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Ruth King

POLITICS Comments turned off

Catfight escalates: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hurls race card at Nancy Pelosi By Monica Showalter

By on July 11th, 2019

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

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must be rueing the day she handed freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all those prestigious committee assignments, and posed with her and a couple of like-minded coevals for lovey-dovey pictures on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Here’s what she gets for her trouble, according to the Washington Examiner:

“So, again, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it,” the speaker reportedly told Democrats. “But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just OK.”

This is basic party discipline, but Ocasio-Cortez’s takeaway from this closed-door meeting was not, “be a team player and expect a ruckus if you besmirch your fellow Democrats in public.” Rather, the message that the freshman congresswoman came away with is this: Nancy Pelosi is a racist.

“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Post, referring to not just the closed-door meeting but other critical remarks that the speaker has had for herself and the other freshman progressives.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Former Aussie deputy PM becomes backbencher, suddenly tells the truth about global warming By Thomas Lifson

By on July 11th, 2019

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

You’ve probably never heard of Barnaby Joyce, but he has twice been deputy prime minister of Australia, from February 2016 to October 2017 and from December 2017 to February 2018.  During both terms, he served as leader of Oz’s National Party, which frequently allies with the country’s biggest conservative party, called the “Liberal Party.”  The National Party was formerly known as “The Country Party” and represents farmers, grazers, and other rural residents.

Like the United States, Australia is subject to agitation for CO2 emissions reduction in the name of “saving the planet.”  As deputy P.M. serving in coalition under the leadership of warmist true believer Malcolm Turnbull, Joyce could not speak his mind for fear of those interests.

But Australia has a new liberal (conservative) government following federal elections last May 19, with the margin of victory attributed by most observers to the opposition by Scott Morrison, the new leader of the Liberals, to closing a major coal mine.  And Barnaby Joyce became a backbencher.

In that capacity, Joyce is answerable only to his constituents in rural New South Wales.

As columnist Andrew Bolt put it (link paywalled):

Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is now a backbencher and can finally tell the truth about the global warming scare[.]

On his Facebook page,  Joyce wrote:

The very idea that we can stop climate change is barking mad. Climate change is inevitable, as geology has always shown.” These are the views of New Zealand lecturer of geology, David Shelley. A person vastly more competent than me and the flotilla of others telling the kids the world is going to end from global warming.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Pelosi Advises Illegal Immigrants on How to Avoid ICE By Jack Crowe

By on July 11th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pelosi-advises-illegal-immigrants-on-how-to-avoid-ice/

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday offered advice to illegal immigrants seeking to avoid arrest and deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

“An ICE deportation warrant is not the same as a search warrant. If that is the only document ICE brings to a home raid, agents do not have the legal right to enter a home. If ICE agents don’t have a warrant signed by a judge, a person may refuse to open the door and let them in,” said Pelosi, reading from prepared remarks at her weekly press conference.

Pelosi’s comments come as ICE plans to begin raids in ten major cities Sunday targeting 2,000 illegal immigrants who have ignored deportation orders.

During a closed-door meeting on Thursday, Pelosi urged members of her caucus to help disseminate the party’s “know your rights” campaign to illegal immigrants in their districts who may be targeted during the raids, Politico reported. She also told her colleagues that she plans to appeal to religious leaders to speak out against the planned raids.

After the meeting, Pelosi told reporters that she believed opposition from religious leaders played a significant role in Trump’s decision to call off a sweeping ICE raid in early June.

“They were very concerned that this goes too far because these raids were not what they signed up for with President Trump. And I think their calls to the president made a difference,” Pelosi said. “Hopefully the president will think again about it or these groups will weigh in once again.”

 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democratic Presidential Contenders Prescribe Big Government Snake Oil By Deroy Murdock

By on July 11th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/democratic-presidental-candidates-big-government-proposals/

‘Free’ health care for all, including illegal aliens, will cost trillions.

When it comes to health care, the Democratic presidential candidates offer the same cure: Big Government. Their chief prescriptions are almost stereotypically statist. Their “remedies” include destruction of private property, huge tax hikes, and “freebies” — even to people who break into this country. This would be underwritten by the Democrats’ go-to source for funding their zany schemes: the beleaguered American taxpayer.

Decrying White House efforts to scuttle Obamacare, Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.) said at the June 27 Democratic debate in Miami: “President Trump, you’re not standing up for working families when you try to throw 32 million people off the health care that they have.”

What chutzpah.

As Medicare for All’s chief sponsor, Sanders would terminate, with extreme prejudice, the private health plans of roughly 180 million Americans — nearly six times as many cancellations as Sanders claims Trump wants.

“I’m with Bernie on Medicare for All,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts chirped in her debate. Bill de Blasio, New York City’s breathtakingly inept mayor, gleefully concurred. California senator Kamala Harris raised her hand when NBC’s Lester Holt asked, “Who here would abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?” She later reversed herself and said that she misheard the question. Regardless, she is a Senate co-sponsor of Sanders’s bill, as are New Jersey’s Cory Booker and New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, also White House wannabes.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Do Democrats Hate Jobs So Much?

