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POLITICS

Why Rep. James Clyburn just walked back his prediction of impeachment By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/why_rep_james_clyburn_just_walked_back_his_prediction_of_impeachment.html
“Do Dems really want to start impeachment against Trump, given the prospect that Obama/Biden/Hillary (and perhaps others in the Obama administration) engaged in what would clearly be impeachable offenses?”

Nancy Pelosi, desperately trying to hold onto her speakership in the face of the Trump-haters (nearly all from safe districts) demanding impeachment, must have been furious at her second-highest-ranking member yesterday saying it’s only a matter of time until President Trump is impeached.  Pelosi knows that if impeachment proceeds, the freshmen Democrats in the House who provided the Democrat majority that made her speaker, most of them elected in swing districts, will face a tough re-election bid.  She would revert back to minority leader in a GOP-run House that could enable a re-elected President Trump to advance his legislative agenda when voters react negatively to what would be an impeachment fiasco.

Rep. James Clyburn is the majority whip in the House of Representatives, second only to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer as an aide to Pelosi.  And yesterday he lobbed what amounts to a stink bomb at Pelosi’s dream of returning as speaker.  Clyburn acknowledged that the public does not yet support impeachment:

Clyburn, who serves as the Democratic whip, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that his party’s leadership is waiting to open an impeachment inquiry until there is broader public support for for [sic] the move, but effectively guaranteed that the president would be impeached at some point.

“We think we have to bring the public along. We’re not particularly interested in the Senate,” Clyburn said, pushing back on Tapper’s suggestion that Democrats might wait to impeach until there is support for the move among Senate Republicans. “We think if we efficiently and effectively educate the public, then we will have done our jobs and we can move on an impeachment vote and it will stand and maybe it will be what needs to be done to incentivize the Senate to act.”

“But it sounds like you’re — you think that the president will be impeached, or at least proceedings will begin in the House at some point, but just not right now?” Tapper went on to ask.

“Yes, exactly what I feel,” Clyburn responded.

AOC: Everybody Should Live in a Place Like My Luxury Apartment Building, or Something By Jim Treacher

https://pjmedia.com/trending/aoc-everybody-should-live-in-a-place-like-my-luxury-apartment-building-or-something/

The great thing about socialism is that it meets everybody’s needs and solves everybody’s problems, as long as it’s never, ever put into practice. As long as you’re just talking, socialism is great. Who doesn’t like a good fairy tale?

And nobody loves talking as much as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez loves talking. If words were deeds, she’d already be the most accomplished politician in the 21st Century. Here she is talking about how her recent move into a luxury apartment building in D.C. has taught her that, um… everybody should live in a luxury apartment building? I think that’s what she’s saying? Here, see if you can decipher this stream of syllables:

“So I move into this building, and it’s marketed as a ‘luxury’ building in D.C. Right? I’m keeping it 100% with you all… It’s an efficient building, it’s clean, it has public space, it has a rooftop garden (y’all watching my Instagram), it has all of these things. It has clean air, it has clean water. And I think about this and I’m like, ‘Hm, this is what a luxury building is like, right?’…”
“What we have been taught that is a luxury should not be a luxury… We can live in buildings that are non-for-profit, or tenant-owned. There are so many ways we can slice this and we can structure it in a way where all people have the right to a dignified home.”  CONTINUE AT SITE

Dear Joe Biden: It Was Your Administration That Put Kids in Cage By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/dear-joe-biden-it-was-your-administration-that-put-kids-in-cage/

“Biden also doesn’t want the public to remember that it was the Obama-Biden administration that put immigrant children in cages. In fact, outrage over the policy was sparked in May 2018 by photos of immigrant children in cages that went viral. The images were from 2014, during Obama and Biden’s second term.”

It seems like only yesterday Joe Biden was claiming that he didn’t seek out Barack Obama’s endorsement for president because he wanted to win the nomination on his own merits, but ever since then he’s been finding some subtle and not-so-subtle ways to ride on Obama’s coattails, including using images of Obama on his website and social media.

Over the weekend, Joe Biden spoke at the Human Rights Campaign gala in Columbus, Ohio, during which he referred to Obamacare as “the Affordable Care Act of our administration,” meaning his and Barack Obama’s. He never misses an opportunity to assume co-ownership of the Obama administration’s accomplishments—at least those that are still politically viable in his party.

In the same speech that he referred to the Obama administration as “our administration”, he accused the Trump White House as being “literally a bully pulpit” and “implementing discriminatory policies like Muslim bans, turning away asylum seekers, putting children in cages.”

Making Sense of the New American Right Column: Keeping track of the Jacksonians, Reformicons, Paleos, and Post-liberals Matthew Continetti

https://freebeacon.com/columns/making-sense-of-the-new-american-right/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I like to start my classes on conservative intellectual history by distinguishing between three groups. There is the Republican Party, with its millions of adherents and spectrum of opinion from very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, and yes, liberal. There is the conservative movement, the constellation of single-issue nonprofits that sprung up in the 1970s—gun rights, pro-life, taxpayer, right to work—and continue to influence elected officials. Finally, there is the conservative intellectual movement: writers, scholars, and wonks whose journalistic and political work deals mainly with ideas and, if we’re lucky, their translation into public policy.

