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December 2019

Democrats peddle doom, but the middle class never had it so good Most Americans give the economy high marks Stephen Moore

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/29/democrats-peddle-doom-but-the-middle-class-never-h/

These days when you listen to the gloom of the media and many of the presidential candidates you have to wonder what country these Debbie Downers are talking about.

Former Vice President Joe Biden recently declared “the middle class is getting crushed … and the working class has no way up.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders stews that President Trump’s policies have brought “handouts for billionaires and hunger for the poor.”

Mayor Pete Buttigieg claims that many working families are struggling so much financially they don’t have enough income to be able to “afford a two-bedroom apartment.”

The Washington Post says that Americans are awash in debt that they can’t repay.

Time out for a does of reality. If things are so bad, how is it that a new poll from CNN — hardly a network friendly to Mr. Trump, finds three of four Americans rate the economy as pretty good or really good.

We have become so rich as a nation that even most poor families can buy dolls and baseball bats and $100 Nike basketball shoes for the kids, and cellphones that have more computing power than every computer used to put a man on the moon.  

It is nonsense to say the poor and the middle class are worse off than 20 or 30 or 50 years ago.

Go to any neighborhood Walmart or Target and you will see average and even low-income Americans — blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, teenagers, mothers with three kids, and seniors — filing out of the store with sometimes two or three shopping carts overflowing with toasters, and winter coats, and flowers, and games, and dog food, and stuffed animals, and potato chips, and video games, and every conceivable piece of merchandise — and all stuffed in the back of the minivan. 

Extinction Rebellion Founder Confirms That Global Warming Is Voodoo Science by J. Frank Bullitt

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/30/extinction-rebellion-founder-confirms-that-global-warming-is-voodoo-science/

Global warming protests, past the point of absurdity long ago, have become even more extreme thanks to a relatively new group from England. The founder’s background shows exactly why the organization has chosen to engage in the mindless behavior it’s become known for.

Though she has a doctorate in molecular biophysics, Extinction Rebellion architect Gail Bradbrook, called a “neo-pagan” by Britain’s Daily Mail, intentionally went down a path filled with folklore, superstition, tribal rites, and primitive hallucinogenics.

She’s a “lifelong activist,” reports CNN, who has “spent decades working on an array of social justice campaigns,” though few ever lead to real change. So, “in order to bring about real, radical change, Bradbrook felt like something inside her consciousness needed to be unlocked.”

In search of whatever she thought was missing, Bradbrook “traveled to the jungle-covered mountains of Costa Rica,” where she found “a psychedelic retreat.”

There she gulped “a flood dose of Iboga, a tree bark used to induce visions,”  consumed Kambo, “the poisonous secretion of a giant tree frog hailed for its healing powers,” and drank a “hallucinogenic brew” called ayahuasca.

“All,” reports CNN, “have been used in indigenous cultures for centuries as part of Shamanic spiritual rituals.”

In a story earlier this year, Bradbrook told the Daily Mail she had been focused on rabble rousing since 2010 and had “tried many things.” When “they didn’t work,” Bradbrook said she “went on a retreat and prayed in a deep way with some psychedelic medicines.” This appears to be the same event described by CNN, in which, under the influence of ayahuasca, Bradbrook sought the counsel of supernatural forces, praying for “the universe to show her the ‘codes for social change.’”

When all of the evidence is collected together, it is as if Amnesty has declared war on Israel Researcher David Collier sets out the findings from his new 200-page report on the NGO

https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/when-all-of-the-evidence-is-collected-tog

I have just published a forensic 200-page report on Amnesty international, the world’s largest humanitarian NGO.

The overarching conclusion is that Amnesty International has an institutional hostility towards Israel that borders on obsession, with the NGO visibly attacking Israel more frequently and with far more energy, than it does any other nation.

When all of the evidence presented is collected together, it is as if Amnesty has declared war on Israel.

The research was some of the most detailed I have carried out and it was commissioned by Jewish Human Rights Watch. I followed over 50 Amnesty social media accounts and monitored the output of over 40 staff and volunteers who work or have worked for the NGO.

