President Trump Targets Voter Fraud—Dems Go Insane! Joan Swirsky

They never ever counted on the one entity for which neither media hacks nor pollsters have any respect: the American public!

On Tuesday, American voters will once again go to the polls hoping that the candidate(s) they vote for will fulfill what should be their one and only mission, i.e., to serve the needs of We the People.

Republican, ahem, leaders are appropriately nervous that the phony so-called conservatives they’ve been foisting on us for decades will be replaced by authentic conservatives who will help President Trump fulfill his mission to Make America Great Again!

And––oxymoron here––Democrat leaders are even more agitated because looming over the entire election will be the initiative President Trump announced last May to investigate voter fraud, an issue they are all-too-seedily familiar with.

They are also in high anxiety about the inconvenient truth that, according to journalist Susan Jones, “There have been five special congressional elections so far this year, and in the four races where Republicans ran against Democrats, Republicans have won all four. (In CA, two Democrats vied for a House seat, so a Dem win was the only possible outcome).

VP Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach are leading the commission’s efforts to reassure voters about the integrity of federal elections. The president also appointed Hans von Spakovsky, a GW Bush appointee, to head the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

The far-left Washington Post called his appointment “divisive,” which to most Americans meant that the president picked the perfect guy. In 2005, von Spakovsky led the Justice Department’s approval of a Georgia law requiring voters to produce photo ID, which was rejected!

Think about that rejection. You need a photo identification card to get a driver’s license, donate your blood, buy alcohol or cigarettes, open a bank account, apply for welfare benefits or food stamps or Medicaid or Social Security or unemployment or a mortgage or a hunting and fishing license, get on an airplane, rent a car, get a prescription, buy a cell phone, visit a casino and get married––and that is the short list!

But the initiative was rejected because Democrats object to any requirement that would prevent illegals and dead people and cartoon characters from voting and potentially swinging an election in their favor.

What do you think Sanctuary cities are all about? They are certainly not about the deep love and empathy leftists have for humanity, or the preference people who work 12 or 16 or 20 hours a day have for giving total strangers free housing, education, healthcare, and ongoing stipends into perpetuity. No no no….sanctuary citizens are all about Democrat votes!

Sure enough, the reliably cringe-producing Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on the president to reject the embrace of “white supremacy” and the desire to “disenfranchise” voters that motivated such a commission.

Another Terrorist Attack, Another Whitewash of Islamic Jihad Willful blindness sixteen years after 9/11. Bruce Thornton

After a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan murdered eight people on a bike path in New York, the usual “expert” pundits and commentators began recycling the same clichés they always use to avoid a hard, uncomfortable fact: these killings are perpetrated by Muslims who are faithfully following fourteen centuries of Islamic precept and practice.

Sixteen years after 9/11 we still don’t get the reality of Islamic jihad.

Indeed, we can’t even get simple facts straight. The NYC terrorist’s cry of Allahu Akbar, the traditional Muslim battle-cry, is consistently mistranslated. As Robert Spencer has repeatedly pointed out, the phrase does not mean “God is great,” an equivalent, as Senator John McCain has claimed, of “Thank God.” Rather, it means “Allah is greater.” Using the mistranslation obscures the triumphalist intolerance at the heart of Islam. Since the 7th century, Muslims have gone to war for the same reason Mohammed did: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’” Allah is “greater” because all other gods are “idols” or, as with Christians and Jews, distortions of Allah and his revelation to Mohammed. Hence jihad, the effort to “slay the infidels wherever you find them” until Islam and sharia law––practiced by the “best of nations,” as the Koran says, “raised for [the benefit of] men” –– comprise the sole legitimate political-social order for all of humanity.

Having misinterpreted the jihadist war-cry, these same commentators then try to separate the jihadist from the vanguards of modern jihadism such as ISIS. Despite his frank boasts of allegiance to ISIS, or the thousands of videos and photos on his cell phone including beheadings, or his request for an ISIS flag in his hospital room, we continue to hear that he is a “lone wolf,” a “self-radicalized” anomaly much like the Las Vegas mass murderer. Hence the progressive apologists retreat into the psychological analyses that have replaced philosophy and religion in the secular West. Rather than sacred scripture and doctrine, rather than glorious Muslim history and Koranic injunctions, now social conditions and mental derangement must account for this act.

So according to The New York Times, the Uzbek jihadist is the product of a “rootless life,” a neurotic with a “monster inside.” How could he be a Puritanical fundamentalist? He cursed, liked fancy clothes, and showed up late to mosque services. The Wall Street Journal reports that he was a homesick momma’s boy. As The New Republic put it, he is just a “desperate soul” vulnerable to the propaganda of ISIS, the latest in a string of mass murderers who suffer from a mental disorder, one weaponized by mass gun ownership, violent jingoism, and the “politics of fear.”

