Displaying the most recent of 90433 posts written by

Ruth King

POLITICS Comments turned off

Bernie Sanders wins the Nevada caucuses. Democrats hardest hit. By Andrea Widburg

By on February 23rd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/bernie_sanders_wins_the_nevada_caucuses_democrats_hardest_hit.html

That Bernie Sanders has won the Nevada caucuses is a one-line story: Bernie won in Nevada.

The real story is the absolute horror that establishment Democrats are experiencing as they realize that Bernie momentum leaves them with only two choices at the Democrat party convention in July: Yield to the passionate base and anoint Bernie as their candidate, despite the probability (although, sadly, not the certainty) that he will lose spectacularly; or they can override the passionate base and, in a backroom deal, give the nomination to someone else, yielding to an equally spectacular schism in the party as the Bernie Bros get angry.

Here’s the straight news portion of this post: As of this writing, Bernie Sanders is the undisputed winner of the Nevada caucuses. Although counting is going slowly, his lead in the districts counted is so complete that Bernie is already declaring victory, as are most in the media:

It’s unlikely that this will change when all of the precincts have reported. Not all is rosy, though, because Bernie’s win was apparently unaided by the minority voters who are essential to a Democrat victory in November:

Now to the fun part of this post, which is seeing establishment Democrats (all leftists but none as left as Bernie) terrified that they’re watching their party implode. And no, this is not a re-hash of Republican concerns in 2016. Back then, while the establishment disliked Trump’s style, his message was mainstream and consistent with American values through the end of the 20th century. Bernie, on the other hand, is charting an entirely new direction for America.

Zac Petkanas worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and worked for Harry Reid. In a tweet he later deleted, he stated “We are watching Trump win re-election in real time. Just a disaster.” He deleted that tweet after pushback, but continued to worry.

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Open borders Bernie Sanders wants full government benefits for illegal aliens By Andrea Widburg

By on February 23rd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/open_borders_bernie_sanders_wants_full_government_benefits_for_illegal_aliens.html

In his Nevada victory speech, Bernie promised that all Americans will pay for Democrat mistakes, subsidizing not only citizens but also illegal aliens.

Milton Friedman, who was so focused on economics that he forgot that nations need a shared culture to function, believed open borders represented the free flow of both financial and human capital. Friedman, however, drew a single bright line when it came to open borders –no welfare:

Immigration is a particularly difficult subject. There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state, but in a welfare state it is a different story: the supply of immigrants will become infinite. Your proposal that someone only be able to come for employment is a good one but it would not solve the problem completely. The real hitch is in denying social benefits to the immigrants who are here. That is very hard to do, much harder than you would think as we have found out in California.

Bernie Sanders has no time for that economic reality:

Today we got 500,000 people sleeping out on the streets of America. Today we have 18 million families paying 50% of their limited incomes for housing. Today we have hundreds of thousands of bright young people who cannot afford to get a higher education. Today we have 45 million paying a student debt that many of them cannot afford to pay.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Mike Bloomberg, American Julianus Roger Kimball

By on February 23rd, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/22/mike-bloomberg-american-julianus/

The billionaire former New York City mayor is throwing a lot of money around and renouncing plenty of sensible positions to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nod. His effort to buy the presidency will fail.

I see that Mike Bloomberg is angling to become the Didius Julianus of our day. Historians refer to 193 A.D. as the “Year of the Five Emperors.” Julianus became the second contestant in that sweepstakes after the Praetorian Guard murdered the emperor Pertinax, who had been stingy about distributing the pelf they had come to expect. By this time, the Praetorian Guard was a law unto itself, much as the administrative state is today.

Pertinax only survived for about three months as emperor. Cutting to the mercenary chase, the Guard then announced they were auctioning off the office of emperor to the highest bidder. The main contenders were Claudius Sulpicianus, prefect of Rome, and Julianus, a rich politician and former consul under Commodus. Each made multiple offers until Sulpicianus reached the astounding sum of 20,000 sesterces per soldier in the Guard, several times their annual salary. Julianus saw and raised that bid, offering 25,000 sesterces per head.

Thus did he become emperor, earning a place in the history books.

It did not end happily, though. Neither the legions nor the Senate was happy about the office of emperor being bought outright and Julianus was abandoned by his supporters as Septimius Severus, the ultimate successor as emperor, bore down upon Rome. Julianus, having reigned a mere 66 days, was killed by a soldier in the palace on June 1. His last words are said to have been, “What evil have I done? Whom have I killed?”

The bidding for the Democratic nomination is not quite as brazen as was the contest between Sulpicianus and Julianus. Bloomberg is not barking offers over office partitions at the DNC as Julianus did outside the Praetorian camp. But, still, Bloomberg is pretty brazen.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: the Masks of Jefferson and Attila by Amir Taheri

By on February 23rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15630/iran-pseudo-democratic-election

The difficulty was that the leadership of the revolution had no intention of creating a Western-style society in which economically and socially Westernized Iranian middle classes would feel at home. One way to deceive them was to continue with a tradition of elections dating back to 1907.

