“It is important to remember that capitalism has been the greatest driver of prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known.” On October 8, 2016
A. DONALD TRUMP
B. ELIZABETH WARREN
C. CORY BOOKER
D.BETO O’ROURKE
E.KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND
F. NONE OF THE ABOVE
IF your answer was E….you are right. It was Barack Obama in an essay “The Way Ahead” https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/10/08/the-way-ahead?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/the_way_ahead
https://quillette.com/2019/03/09/progressivism
The biggest threat to Western civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own pusillanimity—and by the historical ignorance that feeds it.
~Niall Ferguson
I was wrong.
For a long time, I considered the loose collection of ideas and assumptions I will call “progressivism” to be a regrettable but mostly tolerable side effect of affluence. This quasi-ideology—espoused by prominent progressives from the academy and Vox to Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren—holds that, inter alia: (1) All demographic groups are roughly equal on all socially valued traits; (2) racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry are ubiquitous; (3) almost all demographic disparities are caused by unfair discrimination; (4) diversity is an unalloyed good; and (5) there are many bigots who stand in the way of social progress, but eventually history will redeem the noble and we will inhabit a just society.
Wealth frees a person from immediate survival concerns and therefore increases the importance of symbolic identities. And this, coupled with youth’s natural affinity for rebellion, almost inevitably leads to at least a passing phase of identity-based radicalism. So while others sounded the tocsin, proclaiming this a grave threat to social sanity, I remained skeptical. Of course, I agreed that social justice ideologies were often odious and possibly pernicious, especially inside the elite institutions where they most rapidly proliferated; but, I also thought that alarmism about the problem was equally unhelpful, diverting limited cognitive resources from more constructive activities.
However, I am no longer skeptical. I have come to believe that the hostility to the West embedded in this kind of thinking and activism is a serious and growing problem. It is therefore critical that we understand the motives that drive it and the conditions that enable it, and that we challenge its erroneous assumptions and persuade others of its corrosiveness, preferably without alienating those who find it appealing but are also willing to listen to reasonable objections.
https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/border-emergency-what-border-emergency/
Both wings of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party want the chaos to continue.
Sometimes you wonder whether the New York Times’ editorial page ever reads its own newspaper’s reporting. A dedicated institutional foe of President Trump, the Times scoffs at the need for an executive order to address the dangerous chaos at the border. Then again, it makes a weird kind of sense: the worse things get at the Mexican border the better, because then they can demand even more services for the sick, the halt, the lame, the blind, the drug dealers, the rapists, the drunk drivers and all the other criminals — not just from Mexico but from Central America as well — who are invading our country. And things are bad:
The number of migrant families crossing the southwest border has once again broken records, with unauthorized entries nearly double what they were a year ago, suggesting that the Trump administration’s aggressive policies have not discouraged new migration to the United States. More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, an 11-year high and a strong sign that stepped-up prosecutions, new controls on asylum and harsher detention policies have not reversed what remains a powerful lure for thousands of families fleeing violence and poverty.
“The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point,” Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told reporters in announcing the new data on Tuesday.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/intersectional-brotherhood-week/
In just a few short months, the Muslima from Mogadishu who somehow represents the 5th congressional district in Minnesotastan, has made her stance perfectly clear: she hates Jews with the insouciant, casual fervor of a true Musselman. She hates the country of America-as-founded and, like her compatriots on the increasingly Marxist Left, would like to see it repealed and replaced with something else. For now, she is in an alliance of convenience with the politicians formerly known as “liberals.” But when the geriatric leadership, in the form of Maerose Prizzi (whose brother, Roosey, by the way, was once arrested for statutory rape and somehow skated — his father was the mayor of Baltimore at the time) attempted to rein in Ilhan Omar over her anti-Semitic tweeting, enough Democrats — including the Congressional Black Caucus — refused to support Pelosi’s boilerplate resolution against Jew hatred that it morphed into a generic resolution against “hate” of all kinds, including “Islamophobia.” There’s a word for this in Yiddish: chutzpah. There’s also a word for it in Arabic: taqiyya.
