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In the past few weeks, progressives have gone into paroxysms of pleasure over the results of two special Congressional elections. In Kansas, James Thompson managed to LOSE by over eight thousand votes. In Georgia, Joel Ossoff found a way to fight another day by forcing a runoff election in June. Alas, the way that progressives count votes, both of these developments are counted as "moral victories". However, in the real world of politics, the one result is a defeat and the other is still a pipe dream.

I hate raining on the progressive parade, I really do. They get so excited over moral victories, sort of like small children on Christmas morning, jumping up and down in anticipation and excitement. It's kind of heart warming to see really. Their little cheeks get all red and rosy and their smiles could light up a room. But, at the end of the day, the sad fact is that Republican Ron Estes is now sitting in Congress and Jim Thompson is back practicing law or whatever else he does in his spare time. While Joel Ossoff can take some consolation in the fact that he came in first in the Georgia special election, he faces a steep uphill climb if he expects to address himself as Congressman Ossoff.

Oh, it IS gratifying to be competitive in Congressional districts that had previously been considered lost causes just six months ago, but losing is still losing and there are no consolation prizes in politics. Unlike the Special Olympics, in politics there are winners and there are losers and the winners invariably say deal while the losers just say cut the cards. As the late Tip O'Neill used to say, "politics ain't bean bag!".

There is a hard political lesson to be learned from conservatives. You constantly have to keep your eyes on the prize. There is no "off season" in politics. While progressives may be doing a happy dance that Joel Ossoff got 48.1% of the vote, conservatives are spending THEIR time planning for the rest of the elections coming up in 2017, the 2018 mid-terms, and the 2020 general election. They're recruiting candidates from a large bench of office holders who already know how to win an election and who have been promised they will have whatever resources they need in order to run a successful campaign.

The problem with the progressive approach to politics is that they view politics like a game, a more advanced form of three dimensional chess. Conservatives see politics as war and they will do anything and everything in order to win it. Yes, it's true, this approach takes all the joy and sheer spontaneity OUT of politics, but it DOES have its rewards. Republicans now control every branch of the federal government, and as bad as things may seem for Republicans right now, it is more than likely that they will dominate the political arena for many years to come.

This is the harsh reality of politics. It's not the fantasy world of meaningless polls and impractical pipe dreams that progressives seem so eager to occupy. It is hard and tough and mean. It's definitely a big boy's game, not some playground confection like Ring Around the Rosie. Unless and until progressives get their heads out of the sand and become fully engaged in the grim reality of the political world, they will be treated to moral victory after moral victory until they're moral victoried out of existence!

More here:
Progressives, "Moral Victory" Is Just A Euphemism For Defeat! - ChicagoNow (blog)

For as long as I can remember, Ive been a Jackie Robinson admirer.

Rather, Major League Baseball was arguably still at the summit of pop culture in that era, where the NFL and Hollywood sit today. Before we knew who Charlie Chaplin was, had talkies, or tossed around a pigskin, Major League Baseball had become Americas pastime. Leisure pursuits come and they go, Hobbs, they come and they go. But the one constant throughout all the years had been baseball.

Therefore, Robinson wasnt just breaking the Major League Baseball color barrier. He was essentially breaking the color barrier.

Robinson was the first four-sport letterman ever at UCLA, one of the most successful collegiate sports programs in history. He served in the army for a country that didnt want to give him the same rights as white soldiers. Faced almost daily with mans inhumanity to man as he embarked on his pro baseball career, Robinson turned the other cheek. He became one of the best examples of public Christ-likeness in the national spotlight in recent memory.

But that doesnt mean he backed down like a coward. Instead, Robinson took his frustration out on the competition and let his play do the talking. He became a perennial all-star, World Series champion, and the first player ever to win both Rookie of the Year and MVP during the course of his career.

In short, Robinson was a real man in every sense of the term.

I own a Jackie Robinson throwback jersey. When the excellent movie 42 came out a few years ago, I made each of our kids see it twice because I wanted them to know what real injustice and real courage look like.

