NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Congressman Al Green Forces Impeachment Vote By John McCormack

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/congressman-al-green-forces-impeachment-vote/

On Tuesday night, after the House voted to condemn as racist President Trump’s recent tweets about four Democratic congresswomen, Democratic congressman Al Green of Texas introduced an impeachment resolution.

“There will be a vote,” Green said Tuesday night. “There will be a vote to either table [it], send it to committee, or allow it to go forward.”

Green’s impeachment resolution doesn’t say anything about the Mueller investigation or Russia. It is solely focused on Trump’s comments about immigrants and the bigoted comments directed toward four Democratic congresswomen.

Green’s impeachment resolution states: 

In maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high misdemeanors committed as president, constituting harm to American society, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Article 1, the House of Representatives on July 16, 2019 strongly condemned President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimatized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants and those who may look to the president like immigrants, should go back to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as invaders. And by saying that members of Congress who are immigrants or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants, do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.

In all of this, the aforementioned Donald John Trump has by his statement, brought the high office of the President of the United States in contempt, ridiculed, disgraced and disrepute, has sown seeds of discord among the people of the United States, has demonstrated that he is unfit to be president and has betrayed his trust as President of the United States to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. And has committed a high misdemeanor in office.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Omar to Introduce Resolution Declaring Support for Anti-Israel BDS Movement By Jack Crowe

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/omar-to-introduce-resolution-declaring-support-for-anti-israel-bds-movement/

Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) will introduce a resolution this week declaring support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to elevate the Palestinian negotiating position vis-a-vis Israel through an international pressure campaign.

“We are introducing a resolution . . . to really speak about the American values that support and believe in our ability to exercise our first amendment rights in regard to boycotting,” Omar told Al-Monitor. “And it is an opportunity for us to explain why it is we support a nonviolent movement, which is the BDS movement.”

The announcement comes on the same day that the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on which Omar sits, plans to vote on another non-binding resolution explicitly condemning the BDS movement as an attempt to “undermine the two state solution” by demanding “concessions of one party alone and encourag[ing] Palestinians to reject negotiations in favor of international pressure.”

The anti-BDS resolution further notes that the movement’s founder, Omar Bharghouti, has openly dismissed the possibility of reaching any settlement that allows the state of Israel to retain its sovereignty.

Omar is expected to cast the lone vote against the anti-BDS resolution, further highlighting the divide between herself and the panel’s older, more-established lawmakers, who have condemned her comments about Israel in the past.

POLITICS Comments turned off

AOC Draws a Challenger — a Black, Female, Jamaican, Republican Challenger By Stephen Green

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/aoc-draws-a-challenger-a-black-female-jamaican-republican-challenger/

Most racist, woman-hating, immigrant-fearing party ever, amirite?

The not-so-inside talk has been whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s four-woman war against Nancy Pelosi would earn her a Democratic primary challenger next year, but her high-profile antics have drawn another Republican into the race to represent heavily Democratic NY14.

Fox News reports that Scherie Murray, a 38-year-old New York businesswoman and Jamaica native (she emigrated as a child), has launched a campaign to unseat AOC next year. She told Fox, “There is a crisis in Queens, and it’s called AOC.” Murray went on to say, “Instead of focusing on us, she’s focusing on being famous. Mainly rolling back progress and authoring the job-killing Green New Deal and killing the Amazon-New York deal.”

The polls might just bear out Murray’s complaint against Ocasio-Cortez. The first-term congresscritter was put on the defensive earlier this week, blasting a negative new poll — conducted by her own party — as a “mass distortion of reality.” In a nationwide survey, it was revealed that 74% of people recognized AOC by name, but only 22% viewed her favorably. The poll was conducted by Democrats hoping to identify potential swing voters for 2020. Instead what they found was that the party’s oh-so-public up-and-comers are almost universally loathed. Ellie Bufkin reported for the Washington Examiner:

Fellow “squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar was recognized by 53% of participants and viewed favorably by only 9%. Other questions on the poll included approval of socialist policies, which showed only 18% of participants viewed favorably. Democrats looking ahead to the 2020 election characterized the results as, “Socialism is toxic to these voters.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

A Third of Dems Believe Any White Politician Who Criticizes a Politician of Color is Racist By Matt Margolis

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/a-third-of-dems-believe-any-white-politician-who-criticizes-a-politician-of-color-is-racist/

On Wednesday, Rasmussen released a very disturbing poll that found “one-in-three Democrats think it’s racism any time a white politician criticizes a politician of color.”

