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POLITICS

About That ‘Blue Wave…’ By Michael Walsh

Now that we’ve all had a year-long respite from Washington electoral politics (stop laughing), it’s time once again for journalists to resume retailing their favorite narrative — the horse race. Fortunately for them, this year they can combine it with their Trump hatred and their fondness for the “resistance” and thus turn nearly every story about the president, the Republicans, conservatives and everybody else they loathe into the Left’s Coming Revenge on Trump.

In this scenario, the electorate is finally waking up from a long hangover; revolted, the righteous, female-dominated, Democrat-voting majority will now rise up at the ballot box, recapture the House, and immediately vote articles of impeachment. At the same time — and despite the extremely long odds of this actually happening — the Great Blue Wave will wash over the Senate as well, which means that a conviction and Trump’s removal from office would be at least a theoretical possibility. Why, just look at Virginia and Alabama!

Such daydreams, however, are very likely misplaced, as Nate Silver notes:

The Senate map is really tough for Democrats, with 26 Democratic seats in play next year (including a newly opened seat in Minnesota after Al Franken announced his intention to retire) as compared to just eight Republican ones. Moreover, five of the Democratic-held seats — the ones in West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, Missouri and Indiana — are in states that President Trump won by 18 percentage points or more.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: DAN LIPINSKI FOR CONGRESS (D,ILLINOIS DISTRICT 3)

A primary election is coming up in Illinois,and pro-Israel supporters should back Democratic Congressman Daniel Lipinski. It is shameful that pro-choice Democrats who claim to be pro-Israel are backing a challenger to Lipinski, one of the most independent minded members of either house of Congress,and a strong supporter of Israel. . Again it shows that on the left, the pro-Israel cause will always be trumped by passion for abortion.
To Protect Our Heritage Political Action Committee found out this week that one of the staunchest supporters of Israel in Congress, Representative Dan Lipinski (D, IL-3) is facing a primary challenge from a candidate who does not share our values about a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. With the Illinois primary little more than a month away, Representative Lipinski needs our support now to fight off this challenge.
A man of integrity and character, Lipinski is a moderate Democrat with a stellar voting record on Israel, despite his southwest Chicago/suburban district being home to two of Illinois’ largest mosques. He was one of the few Democrats who bravely withstood presidential pressure by voting against the disastrous Iranian Nuclear Deal.
To help him win and keep his seat you can donate to his campaign

https://www.lipinskiforcongress.com/secure/donate.html

ELECTIONS ARE COMING :Trump’s Midterm Known Unknowns ‘Shy’ Trump voters, a booming economy, consumer confidence, looming investigations, anti-Trump frenzy — all add up to uncertainty in the 2018 elections. Victor Davis Hanson

Conventional wisdom and media hopes are now combining to warn us of what is shaping up as a Trump wipeout in the 2018 midterms.

Certainly, presidents with an approval rating below 50 percent usually lose more than 30 seats in the House. That crash would be more than enough to produce a Democratic majority and thus would ensure an impeachment proceeding designed to paralyze the remainder of Trump’s first term.

In the Senate, the Democrats have three times as many seats to defend (and lots of them in Trump-won states). Yet recently they are gaining confidence that they can flip enough races to deadlock or even win the Senate. The now-orthodox narrative about the midterm elections is increasingly hyped by the media as a “blowout” or “tsunami.”

Yet the dilemma is not just that we are ten months out from the election and relative party popularity is already gyrating, but that there are lots of landmark developments in play that we usually do not experience in any midterm election.

The first, of course, is Trump and the polls. No one knows whether the “Trump phenomenon” of 3–5 percent underreporting in the polls is still valid. The Rasmussen poll has Trump at 45 percent, about 5 percent higher than the gold-standard RealClearPolitics average of 40 percent — analogous to the Election Day outlier and often-scoffed-at polls by USC/Los Angeles Times and Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP. Anecdotally, most can attest that colleagues and friends still usually look both ways before whispering, “Wow, Trump is doing great.” It may be a mass phenomenon that, for some, expressing hesitation about Trump or even virtue-signaling about his excesses serves as psychological penance for voting for him.

Conventional wisdom trusts the 40 percent average; by 2016 unorthodox thinking, however, one might argue for the 45 percent outlier. But remember again, we are in surreal, even revolutionary, times when what is certain is now suspect, and what is absolutely impossible is feasible.

