(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A woman who came forward with allegations that Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax raped her in college is ready to be heard.
Meredith Watson, who was second to emerge with charges of sexual assault against Fairfax, wrote in an opinion piece Monday for The Washington Post that Fairfax should receive a public hearing similar to what then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh underwent last fall.
“I am frustrated by calls for an investigation rather than a public hearing into these matters,” Watson wrote. “Such ‘investigations’ are secret proceedings, out of the public eye, leaving victims vulnerable to selective leaks and smears.”
The Fairfax accusations, along with evidence of racism from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and a subsequent blackface scandal involving state Attorney General Mark Herring, shocked and captivated many. But despite near-universal calls early in the saga for Northam—and later, Fairfax—to resign, the state’s Republican-led legislature, which holds a razor-thin majority, showed little desire to play hardball.
Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook included a picture of individuals—of which he dubiously denied being one—dressed as a KKK member and a person in blackface with a noose around his neck.
But after his refusal to leave, even as it became clear that far-left elements intended to use the scandal as leverage against him, a poll showed an even split between voters over his ouster, with the majority of blacks supporting the governor.
The Fairfax case, meanwhile, bore remarkable similarities to the earlier Kavanaugh one, but with more credible—and acknowledged—evidence.
California college professor Vanessa Tyson‘s initial claims that he had raped her during the 2004 Democratic National Convention drew calls for investigation, while Watson’s coming forward found many saying he should step down.
While maintaining that he respected women and that the encounter was consensual, Fairfax attacked his first accuser in a misogynist, profanity-laced slur shortly after the story broke.
Watson, who said Fairfax assaulted her when the two were students at Duke University, excoriated lawmakers for allowing the outrageous episodes to slip through the cracks of the news cycle.
“Fairfax denied that he raped me, and he denied Tyson’s account as well. And for many in the public, the media and the Virginia General Assembly, that was that,” she said. “In one week, they moved on.”
According to Breitbart, Fairfax has faced some accountability.
He was removed as chairman of the Democratic Lieutenant Governor’s Association and was placed on leave from his law firm pending investigation.
‘The left is composed of clueless naïfs whose rosy-eyed optimism about human nature—and obliviousness to various dangers—will only lead to trouble…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As primary challenges against President Donald Trump begin to emerge, it may be difficult sometimes telling a true conservative from a RINO.
However, science has a solution: pump noxious odors into the air and see who flees for the nearest exit.
For more than a decade, social psychologists have sought to link the concept of “disgust sensitivity” with political values.
New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt, one of the leading experts in the field, termed by some as “disgustology,” explained the phenomenon in a 2012 TED Talk.
After countless studies, some large scale and some more longitudinal involving smaller focus groups, researchers now say that they can predict a person’s politics with 95 percent certainty based off reactions to things like bitter tastes, foul smells or revolting visual stimuli.
In the past several presidential election cycles, since the research first emerged, left-leaning publications have used the theories of disgustology to attack the Right and to justify specious accusations of intolerance and xenophobia against conservatives.
“At a deep, symbolic level, some speculate, disgust may be bound up with ideas about ‘them’ versus ‘us,’ about whom we instinctively trust and don’t trust,” said an article in the upcoming March edition of the The Atlantic.
The Atlantic article relayed the findings of a recent neuroimaging study, which showed that the brain’s responses to “emotionally evocative pictures” had a correlation with political alignment.
Researchers claimed conservatives tended to have more pronounced reactions “to a broad array of threats,” like being more startled by loud noises and staring longer at people with angry expressions.
But they found that disgust elicited stronger reactions than things like violent imagery. “[C]onservatives tend to have more pronounced bodily responses than liberals when shown stomach-churning imagery,” the article said.
Noting some of President Donald Trump’s visceral responses to things like Hillary Clinton‘s alleged mid-debate bathroom break, comments about Sen. Marco Rubio‘s sweat, and others remarks on bodily functions like lactation and menstruation, The New Republic wrote in 2015 that Trump seemed to gain ground with each inflammatory comment.
“The Trump campaign has stunned bemused pundits by growing in strength with every controversy and outrageous policy proposal, like banning foreign Muslims from entering the United States,” wrote the magazine. “It has finally forced them to admit that his success comes not despite these things, but because of them. … What if disgust is a distinct part of that?”
Exposure to unpleasant environments may not only predict, but also help to shape political judgments. In a separate study conducted by Haidt and others, researchers had test subjects fill out political-belief inventories while pumping the foul aroma of things like vomit into the room or asking subjects to sit at a sticky desk. They found that exposure to the unpleasant situations made people move farther to the right.
“Variations on these studies using fart spray, foul tastes, and other creative disgust elicitors reveal a consistent pattern: When we experience disgust, we tend to make harsher moral judgments,” said the Atlantic article.
Other research in the field found that conservatives were more sensitive to bitter tastes and that—in a study spanning 121 countries, including during the 2008 U.S. race between Barack Obama and John McCain—those who were more germophobic preferred the more “conservative” candidate (or, in this case, McCain).
Naturally, those on the Right may be inclined to eye the findings with suspicion and perhaps speculate on the scientists’ hidden agenda. As the Atlantic article pointed out, however, conservatives can draw their own conclusions from it.
“If you’re liberal, you may be thinking, So this explains some of the other side’s nativism and hostility to immigration,” said the article. “But it’s just as easy to flip the science on its head and conclude, as conservatives might, that the left is composed of clueless naïfs whose rosy-eyed optimism about human nature—and obliviousness to various dangers—will only lead to trouble.”
That may be putting it generously.
In light of the studies by Haidt and others showing a looser moral compass when feelings of disgust are not present, the research could also go a ways in explaining the seemingly abject refusal of those on the Left to hold their own public figures accountable.