They’re not quite cognates, of course. “Chutzpah” translates best as “gall,” or “cheekiness.” The Arabic word means something more akin to “religiously sanctioned lying to advance the cause of Mohammedanism.” And, in any case, it’s worth remembering that Arabic is the official language of Islam everywhere, something that ought to offend proud, humiliatingly conquered cultures like the Persians, who have sacrificed their real faith — Zoroastrianism — and their language of worship to their Arab overlords. Whoever has been organizing the Iranian resistance against the mullahs — and their day will come — ought to appeal to Iranian history and patriotism and demand the overthrow of the Arab influence on Persian culture.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/msnbc-big-lie-sausage-factory_2828918.html
It may be that the media and their political wing in Congress are preparing for the aftermath of a disappointing Mueller report.
If they were anticipating hot, spicy evidence of “Russian collusion,” why would House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) be promising to return to re-investigate “Russian collusion” at the infamous Trump Tower meeting some more?
Or take a recent narrative-setting session with MSNBC’s Katy Tur and MSNBC analyst Michael McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia credited with designing the Obama–Clinton “reset.” If they really thought the special counsel was about to nail President Donald Trump, why would they now be re-baiting some of the same old sorry traps?
Of course, it’s also possible they’re priming the public to accept the special counsel’s findings by re-enforcing a series of forgotten false narratives, Big Lies, which depend on constant repetition to achieve conventional wisdom status—the subject of my last column.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/09/a-
You really have to give it to the suits in Barack Obama’s intelligence services and Department of Justice (many of whom, of course, are still strutting about in Donald Trump’s administration). It was quite a web they wove, and tangled with complexity. Yet their prodigious practice also made it nearly impenetrable to anyone not inside their charmed circle.
That adamantine carapace of impenetrability is a sign of their high style, their assiduity, the reason that a “word of encouragement” did not come amiss.
Put your hand on your heart. Can you really tell me what happened and who all the major players are in the Get Trump farce that has been occupying the nation for more than two years now? There have been various worthy efforts to unpack the drama—I’ve made a few myself—but at bottom it is like Russia according to Winston Churchill, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
Part of the problem is the shifting roles of the main players. Or rather, the shifting roles that elevate one or more players at one moment only to demote them back to the chorus a week or two later. How many people were suddenly cast into starring roles only, a few days or weeks later, to find themselves pushed back into bit-player status? George Papadopoulos: remember him? For a brief shining moment, he was the key to the whole “Russian Collusion” mythos. The New York Times told us so. But after he strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage he faded from sight and now is heard no more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5iv6sECGU&feature=youtu.be
https://nypost.com/2019/03/09/democratic-presidents-behaved-a-lot-worse-than-trump-in-the-white-house/
Adapted excerpt from “The Case for Trump” by Victor Davis Hanson. Copyright © 2019. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, a division of PBG Publishing, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
It’s more likely history will judge President Trump for accomplishments in office than for character flaws.Progressives claim President Trump marks a new low in American political and presidential history, personifying a singularly odious message.But if we examine the present pantheon of progressive icons, and strip away their reliance on liberal-media protection and transfer them instead into the present age of tabloid promiscuity and cyber omnipresence, would we now have a very different view of their presidencies?
The progressive Woodrow Wilson administration likely would never have completed its two elected terms had it operated on media protocols common just a half-century later.For nearly a year during the failing health and death of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson, the president fell into a state of debilitating depression, carefully hidden from the press. Much later, during the last 17 months of Wilson’s presidency, he was more or less unable to fulfill his duties due to a series of strokes that left him partially paralyzed and visually impaired. Those realities were carefully hidden from the public by the efforts of his second wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, and physician Dr. Cary Grayson.In the present case, we know that Trump is neither comatose nor is Melania running the country.