No one ever imagined that the take-the-knee NFL protests would have tanked viewership and attendance by over 10 percent and shaken the very foundations of a multibillion-dollar industry. No one ever dreamed that many in the illustrious liberal aparat would be attrited in just days by long-known but suddenly disclosed creepy behavior — John Conyers, Al Franken, Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Ryan Lizza, Charlie Rose, Jann Wenner, and Leon Wieseltier. We had never seen late-night television turn into nonstop political ranting. We have no idea whether comedians’ spiked ratings represent the new normal or have earned a quiet but simmering backlash.

Pew Poll Makes It Official: Democrats Abandon Israel By Tyler O’Neil

President Donald Trump has proven himself a staunch defender of the State of Israel, officially recognizing Jerusalem as the state’s capital. Republicans are on board, but Democrats have distanced themselves from Israel in the past two years, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Since 1978, more Americans have sympathized with Israel than with the Palestinians. In recent years, Republicans have backed Israel and Democrats have pulled away.

According to the Pew survey, 46 percent of Americans favor Israel, while 16 percent sympathize more with the Palestinians. A full 38 percent said they either sympathize with both (5 percent), neither (14 percent) or that they don’t know (19 percent). In 1978, 45 percent said they sympathized with Israel, 14 percent favored the Palestinians, and 42 percent could not decide.

A vast majority of Republicans (79 percent) said they sympathized more with Israel than with the Palestinians, an increase of 29 percentage points from 2001 (when 50 percent of Republicans preferred Israel).

Democrats shifted decisively away from Israel even more dramatically, however. In April 2016 — less than two years ago — 43 percent of Democrats said they sympathized more with Israel. This year, only 27 percent said so.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, liberal Democrats drove this change. In 2016, 33 percent of liberal Democrats sympathized with Israel, while 19 percent did so this year. Nearly twice as many liberal Democrats say they sympathize more with the Palestinians than Israel (35 percent to 19 percent).

Moderate and conservative Democrats still sympathize more with Israel (35 percent) than with the Palestinians (17 percent). Even so, fewer conservative and moderate Democrats sympathize with Israel today (35 percent) than in 2016 (53 percent).

Democrats didn’t reject Israel for the Palestinians, however. In fact, more Democrats sympathized with Palestine in 2016 (29 percent) than this year (25 percent). In 2016, only 16 percent of Democrats said they sympathized with both the Israelis and the Palestinians or neither of them.

Even in the past year, more Democrats said they sympathized with both or neither — and more said they just don’t know. In 2017, 19 percent chose both or neither, while this year 23 percent did so. Last year, 17 percent said they did not know which side they sympathized with, while 25 percent said so this year.

More Americans said President Trump is “striking the right balance” in the Middle East (42 percent) than those who said he favors Israel too much (30 percent). A quarter (25 percent) did not offer an opinion, while 3 percent said Trump favors the Palestinians too much (What are they smoking?).

At a similar point in Barack Obama’s presidency — April 2010 — 47 percent of Americans said he struck the proper balance, while 21 percent said he sided too much with the Palestinians, and 7 percent said Obama favored Israel too much. CONTINUE AT SITE

Vowing to ‘rip’ Trump ‘a new one,’ Obama in his ex-presidency devolves into third-world coup-plotting By Monica Showalter

Far from content living his golden years on the $400,000 speech and lecture circuit of other former presidents, President Obama has been busy with clawing back his old power. He’s actually covertly plotting to oust his democratically elected successor, President Trump, vowing to his associates to “rip him a new one” in the 2018 midterm elections. Seems he’s not all that interested in watching his younger daughter grow up.

That’s the word from DCWhispers, which reports that Obama’s Kalorama mansion, in the heart of the capital’s toniest district, is the center of significant comings and goings among the Obamatons, who, led by his consigliere, Valerie Jarrett, are busily raising funds for the project as Obama eggs them on.

The Obama Machine has in recent months been raking in tens of millions in preparation for a significant 2018 [m]idterm war effort – primarily through an LLC called Citizen 44, run by Paulette Aniskoff, a longtime Obama staffer who answers directly to Jarrett. Citizen 44’s primary purpose is to keep the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaign machine intact, continue to build up its state-by-state influence, and use it as an election entity that will rival the influence of the DNC itself. In short, any Democrat of importance who hopes to rise in rank will have to kiss the ring of Citizen 44 first.

