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January 2019

Ten Thoughts on Theresa May’s Brexit-Deal Defeat By John O’Sullivan

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ten-thoughts-on-theresa-mays-brexit-deal-defeat/

1. Theresa May’s defeat by the unexpectedly large margin of 230 votes last night was indeed “historic,” as every bore in journalism and punditry wrote — but only because of its size: It was the largest defeat for a government on a major issue in parliamentary history. Some of the earlier defeats turned out to be historic in a more substantial sense — Neville Chamberlain’s loss of Tory support in the 1940 Norway debate, leading to the appointment of Winston Churchill as prime minister, is the best example (though Chamberlain was not actually defeated but won the vote). Other such votes were less important because they didn’t lead to much, such as the vote of no confidence in the 1924 Labour government, which led to Stanley Baldwin’s lackluster “Safety First” Tory government, which in turn lost the following election — which, come to think of it, may not be a bad forecast of the unexciting May regime.

2. Don’t trust any of the predictions that as a result of this vote, some particular next-step “option” is now off the agenda because it lacks parliamentary support. That’s because no single option for Brexit or Remain currently enjoys a parliamentary majority. All, however, have some prospect of succeeding in eventually amassing such a majority. That even includes a No Deal Brexit, since that’s what will happen unless a majority of MPs gradually gather around another option. Most media people either don’t know that or don’t want you to know that because they disapprove of No Deal and of the kind of voters who support it.

3. It’s always interesting to compare the expected effects of a surprise upset with the actual effects. For most of the last year, press commentary treated the Tory Brexiteers as the main opposition to the soft-as-putty Brexit that became May’s Withdrawal Agreement. Yet when its defeat was announced, the large pro-Remain crowd outside Parliament cheered lustily. It was important to them that the Brexiteers should not enjoy a victory. So they claimed it as their own in the hope of ensuring that they do actually benefit. Similarly, pre-vote there had been dire media predictions that a defeat for May would mean a fall in the pound. It was the predictions that collapsed, however, when May’s defeat led to a rise in the pound. It was swiftly explained by the financial pundits that it was the very size of May’s defeat that caused the pound to rise rather than fall, because it might mean we would now get an even softer Brexit than before. Hmmnnn. I’m not sure that would convince me if I’d lost money following their first advice.

4. Another factor at play here is the confusion that May herself causes by constantly reiterating her absolute determination to achieve Brexit and fulfill the instruction given by the voters in the referendum. That doesn’t deceive the Westminster village, but it has persuaded others that she is a symbol of Brexit at any price. In reality, she is a symbol of subordinating Brexit to the wishes of a Remain establishment and cabinet without seeming to do so. She is thus a cause of confusion and an obstacle to any fruitful change of government and/or Tory policy in response to last night’s defeat. Her rhetoric will probably remain strong, but she will likely be as weak towards the Labour and Tory Remain Ultras like Dominic Grieve as she has been towards the EU negotiators and the establishment. Unless she undergoes a Damascene conversion, she will now open negotiations with Opposition parties and her own Remainer rebels on the next Plan B while ramping up her Brexit language to keep Brexiteers happy and Boris at bay. This kicking the can down the road works until you run out of road, which in this case will be the 29th of March — and that means on present form that she will try to get the EU to agree to a postponement of Brexit. That would keep open a Pandora’s Box of competing alternatives to Brexit that the fixed date was intend to close firmly.

Pelosi to Trump: You Can Just Give Us the State of the Union Address in Writing By Bridget Johnson

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/pelosi-to-trump-you-can-just-give-us-the-state-of-the-union-address-in-writing/

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested to President Trump that he either deliver a written version of his planned State of the Union address to Congress or postpone it because of the government shutdown.

The speaker traditionally invites the president to come make the annual address before a joint session each January, starting with a year after inauguration.

Pelosi invited Trump to address lawmakers on Jan. 3, the first day of the 116th Congress, with the State of the Union date set on Jan. 29.

With no end in sight to the shutdown that began at midnight Dec. 22 over an impasse on border wall funding, Pelosi sent a letter to Trump today noting that “during the 19th Century and up until the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, these annual State of the Union messages were delivered to Congress in writing,” and “since the start of modern budgeting in Fiscal Year 1977, a State of the Union address has never been delivered during a government shutdown.”