For decades later, a new middle class has emerged, President Hassan Rouhani refers to it as “the well-off 30 percent”, people who are prepared to live a double life in which economic comfort, not to say prosperity, is combined with lack of political freedoms and restrictive social norms….In this double life, the new middle class passes part of the year abroad, mostly in Western Europe and North America, where it can wear what it likes, eat what it likes and live like its Western counterparts.

[O]ver 3,000 high-ranking officials have permanent resident permits for the United States and Canada…. Thousands of the children of this new middle class attend Western universities, mostly in the US and Canada…. In Western Europe and North America tens of thousands of former Islamic officials and their associates own property and substantial investment portfolios.

A Majlis reflecting the reality of a corrupt, incompetent and brutal regime in full is less harmful than one designed to hide the nature of the Islamic Republic and promote forlorn hopes of moderation and reform.

Iranians went to the polls on Friday to elect a new Islamic Consultative Assembly, an ersatz parliament designed to give an autocratic regime a pseudo-democratic varnish. At the same time, voters were invited to participate in by-elections to fill vacancies in the Assembly of Experts, a grouping of mullahs supposed to supervise the performance of the “Supreme Guide”.

With the final official results not yet available, it is not clear how many of the 60 million people eligible to vote bothered to take part in an exercise that many regard as insulting and futile. A number of polls, including some conducted by the government, predicted a turnout no higher than 50 percent. A Ministry of the Interior poll put the number of those who intended to vote in Tehran at 24 percent.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Civil War The divide between labor leaders and environmental activists widens in a state dependent on fossil-fuel industries. Charles F. McElwee

By on February 23rd, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/pennsylvania-democratic-divide

For generations, Pennsylvania’s blue-collar voters found political refuge in the Democratic Party. Even when the national party moved leftward on social issues, this voting bloc—largely Catholic, with multigenerational roots in coal and steel towns—elected Democrats to defend their economic interests. But the party’s environmental activists are jeopardizing this allegiance. A clash is taking place between progressives, who want a carbon-free future, and organized labor, which sees fossil-fuel industries and the jobs they create as essential for many communities. This opposition, reflective of a national trend, could fracture the party statewide and help ensure another victory for Donald Trump.

From Pennsylvania’s big-city wards to its rural townships, union members feel disenfranchised within a party that once championed their interests. In South Philadelphia, for example, the closure of Philadelphia Energy Solutions, the East Coast’s largest and oldest oil refinery, has exposed divisions between the city’s powerful building-trades unions and a newer liberal constituency. Located in the 26th ward—one of only three wards citywide that supported Trump in 2016—the refinery symbolizes the cultural tensions of a changing neighborhood. Near the city’s sports stadiums, older Italian residents, who revere the late mayor Frank Rizzo, live side-by-side with young, secular, and progressive professionals on blocks lined with row homes.

The refinery, shuttered after a massive fire last year that resulted in bankruptcy, prompted discussions about how to redevelop a parcel of land larger than the Center City district. Labor leaders, with support from the Trump administration, called for restoring a facility that supplied 335,000 barrels per day—principally to New York’s market. In January, the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council rallied at City Hall, where the organization’s leaders ripped “elitists” and “rich kids” for prioritizing environmental concerns over saving jobs. It would take years, after all, to clean up a complex in operation since 1870, not long after the first oil well was drilled in northwestern Pennsylvania. Legal restrictions inhibit the contaminated property’s reuse, the leaders pointed out, whereas reopening the site would restore more than 1,000 jobs—many unionized, well-paying, and highly skilled—lost after the fire.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Escape from Wuhan By Spencer Case

By on February 23rd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/03/09/escape-from-wuhan/#slide-1

An account of the coronavirus quarantine in China

The onset of the crisis in Wuhan startled me like a jump scare in a horror movie. You’ve seen the kind I mean. The audience is led to believe that the monster, psycho killer—or what have you—pursuing the intended victim is still distant. Then whatever it is stands up from behind, leaps out in front, bursts through the floor, or otherwise appears and delivers the jolt. 

In mid January, my girlfriend visited the hospital for an ordinary illness. She came back on edge about the new disease, which had alarmed the staff. She had to cancel her usual trip home for Chinese New Year, too. She was told that if she visited her family, who lived in a smaller town (by Chinese standards!) near Hubei Province, she would be quarantined for two weeks, as a precautionary measure. The same would be done to anyone who arrived from Wuhan. She advised me to avoid the subway at peak hours.

Ominous signs mounted after that. More and more I saw surgical masks—usually blue, sometimes white—on the faces of people walking on Guangba Street where I lived. These were different from cloth breathing masks, the ones used for filtering out pollution, that had, in a casually dystopian way, been incorporated into fashion. Those I think make people look like characters from the 1990s video game Mortal Kombat. The preponderance of these new masks on people’s faces was a rough barometer of the intensifying climate of fear.

On Wednesday, January 22, the proportion of people on the streets I saw wearing the masks jumped up precipitously from about 25 percent the day before to about 80 percent. Pharmacies were selling out of them. When I sat down in a coffee shop that evening, someone took my temperature with an electronic thermometer you pointed at the target’s ear, to make sure I wasn’t running a fever. They were doing this with all of the patrons. Other businesses were, increasingly, doing the same thing. This is getting weird, I thought.