Want to know who the leader of the resistance is? This is the leader of the resistance.

Knowing how Obama’s campaign organization was run, with its slipshod accounting of foreign cash infusions and phony claims to be running on small-dollar donations, it’s probable that this operation is as shady as all the other ones. In fact, it is all the other ones. DCWhispers reports that it comprises almost entirely Obama’s leftover and not dead campaign apparatus.

It’s a disgusting picture for any ex-presidency.

What we are looking at right now is a third-world coup-plotting effort, done under legal pretenses (just as Hugo Chávez did everything under legal pretenses), to oust a sitting president. It’s unprecedented. When have we ever seen an ex-president acting like this, spending his post-presidency determined to consolidate and continue his rule, if not the conventional way, then the subterranean way? Did Nixon do that? Did LBJ? Did Jimmy Carter? Heck, did either of the George Bushes? Imagine Jerry Ford doing that!

ELECTIONS ARE COMINGMartha McSally Blasts Dems For Holding Troops ‘Hostage’ Over Immigration By Stephen Kruiser See note please

Martha McSally is an outstanding Representative who is running in the GOP primary for the Senate…..Watch the video….rsk

https://pjmedia.com/video/martha-mcsally-blasts-dems-holding-troops-hostage-immigration/

Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ) joined Tucker Carlson to unload on Dick Durbin and his fellow Democrats for threatening funding for our military unless they get what they want on DACA. McSally, a former fighter pilot, was visibly upset, saying that the Democrats are “d–king around” while focusing on something that isn’t a priority for many voters or a crisis.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: CHELSEA MANNING RUNNING FOR SENATE IN MARYLAND’S DEMOCRAT PRIMARY

MARYLAND’S DEMOCRAT PRIMARY WILL BE HELD ON JUNE 28, 2018….BEN CARDIN IS STANDARD ISSUE LIBERAL SENATOR BUT THE BUZZ AROUND MANNING IS INCREDIBLE…..STAY TUNED! EVERY VOTE COUNTS….RSK

Transgender Chelsea Manning was convicted in a 2013 court martial of 20 counts, including violations of the Espionage Act, for illegally leaking more than 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks. Chelsea Manning, known as Private Bradley Manning at the time of the crime, received a 35-year sentence, right after which she came out as a transgender and demanded that the army pay for sex change hormone treatment. Former President Barack Obama went one step further. Obama gave Manning a free “get of jail” card just days before the end of his term in office, granting clemency to the felon of all but 4 months of her 35-year sentence. She was released from prison last May, after serving only 7 years. In his last press conference as president, Obama doubled down on his clemency decision, declaring that “I feel very comfortable that justice has been served.”

Freed only a few months, Chelsea Manning has just announced that she is running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, challenging the two-term incumbent Senator Ben Cardin in the party’s primary. The fact that Manning is a convicted felon does not appear to preclude her from being eligible to run for the U.S. Senate. If Obama were a registered voter in Maryland, he probably would vote for her.

Progressives have been fawning all over Manning as a symbol of the liberated transgender and proud supporter of the antifata movement, who has latched on to virtually every leftist cause from open borders to free health care for everyone. She is a celebrity, gracing the cover of Vogue magazine in a bathing suit last September, under the headline “Chelsea Manning Changed the Course of History.”

Samantha Allen wrote in a column appearing in Rolling Stone last December that Chelsea Manning’s emergence from prison “brought a ray of digital sunshine into a dreary world. Manning’s aesthetic brilliance and social media optimism were both backed up by genuine political convictions, like vocally supporting the J20 defendants – a group of protestors arrested on Inauguration Day – or condemning the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.”

Linda Sansour tweeted out her support for Chelsea Manning’s Senate candidacy: “If you are cool with Sheriff Arpaio running for Senate in Arizona but up in arms that Chelsea Manning is running in Maryland – you my friend are a HYPOCRITE. #GoChelsea”.

Perhaps as a foretaste of what lies ahead in Chelsea Manning’s Senate campaign, she tweeted the following hate-filled expletive against the police on January 9th, Law Enforcement Appreciation Day: “f..k the police.” That is the kind of language leftists who conducted or supported violent anti-police riots in Baltimore in 2015 will love to hear more of.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: Will Indiana Choose a Genuine Conservative Congressman? By Eileen F. Toplansky see note please

THE INDIANA GOP PRIMARY IS ON MAY 28, 2018 RSK
It is clear that much still needs to be done to maintain the many encouraging strides President Trump has already made in his first year. And with so many long-term Republicans retiring, it is critical to look for impeccable conservative credentials in those running in 2018.

