Gorbachev passes

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev died last week at 91. I’ve refrained from commenting because I have a general policy of not speaking ill of the recently dead, and frankly, it’s hard to discuss Gorbachev honestly without bringing up a lot of negatives.

He was lionized by the same “historians” who care more about promoting a political agenda than accurately recording history, showered with every award including the Nobel Peace Prize, and given credit for ending the evil empire of the USSR when that was actually Ronald Reagan’s doing (he even coined the phrase “Evil Empire,” something that the liberals who hailed Gorbachev attacked him for at the time – those of us who actually lived through the history don’t need biased “historians” to distort the facts.)

The USSR ended because Reagan took them head-on, and they couldn’t keep up militarily or financially. It also helped that improving technology such as satellite communications tore down the Iron Curtain and allowed the people under Soviet dominion to see what the rest of the world was really like, the depredations they were suffering under communism, and how they had been lied to.

The fact is that, like many of our own current leaders, unfortunately, Gorbachev never stopped believing that communism was good, it just needed a few “reforms.” It was to his credit that when he saw the USSR starting to crumble, he didn’t use military force against its rebelling satellite states. But that didn’t mean he just sat by and let communism die in peace.

I decided that instead of trying to summarize Gorbachev’s “complicated legacy,” I’ll just direct you to this excellent article by Jeff Jacoby.

https://jeffjacoby.com/26432/gorbachev-failed-that-why-he-was-showered-with

Jacoby makes the point that Gorbachev is remembered as a great figure only because he lost the Cold War and didn’t have the Putin-like brutality to launch a hot war. He wanted to save communism and keep the USSR together, but R. Emmett Tyrrell may have provided his best epitaph, saying that he made the world a better place because of his repeated failures to achieve what he really wanted to do.

Hot under the collar

Throughout his decades in DC, Joe Biden liked to depict himself as “Lunch Bucket Joe,” the champion of blue collar workers. So what do Pennsylvania iron workers think about being put on the taxpayer hook for hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of other people’s college loan debt? Let’s just say they are hot under their blue collars.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/03/pennsylvania-iron-workers-blast-bidens-student-loan-forgiveness/

A clear choice for Massachusetts

Tuesday, Primary elections were held in Massachusetts. In the Democratic race for Governor, current state Attorney General Maura Healy easily won, running virtually unopposed. She’s an anti-gun far-leftist who would be the first openly lesbian Governor. On the Republican side, Trump-endorsed Geoff Diehl defeated moderate Republican Chris Doughty, whom the Party establishment thought would have a better chance of winning.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/09/06/tuesday-primary-preview-n2612687

Massachusetts currently has a Republican Governor, Charlie Baker, and Lt. Governor, Karen Polito, believe it or not. Many had hoped Polito would run, but she decided against it, saying it would distract from her focus on getting the state out of the pandemic.

This primary has definitely left Massachusetts voters with a clear choice. While Healy is heavily favored to win, let’s all pray they make the right choice and surprise us.

Today’s Must Read

In an exclusive, the Daily Caller reports that the FBI used a secret form to get Americans to voluntarily relinquish their Constitutional right to buy, own or even use firearms. They report that “at least 15 people between 2016 and 2019 signed the secret forms, which ask signatories to declare themselves as either a ‘danger’ to themselves or others or lacking ‘mental capacity adequately to contract or manage’ their lives.”

https://dailycaller.com/2022/09/06/fbi-second-amendment-nics/

Attorneys specializing in Second Amendment law say this raises serious concerns (I would question how it could be legally binding to sign a contract agreeing that you aren't mentally fit to sign a contract.) Comparing it to the sci-fi movie “Minority Report,” they said it appears that the FBI thought it could “take constitutional rights away from anyone it thinks possibly might pose a threat in the future…which certainly is not something you expect in the United States.”

Well, it might be something you’d expect from the FBI, but only if you’ve been paying close attention.

