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The presidential victory of Donald Trump in November of 2016 has been under systematic assault by Democrats, their institutional and media organs, and their followers in an effort to delegitimize him. Why? Progressives thought they had won the battle and would be in power in perpetuity. The election of President Trump demonstrated otherwise. Consequently, Progressives responded with protests, marches, riots, and sustained rage in an effort to undermine his effectiveness in order to restore Progressive governance, now and forever.

Their purpose is to delegitimize not just President Trump but all Republicans and Independents that oppose a Progressive agenda and its stranglehold of policies that undermine American democracy, free speech, and constitutional liberties. Just consider how easy it is to boycott and ban conservative speakers on university campuses these days under the guise of concerns about safety. The result is the loss of divergent opinions that lie at the very heart of liberty.

Progressive outrage is directed against President Trump and is unrelenting. Nearly all television, Internet, and newspaper coveragesave for Fox News and conservative outletshas become a series of hit pieces that make no pretense of impartiality or fact-driven analysis.

Why the vitriol? Progressives believed their revolution had succeeded under President Obama and that Hillary Clinton would ipso facto secure the mandate. What would that encompass? It would include national health care, a European-style socialism, an emphasis on open borders, and a focus on global initiatives at the expense of national issues that responded to the needs of ordinary Americans and their desire for better jobs with the potential of higher incomes. Why was the Progressive agenda rejected by so many voters? It failed to address the anguish of many Americans whose incomes in 2015 remained the sameas measured in real dollarsas 1999.

Progressives never understood the significance of that indicator or the pain that ordinary Americans felt. Consequently, President Trump won and his victory signified the dismantling of the Progressive dream of socialist revolution and replaced it with the hope of reinvigorated capitalism.

Despite the onslaught of attacks against Present Trumps administration, its important to understand that these are but a proxy war for the real villain, the Republican Party and its supporters. The objective in demonizing President Trump is to turn the American tide so decisively away from conservative values that no Republican-leaning leader will ever win again. To this end Americans must never hear, read, or understand the opposing perspective. Social media, television, news, and the Internet must be saturated with a sustained and unrelenting war against conservative beliefs unanchored by pesky facts or true evidence. The outcome, if Democrats had their way, would be nothing less than a perfectly executed coup dtat resulting in 1,000 years of Progressive rule.

What would Progressives advocate? Above all, a foreign policy in which our national goals are sacrificed in favor of interests characteristic of a post-American world. To that end, Progressives would promote measures aimed at ameliorating the conditions of the underprivileged everywhere. However, these improvements typically come not from social directives, but through sustained and systematic changes in the infrastructure that alter the nature of labor, the products produced, and their inherent value. Thus, global socialism, even if it were commendable, would not measurably enhance peoples lives overall. Meanwhile, America, saddled with this global mission, would no longer pursue objectives that would benefit our citizenry and improve their social and economic circumstances.

How would Progressive values be manifest here at home? Socialized health care would replace best practices with palliative care, thereby jettisoning medical advances and excellence. Governmental programs would encourage individual and familial dependence on the state at the expense of empowering Americans to achieve their own economic success. Our educational system would focus on multiculturalism, instead of universal national values committed to excellence. America would be rendered economically and militarily powerless due to its inability to create wealth, enforce borders, and support mandates that champion democratic freedoms both here and around the world.

The case for what was is at stake in the 2016 election was pervasively argued by Michael Anton, a senior staffer at the National Security Council, under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus in his essay The Flight 93 Election. It was published in September of 2016 on the website of The Claremont Review of Books, a conservative journal associated with the Claremont Institute.

Antons premisecharge the cockpit or you diewas bold and to the point. Failure of the Republican Party to align behind Trump in the 2016 election, he argued, was analogous to doing nothing as terrorists hijacked a plane. Failure to act, he implied, would result in death for everyone onboard and, if the metaphor was extended nationally, imperil our country. Sadly, many Republicans and Independents have yet to heed Antons message.

Why werent Americans outraged of the recent evidence of wiretapping and the unmasking of Trump and several of his advisors during the campaign and the transition to the presidency? Why werent Americans distressed by the illegal public disclosure of national security documents leaked by governmental officials with associations to the former Obama administration that targeted President Trump and some of his team?

These were actions that breached our national security and suggest illegal practices that dwarf the Nixon administrations 1972 illegal break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Washington, D.C. Watergate complex. What will it take to unite the Republicans, Independents, and fair-minded Democrats against a Progressive agenda intent on a dictatorship-style coup dtat through the illegal use of national security information to bolster a failed regime and its misguided agenda?

Dr. Diana E. Sheets is a Research Scholar at the University of Illinois. She writes literary criticism, political commentary, and fiction. Much of it can be read on her website, http://www.LiteraryGulag.com. Her latest book, The Doubling: Those Influential Writers That Shape Our Contemporary Perceptions of Identity and Consciousness in the New Millennium, is published by Nova Science Publishers.