Richard Moss, M.D. is running in Indiana’s 8th Congressional District against an entrenched Republican. Dr. Moss is “formally committed to joining the ‘Freedom Caucus,’ the conservative bloc within the Republican Caucus in Congress[,] at the announcement of his candidacy on September 9, 2017.” Dr. Moss went to Indiana University in Bloomington and I.U. School of Medicine. His mother was actually from Indiana but left in 1931 to live in the Bronx in New York with her family.

Founded in 1991, Dr. Moss’s medical office provides care and treatment in the specialty of otolaryngology, or routine and complex ear, nose, and throat disorders; head and neck cancer; and facial plastic and cosmetic surgery.

Dr. Moss agreed to give his views on the following questions posed to him by American Thinker.

Why do you think “squish” Republicans are so hesitant in maintaining a winning streak?

They don’t really want to win. They prefer minority status or a Democratic president so they can pound their chests resisting him, claiming conservative principles, which is good for fundraising. But when they actually have power … they shrink from doing so. They are basically big-government Republicans and political cowards.

What are your views on immigration control?

No DACA. No amnesty. No birthright citizenship. No chain migration. Build a wall. I would have a moratorium on immigration other than for Nobel Prize-level talent and proven Solzhenitsyn-level dissidents and reformers.

Earmarks Are Inherently Corrupt. Congress Has No Business Resurrecting Pork Barrel Politics By Tom Coburn

Tom Coburn, M.D., was the Republican Senator from Oklahoma from 2005-2015 after being in the House from 1995 to 2001. He is the honorary chairman of Open the Books- https://www.openthebooks.com/

Months of headlines detailing misconduct inside Congress have apparently not been enough to shame Washington away from soliciting even more scandals.

Congressmen resigning in disgrace for unethical and potentially criminal activity. A secretive congressional account doling out millions of dollars, with little transparency or accountability as to who is getting the money or for what purpose.

While this sounds a lot like the recently exposed congressional hush fund used to cover-up harassment claims, it is actually a description of life in Congress in the not so distant past during the era of earmarking.

An earmark, more commonly derided as pork, is a provision inserted into a bill or accompanying report at the request of a member of Congress that directs funds to be taken from the Treasury and given to a specific recipient, circumventing the standard merit-based and competitive procedures typically used to award federal assistance. Earmarks can, and did, financially benefit politicians, their family members, and campaign donors.

As a member of both the House of Representatives and Senate, I have witnessed earmarking up close and know it is inherently corrupt. Earmarks were abused as a form of currency to buy and sell the votes of politicians and to reward political supporters. Convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff affectionately called the earmark system “the favor factory.” Amidst criminal investigations and embarrassing headlines, public outrage forced Congress to shut down the favor factory in 2010.

Taxpayers are not nostalgic for a return to the days of bridges to nowhere and pork barrel politics. In fact, most are angry that Congress has done little to cut wasteful spending or address our growing national debt, which now tops $20 trillion.

But instead of tackling these, the House of Representatives is holding hearings about returning to the days when politicians could freely spend money we did not have on things we did not need that benefitted the well-connected few.

Politicians are rationalizing earmarking as a constitutional prerogative of Congress and arguing that pork makes it easier to pass bills, while offering assurances this time will be different because the make-up of Congress is different and the process will be more transparent.
“If there is one thing I learned during my time in Congress, it is never to underestimate the dumb things politicians will dream up to spend other people’s money on.”

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: GOP PRIMARY IN COLORADO DISTRICT 5

Republican Representative Doug Lamborn, one of the finest Congressman in America is being challenged in the Republican Primary by Darryl Glenn who ran for the Senate in 2016 and lost to incumbent Democrat Senator Michael Bennet.

I am a big cheerleader for Lamborn who is a conservative and a staunch supporter of Israel and has visited the towns in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) in solidarity with the “settlements.”

Darryl Glenn is no slouch. He is black, a staunch conservative, and spent 21 years of combined active duty and reserve in the United States Air force (June 1988-October 2009) retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel.

The primary is on June 28, 2018. I hope Lamborn wins, but Glenn is a candidate who deserves a future in politics.