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Ruth King

Small-c communist ousts House Democrats number four in leadership. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270618/dsaer-wins-seat-congress-matthew-vadum

A radical leftist upstart’s unexpected primary trouncing of a key member of the House Democratic leadership is sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party establishment.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old of Puerto Rican ancestry, crushed longtime U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley, a 56-year Irish-American Catholic, in the primary election June 26 for the 14th congressional district in New York, covering parts of the boroughs of Queens and The Bronx. Ocasio-Cortez, who previously worked as an organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, garnered 57.5 percent of the vote compared to the 42.5 percent Crowley earned.

Of course, democratic socialism is a profoundly dishonest euphemism calculated to make the horrors of communism more palatable.

As I’ve written before,

Karl Marx thought of socialism as a necessary way station on the road to the supposed utopia of communism. The question of socialism versus communism is a never-ending debate in academic circles, and it is one that is too involved to get into here. Suffice it to say that socialists and communists all want government or the collective to be master. They all subscribe to bad, un-American ideas, are all in the same ideological camp, and all tend to believe that the ends justify the means. In ideological terms, there is no bright line or safe harbor that neatly separates socialism from communism. They overlap and blend into each other.

ICE + Local Police Cooperation A winning formula. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270613/ice-local-police-cooperation-michael-cutler
On June 21, 2018 ICE posted a news release, Honduran man pleads guilty to transporting illegal aliens. This successful prosecution was only possible because of the able assistance provided to ICE by a Fairfax County police officer.

Here is an excerpt from this news release:

According to court documents, Danny Josue Zelaya-Ortiz, aka “Jose Castro”, 29, was part of a conspiracy to charge illegal aliens in the United States a fee for transporting them from Texas to other states across the country. In April 2018, Zelaya-Ortiz picked up at least six alien passengers, all of whom had been smuggled into the United States from the Mexico border. Zelaya was driving the passengers towards Maryland and the New York area when his vehicle was stopped in Virginia by Fairfax County Police on April 25, 2018. He was cited for an improper vehicle tag display and driving without an operator’s license. Homeland Security Investigations special agents responded to the scene after it was determined Zelaya-Ortiz and the passengers had no lawful status in the United States. Zelaya-Ortiz admitted he knew the passengers were illegal aliens and that he received payments for his role in the scheme. At the time of the crime, Zelaya-Ortiz had been in the country illegally after having been twice removed by immigration officials.

Before criminals can be successfully prosecuted for their crimes, these law violators obviously must first be identified and evidence of their crimes must be accumulated.

The above-noted case illustrates the importance of routine and effective cooperation between local police and ICE to facilitating federal investigations into immigration law violations. In this instant case Danny Josue Zelaya-Ortiz, aka “Jose Castro,” an illegal alien from Honduras who had been arrested and deported on at least three previous occasions was taken into custody by ICE, along with several illegal aliens he was caught transporting. from the U.S./Mexican border to Maryland and ultimately to New York City.

This illustrates that illegal immigration impacts every state of the United States, from border to border and coast to coast.

It’s Not Socialism, It’s Racism The myth of the media’s new Socialist It Girl. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270614/its-not-socialism-its-racism-daniel-greenfield

After the ’10 census, New York lost two congressional seats. Overpriced, lacking any growth industries except tourism and community organizing, the state just couldn’t keep up with the rest of the country.

New York had been bleeding congressional seats since the rise of the suburbs. After the massacre of ’10, its congressional delegation was the smallest since 1823. And it’ll lose more seats after the next census.

But the ’10 massacre also forced Rep. Joe Crowley out of the 7th Congressional District and into the 14th. The 7th became a gerrymandered a district built like a Frankenstein’s monster out of parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens that had nothing geographically in common except Puerto Rican populations who will keep voting for Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a Democrat, until the city sinks beneath the waves.

Crowley, who is paler than birch trees, had no shot at the new 7th. But he settled down comfortably in the 14th, winning 70% of the vote by just showing up, without the fuss of a primary challenge. While representing a Hispanic district in Queens, he was allegedly living comfortably in Arlington, Virginia.

That was never going to last.

New York City’s working class white population is an endangered species. If you’re not on welfare or earning well in the six figures, you can’t afford to live there. Crowley’s district was 46% Hispanic. It had the second highest share of Latino voters in New York. The machine pol was living on borrowed time.

