[guest post by JVW]

When we last checked-in with our friend ex-Congresswoman Katie Hill (D-CA) just about one year ago, she was ignobly leaving Congress after evidence of a sexual affair with a campaign staffer and highly-believable allegations of a sexual affair with a member of her Congressional office staff had come to light. The story was sordid and gross, involving polyamory, nude pictures, possible blackmail, substance abuse, and other aspects that are better left unmentioned. Though Ms. Hill had taken advantage of the MeToo movement to rise to federal office at the tender age of 31, her poor judgement in her own romantic life led to House Democrat leadership prevailing upon her to resign.

And of course, in a totally 2020 sort of way, the young bisexual Ms. Hill became a martyr to a certain brand of feminist who assumes that women are always the victim in any sexual relationship gone wrong. They worked to switch the narrative from Katie Hill as a hypocrite who made poor decisions to Katie Hill as a victim of Puritanical expectations for LBGTQ female politicians and a nasty smear campaign orchestrated by her jilted abusive cis-normative white male husband. It became standard on the lifestyle left to claim that the former Congresswoman had resigned office due to a revenge porn scandal, rather than her own bad decisions and credible ethics violations. A self-serving memoir written by Ms. Hill has recently been optioned by Hollywood producer Michael Seitzman with Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale set to portray the heroine. Ms. Hill exulted that the film version would further her goal of “tak[ing] back my story from those who have exploited and twisted it.”

But today yesterday her ex-staffers registered their objection to Ms. Hill’s image rehabilitation. Writing on her former Congressional Twitter account, they begin to push back on preferred narrative promoted by Ms. Hill, and portray her as being an abusive and manipulative boss. The full set of tweets can be found at the link in the previous sentence, but I’ll add some screenshots of them here, for those of you who don’t want to sully yourselves by visiting Twitter and in case the tweets mysteriously disappear (note: I am not showing all the tweets in the thread, so to see the full stream in proper order you should visit the link).

I suppose it will be interesting to see if Mr. Seitzman and Ms. Moss proceed with the hagiography. One of the dumber aspects of our modern times is our insistence upon seeing various public figures as either entirely blameless victims or else as utterly incorrigible perpetrators. In a perfect world, Ms. Hill would have disappeared into the background, perhaps even taking a useful job in a healthcare-related field or otherwise doing good works for society. Instead, she seems bound and determined to keep her name in the public eye, so I’m not going to waste any sympathy on her should her reputation continue to get dragged down by the people whom she has apparently wronged. Her former seat is now held by a Republican who appears to be a halfway decent guy, so between that and these new allegations perhaps the Democrats will sensibly close the door on any future political aspirations that Katie Hill may harbor.

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

As a follow-up to last Friday’s story about the sexual imbroglio that freshman Representative Katie Hill of California’s 25th District finds herself in, the Congresswoman earlier today announced her imminent resignation, expected to be formalized later this week:

It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community, and our country.

See my official statement below. https://t.co/RO8B0znc6C

— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) October 27, 2019

Though her decision to quit strongly suggests that she was indeed, despite her denials, engaging in a forbidden sexual relationship with her legislative director, Ms. Hill still finds the need to cast herself as a victim, insisting:

This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation.

Whatever you say, sweetie. Only next time, try avoiding hopping into the sack with selected members of your campaign staff, especially those whom you bring along with you to your office staff. I haven’t been following the story on RedState, but according to this Fox News report there have also been allegations that Ms. Hill is a heavy drinker. Yes, I know: Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd can’t understand why that would be a problem at all. And, of course, in her resignation statement Ms. Hill treated us to the requisite psychobabble in explaining her peculiar peccadillos:

For the mistakes made along the way and the people who have been hurt, I am so sorry, and I am learning – I am not a perfect person and never pretended to be. It’s one of the things that made my race so special. I hope it showed others that they do belong, that their voice does matter, and that they do have a place in this country.

But fear not, Democrats. It would appear that four or five Republicans, including such distinguished figures as — (checking notes) — George Papadopoulos are considering running for the open seat, so they will almost certainly tear themselves up to shreds thus allowing some typical time-serving Democrat hack to come in and keep the seat in the donkey category.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Poor Hillary Clinton. Not only did she get clobbered in New Hampshire by the Sexist Socialist, she also lost every demographic group other than the 65+ crowd and those making over $200,000.