So when ESPN Radio decided to honor the 70th anniversary of Robinsons MLB debut during a show I was listening to Saturday morning, my ears perked up. Surely, I thought, not even the obnoxiously progressive ESPN could blow this one.

Sadly, I thought wrong.

The entire segment consisted of an interview with a white guy bemoaning the lack of black players in MLB these days and then claiming black players in MLB have an obligation to get more black people into the sport, all the while never telling us why; just that its a shame there arent more black players.

Setting aside for a moment that a progressive white guy saying black folks arent doing enough to fight fake racism is pretty much the most progressive ESPN thing ever, it also happens to be anathema to Robinsons legacy.

The reason Robinson was the first black player in MLB isnt because Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and others werent good enough. Its because they werent allowed in simply because they were black. The worth of their measure wasnt even considered, because they were instantly disqualified by their pigmentation. Thats institutional racism. Young black athletes voluntarily losing interest in baseball in 2017, for various reasons, is not.

In 1947, baseball was pretty much the one professional team sport in which you could make a life-changing amount of money. The NFL was still a niche. The NBA wasnt even founded until 1946. Hockey was just an original six. Therefore, if you were young, black, and gifted, there werent many opportunities in team sports beyond baseball for upward mobility. Nowadays there are. In fact, baseball is a definite third now, in terms of popularity and branding, behind the NFL and NBA.

Of course, that was never mentioned in the ESPN interview.

Neither was the real reason that its bad for baseball to be losing popularity in the black community. Its less than ideal for 12 percent of the population, which also happens to be one of the demos most invested in sports, to needlessly be losing interest in your sports product. Thats a simple economic reality and a bottom line any business plan in any industry would prefer to avoid.

Of course, that was never mentioned in the ESPN interview, either.

Instead, ESPN lamented the loss of black interest in MLB for the sake of counting people by the color of their skin not the content of their character.

Wasnt the point of what Robinson did to open up opportunities for those with the talent and ability to achieve excellence on their own merits, which were being denied because players were viewed only by their skin color rather than their skill set? Now ESPN is arguing for black players to be in MLB just because theyre black.

ESPN supposedly sought to celebrate Robinsons breaking of the color barrier. Instead, it effectively sought to perpetuate a new one. The networks descent into the mouth of politically correct madness continues.

Steve Deace is broadcast nationally each weeknight on CRTV. He is the author of the book A Nefarious Plot.

More here:
ESPN's white progressives turn Jackie Robinson Day into yet another fake racism day - Conservative Review

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On Mondays broadcast of MSNBCs Hardball, host Chris Matthews told Georgia Congressional candidate Jon Ossoff (D) his answer on what to do to companies who hire people in the country illegally was a failure to be comprehensive that progressives have.

After Ossoff touted immigration reform with border security and a path to legal status to non-felons who are in the country illegally, Matthews asked, But what do we do to stop themagnet of illegal jobs, which is the reason people come here. How do you stop people from hiring people illegally, how do you do that?

Ossoff replied, Well, the best way to stop it is to secure the border, and, provide a path to legal status so folks can come out of the shadows.

Matthews then cut in, No, what do we do about enforcing those people who no, this is what this the failure to be comprehensive. What do you do to enforce our immigration laws? Ossoff answered that there should be stricter penalties for those who knowingly employ those who dont have proper documentation because that deprives law-abiding American citizens of work. But that in and of itself, Chris, is not a solution, unless there is both a border security element, and the pathway to legal status.

Matthews then stated, The point that you finally got to is the one that progressives tend to skip, and I think thats the lack of comprehensiveness.

Follow IanHanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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Matthews to Ossoff: You and Progressives Have 'Failure' of Not Having Solution to Companies Hiring Illegal Immigrants - Breitbart News

PORTLAND, Maine When Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez arrive at the State Theatre tonight, David Bright would be there. Bright, an organic farmer who helped Sanders win the states Democratic caucuses, was one of Maines four voters in the electoral college. Hed used that role to cast a protest vote for Sanders, relenting and casting a futile vote for Hillary Clinton only after state law forced him to.

His opinion of the Democratic Partys establishment had not improved much since then.