It’s a common mistake to conflate these groups. The Republican Party is a vast coalition that both predates and possibly will post-date the conservative movement. That movement has had mixed success in moving the party to the right, partly because of cynicism and corruption but also because politicians must, at the end of the day, take into account the shifting and often contradictory views of their constituents. The conservative intellectual movement exercises the least power of all. You could fit its members into a convention hall or, more likely, a cruise ship.

Ideas matter. But the relation of ideas to political action is difficult to measure and often haphazard. The line between shaping a politician’s rhetoric and decisions and merely reflecting them is awfully fuzzy. The conservative intellectual movement, in addition to generating excellent writing, has had seven real-world applications since its formation after the Second World War: originalism and supply side economics in the 1970s; welfare reform and crime policy in the 1980s and ’90s; educational choice and reform over the last two decades; James Burnham’s anti-Communist strategies that found expression in the Reagan Doctrine; and the counterinsurgency plan known as the “surge” that prevented the defeat of American forces in the second Iraq war. There have been other successes, for sure, but also plenty of setbacks. What’s important to remember is that liberals as well as Republicans, conservative activists, and conservative intellectuals contested every single one of these policies.

What Is Bernie Sanders Worried About? by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14330/bernie-sanders-iran

The important point is what war one talks about, when, where and against which adversaries. The bland assertion “I oppose war against X or Y” is a sign of intellectual laziness if not of moral bankruptcy.

Senator Bernie Sanders never tells us which side he would have supported: Saddam Hussein or a majority of the Iraqi people? One may justly infer that he is opposed to wars only where the US is fighting real or imagined enemies.

Sanders is wrong in pretending that Iraq was a “disaster”. Since 2003, Iraq has gone through many ordeals, paying a heavy price. And yet, today no one could deny that most Iraqis enjoy freedoms they never thought possible under the dictatorship.

“No war with Iran!” The shop-worn slogan, in circulation for four decades, is back in vogue as self-styled peaceniks in the West seek a fig-leaf to hide their shameless support for a regime rejected by its people. In Britain, the neo-Marxists who control the Labour Party bandy the slogan around on airwaves and meetings of militants. In France, the pro-Putin “France Unbowed” outfit led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon makes similar noises. And in the US, we have Senator Bernie Sanders, currently the front-runner to become the Democrat Party’s nominee in the next presidential election, donning the mantle of supreme peacemaker, in effect offering himself as a human shield for the Islamic Republic.

“Recently I’ve been criticized … because of my opposition to war,” Sanders says in a video message. “So let me be very clear: I make no apologies to anybody, that when I was a young man before I was elected to anything, I opposed the war in Vietnam. And I know what that war did to my generation.”

He adds “I’m going to do everything that I can to prevent a war with Iran because if you think the war in Iraq was a disaster, my guess is that war in Iran would be even worse.”

Divisions Over Israel Shadow Calif. Democrats’ Convention . By Susan Crabtree

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/31/divisions_over_israel_shadow_calif_democrats_convention_140467.html

Democratic activists in California have sparked another divisive intra-party debate over inflammatory accusations leveled against the Israeli government at the state party gathering this weekend – an event where several Democratic presidential contenders plan to showcase their campaigns.

On Friday, the eve of the California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco, officials were set to consider at least five draft resolutions that would denounce the Israeli government’s influence on U.S. politics.

One particularly controversial resolution accuses Israel of willfully “aligning with the virulent Islamophobia” of white supremacist groups, including “Christian fundamentalist and ultra-right groups” in the U.S., and it indirectly links that alliance to the 2018 massacre of 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

The party’s Resolutions Committee on Friday evening will consider the five draft resolutions, among roughly 200 in total authored by convention delegates. The panel could try to table the ones dealing with Israel to avoid a dramatic public floor debate over the weekend.

Drew Hammill, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, declined to comment on the resolutions while they remain pending. State party spokesman Roger Salazar was equally reticent.

WHO IS VIRGINIA STATE DELEGATE IBRAHEEM SAMIRAH? ANOTHER BIGOT

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/30/calling-out-anti-semitism-isnt-islamophobic/

Calling Out Anti-Semitism Isn’t ‘Islamophobic’ By Kyle Shideler

Virginia State Delegate Ibraheem Samirah is the poster child for a new crop of Democratic politicians. He’s young, charismatic, and very progressive, with a history of activism that began in his student days on the campuses of Boston University and American University. Samirah has spent his brief time as a Virginia delegate hawking a “Green New Deal” for Virginia in the Washington Post.

But Samirah also has a history of shockingly antisemitic and virulently anti-Israel statements and troubling associations, and he doesn’t take kindly to those who point it out.

