Our Ignorance of Socialism Is Dangerous

Walter E. Williams

A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42 percent prefer the latter.

Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was view him favorably. Lenin was the first premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Half of millennials have never heard of communist Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1959 and was responsible for the deaths of 45 million Chinese people.

The number of people who died at the hands of Josef Stalin may be as high as 62 million. However, almost one-third of millennials think former President George W. Bush is responsible for more killings than Stalin.

By the way, Adolf Hitler, head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was responsible for the deaths of about 20 million people. The Nazis come in as a poor third in terms of history’s most prolific mass murderers. According to professor Rudolph Rummel’s research, the 20th century, mankind’s most brutal century, saw 262 million people’s lives destroyed at the hands of their own governments.

Young people who weren’t alive during World War II and its Cold War aftermath might be forgiven for not knowing the horrors of socialism. Some of their beliefs represent their having been indoctrinated by their K-12 teachers and college professors.

There was such leftist hate for Bush that it’s not out of the question that those 32 percent of millennials were taught by their teachers and professors that Bush murdered more people than Stalin.

America’s communists, socialists, and Marxists have little knowledge of socialist history. Bradley Birzer, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, explains this in an article for The American Conservative titled “Socialists and Fascists Have Always Been Kissing Cousins.”

Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1925, “It would be better for us to end our existence under Bolshevism than to endure slavery under capitalism.” This Nazi sentiment might be shared by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his comrade Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Goebbels added, “I think it is terrible that we and the communists are bashing in each other’s heads.”

When the tragedies of socialist regimes—such as those in Venezuela, the USSR, China, Cuba, and many others—are pointed out to America’s leftists, they hold up Sweden as their socialist role model. But they are absolutely wrong about Sweden.

Johan Norberg points this out in his documentary “Sweden: Lessons for America?” Americans might be surprised to learn that Sweden’s experiment with socialism was a relatively brief flirtation, lasting about 20 years and ending in disillusionment and reform.

Reason magazine reports:

Sweden began rolling back government in the early 1990s, recapturing the entrepreneurial spirit that made it a wealthy country to begin with. High taxation and a generous array of government benefits are still around. But now it’s also a nation of school vouchers, free trade, open immigration, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws.

School vouchers, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws are practices deeply offensive to America’s leftists.

Our young people are not the first Americans to admire tyrants and cutthroats. W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, “Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman” and “a quiet, unobtrusive man.”

There was even leftist admiration for Hitler and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as “a very remarkable man, a very able man.” President Franklin Roosevelt called Mussolini “admirable,” and he was “deeply impressed by what he [had] accomplished.”

In 1972, John Kenneth Galbraith visited communist China and praised Mao and the Chinese economic system. His Harvard University colleague John K. Fairbank believed that America could learn much from the Cultural Revolution, saying, “Americans may find in China’s collective life today an ingredient of personal moral concern for one’s neighbor that has a lesson for us all.”

Are Americans who admire the world’s most brutal regimes miseducated or stupid? Or do they have some kind of devious agenda?

SOURCE 

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Allen West: Progressive, Socialist Left Will Use and Forget Anyone to Attain Control, Power/b>

I have previously shared on this platform the three branches of rule for the progressive, socialist left. If you recall, they are, academia, courts, and the media. It is vital to have an organization like the Media Research Center (“MRC”), for whom I am a Senior Fellow, that evidences the bias emanating from the liberal, progressive media. There can be no further debate that the leftist media has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the progressive, socialist left. They have seemingly lost their sense of objectivity and focus more on being a propaganda wing of the Democratic Party, and their distortions of the truth enable the leftist mob.

Case in point: last weekend the leftist media was up in arms about our U.S. Border Patrol agents using a non-lethal means, tear gas, to disperse violent protests at our southern border. These were protests where rocks and bottles were being thrown, and our border was forcibly breached. What did the left-leaning media focus on? Yes, they used a picture of a woman and two kids running away from a tear gas canister. First, whomever threw that canister that far needs to be a quarterback in the NFL. However, it was a branch of the MRC, Newsbusters, that reminded us all that during the Obama administration they used tear gas and pepper spray along the border against rioters.

Ya know, it’s just another little fact that it appears the left-leaning media did not want to disclose.

And so, it is, we are just about a month away from having a new Congress sworn in, one which will include a Democratic House majority. So, during my Sunday morning five mile run, I thought about it: How much will the liberal, progressive media not disclose as we go into this new House majority?

I remember a 1985 song by one of my favorite rock bands, Simple Minds, called “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” It was a song on the soundtrack to the movie “The Breakfast Club.” But as I pondered this new Democratic House majority, I had some interesting thoughts.

As we know, Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) will be the incoming Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Nadler has already made it rather clear that he will be seeking an investigation, and potential impeachment, of newly seated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Hmm, has anyone thought about how abjectly absurd that would be? On what grounds, basis, would Chairman Nadler seek to impeach Justice Kavanaugh? At this time there have been no rulings issued from this current court. Oh, that’s right, the left still believes Justice Kavanaugh is guilty of something. How very perplexing, and odd, that we have not heard the media chirping about Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick? These women, who were front and center in the leftist news, have, it seems, all been forgotten. But there is one thing we can say, these allegations brought forward appear to have been false. So, will Chairman Nadler be looking into that or is this just to be forgotten. Based upon what we have seen in the leftist news media, they have moved on, forgotten it.

Then there is incoming House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman, Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Lord knows this guy will be all over the TV cameras even more so now. His focus will certainly be on the illusive, “Bigfoot”-like, Russian collusion story. I mean, two years into this and what has been revealed? Ahh, but ‘We are so close,’ the leftist media will tell you, to the impeachment of President Trump and the infamous smoking gun. Most recently, the liberal, progressive media has been salivating over the guilty plea of former Trump businessman attorney Michael Cohen. However, this is an individual who has just about as much credibility as a hungry rattlesnake telling a mouse it is on a diet.

For some odd reason, I do not think we will hear Chairman Schiff talking at all about these names – Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Paige, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, and Fusion GPS.

Yes, these are more names that it appears the liberal, progressive media has forgotten. As a matter of fact, if you try and enter into a discussion with someone who patronizes the leftist media and ask them of these names, you will get the most disturbing “deer in the headlights” look. And of course, the response will be, “that’s just a Fox News made up lie.” Let’s be honest, the only folks who had anything to do with Russian collusion were those who coordinated with Russian operatives to produce what appears to have been a false, politicized, dossier that was used to create a FBI investigation by way of presenting to the FISA court under omission of certain disclosures.

I just do not think this will be a priority for Chairman Adam Schiff or incoming House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings. And thanks to a complicit leftist media and the social media platforms that undoubtedly are censoring constitutional conservative speech, thoughts, perspectives, and insights, the message will be controlled as to what the progressive socialists want disclosed.

These are very dangerous times in these United States of America. I will go back and reiterate that we still have no one being held responsible for Americans being abandoned to die in a combat zone attacked by Islamic jihadists – four Americans lost their lives: Amb. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty Woods, and Glen Doherty. Their souls still cry out, “Don’t you forget about me.” But when it comes to the progressive, socialist left, it is all about their ideological agenda. They will use and forget anyone they please in their quest for one simple objective: control, power.

I admonish you to remember these names. Don’t forget them, as you will not be hearing of them anymore, but they must resonate.

Those names are Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Paige, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, and Fusion GPS. We hear at the Media Research Center will not forget those names, and we will continue to stand guard against the liberal, progressive media and their insidious propaganda machine.

Yes, our First Amendment advocates for a Free Press, but only we can ensure that we have a responsible press. Don’t you forget about that.

Allen West is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. Mr. West is a Senior Fellow at the Media Research Center to support its mission to expose and neutralize liberal media bias and is the author of  “Hold Texas, Hold the Nation: Victory or Death.” He pens a daily column for his personal website at theoldschoolpatriot.com.

SOURCE 

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Is It Time to Punish False Accusers?

Should deliberately false reports of sexual assault be subject to the same legal penalties as false reports of other felonies? Right now, accusers who lie about sexual abuse are criminally liable for filing a false report and perjury, as well as civil sanctions for defamation, but legal consequences rarely occur.

The question was spotlighted by the accusations surrounding Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh. It was clear during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing: An accusation of sexual assault can devastate a man’s life, family and future. Those who reject the account of his main accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, don’t suggest bringing legal proceedings against her. A sincere report of sexual abuse should not be penalized for being confused or mistaken.

Jeffrey Catalan and Julie Swetnick are different stories; in the wake of Ford’s accusations, Catalan and Swetnick claimed to have witnessed sexual abuse by Kavanaugh; Catalan quickly recanted. But the chairman of the Senate Committee that presided over Kavanaugh’s hearing has asked for an official review of the claim as a possible crime. In a NBC interview Swetnick contradicted a sworn statement to the Committee, which had implicated Kavanaugh in gang rapes. Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has called for Swetnick to be investigated and then prosecuted for perjury, if appropriate.

The debate on how to handle blatantly false accusations of sexual abuse has re-opened. Feminists argue that punishing any accuser chills the willingness of victims to come forward. Rule-of-law advocates counter that false accusations are not victimless crimes. In most cases a real person is named as an attacker and he or she confronts severe consequences. Genuine victims are also damaged by false allegations. Every lie casts a shadow of doubt over every future report of sexual assault. So legal disincentives should attach to the act of lying not merely to protect those falsely accused but also to encourage real victims to make reports.