“I think there is some truth to the claim that people who are more threat sensitive gravitate to the right, if all else is equal,” Haidt told Liberty Headlines in an email. “Being insufficiently threat sensitive is careless, taking needless risks, reckless.”
The concern has been one of national prominence in recent years. Many, in fact, speculate that the winning issue for Trump was the impunity with which Hillary Clinton, conducted herself while secretary of State, using deception and cover-ups to dodge culpability over her transmission of sensitive national-security data via an unsecured, private server.
More recently, high profile cases of injustice—such as casual attitudes about voter fraud, the tepid responses to racism and rape allegations in Virginia, and a growing wave of anti-conservative hoaxes propelled by a complicit media—have led to criticism of leftist attempts to “gaslight” the American public.
So @CNN, @VOX and the usual suspects say ‘rush to judgment’ in Smollett case was done by others. Gaslight much? As long as Dems and media (but I repeat myself) in #mn02 and elsewhere obsesses over identity politics, this nonsense will continue. https://t.co/hGVvlk2mxe
Liberals have taken a gambit on the old maxim that “if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”
They bank on the fact that Americans’ short attention spans in the Twitter age mean denying and ignoring morally repugnant behavior will help it go away.
However, it may well be that ongoing exposure to this toxic environment affords Donald Trump just the push he needs in the 2020 race.
Democrats at the top are killing the Great State of Virginia. If the three failing pols were Republicans, far stronger action would be taken. Virginia will come back HOME Republican) in 2020!
Those interested in seeing the inventories used to determine disgust sensitivity and moral/political values may register and take the surveys at www.yourmorals.org.
‘While its veracity isn’t confirmed, its sentiment needs no fact-check…’
Jussie Smollett / IMAGE: ABC News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The case of Jussie Smollett—whose accusations of a racially-motivated assault by MAGA-hat-wearing, white assailants came crumbling apart this weekend—has left many scratching their heads.
Ignoring some of the more questionable details of the case, left-leaning political figures and media outlets promptly sought, in the immediate aftermath, to spin it into a broader narrative about the state of race and politics in 2019.
In the Chicago Tribune, Dahleen Glanton wrote, “The incident raises an interesting question: Why are we so obsessed with who committed the crime rather than dealing with the fact that such crimes routinely happen across America?”
In GQ, Joshua Rivera wrote, “While its veracity isn’t confirmed, its sentiment needs no fact-check. America’s choice to embrace the blind rage of late-stage whiteness in decline is an explicit longing for this kind of crime…”
But as the facts emerge, it turns out that, indeed, the Jussie Smollett hoax does signal something about the state of America in 2019—it is indicative of a growing trend of fake accusations targeting white, male or conservative Americans.
Rather than accept the blame for spreading such falsehoods, leftists now argue that their political foes and cultural foils are the beneficiaries of systemic power and privilege, and are therefore guilty—worthy of shame and punishment on some abstract level, even if not for the crime of which they stand accused.
As the Boston Herald reports, “Advocates say most hate-crime reports—which have been on the rise in recent years, according to the federal government—are not found to be fake, but there have been a string of high-profile hoaxes over the past several years.”
Hoaxes are nothing new, of course. On its blog, the San Diego-based Museum of Hoaxes has catalogued some of the more noteworthy ones dating back to the Middle Ages.
In addition, several articles, books and websites dedicated specifically to examining racially-motivated hoaxes of the past few decades point to some in which whites falsely accused minorities of high-profile crimes, including murderers Susan Smith and Charles Stuart, both of whom incorporated made-up black assailants into their alibis.
But a key distinction remains: While those accusers are branded—and rightfully so—as loathsome, pathological liars, whose universally condemned offenses against humanity are compounded by their egregious bigotry, the softer sort of anti-Right hoaxers, after falsely being cast as victims, face little accountability and are often rewarded for their efforts.
Listed below are some of the more notorious hoaxes of the modern era that the Left has used to advance phony narratives—with few consequences for the liars themselves but very real implications for others.
Tawana Brawley
Al Sharpton / IMAGE: The New York Times via Youtube
The mother of modern race hoaxes is Tawana Brawley, who claimed to have been a victim of a racially motivated gang rape in 1987.
The 15-year-old African–American girl was found outside a New York condominium wrapped in trash bags and covered in feces, with racial slurs written on her body. Parts of her hair were cut off, and her pants were slightly burned. She told police that she had been held for four days by a group of white men, one of whom had a police badge.
The case first elevated Al Sharpton into the national spotlight, amid accusations of a cover-up. But as witness accounts and forensic evidence began to contradict them, the increasingly outlandish fabulations faced tougher scrutiny.
A grand-jury ultimately concluded that they were fraudulent, and Steven Pagones, a prosecutor who had been falsely implicated, successfully sued for libel. The Brawley family maintains that the claims were true.
While the case would seem to be one for the history books, liberal revisionism may not yet be done with it. A 2015 fiction novel by far-left author Joyce Carol Oates, The Sacrifice, was premised on the question, “What if Tawana Brawley hadn’t been a hoax?”
Matthew Shepard
Unlike others on the list, Matthew Shepard was, tragically, the victim of a real crime. It was his subsequent exploitation in service of a political agenda, rather than his own actions, that left the gay, 21-year-old Wyoming student as an unfortunate footnote in the history of hoaxes.
In October 1998, Shepard was found comatose and tied to a fence, his face covered in blood, with evidence that he had been tortured and set afire. He died six days later, having never regained consciousness.
His two assailants, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were each given two consecutive life sentences. Much of the contemporary reporting painted them as bigoted rednecks who had killed Shepard due to his sexuality after offering to give him a ride home from a bar.
The story drew calls for a new initiative: hate crime legislation that would result in harsher federal penalties for those who targeted marginalized groups. Although the movement raised serious questions about due process and the arbitrary nature of determining who qualified as a “hate crime” victim, it eventually was signed into law in 2009 by President Barack Obama.
