Unca Darrell

MARCH 26, 2020 / UPDATED: President Trump's RCP approval number today jumped to . . .

. . . 47 percent. LATE UPDATE: Make that 47.1 percent.

Credit where due, first to . . .

MARCH 25, 2020 / REVISED: Make of this what you will

Shortly after I posted this item, I revised it. The numbers I first posted were radically low. I'm not sure about the source of my error. Probably my failure to update a count I had studied earlier. I have now updated the numbers, revised my main argument slightly, and deleted an argument at the end of the essay that relied on a much smaller total count of reported deaths. 

ALL FIVE STATES with the highest number of reported Wuhan flu deaths -- New York (285), Washington (123), Louisiana (65), California (64), and  New Jersey (62) -- have Democratic governors.

MARCH 25, 2020 / President Trump's approval rating . . .

. . . has matched his all-time post-inauguration approval rating -- 46.3 percent -- which he first hit 29 days ago. (President Trump Job Approval, Real Clear Politics, March 25, 2020 at 11 a.m.)

I'm not the sort who looks at day-to-day polls and declares how remarkable they are, but . . .

MARCH 25, 2020 / He has a point

HOUSTON TALK-SHOW Michael Berry said this morning that he'll believe a government official who says we're all in this together when . . .

MARCH 23, 2020 -- Have you contributed to the Trump campaign this month?

Why not?

Send your check to . . .

MARCH 20, 2020 / Think last year was bad?

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

DESPITE PRESIDENT Donald Trump's best efforts, economic freedom in the [United States] declined slightly over the past year, even as it increased across the world, according to the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom . . . .

Unca D's rewrite: Because of President Donald's overspending and protectionist trade policies, economic freedom declined . . . .

"This year's Index highlights a consistent trend . . . around the globe -- countries [that] embrace the ideals of capitalism and free markets . . .

MARCH 19, 2020 / Senator Sanders has won ideological control . . .

. . . of the Democratic Party. Who tilled the soil in which his ideology took root? 

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL explains. This essay was written before the Democratic establishment closed ranks around former Vice President Biden, but the thesis still holds (emphasis added).

[Senator] Sanders wouldn't be this close to the White House if not for the complicity of Democrats and the liberals [read progressives] who dominate the academy ad media. Rather than fighting the ideas that animate him and millennial voters, they have . . .

 

MARCH 18, 2020 / Establishment Democrats control . . .

. . . the arms, legs, and torso of the party; Bernard Sanders and his crowd control the head and heart.

THEY'LL NEVER admit it, but Biden and Sanders actually agree on far more than they disagree. Both champion universal health care, raising the minimum wage, raising taxes on the wealthy, wiping out student debt, making college affordable, if not free, and leading the fight against climate change. . . . With only slight variations on a theme, every single Democratic candidate in 2020, left or center, ran on the Sanders platform. . . . Whatever they choose, revolution or evolution, they're both paths to the same progressive goals. And those goals were first set by Sanders in 2016. That's why I argue that Sanders has already won the Democratic primary. (Bill Press, from The Hill, March 10, 2020, quoted in Notable and Quotable, The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2020).

But where did candidate Sanders's ideology come from? From the academy and media. So explains The Wall Street Journal in an essay quoted in tomorrow's Unca Darrell. 

MARCH 17, 2020 / Know your enemy, iteration umpteen

Middlebury College in Vermont, a factory that turns out social justice warriors.

Their handiwork at work: