard and the hearings included nothing even vaguely improper about President Trump’s behavior.

As a result, Americans didn’t flock to the cause of removing the president after viewing the tiresome suits on TV, but instead were turned off by the Democrat partisanship and lack of substance.

A Rasmussen poll released in mid-November found 53 percent of likely voters believe the media were working with the Democrats to impeach Trump. So the deck looked stacked from the start to many Americans.

Mark Steyn (filling in for Tucker Carlson) recently noted Pelosi’s gambit with the impeachment drama:

MARK STEYN: Good evening and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” I’m Mark Steyn, in for Tucker. I hope you had a terrific Christmas, Happy Boxing Day or as I believe it’s known in America — Thursday.

2019 was supposed to be the year of impeachment. The Democratic Party spent years promising it, and it looked like they were finally going to deliver. They called witnesses. They held hearings. They summoned academics to deliver dull, pseudo-constitutional lectures to any American bored enough to watch the proceedings live.

And finally last week, they voted to impeach President Trump. And yet, the President still isn’t actually impeached. A week after the vote, Nancy Pelosi still hasn’t forwarded the Articles to the Senate for a trial as is constitutionally required.

Impeachment has been put on hold, maybe it was all a charade from the start. Or maybe Speaker Pelosi is too busy basking in the fawning, drooling, sycophantic praise of cable news talking heads. . .

Following are some typical MSNBC commentors, spouting the usual anti-Trumpisms and Pelosi admiration.

Speaker Pelosi had insisted upon a speedy impeachment despite the looming presidential election in 2020, yet now she won’t send the Articles to the Senate. Is the inevitable outcome too embarrassing for her to face?

We shall see, as the New Year awaits.

The New York Times recently was put in the crosshairs by a leaked memo showing the paper intended to shift its fake [...]]]> The mainstream media and its reporters may think they are the champions of truth, justice and the liberal way, but recent polling shows the public thinks scribblers should be subject to fair criticism.

The New York Times recently was put in the crosshairs by a leaked memo showing the paper intended to shift its fake news Trump reporting from Russia to Racism.

Perhaps reporters should stick to their original job of recounting facts rather than trying to shape public opinion, particularly when public distrust of the media remains at a record high.

61% Welcome Public Scrutiny of Big League Reporters, Rasmussen Reports, August 28, 2019

The New York Times and others are complaining that allies of President Trump are targeting hostile reporters by exposing controversial social media postings from their past. But most voters consider these reporters fair game for public criticism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 61% of Likely U.S. Voters think reporters at major news organizations like CNN, Fox News and the New York Times are public figures who deserve the same level of scrutiny as the people they cover. Just 19% disagree, although just as many (20%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Just over half (51%) say it is appropriate for elected officials to criticize specific reporters and news organizations. Thirty-nine percent (39%), however, view such criticism as a threat to freedom of the press. This compares to 48% and 45% respectively in February 2017 after Trump began criticizing specific news organizations that were targeting him. Ten percent (10%) remain undecided.

Rasmussen Reports bases its surveys on likely voters — those who have a history of voting in recent elections — as opposed to registered voters in general, many of whom historically don’t go to the polls.

A plurality (47%) of voters continues to believe that ideologically speaking the average reporter is more liberal than they are. Just 19% think that reporter is more conservative than they are, while 22% consider them ideologically about the same. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure. This is consistent with findings in surveys for the past several years. (Continues)

But now, tribalism has risen to such a fever pitch among leftists that such basics are now [...]]]> Not that long ago, assimilation was expected of immigrants. It seemed a fair deal that when foreigners came here to live permanently, they should learn English, be loyal to America and adopt our values of liberty and equality.

But now, tribalism has risen to such a fever pitch among leftists that such basics are now considered an affront to foreigners who expect to live here with no attitude adjustment from say, hostile Mexico or jihadist Pakistan. In fact, we citizens are expected to receive diverse unfriendlies with no complaint — like Obama’s wholesale import of unscreened Syrian muslims — otherwise we are meanie racists.