As early as 2004, the two murderers, interviewed by “20/20,” said money and drugs were the main factor, not hate. In 2013, investigative journalist Stephen Jimenez, who is gay, published a book that revealed an even shadier picture. It said Shepard was addicted to and was dealing crystal meth, and that his risky lifestyle also had included heroin and prostitution (he was revealed to be HIV positive at the time of his death). Moreover, he had allegedly been pimped alongside McKinney and had engaged in prior sexual encounters with his meth-head murderer.
The revelations drew a minor wave of public outrage, but largely, with the hate-crime law having been passed and cultural attitudes having shifted in the Obama era, it was seen as a fait accompli, with Shepard having served his symbolic purpose.
Duke Lacrosse
Demonstrators protest the Duke lacrosse players / IMAGE: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
In 2006, Duke University lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evan were accused of raping Crystal Gail Mangum, an African-American stripper who also was a student at North Carolina Central University.
As the case proceeded, with Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong pursuing hate-crime charges and also acting as lead investigator, the lacrosse coach was forced to resign and the team’s entire 2006 season canceled.
Ultimately, the investigation—though not painting the players in the best of light—disproved Mangum’s accusation. Nifong was forced to resign and was disbarred for ethical violations after withholding exculpatory evidence in his aggressive crusade against the students.
Mangum was never charged for the false accusations and later published a book telling her version of events, but in 2013, she was convicted of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of her boyfriend.
U.Va Frat Rape
A 2014 story in Rolling Stone magazine supposedly exposed a horrific gang-rape by the University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity just as the Obama administration’s Office of Civil Rights, overseen by Attorney General Eric Holder, was using Title IX equal-opportunity requirements as a pretext to assert unprecedented oversight of campus disciplinary policies.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article, detailing the account of a girl named “Jackie,” was proven to be a complete forgery, designed to garner the sympathies and attention of a male student that the girl was stalking. Erdely, who was revealed to be working in tandem with the Holder OCR, had cut corners on the reporting and neglected to seek out interviews with any of those accused.
One U.Va. administrator implicated in the case was able to pursue a $3 million libel judgment against the magazine, with Erdely personally responsible for $2 million of it. Rolling Stone later settled the case.
Although it was relegated to the annals of bad journalism, it also marked one of the first times in which the Left attempted to advance the argument that the spirit of story mattered more than the actual facts.
Post-Trump Era
Nick Sandmann and Nathan Phillips / IMAGE: Inside Edition via Youtube
From the uncorroborated or disproven allegations of several women against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to the false account of American Indian activist Nathan Phillips against a group of Kentucky students attending January’s March for Life rally, fraudulent allegations reported on as fact in the media are now too commonplace to address individually.
College campuses have become one of the worst offenders, likely because the student accusers are shielded from accountability. Among them was Yasmin Seweid, a Muslim student at Baruch College who claimed in December 2016 that three white men attacked in a New York subway station while yelling “Donald Trump” and anti-Islamic slurs.
The College Fix, a student-based, conservative media outlet, has tracked such hoaxes since 2012 and seen the number rise exponentially. In an article published Monday, following the Smollett feeding-frenzy, it noted that the circumstances seemed all too familiar, documenting 50 other similar episodes.
Some of the hoaxes may amount to innocent misunderstandings exacerbated by a hypersensitive culture, such as a “noose” in a tree that proved to be shoelaces or a supposed KKK hood that was actually lab equipment.
Others, however, seem designed for more nefarious purposes. Often, no other motive is evident than perpetrating a hoax simply for the sake of advancing a political agenda or getting sympathetic media attention.
There is no doubt, however, that the cumulative effect of these politically motivated “cry wolf” episodes is to create a greater public skepticism, widening the cultural/political divide and, dangerously, eliciting suspicion in cases where the victims most need and deserve to be trusted.
‘We should sue him, of course, because, left unchecked, he will declare a national emergency because tanning beds are disappearing from the shelves…’
Stacey Abrams / IMAGE: Late Night with Seth Meyers via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) For a losing candidate who continues to be artificially bolstered by leftist power-brokers, former Georgia gubernatorial contender Stacey Abrams had a lot to say about the validity of President Donald Trump.
Abrams visited leftist “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on Thursday to pitch a website that she claims to have launched in her effort to fight alleged voter suppression.
Smarmy former “SNL” comedian Meyers began by inviting her to respond to the recent development that Trump had agreed to avert a second shutdown by signing a massive omnibus spending bill with only minor concessions for a border barrier, saying he would instead declare a national emergency to fund the contentious wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
As she did in her unremarkable rebuttal response to Trump’s State of the Union address last week, Abrams once again rattled off a scripted list of Democrat talking points while showing astoundingly little self-awareness—including an attack on the president’s skin tone.
“We should sue him, of course, because, left unchecked, he will declare a national emergency because tanning beds are disappearing from the shelves,” she said.
“But in all seriousness … there is necessary response, but it doesn’t have to be public and it doesn’t have to be constant,” she added. “We validate his behavior by treating it as serious.”
Of course, the attention currently being given Abrams has far less to do with the validity of her ideas or leadership qualities as with the niche she fills within the Democratic Party.
As they struggle to gain political inroads within the Deep South—using identity politics to convince black voters to upend the conservative strongholds—Democrats have deployed the canard of “voter suppression” and other coded language to undermine voter ID laws, while also aggressively trying to expand their base by restoring the voting rights of convicted felons.
Leftist billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer invested unprecedented amounts of super-PAC “dark money” into the failed campaigns of Abrams and Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, and liberal media trumpeted the two African–American candidates endlessly as Democrats’ rising stars.
Even Oprah Winfrey got involved, as Meyers observed, setting up a clip of the Chicago media mogul canvassing for Abrams.
“I mean, I hope you got her vote,” Meyers said, referring to the Georgia resident who answered the door.
