Displaying posts published in

July 2019

A dirty, dangerous border situation with illegals threatening riots By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/a_dirty_dangerous_border_situation_with_illegals_threatening_riots.html

Democrats have gone a long way to create chaos at the border.  They’ve denied necessary funds for law enforcement to pay for humane conditions in detention camps during a border surge.  They’ve nullified any meaning to border law.  It’s all a politically cynical bid to Blame Trump.

Thus far, the issue has been viewed and reported as a public relations issue for President Trump, with reports of children brought to the U.S. illegally now in detention without soap or toothbrushes.  The media and the Democrats have been dining out on it, calling Trump a heel.

There’s more than that, of course.  There are the legal challenges from the Left to any border enforcement, the strange collaborations between some Democratic political machines and the Mexican and Central American governments, the left-wing activist networks linked to Democrats actively recruiting illegals, and the open encouragement of illegal immigration by blue states offering huge arrays of benefits.  If chaos were the aim, Democrats couldn’t have done it better. 

But it’s actually something much more dangerous.  We’re now seeing potential for violent migrant riots.  The mobs rolling over our border now are violent, and they demand to be let in without vetting. 

Nonsense from the Democrats’ Debates By Dennis Prager

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/democratic-party-debate-intellectual-shallowness-demagoguery/

Open borders, student-loan forgiveness, Iranian nuke deal — and that’s just for starters

If you watched either or both of the two Democratic-party presidential-candidate debates, and if you are a liberal, a conservative, or a centrist, you had to have been depressed. The intellectual shallowness, the demagoguery, and the alienation from reality were probably unprecedented in American political history. Only a leftist, a socialist, or a Communist could have gone to bed a happy person on either night.

If you think this is a baseless generalization, here are a few of myriad examples from the first night:

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.): The economy is not doing great “for the African Americans and Latinx whose families are torn apart, whose lives are destroyed, and whose communities are ruined.”

Two things stand out: First is Warren’s morally reprehensible and false description of the economy. She never explains how the American economy is tearing families apart, destroying lives, or ruining communities. Aside from being baseless, it is another left-wing libel against America.

She went on to explain economic inequality in America: “Corruption, pure and simple. We need to call it out.” It is difficult to overstate the contempt she and the rest of the Left have for America.

Even more troubling was Warren’s use of the term “Latinx.” When leftist Orwellian newspeak makes its way into the United States Senate and into the vocabulary of a presidential candidate, the country is in trouble.

Iran and the Levers of Global Power By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/us-iran-standoff-trump-has-more-choices-than-previous-presidents/

Vis-à-vis Tehran, Trump has more choices than previous presidents have had, partly because the U.S. is now the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.

I n the current American–Iran stand-off are a number of global players. That is hardly new, but what is novel is that, for the first time in decades, there’s almost no power that can obstruct or alter U.S. efforts to confront Iranian aggressions in America’s own time and fashion.

In other words, the United States is almost immune from the sort of pressures that usually coalesce to dictate, modify, or thwart U.S. decision-making in the Middle East. Such liberation from outside coercion is singularly unusual in the post-war American overseas experience.

The Muslim World
Usually in any showdown with a Muslim state of the Middle East, especially a large, theocratic country like Iran, the United States would be subject to the usual Islamic boilerplate slurs of Islamophobia, racism, imperialism, and colonialism, and we’d see popular anti-American unrest. But in the Muslim world, Iran is probably more unpopular than even the Trump administration. Renegade allies such as Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad’s rump remains of Syria, and Hamas are reminders that Iran has no friends. Hatred for Tehran in the Middle East transcends the ancient Persian–Arab and Shiite–Sunni fault lines, and it’s fueled by 40 years of Iran-backed terrorism, bullying, and backing of insurgent movements throughout the Middle East.

Mike Pence Cancels New Hampshire Trip to Return to D.C., Reason Unclear By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/breaking-mike-pence-cancels-new-hampshire-trip-to-return-to-d-c-reason-unclear/

Late Tuesday morning, Air Force 2 altered its flight path, returning Vice President Mike Pence to Washington, D.C. and taking him away from his scheduled meeting in Salem, New Hampshire. Rumors swirl as to the reason for this sudden change, but sources have said it does not involve Pence’s health.

“Crowd leaving the Granite Recovery Center in Salem, NH where [Pence] was supposed to participate in a round table and speak to audience of 200. Just told Air Force 2 was turned around due to an emergency and the Vice President is now headed back to DC,” NBC 10’s Alison King tweeted shortly after 11 a.m. Eastern.

King added that she was “just told it is not an ’emergency’ (1st word used) that the [vice president] is sent back to DC. Now being told it is a ‘diversion.’. No explanation yet of what that means.”

BS White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor shared an official denial that the change had anything to do with the health of the president or vice president.

There is an outside chance the schedule shift might have something to do with New Hampshire’s Pease Air National Guard Base going on lockdown at about 1122 a.m. Possible shots were reportedly heard on the base, and the incident is being treated as an active shooter scenario.

