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Bernie v. Biden: Brand Identity Triumphs Over Identity Politics Bob Maistros

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/07/bernie-v-biden-brand-identity-trumps-identity-politics/

Like, wow. The Democratic presidential field has shrunk from the most diverse ever – in race, gender, age, background and even sexual orientation – to two old white guys duking it out.

Even, and perhaps especially, in the age of “woke,” brand identity is triumphing over identity politics.

That was the very point of the first (second, if you count JFK) great political “brand:” Barack Obama. His carefully crafted image was described as “post-political,” “post-racial,” and yes, “beyond identity politics.”

Youthful, irresistibly “cool,” and for many, an ideological blank slate, Obama would be The One ushering in “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” His rising sun logo and the independently designed “Hope” poster emerged as iconic brand symbols – equal parts aspirational and soothing in a time of social and economic turmoil.

Brand power ascended again in 2016, when a casino mogul and reality show host – whose real business was marketing one of America’s most recognized names – leveraged his notoriety to smash political norms to smithereens.

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Trump Taps Rep. Mark Meadows as White House Chief of Staff, Replacing Mulvaney By Zachary Evans

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mark-meadows-new-white-house-chief-of-staff-replacing-mike-mulvaney/

President Trump on Friday named Representative Mark Meadows (R., N.C.) as White House chief of staff, replacing acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

“I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I want to thank Acting Chief Mick Mulvaney for having served the Administration so well. He will become the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Thank you!”

Meadows announced in December that he would not seek reelection after an eight-year run in the House, during which he clashed with former House speaker John Boehner, called for balanced budgets, and was chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. More recently, the congressman has been a staunch ally of Trump, and has called the impeachment proceedings against the president “a baseless, fact-free sham that ignores rules, obliterates precedent, and ultimately runs directly contrary to the will of the people.”

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When asked, Trump zeroes in on what made Liz Warren lose By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/when_asked_trump_zeroes_in_on_what_made_liz_warren_lose.html

Although Tulsi Gabbard, a woman, remains in the race, the Democrats are assiduously ignoring her. As far as Democrats in both politics and the media are concerned, Elizabeth Warren was the last woman standing in the Democrat primary race and now she’s gone. With her departure, they are falling back on the old standby, which is that it was sexism that brought Warren down (never mind that the sexism, if it exists, is confined to Democrats).

During a press conference at the White House before President Trump left to visit Tennessee following the horrific tornadoes, a reporter asked the President if he thought sexism accounted for Warren’s downfall. Trump’s answer was blunt – and, typically, quite funny too:

REPORTER: Do you think sexism was a factor in Elizabeth Warren pulling out and do you think you will see a female president in your lifetime?

TRUMP: No, I think lack of talent was her problem. She had a tremendous lack of talent. She was a good debater. She destroyed Mike Bloomberg very quickly like it was nothing. That was easy for her. But people don’t like her. She’s a very mean person, and people don’t like her. People don’t want that. They like a person like me, that’s not mean.

Trump, of course, is correct. Warren always had the air of a scolding schoolmarm about her. Despite the light, fluffy voice, she was right, you were wrong, and she was going to put you in your place and tell you how to do things. Warren didn’t sound like a leader; she sounded like a know-it-all, the type of person you dread having as your teacher or team leader. And that was when she wasn’t mean.

POLITICS Comments turned off

A Biden candidacy –What’s the plan? There is always a plan By Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/a_biden_candidacy_whats_the_plan_there_is_always_a_plan.html

Why, when Joe Biden’s mental decline is so obvious, are so many former Obamaphiles pledging their spurious support for the man?  Something’s up.  It is beyond clear that Biden is not up to the job.  This fact cannot escape the notice of Susan Rice, James Comey, John Brennan, et. al., all those conspirators who tried so treasonously hard to destroy Donald Trump.  They surely know better than most that Biden is a dead man walking. So why the all-out campaign to support his candidacy?  Hmmm.  They must have a plan.  Is their plan to submarine Joe before the convention, admit he is incapacitated and put up a heretofore  untested candidate at a brokered convention?  Or do they have a plan to appoint a VP candidate they assume will become president in short order? Perhaps, as Joel Gilbert speculated here yesterday, the plan is to install Hillary as the candidate to run against President Trump in a last-ditch effort to derail his fabulously successful presidency.  They certainly have some devious scheme to replace Biden by hook or crook for his dementia cannot possibly have escaped their notice.

