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POLITICS

It’s Not That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Knows Nothing . . . By Chris Buskirk

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/28/its-not-that-alexandria

Many on the right say she is a millennial know nothing. That’s not true. It’s just that everything she thinks she really knows is wrong.

As tragedy struck an acquaintance this week, I was reminded today of the fleeting nature of life. The Psalmist begged God, “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” What can one say to that but, Amen! As important and precious as our lives are, they are fleeting, delicate, ephemeral.

But Christmas is a season when we pause to remember and to honor the advent of the Creator who took on human vesture, as the Liturgy of St. James so memorably puts it, and in doing so we catch a glimpse of the eternal. Politics, though important, gets put into perspective.

Yet Christmas was also the day I was reminded of how quickly and perversely even the highest things are misused for low purposes. I realized almost immediately that I had made a mistake when, out of sheer habit, I looked at Twitter on Christmas morning. Within moments I happened upon a tweet from the Bronx’s newest congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

It began cheerfully enough: “Joy to the world.” Wonderful. “Merry Christmas everyone.” And a Merry Christmas to you, too! I thought. Look, per Rodney King, we can all just get along if only for a morning. The congresswoman-elect continued: “. . . here’s to a holiday filled with happiness, family, and love . . .” Lovely. Sounds like just the way to spend Christmas.

Trump Works While NeverTrump Predicts Doom—Again By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/27/trump-works

While the president worked during the holidays—including surprise trips with the first lady to greet U.S. troops in Iraq and Germany—anti-Trump “conservatives” worked hard on their laptops to warn Americans of impending doom for Trump’s presidency.

Again.

In an uncharitable Christmas Day screed, National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg served up some flashbacks from his NeverTrump past to yet again warn that Trump’s presidency will “end poorly.” Goldberg again condemned Trump for his lack of character; again blasted Trump supporters for emulating his bellicose style; and again unleashed a litany of alleged offenses—such as the president’s “rants against the 1st Amendment”—as evidence of why Donald Trump is, like, the worst president ever.

Goldberg is lashing out lately: From his borderline-misogynistic diatribe against a female journalist who outed National Review for accepting donations from Google while possibly suppressing negative stories about the tech giant, to an attack on his NR colleague Andrew McCarthy (which eventually elicited an apology from Goldberg), he seems more unhinged than usual.

Which makes his lazy harangue about Trump’s name-calling and mean-spiritedness all the more ironic. Please, Jonah, tell us more about character and manners just days after you called a woman reporter an “idiot,” a “McCarthyite,” a “failed-actress-turned-faux journalist,” and a “MAGA infomercial hostess.”

Goldberg isn’t alone. His fellow NeverTrump travelers are certain it’s really over for Trump this time.

“We should be deeply troubled,” insisted Goldberg’s sidekick, David French, after the December 20 resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. “Now is the time for Republicans in Congress to declare their independence from the Republican in the White House and refuse once and for all to rubber-stamp Donald Trump’s whims and desires.”

Tom Nichols—who seizes on every real or imagined scandal du jour to warn his fellow Americans that the end is (again near—fumed over Mattis’s resignation.

Hijab in the House By Bruce Bawer

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/hijab-in-the-house/

One of the notable results of the November 6 midterm elections was that the U.S. House of Representatives went from two Muslim members — Indiana’s André Carson and Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, who on the same day was elected his state’s attorney general — to three Muslims, Carson plus two new female members from Michigan and Minnesota. With few if any exceptions, the mainstream media rooted for these ladies throughout the campaign season and lustily cheered their victories, not because of their skills or experience or political views but because they represented “diversity.”

The same media also did their best to cover up unpleasant details about them. For example, Rashida Tlaib, the soon-to-be-installed member from Michigan, has a record of outspoken anti-Semitic comments (at her victory party, she wrapped herself in a Palestinian flag). As David Steinberg demonstrated in a bravura series of investigative articles for PJ Media, Ilhan Omar, the hijab-wearing future Gentlewoman from Minnesota (on her account, Democrats plan to lift a 181-year-old ban on head coverings in Congress), not only hates Jews but committed perjury and married her brother, likely as part of an immigration and student-loan scam. Nonetheless she is already being hailed as a “star” and has been elected to a leadership role in the House progressive caucus.

Granted, these are just two House members out of 435. And Ellison, who won election in Minnesota despite his chummy relations with Louis Farrakhan and highly plausible accusations of domestic abuse, is, so far, the country’s only Muslim state AG. But it’s a start — a foot in the door. At what point are we permitted to begin worrying out loud?