By on July 11th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/11/why-do-democrats-hate-jobs-so-much/

House Democrats, resistant to reason, continue to press for a minimum-wage hike even though a government report says it could cost as many as 3.7 million jobs. The party of the “working man” seems to have no problem throwing low-wage workers out on the streets.

The bill, which is headed to a floor vote, would increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour over five years. The Congressional Budget Office says it could kill as many as 3.7 million jobs, with a median estimate of 1.3 million, should it become law. (To be fair, the low estimate is roughly zero job losses, which seems far less credible than the upper estimate of 3.7 million, simply because the laws of economics show that when goods or services cost more, in this case labor is the service, markets respond by buying less.)

Rep. Bobby Scott, Virginia Democrat, has dismissed the job losses and is instead focusing on the CBO’s estimate that the hike would increase wages for 17 million workers (which is plausible) and move 1.3 million families out of poverty. (Which seems unlikely, since only about half of minimum-wage workers are not yet 25 years old, a quarter are teens, 64% work part time, only 221,000 are older than 25, and the never-married outnumber the married about 4-to-1, which means most aren’t providing the primary income for a family.)

But reality should never be denied, and the facts show there can be no doubt that minimum-wage hikes, even previously government-mandated wages floors, are job killers — and tend to reduce family income, as well.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

UK Tory leadership front-runner Boris Johnson declares his love for the State of Israel, willingness to launch sanctions against Iran.

By on July 11th, 2019

https://unitedwithisrael.org/uk-leadership-frontrunner-boris-johnson-im-a-passionate-zionist/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&

In a recent exclusive interview with the UK-based Jewish News, British MP Boris Johnson, a leading candidate to replace Prime Minister Theresa May, praised Israel and said he would pursue Palestinian leaders about their “pay for slay” policy.

May will be leaving her post this month.

Johnson, who was mayor of London from 2008 until 2016, described himself as a “passionate Zionist” and referred to Israel as a “great country” that “I love.”

As for the Iran’s breaching of the nuclear deal, Johnson told the Jewish News, “I think that there are enough tensions in that region without triggering a nuclear arms race, whose consequences would be very hard to foresee, and which would certainly pose very difficult choices for any Israeli government.

“I certainly think you could not fault the UK government for being tough on Iran’s sanction busting. As Prime Minister, I’d make sure we continue to do everything we can to constrain Iran’s disruptive behaviour in the region,” he said.

Concerning a Palestinian state, Johnson said that should only happen when Palestinian leaders “meaningfully recognize Israel and stop threatening to revoke recognition.”

In 2016, the British government froze $30 million earmarked for aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA.) Though the PA had claimed the money was to pay civil servants in Gaza, it was used to support terrorists in Israeli jails and their families.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Palestinians Do Not Trust Their Leaders by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on July 11th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14520/palestinians-leaders-trust

Evidently, Palestinian leaders do not grasp that the Palestinian public cares a great deal more about being treated like human beings by their own leaders than about anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric.

This incitement is Palestinian leaders’ way of distracting attention from problems at home. They want their people to be busy hating someone else – in this case Israel, the US and pro-US Arab leaders. Otherwise, these people might wake up one fine morning and demand reform, transparency and democracy from their leaders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

If Palestinian leaders spent a fraction of the time that they waste on condemning Israel and the US, on bringing good government to their people, the Palestinians would be in a much better situation. It seems that some senior Palestinian leaders cannot go to sleep at night without having disgorged fiery statements against Israel and the US. Needless to say, this does not make for particularly constructive governance.

When fighting an unseen peace plan becomes a greater priority than bettering the lives of your people, one can only say that, with failed leaders such as these, the time has come for the Palestinian public to raise its collective voice and demand its rights from its unelected leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Until this happens, Palestinian leaders will continue to enjoy the good life on the extremely burdened backs of its people.

While Palestinian leaders continue to dedicate their time to vilifying Israel and the US administration, the Palestinian public seems to have more pressing matters on its mind. Take, for example, the debilitating and dangerous lack of public freedoms and the corruption under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian leaders, however, appear oblivious to the urgent concerns of their people. Evidently, Palestinian leaders do not grasp that the Palestinian public cares a great deal more about being treated like human beings by their own leaders than about anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric.

Thus, the gap between Palestinian leaders and their people appears to widen by the moment, and the Palestinians’ dissatisfaction with the performance of these leaders grows at a parallel pace.

The number of Palestinians who heeded the Palestinian Authority’s call to take to the streets in protest against the recent US-led “Peace to Prosperity” economic conference in Bahrain was relatively small.

Although the Palestinian leaders were hoping that tens of thousands of people would participate in the rallies against the US and Israel, it was evident that the number of participants was much lower than expected. In fact, most of the protesters in the West Bank were members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction or employees of his government.

Similarly, the number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who are heeding Hamas’s call to head to the border with Israel for the weekly protests is in steady decline. The protests, which began in March 2018, are organized by Hamas and other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip under the title: “Great March of Return.”