The State of the Union was also designated by the Department of Homeland Security last September as one of the National Special Security Events that requires “the full resources of the federal government to be brought to bear.”

“The extraordinary demands presented by NSSEs require weeks of detailed planning with dozens of agencies working together to prepare for the safety of all participants,” Pelosi wrote, noting that “both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been funded for 26 days now – with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs.”

Jordan Peterson, the Sacred, and the Therapeutic By David P. Goldman J

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/jordan-peterson-the-sacred-and-the-therapeutic/

What makes Jordan Peterson so popular? There are scores of popular pundits who attack political correctness, many with more aplomb than the professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. The estimable Mark Steyn comes to mind, or Heather Mac Donald, or Dennis Prager, among many others. I’ve attempted my own diagnosis of the PC disease, as existential dread and as a witch hunt in response to the tragic failure of too many black Americans.

Dr. Peterson, though, is the people’s choice as champion against PC madness for the time being.

A full 80% of Americans think that political correctness is a problem in their country, according to polling data, and a reaction against the excesses of the new Savonarolas has been gathering for some time. But why choose Dr. Peterson as the poster-boy for this reaction?

I believe that his enormous and sudden popularity stems from his use of the language of therapy to attack the symptoms of a therapeutic society. His 2018 bestseller Twelve Rules for Life is a self-help book, not a work of politics, philosophy, or cultural criticism.
The Best Quotes from Jordan Peterson’s ’12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos’

Therein, I think, lies Dr. Peterson’s great appeal. The four-fifths of Americans who think that PC has gone too far do not want to undo the great cultural transformation of the past half-century, which has placed self-esteem at the center of human concerns at the expense of traditional virtues. We no longer wish to do what is good and upright in the eyes of God; who does this God think He is, sitting in judgment over us? We want to be our own little gods and make ourselves into whatever we would like to be.

Medical Jihad Means Death to the Patient by Linda Goudsmit

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22246/medical-jihad-means-death-to-the-patient
http://goudsmit.pundicity.com http://lindagoudsmit.com

Islam has been at war with competing ideologies since the time of Muhammad. The objective was and continues to be the establishment of a worldwide Islamic caliphate. In 1928, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Egyptian cleric Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood which continues to be the voice of Islamic expansionism and a source of virulent antisemitism worldwide.

According to al-Banna, “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” The Muslim Brotherhood’s founding manifesto clearly and unapologetically states its tenets:

“Allah is our goal,

the prophet our model,

the Koran our constitution,

the Jihad our path

and death for the sake of Allah the loftiest of our wishes.”

German scholar and historian Matthias Kuntzel explains the connection between Islamism and antisemitism in his extraordinary 2007 book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11. Kuntzel identifies the Muslim Brotherhood as the ideological reference and organizational core of radical Islam. He warns that, “whoever does not want to combat antisemitism hasn’t the slightest chance of defeating Islamism.”

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: THE DEM’S CASTING COUCH SO FAR

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is entering the 2020 race for president

https://nypost.com/2019/01/15/sen-kirsten-gillibrand-is-entering-the-2020-race-for-president/

Sherrod Brown is going on tour to the first four early presidential states

https://www.cleveland.com/politics/2019/01/sherrod-brown-is-going-on-tour-to-the-first-four-early-presidential-states

Kamala Harris opens up as she eyes a 2020 bid By Maeve Reston and Kyung Lah, CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/politics/kamala-harris-2020-bid-personal/index.html

Beto, Bernie and Biden Keep Iowa-Caucus Democrats in Suspense
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-16/beto-bernie-and-biden-keep-iowa-caucus-democrats-in-suspense?srnd=politics-vp
Abrams and Gillum are likely 2020 kingmakers
The progressive African-American pols are looking to parlay their near-success into the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020.By MARC CAPUTO and DANIEL STRAUSS
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/16/stacey-abrams-andrew-gillum-2020-democrats-trump-1102371

Walls Are Closing in on the FBI—and Its Media Accomplices By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/15/walls-are-closing

Those of us who have closely followed the unfolding scandal at the Justice Department— particularly how the FBI abused its power not only to spy on the Trump presidential campaign but also on the president himself—have been frustrated with the inaction both of the White House and Congress. Documents have not been declassified as promised; letters by top lawmakers have gone unanswered with no consequence; and not one perpetrator in the biggest political scandal in history has been held accountable.