Hence after the attacks the widespread false analogy with the Las Vegas shooter. Mostly this trope was an excuse to bash Trump for his different responses to the attacks. But beyond that is the same assumption that only psychological dysfunction could explain why someone would brutally run-down bikers and pedestrians. Yet the falseness of the analogy is obvious: The Las Vegas shooter did not have a worldwide virtual community of like-minded believers inspiring and counseling Muslims to inflict murder and mayhem on unbelievers. He did not have a historical precedent in the long record of Islamic violence and aggression. He did not have several models for his crimes like the Muslims using vehicles for murder in London, Nice, Barcelona, Stockholm, Berlin, and Israel. He did not have a belief system in which such violence is enjoined as a command of God and a mark of righteousness. He did not shout “Thank God” as he mowed down his victims. He did not believe that his acts would turn him into a martyr destined for a life of eternal pleasure. He had no global organization eager to take credit for his deeds.

Antifa Fail Near-empty protest sites across America means the anti-Trump Resistance’s so-called revolution will have to wait for another day. Matthew Vadum

The millions of rabid Trump-haters that the George Soros-linked group Refuse Fascism hoped would show up Saturday in cities across America to drive the duly elected president and vice president of the United States from office must have had other plans.

The so-called Resistance’s coordinated multi-city action failed despite oceans of favorable media coverage from the mainstream media and a full-page ad in the New York Times.

The plan was to occupy city centers and parks in around two dozen U.S. cities and not depart until President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were forced to flee the White House. The protests, Refuse Fascism boasted, would rage “day after day and night after night ─ not stopping ─ until our DEMAND is met.”

So this means they left a little over three or seven years too early. And the turnout on the weekend for the launch of their revolution was so sparse, no one will care if a few stragglers have stayed behind to “occupy” various cities.

The broader goal of Refuse Fascism is to overthrow the U.S. government through occupations and crippling strikes. Perry Hoberman, an associate research professor in the School of Cinematic Arts at USC and a member of Refuse Fascism’s national steering committee, had previously said Nov. 4 would be modeled on the Women’s March that took place the day after President Trump’s inauguration.

But the “Antifa apocalypse,” as some had termed it, a series of disruptive protests planned in 20 cities, failed to materialize on Nov. 4.

Heroism Rises Out of Tragedy in a Small Texas Town Armed heroes can make a difference. Daniel Greenfield

In moments of terror, the killer in black mowed down 26 victims in and near the small white church off Old Highway 87. The victims behind the church’s red door were as young as 5 years old.

And then the killing at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs stopped.

A neighbor had found his own rifle and opened fire on the killer. Devin Kelley, the 26-year-old man identified as the gunman, dropped his weapon and fled. And at least one local resident, if not more, followed in pursuit. Kelley was later found dead with his massacre cut short by a local hero.

Evil knows no geography. A mass murderer can take over two dozen lives in fifteen seconds. The worst humanity is capable of can appear in a tiny town of a few hundred. And another man can save a dozen more lives in even less time. And the best humanity is capable of can also come to life in that tiny town.

Sutherland Springs, a town hastily named when the post office came calling, is a reminder that the great dramas of human life don’t just happen in big cities where millions of people swarm the streets. They can happen in the smallest and the most overlooked places in the heat of a lazy Sunday morning.

History appeared to have passed Sutherland Springs by since its days as a resort town. But there is no place so forgotten that it cannot serve as the stage for a confrontation between good and evil.

Devin Kelley, the monster in black who came through that red door, had been court martialed by the Air Force for domestic violence. The man who had abused his wife and child thought he would show the world how tough he was by gunning down unarmed women and children. But once a few shots were fired in his direction, Kelley turned and ran. Mass shooters aren’t courageous, they’re cowards.

There is a reason that they choose targets that they expect will be unarmed and unable to fight back. Devin Kelley had spent a little time in the Air Force. And had then been locked away for a year for attacking his family. At First Baptist, Kelley thought he had his perfect target. He murdered children and the elderly. But when the gun swung his way, he fled and didn’t stop until he could go no more.

After this latest massacre, the discussion will inevitably turn to gun control. But it isn’t guns that need controlling. People either control their worst selves. Or they don’t. The First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs shootings showed us that in the brutal collision between two men.

Some men shoot the innocent. Others risk their lives to stop them.

Donna Brazile Says She Was ‘Haunted’ by Murder of Seth Rich, Feared for Her Life By Debra Heine

In another bombshell from her upcoming book, Donna Brazile says that she was haunted by the mysterious murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was killed in July of 2016 purportedly during a botched robbery. In her memoir, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, she describes how she became increasingly paranoid about alleged Russian interference in the election and elements within her own party.

According to the Washington Post, she said that after Rich’s murder, she shut the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her. Brazile, who became interim head of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 after Debbie Wasserman Schultz was ousted, also installed surveillance cameras in her home and worried that the Russians might have bugged her DNC executive suite with listening devices.

Wasserman Schultz was forced out after WikiLeaks published emails revealing how she and other officials stacked the deck against Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary process in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Surprisingly, Brazile claims that top Democratic officials “encouraged” her not to talk about the hacked emails but says she was told to take the matter seriously. That message was made clear, she said, during her visit to the White House in August 2016 for then-President Obama’s 55th birthday party. She says then-National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice and former attorney general Eric Holder separately pulled her aside to caution her “to take the Russian hacking seriously.”