The now-available Hillary documentary for all to see is probably meant to prime the public for her potential last-minute candidacy. It is not very likely to be successful.  She is the kind of harridan who makes Elizabeth Warren seem kind and gentle!  Hillary is also a narcissist of the worst order, the kind who never takes responsibility for the havoc she has wrought on the lives of others, let alone her country.  She is in fact one of the most corrupt politicians ever to  prevail for so many years, to become fabulously wealthy for her many deceits and crimes.  She has been a blight upon the U.S. since she gained power as the wife of the governor of Arkansas.  She spent forty years covering up for her husband’s crimes against women and has somehow lived to tell no tales.  Her fans are certifiable morons, susceptible to any and all of the propaganda the left propels into the mainstream media.  She has yet to endorse Biden.  To support his candidacy is to deny his indisputable advancing dementia. 

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Grandson Of Terrorist Wins California Primary Election

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://deplorablekel.com/2020/03/04/grandson-of-terrorist-wins-california-primary-election

Ammar Campa-Najjar, the grandson of a muslim terrorist, has advanced to California’s 50th Congressional District general election after winning the March 3rd primary election. He will face Republican Darrell Issa on November 3rd 2020.

Ammar is the grandson of the mastermind of the Munich massacre. Ammar’s grandfather, Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar also known as Abu Youssef, was a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, which took eleven Israeli Olympic team members hostage and killed them in 1972. Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar helped mastermind the terror attack, known as the Munich massacre. Al-Najjar was assassinated for his involvement in the massacre.

Ammar once referred to his grandfather as a legend on social media.

It seems his grandfather is not the only terrorist connection that Ammar has. Ammar attended the same mosque as three of the terrorist that carried out September 11th terror attacks in 2001.

In 2012, Ammar served as Deputy Regional Field Director for Obama’s re-election campaign. After the election, he worked in the Obama administration as an official at the Labor Department. Ammar was endorsed by Obama during the 2018 election.

Ammar is anti-President Trump and has stated that he will be President Trump’s worst nightmare if elected to Congress.

Ammar also ran for Congress in 2018 but thankfully he was defeated. Let’s hope he’s defeated in November 2020 as well!

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The ‘No Bail’ Fiasco in New York Crime is breaking out again amid a get-out-of-jail-free law.

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-no-bail-fiasco-in-new-yorkthe-no-bail-fiasco-in-new-york-11583534248?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

You know New York has a problem when even Mayor Bill de Blasio admits it. On Thursday the New York Police Department held a press conference to report that major crime is up 22.5% this February over a year ago. Both the cops and the mayor attribute the spike to the bail reform pushed through the state Legislature in Albany last year, which is releasing people who have been arrested for one crime to go out and commit another.

“There’s a direct correlation to a change in the law, and we need to address it, and we will address it,” Mr. de Blasio said of the increase in crime. The mayor also said he was “absolutely confident” it will be addressed in Albany in the budget due April 1.

The Democratic Legislature, with the backing of both Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, ended cash bail last year. The goal was to prevent cases such as that of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old charged with stealing a backpack. Because his family could not afford bail he spent three years in prison on Rikers Island—much of it in solitary—without being tried or convicted of a crime. After his release, he ultimately committed suicide.

The sensible part of bail reform was aimed at preventing injustices such as this one. The non-sensible part was to deprive judges of the discretion to keep behind bars criminals who remain a menace to the community.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

More Smoke and Mirrors on Mental Health Mayor de Blasio’s latest promises to the most seriously ill remain hollow. D.J.Jaffe

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/de-blasio-thrivenyc-mental-health-plan?utm_source=Bigger+Apple&utm_campaign=
DJ Jaffe is author of Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill, executive director of Mental Illness Policy Org. and an adjunct fellow at Manhattan Institute.

Mayor de Blasio and his wife Chirlane McCray, who serves as his mental-wellness czar, just announced an additional goal for ThriveNYC, their signature $850 million, multiyear mental-health plan: “Reach People with the Highest Needs.” One might think that that priority would have been part of the original plan. In any case, it’s a hollow promise: a close reading of the 2020–2022 ThriveNYC spending plan and “Progress Report” makes it clear that the de Blasio administration will continue to send money to ineffective programs, while giving short shrift to programs that reduce homelessness, arrests, and incarceration of the seriously mentally ill. The mayor and his wife justify the continuing ThriveNYC boondoggle by reporting meaningless and misleading statistics.