I poured through 100,000s of social media posts. The process took several months and involved rigorous checks to try to identify what Amnesty were doing and how much of their time was spent focusing on Israel.

I was shocked by the findings. I knew when I started that accusations of bias against Amnesty were not new.

NGO Monitor, an Israel-based NGO that analyses anti-Israel bias has frequently been critical of Amnesty. Even having read their detailed analysis, I was still unprepared for what I found.

The report provides examples from the absurd to the foul. One Amnesty human rights researcher publicly asked non-Jewish citizens of Israel not to vote in an election. How cruel a twist is this, in a world where voting rights are so frequently denied.

An Amnesty media manager for the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region was found advising Palestinian terror groups like Hamas not to publicly identify their martyrs if they were lost in an action, but rather to have the west believe the fallen were innocent civilians.

An Amnesty consultant tweeted an image of two Islamic Jihad terrorists, with a love heart — and she wrote the word ‘heroes’ above the images. In the same week she tweeted that others in Gaza should be careful about what they say publicly — so as not to harm ‘the resistance’.

Germany Puts Its Head in Russia’s Energy Pipeline Noose by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15353/germany-russia-nord-stream-pipeline

A report by the Swedish Defense Research Agency found that Russia has threatened to cut energy supplies to Central and Eastern European more than 50 times. Even after some of those states joined the European Union, Russian threats continued.

Not surprisingly, Germany’s current Social Democratic Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, has criticized the U.S. sanctions as foreign interference. “Decisions on European energy policy are made in Europe, not the USA,” he tweeted on December 12. “We fundamentally reject foreign interventions and sanctions with extraterritorial effects.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has opposed the pipeline project. Trump in particular has criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her refusal to increase defense spending while at the same time supporting the pipeline that will funnel billions of dollars to Russia…. “So, we’re supposed to protect you against Russia and you pay billions of dollars to Russia and I think that’s very inappropriate. Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas. You tell me, is that appropriate?” — U.S. President Donald J. Trump.

“One must assume that Putin’s pet pipeline is not really a business venture — and that the fools are the Europeans, in particular the Germans…. In short, Nord Stream 2 could make Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states less secure, undermine the EU’s security strategy, give Russia a big stick for threatening Eastern Europe and sow discord among NATO allies. To Mr. Putin, causing so much trouble for a mere $11 billion must seem like a bargain. For Europe it is a trap…. The mystery is why Germany has fallen into it and has been twisting French arms to do the same.” — The Economist.

A Swiss company working on the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline directly linking Russia to Germany has suspended pipelaying operations after U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed into law new sanctions.

The sanctions are part of an effort by the United States to halt completion of the €9.5 billion ($10.5 billion) pipeline, which would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea. Opponents of the pipeline warn that it will give Russia a stranglehold over Germany’s energy supply. Proponents counter that with European domestic natural gas production in rapid decline, the pipeline will enhance security of supply.

American sanctions may delay Nord Stream 2, but they are probably too late to kill the project. More than 80% of the 1,230-km (764-mile) pipeline has already been laid and the project is expected to be completed in 2020, according to Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak.

On December 17, the U.S. Senate, by a vote of 86 to 6, passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense spending bill, which includes the Nord Stream 2 sanctions language. The measure previously cleared the U.S. House of Representatives on December 11 by a vote of 377 to 48. President Trump signed it into law on December 20.

Turkey’s Gunboat Gambit in the Mediterranean by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15347/turkey-gunboats-mediterranean

Erdoğan seems to think that his best defense in the Mediterranean power game is an offense.

One emerging power in Libya, however, is not a Western state actor…. Russia has the potential to step into the Libyan theater with a bigger proxy and direct force, to establish its second permanent Mediterranean military presence.

Also as in Syria, Turkey’s Islamist agenda will probably fail in Libya, but by the time Erdoğan understands that, it might be too late to get out of Moscow’s orbit.