While 80% of Democrats believe the president is a racist, 85% of Republicans think the racism charges by his opponents are politically motivated. Voters not affiliated with either major party are evenly divided on the question.

Thirty-two percent (32%) of Democrats, however, say it’s racist for any white politician to criticize the political views of a politician of color. That’s a view shared by just 16% of both GOP and unaffiliated voters.

Among all voters, 22% think it’s racist if a white politician criticizes the political views of a politician of color. Sixty-eight percent (68%) disagree, while 10% are undecided.

But only 11% believe the term “racism” refers only to discrimination by white people against minorities. Eighty-four percent (84%) say racism refers to any discrimination by people of one race against another. These findings have changed little in surveys for the last six years.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Back to Videos Kamala Harris: Trump “Lighting Fires” Around Race; “He Needs To Go Back Where He Came From” VIDEO

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/07/17/kamala_harris_trump_lighting_a_fire_around_race_he_needs_to_go_back_where_he_came_from.html

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) sits down with CNN’s Kyung Lah and gives her response to President Donald Trump’s controversial tweets attacking four Democratic congresswomen.

“It is irresponsible. It is hateful. It is hurtful. And he has taken the presidency to a new low,” Harris said of the tweets.”He wants to distract by… lighting fires around the issue of race and ethnicity. It’s disgusting,” Harris said on CNN. “He needs to go back where he came from and leave that office. And so that’s why I’m running with the intention of making sure there will not be four more years.”

Watch the full interview below.

KYUNG LAH, CNN: How do you not get distracted? How do you not fall into his trap where he controls the narrative with a tweet like this?

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA): I’ve said it many times. This president purposely, I believe, distracts and attempts to distract by flame-throwing, because the reality of it is that he has done nothing to help working families in America…

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mark Esper headed for quick confirmation for head of Defense Department after acing largely bipartisan Senate hearing by Jamie McIntyre

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/mark-esper-headed-for-quick-confirmation-after-acing-largely-bipartisan-senate-hearing

Mark Esper, President Trump’s fallback nominee to head the Defense Department, did everything he needed to do yesterday to win quick and easy confirmation. With one notable exception (more on that below), he cruised effortlessly through his 2 hour, 45 minute hearing before the Armed Services Committee, telling the senators just what they wanted to hear, reassuring them he would work on their concerns, and generally showing a deep understanding of the issues facing the U.S. military.

For the most part the hearing was a bipartisan lovefest, beginning with the introduction of the nominee by Democratic former vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine, who compared Esper to Jim Mattis, the widely-respected previous defense secretary, who resigned last December over policy differences with the president.

“Most of us were very discouraged by the resignation of Secretary Mattis. And what we’ve hoped for is a successor who could show the same level of candor and principle and a willingness to remain independent even in the most challenging circumstances,” Kaine said at the start of the hearing. “I believe that Dr. Esper has those traits.”

IN THE MOLD OF MATTIS: Though lacking Mattis’ résumé as a decorated general and legendary commander, Esper does have a solid military background, having spent 10 years on active duty and another 11 years in the Guard. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he served as an infantry officer with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division.

And while Esper was not exactly a protégé of Mattis, he has adopted his positions, including Mattis’s three “lines of effort” to move the Pentagon into the 21st century, namely to build a more lethal force, strengthen alliances, and reform the Pentagon to free up resources.