Leftists expect America to be a passive welfare office for the poor billions of the planet — and how can depressed poverty-stricken people be expected to assimilate??

Tucker Carlson had some remarks about the media smackdown of Tom Brokaw a couple days back.

Interestingly, one sub-topic of assimilation is the place of English in this country, and it polls strongly: a Rasmussen/ProEnglish survey from last April determined that 81 percent of Americans believe that English should be the official language of the United States. A Frank Luntz poll from July found that nearly two-thirds of respondents believe immigrants should be able to hold a basic conversation in English.

Of course, immigrants who don’t speak English are crippling their potential for economic success.

A 2017 Rasmussen poll found most voters still think immigrants should adopt American culture.

Here’s Tucker discussing the general issue of assimilation with Federalist writer John Daniel Davidson:

Here’s an audio version, just in case…

TUCKER CARLSON: Tom Brokaw was long one of the most respected men in America. He anchored the “NBC Nightly News” for 22 years. He’s 78 years old now. He ought to be enjoying a happy retirement, fly-fishing every morning. Instead, Tom Brokaw just made a terrible mistake. He expressed an unauthorized opinion in public. Can’t do that.

During a live television show, Brokaw said that assimilation is good and that immigrants should try to learn English.

TOM BROKAW: I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time. You know, that they ought not to be just codified in their communities, but make sure that all of their kids are learning to speak English and that they feel comfortable in their communities.

CARLSON: Well, not so long ago, those words would have passed pretty much unnoticed. Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barbara Jordan said it all the time and if you don’t believe it, go to Google right now and look up Barbara Jordan on immigration. Whoa.

And they said it for a pretty simple reason, English unites the country, obviously, and now around the world, it is also the language of business and science and culture. It’s clearly a good thing for everyone in America — immigrant or not — to learn English as quickly as possible, but no, you’re not allowed to have that opinion anymore even if you’re Tom Brokaw.

So the activist group Latino Victory, whatever that is, accused Brokaw of quote unquote “white supremacist ideology.” An NYU journalism professor called Carolina Moreno announced that actually, it’s Americans job to quote “try harder to assimilate into a global society.” And then some kid at Vox called Dylan Matthews suggested that Brokaw with sympathetic to quote “pure racial animus.”

Even after Brokaw apologize profusely, the cowards on his old show over at NBC denounced him for his thought crime. Watch this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A former long-time anchor of this broadcast is in the news tonight for comments he made Sunday on “Meet The Press.” The criticism was widespread and almost immediate.

NBC NEWS ANCHOR STEPHANIE GOST: Lester, tonight an NBC News spokesman tells me quote, “Tom’s comments were inaccurate and inappropriate. And we’re glad he apologized.”

CARLSON: Well, he’ll be getting paid a lot at NBC to say stuff like this. John Daniel Davidson is a senior correspondent at “The Federalist,” and he joins us tonight. So John, look, my bottom line hope is that you could live in a country where you could have a conversation about assimilation and English and whether or not they’re important.

The response to Tom Brokaw makes it absolutely impossible for any decent person to have any opinion on this at all, and it makes it impossible to solve our problems if we can’t have a conversation about it.

JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON: Well, exactly. It’s like you say, it used to be an unremarkable thing to talk about the melting pot as an American ideal. The idea that from many, we are one and we come together from all different countries, all different backgrounds and we become Americans.

And of course, language is one of the things that binds us together as Americans. But there are other things that bind us together as Americans, too. And that’s not to say that because we have a melting pot that you have to abandon all aspects of your own culture. Those cultural aspects feed into the American life and the American culture that we have and make it richer and make it better and that shouldn’t be controversial, and it shouldn’t be scandalous to suggest that learning English is part of assimilating and it’s part of what immigrants should strive for.

There’s nothing controversial about that and there should have been nothing controversial about what Tom Brokaw said.