Continued here:
The Progressive Coup d'tat That Wasn't Quite - Huffington Post

posted at 7:21 pm on April 27, 2017 by John Sexton

The Trump administration launched a new initiative Wednesday called Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE). The office is intended to provide support for Americans who have been victimized by illegal immigrants. Trump mentioned it during his first address to a joint session of Congress.

Progressives offended by the existence of the office noticed that the launch also corresponded with Alien day, a day where fans celebrate the Alien film series. So some progressives decided it would be a good idea to flood the hotline that responds to reports of criminal aliens with calls about UFOs. Buzzfeed highlighted some of these yesterday:

McCoy told Buzzfeed he did call and told the hotline hed been abducted by a UFO, at which point they hung up on him. Lots of other people jumped on the bandwagon:

Thousands of people tweeted or retweeted the idea and dozens (more?) seem to have actually called the number. But its not clear what impact if any this had. Fusion contacted the office and received a statement about the prank:

The VOICE line remains in operation. As yesterday was its first day I cant give you any sense of whether this group had any impact at all on wait times or call volume because theres no prior data to compare

Openly obstructing and mocking victims crosses the line of legitimate public discourse. VOICE is a line for victims to obtain information. This groups stunt is designed to harm victims. That is shameful.

I imagine theyll get bored with this after a few days and move on to the next outrage. Still, its noteworthy that weve finally identified a government program the left would like to cut.

Go here to read the rest:
Progressives flood hotline for victims of crime by 'criminal aliens' with UFO sightings - Hot Air

The progressive vision for America to make life better for all families, not just the privileged elite at the top has suffered setbacks. After the 2016 election, Republicans control the White House, both chambers of Congress and more than half of state governments.

Liberal hopes for free college, universal health care, equal opportunity, female rights, higher minimum wage, less militarism, less imprisonment and other left-wing goals seem doomed, at least for now. All that reform-minded folks can do is try to prevent losses of past social progress.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is trying to rally progressives into stronger unified resistance against the conservative Trump era. Her new book, This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save Americas Middle Class, is a blunt weapon.

From the New Deal to the 1980s, she points out, America built the greatest middle class the world has ever known. She continues:

We built it ourselves, using our own hard work and the tools of government to open up more opportunities for millions of people. We used it all tax policy, investments in public education, new infrastructure, support for research, rules that protected consumers and investors, antitrust laws to promote and expand our middle class ... . Income growth was widespread, and the people who did most of the work the 90 percent of America also got most of the gains.

However, trickle-down economics under President Ronald Reagan turned the tables, giving ever-bigger favors to the rich, who used snowballing technology and their amassed wealth to corral more power.

Warren, a former Harvard professor, writes that she spent years researching the great and terrible story of middle-class decline. Today, college debt hobbles many families. Job insecurity grows as electronic breakthroughs wipe out more jobs. Wealth keeps amassing in the hands of the 1 percent who control corporations and investments and who stash their money in overseas shelters.

People are angry because trade deals seem to be building jobs and opportunities for workers in other parts of the world, while leaving abandoned factories here at home, Warren continues. Today, this country works great for those at the top. It works great for every corporation rich enough to hire an army of lobbyists and lawyers. It works great for every billionaire who pays taxes at lower rates than the hired help. It works great for everyone with the money to buy favors in Washington.

She calls President Donald Trump a man always on the hunt for his next big con. She urges progressives to follow the pattern of the million-member Womens March on Washington, to mobilize resistance against conservative attempts to slash the public safety net and human rights.

Another form of resistance is citizen lawsuits to prevent new law changes from scuttling past public gains locked into statutes.

With Republicans controlling most government power, will it be possible for progressives to resist effectively? Maybe maybe not. But at least conscientious Americans shouldnt just surrender.

James A. Haught is editor emeritus of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, haught@wvgazettemail.com.

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James A. Haught: Mobilizing progressive resistance (Gazette) - Charleston Gazette-Mail (subscription)

The likely winner of an Arlington County board race would normally be the candidate who raises the most money and collects the most recognizable endorsements.

Arlington politics, however, has been unusual for the past few years.

The strongly Democratic electorate twice chose a former Republican-turned-independent for County Board in 2014, even though he came up short on cash and endorsements in his first election. Just last year, incumbent Libby Garvey, who had plenty of cash but had lost the support of the party establishment, held off a primary challenger, Erik Gutshall, who had captured the endorsements Garvey had lost.

Democrats next month will choose from among four candidates including Gutshall for a nominee to fill an open seat on the board, a decision that will likely determine the outcome of the general election in the deep-blue county.

Gutshall is the clear leader in fundraising and getting backing from names that voters know. But those accomplishments may no longer be enough.

Arlington is sort of unique; looking at how much money a candidate has raised in the last few years has not been particularly helpful, said Frank Shafroth, director of George Mason Universitys Center for State and Local Leadership. The community tends to be very involved, and their decisions are made at the last minute.

In addition to Gutshall, owner of a home improvement business, the candidates include tax accountant Peter Fallon; nonprofit official Kim Klingler; and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Patil. They are competing in an unusual three-day party caucus that will require voters to rank their choices as part of an instant-runoff feature.