“Oh god yeah—-I mean, no, no, no, because then they’ll accuse me of voter fraud,” Abrams replied, referring to Oprah. “She lives in Illinois, but she really helped.”
“Uh right, Oprah would never—-because she is not registered in Georgia,” Meyers clarified.
Whether Oprah cast a ballot or simply helped in other ways, it wasn’t enough to win the race.
But Abrams and her fellow Democrats struggled coming to grips with the political rejection.
Because Georgia law would have required a run-off if neither candidate had received a majority (Libertarian Ted Metz garnered just under 1 percent of the vote) Abrams continued efforts to chip away at Kemp’s slight margin for 10 days afterward, pressing for voter recounts and lawsuits while launching accusations, without much evidence, of polling place irregularities.
On Nov. 16, she formally abandoned her efforts but still, semantically, refused to concede the race, complaining that Kemp used his official role in overseeing the elections to rob her of her rightful victory.
Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp/IMAGE: Associated Press via Youtube
“We know that if you talk to communities that are normally ignored, and if you fight for their right to vote, you can win elections,” Abrams told Meyers. “You just can’t have someone acting as the referee, the umpire and also the scorekeeper acting as your opponent.”
Ironically, given her own fraud claims, and despite the weight of evidence from organizations dedicated to documenting and investigating instances of illegal voter fraud, Abrams parroted other Democrats by telling Meyers that the concerns used by conservatives to justify voter ID laws were baseless.
“Republicans have talked about voter fraud, which is largely a myth, but they’ve talked about it for so long and with so much energy that we take it as the truth,” she said.
Despite touting the record number of blacks—1.9 million, she said—who voted for her in Georgia, Abrams then said the real problem was with suppression, not fraud.
“We know voter suppression is real, but we never talk about it—we take it for granted,” she said. “My belief is that by calling it out and by using my non-concession speech and my since-actions to demonstrate that we can fight back, that we can actually reclaim our democracy.”
Clearly, Abrams plans to continue her crusade—at least until another opportunity to run emerges.
With the dust barely settled on her last campaign, some Democrats were buzzing already about pitting her against first-term Republican Sen. David Perdue, a staunch Trump supporter who likely will seek re-election in 2020.
It’s unclear, however, whether Abrams will first have to concede the governor’s race before running again.
‘What will we tell them that we did in regard to standing up for white supremacy?’
Ralph Northam / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam desperately clings to his seat of power despite evidence of a racist past, his allies on the Left have now taken a bifurcated approach in shirking their moral obligation to hold him accountable.
On one hand, black activists in the state this week delivered a list of demands necessary for “reconciliation” in order to support to the embattled governor. With three years remaining in his term, Northam already has promised a dramatic departure from the “moderate” platform he ran on.
Meanwhile, sympathizers in the media—who earlier tried to deflect by falsely accusing the state’s Republican senate majority leader of racism in his 1968 yearbook—struck out on a new tactic of trying to normalize and downplay the allegations against Northam.
Radical Demands
On Wednesday, a group called the Virginia Black Politicos protested in front of the governor’s mansion in Richmond. Although they claimed to be calling for his resignation, they instead delivered an ultimatum, outlining their list of demands if Northam refused to leave, as he has indicated he will.
Among the conditional requirements for allowing Northam to stay:
The removal of all Confederate statues and memorials from public spaces
The creation of an Office of Equity and Inclusion
The decriminalization of marijuana
A racial hiring quota of 25 percent people of color
Preferential budgeting treatment for the states five historically black universities, including a guaranteed $5 million for each
Not satisfied with addressing items that related directly to issues of racism, the group claimed also to have allied itself with other radical leftist organizations who tacked on their own agenda items:
Use executive power to implement mass clemency, with an emphasis on incarcerated blacks
Eliminate funding for “budget measures that increase harm to youth of color,” such as school resource officers
Undermine federal immigration enforcement and use state budget to grant illegal immigrants access to funding for litigation purposes
Already the governor has signaled his effort to comply with some of these. He reportedly was assigned by his advisors to read works of black liberation literature, including Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations.”
He also issued a statement this week touting the fact that he—following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe—had granted voting rights already to more than 10,000 convicted felons.
Although many of the conditions seemed unachievable for Northam, who even before his leadership crisis was obliged to work with a slight Republican majority in the state legislature, the extortion of the governor—demanding substantial policy and budgetary concessions to forgive his personal deficiencies—underscored the conflicts of interest and the political turmoil that will enmesh him moving forward.
Echoes of Charlottesville
Wes Bellamy / IMAGE: Break Through News via Youtube
The group making the demands on Northam was led by Charlottesville City Councilor Wes Bellamy.
Bellamy also was at the center of the storm in the buildup to the tragic protests in the city a year and a half ago, after he led the push to remove statues honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from two city parks.
“What will we tell them that we did in regard to standing up for white supremacy?” he said during Wednesday’s protest at the governor’s mansion. “What will we tell them and their colleagues and their pupils in school that we did in the year 2019 when our governor decided to make fun of our people?”
Bellamy is no stranger to scandal himself; he was forced to resign from a teaching position when it was revealed he had made anti-white, homophobic and misogynist statements on Twitter, but he nonetheless kept his job as the city’s vice mayor.
Among those calling on Bellamy to resign his position with the city was Jason Kessler, eventual organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally, who addressed the council in December 2016, eight months before the rally.
Although there was little demand for removing the Confederate statues, even in the uber-liberal college town, and while going against the recommendation of a blue-ribbon committee tasked with studying the cost for removal, Bellamy prevailed in February 2017 with a 3-2 vote from the all-Democrat city council to remove the two statues and rename their respective parks.
Objectors justifiably wanted their voices to be heard, questioning among other things the city’s authority to remove the statues, but Bellamy blatantly disrespected them, even giving a black power salute while one citizen spoke during a public comment period.