False accusations on crime are everyday events

The danger of using the Kavanaugh hearing as a springboard for discussing false accusations is threefold: the session was highly politicized, with unrelated agendas attached; it was played out in the Senate, with the Supreme Court as a backdrop; and the true context of false accusations in everyday life may be lost. False accusations are not partisan, elite, or recent occurrences.

The recent re-evaluation grows out of a backlash that has raged on college campuses for over seven years. At some universities the battle has been much longer. In 2011, President Obama’s Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights sent a letter to every college that received federal funding. To continue the flow of funds colleges needed to dilute the due process that on-campus hearings offered to students accused of sexual misconduct.

The purpose: To combat sexual misconduct and to protect victims who were overwhelmingly female. Accused students were denied legal representation and the presumption of innocence, as well as standard protections of justice such as facing an accuser and questioning witnesses. As a matter of policy, accusers were to be believed.

As a result, false accusations increased—at least, that was a widespread assessment. Legal experts signed petitions in protest; lawsuits proliferated from students who had been found “guilty;” high-profile cases of false accusations rocked the media.

Finally, new Title IX guidelines were recently drawn up by the DOE’s new administration and they will be unrolled shortly. The guidelines direct colleges to restore due process rights to students accused of sexual misconduct.

The human cost of false accusations

Petitions and guidelines do not capture the human suffering that caused a rebellion against the imperative to #BelieveWomen. For that real stories are required. Consider the Flood family of Pennsylvania and their teenage son, whom the media identifies as T.F.

According to a local newspaper five girls at T.F.’s high school “terrorized” him with accusations of sexual molestation. T.F. was fired from his part-time job, “tortured in school by the other students and investigators,” expelled and “forced to endure multiple court appearances, detention in a juvenile facility, detention at home, the loss of his liberty and other damages.”

Finally, the girls confessed to lying. Why did they? One explained, “I just don’t like him...I just don’t like to hear him talk...I don’t like to look at him.” The girls have not been punished. Meanwhile, the boy is under the care of a psychologist and being schooled at home. Devastated by the experience, his parents are suing.

The Kavanaugh hearing brought the question of false accusations into people’s living rooms. That’s where the issue belongs because average and disadvantaged people need due process far more than the elite of society.

Average people have fought through centuries to gain and maintain these protections against imperious government and bad actors. The protections benefit both men and women because they stand in defense of common people. No sincere accuser, mistaken or not, should have anything to fear from impartial justice. But no intentionally false accuser should be able to bypass the protections of justice in their own self-interest.

Conclusion

#BelievetheWomen is the culmination of a push that began decades ago to achieve much-needed reform within the justice system. In the 1960s feminists crusaded against rape laws that brutalized women by treating them as though they were responsible for their own assaults. They weren’t and they aren’t, but the reform has gone too far. It is not an insult to ask for evidence when a crime is alleged. It is a sign of taking the accusation seriously and that’s what feminists crusaded for in the first place.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Apologies

Because of some minor but pesky health problems, I  will not be blogging for a while
I hope to be back on Sunday

Apartheid warriors

The American Left have revived apartheid.  Apartheid had at its core a classification of races and the application of disadvantageous policies to some of them.  With their constant obsession with race, the American Left are their heirs.  They are constantly trying to drive ethnic groups in America into antagonism towards one another -- with cries of racism, discrimination, white supremacy, white privilege etc.  In that they are actually worse than the old South Africans.  The original apartheid was designed to keep the peace between the races.  The American Left does its darndest to promote antagonism.

And, as in South Africa, the aim is to tear down one particular ethnic group: In this case whites.  They have very limited success at that but it's not for want of trying.  Any disadvantage that a minority person experiences, is automatically blamed on racism.  Leftists are constantly telling poor blacks: "You bin discriminated against".  "White racism is what is holding you back".  And that of course generates anger.

And the residential discrimination that characterized the original apartheid is strongly in place in America too.  Whites try to minimize their contacts with blacks by "white flight" --living in outer suburbs and exurbs and leaving blacks to the inner cities.  "Apartheid" means "apartness" and blacks and whites do largely live apart in America today.

It's not exactly the same as the old apartheid but the results are similar: White fear and black anger.  It's all part of the Leftist hatred of America and their wish to tear it down.  It parades as compassion for the less fortunate but if it there were any real compassion there, colorblind interpersonal harmony would be the aim.  Who benefits from America's racial tensions?  Nobody.  And that is the way the Left likes it.  They will stoke the flames of division any time they can.

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Teaching Americans to Despise America

"Congratulations to the leftists who've taken over the nation's public education system. They're now producing generations of Americans who know little about their own country, other than that they hate it." —editorial, Investor's Business Daily

Investor's Business Daily is referring to the latest YouGov poll conducted by the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness (FLAG). It questioned 1,078 Americans aged 14 and up about their knowledge of America's history, institutions and patriotism, and one suspects most Patriot Post readers know where this is going. Like this writer, regular readers at this site are beginning to realize that younger generations of Americans increasingly see us all as anachronistic pariahs with wholly illegitimate values that must be "fundamentally transformed" — out of existence. The idea expressed by John Adams that our Constitution "was made only for a moral and religious people" and is "wholly inadequate to the government of any other" no longer resonates.

Today, morality is "relative," religion is for "bitter clingers," and it's likely a majority of young Americans have never heard of John Adams. Older generations of Americans have been reduced to being proverbial keepers of the flame, hoping this nation can outlast the tsunami of orchestrated ignorance so all-encompassing that even "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is cannon-fodder for the terminally offended.

Thus, the survey's key findings are completely unsurprising:

Half of those surveyed believe the United States is sexist (50%) and racist (49%)

46% of younger Americans do not agree that "America is the greatest country in the world"

38% of younger Americans do not agree that "America has a history that we should be proud of"

One in eight (14%) of Millennials agree that "America was never a great country and it never will be"

46% of younger Americans agree that "America is more racist than other countries"

84% of Americans do not know the specific rights enumerated in the First Amendment

19% of Millennials believe that the American flag is "a sign of intolerance and hatred"

44% of younger Americans believe Barack Obama had a "bigger impact" on America than George Washington

There is a political agenda underlying every activity — an agenda historian Victor Davis Hanson accurately describes as a "progressive synopticon" where the 40-45% of traditional Americans are "relentlessly lectured, sermonized, demonized, and neutered by a 360- degree ring of prying institutional overseers."

Overseers determined to institutionalize contempt for America in general, and its exceptional nature in particular.

The late Andrew Breitbart once observed that politics is "downstream" from culture. Everything is downstream from education, and four years of "seed planting" has been expanded to 13 years, if one goes from kindergarten through the 12th grade, and 17 years if one goes on to attend one of the Marxist finishing schools purporting to be colleges.

In a column entitled, "Here's What College Freshmen Are Reading," NPR reveals how the bedrock principles of Western civilization and our constitutional republic have been supplanted by a curriculum of identity politics. The classic literature that used to be the backbone of a legitimate education? As the National Association of Scholars reveals, "67 percent of common reading books assigned were published after 2011."

Of course they were. One can only imagine the consternation that might arise if those same students were required to read something like the collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay known as The Federalist Papers. No doubt they would be astonished to discover that men routinely dismissed by many of their "woke" professors as "dead, white slave owners" had incredibly keen insight with regard to human nature. Those same students might even be embarrassed to discover that such complex ideas were published in newspapers and read by ordinary citizens.

Yet barring self-discovery, they will never know any of it. Today it is far more important to be well-versed in the politics of victimization, group grievances, genderism, racism, white supremacy, etc. Better to hate America for the sin of slavery than celebrate the enormous effort undertaken to eradicate it. Better to celebrate the "glory" of socialism while remaining largely contemptuous of the capitalism that lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in the history of the planet. Better to be so bereft of economic acumen that the idea of "free" anything actually resonates. Better to be younger Americans obsessed with "rights" even as only 11% of high schoolers could name those enumerated in the First Amendment.

Better to assume that anyone who disagrees with you is not wrong, but evil.

Given the popularity of moral relativism, the irony is stupendous. Nonetheless, reducing one's opponents to evil is, by far, the most useful convention employed by those invested in upending everything that does not align itself with progressive dogma. If one is evil, debate becomes unnecessary, and the ends of eradicating such evil justify the means for doing so — even when those means engender a justice system wholly contaminated by double standards.

"We suspected that we would find decreasing numbers of Americans well-versed in our nation's most important principles and young people less patriotic than the generations that came before, but we were totally unprepared for what our national survey reveals: an epidemic of anti-Americanism," stated FLAG founder Nick Adams.

Adams is naive. The opposite of anti-Americanism is pro-globalism, and it's time Americans (who still want to be Americans) realize the ongoing bastardization of traditions, morals, law, language, culture, and borders — along with the unconscionable student data collection taking place in America's classrooms — is all part of the same agenda. One cannot make a globalist omelet without breaking nationalist eggs, and nothing is more important than making sure America's youth are ready to "transition" from being proudly American to being "citizens of the world."

As the survey demonstrates, it is a transition well under way.

While the Senate is still controlled by Republicans, it would behoove those members of the GOP who still believe in national sovereignty to conduct nationally televised hearings exposing this agenda. Hearings that should be considered the beginning of a wholesale pushback. A pushback that must continue until the restoration of our founding principles takes hold. We have abided the wholesale inculcation of ideological conformity in lieu of independent thinking, as well as the legitimization of emotion over reason, for far too long.