The base is a 39-minute drive away from Salem.

Update 1:17 p.m.:

Now officials are saying Pence never left Washington, D.C.

“The [Vice President] never left Washington, DC. There was no ’emergency callback.’ Something came up that required the VP to stay in DC. We’ll reschedule NH shortly,” Farah tweeted.

If Pence never left D.C., where did the original story come from? If he did leave, why would officials try to cover that up?

Update 1:22 p.m.:

Reports are saying the Pease shooter scare has nothing to do with Pence’s travel plans.

Update 1:41 p.m.

In remarks to Reuters, Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, also said the plane never left.

“The vice president was called back to the White House but there’s no cause for alarm and we’ll reschedule the trip soon,” Short said.

Short said Pence’s plane never actually left Washington.   STAY TUNED

VICTOR SHARPE: THE MOSQUES OF WAR

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe

“Islamic hatred for Jews and Christians alike dates from Mohammed, is expressed in many passages of the Koran and repeated daily in mosques in every corner of the world.”

Of the three monotheistic religions, Judaism may be considered the mother faith and the other two, Christianity and Islam, her daughters.

The first daughter, Christianity, under the influence of the early church fathers, rejected the mother and distanced herself from Judaism, even to the extent of changing the Sabbath from the seventh day, Saturday, to Sunday and renaming it the Lord’s Day. Seventh-Day Adventists still retain Saturday as the Sabbath.

The youngest daughter, Islam, under Muhammad, turned on both the Jewish and Christian tribes of Arabia, who declined to accept Muhammad claim that he ushered in God’s final revelation.

After Rome embraced Christianity under Constantine, the Church fathers increasingly used temporal powers to discriminate against the Jews and proscribe the practice of their faith. For Jews this tragically led to the horrors of the Crusades, the Catholic inquisition, forced conversions, pogroms, and ultimately, the Holocaust.

Lessons from Bill: Call the S.O.B. By Augustus P. Howard *****

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/25/lessons-from-bill-call-the-s-o-b/

In January 2016, Bill Clinton’s presidential library made public transcripts of telephone calls between the president and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The calls, placed between May 1997 and December 2000, represent, as the New York Times noted, “a time capsule . . . captur[ing] the priorities and perceptions of the moment that, judged with the harsh certainty of hindsight, look prescient or wildly off base.”

One remark of the former president is striking, not so much for its prescience or its predictive error but rather for what it tells us about the American foreign policy status quo and the potentially tragic enslavement of our presidents to media narrative. Speaking with Blair about Saddam Hussein, Clinton said, “If I weren’t constrained by the press, I would pick up the phone and call the son of a bitch. But that is such a heavy-laden decision in America. I can’t do that and I don’t think you can.”

Clinton’s statement is a loaded one. It tells us much about the traditional power of “media optics” in our national politics, much about the constraints such optics have placed upon our presidents—and much, also, about how President Donald Trump stands apart.

Would the world be a different place today if President Clinton had actually picked up the phone and called the S.O.B. in Baghdad? Clinton hoped to assure Saddam of his intentions: that he wanted the elimination of any chemical or biological weapons programs, not the destruction of the Iraqi regime itself. But, to keep the media at bay, Clinton relied upon third parties to make his point to Saddam. We are left only to wonder if Clinton’s message was ever really conveyed. And even if it was, did the Iraqi leader believe it given the impersonal and roundabout manner of its delivery?

As Winston Churchill once remarked, “meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.” This was not a call for some type of spineless appeasement—surrendering to the insatiable demands of a tyrant and strengthening that tyrant, in turn, to do his worst. Churchill’s call was for dialogue and interpersonal summit politics: discussion between leaders at the apex of government, without interference, and certainly without bowing before the dictates of the media.

John Nolte: CNN’s Antifa Pals Have Assaulted 15 Journalists

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/07/01/nolte-cnns-antifa-pals-have-assaulted-15-journalists/

Even though there have been at least 15 documented incidents of Antifa assaulting members of the media, CNN has steadily remained the left-wing terrorist group’s public relations arm.

Over the weekend, Antifa added another notch to its gun with a brutal assault on Quillette journalist Andy Ngo, an attack that landed him in the hospital, an assault that CNN’s media reporter Brian Stelter deliberately downplayed on his basement-rated weekend show.

Sadly, Saturday’s Ngo assault is just the most recent attack on a journalist (and on Ngo himself, who has been physically accosted by Antifa in the past).

Nevertheless, not counting Stelter using selectively-edited video this weekend to make it look as though Ngo was merely the victim of a milkshake/silly string hazing that went too far, here is a short list of CNN’s encouragement and defense of Antifa’s violence:

Finally The U.S. (aka Trump) Has Caught On To What The G20 Is About Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-7-1-finally-the-us-aka-trump-has-ca

Everybody knows what the G20 is about. Everybody, that is, except high-ranking members of the Democratic Party, the “establishment” branch of the Republican Party, the mainstream press, and the U.S. State Department career bureaucracy. Those people somehow think that what the G20 is about is reasonable people trying to work together in good faith to solve the world’s problems. Really! (Could anybody be that dumb? Yes. In fact, the “smarter” they appear to be from their credentials, the dumber they prove to be when it comes to understanding world affairs.)