The decreasing number of Palestinians who are willing to go to the border and endanger their own lives by catapulting stones, firebombs and other lethal objects at Israeli soldiers is a positive sign; it is possible that the Palestinian public in the Gaza Strip is getting fed up with Hamas’s empty arguments and rhetoric.

Two recent public opinion polls have revealed the depths of Palestinians’ mistrust for their leaders.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Donald Trump knows Boris is the man to get Brexit done and resuscitate the UK-US alliance Nile Gardiner

By on July 11th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/07/10/donald-trump-knows-boris-man-get-brexit-done-resuscitate-uk/

It is perhaps unsurprising that the British ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch, felt the need to resign after Donald Trump’s condemnation of comments he made in leaked diplomatic cables. But the ambassador’s critical views of the White House point to a wider problem.

Despite the success of the president’s state visit to Britain, Trump and Theresa May have long been worlds apart in terms of vision, outlook and approach. There is no chemistry between them, and May has shown little interest in building a partnership with Trump, frequently siding with the EU over the US on foreign policy matters. The special relationship has been left weakened.

This week’s diplomatic spat will not, however, alter the reality that the alliance will be in a far better place once May steps down. Here in Washington, the expectation is that Boris Johnson will be in Downing Street on July 24, and will immediately be America’s most important ally. For the US, a Johnson premiership represents a powerful opportunity to reignite the special relationship.

The US is not taking sides in the Tory leadership contest, but there is an acute understanding in the Oval Office that Johnson represents a distinctly pro-American outlook with a deep-seated affinity for the transatlantic alliance. Johnson, after all, was born in New York, and was until recently a US citizen. He has been a frequent visitor to the US and is well known in political circles here.

This bodes well for Britain. Many Americans admire Johnson’s record as mayor of London, and view him as an exciting personality, with a dash of Churchillian brilliance, who is unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom and get things done.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Democratic Candidates Are Running a Race of Inauthenticity By Victor Davis Hanson

By on July 11th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/10/democratic-candidates-are-running-a-race-of-inauthenticity/

An epidemic of false identities, massaged resumes and warped ancestries has broken out among the current Democratic presidential primary candidates.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for years claimed Native American ancestry. An embattled Warren ironically took a DNA test that only proved her critics’ contention that she was no more of Native American heritage than the vast majority of Americans.

Another Democratic candidate, Robert Francis O’Rourke, is a rich white male who grew up in affluence. O’Rourke some time ago adopted the name “Beto,” an abbreviation for the Spanish “Roberto.” The Spanish-speaking, Irish-American O’Rourke, with a wink and nod, has assumed a useful near-Latino identity.

That ruse became a caricature in O’Rourke’s 2018 race for the U.S. Senate in Texas. The second-generation Cuban-American incumbent, Senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz, was portrayed by the media as the non-Spanish-speaking “white guy” pitted against the more authentic Irish-American Latino “Beto.”

Few would know that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was actually born with the alliterative European name Warren Wilhelm Jr. With today’s politically correct calibrations of avoiding Northern European nomenclature, the Latinate “de Blasio” apparently ranks higher than the overtly German “Wilhelm.”

It has long been a populist tradition that presidential candidates downplay their financial success or even fabricate a “born in a log cabin” myth of early poverty and adversity. But recently, Democratic candidates have taken that trope to identity-politics extremes.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Street Smarts in the White House Karin McQuillan

By on July 11th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/10/street-smarts-in-the-white-house/

President Trump went to an Ivy League school, but he came out still talking like a New Yorker, with his street smarts intact. What does it mean to have street smarts? It’s knowledge of how to spot trouble coming, how to cope with mean bastards, and thrive. It is knowledge gained from gritty life, which gives you “a bank of courage to depend on when you are tested.” Your knowledge is based in your life experience, not conventional wisdom or academic notions, so it is actually real.

Street smarts combines common sense, self-preservation, and assertiveness. Think President Trump.

The person with street smarts has a great bullshit detector. You know how to deal with bullies and cheats, whether they be elite media or political opponents. As Willie Dixon put it, “You can’t mess with the messer, the messer’s gonna mess with you.”

Trump’s success dominating his dirty-dealing opponents has amazed and dumbfounded Democrats and the old GOP alike. They don’t understand his strengths. Like a martial arts master, Trump doesn’t absorb his enemies’ attacks. He transforms their assaults into his own energy to win.

President Trump’s street smarts go way beyond dealing with enemies. It is the key to how he carved his own successful path in life, and in the White House. The key to street smarts is noticing life as it is and dealing with it. In high falutin’ psychology terms, it is reality testing, the highest order of brain functioning.

Reality testing is essential to good judgment and effectiveness in life. It means dealing with the world as it is, not as you want it to be, nor as you fear it to be. No socialism, no global warming, no free lunch.

Good judgment requires facing things as they are. Democrats lack it almost entirely. President Trump has it in excess. Reality testing is a rare gift. It is called common sense, but it is not common.

This is why President Trump has managed to accomplish so much that was deemed impossible in the two difficult areas of the economy and foreign affairs. He pays no attention to the received truths of other people. He looks simply and without equivocation at what’s in front of him. Like any builder, President Trump has his two feet solidly on the ground at all times.

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