Perhaps her landslide loss this week speaks to voters being weary of her never-ending presence on the national stage and being tired of her yelling at them. Certainly their increasing distrust of her greatly factored into the outcome. Considering everything from Benghazi, to her email scandal, to an FBI investigation, well, any of these would cause a rational person to harbor grave doubts and misgivings about her judgement and trustworthiness.

And then there is her hypocrisy. Consider her close ties to Wall Street. She earned big Wall Street money giving big speeches. Speeches, by the way, whose content she would rather you didn’t know. And no wonder. Pandering is always fraught with danger. You pander to a special interest group one day, the next day you are excoriating them before voters for their mere existence. It’s quite a juggling act, and one that will cost dearly if you are exposed.

Clearly there are a number of reasons why she lost so badly.

I’m guessing that most shocking, and frankly, embarrassing to her is that the iconic feminist of all feminists lost the vote of women.

If you’re the self-proclaimed savior of women who claims to have spent an entire lifetime championing women’s rights and are running on a campaign platform of the same, to lose the vote of your people has to be the biggest blow of all.

But when one considers Hillary’s inability on the campaign trail to successfully address accusations about smearing women who accused her husband of sexual abuse and rape, and enabling his bad behavior toward women, one is not convinced that she has ever been a friend to women.

Further, it’s not wise to try to guilt women into voting for you. While women may like to play the guilt trip on their kids, and even their husbands, they don’t like it being played on them. So trotting out Madeline Albright to threaten women with going to hell if they didn’t vote for Hillary was bound to backfire.

To make matters worse, when Gloria Steinem steps in and makes a profoundly sexist accusation and blames young women’s hormones for not supporting Hillary, it shouldn’t be surprising that those young women get righteously pissed off about being treated in such a condescending manner.

Simply put, Hillary Clinton cannot win by simultaneously campaigning on a platform of feminism and women’s rights, and at the same time, insult the intelligence of the very women she hopes to convince.

With that, Carly Fiorina, who ended her campaign for the presidency yesterday, keeps it simple, because it is:

To young girls and women across the country, I say: do not let others define you. Do not listen to anyone who says you have to vote a certain way or for a certain candidate because you’re a woman. That is not feminism. Feminism doesn’t shut down conversations or threaten women. It is not about ideology. It is not a weapon to wield against your political opponent. A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses and uses all her God-given gifts. And always remember that a leader is not born, but made. Choose leadership.

This is a woman I can respect.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

From confirmation note from Texas Southern Univ, which is hosting Hillary Clinton's voting rights speech tomorrow pic.twitter.com/87PPv11jHu

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) June 3, 2015

Hillary imperiously says no to the press, yet again. Nora Desmond of the campaign trail: “My speech is my interview.”

Huh?

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill claims the campaign did not approve the language on the notice released by the university – the university that seeks to shield a woman who wants to be president of the United States from facing tough questions about those sticky wickets she’d rather continue avoiding. Because transparency is clearly not in her best interest. And isn’t that who all of this is about in the first place? Certainly not the voters.

On the upside, from the university:

“There will be wifi and restrooms available.

So the press has that going for them.

In comparison, in just a mere two days of being a declared candidate, Martin O’Malley has taken 70 uncensored questions from the press.

Anyway, if this nomination thing doesn’t work out for Hillary, Bernie Sanders would like her to consider being his vice-president.

–Dana

[guest post by JVW]

Of course I refer to California, and especially to a huge dysfunctional city/county like Los Angeles. From CalMatters with bolded emphasis added by me:

Jesus Mares got a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to rental support from one of Los Angeles’ leading homelessness agencies, he had a roof over his head.

He had been bouncing between sleeping in his car and hotel rooms. The taxpayer-subsidized room in a South L.A. duplex provided stability until he could get back on his feet, he’d hoped.

It went well for a while, he said. Then Mares quickly noticed things were amiss with the nonprofit, known as HOPICS. He went through several case managers who Mares said didn’t come to see him.

Then came the eviction notice. HOPICS, which has received about $140 million in Los Angeles city, county, state and federal funding over the last three years for a program known as rapid re-housing, was months behind on paying his rent, according to Mares and his former landlord.