Turkey, since 2011, has been waging a pro-Sunni proxy war in Syria, in the hope of one day establishing in Damascus a pro-Turkey, Islamist regime. This ambition has failed, costing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey violent political turmoil on both sides of Turkey’s 911-km border with Syria and billions of dollars spent on more than 4 million Syrian refugees scattered across the Turkish soil.

In Egypt, in 2011-2012, Erdoğan aggressively supported the failed Muslim Brotherhood government and deeply antagonized the incumbent — then-general but now president — Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Since Erdoğan’s efforts in Syria and Egypt failed, his Sunni Islamist ambitions have found a new proxy-war theater: Libya.

On December 10, Erdoğan said he could deploy troops in Libya if the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli (which Turkey supports) requested it. Erdoğan’s talks with GNA’s head, Fayez al-Sarraj, who is fighting a war against the Libyan National Army (LNA) of General Khalifa Haftar, produced two ostensibly strategic agreements: a memorandum of understanding on providing the GNA with arms, military training and personnel; and a maritime agreement delineating exclusive economic zones in the Mediterranean waters.

Greece and Egypt protested immediately while the European Council unequivocally condemned the controversial accords. Meanwhile, the deals apparently escalated a proxy competition between Turkey’s old (Greece) and new (Egypt and the United Arab Emirates) rivals.

The Head Scratching Insanity of Today’s Left-Wing Mob Andrew I. Fillat

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/29/the-head-scratching-insanity-of-todays-left-wing-mob/

Far too many of us are dismissed, or even disdained, for having logical minds, rejecting junk science, and having a semblance of intellectual honesty because those things do not fit the dogma of the progressives and the pecuniary interests of their boosters.

As I listen to and observe various news stories (that I assume are accurate) lately, I wonder whether I have gone mad. My misfortune seems to be that I am rational, reasoning, reflective, and as much as possible intellectually honest, which seems to pass as a mental disorder—or, at least, a rare anomaly—these days.

I read that Jussie Smollett’s fairy godmother, Cook County state’s attorney Kim Foxx, has declared that her office will not prosecute as a felony shoplifting valued at less than $1,000 in goods. Doesn’t that mean that shoplifters can just make multiple trips and wink at the store security staff on the way out? Since when did shoplifting become a lucrative job with minimal risk?

Where is the outrage? What am I missing?

Then I try to follow the entire impeachment exercise and really scratch my head. The only actual facts seem to be that lethal military aid to Ukraine, which was withheld completely during the Obama years, was delayed by a few weeks this summer; that President Trump mentioned a desire to see Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, investigated to determine if corruption was involved in Hunter’s inexplicable (other than influence peddling) job at Burisma; and that the aid flowed and the investigation never happened. Records of all the actual communications with Ukraine seem to be available.

Trump’s ‘Failures’ The Left, far better than the NeverTrump Right, grasped that Trump is succeeding, and that it has little traction in demanding economic, energy, immigration, trade, and regulatory alternatives. Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/29/trumps-failures/

It is popular on the NeverTrump Right and everyone on the Left to claim that President Trump has “failed” as we head into an election year. But his supposed failures are instructive.

Take the wall. True, Trump certainly in the last three years has not come close to building an envisioned initial phase of 1,000 miles or so of border fencing to stop the easiest access to the United States, much less made Mexico pay for it. Yet even his critics concede he relentlessly tried—and are fearful he will soon succeed.

There are some considerations to keep in mind. In some sense, we have had no wall at all, given that previous chain-link and thrown-up steel barriers were hardly impediments, at least in critical free-passage zones. Trump is addressing this. A recent Economist article lamented the fact that Trump is, in fact, slowly building a wall and replacing previous makeshift barriers in a manner that supposedly will have negative results—as defined by proponents of open borders—and “irrevocably change America’s south-western border.”

To move toward what the Economist believes is an existential redefinition of the border, the president has gone to court to fight constant lawsuits, scraped together almost $10 billion from previous allocations, as well as siphoning and redirecting funds from various agencies, shutting down the government from December 22, 2018 through January 25, and prompted a near crisis with the Mexican government—and yet so far built only 66 miles of replacement walling and about nine miles of new barriers.