SOURCE 

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Judge Gets Federalism Backwards on Sanctuary Cities

A NY judge blocks Trump's withholding of federal funding from "sanctuary" cities and states.

Yet again, a judicial despot has blocked one of President Donald Trump’s immigration actions. This time, a federal judge in New York ruled against Trump’s decision to withhold federal funding from cities or states that enact illegal-alien-harboring “sanctuary” policies. Again, Trump isn’t trying to change those laws; he’s just defunding cities and states that have them. In the ruling, however, Judge Edgardo Ramos wrote that “the separation of powers acts as a check on tyranny and the concentration of power.” Unfortunately, Ramos’s understanding and application of the Constitution’s separation of powers principle is, well, unconstitutional.

Separation of powers begins from the understanding that everything is under state and local jurisdiction unless specifically delineated by the Constitution to be a responsibility of the federal government. In this case, the issue of immigration — who is and is not allowed entry into the nation — comes under the purview of the federal government, not that of the individual states — much less cities. Logically, if individual states are free to set their own policies on immigration enforcement, what’s to stop one state’s polices from colliding with that of another state? Confusion and conflict will abound. Like national defense, immigration enforcement rightly falls under the authority of the federal government. Ramos gets federalism backwards.

Democrats and leftists are disingenuously using federalism in a bid to gain power. The irony is that their globalist agenda would end federalism, replacing it with a top-down elitist form of globalist socialism, which they love to preach as being more democratic. Communists have been playing the one-party-rule game for a long time now.

Meanwhile, Texas just filed a lawsuit against the city of San Antonio and its police chief for violating the state’s 2017 law banning sanctuary cities. According to Ramos’s understanding, would a city government have greater authority than the state government to create laws that impact the entire state, not to mention the entire country?

SOURCE 

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Barmaid Sandra attacks Sarah Sanders For No Reason At All, Implies She’s A Liar

I believe she was popular as a barmaid.  With all due respect to barmaids that is about her level

New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attacked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and implied she’s a liar for no reason at all.

On Friday, Ocasio-Cortez compared her election victory to “establishing civil rights” and the United States landing on the moon.

“We went to the moon. We electrified the nation,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We established civil rights. We enfranchised the country. We digged deep and we did it. We did it when no one else thought that we could. That’s what we did when so many of us won an election this year.”

In response, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — the father of Sarah Sanders — mocked Ocasio-Cortez for the absurd claim that her election victory in the deep blue New York district was comparable to some of America’s greatest achievements.

“Ocasio-Cortez compares her election to moon landing. Huh? Big difference. Moon landing was LUNAR, not LOONEY; Moon landing done by ppl who knew what they were doing…those who elected someone who thought there were 3 branches of Congress did NOT,” Huckabee wrote on Twitter.

Ocasio-Cortez responding by attacking Huckabee’s daughter and calling Trump’s press secretary a liar.

“A Green New Deal will take a level of ambition + innovation on the scale of the moon landing. We’ve been done it before, and can do it again. Leave the false statements to Sarah Huckabee. She’s much better at it. Also, you haven’t been a Governor of any state for 10+ years now,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

Ocasio-Cortez didn’t specify what “false statements” Sanders has made, but it’s just one of many bizarre claims the New York socialist has made recently.

SOURCE 

To use a popular Australian metaphor: She wouldn't know if you were up her.

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Trump’s $5B Border Wall Request Equals 0.11% of Federal Spending

President Donald Trump’s $5 billion request for funds to use building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border equals 0.11 percent of the estimated $4.5 trillion the federal government is expected to spend this fiscal year.

According to the Monthly Treasury Statement for October, the Office of Management and Budget has estimated that the federal government will spend a total of $4,509,641,000,000 in fiscal 2019, which started on Oct. 1.

President Trump is now asking Congress to approve $5 billion in the fiscal 2019 Department of Homeland Security appropriation to fund border wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.

That $5,000,000,000 would equal 0.11 percent of the anticipated total federal spending of $4,509,641,000,000.

To put the president’s border wall request in perspective, the federal government spent $5.587 billion in the month of October alone for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, AKA food stamps. Thus, funding food stamps for just the first month of fiscal 2019 cost more than Trump’s entire fiscal 2019 request for border wall funding.

Over all of fiscal 2018, the federal government spent $68,493,00,000 on food stamps, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement. Thus, the most recent full year of the food stamp program cost about 13.7 times as much as Trump’s border wall request.

The Homeland Security Appropriation bill that the House Appropriations Committee approved in July included $5,000,000,000 for the border wall.

“The bill includes $5,000,000,000 for new border technology and the construction of over $200 miles of new barriers to fill critical gaps along our Southwest border,” says the committee’s report on the bill.

The version of the Homeland Security Appropriation approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee, however, says that only “$1,600,000,000 shall be available for approximately 65 miles of pedestrian fencing along the southwest border in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) indicated this week that he will not support $5 billion for the border wall.

“[T]he $1.6 billion for border security negotiated by Democrats and Republicans is our position,” Schumer said at a Tuesday press briefing. “We believe that is the right way to go. … [I]f there’s any shutdown, it’s on the President Trump’s staff.”

“The Republicans are in control of the presidency, the House and the Senate, a shutdown is on their back,” said Schumer. “Stick to the $1.6 billion.”

SOURCE 

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Mexico's new president signs deal to stop migrants

In one of his first acts in office, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has signed an agreement with his counterparts from three Central American countries to establish a development plan to stem the flow of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.

The Foreign Ministry said Saturday that the plan includes a fund to generate jobs in the region and aims to attack the structural causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Thousands of migrants, mostly Hondurans, have joined caravans in recent weeks in an effort to speed through Mexico to request refuge at the U.S. border.

Dozens of migrants interviewed by The Associated Press have said they are fleeing poverty and violence in their countries of origin.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The Left’s Election Day Analysis: If We Lost, They Must’ve Cheated

A disturbing trend is emerging from the political left: When their candidates lose elections, rather than accept lawful defeat, they denounce the election itself.

In 2016, they explained away President Donald Trump’s victory as the product of Russian meddling. Now, they are blaming election losses in Florida and Georgia on “voter suppression” and other sinister acts.

In Florida, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum walked back his election night concession, claiming “tens of thousands of votes have yet to be counted,” and told supporters that a “vote denied is justice denied.”

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, described the Georgia gubernatorial race as biased against Democrat Stacey Abrams, claiming that if Abrams “had a fair election, she already would have won.” Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, announced that Abrams’ apparent defeat was a sure sign that Republicans “stole” her election.

Sure enough, when the final tally gave the victory to Republican Brian Kemp, Abrams refused to concede, because “concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper.” Instead, Abrams blamed her defeat on Kemp’s supposed “suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote.”

Such pronouncements are creating a dangerous perception within liberal ranks that electoral defeat automatically equals electoral theft. For years, the left has denounced election integrity measures as tantamount to disenfranchisement. Now they are saying the same thing about electoral defeats.

This sort of rhetoric can have profound — and dangerous — consequences. Democracy works only when the people have confidence that the electoral process is free and fair, and the outcome is valid. Sometimes, to be sure, this is not the case.

The Heritage Foundation election fraud database presently has 1,147 proven instances of fraud. Several of these cases involve elections that were overturned because enough fraudulent ballots had been cast to alter the outcome.

But there is a key distinction between those cases and liberals’ new accusations: proof.

Winning a court case to invalidate an election on the basis of fraud requires gathering significant evidence, and demonstrating, for example, that ballots were tampered with, that voters were bribed or coerced, or that elections officials rigged the results. Convicting someone on criminal election fraud charges requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s a high bar to meet, leagues beyond the reckless and unsubstantiated allegations erupting after the Florida and Georgia elections. Consider the facts.

After a machine recount, in the Florida gubernatorial race, Ron DeSantis’ 33,683 vote lead over Gillum had hardly moved at all.

And in Georgia, the left’s claims that Kemp was overseeing insidious vote suppression efforts seem nonsensical, given that voter turnout actually skyrocketed.

According to FiveThirtyEight.com, 55 percent of all eligible Georgia voters cast a ballot: “21 points higher than the state’s 1982-2014 average. That was the biggest change from the average of any state.” Exit polls indicate that minority turnout in the state may also have set records.

Still, Abrams declared to supporters that “democracy failed Georgia.” Not quite. A more apt summation of the election would be that “liberals are failing democracy.”

Telling voters that elections are only fair when their party wins sets up every election to be discounted by one side or the other. It foments distrust and dissension, and it feeds the vitriol that already pervades so many aspects of modern politics.

Some political strategists might hope that de-legitimizing the electoral process will frighten and enrage the liberal base, increase turnout, and pay dividends in 2020. If true, then the left’s cynical gamble on “voter suppression” rhetoric would be a great irony.

But for all the temptations of that approach, we can and should hope that the rhetoric of the last few weeks — overheated, baseless, and reckless as it has been — will fall by the wayside.

Even today, in an age of division and zero-sum politics, there remains something more important than winning elections: keeping our democracy.

SOURCE 

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Trump Keeps Promise to Farmers, China Folds in Negotiations

China will increase its purchases of a broad range of American products under an agreement that will stave off a tariff increase President Donald Trump had planned to impose on Jan. 1, officials announced Saturday.

China agreed to buy “a very substantial amount of agricultural, energy, industrial, and other products from the United States to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement, according to Politico.

China will “start purchasing agricultural product from our farmers immediately,” Sanders said.