How about when we catch up with Canada, where the minister of Immigration is a Somali-born Muslim named Ahmed Hussen, who was last seen pushing the sinister UN migration pact and refusing to answer queries about it from Rebel Media, Canada’s online alternative news organization? (Canada’s mainstream media were too polite to ask Hussen uncomfortable questions about the UN deal.)

Or how about when we evolve as far as Germany, whose Minister of Immigration Aydan Özoğuz is the sister of two Hezbollah enthusiasts named Yavuz and Gürhan Özoğuz, who reportedly have “close ties to the Iranian government” and to various Holocaust deniers and who run a “virulently anti-Israeli, anti-American and anti-democratic” website called “Muslim-Markt.” In a 2013 interview, Aydan, the Immigration minister, said: “They are my brothers. I don’t deny my family. I think apart from my brothers on political issues.” Two years later she expressed the same sentiments in an NPR interview, saying that she and her brothers “have completely different views” but that she considers it “important to keep the channel of communication open in her family.” How sweet! One is reminded of Hillary’s sidekick, Huma Abedin, who got a pass from the media even though her father ran a top Muslim Brotherhood organization and her mother edited a Sharia law journal (for which Huma herself worked from 1995 to 2008) and sat on an Islamic council chaired by the vile hate preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

In 2015, voters in the traditionally Polish-American city of Hamtramck, Michigan, elected the nation’s first Muslim-majority city council — leading a local Muslim leader to shout at an Election Night victory party: “Today we show the Polish, and everybody else!” As Robert Spencer wrote at the time: “Multicultural euphoria, meet Islamic supremacist reality.” No major U.S. city has a Muslim mayor yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Rotterdam has one: Morocco-born Ahmed Aboutaleb, who’s been in office since 2009 and who identifies as a devout yet Westernized Muslim. A dual citizen of the Netherlands and Morocco, Aboutaleb has said many of the right things about terrorism and integration, and has even been praised by Geert Wilders; but last December he got into trouble when he told an interviewer that “every Muslim is a bit of a salafist” and described his own mayoral work as “jihad in its most perfect form” — remarks which led Wilders to demand his resignation. A couple of months ago, Aboutaleb agreed to a plan that would cut off the flow of asylum seekers from North Africa into Rotterdam, which is already one of the most heavily Muslim — and crime-ridden — cities in Europe. But who knows what he’s really thinking? What can it possibly mean to be a devout yet Westernized Muslim? Whom is this guy hoodwinking? His fellow Muslims or us?

Sadiq Khan, who has been mayor of London for two years, also calls himself a “moderate, socially liberal Muslim.” Yet one of his first acts as mayor was to ban ads on public transport depicting scantily clad females. He claimed to be doing so on feminist grounds, although many observers saw it as a step toward Sharia. Under Khan, who has notoriously stated that living with terrorism is “part of living in a big city,” London authorities have focused less on Muslim crime and preventing terrorism and more on harassing “Islamophobes.”

Then there’s the Somalia-born Lord Mayor of Sheffield Magid Magid, who, since being named to that post earlier this year, has been celebrated by hip types all over the UK because he’s young, black, Muslim, and informal to the point of irreverence. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Magid referred to the current monarch as Queen Victoria, then, when corrected, said: “Yeah. Liz.” Making no secret of his disdain for the monarchy, his contempt for Donald Trump, and his indifference to the legacy of Winston Churchill, Magid appears to know absolutely nothing about the history of his city and has not bothered to read the guidelines to official protocol that he was given when he took office; but he’s big on immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, all of whom, he says, “enrich our society,” and one of his chief goals is to establish an official Sheffield poet laureateship so he can give the job to a certain rapper. Anyone who criticizes him for any of this is, in his view, a racist. Magid comes off as such a buffoon that it’s hard to take him very seriously as a part of the Muslim menace, but perhaps it’s unwise, at this stage, to underestimate his ability to make a meaningful contribution to the Islamic assault on British freedom. CONTINUE AT SITE

Democrats keep being wrong and keep demanding we believe them By Jack Hellner

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/democrats_keep_being_wrong_and_keep_demanding_we_believe_them.html

For decades, journalists and other Democrats have played the race card and sex card in elections because they can’t win based on their policies. For the last few years, they have added the Russian card to their hand to play tricks on the public. We knew that the Russian card has been played in the presidential election, but on Thursday, I saw that they also played it in the special election in Alabama in 2017.