We Can No Longer Ignore The Attacks On Jews In New York By David Marcus

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/29/we-can-no-longer-ignore-the-attacks-on-jews-in-new-york/

In Rockland County last night, during a Chanukah celebration at a synagogue a man stormed in with a machete and stabbed at least five victims, who were taken to the hospital. This is the latest in a string of antisemitic attacks in the New York City area, coming in the wake of the tragic killing of four people during an attack on a Jewish grocery store in Jersey City.

These two acts of violence this month have brought renewed attention to the sharp uptick in anti Jewish violence that has quietly held New York City in its grip over the past few years. Sadly, Mayor Bill de Blasio, who spent much of the year more concerned with his farcical run for president than protecting the citizens of his own city, and the state governments of New York and New Jersey have, been flatfooted in addressing the growing concern.

It has frankly been astounding how little attention attacks on Jews in the New York City area have received. If any other minority group were subject to such abuse, it would be a leading national story. Why have these attacks been swept under the carpet? The clearest answer seems to be that the news media and our political leadership are uncomfortable with the fact that many of these attacks, including last night’s, were perpetrated by black people.

Make no mistake, if white supremacists in MAGA hats were shooting minorities or carving them up with machetes, it wouldn’t just be news, it would be the only news. So satisfying would that narrative be to our politicians and scribes that we would scarcely be able to turn away. But alas, it’s Jews being killed and maimed. And the criminals don’t fit the bill of right-wing, Trump-supporting Nazis, so, you know, it’s complicated.

Tulsi Gabbard: Democrats in Congress Preferred People Rotting in Prison to Giving Trump a Win By Michael van der Galien

https://pjmedia.com/election/tulsi-gabbard-democrats-in-congress-preferred-people-rotting-in-prison-to-giving-trump-a-win/

When speaking to a group of supporters, Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard explained that hyperpartisanship has truly taken Washington D.C. hostage. An example of this extremely troubling Washington culture, she said, was that some Democrats in Congress would rather have people needlessly sitting years behind bars than help President Trump get criminal justice reform.

“A very practical thing that we need to address about the power of the two-party system,” Rep. Gabbard said, “and how hyperpartisan things have become, because those two parties basically can accept an unlimited amount of money from any individual, business, or whatever. And that creates an incredible amount of leverage for them to hold over members of Congress from both political parties, who may be looking at an issue or a vote that’s coming to the House floor based on its merits, imagine that, thinking about alright, well, how will this best impact my constituents? But if they’re thinking about voting against the party interest, then more often than not, they get the phone call or they get the tap on the shoulder on the House floor before the vote, saying, ‘Don’t you dare. If you vote against the party interest then when it’s time for your reelection and you need help, we’re not going to be there for you’.”

Anti-Macron Yellow Vests Protests Continue Unabated in France By Michael van der Galien

https://pjmedia.com/trending/anti-macron-yellow-vests-protests-continue-unabated-in-france/

Although it’s not exactly considered frontpage news by the leftist mainstream media, the so-called Yellow Vests continue to protest every single weekend against President Macron’s horrendous policies. Don’t believe me? Well, just watch this rather inspiring video:

This weekend was the 59th weekend in a row that the Gilets Jaunes or Yellow Vests have taken to the streets in order to show the government they mean business. They are against Macron’s pension reform, and also protest against the rising cost of living (which makes it virtually impossible for blue-collar workers to live a normal kind of life), while the rich are getting all kinds of tax breaks.

Of course, there are a lot of reasons not to like the French (and yes that’s coming from someone who, although a Dutchman himself, has French ancestors). They’re arrogant. They refuse to speak English to tourists. Their cheese smells horrible. Their soccer team beat the Dutch team in the 1998 world cup with penalties. And yes, their movies are awful too.

Finally, there is the little fact that France has been living on the dole in Europe for ages. The rich northern EU members are paying France’s bills. Trust me when I say that those of us from those northern countries aren’t exactly happy with that situation, especially not because we see Frenchmen refusing to give up privileges we had to give up years or even decades ago to prevent the welfare state from collapsing.