Altogether, 306 residents of Los Angeles County lost their homes thanks to HOPICS failing to keep up on the rent subsidies. While the CalMatters piece assures us that “more than half were then placed in permanent housing or sent to temporary sites,” there are apparently 119 formerly-housed souls who are unaccounted for, though in interviews with former program participants CalMatters has ascertained that at least some of them are on the streets or are living in their automobiles. Perhaps others are incarcerated or even dead. Where did it all go wrong? According to documents reviewed by CalMatters, it was the usual mix of ineptitude such as a failure to properly vet middlemen who connected homeless residents with housing, utter and complete laziness like ignoring repeated warnings from landlords that the rent was in arrears, and that annoying sort of progressive grandiosity which in this case was taking on far too many clients than the program could properly manage.

Naturally, HOPICS (which stands for Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System) blames their problems on an embarrassment of riches, i.e. the piles and piles of COVID money that the government was happy to shovel into the economic furnace over the past three years. The program hired the aforementioned middlemen, many of them from fly-by-night nonprofits that suddenly sprung up when the government started making it rain with all of the Jacksons, Grants, and Benjamins that they were feverishly printing late at night. You won’t be surprised to hear that HOPICS found some “questionable charges” on the invoices submitted by these middlemen, and investigating them started clogging up the whole payment process. And, of course, the eviction moratoriums being extended well beyond the point when the pandemic had started to subside ensured that there was no real urgency for HOPICS to act in a timely manner.

HOPICS itself is a division of Special Service for Groups (SSG), which is an outfit so well-managed and tightly run that their homepage still loads a pop-up window which decries the Atlanta massage parlor shootings of March 2021. So apparently none of their $149.1 million budget in 2022 (up from $84 million in 2018; the pandemic sure was a boon to some organizations) went to updating the website.

There’s more, much more, about the nexus between private nonprofits and taxpayer money, about the history of HOPICS from its founding in the early 1980s to today, about why the organization turned so readily to middlemen to place people in homes (spoiler: it was partially about fooling landlords), and about how the organization’s alleged due diligence in checking and double-checking these invoices has led to some landlords being owed upwards of $200,000 for the past two years and has put much of this in our county court system. It’s the usual story about a program operating under the premise of good intentions going awry through the randomness of the human element, and how undertaking charitable works can be fairly big business these days in a county like Los Angeles and a state like California (SSG has at least eight executives making somewhere between $200,000 and $320,639, and overall a healthy $66.4 million out of 2022’s total expenses of $147 million went to wages and benefits for employees). What’s the old joke about the missionary who ended up owning a diamond mine in Rhodesia? He went there to do good, and he ended up doing very well.

But the best coda to this story is that there is a quote from our dear old friend, former U.S. Representative Katie Hill, who is now a deputy director at HOPICS and who has spent a good portion of her non-Congressional career in the social services racket. She is still immersed in the contemporary psychobabble by which the the Millennials explain their foibles: “This is a lot of money that has gone towards a program that has shown that it can house a lot of people. It’s not perfect in any way, shape, or form, and it’s evolving, and we’re learning as we go.”

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

UPDATE [9/14/23, 2:00 pm]

I can’t help it; this is hilarious and sums up the hyprocrisy pretty nicely (hat tip to Powerline):

Democrats in 2003: “Stay out of our bedroom!”

Democrats in 2023: pic.twitter.com/IkGdnugpxt

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) September 12, 2023

—— Original Post ——
Because sordid, sleazy, and gross is right up my alley.

Maybe you’ve heard mention of the story of Susanna Gibson: wife, mom, nurse-practitioner, Democrat candidate for Virginia’s House of Burgesses (i.e., the state legislature), and — well, how do we put this delicately? — camgirl on a pornographic website where she makes and distributes sex videos featuring herself and her husband in return for cash “tips.”

I have nothing of particular value to add to this story, so I’m just going to provide a round-up of others’ reactions to it. Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker finds the Democrat media up to their old tricks:

[. . .] In its effort to help the Democrats in Virginia, the [New York] Times slides from spin to outright falsehoods. It headlines: “State House Candidate in Virginia Condemns Leak of Sex Tapes.” But there was no “leak.” Susanna Gibson performed sex acts in public, for money. The videos were posted by her, not someone else. Nor was there a “sex tape,” which carries connotations of nonconsensual posting of a private video by another party. No: Gibson did this herself, publicly, for cash. And the paper’s suggestion that the story here is Gibson’s “condemnation” of Republicans, not what she did, is risible.