The next day, the real shock came. 

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Stunning: A Delusional Socialist Just Blew Away the Democrat Competition in Nevada. Now What? By Paula Bolyard

By on February 23rd, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/blog/stunning-a-delusional-socialist-just-blew-away-the-democrat-competition-in-nevada-now-what/

If you think that headline sounds like something from the Babylon Bee, you’re not alone. It defies logic, reason, and incredible odds, but as of publishing time, it appears that Bernie Sanders—a democratic socialist who is not even a member of the Democratic Party—is going to blow away the competition in the Nevada caucuses. At present, with just over 23% reporting, Bolshie Bernie has nearly 40% of the vote, topping second-place Biden by 17 points.

While Sanders caucuses with Democrats in the Senate, he has held elected office since 1981 as an independent and self-identifies as a democratic socialist (a less-scary-sounding way of saying “I know best, so gimme all your money and say goodbye to your freedom”). He’s also identified himself on multiple occasions as a plain old “socialist.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Geert Wilders: “The Koran is Full of Jew-Hatred” VIDEO

By on February 23rd, 2020

https://gatesofvienna.net/2020/02/geert-wilders-the-koran-is-full-of-jew-hatred/

In the following video Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands, speaks out in the Dutch parliament, taking government ministers to task for refusing to acknowledge Islam as a major factor in the growth of Jew-hatred in the Netherlands:

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islamists are feeling the pulse of France France risks a breakdown according to ethnic and religious lines. It is a gradual process of balkanization, at best, or of open conquest in the worst case. Giulio Meotti

By on February 23rd, 2020

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25236

“Islamic ideologues work in the same way on both shores of the Mediterranean: what they did twenty or thirty years ago in the Maghreb, they do it today in France. If these Islamist ecosystems continue, they will speak for our Muslim companions. In the event of an extreme right reaction or electoral victory, we will be in a civil war scenario”.

This is the scenario outlined on Le Figaro by Bernard Rougier, academic and Arabist author of the new book “Les territoires conquis de l’Islamisme”. This is the scenario on which Emmanuel Macron spoke on Tuesday. He explained that French Muslims have their place in the national community, they are French among the French, but that [their intention is that] there will be laws of Islam on French soil.

Macron said that the republican ideal is not an empty space but a historical reality whose density is urgently needed and everyone must be respected. Macron said it from Mulhouse, in Alsace, where Islamists are working on a space that takes charge of all aspects of life by placing them under Islamist control, a real enclave – financed by Qatar and Turkey.

Macron launched a campaign against political Islam and what he calls “Islamist separatism” in some French cities, announcing measures to strengthen controls over the external financing of mosques, to end the nomination by Algeria, Morocco and Turkey of 300 imams per year in France and ban Turkish and Arabic courses. Imams, Macron said, are often related to Salafism or the Muslim Brotherhood and “preach against the republic”.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Monstrous Lie Behind CrowdStrike by Michael Thau *****

By on February 22nd, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/22/the-monstrous-lie-behind-crowdstrike/

There’s a simple explanation for the Democratic National Committee’s unwillingness to let outsiders have a peek at evidence its servers were infiltrated by the Russians in 2016: There isn’t any. The Russian hacking that’s caused so much division and turmoil at home and abroad never really happened. It was all a ruse.

Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election was predicated largely on the claim Russian intelligence had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers ahead of the November election. Russia’s guilt is such an article of faith among our political class that a Republican-controlled Congress imposed sanctions on Russia and President Trump signed on, substantially worsening relations with an important and potentially dangerous nation. 

Since those sanctions were imposed, Mueller’s team confirmed the Russian espionage those sanctions were meant to punish. Since its publication last year, the Washington establishment has treated the Mueller report almost as a sacred document.

Outside the Acela Corridor, however, one finds more skepticism.

A lot of ordinary folks just can’t stop wondering why the DNC wouldn’t let any federal investigators examine their servers. Only CrowdStrike, an independent contractor on the DNC’s payroll, was allowed to do so. CrowdStrike executive Robert Johnson appeared on “60 Minutes” to address concerns that his firm hadn’t been completely forthcoming with its findings. But he only succeeded in raising more questions by claiming that the “FBI got what it needed and what it wanted.”

Even if the self-proclaimed “hard-hitting” investigators at “60 Minutes” couldn’t be bothered to spend 30 minutes researching such an important story, Johnson himself had to know he wasn’t telling the truth.

On no less than three occasions before President Trump fired him, FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress about the DNC’s strange unwillingness to let his agency examine their servers in a case they were simultaneously hyping as akin to “an act of war.” Comey testified that the DNC rejected the FBI’s “[m]ultiple requests at different levels” to collect forensic evidence. 

A week before Comey testified in January 2017, the DNC had already tried palming off Johnson’s lie and were sternly contradicted the very next day. A senior FBI official told The Hill that his agency “repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise.” According to The Hill’s source, far from getting everything the bureau wanted, “the FBI [had] no choice but to rely upon” CrowdStrike.

Continue reading →