In her statement, she said that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping “agreed to immediately begin negotiations on structural changes with respect to forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, non-tariff barriers, cyber intrusions and cyber theft, services and agriculture.”

Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding the President’s Working Dinner with China:

The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and President Xi Jinping of China, have just concluded what both have said was a “highly successful meeting” between themselves and their most...

“Both parties agree that they will endeavor to have this transaction completed within the next 90 days. If at the end of this period of time, the parties are unable to reach an agreement, the 10 percent tariffs will be raised to 25 percent,” she said.

Xi also agreed to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance, meaning that Chinese citizens selling the drug are subject to China’s maximum penalty, Sanders said in the statement, according to the White House media press pool.

The move represents a crackdown on the deadly synthetic opioid which kills well over 100 people a day in the U.S.

The decision came after a meeting between American and Chinese officials at the G20 summit in Argentina.

“This was an amazing and productive meeting with unlimited possibilities for both the United States and China,” Trump said. “It is my great honor to be working with President Xi.”

At the summit meeting, Trump emphasized the positive nature of his relationship with Xi, New York Times reported. “The relationship is very special — the relationship that I have with President Xi,” he said. “I think that is going to be a very primary reason why we’ll probably end up with getting something that will be good for China and good for the United States,” he said.

Xi also offered an upbeat assessment of his partnership with Trump. “Only with cooperation between us can we serve the interest of world peace and prosperity.”

SOURCE 

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These Liberal Hypocrites Build Walls Around Their Own Houses


Hillary Clinton has a border wall around her Chappaqua estate.

Although, in fairness, shouldn’t every crooked (former) federal official who houses an illegal email server in their basement spare no expense trying to keep intruders away from the classified information they’re mishandling?

I mean she can’t have anyone get in there and expose what really happened in Benghazi or what her State Department did to Julian Assange, can she?

In fact, it seems that Assange too might benefit from a wall around the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since a would-be intruder apparently tried to break in there the other day.

Maybe someone should ask Mrs. Clinton a question or two about that … under oath.

Further, the Clintons aren’t the only folks talking smack about President Donald Trump’s border wall from safely within their own fortresses of liberal hypocrisy.

Check out the walls surrounding many of the dorms at Harvard University.

I wonder, how many anti-border-wall antifa protesters “raise the drawbridge” before they retire there for the night.

Indeed, one wonders why Harvard built these walls in the first place given that the university already fields its own private deputized police force and has strategically placed emergency call boxes what seems like every 10 feet throughout its campus.

And Cambridge, Massachusetts is hardly as violent as other Democratic city strongholds like Chicago.

So, given that Harvard’s campus already seems better protected than the border, why the walls?

Regardless, for a bunch of people who are pretty outspoken against building walls, this group sure seems to like having their own.

I wonder, how would they feel about their walls, if it was them and their cohorts exposed to the whims of whoever decided to drop by unannounced — kind of like the rest of America?

Might they demand someone build something to protect them?

Methinks that they might.

SOURCE 

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The House GOP Just Got a Whole Lot Trumpier

The RINOs are out and the Trumpies are ascendant. It’ll be good theater. But will it be good for the GOP?

With Rep. Kevin McCarthy poised to become the next minority leader in the House of Representatives, Donald Trump will get his first handpicked congressional leader.

Unlike Speaker Paul Ryan, whom Trump inherited, McCarthy has seamlessly transitioned from establishment “young gun” to being (as Trump has called him) “my Kevin.” He owes his position to Trump.

To skeptics who are wondering what might change (isn’t it already Trump’s party?), there will no longer even be the pretense that House Republicans will pursue an independent agenda. Trump now controls at least one-and-a-half branches of government.

The big question is whether Trump wants to wage war (as revenge for investigations) or whether he issues an edict to cut some deals on things like infrastructure (doubtful). If Trump chooses the former, he will have a loyal contingent in the House to serve as his surrogates. And remember, being in the minority can be fun. Absent the responsibility to actually prevent crisis (see the debt ceiling) a minority party can engage in high jinks and extract concessions and compromises.

Like a meddling NFL owner watching the game from above in a press box, Trump will be phoning in some of the plays.

Remember the days when Republican leaders and presidents had to deal with those pesky conservative insurgents? Yeah, that doesn’t exist anymore. In the House, Trump now owns both the conservative revolutionaries and the Republican establishment. That’s because most of anti-Trump Republicans either (a) decided against running for reelection or (b) were (ironically) defeated because of the anti-Trump backlash in the suburbs.

Although the percentage of Republicans in House will be smaller starting in 2019, the percentage of “Trumplicans” within the GOP caucus will have increased. The result is a leaner and (literally) meaner GOP caucus. It’s an Army of Trumps.

Jim DeMint once declared that he’d “rather have 30 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters.” That was when Rubio was considered a Tea Party conservative revolutionary and Specter a liberal Republican. But the premise—that purity and combativeness mean more than having a majority—is something that Donald Trump might endorse. Nobody said remaking the party in his image wouldn’t require sacrifices and setbacks.

McCarthy’s ascension, though, isn’t the only indicator for just how Trump-tastic we can expect the GOP House caucus to get. Given that Steve Scalise and Liz Cheney are both unchallenged for their leadership posts (minority whip and House GOP conference chair, respectively), there is likely no room for a more moderate "anti-Trump" alternative.

Trumpism, it seems, is the only game in town.

Trump also reportedly is helping Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, become ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. As Politico noted, during a recent interview on Fox News, “Jordan cited conservative priorities like repealing the Affordable Care Act, building Trump's long-promised wall along the southern border…”

SOURCE 

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The stomach-turning 'ballot-harvesting' that enabled Democrats to walk off with California

The picture emerging from California's election is grotesque. How again did Democrats engineer their strange midterm victory in Orange County and in other traditionally Republican areas? In that election, apparently winning Republican candidates were all unseated as the ballots just kept arriving, and arriving, and arriving, until the results flipped. Each and every time. And no such flips happened for Republicans, just Democrats, after they learned that Republicans were winning. And Democrats say it's just 'counting all the votes.'

Welcome to ballot-harvesting.

Attorney Robert Barnes, on Twitter, noted just how problematic that new practice is: "Cali new law for 2018 election "allow anybody to walk into an elections office and hand over truckloads of vote by mail envelopes with ballots inside, no questions asked, no verified records kept. It amounts to an open invitation to large-scale vote buying, voter coercion"

Which is why it's illegal almost everywhere in the world. California, on the other hand, back in 2016, passed AB1921, a law that actually permits it. Anyone can turn in ballots now, no questions asked, no chain of custody required. Back at the time, Democrats were hollering about low turnout and how getting more turnout was a priority, even though they were running a one-party state at that time, as they are now. They painted themselves as all concerned about 'democracy' given the low rates of turnout in their districts, many of which were known as 'rotton boroughs' full of non-citizen voters. But what they really had in mind was 'ballot harvesting.' Most of the attention at the time from Republicans was focused on the involuntary registration of voters through the Department of Motor Vehicles, which has led to what was feared: the registration of illegal immigrants. But the bigger thing was going on on the outside, with the mail-in ballots nobody asked for and the apparent real purpose for these unasked for and unwanted ballot, which was ... ballot-harvesting.

I sign up for every party mail list in order to read what all political sides are thinking, so I get lots of Democratic Party mail, including polls of members, which I answer, probably horrifying Democrats who open such returned polls, as I tell them to get rid of Obamacare. If they want to know what I think, I tell them. Could the fact that I am on those lists be the reason why I got a mail-in ballot when everyone else in my household gets sample ballots and goes to the polls on election day? Despite my Republican registration, it sure sounds like it.

This signals a grotesquely changed electoral landscape. Turns out the mail-in ballots are all that matters now, because all anyone has to do is harvest, and keep harvesting them, until Democrats get the result they want. I wrote about those lingering questions in the recent midterm here.

'Count all the ballots!' has been the Democrat rallying cry. Yet in reality, it was their defense of this sneaky little project, making anyone who doen't like it someone who wants to disenfranchise people.

It's a lie. It's not about counting all the ballots in the slightest, it's about selectively counting the ballots of only voters who fill in the Democratic slots. The Democratic operative who called herself 'Lulu' in the video clip wanted to collect only the ballot of the voter in the household who had no party affiliation, not the ballots of the Republicans, so it wasn't about counting all the ballots, it was about counting all the Democratic ballots and the ballots of those on the fence who could be muscled into voting Democrat. She after all, offered to 'help' that voter, which we all know means the ballot would be filled out a certain way. Oh and here's another goodie in this: Ballots can be harvested and mailed even on election day, when the counts are happening and Democrats can see which candidates are performing weakly.

The operatives can be dispatched like flying monkeys to those districts to intrude on the private spaces of voters who maybe didn't want to vote or who were planning to go to the polls in the evening, and 'harvest' those votes. And you can bet a certain number of those ballots would be cast by people who were afraid of consequences if they didn't vote the way that ballot harvestor standing at the door wanted them to vote. After all, the harvesters, by coming to the homes, signaled they knew where the voters lived, and theoretically, many of these voters could have been illegal immigrants registered whether they liked it or not by the DMV to vote. Oh, and could the operative have steamed open the ballots to see how those people voted and make sure they were delivering the votes? With zero chain of custody rules, they certainly could.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Leftist Hate has no boundaries and no shame

Alaska was hit with a major earthquake Friday morning measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. According to Fox News, there were no reports of deaths or serious injuries, but there was some pretty serious damage — particularly given that it struck close to Alaska’s biggest city, Anchorage.