CARLSON: Of course not and you’d think Brokaw out who is a liberal by the way would be given the benefit of the doubt, but he was ceremonially slayed instead. But I wonder if the people pushing this — and by the way, nobody is pushing for anyone to give up their own culture or their identity. That’s insane. Only to participate in a common identity, which is not a racial category. It’s a culture that binds us together as Americans from different backgrounds and races and religions. But what do we have in common is the question. Why is there such an organized caucus against having anything in common? What is that?

DAVIDSON: Well, for the left, the whole idea of assimilation cuts against the idea of identity politics. Identity politics necessitates that everybody’s kind of stay in their lane and keep their racial or ethnic identity as the number one most important thing about them.

And to the extent that you view assimilation as a positive thing, as a good thing, as something that helps immigrant communities get ahead economically or achieve more in terms of education, it’s to be viewed as a negative thing. They want to hold on to discrete identities and not assimilate and this is the opposite for example of what we see in Europe, where you have massive numbers of unassimilated immigrant communities, especially Muslim communities that have fared very poorly in European countries partly because they don’t adopt the cultural norms, they don’t adopt languages. They don’t achieve highly in education and in business in Europe, and they stay in these sort of segregated enclaves.

That is the opposite of what we want for this country, but that seems to be what the left would like in terms of what their identity politics dictates for us.

CARLSON: Maybe keeping people poor and helpless and atomized helps them rule more efficiently. Just a thought, just kind of throwing that out there, John.

Orange County used to be a Republican stronghold, even [...]]]> Monday’s New York Times has a front-page story that illustrates a basic political principle and how it manifests on the local level: big diverse immigration creates more Democrat voters even in formerly conservative bastions, which is why the party supports open borders above all other values.

Orange County used to be a Republican stronghold, even as the state racked up the largest percentage of foreign born in America (27 percent). But the recent election showed that no region is safe from the Democrat diversity onslaught, fueled by excessive immigration.

As noted by Pew pollsters, hispanic foreigners tend to prefer big government and therefore vote Democrat: they come for America’s economic opportunity provided by free markets but vote to recreate the crapistans they came from. Go figure.

If Republicans in Congress had a brain, they would have voted to reduce legal immigration (in the bill offered by Senators Cotton and Perdue) and worked for restrictionist legislation like E-verify. Instead, Republican leadership pursued their own elite agenda of tax reform and such, about which regular voters have little interest. So many GOP representatives were shown the door in November, particularly in areas which immigration has transformed.

The Times story was reprinted in newsstandhub.com, linked below:

In Orange County, a Republican Fortress Turns Democratic, New York Times, December 31, 2018

WESTMINSTER, Calif. — To appreciate the vast cultural and political upheaval across Orange County over the last 40 years, look no further than Bolsa Avenue. The auto body shop, the tax preparer, a church, a food market, countless restaurants — all are marked by signs written in Vietnamese.

Or head seven miles west to Santa Ana, where Vietnamese makes way for Spanish along Calle Cuatro, a bustling enclave of stores and sidewalk stands serving an overwhelming Latino clientele.

The Democratic capture of four Republican-held congressional seats in Orange County in November — more than half the seven congressional seats Democrats won from Republicans in California — toppled what had long been a fortress of conservative Republicanism. The sweep stunned party leaders, among them Paul D. Ryan, the outgoing House speaker. Even Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor-elect of California, won the county where Richard M. Nixon was born.

But the results reflected what has been a nearly 40-year rise in the number of immigrants, nonwhite residents and college graduates that has transformed this iconic American suburb into a Democratic outpost, highlighted in a Times analysis of demographic data going back to 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected president.

The ideological shift signaled by the most recent election results, on the heels of Hillary Clinton beating Donald J. Trump here in 2016, is viewed by leaders in both parties as a warning sign for national Republicans, as suburban communities like this one loom as central battle grounds in the 2020 elections and beyond.

Those new swing suburban counties were one of the central factors behind the 40-seat Democratic gain in the House in November. Many of them have been changed by an increase in educated and affluent voters who have been pushed toward the Democratic column by some of Mr. Trump’s policies. That partly accounts for what is happening here in Orange County, but the political shifts can also be explained by the rapidly changing cultural, political and economic face of the region and are on display in places like Bolsa Avenue, which is known as Little Saigon.