Hillary Clinton is back in the news

I apologize in advance for bringing this person up, especially if you’re trying to eat breakfast, but Hillary Clinton has inserted herself back into the news again.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/hillary-clinton-blasted-astonishingly-false-twitter-thread-claiming-she-had-zero-classified-emails

The biggest news was her announcement of what she’s allegedly not going to do, and that’s running for President in 2024, which we’ll all believe and celebrate when we don’t see it.

She also proved that the man who beat her in 2016 (and he did, Hillary, he really, really did) lives rent-free in her head 24/7, as she continued to assail Donald Trump for allegedly not being careful in handling classified documents. (Okay, I’ll wait until you finish laughing…Done? Good, let’s proceed.) Hillary rejected any comparisons of the heavy-handed raid on Trump to the way she skated on her email scandal, insisting that the government confirmed there was no classified information on her devices. As you can see at the link above, that claim left a lot of people more slack-jawed than Monica Lewinsky.

National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss also pointed out another problem with Hillary’s claim:

https://slaynews.com/news/hillary-clinton-tries-to-convict-trump-gets-debunked-and-gives-donald-huge-gift-instead/

It is true that her situation and Trump’s are not comparable, but not the way she thinks. For instance, she didn’t have the power to declassify any documents she wanted; Trump did. One of the dumber lines in that linked story is this: “The Atlantic went further on Wednesday and insisted that if anyone else besides Trump possessed classified documents that ‘they’d be prosecuted.’" Well, anyone besides Trump or any other former President, who all have the power to declassify documents, which is why they wouldn’t be prosecuted. Also, Trump’s documents were stored in boxes inside a padlocked room at his home that was secured by both private security and the Secret Service. Hillary’s were on random laptops and Blackberries and sent over an unsecured, gerry-rigged private server in her bathroom.

In addition, even if they hypothetically didn’t contain classified information, they were under subpoena when she had them erased with Bleachbit and smashed with hammers, which should be a separate indictable offense on its own. It’s called “obstruction of justice.” Ever heard the term, Hillary?

But that wasn’t the end of Hillary’s gaslighting. She also said, “Did I ever for a nanosecond think, ‘I’m gonna declare victory and try to get the Democrats to refuse to certify the election’? No.”

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2022/09/06/hillary-clinton-hit-with-reality-check-after-telling-quite-the-2016-election-whopper-during-interview-n623637

Well, not for a nanosecond, but she did spend four years calling Trump an “illegitimate President,” claiming the election was stolen by Russia, and seeding fake oppo research to the FBI to gin up a bogus investigation of that false narrative to hinder his Administration. A number of Democrats also tried to challenge the results of that election, including, ironically, the Chairman of the January 6th Committee.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-dems-challenged-2016-election-results-fight-republicans-2020-challenges

That Committee is trying desperately to indict Trump because of the actions of his followers, claiming that his rhetoric is to blame for their actions. And it’s not just the riot: they’re also trying to accuse any GOP Congress members who questioned the election and suggested there be alternate Electors of being insurrectionists.

Okay, Hillary, under those standards, is your rhetoric responsible for your insurrectionist, democracy-assaulting celebrity followers’ attempt to pressure Trump Electors to ignore the voters of their states and switch their votes to you?

Sadly, for you, the Internet is not like your Blackberry: it can’t be erased. And neither can all of our memories.

Speaking of people who deny denying elections, President Biden’s demagogic denunciations of Trump voters as enemies of democracy has inspired conservative media to dig up the records of all the Democrats who claimed previous elections were rigged against them, and there are some pretty prominent names. Conspicuous among them is Biden’s own press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who when confronted with her own history of denying election results, predictably insisted that that was completely different and any such comparisons are “ridiculous.”

https://instapundit.com/541202/

I think her critics just don’t understand the most basic concept of Democratic politics: all elections are fair and above question if Democrats win, but if they lose, the minority vote was suppressed (even if it was at a record high) and the election was stolen.

This is hardly a recent phenomenon. One of my writers tells me that his dad, who founded his local Republican Party, used to joke that “No Democrat ever lost a ‘fair’ election.” His dad died in 1993.