A few months back I asked the question of the Republican Party - If you can't make a story as black and white as the killing of Kate Steinle part of the debate over illegal immigration, why do you even bother to exist? Recent events have me asking the same question again: First off, revisiting the killing of Kate Steinle, National Review's Mark Krikorian reports:
Sure enough, Senate Democrats voted to prevent debate on a bill to rein in sanctuary cities that shield illegal-alien criminals from deportation. The final tally was 54-45, short of the 60 votes needed just to proceed to debate on the bill. Manchin and Donnelly were the only Democrats to vote for it, Kirk the only Republican to vote against. (Graham didn’t vote.)So when Illinois Democrat Luis Gutierrez, the most strident anti-borders voice in the House, called the murder of Kate Steinle in the sanctuary city of San Francisco “a little thing,” he seems to have been speaking for his party. The only question now is whether Republicans will even try to make this a campaign issue. Cruz probably will, since he took to the Senate floor before the vote to urge its passage, but it will take more than that. Will party leaders go on the Sunday talk shows this weekend and denounce Democrats for protecting criminals? Will Jeb Bush hammer the issue on the campaign trail? Not likely.The Radical Left has no problem raising poster children to sainthood status, no matter how outrageous the actual stories may be - see Trayvon Martib, Sandra Fluke, Michael Brown, Cindy Sheehan, etc. Or most recently, there is Ahmed Mohammed, but we'll come back to him shortly. At the end of the day even though Conservative principles are superior, those of the radical Left have been winning because they do a better job of messaging, and part of that is storytelling. Individual stories help to humanize complex issues, and if the Republicans can't use this to make the case you have to wonder why they bother to exist.
Meanwhile, Rebecca Reynolds Yonker reports over at the AP about a school district in Tennessee that will be closing because it can't afford its new Obamacare premiums:
Classes in a small, financially struggling school district in northern Tennessee have been canceled until officials can find a way to generate more revenue.Clay County Director of Schools Jerry Strong said the school board made the decision Thursday night after struggling with budget concerns for three years. He said the district doesn't have enough money to pay for partially unfunded government mandates.This is just one of many, many stories of people who have been hurt by this piece of legislative date-rape that the Radical Left forced onto the American people. You don't think when serious talks of repeal emerge the left won't be prepared with some sob story of someone who would die without Obamacare? There are many different stories and angles showing the negative impact of the law - guess which one story is the one that will be repeated over and over?
"Clay County's inability to generate the revenue to offset the mandates is what's caused this to come to a head," he said. "The straw that broke the camel's back was really the Affordable Care Act for us and it has made it very difficult for us to have our employees properly covered and meet the mandates of the law. That was going to require new revenue and the commission felt like they couldn't do that through a tax increase."
"The choice was to either close schools and deal with this now or keep schools open and spend ourselves until we have nothing in our fund balance at all," he said.
"This is a poor, rural county and we already have the seventh-highest property tax rate in the whole state of Tennessee," he said. "Our property taxes, they're high enough."
Next up, Governor Mark Dayton decided to lecture his citizens at a talk for the NAACP on accepting more immigrants. Powerline's John Hinderaker weighs in:
From the start of the event, Dayton bluntly stated his opinions on the racial tension in St. Cloud and across the state in regards to immigration.“Look around you. This is Minnesota,” Dayton said. “Minnesota is not like it was 30, 50 years ago. But, this is Minnesota and you have every right to be here. And anybody who cannot accept your right to be here and this is Minnesota should find another state.”Hinderaker raises serious questions about these remarks:
Dayton said he was aware of some of the racial issues happening in the St. Cloud area and urged participants to take a stand against what he described as “unacceptable, un-Minnesotan, illegal and immoral” behavior.
“If you are that intolerant, if you are that much of a racist or a bigot, then find another state. Find a state where the minority population is 1 percent or whatever. It’s not that in Minnesota. It’s not going to be again. It’s not going to be that in St. Cloud, or Rochester or Worthington,” Dayton said.…
Dayton said many organizations are providing assistance to those who are arriving in Minnesota. But he said the key reason many immigrants choose to come to Minnesota is because of the jobs Minnesota provides.
Really? The data suggest otherwise:
Even though Minnesota has a good job market, that doesn’t seem to have translated into jobs for the Somali refugees. Minnesota’s state demographer’s office reports that only 41 percent of Somali men are working and 54 percent of Somali women are employed, meaning many may rely on the state’s handouts to survive, and are more susceptible to extremists’ pull. Minnesota has one of the nation’s most lavish welfare systems. Dayton’s rant continued:
“Our economy cannot expand based on, white, B+, Minnesota-born citizens. We don’t have enough,” Dayton said.
Wow. Those “white, B+ Minnesota-born citizens” just can’t cut it anymore. Can anyone imagine a politician of any stripe making a remotely comparable remark about citizens of any other race? And Dayton is talking about his own constituents: over 80% of Minnesotans are white, and the proportion of voters is higher. Dayton won’t run for governor again, so, like lots of other Democrats, he is taking the gloves off.
Two questions remain: first, what did Dayton mean by the “B+” reference? I think it derives from Garrison Keillor, the leftist who for years has found a home on public radio. All Minnesotans, as Keillor says, are “above average”–B+, in Dayton’s account.Second, why didn’t Dayton’s racist rant get more publicity? Because not many people read the St. Cloud Times. A great many people, on the other hand, read the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The Strib did report on Dayton’s St. Cloud adventure, but its account was carefully sanitized. No “love immigration or leave Minnesota” rhetoric, and above all, no reference to the “white, B+, Minnesota-born citizens” who can no longer sustain our economy. The Strib knows the first rule of journalism: the job of a reporter is to run interference for the Democratic Party.This is exactly the sort of story that should be broadcast loud and clear. Leftists will sneer at us as they wave their finger and lecture us about helping other, but get damned quiet when you ask how many of these refugees they're inviting into their own homes or at least suggesting that a refugee center be put in their own neighborhoods. It's not difficult to demonstrate the hypocrisy and contempt that most leftists have for this country and it's values. Maybe it would be a good idea to go on the offensive and point out to the people the politicians and propaganda outlets who despise them so?
And finally, back to Ahmed Mohammed, aka "The clock bomb boy". When the story first broke it created a nice little uproar in social media. And then the story sort of unraveled. Not only was this clock not an invention, but his family has a history of being Islamic agitators. As Mark Steyn wrote:
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