“There are so many of us here and that is what is contributing to these changes,” said Tracy La, 23, who is Vietnamese. Ms. La helped organize a rally in Westminster in mid-December to protest an attempt by the Trump administration to deport thousands of Vietnam War refugees. It drew hundreds of people to the Asian Garden Mall, one of the largest and oldest Vietnamese-operated malls in the nation.

“This is where the future is heading,” said Mark Baldassare, the president of the Public Policy Institute of California. “I don’t see anything that took place in these elections or the demographic trends that are ongoing, to make me think this is a one-time incident.” (Continues)

The Daily Caller reported on Wednesday that a GoFundMe website had collected over a million dollars for the cause:

Over 15,000 People Have Raised over a $1 Million on GoFundMe for Trump’s [...]]]> Some of the citizens of this country are committed enough to achieving genuine border security to pay for it themselves. Two examples follow.

The Daily Caller reported on Wednesday that a GoFundMe website had collected over a million dollars for the cause:

Over 15,000 People Have Raised over a $1 Million on GoFundMe for Trump’s Border Wall, Daily Caller, December 19, 2018

A GoFundMe page started by a Purple Heart Recipient has raised over $1 million in an effort to fund President Donald Trump’s border wall.

Brian Kolfage, a triple amputee who served in Iraq, created the fundraising page on Sunday. As of Wednesday afternoon, the fundraiser has received $1,003,544 from 16,333 donors.

One anonymous donor parted with $5,000, and over 30 people have donated $1,000 or more.

Kolfage wrote in the description of the page, “Like a majority of those American citizens who voted to elect President Donald J. Trump, we voted for him to Make America Great Again. President Trump’s main campaign promise was to BUILD THE WALL. And as he’s followed through on just about every promise so far, this wall project needs to be completed still.” (Continues)

Americans believe that the wall should be built where it’s needed.

Another sign of dedication (or desperation) is shown by a Rasmussen poll earlier this week where 21 percent of respondents said they would donate funds to build the wall. That may seem a small percentage, but any number is impressive when you consider that our existing taxes are supposed to cover the #1 job of government, i.e. defending the nation from foreign harm. And many Americans feel their taxes are already too high.

If the effort were to receive some publicity, enthusiasm to participate would probably increase. The citizen funding idea was discussed on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday with positive reaction.

21% Are Willing to Privately Contribute to Build Border Wall, Rasmussen Reports, December 18, 2018

Congress appears likely to refuse funding again for President Trump’s border wall, but one-in-five voters are willing to dig into their own pockets to privately fund the barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 21% of Likely U.S. Voters say they would contribute money to a private fund set up to build the wall if Congress refuses to fund it. A sizable majority (69%) would not privately contribute, but 10% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

One-in-three Republicans (34%) would contribute to a private fund to build the wall, compared to 10% of Democrats and 21% of voters not affiliated with either major political party.

Voters continue to believe illegal immigration is a major problem, and few feel the government is doing enough to handle it.

But most voters (56%) are not willing to pay anything more in taxes each year to fight illegal immigration. Nineteen percent (19%) are willing to pay an extra $100 each year. Another 19% are willing to pay an extra $300 a year or more, with two percent (2%) who say they would pay more than $1,000 more in taxes each year to fight illegal immigration.

Voters are even less willing to pay to fight illegal immigration than they are to pay higher taxes and utility costs to fight global warming. They’re about equally as likely to pay higher taxes to fight illegal immigration as they are to pay for Obamacare, although voters are slightly more willing to pay an extra $100 a year for the wall than they are for Obamacare.

The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on December 12-13, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

The president has warned that a partial government shutdown is looming following a heated meeting with Democratic leaders in which the two sides failed to come to an agreement over the border wall. Voters are getting more enthusiastic about building the wall, but they’re still not willing to risk a shutdown over it.

Among those who want the United States to build a wall along the Mexican border, 43% would contribute their own money to build it. Thirty-nine percent (39%) would not, but 18% are undecided.

Men are more willing than women to privately contribute and pay more in taxes to build the wall and fight illegal immigration. Blacks are stronger opponents of both ideas than whites and other minority voters.

Even among Republicans, 47% are not willing to pay anything extra in taxes to help fight illegal immigration, while 26% are willing to pay an extra $100 a year only. Most Democrats (66%) and unaffiliateds (55%) aren’t willing to pay any extra taxes to fight illegal immigration.

Half (49%) of voters who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing would contribute their own money to build the wall if Congress refuses to fund it. Just 35% of these voters are unwilling to pay any more in taxes to fight illegal immigration. Among voters who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s job performance,  97% are unwilling to privately contribute to building the wall, and 79% aren’t willing to pay any more in taxes.

Illegal immigration and health care are the top voter priorities for the new Congress, but voters aren’t very hopeful that the president and Democrats in Congress can work together.

Most voters (52%) think illegal immigrants are a significant strain on the U.S. budget, and 45% believe illegal immigration increases the level of serious crime in America.

Voters agree the migrant caravans approaching the U.S. southern border through Mexico are a danger to the country and should be stopped at least temporarily.

Fifty percent (50%) think the U.S. military should be used along the border with Mexico to prevent illegal immigration. (Continues)

Two major automakers have recently announced their intention to [...]]]> While there are skeptics about the self-driving project who think it will require more time and testing to materialize, top corporations are taking concrete steps to move forward. Billion-dollar companies see autonomous vehicles as the future of transportation and they don’t want to be left behind.

Two major automakers have recently announced their intention to launch automated taxi services in California. That’s a smart move for a couple reasons, one being a smaller scale arena to work the kinks out.

Another topic that must concern the auto companies is the public’s apprehension about having a machine operating the car. A January Reuter/Ipsos poll found that two-thirds of Americans are uncomfortable about the idea of riding in a self-driving car. A Gallup survey released in February determined that 54 percent of Americans said they are unlikely to utilize self-driving cars.

So a gradual introduction of self-driving technology via taxis would make sense along with a marketing program of advertising and social media. For example, Intel ran an ad last fall showing basketball star Lebron James overcoming his aversion toward a driverless car. Online coupons for a cheaper ride would entice some. Local news stories about the new taxis will likely be promoted when they get going.

Of course, the proponents of the new automation technology rarely mention the associated job loss, as the less expensive machines replace pricey humans who also need lunch breaks and healthcare. A Bureau of Labor Statistics page for Taxi Drivers, Ride-Hailing Drivers, and Chauffeurs put the number of workers at 305,100 for 2016. In addition, there are millions of Americans who work as drivers: in 2015, the Department of Commerce reported that there were 3.8 million motor vehicle operators:

Interestingly, a 2013 paper from CIS.org noted that 42 percent of taxi drivers and chauffeurs are foreign born, so continuing to import low-skilled immigrants appears unwise, to say the least. For example, the Central Americans now mobbing the border and making fake asylum claims don’t bring any useful skills. Low-skilled jobs that Centrals could do — like restaurant work and agriculture — are the ones most likely to get robot replacements in the near future if they haven’t been transformed already.

Okay, back to robo-taxis coming to California; tech-friendly San Francisco is getting a General Motors installation:

GM puts pieces in place for self-driving taxis in San Francisco Los Angeles Times, July 3, 2018

General Motors Co. has created its own ride-hailing platform and quietly built one of the largest charging stations in the United States to get its Cruise self-driving car unit ready to enter the robo-taxi business next year.

Cruise has installed 18 fast chargers in a parking facility near San Francisco’s Embarcadero, the well-trafficked boulevard along the city’s eastern shoreline where Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. have busy drivers. And GM’s self-driving car unit has been testing its own Cruise Anywhere ride-hailing app and fleet-management system, said people familiar with the matter.