If one candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes during the first round of counting, that candidate wins. If not, the candidate with the fewest number of first-choice votes is eliminated and each of his or her ballots is redistributed to the candidate listed as the second choice on that ballot. The process continues until one candidate reaches the majority.

Each hopeful has enough support that party insiders expect the second-choice votes will may be decisive.

Voters will caucus May 9 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Key Elementary School; May 11 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Drew Model School; and May 13 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Washington Lee High School. The last major candidate forum is Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the NRECA building, 4301 Wilson Blvd. Three School Board candidates vying for one seat will also appear.

No Republicans have yet announced an intention to seek the County Board seat in November; a perennial candidate, Audrey Clement, will run as an independent.

The four Democrats identify as progressive politicians eager to uphold Arlingtons culture of smart growth, strong schools and welcoming diversity. They also say they will focus on improving the climate for businesses and boosting the struggling commercial real estate market.

Gutshall, 47, raised $22,512 in the first quarter of 2017. He lists multiple current and former elected officials as supporters, including incumbent Jay Fisette, who is stepping down after nearly 20 years.

Against Garvey last spring, he emphasized the need for homes that will fit the budgets of young families and working people priced out of Arlingtons expensive market but too affluent to qualify for subsidized affordable housing.

Hes the current chair of the county planning commission, a former member of the transportation commission and a past civic association president, experience he says will help him connect the dots, because all those other things schools, housing and transportation are possible only when we have the commercial tax base to pay for them.

Fallon, 53, who raised $10,129 in the first quarter, came in a close third in a six-way race for two open board seats in 2015, and ran twice before that.

A former transportation commissioner, civic association president and planning commission chair,he has called for more transparency in decision-making and said the current board is too passive in its response to school overcrowding, Metros financing needs and housing affordability.

Fallon broke with other Democrats to say he would consider voting for independent John Vihstadt for board chair, a heresy for some activists. Mr. Vihstadt is one of the most conscientious, responsive and dedicated board members, Fallon said. We should not be hyper-partisan.

Klingler, 35, a former volunteer emergency medical technician, a current civic association president and advisory commission chair, raised $5,065 in the first quarter. She came in fourth in a 2012 party caucus won by Garvey and said she was motivated to get back into electoral politics after the 2016 presidential election and the Womens March in January.

Her campaign has focused her on improving public safety and emergency response times, boosting government efficiency and increasing spending on public safety.

There are a lot of areas in the county where we could do better, said Klingler, a former management consultant.

Patil, 41, a first-time candidate who raised $20,320 in the first quarter, says he has big ideas to create green and clean jobs in the county, which would include positions for both highly educated tech innovators and those who work in manufacturing.

An engineer who came to the United States from India 18 years ago and has started two businesses, he has called for more creative thinking to improve housing affordability, transportation alternatives and school capacity shortages.

When it comes to our values about the environment, about womens rights, about equal pay, let us stand up and be known for something, he told a gathering of Arlington Young Democrats in April. We may be slapped on the wrist, but I am willing to stand up.

Excerpt from:
Four Democratic progressives compete for Arlington County Board nomination - Washington Post

HALIFAX Nova Scotia's premier did his best to laugh off a gaffe apparently revealing the provincial election date, after a campaign video was posted to the Liberal party's website Friday.

The video, which was quickly taken down, showed Premier Stephen McNeil next to a campaign slogan and the message "on May 30th vote Liberal."

It is the strongest hint yet that an election will be called in the coming days, although McNeil refused to confirm anything.

"You saw an ad that was a mock-up of an ad, I wouldn't read too much into it," McNeil told reporters at the legislature.

"As you can tell it didn't go through the spell check or anything. There is a number of stuff the campaign is doing, but I wouldn't read too much into it."

The campaign video alsomisspells the party's slogan "Building on a Stronger Nova Scotia" spelling it as "Bulding."

The Elections Nova Scotia website says an election period is "not less than 30 days" from the date the writ drops.

The Liberal government would have to call an election by this Sunday in order for Nova Scotians to go to the polls May 30.

On the heels of aweeks-long spending spree, the provincial government tableda balanced budget Thursday, further fuelling speculation that an election is around the corner.

Still, McNeil chose to remain coy when asked whether he was denying there was going to be an election on May 30.

"There will be an election at some point in the future and I'm looking forward to that," said McNeil, who added he would be spending his Saturday night at a church dinner in his home riding.

McNeil was again asked whether someone had jumped the gun and pre-empted an announcement that is usually made by the premier.

"Well there's no campaign," he laughed.

Progressive Conservative Leader Jamie Baillie said he didn't see what happened as being funny.

Baillie said the episode looks bad on the government, and how it has handled the run-up to what seems to be an imminent election call.

"It just shows that we've got to get away from this style of leadership where you pretend you're presenting a real budget and really you are planning an election," he said. "That's why I've been in favour of fixed election dates and this is probably the strongest argument yet."

Nova Scotia is the only province in Canada without a fixed election date.

Keith Doucette, The Canadian Press

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Nova Scotia's governing Liberals pull campaign ad suggesting May 30 election - rdnewsnow.com