As backlash against the removal drew the attention of more demonstrators, prompting Kessler to organize the “Unite the Right” rally, Bellamy responded by attempting to revoke its permit to assemble.
When the courts reinstated the group’s permit, Bellamy continued to foment tensions by making inflammatory comments. And on the day of the fateful rally, as police attempted to disperse the protests by declaring an unlawful assembly, Bellamy intervened, telling the police to back off and allow the violent clashes to continue.
Party Politics vs. Principle
Ralph Northam’s 1984 Eastern Medical yearbook / IMAGE: CNN screenshot via Youtube
Eighteen months after Charlottesville was thrust into the national spotlight—and contorted by opponents of President Donald Trump into evidence of racism due to his condemnation of violence on both sides of the dispute—it seems actual evidence of racism has become much less of an issue for the current Virginia governor.
While most national Democratic leaders unequivocally called for Northam’s resignation in the immediate aftermath, few seem to have pressed the matter beyond their public statements, making it increasingly clear that party politics outweigh principle.
Likewise, the national media, ignoring the fact that Northam’s page featured a person dressed in Ku Klux Klan regalia, shifted its focus intensely to the issue of blackface, bolstering the governor’s dubious claim that he wasn’t depicted in the image on his yearbook page but that he had dressed up as Michael Jackson in a separate incident.
A spate of “explanatory” articles in outlets such as USA Today put soft focus on the issue with rundowns of past celebrity blackface scandals, while simultaneously redirecting the attention from Northam’s scandal.
Others took steps to diminish and normalize blackface altogether. Pew Research Center released a survey indicating that a third of respondents thought blackface was acceptable in some circumstances, such as Halloween costumes, even though the media seemed to reject this argument when Today show co-host Megyn Kelly was forced out simply for defending blackface Halloween costumes on air.
Student newspapers, such as the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily—representing the Charlottesville school where Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface at a party—pored over past yearbook editions to find more examples of its widespread use.
The Cavalier Daily investigation found evidence of racism and cultural appropriation “peppered” throughout past yearbook editions, including, alarmingly, what appeared to be a photograph of a staged lynching in the 1971 edition.
Photo of what appears to be a staged lynching found on the Chi Psi fraternity page in the 1971 edition of UVA’s official yearbook, Corks and Curls. @cavalierdailypic.twitter.com/aVwC9rGx1Q
In response to the article, the student editors were invited to appear on CBS Evening News, while the story was picked up by outlets such as NPR and The Washington Post.
But the student journalists’ commendable investigative efforts made only a single reference to Northam in the opening paragraph. Rather than lending itself to an even greater charge for the governor’s removal, the article seemed tacitly to downplay his racist conduct and imply, falsely, that it was commonplace and acceptable to dress that way at the time of Northam’s 1984 yearbook.
Swaying Perception?
The media’s efforts are, no doubt, designed to sway public perception for Northam and Herring.
As Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax faces even more serious allegations of having sexually assaulted two women, the ouster of all three would result in a transfer of power to state Republicans according to the state’s succession order, elevating House of Delegates Speaker Kirk Cox into the office. It is unlikely, though, that the current blackface scandal against Herring would warrant his resignation, barring further allegations.
A poll released last Saturday by The Washington Post in coordination with George Mason University showed an even split over whether Northam should step down, while a majority of black respondents supported the governor by an almost 20 percent margin.
However, low sampling numbers and a high margin of error cast some aspersions on the data. The survey sampling also favored self-identified Democrats over Republicans by an 8 percent margin (33 to 25 percent) while nebulously claiming that 39 percent identified as independents.
Moreover, The Post‘s emphasis on unexpected support for Northam glossed over the responses to several other questions. More than 70 percent of respondents disapproved of his handling of the photo controversy, and even more said that his denial of being in the photo was not credible.
‘I guess that means our colleagues from California are going to be riding their bicycles back home to their constituents…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Even though House Democrats now set the agenda, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., showed that she was still the one in charge during a hearing earlier this week for the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources titled “Climate Change: Preparing for Energy Transition.”
In the cosmic plane occupied by Ocasio–Cortez, the world is due to end by the year 2031.
That leaves precious little time for Democrats to put in place the ambitious—and costly—agenda that the socialism-loving freshman congresswoman proposed last week.
“The Green New Deal resolution a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for all,” said the policy framework.
The plan was publicly shared, but was later deleted from her website with Ocasio-Cortez claiming her staff had mistakenly released a preliminary draft.
Among the memorable highlights:
Economic security for those unable and unwilling to work
Green-friendly sustainability makeovers for every building in the U.S.
The elimination of fossil fuels within 10 years
The corresponding phase-out of fossil-fuel-dependent air travel
To show voters that she hadn’t gone off the rails, “AOC” noted that the aim of reaching zero emissions within a decade was a goal, not set in stone but one that could be redefined as political necessity dictated.
“We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast,” said a frequently-asked question section.
Evidently, those reassurances offered little comfort to the people of Wyoming, the largest coal-producer in the country.
Although mocked and dismissed by many, the “Green New Deal” received offers to co-sponsor from all five of the Senate Democrats who have announced their candidacy for the 2020 presidential race. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also promised, albeit ironically, to put it to a floor vote in the upper chamber.
The attention given to the proposal, along with the topic of the subcommittee hearing on “Preparing for Energy Transition” and the “experts” brought to testify made it no laughing matter for Cheney, who opened her questioning by asking how each of the panelists had arrived that day in Washington.
After four of the six said they used air-travel, Cheney immediately laid into the absurdity of the “Green New Deal” proposal to eliminate fossil fuels within 10 years.
“I would assume we’re not just going to wait 10 years and then all the sudden tell people all the sudden they can’t fly, but that we’ll be in a situation where over the course of ten years we would somehow gradually work our way out of air travel,” she said.