The largest U.S. automaker has long planned to start a ride-hailing business using self-driving cars by 2019, but it hasn’t said where the service would start or whether it would work with a partner. These latest moves show that San Francisco is where GM is assembling the pieces to launch its rival to Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo next year if GM decides against working with an established livery app such as Uber or Lyft. (Continues)

Meanwhile, Daimler is eyeballing wealthy Silicon Valley for a rollout of deluxe Mercedes shuttles.

Mercedes Will Launch Self-Driving Taxis in California Next Year, Wired, July 10, 2018

LIKE IN A Tough Mudder, you’ve got a few strategies when it comes to the race to launch a taxi-like service with autonomous vehicles. You can start early and keep a slow but steady pace. You can show up a bit late, then try to sprint through it. Or you can hold back, see what trips up other contenders, and then slowly work your way through the obstacles.

The big automakers tend to fall into the third category. They may have taken a few years to recognize that shared autonomous vehicles could annihilate their business model—selling human-driven cars to individual humans—but they’re now making real progress toward the finish line. And today, Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler took a cautious step into the swamp stomp, announcing plans to launch a self-driving car pilot somewhere in Silicon Valley, next year.

Daimler is calling its service an “automated shuttle,” but it’s not referring to some blobby, slow-moving van. It’s going to start out using a fleet of S-Class luxury sedans and B-Class hatchbacks, with long-term plans for vehicles designed for autonomous driving, like the F 015 “Luxury in Motion” concept it showed off a few years back.

The automaker is still negotiating the particulars of the deal, has not divulged which city will host this program, and being cagey on details like how many cars will make up the robo-fleet. It does plan to have human safety drivers on board to keep an eye on the system. Passengers, who will request rides via an app, will travel for free. The Germans are more open about the lessons they’ve learned watching the self-driving car industry start to take shape, including the myriad complexities of the challenge. “Hardly any company can meet this challenge alone,” says Uwe Keller, Daimler’s head of autonomous driving. (Continues)

This is an interesting course of inquiry since the pollster is a well known Democrat who worked for Hillary Clinton. Probing the public’s actual feelings about how illegal [...]]]> Pollster Mark Penn reports that a large majority of Americans believe illegal aliens should be turned over to authorities to be deported rather than protected by government.

This is an interesting course of inquiry since the pollster is a well known Democrat who worked for Hillary Clinton. Probing the public’s actual feelings about how illegal aliens should be treated shows how far the Trump effect has reached regarding unlawful immigration as a top issue.

One segment of the Democrat party has swung to the extreme left, advocating open borders and abolishing ICE.

Penn’s efforts shows that not every Democrat is a raving anti-sovereignty lunatic who cares nothing for public safety. How reassuring.

Below, illegal aliens get a free ride home to Mexico on the ICE airline in 2009.

Ex-Clinton aide: 84 percent of Americans support turning undocumented immigrants over to authorities, The Hill, June 28, 2018

Prominent Democratic pollster Mark Penn said on Thursday that a vast majority of Americans don’t really support so-called sanctuary cities that shield immigrants in the country illegally from deportation.

Penn, who served as chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, revealed that 84 percent of Americans favor turning undocumented immigrants over to federal agents.

“I asked them, ‘Do you think notifying ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] would in fact increase crime because it would inhibit people from reporting crimes or does it decrease crimes because it takes criminals off the street,’ and they overwhelming said ‘decrease,’ ” Penn told Hill.TV’s “Rising.”

Penn said the response was strikingly “out of sync” with what the public might think about sanctuary cities. The broad term refers to cities that don’t fully cooperate with federal authorities when it comes to turning over people in the country illegally to immigration enforcement.

“When someone’s arrested, they expect someone will notify federal immigration authorities just as they would expect someone who violates state tax law will find out that they notified the IRS,” the pollster said.

President Trump has made sanctuary cities a frequent target during his administration, arguing that they make the U.S. less safe. In January, Trump signed an executive order in an effort to withhold money from sanctuary cities, though some of that money did still go to those cities.

Some cities protested Trump’s crackdown. Mayors, including New York’s Bill de Blasio and then-New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, boycotted a meeting with Trump following his executive order. De Blasio called the order a “racist assault” on sanctuary cities.

(Continues)