Michigan Democrat Gary Peters asked Esper point-blank, “Would you be a secretary of defense with views more aligned with Secretary Mattis or more aligned with President Trump?”

“I don’t know where to pick between the two,” Esper said, “but clearly I shared Secretary Mattis’ views and I’ve expressed that publicly.” Pressed by Peters about whether he might also consider resigning on principle if asked to support a policy counter to his values, Esper said, “Absolutely,” adding “In the Army, I grew up with this view that you’re asked to do anything that is illegal, or immoral, or unethical, then that would be the point at which you have to consider resignation and you’d be willing to do that.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The white supremacy phantom Does Donald Trump’s habit of tweaking the commentariat mean he must be impeached? Roger Kimball

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://spectator.us/white-supremacy-phantom/

Well la-dee-dah. The House votes to condemn ‘President Trump for his “racist comments” about four Democratic congresswomen of color.’

First, I am glad that ‘racist comments’ was in scare quotes. Why? Because there was nothing racist about the president’s tweets inviting creeps like Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar to leave the United States if she doesn’t like it here.  

Second, I wish people would give the phrase ‘people of color’ a rest. Everyone is a color — even, I suppose, Albinos (is that ‘racist’ now, too?). I, for example, am a pleasing pink. 

But the fact that someone is dark-skinned imparts to him no special virtue, just as the fact that someone is Caucasian saddles him with no special liability. 

Except, alas, that it does. At least in the racist court of identity politics. 

Please note the absence of scare quotes around ‘racist’ this time. It is one of the signal moral and intellectual deformations of our time that many people strain every action through the sieve of racial redress. The result is that a pretended campaign against racism is fueled by a thoroughly racist imperative. Remember that the next time someone condemns the phantom of ‘white supremacy.’ It is a category as vacuous as ‘counter-revolutionary’ for a paid-up Jacobin or ‘bourgeois capitalist’ for a Marxist. 

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Four Horsewomen of the American Apocalypse Michael Copeman

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

President Trump is in trouble. Ho hum. For a tweet. Ho hum. About women. Ho hum. He’s been called out as racist. Ho hum. Many Republicans won’t support him. Ho ho!

The women in question of course are four “newbies” (or new Queen Bees) in the hive that is the US Congress. Trouble is, they’re already in trouble. But not with Trump. No, with Nancy Pelosi, the ageing, wealthy, San-Francisco-based doyenne of the Democrats. And she, well, she is the Queen Bee Mother.

Nancy Pelosi is sharp. No one survives in Democrat politics for two generations without being whip smart. You gotta know when to slide into third base with the progressives in your party, and when to stay cautiously on second, hoping that the new batter is about to hit the issue of the day outta the park.

Nancy knows her party has not only swung left recently, it has swung low. Character assassination is now the Democrats’ chosen weapon. Justice Kavanaugh only made it through to the Supreme Court because Christine Blasey Ford’s claimed witness didn’t know a thing about the assault she alleged.

Almost everyone who is male, white, religious (except for one religion), able to earn their own living, and committed to free enterprise, national borders, international peace-keeping and innocent-until-proven-guilty justice is suspect, if not evil.

So, what happened? Well, the Democrats (a seemingly irresistible force) finally came up against an immovable object (Donald J. Trump). In the “play the man/woman” department, The Donald gives as good as he gets and better (or worse, depending on your point of view.). Donald used to be a Democrat, and sometimes it shows. Thus, when Donald put his hand up for president in 2016, and both Dems and Republicans just blew his candidacy away, Donald blew right back at them. He’s still blowing.

 

This is where those four, relatively young women “of color” come in. The 2018 midterm elections saw all four take up seats in the US Congress. And, what’dy’all know? They didn’t take no, from Mother Hen Pelosi. They started going for Donald’s jugular.

According to them, everything was wrong with America. It is a doomed society — only perhaps salvageable by mass unauthorised immigration from Mexico, Central America and parts further south and payment of perhaps a cool trillion dollars in reparations to anybody who had one or more ancestors who may have been slaves.