The DNC has dropped the ball on one congressional campaign after another, Bright said in an interview before driving from his farm to Portland. The only way Perez would be safe to come to Maine is to have Bernie by his side. Otherwise, progressives in this state would tear him apart.

Portland, the bluest dot in a state that has trended Republican in recent years, is the launchpad for a week-long Sanders/Perez campaign tour. The team-up came last month, but last week, when Democrats lost a closer-than-expected House race in Kansas, the reasons for doing it became clearer. While energy on the left has risen since November, the partys base can still tumble into debates about who to blame for its defeats, with the left doing most of the talking.

The Perez-Sanders tour will not go through any state holding a congressional election soon, though it will boost Heath Mello, the Democrat running for mayor of Omaha. In a Monday morning interview on NPR, Perez praised Mello and said that Democrats had contributed to the Kansas race in ways that perhaps had gone unseen.

We invested in the following ways: When people were out there knocking on doors, they were using the DNCs voter file, he said. We were monitoring the election very closely with the state party. We did robo-calls at their request. Pointing to the 20-point swing toward Democrats, Perez said that if we replicate that success everywhere, we will flip the House in 2018.

James Thompson, the Kansas Democrat who lost last week, wrote on Twitter that disappointed progressives should focus on upcoming races instead of casting blame. Colin Curtis, Thompsons campaign manager, said that some people just want to be angry, and while the Democratic Party support had been pro forma, it hadnt been a surprise.

Do I wish they would have come in earlier? Sure, Curtis said. But at the end of the day we didnt plan on them doing it.

Progressives were not just critical of the partys spending they were critical of its messaging. Brett Vars, a 23-year-old who works at a grocery store outside Maines largest city, showed up to the State Theatre seven hours before Sanders was set to speak. He liked Perezs record as labor secretary, but was disappointed with how he talked about the Democratic Party, with lines about leading with our values that did not get into policy. In 2016, hed voted for the Green Partys Jill Stein for president, and was hopeful about Democrats, but also interested in Maines new ranked-choice voting law, which could benefit a left-wing third party.

It would be interesting to see what the Green Party could do if it got some power, Vars said.

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Perez-Sanders tour kicks off in Maine amid progressive skepticism - Bangor Daily News

Tens of thousands of Americans are expected to turn out for Tax Day marches Saturday to protest Donald Trumps refusal to release his tax returns. And while theres little hope their pressure will prompt the president to reconsider his controversial decision to keep those financial records private, organizers and leading Democrats also aim to use the rallies as an opening salvo in the national tax reform debate thats expected to dominate much of the spring and summer.

RELATED:Americans Still Want to See Trump's Tax Returns

Tax policieslack a certain sexiness as a cause, one of the marchs national organizers, Maura Quint, concedes. But she and others on the executive committee are hoping that the progressive anger over Trump and his lack of transparency can help launch the discussion about tax fairness and economic justice, issues that are implicit in the debate over how to structurethe U.S. tax code. Were hoping this can kind of push those things to the forefront of discussion, says Quint, and make it clear as well, to all politicians not just Trump, that this is something that the American people do care about.

The idea for the march sprung, like much of the #Resistance organizing thats happened since Trumps election, out of social media. A day after the January 21 Womens Marches, which drew millions of protesters in a multinational show of fury against Trumps inauguration, two private citizens in different parts of the country tweeted calls for another protest. Trump claims no one cares about his taxes. The next mass protest should be on Tax Day to prove him wrong, tweeted Frank Lesser, a comedy writer who formerly worked for Comedy Centrals Colbert Report. That was echoed by Vermont Law School Professor Jennifer Taub, who urged a nationwide #showusyourtaxes protest on April 15. Their messages quickly went viral.

Quint, who helps nonprofit groups plan events and writes comedy on the side, remembers retweeting Lessers tweet, along with some stupid joke. Then, after seeing the enormous response the idea was generating online, she reached out to Lesser, who she knows through comedy circles, to offer to help plan it. People started Facebook page events for different cities, on their own, Quint says. Organizers began reaching to the various tax march planners around the country to suggest we should all do this together; well be much more powerful that way, she recounts. As of now, there are tax marches planned in 180 cities and counting.