The New York Times over the weekend confirmed the worst suspicions: Andrew McCabe, a disgraced FBI official caught lying to federal investigators and fired by Trump, and his corrupt lackeys opened up a criminal and counterintelligence probe into President Trump on the flimsiest of evidence in May 2017.

Further, statements from William Barr, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, seem to indicate he would be deferential to Special Counsel Robert Mueller rather than focus on the real scandal. It was unclear whether a change in leadership at the Justice Department and on the Senate Judiciary Committee (Lindsey Graham took the reins from Charles Grassley this year) would restart stalled congressional inquiries.

A Clean-Up Pledge
But Barr’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday assuaged those concerns.

Republican senators expressed outrage that the FBI had investigated a sitting U.S. president, and Barr seemed to share their disgust. Graham brought up the Times article and asked Barr to “promise me and this committee to look into this and tell us whether or not a counterintelligence investigation was opened up by somebody at the FBI, Department of Justice against President Trump?” Barr confirmed he would. Graham read aloud derogatory texts, some including profanity, about Trump between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

What Happened to the Peace Party? By Christopher Roach

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/15/what-happened-to-the-

The Democrats used to be the peace party. While Democratic presidents led our entry into both World Wars and endorsed containment during the early stages of the Cold War, since Vietnam the Democrats have favored a more consensus-oriented foreign policy that takes a dim view of American military intervention. They were critical of our support for military regimes in Central America, the Contras, and even the First Gulf War. During the George W. Bush years, they were united in opposition to the Iraq War.

With the rise of Donald Trump and his pragmatic “America First” brand of disengagement, the polarity between the two parties has reversed. While we saw a preview of this reversal in reactions to the Mattis resignation, it has become more apparent in the angry, dismissive, and hostile reception to U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-Hawaii) official presidential campaign announcement. Criticism came not only from the neoconservative Right—whose confusion about what constitutes America’s interest is legendary—but also from the mainstream Left.

Gabbard is unique in that she is one of the only Democrats who may be described as the voice of peace and reason. She has been critical of U.S. intervention in Syria, our cozy relationship with the Saudi regime, and our continuing cultivation of conflict with Russia.

Republicans Were Defined by the Iraq War During the Bush Years
While perennial warmongering may be expected from the Max Boots and Bret Stephens of the world, the change among the Democrats has been jarring and sudden. After 9/11, Bush took an aggressive approach fueled by a strong streak of idealism. He saw the 9/11 attacks not merely as an isolated event involving al-Qaeda, but conceived of Islamic terrorism as a maladaptive response to the region’s backwards, kleptocratic dictatorships. He thought hopelessly outnumbered American forces could transform Iraq and the rest of the region into stable, liberal democracies.

California’s CAIR Collaborator Judge Deborah Barnes And her endless quest to free convicted terrorist Hamid Hayat. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272547/californias-cair-collaborator-judge-deborah-barnes-lloyd-billingsley

Last Friday in Sacramento, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Barnes submitted a 116-page recommendation that the conviction of Hamid Hayat be vacated. It was Barnes’ latest attempt to free Hayat, convicted in 2006 of providing support to terrorists, in the first major prosecution of terrorism after the 9/11 attacks.

Barnes’ ruling charges that Hayat’s lawyer Wazhma Mojaddidi, a former president of the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations in Sacramento, put on an ineffective defense for Hayat. After Friday’s ruling, Mojaddidi told the Sacramento Bee, “I am elated to hear that he could be freed soon after unjustly spending so many years in prison.”

Sacramento CAIR executive director Basim Elkarra said in a statement that Hayat “did not receive a fair trial” and Dennis Riordan of Hayat’s defense team opined that Barnes’ ruling was “effectively a finding of actual innocence.” The courts have established otherwise and Friday’s ruling was the latest episode in a long campaign of strange judicial rulings and bizarre courtroom capers.