“The impact is very real, the impact is very hard, and it will require apparently a great deal of recovery and effort,” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said.

“There are homes without power. There is some concern that you may have gas line breaks that could lead to potential further disasters.”

Among those whose homes were affected by the earthquake was former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. So of course people wished her well and hoped things — oh wait, no, of course they didn’t. This is social media and liberal Twitter is horrible. RedState collected some of the better (and by that I mean worse) responses:

"Good. You and your whole TRASHY family deserve it". Yes, because there’s clearly nothing trashy about wishing ill upon the family of a political figure you don’t like.

But, hey, it made theists of some: "Proof that there is a God?"

Oh, and then there were the jokes about Palin’s troubled son, Track: "You sure those tremors weren’t from Track taking a baseball bat to your house?"

And there were standard-issue awful people: "Good. You deserved that"

Two responses really stuck out for me, however:

"I'm very glad your family is safe, also that you have to deal with what your partys pro oil drilling stance does to poor people. Maybe now you'll take a stand against efforts to increase drilling in Alaska? But prolly not"

So what does this have to do with drilling? Well, who knows? Maybe drilling caused the earth’s plates to shift or something.  You know what else can do that? Climate change, apparently:

"So sorry! Perhaps you’ll begin listening to science and climate change. It’s been knocking at your door"

It would be funny if the situation weren’t so serious.

SOURCE 

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Another hate-filled Leftist

On the floor of the Illinois House of Representatives on Tuesday,  a Democratic representative literally wished death upon the family of one of her Republican colleagues during a debate over a bill.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the debate was centered on a bill passed earlier in the year that would raise the limit on damage claims — from $100,000 to $2 million — for the families of about a dozen veterans who’d died from outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease at an Illinois veterans home.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner had amended and vetoed the bill — he reduced the raised limit from $2 million to $300,000 — and the House was holding a vote to override that veto … which it ultimately did by a vote of 71-36. (The state Senate voted for the override two weeks ago, the Tribune reported.)

During Tuesday’s debate, outgoing state House Republican leader Rep. Peter Breen had objected to overriding the veto, citing the fact that details of how the bill would work were sparse and the state had no idea how much the increased payouts would actually cost.

That’s when Democratic state Rep. Stephanie Kifowit launched her disgusting diatribe and death wish against Breen and his family on the House floor.

Kifowit said of Breen, “I would like to make him a broth of Legionella and pump it into the water system of his loved one, so that they can be infected, they can be mistreated, they can sit and suffer by getting aspirin instead of being properly treated and ultimately DIE!“

SOURCE 

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Trump’s Unwavering Tie to Israel Is Astoundingly Genuine

By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

On Tuesday, during an interview with The Washington Post, President Trump declared, “We wish to remain in the Middle East region for our interests and for Israel.”

It is once again apparent that President Trump has a deeply felt and unwavering tie to the Jewish state and the safety and viability of her citizens. His profuse commitment to Israel, and thus the Jewish people, is singular among Presidents. It is astoundingly genuine.

His commitment to Israel and the Jewish people continues despite the constant drumbeat against him from too many of the establishment liberal Jewish organizations here in America. He courageously, and with compassion, visited the Pittsburgh synagogue where in late October 11 Jews were gunned down. He did this despite the hostile, divisive, and obnoxious slogans and press releases made against him by liberal Jewish groups demanding that he not come.

By now it is obvious that liberal Jewish groups will always come up with some reason to criticize Mr. Trump’s actions no matter how sincere and good he may be. They simply don’t want him to succeed. They have an absolute devotion to leftwing ideology and causes, which guide them and are, for them, far more important than the interests of Jewish survival, Israel, and American continuity.

SOURCE 

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Alan Dershowitz: An Emblem of our National Crisis

The iconic figure in the battle to preserve this great democracy.

David Horowitz

I have admired Alan Dershowitz ever since I picked up a copy of his first book The Best Defense over thirty years ago, and read its opening words. “The difference,” he wrote, between Perry Mason’s clients and mine is that mine are guilty.” And then he explained why it was important to provide the guilty the best defense. It was to keep the prosecution – the government – honest.

Although Alan is a liberal – and he and I would probably disagree over many issues – when you think about it this idea is the bedrock of the conservative outlook. As conservatives, we believe that the root cause of social problems is not “society,” but us - our flawed nature as human beings. The people who are in government have the same impulses to lie, cheat, steel and destroy, as those they are prosecuting. But because they have the power of the state behind them, they are potentially even more dangerous than their targets. And that is why keeping them honest and holding them to the rules, to the process and the law is such a vital task in our democracy. And it is why Alan Dershowitz, a liberal and lifelong Democrat, is such an important figure to our nation in its present political crisis.

It is a tragedy for our nation that the Democratic Party itself is no longer a liberal party, committed to due process and individual rights. It has been taken over by a progressive cohort and ideology, that does not believe the root cause of our social problems is the flawed nature of individuals but instead is the oppressive nature of groups based on race, gender and sexual orientation. The disgraceful witch-hunts of President Donald Trump and Judge Brett Kavanaugh reveal a party that does not believe in due process, or innocent until proven guilty, but is comfortable with guilt by race and gender, and guilt by accusation. If the beliefs that inspire these attitudes prevail our still young republic is over.

That is why I believe Alan Dershowitz is an iconic figure – even the iconic figure - in the battle to preserve this great democracy, and restore its founding principles of equality, fairness, and respect for the rule of law. Alan is both a liberal and a Democrat – the two no longer synonymous. Today he is respected by political conservatives and vilified by progressives as the chief defender of President Trump, who is the target of a seditious attempt by the leaders of Alan’s own party to impeach and overthrow him.

So disrespectful of due process are these Democratic leaders that they have constantly invoked the 25th Amendment as grounds for impeachment. This is an amendment that was specifically designed to remove presidents incapacitated by strokes and similar catastrophic events. No one in his right mind can think that Donald Trump, who has accomplished more in his first two years in office than any president in memory, is a stroke victim.

Because Alan is a lifelong Democrat and his community of lifetime friends reflects the progressive currents that have overtaken his Party, he has been shunned and attacked by the circles he moves in. To be Alan Dershowitz requires remarkable courage, integrity, and commitment to principle – and dedication to the ingenious design of the American founders. In this time of national crisis, Alan Dershowitz is an American hero, and a beacon for a hopeful American future

The way, finally, I see Alan can be summed up in this thought: If the leaders of the Democratic Party were to become liberals like Alan Dershowitz, we would still have a two-party system, but our nation’s crisis would be over, and our democracy restored.

SOURCE 

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The Hidden Hand Behind the Migrant 'Caravan'

A look at the history and agendas of Pueblo Sin Fronteras.

On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of people at the forefront of the horde of Central American migrants that has been headed toward the United States for the past several weeks, stormed past past Mexican riot police and rushed the U.S. border at the port of entry in San Ysidro, California. Many of them threw rocks at U.S. authorities and were repelled by rounds of tear gas shot by border agents. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency reports that some of the would-be border-crossers “attempted to illegally enter the U.S. through both the northbound and southbound vehicle lanes at the port of entry itself” but “were stopped and turned back to Mexico.”

The entity chiefly responsible for organizing and leading this horde of migrants – euphemistically dubbed a “caravan” by most media outlets – is Pueblo Sin Fronteras (PSF, “People Without Borders”), a Chicago-based nonprofit organization founded in 2001 by Roberto Corona, a Mexican-born activist dedicated to promoting the rights of illegal aliens in the United States. PSF is a sister group to two other Chicago-based entities, Centro Sin Fronteras (CSF) and its outgrowth, La Familia Latina Unida (LFLU, “The United Latin Family”).

PSF is a member of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), which seeks to “protect and expand [the] civil, labor, and human rights” of day laborers in America, of whom approximately 75% are illegal aliens. Moreover, NDLON aims to “mobilize” and “organize” these workers as a unified, politically active demographic, and to force employers to establish “safer more humane environments” wherein day laborers can “earn a living” that enables them to “contribute to society and integrate into the community.”

Describing itself as “a collective of friends” who stand “in permanent solidarity with displaced peoples,” PSF began leading caravans of migrants and refugees from Central America to the U.S. in 2008. The organization pledges not only to “provide humanitarian aid and legal advice” to such sojourners, but also to “build solidarity bridges among peoples and turn down border walls imposed by greed.” Its overriding objective is to “abolish borders” and facilitate the free, unregulated movement of Central American migrants into the United States.

PSF’s executive director is Emma Lozano (pictured above), a left-wing activist who serves as co-pastor of the Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, and as the president and founder of Centro Sin Fronteras. Ms. Lozano’s late brother, the left-wing community organizer Rudy Lozano, was the father of Pepe Lozano, an activist with the Communist Party USA and the Young Communist League.

At the Lincoln United Methodist Church in 2014, PSF held a workshop that helped some 600 people apply or reapply for protection under President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive action of 2012, which shielded hundreds of thousands of young illegal aliens (under age 31) from deportation.

Last spring, PSF helped organize a “caravan” wherein hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants from Central America resolved to enter the United States illegally. The co-organizer of that “caravan” was the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project, a coalition composed of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the American Immigration Council, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

On March 23, 2018, PSF publicized the aforementioned “caravan” by issuing a press release demanding that Mexico and the United States “respect our rights as refugees and our right to dignified work to be able to support our families”; “open the[ir] borders to us because we are as much citizens as the people of the countries where we are and/or travel”; and end all “deportations which destroy families.” Ultimately, the PSF-led group disbanded in Mexico City and never reached the United States.