The Democratic Party Is Killing Itself By Ian Henderson

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/02/the-democratic-party-is-killing-itsel

What does America’s political climate bode for us in the next 25-50 years? What if I told you the Democratic Party will fracture into multiple parties and the Republican Party will grow stronger? And what if I said changing demographics and the normalization of identity politics would be the reason?

The Democratic Party has redoubled its embrace of identity politics. Whether it be Mexican-American, African-American, Chinese-American, Muslim-American or any of the two-dozen hyphenated American groups out there, these ethno-religious-cultural groups have by and large used the Democratic Party to further their group interests. Why wouldn’t they? Human beings are tribal creatures and more often than not flock to those who act like them, speak like them, pray like them, and, yes, look like them.

As America’s non-Hispanic White population shrinks due to the influx of non-European immigration and low white birth rates, cultural enclaves have begun to form all over the nation. Starting in the late 1960s and accelerating over the past decade, the Democratic Party has abandoned its traditional base of working-class white voters to embrace minority immigrant groups. Although this has boded well for them in places like California, it won’t last.

Growing Republican Support

Working-class white voters feel abandoned by the Democratic Party. The party went from a platform of being center-left economically and socially/culturally conservative to a platform that is far to the left economically and socially/culturally degenerate. Consider how the South went from blue to red in the 1990s, as Southern Evangelicals embraced the Republican Party platform.

The Left Is Slipping into Terminal Irrelevance By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/01/the-left-is-slipping-into-terminal
Let’s face it. There are no liberals on the left these days…only aspiring totalitarians.

Well, last week was quite a week. For one side, a week of winning. For the other, a week of wailing.

It will be no secret to regular readers that I am in the former camp. I think it is a good thing that so-called “public-sector unions” can no longer force non-union workers to pay dues. Indeed, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I think public-sector unions are an abomination that have no place in a free republic. They all-but-guarantee systematic corruption.

As Daniel DiSalvo notes in Government Unions and the Bankrupting of America, such unions “extract dues from their members and funnel them into politicians’ campaign war chests, then those same politicians agree to generous contracts for public workers—which in turn leads to more union dues, more campaign spending, and so on. It is a cycle that has dominated the politics of some of America’s states with dire consequences.” Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court took an important step in breaking that vicious cycle.

First Amendment Wins
Last week was also a win for religious liberty and free speech. Henceforth, religious pregnancy counseling operations will no longer be required to post advisories informing clients that an abortion is just a quick trip to the local abattoir, a.k.a. Planned Parenthood.

Then there was the decision upholding President Trump’s moratorium on travel to the United States from certain countries known to be hotbeds of terrorism. I am wholeheartedly with the majority on that one, too, partly because I think our government has a duty to be circumspect about whom it allows into the country, and partly because I dislike grandstanding district court judges who presume to usurp the president’s legitimate constitutional powers by issuing injunctions on a “nationwide basis” against properly formed executive orders.

Hilarious satire of Dem apoplexy over Trump’s next Supreme Court pick By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/hilarious_satire_of_dem_apoplexy_over_trumps_next_supreme_court_pick.html

Hilarious satire of Dem apoplexy over Trump’s next Supreme Court pick

The obsessive media hatred of President Trump has made them entirely predictable. Everything he does is not just wrong, it is an outage. And everyone he appoints to office is utterly, irredeemably evil, so malign that dining at a restaurant is a threat that must be countered by mobs.

Blogger Don Surber has provided us with a splendid satire of the spittle-flecked media madness that will erupt as soon as President Trump announces his nominee for the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Kennedy. What makes this brilliant satire is that it is a generic editorial that could (and will) be published against anyone the president chooses. Don instructs journalists:

To those still laboring at a craft that last had impact in the 19th century, I draw upon my 27 years of experience to offer this generic editorial on whomever President Trump nominates for the Supreme Court.

You may cut and paste it, and your boss will not notice the difference.

The Senate Must Reject This Monster

President Trump — a vain, deranged, and impulsive man elected by Russia and not a majority of Americans — has nominated the worst judicial candidate since Roger Brooke Taney, the chief justice who authored the Dred Scott decision. [Nominee’s name] may be worse. Not only does [he or she] view African-Americans as chattel, but women as second-class citizens!

Read the whole thing.

Trump is Winning Over Blacks, Hispanics, Millennials, and Even Gays By Karin McQuillan

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/trump_is_winning_over_blacks_hispanics_millennials_and_even_gays.html

Democrat hate speech targeting deplorables has always worked — on their own voters. Libeling Republicans as racist, homophobic morons has kept Democrat voters in line. President Trump laughs at their insults, and just gets stronger. Suddenly, one more Trump success. The Democrat line is breaking. Our minorities are breaking free.