It starts off with a story that shows up at the Washington Post after decades of Roy Moore running for office – that Moore pursued young girls. Democrats had little chance to win this Senate seat, but all of a sudden, after Moore won the primary and after Republicans couldn’t replace him, this story shows up – not at an Alabama newspaper, but in the hands of a national Democrat-supporting newspaper. With no actual evidence, this story was run throughout the U.S continuously to destroy Moore. It worked.

As insurance, Democrat operatives flooded social networks pretending to be Russians. With no actual evidence, media outlets said Russians wanted Moore in the Senate.

A group of tech experts working as Democratic operatives were paid $100,000 to orchestrate an elaborate “false flag” disinformation campaign during the hotly contested 2017 special election between Roy Moore and Democratic Sen. Doug Jones.

The group, funded by liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman, created over 1,000 Russian-language Twitter accounts that followed Roy Moore overnight in order to link the embattled Republican candidate to Russian influence campaigns, according to a Wednesday report in the New York Times. …

Democrats involved in the scheme have likened it to fighting fire with fire.

Biden’s Prominence Illustrates the Dems’ Weak Bench By Henry I. Miller

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/18/bidens-prominence

James Freeman wrote a recent Wall Street Journal column about the “authenticity” problems facing possible 2020 Democratic presidential candidates Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Beto O’Rourke. But former Vice-President Joe Biden, the current frontrunner according to a CNN poll released earlier this month, arguably has even more formidable baggage.

In spite of his experience in politics and reputation as a hail-fellow-well-met, Biden is anything but presidential material. He has for decades seemed to be suffering from some sort of dementia or other cognitive disorder—which would not be surprising for someone who has had two neurosurgical operations for leaking cerebral aneurysms.

Biden in 1987 plagiarized part of a campaign speech from one by Neil Kinnock, leader of Britain’s Labour Party, even revising his own family history to conform to the speech. He also admitted to an earlier incident of plagiarism in law school.

Biden demonstrated either poor reality testing or merely a propensity for lying when he claimed that same year he “went to law school on a full academic scholarship—the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,” and that he “ended up in the top half” of his class. He also said that in college, he was “the outstanding student in the political science department” and “graduated with three degrees.”

Rep. Martha McSally appointed by Arizona governor to Senate seat held by John McCain By Alex Pappas

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rep-martha-mcsally-appointed-to-open-arizona-senate-seat

Republican Rep. Martha McSally, just weeks after losing one of the midterms’ tightest and most contentious Senate races, was appointed by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday to fill the state’s other U.S. Senate seat.

McSally will serve for at least the next two years in the seat that was held by longtime Arizona Sen. John McCain until his death in August.

“With her experience and long record of service, Martha is uniquely qualified to step up and fight for Arizona’s interests in the U.S. Senate,” Ducey said in a statement.

Ducey had appointed former Sen. Jon Kyl to the seat in September, but Kyl, after serving for several months, announced plans to resign at the end of the year. According to Ducey’s office, Kyl’s resignation will be effective Dec. 31.

US Congresswoman-elect Tlaib to wear ‘Palestinian dress’ at swearing-in

https://worldisraelnews.com/tlaib-to-wear-palestinian-dress-at-congress-swearing-in/

American Congresswoman-elect Rashida Tlaib will wear what she claims is traditional Palestinian garb to her swearing-in ceremony.

By Jack Gold, World Israel News

U.S. Congresswoman-elect Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) announced that she will wear a traditional Palestinian gown when sworn into Congress in January.

Tlaib, of Palestinian-Arab origin, posted a photo of the embroidered gown on Instagram with the caption: ” Sneak peek: This is what I am wearing when I am sworn into Congress. #PalestinianThobe #ForMyYama (mother in Arabic).”

The dress she displayed is common to the entire Middle East, with nothing specifically “Palestinian” about it.

Among the reactions to her post was the comment: “Obviously she doesn’t wish to be an American.” Another said, “Not appropriate, not pro-American.”

Incoming Democrat Chairman Makes Definitive Case Against Impeaching Trump Twenty years ago, Jerrold Nadler argued in Congress that impeaching the president based on private, consensual sex was a ‘partisan coup d’etat.’By Ben Weingarten

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/17/incoming-democrat-chairman-makes-definitive-case-impeaching-trump/

Hours after midterm election night 2018, Mollie Hemingway reported that incoming House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) had impeachment on his mind, cavalierly chatting away on his phone on a train to Washington about the prospect of raising it against President Donald Trump. If his recent words are any indication, he may very well make good on that threat.