Fossil fuel use — including for electricity generation, car, truck and plane travel — should be shut down. Very soon. All education, all healthcare, and all provisions for people who crossed the US border should be free. America’s corporations, and its hardworking citizens, should pay for all this by punitive taxes. Only then can all men, women and persons be free.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Social Media: The Damage is Done: John Glynn

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/07/social-media-the-damage-is-done/

Hi, my name’s John, and I’m an addict. Facebook is my main drug of choice, but I also dabble in a bit of Instagram and Twitter. Every now and then, when I need a real pick-me-up, I’ll turn to Snapchat.

Dramatic introductions aside, these algorithmically optimized systems of content distribution are excellent at two things: engaging the user and retaining the user. Notice that I chose the word user, not customer. That is how we are viewed by the tech-savvy alchemists. Billions of users, all hooked on a virtual high.

Isn’t it odd that only two groups — drug dealers and social media dealers — refer to their target audience as “users”? When one examines the algorithmic architecture of these platforms, a troubling pictures emerges: Facebook and the like are designed to keep us in a user state of mind: First, engage. Second, retain. Third, continue to drip-feed the addiction with notifications and reminders.

Is this an exaggeration? If you think so, go ahead and delete your social media accounts. See how long you can survive without Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. I recently told a friend of mine that I am no longer on Instagram. He looked at me like I had just told him I was thinking of relocating to Yemen. Utter bewilderment.

For those who chose to never ‘sign up,’ kudos to you. Chances are you have saved yourself days – no, weeks – of valuable lost time. According to a 2018 report published by the Global Web Index, the average person in the Western world spends 2.5 hours a day on social networking and messaging platforms. To put this figure in perspective, look at it this way: That’s 17.5 hours a week, or 70 hours a month. The average Westerner wastes close to three days every month on social media.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany: Nest of Middle Eastern Spies by Soeren Kern

Posted By on July 17th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14551/germany-middle-eastern-spies

The report, considered the most important indicator of internal security in Germany, draws a bleak picture and raises questions about the government’s apparent passivity in face of mounting threats…. Meanwhile, the Erdoğan-aligned Islamist movement Millî Görüş (Turkish for “National Vision”), which has around 10,000 members in Germany, is the second-largest Islamist group in the country (the Salafist movement is now the largest Islamist grouping in Germany). Millî Görüş is strongly opposed to Muslim integration into European society.

“The BfV has found that all Islamist organizations active in Germany harbor anti-Semitic ideas and disseminate them in various ways. These ideas represent a considerable challenge for peaceful and tolerant coexistence in Germany.” — Annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), 2019

“The goal of HAMAS is the establishment of an Islamist state in the entire territory of ‘Palestine’ — also through armed struggle. A strategy paper written in 2017 states: ‘Resistance to occupation by all means is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws. At the heart of it lies the armed resistance.’ By ‘Palestine’ HAMAS means the area between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, which also includes the territory of the State of Israel. Western countries such as Germany are seen by HAMAS as a haven where the organization focuses on collecting donations, recruiting new supporters, and propagating its propaganda.” — Annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), 2019

The BfV noted a “high number” of attempts by “covert Pakistani procurement structures” illegally to obtain technology for use in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. The BfV also observed a “significant increase” in attempts by Iran to obtain technology for its missile program, which was not part of the Iran nuclear deal. The BfV reported that Syrian intermediaries were also continuing efforts to obtain products for weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons.

Foreign intelligence services, especially those from Turkey, Syria and Iran, have increased their activities in Germany during the past 12 months, according to Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency. The foreign intelligence services are not only pursuing dissidents among the large diasporas in Germany, they are also targeting Jewish and Israeli interests in the country.

At the same time, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood appear to be operating with impunity in Germany, while, according to the BfV, the number of Salafists in the country has tripled in recent years and now exceeds 11,000. Overall, the BfV estimates that Germany is home to more than 26,000 Islamists, an unknown number of whom pose an immediate threat of attack.