President Trump’s off the charts achievements on jobs and security are improving the lives of every single Democrat identity voting bloc. A small, but increasingly significant number are noticing. With his MAGA gains on the economy and foreign affairs, President Trump is slowly chipping away at the Democrat Party’s foundations. The white working class already belongs to Trump. Fed up blacks, Hispanics, millennials and gays are starting to follow.

Ordinary people, including our minorities, are focused on the reality of their lives. Most Americans actually care about exactly the two big issues Trump cares about: jobs and personal safety. They notice more money in their paychecks. They notice when they get off food stamps and the unemployment line. They notice when they move from flipping hamburgers to a high-paying construction or assembly-line jobs. Securing our border, supporting cops, defeating ISIS in Syria, pressuring North Korea to “denuke” — ordinary people get that we are safer than we were under Obama. Democrats can scream as loud as they want, but they cannot drown out reality.

The War on Admissions Testing What’s behind the move to drop ACT and SAT scores for college entry?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-war-on-admissions-testing-1530481487

The “test optional” movement has won its most high-profile convert in the University of Chicago, which announced last month that applicants to the school would no longer need to submit ACT or SAT scores.

The University of Chicago has become known in recent years for its commitment to academic rigor and resistance to coddling and group think. But in this decision it has increased the momentum of a fashionable but damaging ideology overtaking elite education: That standardized metrics of any kind are discriminatory and elitist, and that each student is so special that he or she can only be evaluated according to uniquely personal traits.

No test is perfect, but the ACT and SAT are powerful predictors of college performance. As psychology professors Nathan Kuncel and Paul Sackett wrote in The Wall Street Journal in March: “Longitudinal research demonstrates that standardized tests predict not just grades all the way through college but also the level of courses a student is likely to take.”

Standardized tests are especially important in a time of severe grade inflation, especially in more affluent high schools. That doesn’t mean students who don’t test well can’t succeed, or that students with high scores are guaranteed to graduate summa cum laude. But it’s clear scores are at least as valid a predictor of college performance as a students’ roster of carefully selected extracurricular activities or “personal essays,” which may be rewritten by tutors.

So what’s behind the campaign against standardized assessments? A University of Chicago spokeswoman says the test “may not reflect the full accomplishments and academic promise of a student.” This is true but could be said of any single part of a college application, including high school grades.

North Korea Expands Key Missile-Manufacturing Plant New satellite imagery indicates Pyongyang is pushing ahead with weapons programs even as it pursues dialogue with Washington By Jonathan Cheng

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-expands-key-missile-manufacturing-plant-1530486907?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

SEOUL—North Korea is completing a major expansion of a key missile-manufacturing plant, said researchers who have examined new satellite imagery of the site, the latest sign Pyongyang is pushing ahead with weapons programs even as the U.S. pressures it to abandon them.

The facility makes solid-fuel ballistic missiles—which would be able to strike U.S. military installations in Asia with a nuclear weapon with little warning—as well as re-entry vehicles for warheads that Pyongyang might use on longer-range missiles able to hit the continental U.S.

New images analyzed by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., show that North Korea was finishing construction on the exterior of the plant at around the time North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore last month. The U.S. is pushing Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic-missile programs.

Last week, 38 North, another organization that monitors North Korea, published satellite images of the country’s main nuclear-research center in Yongbyon, showing that Pyongyang was rapidly upgrading its facilities there. CONTINUE AT SITE

North Korea Keeps Enriching Uranium Troubling new evidence that Kim Jong Un isn’t honoring his promises.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-keeps-enriching-uranium-1530481136

New satellite photos show that Kim Jong Un is continuing to develop his nuclear weapons program, and U.S. intelligence sources say they believe North Korea has increased its production of nuclear fuel at multiple sites. This wasn’t supposed to happen after the Donald Trump-Kim summit last month in Singapore.

According to an analysis by experts at the Stimson Center in Washington, North Korea has improved the cooling system of its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon. Activity also continues at a nearby building where plutonium is extracted from spent fuel, and staining on the roof of another building suggests the North is enriching weapons-grade uranium using centrifuges. U.S. intelligence sources essentially confirmed this news by telling news agencies last week that the North has been increasing its production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

After the June 12 summit with Kim, President Trump said that he trusts the young dictator and expects him to start fulfilling his promise to denuclearize immediately. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Mr. Trump tweeted the next day.