Following the release of the sentencing memorandum for the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, which alleged that Cohen had engaged in campaign finance violations at the behest of then-candidate Trump, Nadler took to the airwaves to lodge his most serious claim yet regarding presidential impeachment. Here’s the relevant exchange from CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: If it is proven that the president directed or coordinated with Cohen to commit these [two federal campaign finance] felonies…are those impeachable offenses?
NADLER: Well, they would be impeachable offenses…even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office. That would be the — that would be an impeachable offense.

Nadler was careful to hedge, caveating that “You don’t necessarily launch an impeachment against the president because he committed an impeachable offense.”
Yet Nadler Excused Clinton for the Exact Same Thing

Beto Is a Hit and (Chances Are He’ll) Run By Jim Treacher

https://pjmedia.com/trending/beto-is-a-hit-and-chances-are-hell-run/
“But Dems love a Kennedy. Beto might not have the pedigree, but he has the requisite driving skills. And he doesn’t look like a drooling Conan O’Brien.”
Election 2020 is uncharted territory. Nobody in politics has ever known anything, but after 2016, we all know they don’t know anything. We all know there are no rules. These clowns are just making it up as they go along, hoping that enough people will believe their lies over the other tribe’s party’s lies. That’s always been the case, but never before have so many people been so wrong about what Americans want. In 2016 they tried to sell New Coke all over again, and two years later they’re still confused and angry that America didn’t just shut up and choke it down.*

So if the Democrats decide to nominate a guy who has only two notable accomplishments under his belt — getting away with fleeing the scene of a drunk-driving accident, and getting away with transforming himself from a white dude into a Latino — it wouldn’t surprise me. I’m not sure anything can surprise me anymore.**

That seems to be how the Dems are leaning. Alex Seitz-Wald, NBC News:

An early straw poll of members of the progressive group MoveOn.org shows a wide-open competition for liberal voters in the 2020 Democratic presidential contest, with Rep. Beto O’Rourke narrowly beating out former Vice President Joe Biden…

The most popular potential candidate was O’Rourke, D-Texas, who was selected by 15.6 percent of respondents, followed by Biden at 14.9 percent, and then Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with 13.1 percent.

An elderly plagiarist and an elderly communist, narrowly beaten out by a relatively youthful blank slate upon which libs can project all their hopes and dreams. That might be why some have described Beto as “the white Obama.” Which is an insult. To Obama.

Kamala Harris only got 10 percent, by the way. Which just goes to show that Democrats are both sexist and racist. I will continue to root for her, though. It would be amazing to watch her become the first black woman to be rejected as president of the United States. And Elizabeth Warren only got 6.4 percent, which is just more evidence of the Dems’ prejudice against Native Americans.

But can Kamala or Fauxcahontas do this?

By the way, O’Rourke says he didn’t flee the scene of that 1998 drunk-driving accident, a claim that PolitiFact rated “Mostly False.” That’s a devastating ruling, considering it’s PolitiFact and he’s a Democrat. Their whole job is to twist the truth to benefit his political party, and that’s the best they could do.

. CONTINUE AT SITE

Fighting Democrats’ Dirty Politics By Karin McQuillan

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/10/fighting

The midterms are in the rearview mirror and the chattering classes are back to debating fake collusion with Russia and a looming indictment of the president. Before the midterms, Republican voters were told this election was consequential. After the midterms, we’re told it is just one more split-government election, move along.

I’m not moving along so easily, and neither is my circle of patriotic MAGA friends.

Losing the House of Representatives was a crippling blow on immigration, the cornerstone of the Democrats’ drive to permanent domination. Any hopes of Democrats accepting Trump’s 2016 victory as normal politics is dead, and now they have Congress from which to harry and hobble the president.

Democrats have dehumanized Trump and all his supporters as white supremacists, in order to justify violence against our republican foundations. Since inauguration day they have undermined respect for the presidential election, the Supreme Court, the electoral college, freedom of speech and religion and the right to bear arms. Democrats claim these hallowed institutions are bringing on fascism.

Danger lights should be going off in every decent person’s mind. We are not in a terrain of politics as usual, but in a new and terrifying world of the hard Left.

Democrats justify their crossing every line of normal political behavior in America by manufacturing a Russian crisis out of thin air. The only “crisis” is that Republicans won an election, fair and square.

The Three Rules of Democrat Dirty Politics 101