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, for the Good Friday holiday and Easter weekend, April 13, 2017. Trump critics around the country are protesting his refusal to release his tax returns Saturday. Yuri Gripas/REUTERS

The planners are realistic about the chances the president, after refusing to release his tax returns throughout the 2016 campaign, will suddenly have a change of heart now. It was yet another precedent Trump bucked during his unorthodox run to the White Housethough theres no law requiring it, all major party candidates over the past several decades have voluntarily released their returns. Where the protests can have more of an impact is directing the anger many feel about the president hiding his tax returns towardthe policy debate that will affect all of theirs. It wasnt that long ago, after all, that a movement calling itself the Tea Party launched on Tax Day, 2009, around the issue of taxes and government spending.

Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House have made clear tax reform is a top priority for 2017. Hours after House Republicans canceled a vote on their health care proposal, Trump told reporters at the White House that, We will probably start going very, very strongly for the big tax cuts and tax reform, that will be next. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin even promised the government would pass a new tax law by August, although most GOP leaders now admit theres no way theyll meet that timeline.

In fact, they are still toiling over what basic elements to include in their proposal, with various factions within the party battling over exactly how to cut corporate and personal income taxes and how to make up the loss in government revenue that will result. House Republicans, led by Speaker Paul Ryan, unveiled a tax reform blueprint last year that would slash corporate and personal tax rates. House Republicans proposed paying for those cuts via deep cuts in Medicaid funding and by instituting a new tax on imported goods, known as a border adjustment tax. The former, however, was reliant on Republicans passing their Obamacare repeal bill, which is currently stalled. And Republicans are deeply divided on the border adjustment tax proposal.

The White House, meanwhile, has been noncommittal about that and many other provisions, even as Trump administration officials insist they will be the ones to determine the ultimate shape of the bill. I think its not clear what the White House strategy is on this, as you know theyre capable of floating trial balloons every 24 hours and then deflating them, says Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, the leading Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees tax policy. Wyden attended a meeting with the president on trade and taxes in March, alongside Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, his Republican counterpart on the Finance Committee, and Congressmen Kevin Brady and Richard Neal, the Houses leaders on tax policy. He insists there are are opportunities for bipartisan agreement on tax reformAmericans of all political philosophies understand how broken the system is, he says.

But Democrats are sure to loathe most of what Republicans are considering on taxes, given that their proposals would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, according to analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The challenge for progressive critics is helping the public understand whats at stake, amidst all the arcane tax code talk. Wyden recounts how, at a recent town hall he hosted in Oregon, some people asked him about the tax changes Republicans had proposed in their repeal of Obamacare, and what the impact would be. I said, well, take a look at your paycheck, which shows deductions for the Medicare tax. Under the now-defunct GOP bill, the only people who would get a cut in their Medicare tax were couples making over $250,000 a year, he pointed out. Wydens listeners, he says, were beside themselves. Trump, himself, is also a powerful symbol of the way the wealthy are able to game the current tax codethe limited records that have been made public suggest he could have used several loopholes to dramatically reduce his own taxes.

Its those kinds of tax fairness issues that progressives are now hoping to rally people around as the reform debate heats up. One of the speakers in Washington, D.C. will be a fast food worker and Fight for $15 campaigner named Priscilla Evans, who, in prepared remarks, plans to talk about how the fast-food industry underpays its employees, forcing them to rely on taxpayer-funded public assistance. The labor union-backed Fight for $15, which is campaigning to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour around the country, is just one of roughly 70 progressive groups that have signed up as national co-sponsors of the march. Wyden and several Democrats in Congress are also scheduled to speak at the D.C. rally, which kicks off at the Capitol before marchers make their way down past the White House to the Lincoln Memorial.

Wyden says he plans to point to Trump to make the case the current system is broken. Youd like to think the president would say, hey, Id like to be part of the solution rather than contribute to the problem, which is what he is doing by breaking with 40 years of history and possibly taking advantage of some of the worst and most offensive abuses in the system.

Read the rest here:
With Marches, Progressives Enter the Tax Reform Debate - Newsweek