Just the fact that the NYT referred to the product as sex “tapes” shows how hopeless stuck in the Clinton 90s that paper truly is. [Confession: in the second paragraph to this post I instinctively wrote “sex tapes” too, before I managed to recall that we are living in 2023 and there is pretty much zero chance that VHS comes into play at all here.] Mr. Hinderaker then suggests that Ms. Gibson and her enablers are out to lunch when they attempt to claim that GOP efforts to spotlight the unusual hobby of the Democrat candidate amount to violations of Virginia’s nebulous “revenge porn” law.

It is true that “[r]eleasing damaging information about candidates of the opposing party…is an age-old political practice.” But the Times’s characterization of “releasing damaging information” presumes that Gibson was entitled to engage in public sex for money without the fact becoming known to voters. In fact, the “release” of damaging information was done by Gibson when she uploaded her videos (there were more than a dozen) to Chaturbate, to be watched by the public. And, yes, this situation is “highly unusual.” It is unusual because most politicians do not use porn sites to engage in sex acts for money.

Writing in The Spectator, Cockburn turns his jaundiced eye to the particulars of the matter and discovers that Ms. Gibson actually violated the terms and conditions of her sex video hosting service:

In her streams, Gibson could be seen prompting her 5,770 followers for “tips” in exchange for various sexual acts with her husband, who looks like a lost, and less talented, Manning brother. Tips are paid in the form of “tokens” purchased through the site. Asking for them apparently violates Chaturbate’s house rules. “Requesting or demanding specific acts for tips may result in a ban from the Platform for all parties involved,” the site’s policy says.

Gibson is a shrewd businesswoman though and won’t often settle for a measly one or two tokens. “I need, like, more tokens before I let him do that,” she responded to a request to perform a certain act with her husband. “One token, no. More. Raising money for a good cause.” In another video, she promised that for 500 tokens she would order room service in a hotel so the delivery person could see her naked. [. . .]

There some more gross stuff about Ms. Gibson in Cockburn’s column, so if like me you appreciate the raunchy details you will find them there.

Jeffrey Blehar at NRO is disgusted by said details, but he puts on a brave face and finds a bit of humor in the whole affair, though he recognizes that there is a quite sorrowful part to the story too:

The story’s details — and I will leave you to the links in this case rather than recounting them myself — are excruciating. (The sexual ones are unworthy of specific mention; the moment at which Mrs. Gibson pauses in the midst of said acts unworthy of mention to chirp that the payments for them are going to a “good cause” are an unfortunate matter for campaign-finance lawyers to scrutinize.) I want to start by clarifying that I understand that one must put on a brave face when caught in an intolerably embarrassing situation. Though I myself have never been caught running a pornographic live-cam side hustle after having asked a party’s voters to entrust me with its nomination, I think we can all agree that it’s the sort of “rookie mistake” anyone could have made.

[. . .]

I actually find it more difficult to be funny about this story than I otherwise might, and the reason is that I’ll never understand the internal psychology of a person who engages in this sort of public exhibitionism, much less then goes out and seeks nomination for public office (Gibson’s primary was not a blowout by any means) with it not just in their past, but their active present. And, more than anything else, because — although this is obviously newsworthy — I shudder to think of the consequences for her family. There’s no punch line to end on here, just a lament about the tawdriness of our demotic era and the invisible damage done.

It was obvious as the Baby Boom generation came to power that we would inevitably at some point end up with a First Lady who had posed nude during her modeling career (as well as the wife of a British Prime Minister who had done the same thing on a much more informal level), and it’s reasonably likely that at some point we’ll have a member of Congress who posed for Playboy while in college or who was photographed streaking through the campus quad one drunken evening. Heaven knows, Italy was electing a pornographic actress to to their parliament 36 years ago, so maybe Puritan America is just decidedly behind the times. But given the social crusading left’s zeal to provide legitimacy to what they deem as “sex work,” does that really mean that we’re ready to entrust our representation to the likes of Susanna Gibson? I guess we’ll find out, and perhaps quite soon.

But spare a kind thought for the pioneering Katie Hill, would ya’?