The much larger PSF-led horde that attempted to breach the U.S. border on Sunday originally departed from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador about six weeks ago. When its members and organizers openly declared their intent to forcibly break American immigration and asylum laws, President Donald Trump warned the governments of those three countries that if they failed to disband this massive movement on their own soil, American foreign aid to those nations would be greatly diminished.

In an October 21 press release, PSF accused Trump and the United States of using “repressive tactics” to inflict “fear and racism” on the people of Central America. Moreover, the organization demanded that Mexico declare itself a “sanctuary country” with wide-open borders.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland – one of many congressional Democrats who likewise have sided with the thousands of “caravan” members defying American law – has stated that the migrants  “should be allowed to come in” to the United States and “seek asylum” immediately. Cummings' position is emblematic of the fact that the Democratic Party has demonstrably and irrefutably become a party whose principal objective is to thoroughly transform the nature of the American electorate by means of open borders and the mass, unchecked importation of illiterate Third World peasants who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats from now until the end of time.

SOURCE 

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Trump Didn’t Create Europe’s Resentment

He just refuses to tolerate its arrogant elites.

The history of just the last 27 years illustrates how little Trump has to do with European attitudes towards America. By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Europe and its dreams of ever-closer integration into a larger transnational federation was a few years away. Suddenly there was geopolitical space for a new “superpower” freed from the old Cold War strictures. Though belonging to NATO and a committed ally of the U.S., increasingly by the early 90s the European elite often appeared to comprise a “non-aligned” movement committed to peace and global development. It also was open to transcending the old, Manichean communist-capitalist dichotomy that had long fretted European communists and socialists, not to mention more recent leftist parties like the Greens. Even before the collapse of the Soviets, “third way” alternatives were touted such as “Eurocommunism,” or frauds like “communism with a human face” were proposed and implemented. Of course, the Warsaw Pact peoples living under communism knew every human face had a boot eternally stamping it.

With the Soviet Union off the table, Europe could find space for greater independence and autonomy, and get out––though not completely––from under dependence on its powerful, arrogant American protector and its capitalist excesses.

Some saw dangers in this new arrangement, however. The collapse of one of the two poles suddenly left a new world: not one with two equally destructive nuclear powers precariously balanced by Mutually Assured Destruction, but one global “hyperpower,” as French foreign minister Hubert Védrine fretted. It was one thing for European elites to tolerate America’s outsized power and influence when posing as an equal partner in a defense pact to which one contributed little more than what NATO chief Lord Robertson called “military pygmies.” It was another to lose an adversarial counterbalance to that overbearing ally, some ideological leverage to use against the American bully when he got too arrogant or too inclined to go his own way. Europe needed an alternative to “American conditions,” the old anti-American shorthand for everything Americans do that Europeans don’t like, such as working too much and earning too much money, or sacrificing social justice and equality to greater profits and economic inequality.

This predicament created much angst among some European leaders in the 1990’s. But the opportunities seemed greater. The “international rules-based order” was given new authority by the disappearance of MAD, and by the U.S.’s binge of military cuts, the so-called “peace dividend.” Nor was the U.S. a “hyperpower” to worry about, for the Europeans claimed America still had a rival in the E.U. As French President Jacque Chirac instructed the world: “The bipolar we have known is finished, and the world of tomorrow will be multipolar. One of these essential poles will be Europe.” That didn’t mean, of course, spending billions on creating militaries that would give credibility to a boast like “essential.”

Then was when we started hearing more about Kantian “postmodern” foreign policy that had progressed beyond the Cold War balance of apocalyptic power. These non-lethal policies inflated the importance of Europe’s “soft-power” like culture, wealth, diplomacy, international institutions, multilateral covenants, and transnational agreements. With no existential Cold War threat, the soft-power tail began to wag the hard-power dog. The misbegotten multinational agreement on Iran’s nuclear development program remains of the best example of such “postmodern” naivete that ends the in appeasement of aggressors.

More HERE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Ann Coulter: ‘Trump Will Be The Last Republican President’

Anne has long been critical of illegal immigration, with an emphasis on the cultural differences of the mostly Hispanic illegals.  The people who collectively support a range of corrupt fascistic and impoverishing governments in their homelands seem highly likely to support similar policies in the USA.  And the steady drift Leftward of the Democrats would seem to be enabled by that sort of support.  With their economically destructive Fascist economic policies, the Democrats could in time make the USA as poor as any Hispanic country.  So Anne is right to be concerned about that,

She is no demographer, however.  She overlooks that the USA is always receiving a large and steady flow of well-educated English speaking conservatives.  Who might they be?  They are America's young people who have put aside childish things (1 Corinthians 13:11) and recognized the wrongness of Leftism. It happens at different ages but most people do at some time come to see that Leftism is on the wrong path.  By the time you get to your '50s there are not many Leftists around.  They have nearly all become conservatives of one sort or another. Both Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan started out as liberals.

But being conservative does not guarantee a particular vote.  Self-interest and many other things go in to a voting decision  But it is nonetheless notable that in the over 45 demographic Trump beat Hillary 52% to 44%.  And many of those who voted for the Hildabeest would have been broadly conservative oldsters who thought that Democrat welfare provision would be more generous. Welfare provision is a big factor in the minds of people whose health is declining.

So that inflow of conservative Americans will tend to dilute the effect of the Hispanic inflow. But children will also be steadily turning into adults and providing a net influx to the Left.  Will they not cancel out the conservative trend of their elders?  They might but it's not looking that way. White American women seem to be having ever-fewer children so there will be fewer children to turn into Leftists.  Nearly half of the children being born in America are to non-whites and, with the exception of the Cubans, they will mostly be Left-leaning anyway.

So the situation is not quite as dire as Anne would have it.  But there is nonetheless a lot that needs to be done. Renewed efforts to get out the elderly must be made and the dire educational scene must be reformed. America's colleges and universities have become Leftist Madrassas and legislators have to find ways of neutering that -- initially via the power of the purse but also by curriculum reform and many other measures.  Ending "Studies" degrees would eliminate a large part of the problem.  Stopping all funding of such useless degrees should be a fairly simple matter. African-American studies, for instance, are both explicitly racist and would appear to do nothing to ready a student for the workforce. Lessons in hate, more like it

And abuse of the election system which we saw such a lot of in the midterms must be severely prosecuted.  Taking her retirement money away from Brenda Snipes of Broward county would set a powerful example.

And so we come to:  THE WALL.  We have to stop the inflow of Fascistically inclined Hispanics.  Fortunately, Mr Trump has made the wall his core issue so it seems likely that he will veto every single thing the Democrats propose until they talk turkey on funding.

There is finally a solution that nobody is talking about.  The USA could import a large conservative population legally.  Why should it be only the Donks who benefit from immigration?  There are a few such populations available, the most assimilable being the white South Africans.  They are having a very hard time under black rule and almost all would get out if a way was offered.

And allowing them to immigrate to the USA could well be justified on humanitarian grounds, which means that it could be done administratively, without any need for new legislation

The howls from the Left would be epic, however.  But Trump has never been cowed by that.

Ulster Protestants are in a stressful situation too and most would again welcome an opportunity to come to America. If they all came it would be a permanent solution to Britain's nagging Irish problem so should be widely welcomed.

And most of Eastern Europe is conservative after their experience of Communism.  And Poles have already been a major immigrant group in America so more of them should be both easily arranged and attract no rational opposition from the American Left


Best selling author and conservative pundit Ann Coulter -- who early in 2016 predicted Donald Trump's presidential win -- said that because of changing demographics and the propensity of many young immigrants to vote for liberals, Donald Trump "will be the last Republican president."

In a Nov. 28 interview with Editor in-Chief Alex Marlow on Breitbart News Daily, Coulter said, “Every day, more and more immigrants turn 18 and start voting, canceling out all of your votes. It’s about five more years. Trump will be the last Republican president."

"You think, ‘Oh well, we may get another Supreme Court nomination, that will save us,'" she said.  "No, no, the Democrats – as we saw in this last election – they can’t wait 10 years for demographics to change, they have to invent the Russia conspiracy. They’re so upset about this brief interregnum with Donald Trump. No."

"Why even fight the Florida or Georgia elections?" she continued.  "The whole country will be yours moments from now. No, we can’t wait, we can’t wait."

"So, I assume they’ll pack the court," said Coulter.  "It won’t matter how many Trump appoints – he could appoint, replace four Supreme Court justices. Then President Beto [O’Rourke] or President Kamala [Harris] will come in and say, ‘Hey, I think we need four more justices on the Supreme Court.’”

Later in the interview Coulter discussed how close the 2016 race was and why the Trump team cannot plan on running the same type of race in 2020.

“They barely won the last election," Coulter said of the 2016 Trump campaign. "It was very exciting, it was great, everyone remembers election night. You always have this feeling we’re invincible and ha, ha, ha you guys are losers, you lost."

But "it was really close," she said. "You switch 80,000 votes, mostly in the industrial Midwest, and he [Trump] loses."

“I told him directly during the transition," said Coulter,  "‘If you don’t keep your promises, you run the exact same election four years from now, and just through the process of immigrants turning 18 and block voting for the Democrats, you lose the exact same election.’”