CAIR and the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) judge-shopped Deborah Barnes, a relative newcomer to California’s Eastern District. Barnes spent much of her career in the office of California’s attorney general, where she worked on environmental issues. In effect, the judge would become a member of Hayat’s legal team.

Barnes’ June 7, 2017 order raised “serious questions concerning the competency of the defense.” That was the very defense Hayat’s team wanted, led by CAIR rising star Wazhma Mojaddidi. After she failed, the judge wasn’t done, and in January of 2018 Barnes ordered an evidentiary hearing on the Hayat case that proved revealing on several fronts.

Secure Borders Protect Immigrant Communities Immigrants are the most vulnerable to transnational gangs. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272539/secure-borders-protect-immigrant-communities-michael-cutler

The Democrats are determined to block the essential construction of a secure barrier on the dangerous U.S./Mexican border that would insure that all who enter the United States are vetted and that records of their entry into the United States are created.

Nancy Pelosi has declared that such a fortification would be “immoral” while her cohort Chuck Schumer stated that the symbol of America should not be a “Thirty foot wall, but the Statue of Liberty.”

Clearly there is a crisis on that border (along with other elements of the immigration system) but for the Democrats, the entry of millions of illegal aliens and tons of narcotics and other contraband is not a crisis but evidence of a success. For them, the entry of those aliens is the fruition of their policies’ goals.

As I have noted in several recent articles, there is certainly nothing immoral about preventing alien criminals and terrorists from entering the United States. There is nothing immoral about protecting American and lawful immigrant workers from being displaced by foreign workers or in having them suffer wage suppression because of the tsunami of a massive illegal alien Third World workforce.

New York State’s Governor Cuomo, who unbelievably referred to ICE agents as “Thugs,” decided to be publicly sworn in at Ellis Island to begin his third term in office. He selected Ellis Island to further his fraudulent claim that he is “pro-immigrant.” In reality, he is a staunch advocate for immigration anarchy and illegal immigration that most endangers the immigrant communities in his state.

President Trump has been accused of being “anti-immigrant” when, in point of fact, his actions and policies are the most “pro-immigrant” we have seen in many, many years.

Today’s Cultural Engineers The arbiters of taste loathe their audiences. Joel Kotkin

https://www.city-journal.org/politicization-of-mass-culture

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin once labeled writers and other creative people “engineers of the soul.” In his passion to control what people saw and read, Stalin both coddled artists and enforced unanimity through the instruments of a police state. Today, fortunately, we don’t face such overt forms of cultural control, but the trends in American and to some extent European mass culture are beginning to look almost Stalinesque in their uniformity. This becomes painfully obvious during awards season, when the tastes and political exigencies of the entertainment industry frequently overpower any sense of popular preferences, or even artistic merit.

Our cultural climate has become depressingly monochromatic. Award ceremonies, once a largely nonpolitical experience, have become reflecting pools for preening progressive artistes. Those emceeing the awards must be as politically pure as possible—sorry, Kevin Hart—and those winning acclaim get the best press if, besides thanking their producers and agents, they take a shot at Donald Trump.

This dynamic is not exactly the byproduct of popular demand. In recent years, ratings for the Oscars have fallen to the lowest levels since the awards were televised, down from over 40 million to fewer than 30 million. The ratings decline tracks the fall in movie attendance, which has sunk to a 25-year low. We’re a long way from a time when awards nights were dominated by popular mainstream winners such as West Side Story, The Sound of Music, or even the original Lord of the Rings. The movie industry makes money now by producing sequels of movies based on comic books, with relentless action and violence but little character development.

As movies and television shows in both the United States and Britain today increasingly adopt the feminist, gay, and racial obsessions of their makers, they have written off a large portion of the less politically “woke” audience. Many of these shows, such as Britain’s venerable Doctor Who, have hemorrhaged viewers since taking on a more preachy, PC aspect. “It’s supposed to be entertainment,” one disgruntled viewer complained. Late-night television, now dominated by stridently anti-Trump comedians, also has seen ratings drop in recent years; no show has close to the number of viewers, let alone the iconic status, enjoyed by the late—and largely apolitical—Johnny Carson.