Cheney went on to ask the panel whether they thought the federal government would need to establish rules to prioritize air travel.
“It would seem to me I guess we would then have a situation where the FAA could say for example, you know what, vacation travel—that’s not essential,” she said. “… Would you say that we’re going to have some sort of a vacation commissar set up in the government to determine what kind of air travel makes sense and what kind doesn’t?”
Cheney continued her interrogation by asking who on the panel supported the Green New Deal.
None raised their hands.
“It’s going to be crucially important for us to recognize and understand when we outlaw plane travel, we outlaw gasoline, we outlaw cars—I think actually probably the entire U.S. military—because of the Green New Deal that we are able to explain to our constituents and to people all across this country what that really means,” she continued. “… I guess that means our colleagues from California are going to be riding their bicycles back home to their constituents.”
TRUMP RESPONSE: Why don’t you allow revenue-generating fracking in your state?
Andrew Cuomo (screen shot: CNBC/Youtube)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose tax-and-spend vision for the Empire State recently was felled by a $2.3 billion budget shortfall, begged President Donald Trump to revoke a $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.
Cuomo said the SALT provision in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was causing an exodus of wealthy New Yorkers to areas with lower rates, according to Politico.
“You’re hurting the economic engines of the nation,” he said on a radio show Tuesday following his White House visit.
Cuomo appealed to fellow Democrats that repealing the tax reform should be their No. 1 priority. “This should be right at the top of your list,” he said. “If the Republicans ask for the time of day … the Democratic Congress should ask for reform for this SALT tax provision.”
Earlier law provided for virtually limitless tax shelters—such as campaign, super-PAC and nonprofit contributions—which allowed elite 1-percenters in blue-state enclaves to avoid paying their “fair share” in income tax.
Democrats, who have embarked on an all-out blitz to force Trump to turn over his personal tax filings, no doubt suspect that he was a beneficiary of such loopholes during his days as a Manhattan real-estate mogul.
But rather than reverse the overhaul, Trump suggested Cuomo might reconsider some of his revenue-killing liberal policies, such as dialing back a 2014 ban on fracking for natural gas or approving fossil fuel pipelines.
In his recent State of the Union address, Trump touted the fact that the U.S. for the first time in its history had become an energy exporter.
“The President discussed economic growth opportunities for the State of New York, including helping lower energy prices throughout the entire Northeast by allowing low-cost, American energy to thrive with fracking and pipeline systems,” Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.
Like New York, ultra-liberal California has been dealing with the mass-migration of its wealthy tech moguls from pricey regions like Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area to more affordable areas like Nevada (although hardly offsetting the in-bound migration from Tijuana).
While Trump may relish the Schaudenfreude of seeing his political adversaries lose their cash cows, however, there may be unintended consequences to his efforts: California’s limousine liberals are not checking their politics at the door as they flee.
Nevada and neighboring Arizona were the only two 2018 Senate races in which Democrats were able to oust incumbent Republicans, due largely to the demographic shifts.
And other states once solid in the red column, such as Texas, are tilting increasingly purple, in part as the result of their own economic prosperity and favorable tax laws.
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Although he may not be the world’s richest man anymore, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said on the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” that he still has way too much money.
“We’re trying to give it away faster,” Gates said during a joint appearance with his wife, Melinda, to pitch their annual philanthropy newsletter.
But Gates, who last year was officially surpassed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (pre-divorce) on the wealthiest person list, said proposals like radical socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez‘s pitch for a 70 percent income-tax rate would not do the trick.
“These great fortunes were not made through ordinary incomes, so you probably have to look to the capital gains rate and the estate tax if you want to create more equity there,” he said.
In fact, while he supported making the tax system “take a much higher portion from people with great wealth,” Gates said there should be no defined cap on the amount the government can claim from the uber-rich.
“I think if you go so far as to say that there’s a total upper limit, that might have more negatives than positives—but you know, I may have a distorted view of this.”
Gates said he and his wife have lobbied for a higher estate tax—often referred to by critics as the “death tax”—in which Uncle Sam takes his cut from a deceased individual’s earthly possessions prior to inheritance.
“There was actually one year that was good to die in because there was no estate tax,” he joked.
Melinda Gates agreed that the wealthy needed to be hit harder but said the system also needed to be set up in such a way as to “stimulate good growth.”
She pointed to France, which lacks a vibrant tech sector, she claimed, because its tax system had de-incentivized innovation.
The key, she said, was to encourage more charitable giving in areas that weren’t necessarily contributing to the common good.
“Philanthropy can never make up for taxes, but it is that catalytic wedge where we can try things—we can do innovations that you wouldn’t want your government to do with tax dollars.”
Still, she said, higher taxes for the wealthy were also necessary to cover the vast expanse of public services in a perfect world.
“It has to be government that scales up things like health and education,” she said.
Pointing to a multitude of billionaires who were considering entry into the political arena—among them Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, business-media mogul Michael Bloomberg and hedge-fund investor Tom Steyer all eyeing runs against the well-to-do current president—Colbert asked if either Gates had considered running.
Fortunately for the nation’s taxpayers, they have not.
“We work with politicians, but neither of us will choose to run for office. We are specialized in what we dig into and what we know,” Bill Gates said. “And we hope we get good politicians, but we’re not going to run.”
‘Allowing trained professionals with years of expertise to carry … makes our communities safer…’
IMAGE: WFLA News Channel 8 via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As the year anniversary of the Parkland, Fla., school massacre approaches on Thursday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are using the opportunity to push competing firearms agendas.
Both measures seem unlikely to pass the opposing chamber—and neither directly addresses the conditions under which deranged teenager Nikolas Cruz carried out his attack last Valentine’s Day, killing 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
However, a bill re-introduced by Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., would extend greater protections to vulnerable school systems by updating existing laws to give “good guys with guns” more latitude in concealed-carry laws.
Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general, has introduced the LEOSA Reform Act, an update to the original Law Enforcement Officer Safety Act. Its main focus would be to expand the existing code to allow qualified law-enforcement officers and retired officers to carry firearms into public places such as school zones, Amtrak stations and national parks.
“The LEOSA Reform Act will allow our law enforcement officers who have dedicated their lives to protect our communities, to continue doing so by extending their concealed carry privileges,” said Bacon’s office in a news release announcing a Wednesday press conference outside the Capitol.
Retired law-enforcement officers would be eligible to qualify after taking a special, state-approved conceal-carry course.
“Allowing trained professionals with years of expertise to carry could allow them to respond more quickly to emergencies, and makes our communities safer,” said the statement.
The bill was originally introduced last June, cosponsored by Reps. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and John Rutherford, R-Fla., but because it was not enacted by the then-Republican majority before the end of the legislative session, it was cleared from the books.
Since the original bill’s introduction, it has added nine more cosponsors—including bipartisan support from Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa.
House Democrats also have in their cross-hairs their own bill to massively expand background checks for gun purchases, including the closing of loopholes that allow private sellers to peddle their arsenals without Uncle Sam’s approval.
Steve Scalise/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
Earlier this week, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La.—himself a recent victim of politically motivated gun violence—was blocked from testifying before the Judiciary Committee on the Democrat-led bill.
Scalise criticized the Democrats for silencing conservative voices and for capitalizing on the Parkland tragedy, once again, to push an unrelated agenda.
“If their bill would have passed, it would have done nothing to stop the shooting that happened in my case, the shooting that happened in Parkland, a lot of these other tragic shootings,” Scalise said in an interview with Laura Ingraham. “It would take away the rights of law-abiding citizens to have a gun.”
In Scalise’s case, Capitol Police, who were there because of his role as majority whip at the time, engaged crazed Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson in a 10-minute shootout in June 2017 after he opened fire on the Republicans’ practice for the charity Congressional Baseball Game.
“I’ve got a perspective,” Scalise said. “Clearly, mine dealt with something that happened to me, and I saw how guns were used to save people’s lives.”
‘The Democratic Party has made it clear we will not tolerate racism … They just have to do it in a smart way that respects voters’ wishes that Democrats be in charge…’
Ralph Northam, Mark Herring and Justin Fairfax / IMAGE: WAVY TV 10 via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) During the 1950s, the tactic that Democrats in Virginia used to try to defeat federal demands to integrate schools was known as “massive resistance.”
By refusing to acknowledge the newly established law of the land that repealed the earlier “separate but equal” treatise, political heavy-hitters like Sen. Harry Byrd and Gov. Mills Godwin managed to forestall the inevitable federal mandate into the early 1970s.
But as some on the Left are fond of saying in the ongoing push to elevate marginalized identity groups, Virginia Democrats were “on the wrong side of history.”
The recent scandals involving the commonwealth’s three top officials, all Democrats, have many echoes of that earlier defeat—not the least of which are the racial undertones and the tensions between social norms of the past and present.
While it is clear they are morally in the wrong, what side of history they fall on rests in the hands of their political allies.
Again, as with the repeal of segregation, it seems the Democrats’ strategy is to try to ride it out and hope it blows over. Facing a veritable minefield of criticism for their hypocrisy and double-standards, prominent party leaders either have sought to deflect and redirect the blame, or to remain deafeningly mute.
To borrow very liberally from Gandhi the term used to refer to his nonviolent protests, some might even consider the Left’s aggressive inaction a form of passive resistance.
‘Believe Women, Unless…’
Justin Fairfax / IMAGE: WTVR CBS 6 via Youtube
Nowhere has such passivity been more evident than in the allegations against Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and their parallels with the Brett Kavanaugh allegations last fall.
Like Kavanaugh, Fairfax was accused by a California college professor of an assault that was jostled into her memory by his sudden appearance in the national spotlight.
Late Friday, details emerged of a second accuser alleging Fairfax raped her while the two were students at Duke University. Details and fallout remained to be seen.
Fairfax’s primary accuser, Vanessa Tyson, who said she was forced to perform oral sex on him when both were graduate students volunteering at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, even hired the same high-profile attorney as Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford.
Several key differences exist: the Tyson account is more detailed than Blasey Ford’s and with fewer holes in the story. Also, there was no apparent alcohol use that might cloud the memories, and it involved only a 15-year gap rather than 35 years.
Despite an early denial, Fairfax also acknowledged that the encounter happened but says it was consensual. And notably, because Tyson is herself a Democrat, the political motives that were ascribed to Blasey Ford’s conveniently timed accusations are far less a factor.
The biggest difference of all, though, is that the chorus of impassioned cries to “Believe women” has fallen silent. Instead, those Democrats who are willing to address it maintain that further investigation is needed before passing judgment and demanding accountability.
“It’s still a he-said, she-said,” the Associated Press quoted state Sen. Barbara Favola as saying.
Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez also hemmed and hawed, stressing the importance of “due process” after having ignored Democrat calls during the Kavanaugh case for chauvinist skeptics to “shut up.”
The Washington Post compiled comments from several prominent Congressional Democrats, and nearly all sought to reserve judgment, in stark contrast with the Kavanaugh hearings.
Most began by couching their equivocations under the qualifier of “I believe we must listen to women, but…”
America Rising, a conservative political-action group, released a video showing even more awkward efforts to dance around the topic.
After the second accuser, Meredith Watson, emerged late on Friday, some of the prominent state-level Democrats appeared to take a firmer position against Fairfax with a statement saying it was time for him to step aside.
Republicans in the legislature indicated they may put forward articles of impeachment.
Fairfax, however, at press time, remained adamant that he would not resign.