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

The House race between incumbent Congressman Mike Garcia who was only recently elected back in May to finish the term of disgraced Congresswoman Katie Hill, and his Democrat challenger state Assemblywoman Christy Smith is, as Frank Sinatra used to sing, closer than smog when it clings to El Lay. Mr. Garcia, who defeated Ms. Smith in the May special election runoff by a 55%-45% margin, ended last Tuesday’s election evening with a small lead, only to see Ms. Smith jump ahead over the weekend by about 1,000 votes. In the past couple of days, however, the lead has swung back ever-so-slightly to the incumbent, with Mr. Garcia as of this writing holding a tiny .048% lead (yes, you read that correctly) of 159 votes out of over 330,000 counted. This is a good time to remind everyone that California has given itself until December 4 to complete their counts and December 11 to certify results, so expect this to end up dragging on through to a recount.

I mention this today because Congressman Garcia, who flew missions in Iraq as a Navy fighter pilot, spoke this morning at a Veteran’s Day commemoration event held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library which is located in his California 25th Congressional District. It was a fine speech in which he referred to the Reagan Library as “my Graceland,” eliciting an appreciative chuckle from the audience. Unfortunately it does not appear that his remarks have been posted to YouTube just yet, so I’ll try to add them if they do appear later today. In the meantime, the main address was delivered by Mr. Garcia’s Washington DC colleague, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, who as usual hit it out of the park. Enjoy, and here’s saluting our Veterans on this day of remembrance.

– JVW

The Lincoln Project makes some pretty compelling ads that likely get under Donald Trump’s skin. I have considered myself pretty simpatico with the philosophy of George Conway: a conservative appalled by what he sees in the Oval Office who wants it gone. He was once more of a Trumper than I could ever have been in any lifetime, but I rationalized that this allowed him to experience the zeal of a convert. Overly zealous for my taste at times, but spurring an enthusiasm for the effort to oust Trump that the more phlegmatic personalities like me could never muster.

But the evidence is now overwhelming that his Lincoln Project is simply a Democrat effort. I can’t support it.

First there’s this article in National Review:

The gap between the group’s rhetoric and its actions is enormous. The Times op-ed declared that “national Republicans have done far worse than simply march along to Mr. Trump’s beat. Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope.” And yet the group’s focus thus far has been on vulnerable Senate Republicans, notably the moderate Susan Collins and the mainstream Cory Gardner, who haven’t exhibited any such behavior. Neither has Joni Ernst, another target.

The Lincoln Project’s ads don’t attack these GOP senators for supporting profligate federal spending, contributing to explosive debt, or enabling feckless foreign policy, nor do they bash President Trump for his incoherent trade policy or his failure to tame an ascendant administrative state. Rather, they attack Republicans from the left, in terms that please the Lincoln Project’s predominantly progressive funders. Rarely, across dozens of ads, is a political principle recognizable to anyone as center-right to be found. Is the Lincoln Project aware of who Abraham Lincoln was?

And then the kicker:

This makes sense when one examines the Lincoln Project’s FEC filings. To date, the group has spent nearly $100,000 for “fundraising consulting services” with the Katz Watson Group. That firm’s founder, Fran Katz Watson, is a lifelong Democratic operative who previously worked as the national finance director for the Democratic National Committee. The firm’s long list of left-wing clients includes the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Beto for Senate. In addition, the Lincoln Project has spent large sums contracting with Elrod Strategies, the firm run by Adrienne Elrod, former director of strategic communications for Hillary for America, and has paid Zachary Czajkowski handsomely for “political strategy.” Czajkowski’s resume includes work for Barack Obama, former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton, and disgraced former California representative Katie Hill.

But if there still were any doubt it was erased by this tweet (and thread) from Greg Sargent at the Washington Post:

3) Here's a fascinating bit of news: @ProjectLincoln will work *against* GOP Senators who try to obstruct Joe Biden's agenda, should he win the presidency.

Founder @jwgop tells me the group is wary of any rerun of what GOP Senators did to Obama in 2009:https://t.co/Po7HE628Nx pic.twitter.com/kX5Jb03HvP

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) July 20, 2020

From the linked article, an interview with co-founder John Weaver:

The group is preparing to vehemently oppose efforts by GOP senators to obstruct and stymie Biden’s agenda, should he win the presidency, Weaver confirmed.

. . . .

Weaver insisted the group would actively work against Republicans who obstruct a Biden presidency, which would face a deeper crisis than in 2009, when Republicans tried to obstruct Obama in hopes of profiting off continuing economic misery.

. . . .