Over the last four years, de Blasio and McCray regularly insisted that ThriveNYC was helping the seriously mentally ill. In 2019, McCray told an incredulous city council that 100 percent of ThriveNYC’s funds are used for the seriously ill. The real figure is well short of that mark. New York City Council Speaker Cory Johnson says that only 13 percent of the program’s funds go to the seriously mentally ill. Gary Belkin, the program’s first director, pegged the figure at 19 percent; Susan Herman, ThriveNYC’s current head, says that in 2022 it will go up to 26 percent. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Coronavirus: China’s War on the Truth by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15670/china-coronavirus-lies

“The epidemic has exposed this country completely in its corruption, bureaucracy, information control and censorship.” — Phillip Wu, a freelance writer in Beijing, The Guardian, March 1, 2020.

Then there are many instances of journalists and activists who told the truth, but who were arrested or “vanished”. The Chinese regime is now even announcing plans to publish a book in six languages about the outbreak that portrays President Xi as a “major power leader” with “care for the people”.

Italy’s main fatal mistake was trusting China’s regime. Instead of checking everyone — Chinese or Italian — returning from China since January, Italy kept its borders open. We are now dealing with tens of thousands of Italians under quarantine….

The idea that the coronavirus might be related to Wuhan’s virus research laboratory is considered by some a “conspiracy theory”, yet China’s refusal immediately to accept help from the US Centers for Disease Control understandably arouses suspicion.

“On current course, China is liable to do significant damage to the rest the world, by accident or intent,” wrote columnist Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal on January 29.

“The Chinese Communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large”, wrote the noted historian Victor Davis Hanson on February 20.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Republicans Are Blocking Renewal of Commonsense Anti-Terrorism Tools By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/republicans-blocking-renewal-commonsense-anti-terrorism-tools/

Our surveillance laws need revision, but this is not the way to do it.

I  wonder if Congressman Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.) has ever heard of Sayyid Nosair. There was a time not that long ago when Nosair was something of a household name, the kind that the Arizona Republican, a strong conservative who cares a great deal about our national security, would know.

Time flies, though, and memories fade. It’s been 30 years since Nosair, a naturalized American citizen and a hardened jihadist, murdered Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane in one of New York City’s most notorious late-20th-century homicides. It has been 25 years since I led a team of prosecutors who convicted Nosair of conducting a terrorist war against the United States — a war waged by a foreign terrorist organization that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which was plotted in his upstate New York prison cell.

The question of Representative Biggs’s familiarity with Nosair — to say nothing of many other historical instances of Americans collaborating with foreign powers against American interests — suggested itself when I watched him get interviewed on Fox News Thursday morning (see here, about three minutes in). Biggs was asked to weigh in on the GOP’s ongoing intramural skirmish over what is being called “FISA reform,” but, in actuality, has very little to do with that important subject — at least, not directly.

Biggs reminded Fox’s Ed Henry that “the F in FISA stands for ‘foreign,’” his ill-informed point being that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is supposed to be about the surveillance of foreigners, not Americans. Therefore, the argument continued, we need to reform FISA so it is limited to non-Americans; otherwise, the FBI could once again pretextually use it to spy on President Trump, or on another American political campaign, or on the rest of us.

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

328 Chinese Nationals Caught Trying To Illegally Enter U.S. At Southern Border By Ryan Saavedra

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.dailywire.com/news/328-chinese-nationals-caught-trying-to-illegally-ente

The Department of Homeland Security says that hundreds of Chinese nationals have attempted to illegally enter the United States through the southern border since the outbreak of the coronavirus in China.

“Some 328 illegal immigrants from China have been nabbed jumping the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year, according to Homeland Security data that raises the prospect a coronavirus carrier could sneak into the country via the border,” The Washington Times reported. “Three other people from South Korea — another country with rapidly spreading cases — have also been arrested at the border, as have 122 people from the Dominican Republican, where the coronavirus has now been detected.”

The coronavirus, which originated in China in December, has infected more than 91,000 people worldwide and killed well over 3,100 people – with most of the infections and deaths occurring in China.

Border Patrol agents told the Times that in addition to the 1,000 illegal aliens who are caught every day entering the United States through the southern border with Mexico, which is also dealing with an outbreak of the coronavirus, a significant number of illegal aliens are managing to sneak into the country undetected.

“The journey to the U.S. border puts migrants in poor conditions,” a Homeland Security official told The Washington Times. “We don’t know if they have come into contact with someone who has the flu, there is no passport, medical history, or travel manifest.”