Ann Coulter's latest book, a New York Times best seller, is Resistance Is Futile! How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.

SOURCE

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The latest ill-informed and foolish rage about Russia

It is absolutely evil the way American politicians are building up Russia as a monster. They need an external enemy, it seems. Vladimir Vladimirovich hears all these bits of abuse that are thrown at himself and his country and has made known that he is offended by them but he fortunately keeps his cool.  He must think American politicians are dangerous idiots

On departure for the G-20 gathering in Buenos Aires, President Donald Trump canceled his planned weekend meeting with Vladimir Putin, citing as his reason the Russian military's seizure and holding of three Ukrainian ships and 24 sailors.

But was Putin really the provocateur in Sunday's naval clash outside Kerch Strait, the Black Sea gateway to the Sea of Azov?

Or was the provocateur Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko?

First, a bit of history.

In 2014, after the pro-Russian regime in Kiev was ousted in a coup, and a pro-NATO regime installed with U.S. backing, Putin detached and annexed Crimea, for centuries the homeport of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

With the return of Crimea, Russia now occupied both sides of Kerch Strait. And this year, Russia completed a 12-mile bridge over the strait and Putin drove the first truck across.

The Sea of Azov became a virtual Russian lake, access to which was controlled by Russia, just as access to the Black Sea is controlled by Turkey.

While the world refused to recognize the new reality, Russia began to impose rules for ships transiting the strait, including 48 hours notice to get permission.

Ukrainian vessels, including warships, would have to notify Russian authorities before passing beneath the Kerch Strait Bridge into the Sea of Azov to reach their major port of Mariupol.

Sunday, two Ukrainian artillery ships and a tug, which had sailed out of Odessa in western Ukraine, passed through what Russia now regards as its territorial waters off Crimea and the Kerch Peninsula. Destination: Mariupol.

The Ukrainian vessels refused to obey Russian directives to halt.

Russian warships fired at the Ukrainian vessels and rammed the tug. Three Ukrainian sailors were wounded, and 24 crew taken into custody.

Russia's refusal to release the sailors was given by President Trump as the reason for canceling his Putin meeting.

Moscow contends that Ukraine deliberately violated the new rules of transit that Kiev had previously observed, to create an incident.

For his part, Putin has sought to play the matter down, calling it a "border incident, nothing more."

"The incident in the Black Sea was a provocation organized by the authorities and maybe the president himself. ... (Poroshenko's) rating is falling ... so he needed to do something."

Maxim Eristavi, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, seems to concur:

"Poroshenko wants to get a head start in his election campaign. He is playing the card of commander in chief, flying around in military uniform, trying to project that he is in control."

Our U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, however, accused Russia of "outlaw actions" against the Ukrainian vessels and "an arrogant act the international community will never accept."

Predictably, our interventionists decried Russian "aggression" and demanded we back up our Ukrainian "ally" and send military aid.

Why was Poroshenko's ordering of gunboats into the Sea of Azov, while ignoring rules Russia set down for passage, provocative?

Because Poroshenko, whose warships had previously transited the strait, had to know the risk that he was taking and that Russia might resist.

Why would he provoke the Russians?

Because, with his poll numbers sinking badly, Poroshenko realizes that unless he does something dramatic, his party stands little chance in next March's elections.

Immediately after the clash, Poroshenko imposed martial law in all provinces bordering Russia and the Black Sea, declared an invasion might be imminent, demanded new Western sanctions on Moscow, called on the U.S. to stand with him, and began visiting army units in battle fatigues.

Some Westerners want even more in the way of confronting Putin.

Adrian Karatnycky of the Atlantic Council urges us to build up U.S. naval forces in the Black Sea, send anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, ratchet up sanctions on Russia, threaten to expel her from the SWIFT system of international bank transactions, and pressure Europe to cancel the Russians' Nord Stream 2 and South Stream oil pipelines into Europe.

But there is a larger issue here.

Why is control of the Kerch Strait any of our business?

Why is this our quarrel, to the point that U.S. strategists want us to confront Russia over a Crimean Peninsula that houses the Livadia Palace that was the last summer residence of Czar Nicholas II?

If Ukraine had a right to break free of Russia in 1991, why do not Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk have the right to break free of Kiev?

Why are we letting ourselves be dragged into everyone's quarrels — from who owns the islets in the South China Sea, to who owns the Senkaku and Southern Kurils; and from whether Transnistria had a right to secede from Moldova, to whether South Ossetia and Abkhazia had the right to break free of Georgia, when Georgia broke free of Russia?

Do the American people care a fig for these places? Are we really willing to risk war with Russia or China over who holds title to them?

SOURCE

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A perfect Presidential speech

Trump Literally Puts ‘Christ’ Back in Christmas at WH Christmas Tree Lighting

While some try to gloss over the fact that Christmas is a religious celebration for Christians, preferring to call Christmastime simply the “holiday season,” President Donald Trump approaches the holiday differently.

His speech during the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony at the White House on Wednesday was uplifting, appreciative and decidedly Christian.

Trump was forthright in celebrating Christ’s birth as the reason for the festivities.

After thanking everyone who made the Christmas decorations possible, the president began his speech with the story of Jesus’ birth from the Gospel of Luke.

“For Christians all across our nation, around the world, this is a sacred season that begins 2,000 years ago when Jesus Christ was born,” Trump said.

“An angel declared to the shepherds tending their flocks, ‘Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord,'” he said. “There in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph held in their hands the Son of God, the light of the world, and through Him the promise of eternal salvation.”

“No matter one’s faith or beliefs,” Trump continued, “the Christmas seasons reflects all that is best in the American spirit.”

The president talked about how Christmas is time for rejoicing with family, spreading charity and giving thanks for blessings.

He especially applauded the foster families in the crowd.

“We are especially thankful for the countless Americans who have given their time and passion to help those in need. Here in the audience today are a number of extraordinary foster families and guardians joined by the beautiful children they have welcomed into their homes. … To every child in foster care: You are the precious loved one and gift of God,” Trump said.

The president spoke of Americans as one family when he called to mind those affected by the tragedies and natural disasters of the past year.

“At this time of the year, we renew the bonds of affection between our fellow citizens, and we awaken the faith in our hearts that calls each of us to action,” he said. “As we gather loved ones, our thoughts turn to those who are rebuilding their lives after devastating wildfires, destructive hurricanes and terrible tragedy. We are one American family. We hurt together, we heal together and we will always pull through together. This is the United States of America.”

He honored first responders and those in military service, extending gratitude to them on behalf of all Americans.

“Their families are all our families, and we thank them so much for their greatness and for the incredible job they do,” Trump said.

The president concluded the speech by asking God to shed His grace on the country and to bless its people.

“We ask God to watch over this nation’s heroes and to shed His almighty grace upon our nation, and we pray that America’s light will shine more brightly and stronger than ever,” Trump said.

The president’s speech was a beautiful celebration of God and His gifts. Let’s remember to acknowledge God and give thanks to Him during the upcoming Christmas season.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Flaky Flake makes a nuisance of himself again

He has always hated Trump and wants to protect Mueller from being shut down by Trump. Thank goodness he is out in a couple of weeks.

He has no leverage anyway. The Senate is in GOP hands for the next two years so he doesn't matter. And it would be a grave mistake to let one man rule the roost the way he wants to.  Do that once and others would soon follow.  There would be a bedlam of competing special positions

It reminds me of the doings in Austria's Abgeordnetenhaus (lower house of Parliament) in the early years of the 20th century.  Many of the deputies had strongly held personal views that they would not compromise on, so almost no new laws would get through it. There was such dissatisfaction with the situation that some deputies would ring bells and sound horns in response to things they disagreed with. It was chaos.  It was so disorderly that citizens would sit in on its sessions for entertainment.

One of those sitters was the young Adolf Hitler. He ensured that nothing like that happened once he took charge


The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee canceled votes on nearly two dozen of President Trump’s judicial nominees.

The move Wednesday evening by Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican, resulted from a standoff in the panel caused by the refusal of Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona to vote for any judicial picks.

Mr. Flake has said he will oppose all judge nominations unless a bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller gets a floor vote. An effort to force one failed Wednesday.

As a result, the committee’s Thursday business meeting was canceled.

SOURCE

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Far Left Judges Starting A New Civil War

The ongoing insurrection against the duly elected government of the United States isn’t being led by the violent Far Left thugs of Antifa, nor is it being led by the political thuggery of power-hungry Democrats on Capitol Hill and in their corrupt urban strongholds – it is being led by black-robed revolutionaries working from federal courthouses, especially in the California-centered Ninth Circuit.

The latest raid on the constitutionalist forces was led by U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar who preemptively prohibited the President from declining to process the asylum claims of aliens who enter the United States illegally.

The Mexican government says it is aiding more than 5,600 migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala on the U.S. border — 2,610 in Tijuana and 2,995 in Mexicali.

Judge Tigar, appointed by President Barack Obama, issued a 37-page ruling that appears to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld President Trump’s Executive Order barring travelers from a list of majority-Muslim nations

According to the Washington Post, four Far-Left advocacy groups — the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, Al Otro Lado, Innovation Law Lab and Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles — filed suit over the asylum policy hours after the administration issued the new rule in early November.

The order is full of political comments and dicta that render it more of an open borders manifesto than a sober judgement of the legal authorities and precedents that were relied upon in constructing the President’s Executive Orders issued earlier this month.