“Trickle-down economics has proven not to work,” Weaver said, allowing that “growing and growing” inequality is a big reason the American people are losing faith in government, which is often said to have helped Trump’s rise.

I can see opposing Senators who have supported Trump and Trumpism, even if it makes the Republican agenda more difficult in the near term, based on the argument that it’s necessary for the party in the long term to curb-stomp Trumpism as hard as possible.

But even if you’re as committed as I am to relegating Trumpism to the ash heap of history, pursuing a Democrat agenda after the election is indefensible.

If the Lincoln Project will be pushing a Democrat agenda after the election, they are Democrats. It’s really that simple.

[guest post by JVW]

Those of us who have been in California for two decades or longer have seen a slow, inexorable decline of the Republican Party in the state. When I arrived, Pete Wilson had won reelection as governor two years earlier, and though Bill Clinton would win the state for a second consecutive election later that fall (after six straight elections where the Golden State had gone for the GOP candidate), exactly half of California’s 52 Congressional districts elected Republicans that year. Nearly a quarter-century later, the tide as emphatically turned as Hillary Clinton won the state by over three million votes and just two years later Democrats took 46 out of the state’s 53 House seats. Combined with a decade of Democrat governors and now super-majorities in both state legislative houses, the GOP has been reduced to the parsley garnish on the politial steak dinner plate.

But could that be changing? The first significant pushback to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdown order came from Huntington Beach, in a nominally-Republican congressional district that a Democrat managed to capture two years ago. Though the state ended up swatting down Huntington Beach’s attempt to reopen the beach before the state had granted authorization, it’s not hard to imagine that Huntington’s move greatly accelerated the state’s plans and forced them to relax their stringent plans. And now even the governor’s fellow Democrats are pushing him to speed up the process for returning to some semblance of normality. Gov. Newsom, who just last week was warning us that restrictions would likely last throughout the summer, is now optimistically suggesting that sporting events — sans stands manned with tanned fans — could return to the state as early as two weeks from now. We can try to believe that these developments coincidentally arose independently of the protests, but it seems far more likely that state Democrats are starting to understand that they may have overreacted just a wee bit.

A second shoe dropping was last week’s special election where Republican candidate Mike Garcia won a surprise victory to serve out the remainder of disgraced Democrat Katie Hill’s term in California’s 25th Congressional District. Though the party registration is divided equally between Republicans and Democrats, the donkey party bailed out on the race once their candidate beclowned herself with an intemperate remark about Mr. Garcia’s military service, and the party decided to cut bait and hope to win the seat back in the general election this fall, when they presume Democrat turnout will be higher.

And finally, one of the most positive developments is that the few remaining GOP legislators in Sacramento seem to have coalesced around a workable agenda which involves cutting spending, holding taxes as low as possible, and removing the ridiculous levels of red-tape that Democrats have used to tie up businesses over the past decade-plus. Republican Senator John Moorlach, a CPA who served as Orange County Tax Collector during the county’s bankrupcy in the mid-1990s, has been at the forefront of pushing for budget and regulatory reforms. Though super-majority Democrats can easily swat aside his bills, Sen. Moorlach has started to attract some support form across the aisle among those Dems who are starting to understand that their party’s hyper-progressivism might be a constraint upon getting the economy restarted. This past week, Sen. Moorlach introduced a bill that would have entered California into a multi-state licensing compact where nurses from the Golden State would be licensed to practice in other states who have signed on to the compact, and vice-versa. This bill was supported by hospitals, the AARP, health insurance providers, and dozens of other stake-holders, but was opposed by the California Nurses’ Association, a militant left-wing union whom progressive Democrat legislators are loathe to cross. Despite this, the bill was narrowly defeated in committee on a 5-4 margin, with two Democrats bucking the powerful union and voting in support of the compact. Could it be that even some Democrats are beginning to understand that business as usual is not going to pull us out of this economic malaise? Sen. Moorlach is also taking the lead on challenging Sacramento Democrats to get serious about budget and spending reform, so here’s hoping his efforts bear at least some fruit.

As I’ve written before, I am not going to be making any predictions for this November’s election, in the Golden State or anywhere else. But I am pleased to see that perhaps at long last the California GOP is getting its act together and providing at least the appearance of opposition to the Sandersista socialists in Sacramento.