A story by Mikhael Smits in the Washington Free Beacon detailed Samirah’s long-running association with the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions group formed out of the Hamas-linked Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP). Samirah’s ties are both historic—including his father’s time as Chairman of the IAP and role as a Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman—and ongoing. He received funds from AMP donors in his delegate campaign this year, and spoke at AMP’s 2018 national convention.

Smits’ piece builds upon reporting during the February 2019 special election that highlighted Samirah’s anti-Semitic Facebook posts, which were condemned by both Republicans and Democrats but didn’t prevent him from winning the race by a comfortable margin.

Samirah responded to the new wave of criticism by tweeting an unsourced list of “statistics” claiming large numbers of Republicans, and a significant minority of Americans generally, hate or fear Muslims involved in politics.

Samirah also labeled his critics “Far-Right,” even though the “Far-Right” of Samirah’s imagination would seem to encapsulate the entire Virginia Republican Party, which responded to the Free Beacon report by labeling Samirah’s behavior “rabid anti-Semitism.”

Funny how no one wants to look into that report that Omar married her brother… By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/funny_how_no_one_wants_to_talk_about_that_report_that_omar_married_her_brother.html

You’d think they’d be all over this like tabloid papparazzi. Wild and prurient news always sells papers and draws viewer eyeballs, and the scattered reports about how America’s first Muslim congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar, reportedly married her own brother in a bid to bring him into the country ahead of the others trying to get in, is quite a doozy. The press certainly got excited about the Stormy Daniels controversy for such a reason, but why the absence of interest in Omar’s kinky weird love life?

Now the fearless Michelle Malkin has taken up the case, wanting to know why this isn’t being looked into by either the press or more importantly, these law enforcers. She writes:

Investigations dating back to 2016 by blogger Scott Johnson of Power Line (which recently celebrated 15 years in the blogosphere), David North of the Center for Immigration Studies, Alpha News reporter Preya Samsundar and PJMedia.com reporter David Steinberg have determined that the outspoken Somalian Muslim refugee likely married her own brother named Ahmed Elmi in 2009 for some unknown ill-gotten gain while still informally married to the man she calls her husband and father of her three children, Ahmed Hirsi. After a Somalian website floated questions about the marriage arrangement with Elmi and Johnson’s initial reporting broke into the local news, Omar sought to divorce Elmi. Her use of $6,000 in state campaign funds, some of which went to pay a personal divorce lawyer, is currently under state investigation.

Right-wing documentary filmmaker enters Dem presidential race By Tal Axelrod

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/442786-right-wing-documentary-filmmaker-ami-horowitz-enters-dem-race-solicits

Conservative documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz announced Wednesday that he is running in the Democratic presidential primary to disrupt the party’s nominating process.

“The Democratic Party has become the party of socialism, open borders and late-term abortions. They’ve become so radicalized over the past several years that I feel compelled to try to bring some sanity into the discussion,” Horowitz said in an announcement video posted to Twitter. 

“So if you want to see me throw an intellectual hand grenade on the Democratic debate stage and hold them accountable, go to AmiForAmerica.com and donate some money. Send some cash. Anything!”

Horowitz wrote in a tweet announcing his candidacy that he is soliciting donations to reach the threshold of 65,000 individual donors set by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in order to appear on the primary debate stage next month.

He told The Hill that he is “pretty confident” he will garner the necessary funds, noting that he’s already raked in 2,756 donations in two hours before his website crashed.

Horowitz is unlikely to achieve the DNC’s polling threshold of hitting at least 1 percent on three different nationally recognized surveys.

A Democrat Who Terrifies Other Democrats Thomas McArdle

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/30/a-democrat-who-terrifies-other-democrats/

As impeachment noise reaches ever-louder crescendos among Democrats, with the real danger they will overplay their hand and end up investigating and subpoenaing themselves into defeat in 2020, there now emerges another threat: a little-noticed Democrat running for President who is reminding his party of the saner policies some of their most prominent leaders embraced not that long ago.

Democratic luminaries like Bobby Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, John F. Kennedy, and Henry “Scoop” Jackson – all of whom in their time represented dark blue states.

Ami Horowitz, a noted documentary filmmaker, announced his candidacy this month and expressed sentiments with which all four of those giants of the party’s history would agree. “The Democratic Party has become the party of socialism, open borders, and late-term abortions,” he said. “They’ve become so radicalized over the past several years that I feel compelled to try to bring some sanity into the discussion.”

Horowitz got thousands of donations within days of announcing, but needs many times that to get a place on the stage for the first two rounds of debates.

“The Democratic Party has been inexorably and decisively moving to the left,” he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. He charged that the party now holds a position in favor of open borders that “90 percent of the country doesn’t believe in.” The same 90 percent opposition is the case on late-term abortion, he asserted.

“They’re running away from the word capitalism, which has brought more wealth to more people and lifted more people out of poverty than anything man has ever created – but they’re running away from it. So I want to go on the debate stage, I want to throw an intellectual hand grenade there, and make that debate stage a very unsafe space, intellectually speaking, for those people.”