Tigar’s TRO was the latest in a series of judge-led assaults on presidential authority to defend the United States against the illegal alien invasion and the internal enemies that seek to facilitate it. As the Washington Post noted, federal judges have temporarily blocked President Trump’s efforts to strip funding from ‘sanctuary’ cities and rescind temporary work permits and deportation protections from roughly 1 million illegal aliens who were protected by Obama and thwarted the President’s “zero tolerance” policy that was intended to detain illegal aliens to prevent them from refusing to appear for asylum hearings and simply disappearing into the United States.

Our friend Andrew C. McCarthy, writing for National Review, predicted Tigar’s ruling well before it was issued, writing:

"Therefore, the fact that the administration’s action is entirely reasonable will not matter. No more will it matter that, contrary to numbing media repetition, the rule and proclamation derive from federal statutory law. Nor will it make any difference that, in part, the president is relying on the same sweeping congressional authorization based on which, just four months ago, the Supreme Court affirmed his authority to control the ingress of aliens based on his assessment of national-security needs.

Just two things will matter. The first is that the asylum restrictions represent a Trump policy that reverses Obama policies — specifically, policies of more lax border enforcement, and of ignoring congressionally authorized means of preventing illegal aliens from filing frivolous asylum petitions (with the result that many of them are released, evading further proceedings and deportation). The second is that, precisely to thwart the reversal of Obama policies, President Obama made certain that the vast majority of the 329 federal judges he appointed were progressive activists in the Obama mold.

The media-Democrat complex will tell you this is “the rule of law.” In reality, it is the rule of lawyers: the Lawyer Left on the front line of American decision-making, a line that runs through courtrooms, not Capitol Hill."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called Tigar’s ruling “yet another example of activist judges imposing their open borders policy preferences.”

“This decision will open the floodgates, inviting countless illegal aliens to pour into our country on the American taxpayer’s dime,” she said in a statement. “We will take all necessary action to defend the executive branch’s lawful response to the crisis at our southern border.”

What Andy McCarthy calls “the front line of American decision-making” is no longer decision-making; it is an all-out Civil War with Far-Left activist judges acting as the shock troops of the insurgents.

SOURCE

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The rise of the mind-reading left

Imputing the motives of one’s opponents is no way to win an argument.

The Oxford Union faced heavy criticism last week for extending an invitation to Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist. When asked to defend the decision, the president of the union, Stephen Horvath, explained that it ‘is only through listening to the opinions of others that we can fully understand those opinions’. This is not only a reasonable and measured response, it also has the advantage of being true.

In an article for the Guardian, Fred Dimbleby attacked the union for its decision, and in doing so exemplified one of the most troubling aspects of the censorial mindset. ‘So why has the Oxford Union invited him?’, asked Dimbleby, a somewhat redundant question given that he had already quoted Horvath’s answer. But Dimbleby apparently knows the ghastly truth: ‘It’s for the excitement. Leaders of the union are titillated by the idea of having someone like Bannon speak at their institution.’

I am less interested in Dimbleby’s fatuous arguments against freedom of speech, and more in what his article reveals about the intellectually defunct approach of so many on the left. Too often we see polemicists attempting to intuit the motives of those with whom they disagree. Speculation would be one thing, but the certainty which they tend to make these assumptions is chilling. Dimbleby’s sixth sense apparently knows no bounds. He shouldn’t be writing articles for the Guardian, he should be vying for Mystic Meg’s job.

Not only does he claim to have a telepathic insight into the minds of the Oxford Union’s standing committee, he also knows for sure that Bannon is a fascist. As far as I am aware, Bannon has never expressed support for imperialism, the violent suppression of political opposition, or a paramilitary coup against the state. Bannon may be a right-wing nationalist with whom I share little ideological common ground, but I also know that to brand him a fascist would be to open myself up to accusations of historical illiteracy.

It is rarely possible nowadays to read an article by a leftist identitarian without the writer at some point divining the secret motives of his or her adversaries. It is the same mentality that has led so many to assume that the Brexit vote was predominantly driven by xenophobia. In a broad poll analysis by the Centre for Social Investigation at the London School of Economics, it was discovered that Leavers were ‘better at characterising Remainers’ reasons than vice versa – something which may be linked to progressives’ greater tendency to disengage from their political opponents’. The findings are depressing, but no great surprise.

After the election of Donald Trump, leftists desperately sought to understand why people had not voted in the ‘correct’ way. It soon became clear that a nuanced discussion of the possibilities was to be rejected in favour of groundless assertions. So we had Suzanne Moore diagnosing the majority of American women as suffering from ‘internalised misogyny’ because they voted Republican. It apparently didn’t cross her mind that there might be women out there who simply do not share her political perspective.

In a similar vein, Laurie Penny decided that Trump won because of ‘white resentment’ born of a frustration that ‘women, migrants and people of colour no longer seem to know their proper place’. When Trump supporters express concern for ‘ordinary people’, Penny tells us, ‘they mean white people’. Few would be foolish enough to deny that there are many individuals whose politics are motivated by prejudice, but this kind of blanket assessment of such a broad contingent of the electorate is hardly a productive tactic.

And last week Carole Cadwalladr, feature writer for the Observer, accused BBC interviewer Andrew Neil of trying to limit her speech by comparing her to the ‘crazy cat woman’ from The Simpsons. Whereas most would surely assume that Neil’s tweet was simply a throwaway barb of the kind one regularly sees on social media, Cadwalladr assures us that it was in fact ‘an attempt to silence’ her, and an exercise in ‘slut-shaming’. If Neil had genuinely intended to slut-shame, one imagines he might have chosen a better example of sexual debauchery than an elderly cartoon woman who keeps cats.

Whenever I read articles of this kind, I am always struck by the sheer sense of certitude on display. Has it ever occurred to the likes of Dimbleby, Moore, Penny and Cadwalladr that they might be wrong? If it has, there is little evidence of it in their work. This kind of rigidity comes when critical thinking is abandoned. To close oneself off to the possibility of alternative opinions, and only to see the world through the lens of confirmation bias, is a form of intellectual death.

Nobody has ever been persuaded to alter their convictions by having them misrepresented. I do not disbelieve these prominent voices on the left when they tell us how frustrated they are at what they perceive to be the rise of the far right. I also have little doubt that their intentions are good, even if their conclusions are bad. But if they are serious about changing minds, it would serve them well to try arguing against their detractors’ actual viewpoints rather than those they imagine them to hold.

SOURCE

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Border Patrol Union: Agents Will Use 'Reasonable Force' to Repel 'Invasion'

Hector Garza, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents, told Fox News Monday night that agents used great restraint in dealing with rock-and-bottle-throwing migrants in Tijuana on Sunday, as the foreigners tried to storm across the border into the United States.

"This was an assault. This was an invasion on our agents, on our country. And our agents had to respond with a very low level of force, which is the tear gas that was deployed."

The caravan members easily overran the Guatemala-Mexico border, but it won't happen here, Garza said:

These people think that they're going to do the same things they did on the Guatemala-Mexico border, they're wrong. Our agents are properly trained. They are going to be using reasonable force.

And something that they are reporting to us is that these migrants were using these children as human shields as they were launching rocks at our agents. So they had no regard for human life. They did not care about the other migrants; they did not care about the kids. And our agents did a great job by using this tear gas to be able to disperse the crowd.

Now, our agents could have been justified to use a higher level of force, but they did not. They used a very low level of force and they were successful. They did a great job out there.

Garza said it's a "good thing" that President Trump has sent the U.S. military as backup and support for Border Patrol agents.

"But with more caravans on the way, "it is going to get out of control," he said, "and that's why Congress needs to act and we have to make sure we do build that wall so that we can avoid these type of confrontations because people will end up getting hurt.

"Now again, our agents are properly trained and they're going to do the best job that they can out there. But again, these caravans, they need to stop. And we need to do our job and also Mexico needs to do their job as well, helping us on the southern border."

SOURCE

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The Left Hysterical Over Border Patrol But Where Were They When Obama Admin Used Pepper Spray On Rock-Throwing Migrants?,/b>

The reaction Sunday by the pearl-clutching left and their media allies to the chaotic scene on the southern border could serve as Exhibit A in a case study on hypocrisy, and goes to show that it’s all about politics.

Unless the Obama administration is held to a different standard when setting the precedent for actions taken by the Trump administration.

Hundreds of illegal immigrants from the migrant caravan made a mad rush on the U.S. border, with some becoming violent, attacking Border Patrol agents with rocks. Agents held their ground, fighting back with flash bang grenades and tear gas.

All of which sent Democrats into a frenzy.

And while the rock throwing drew little attention, the media was quick to report on children — who were forced on this perilous journey and placed directly into harms way by their parents — being caught up in the fracas.

SOURCE

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Trump rescues Britain from its elite

Being half British, Mr Trump has an interest in Britain

He slams Theresa May's Brexit deal as 'great for the EU' and warns it will harm UK-US trade

President Donald Trump has warned Britain “may not be able to trade with the US” because of Theresa May’s Brexit deal in comments that could torpedo her hopes of winning Parliament’s backing.

Mr Trump said the agreement Mrs May reached with Brussels on Sunday “sounds like a great deal for the EU” as he urged the Prime Minister to think again.

The President’s intervention flies in the face of Mrs May’s claims that Britain will be able to strike free trade deals around the world after Brexit despite her concessions to the EU.

The timing could hardly have been worse for Mrs May, coming after she had spent hours in the Commons trying to convince MPs that her deal was the right one for Britain.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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