[UPDATE]: Sorry folks, this post was kind of a mess. I accidentally published it a couple of hours ago, so I copied it, trashed it, and then pasted it into a new post. But I guess in that process a portion of the post got deleted by mistake, so when it was published the second time around I was horrified to discover that some paragraphs were missing. I’ve tried my best to reconstruct it, but I beg your forgiveness if it seems somewhat slap-dash (because it is).

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Whenever I write about politicians with gross attitudes toward women and their happy willingness to objectify them in the most demeaning of ways, Trump always comes to mind because he is the biggest reminder that a disturbingly huge swath of Americans don’t really care about the character or moral clarity of those elected to lead. And now we have Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders demonstrating a similar who cares attitude as he endorses a well-known misogynistic sleazebag:

Bernie Sanders endorsed a California congressional candidate Thursday with a long history of making crude and degrading comments about women and provocative statements about Jews, Muslims and other groups.

The Democratic presidential candidate said Cenk Uygur, founder and co-host of “The Young Turks” online talk show, is “a voice that we desperately need in Congress” to fill the seat of former Rep. Katie Hill of Santa Clarita.

In one episode in 2013, Uygur ranked women on a scale of 1 to 10 on how likely men would be to let them perform oral sex on them.

Uygur also defended the Harvard University men’s soccer team in 2016 for ranking the sexual appeal of female students on a scale of 1 to 10 on a widely shared “scouting report,” including explicit descriptions of potential sex acts with the women.

“We’ve been doing it for as long as humanity has existed, so they put it in a Google doc — not guilty,” said Uygur, who has promoted Sanders on his program.

In 2007, Uygur used the n-word multiple times in a show about Duane “Dog” Chapman after the celebrity bounty hunter used the racial slur.

Charming guy. So, if Sanders thinks this is the “voice that [Democrats] desperately need in Congress,” then that is quite an insight into Bernie Sanders and his willingness to overlook disgusting behavior because the end justifies the means, or perhaps because sexism and the harassment of women is just a continuing part of his campaign. I don’t know. Clearly any candidate running for the presidency is not going to give his his imprimatur to just anyone. The candidate will have obviously been fully vetted and researched before an endorsement is given. Also, Uygur is not some unknown, new kid on the block. His misogynistic sleaze has been very thoroughly documented.

Reminiscent of another middle-aged Democrat trying to avoid taking full responsibility for his actions, Uygur blames conservatism for his foul behavior:

“The stuff I wrote back then was really insensitive and ignorant,” Uygur said. “If you read that today, what I wrote 18 years ago, and you’re offended by it, you’re 100 percent right. And anyone who is subjected to that material, I apologize to. And I deeply regret having written that stuff when I was a different guy.”

Uygur also noted that at the time, he “was still a conservative who thought that stuff was politically incorrect and edgy.

OK, got it: a part of conservative orthodoxy is that right-leaning men not only want to be edgy, but think that being “edgy” means making disgusting comments like those that Uygur has made:

An entry from 2000 complaining about his lack of sex declared that “the genes of women are flawed” because they “do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peaceably and fruitfully.”

Another entry titled, “Rules of Dating,” said he would break up with a woman if he hadn’t felt her “tits” by the fourth date, and that “there must be orgasm by the fifth date.”

Anyway, not all Democrats are on board with Bernie endorsing Uygur:

Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, president of California Young Democrats, a group that backs Sanders, had called on the Vermont senator to withdraw his endorsement of Uygur.

“We think that he doesn’t necessarily reflect the movement that Sen. Sanders has built,” he said.

Mark Gonzalez, chairman of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, had also called on Sanders to “disavow” Uygur and pull his endorsement. Uygur’s “vulgarity, his hate speech and divisive rhetoric have no place in our party,” Gonzalez said…

UPDATE:

.@cenkuygur has been a longtime fighter against corruption. However, our movement is bigger than any one person. I hear my supporters who were frustrated and understand their concerns. Cenk today said he is rejecting all endorsements for his campaign and I retract my endorsement.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 13, 2019

What a load of bullshit. What a weaselly way for two weaselly men to wiggle out of a tangled web of their own making. As if Sanders or anyone on his team didn’t already know about Uygur’s misogyny. Just google “Cenk Uygur” and all his nastiness is there for anyone to see. Note, too, that Sanders doesn’t even mention Uygur’s misogyny in his tweet. As if the very thing that the complaints were focused on doesn’t exist.

Elizabeth Warren, opportunity is knocking loudly at your door…

–Dana