Going Underground
In the case of Gov. Ralph Northam, who last Saturday recanted an earlier mea culpa over the blatantly and inexcusably racist images on his personal yearbook page in his senior year of medical school, those who rushed to condemn the governor with near universal calls for his resignation fell largely silent after the Fairfax scandal broke.
However, Northam’s subsequent denial—which in the eyes of many did more harm than good—and his refusal to step down of his own accord, pose a dilemma for his critics. Even if the claims were somehow provable, meaning witnesses came forward to contradict the governor, nothing about wearing blackface or KKK robes in a 35-year-old yearbook violates the law.
Ralph Northam’s 1984 Eastern Medical yearbook / IMAGE: CNN screenshot via Youtube
According to the Associated Press, he has weathered the storm thus far by staying out of sight, using underground tunnels and communicating, if necessary, through a crisis PR firm.
Like many of his fellow Democrats, Northam, who was statutorily limited to a single term as governor, seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach, doing his best to stall while weighing the best strategy to dodge political consequences.
“His best hope of survival in the short term might be the eruption of two other controversies that have since hit the two men next in line to succeed him, both Democrats,” said the AP article. “The party might be loath to oust the three for fear of handing the governor’s office over to the Republican legislative leader who is next in line.
Whitewashing Blackface
To some extent, Northam’s strategy appears to be working. While denying he was in the damaging yearbook photo, Northam admitted to just enough guilt—claiming to have worn blackface for a Michael Jackson dance contest—to shift the focus away from the more damaging—and more likely—possibility that he was the Klansman. He even called on investigators to use facial recognition technology, seeming confident that it would disprove he was the less problematic half of the racist duo.
Meanwhile, copping to a separate, undocumented blackface incident offered him the perfect deflection defense. In the mid-80s, public acceptance of blackface was such that Hollywood was still using it as a vehicle for comedies. Whether or not one now finds it offensive, blackface was prevalent enough in the time period that laying blame on Northam would surely mean setting up other dominoes to fall.
Image from Virginia Military Institute’s 1968 yearbook depicting cadets in blackface. / IMAGE: WAVY TV 10 via Youtube
And indeed, it didn’t take long for the partisan press to lay cover for the embattled gov by painting a false equivalency to Virginia’s Republican Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment.
On Thursday, The Virginia Pilotfirst reported that the 1968 yearbook Norment helped edit at Virginia Military Institute included several inappropriate references to minorities.
Astoundingly, more in the media seemed to pick up on that engineered scandal than on any of the earlier ones involving the more prominent Democrats.
But unlike Northam, Norment came out swinging, pointing out that he was one of seven editors, that none of the offensive content was directly traced to him, and that he had, in fact, been a vocal supporter of the integration movement taking place at the time, as evidenced on his personal pages.
“The use of blackface is abhorrent in our society and I emphatically condemn it,” Norment said in a statement. “However, I am not in any of the photos referenced on pages 82 or 122, nor did I take any of the photos in question… I am not surprised that those wanting to engulf Republican leaders in the current situations involving the Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General would highlight the yearbook from my graduation a half century ago.”
Muddying the Waters
Mark Herring/IMAGE: YouTube
Another blackface case to emerge in the wake of Northam’s scandal was Attorney General Mark Herring‘s.
Facing the possibility that he, as third in line for the governorship, might come under scrutiny, Herring got out in front of the liability by acknowledging that photographic evidence might exist showing him, too, wearing shoe polish to pay tribute to ’80s rapper Kurtis Blow.
Herring’s confession added several shades of nuance to Northam’s defense—first and foremost by again directing the media focus on the lesser sin that the governor may have committed, ensuring that the story was about blackface and not klansmen. Being lumped in with Herring’s more benign appropriation of skin tone diminished the weight of Northam’s offense by association.
It also introduced the question of degree, posing a problem of whether all instances of blackface were equally egregious and unpardonable. Could one offender be punished and not the other?
For Democrats, who were confronting the possibility that Republican House Speaker Kurt Cox would be next in line after Herring, it also tested the limits of their “moral clarity” versus pragmatism, according to Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Kidd likened it to three sinking ships “that suddenly lash themselves together and find they can float.”
Or, as Democrat political operative Zac Petkanas told The Daily Journal, the outcome must determine the consequences.
“The Democratic Party has made it clear we will not tolerate racism or the way some men have treated women,” Petkanas said. “They just have to do it in a smart way that respects voters’ wishes that Democrats be in charge.”
‘Both Sides of the Aisle’?
Like Petkanas, other Democrats seemed to be in total denial of the fact that racism or misogyny could figure into the Democrats legacy in such a way.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., a 2020 presidential hopeful, said in scandals such as these, the offender’s party was irrelevant.
“I don’t think this is a party issue,” he told The Daily Journal while expressing doubts that it would impact Democrats in the long term.
Booker, who during the Kavanaugh hearings rode out his own abuse scandal and charges of hypocrisy, opportunistically used the Virginia scandal to point a finger vaguely at Republicans. “We’ve seen these problems on both sides of the aisle. I think this is an issue with a very difficult past, a painful past, a hurtful past that we have. And a lot of the truth telling that’s going on is going to lay the groundwork for reconciliation that we all need.”
But it was unclear what truth telling Booker was referring to, as Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was even more vocal in his denial, pinning the blame for the Democrats’ refusal to face accountability squarely on the shoulders of President Donald Trump.
“This is but a symptom of a greater syndrome that currently plagues our country as a result of not acting on President Trump’s bigotry,” Green said.
Trump, meanwhile, offered his own take that the fallout would help the state move back toward the red column.
Democrats at the top are killing the Great State of Virginia. If the three failing pols were Republicans, far stronger action would be taken. Virginia will come back HOME Republican) in 2020!
But for now, Republicans are relegated to the back seat.
Whether we as a nation will hold our public figures accountable or continue to tacitly condone overt evidence of racism and sexual assault accusations depends on the standard to which Democrats now choose to hold their own.