And by the way, I don’t mean particularly to single out the G20, other than by the fact that they were just holding their annual meeting last week in Japan. Essentially all major international organizations, from the UN on down, are about the exact same thing.

And here’s the thing that all those organizations are about: They are about trying to disadvantage the United States in international competition, and to hit up the United States for big money to be redistributed by the international bureaucrats. But then, I think you already knew that.

So there was President Trump over at the G20 meeting in Japan last week, and they present him with a draft of a so-called “Joint Statement” that everybody is supposed to sign. A lot of it is the usual anodyne diplomatic bafflegab. But then there is the section headed “Climate Change” (starting at paragraph 35). “Climate” is the issue on which the international bureaucrats have come to believe that self-respecting Americans can be made to feel so guilty that they will give you anything you want, and pay any number you might name. So here are a few of the things that they have thrown in under the heading of “Climate”:

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld:Sweden Is a Perplexing Location for an Antisemitism Conference

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/sweden-antisemitism-conference/

Sweden’s Social Democrat PM Stefan Löfven has announced that his country will host an international antisemitism conference to commemorate the Holocaust. This gathering of heads of state and governments is planned for October 27-28, 2020, and is to be held in Sweden’s third-largest city, Malmö.

This is a perplexing announcement. One would expect the initiative for such a conference to come from a country that has made serious efforts to fight antisemitism. Sweden has a long history of unanswered antisemitic incidents. The Board of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in Sweden voted in 2016 to accept the definition of antisemitism – yet the country does not accept the definition domestically (while the UK, Germany, Austria, Israel, and a number of other countries do). Extreme manifestations of antisemitism, unequaled elsewhere, have taken place in Sweden. The Jewish community of the Swedish town of Umea had to disband entirely because it was threatened by neo-Nazis and harassed by radical Muslims.

In May of this year, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRA) released a report on antisemitic hate crimes. The report notes that Jew-hatred in Sweden stems from the left wing, the right wing, and the Muslim population. Antisemitism is openly expressed, and “there are few places where people with a Jewish background feel safe.”

Germany: Some Hate Speech ‘More Equal than Others’ by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14484/germany-hate-speech-al-quds

Although the “military arm” of Hezbollah is prohibited in the EU, the “political arm” is not, which means that in Germany, Hezbollah is free to engage in “non-military” activities — such as fundraising.

On the one hand, the federal police conduct countrywide raids on middle-aged Germans who post their thoughts on Facebook, while on the other, members of openly lethal terrorist organizations who espouse nothing but hatred towards a specific ethnic group, the Jews, are not only allowed to march in the heart of the German capital… but are free to organize and fundraise for their purpose.

That participants in the anti-Semitic Al Quds march have been allowed to flaunt their hatred for nearly four decades now, while middle-aged Germans are having their apartments searched for anti-Semitic and racist messages on Facebook, exposes a disturbing double standard in the application of the law.

At the very least, it shows that German authorities appear to harbor extremely selective views of what constitutes hate speech, based, it seems, on nothing more than the identity of the group that voices it.

In June, the “Al Quds Day” march took place in Berlin. Al Quds Day, in the words of the late historian Robert S. Wistrich, is “The holiday proclaimed by Khomeini in 1979 to call for Israel’s annihilation” which “has since been celebrated worldwide…”

In Germany, Al Quds Day marches have been taking place in the country’s capital since the 1980s[1], first in Bonn and since 1996 in Berlin. On Al Quds Day in December 2000, more than 2,000 demonstrators in the Kurfürstendamm — a central boulevard in Berlin — called for “the liberation of Palestine and the holy city of Jerusalem”. In November 2002, only one year after 9/11, the march featured slogans such as “Death to Israel” and “Death to the USA”. At the march in 2016, the slogans were, among others, “Death to Israel”, “Zionists kill children”, and so on.

Despite nearly four decades of such rhetoric — the kind that is arguably capable — according to paragraph 130 of Germany’s Criminal Code, which prohibits hate speech — “of disturbing the public peace” by inciting “hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins”, German authorities have continually refused to ban the Al Quds Day march. The argument is, reportedly, that the Administrative Court would overrule such a ban. “A constitutional state must act in accordance with the rule of law,” said the spokesperson for the interior administration of the city of Berlin, Martin Pallgen. “Freedom of assembly and expression also applies to those who reject the rule of law”. Instead, German authorities have prohibited marchers from being overtly anti-Semitic and inciting hatred against Jews. The exercise is a bit like telling a neo-Nazi march please to cover up the swastikas to look more presentable.