The country never learned the full extent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s paralysis. Much less did it know of FDR’s past and ongoing affairs — the mechanics of which were sometimes carried out in the White House and with the skillful aid of his own daughter Anna. By fall 1944, Roosevelt, seeking a fourth term, was suffering from a series of life-threatening conditions. Worrying that the public would not vote yet again for a terminally ill president, sympathetic journalists and military physicians covered up Roosevelt’s illnesses — on the theory that FDR would survive long enough to get elected to a fourth term and ensure a continued Democratic administration.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13861/mullahs-pushed-off-the-gravy-train
If you are one of the 3,400 mullahs who work as Friday Prayer Leader (Imam Jum’ah) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, you better start getting worried, very worried. The reason is that you may soon find yourself disembarked from the gravy train and your cushy seat given to a spring chicken novice.
Last week eight “imams” were disembarked, among them heavyweights from Tabriz, Shiraz, Rasht and Ahvaz. And, if Tehran rumor-mills are right, 25 more are already scheduled for disembarkation. Judging by the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s latest message to the nation, an ambitious “change of generations” scheme is to be implemented in the months ahead.
People, especially the younger generation, are not interested in the shopworn anti-American discourse seasoned with empty pseudo-Islamic slogans. The anti-American discourse sounds even more hollow when the Islamic Majlis publishes claims that some 15,000 children of senior Islamic Republic officials, including many mullahs, are in the United States for further studies and that hundreds of top Khomeinist officials are either US citizens or hold American “Green Cards” (permanent residence documents.) Reports of top officials and mullahs or their families traveling to the West for holidays, medical services and shopping further contribute to the falseness of official Friday sermons.
In the past few weeks, sermon texts coming from Tehran have been peppered with patriotic themes about the Iranian “nation” rather than the “ummah” and Tehran’s attempts at dominating several Arab countries justified, in the words of Quds (Jerusalem) Force chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, as “moves necessary to protect our national territory.”
In the final analysis, however, a change of personnel and official discourse may not be enough to save a tired system in deep crisis. The core question in the debate about Iran’s future remains: change within the regime or regime change?
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13851/christians-persecution-january
Police “behaved with the priests as they would with killers.” — Human rights lawyer, Minya, Egypt.
“The common factor among all [church] closures, however, is that they were done to appease fundamentalists and extremists to the detriment of the Copts. It appears to indicate that extremists now hold the upper hand, and appeasing them is the easy way out of problems…” — The local Christian bishopric, Minya, Egypt.
When it comes to offering asylum, the UK “appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims” instead of Christian minorities from Muslim nations. Statistics confirm this allegation: “out of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian, representing just 0.2% of all Syrian refugees accepted by the UK.” — Nicholas Hellen, Barnabas Fund, January 20, 2019, United Kingdom.
A New Zealand government spokesman said that refugees were considered for resettlement on the basis of “their protection needs and not religious affiliation.” However, considering that the Islamic State regularly targets people based on their “religious affiliation” suggests that Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities have more “protection needs” than Muslims.
Massacres Inside Churches and Attacks on Them
Philippines: On Sunday, January 27, Islamic militants bombed a Roman Catholic cathedral during Mass. At least 20 people were killed and 111 wounded. Two explosives were detonated about a minute apart in the vicinity of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo at around 8:45 a.m. According to one report, “The initial explosion scattered the wooden pews inside the main hall and blasted window glass panels, and the second bomb hurled human remains and debris across a town square fronting the cathedral.”
Photos on social media showed human bodies and remains strewn on the street just outside the building. The officiating priest, Fr. Ricky Bacolcol, “was still in shock and could not speak about what happened,” to quote a colleague. After the first bomb detonated, army troops and police posted outside the cathedral rushed in, then a second bomb went off. Fifteen of the slain were civilians; five military men; 90 of the wounded were civilians. The cathedral, located in a Muslim-majority area, was heavily guarded: it had been hit before. In 2010, grenades had been hurled at it twice, damaging the building; and in 1997, Bishop Benjamin de Jesus had been gunned down just outside the cathedral. The Islamic State claimed the attack, and adding that the massacre had been carried out by “two knights of martyrdom” against a “crusader temple.”
Top Stories @ Fox News