Her recollections about being spooked by Seth Rich’s murder are intriguing. If he was just a lowly IT staffer, killed in a random botched robbery, why would she be worried about snipers coming after her?

If the claim that he was the one who gave WikiLeaks the DNC emails is just a lot of alt-right nonsense, why would she feel the need to shut her blinds and install surveillance cameras?

What does Donna know?

Rand Paul Has 5 Broken Ribs After Assault by Bernie Supporter By Michael van der Galien

Shortly after Rand Paul was attacked by some man who people had previously never heard of, news media reported that the senator from Kentucky had suffered some “minor injuries.” Well, unless having potentially life-threatening injuries is now classified as “minor,” those initial reports were somewhat mistaken:

A senior adviser for Rand Paul says the U.S. senator is recovering from five broken ribs following an assault at his home. Doug Stafford said it is unclear when Paul will return to work since he is in considerable pain and has difficulty getting around, including flying. Stafford said Sunday that the broken ribs include three displaced fractures, which can lead to life-threatening injuries. The severe pain can last for weeks or months.

When those initial reports were published, the overall impression people got was that although it was shocking that someone had attacked Senator Paul, he didn’t suffer serious injuries. Clearly, he did. His attacker, Bernie Sanders supporter and Trump hater Rene Boucher, not only tried to do some real damage here but actually succeeded in doing so.

Following the horrendous attack on Republican congressmen and staffers during a baseball game earlier this year, which left Rep. Steve Scalise seriously wounded, this assault on Sen. Paul proves that the demonization of conservative politicians by the institutional Left is causing serious problems. Yes, political debate is important, but there’s a difference between debating issues and routinely vilifying those who dare disagree with you. Democrats and their friends in the media have repeated for years now that Republicans aren’t merely people “with other ideas,” but evil. They’re purposefully trying to hurt Average Joe, we’re being told. This message is driven home day after day, week after week. It was always only a matter of time before some wacko bird decided to take “justice” into his own hands by “removing the threat” Republicans pose to him, to minorities, and to society at large.

There’s only one way to end these kinds of attacks: by putting a halt to the complete vilification and demonization of “the other side.” Sadly, chances are the Democrats aren’t willing to do so. After all, they clearly believe that polarization will help them win elections. It’s about strategy to them, not about actual principles. CONTINUE AT SITE

How Leftism Makes Us Stupid By Andrew Klavan

Perhaps the worst thing about having an exclusively leftist media is that it makes all of us, right and left, stupider. Take for example that media’s reaction to the latest Islamist terror attack in Manhattan. Evil loser Sayfullo Saipov follows the ISIS playbook by driving a rented van over innocent civilians, killing eight. He jumps out of the van shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (Allah is the greatest) and later tells police he’s glad about what he did and requests an ISIS flag in his hospital room. (I know just where to plant the pole.)

In reporting the event, CNN Crime and Justice reporter Shimon Prokupecz refused to share the police description of the killer after he was caught. Because he’s a journalist, and the last thing we want is to have journalists going around giving people information! CNN’s Jake Tapper responded to news of the loser’s Arabic shout by remarking inanely that Allahu Akbar is “sometimes said under the most beautiful of circumstances, and too often we hear it being said in moments like this.” He later clarified that he was referring to beautiful circumstances like weddings and births. Yeah, what if the guy had been waving a Confederate flag? They wear those at some weddings too.

The New York Times, a former newspaper, ran two separate articles trying to justify the triumphalist Islamic battle cry, one headline reading, “Allahu Akbar: An Everyday Phrase Tarnished by Attacks.” Actor James Woods responded by tweeting: “Let me yell it out at 35,000 feet while you’re eating Chicken Florentine in first class. Then hope someone knows the Heimlich Maneuver…” When I tried to quote this tweet to my wife, I laughed so hard I couldn’t get the words out.

None of which is to make fun of a tragedy, of course, but only of the absurd reaction of the leftist press. Because, being leftist, they reduce every issue to a binary choice: their way or hatred. Ignore the worldwide connection between Islam and terror or you’re a bigot. Support gay marriage or you’re a homophobe. Buy into government health care or you want people to die. Buy into affirmative action or you’re racist. And so on. In each of these cases, there are rational arguments to be made on both sides and, as President Trump pointed out when discussing iconoclasm, “some very fine people” who support those arguments.

But the left has, for the most part, abandoned rational argument altogether, not because leftism is always wrong about everything but because it is wrong and has been proven wrong on its central premise. It is now irrefutable that socialism destroys every nation it touches. Small homogenous nations that are essentially protected by American might can fool around with confiscatory taxes and massive social programs, but even they will have to privatize industry sooner or later to stay solvent. Otherwise socialism gets you Venezuela, and that’s only if you’re lucky enough not to wind up with the Soviet Union or Red China, with over 100 million human beings exterminated in the name of paradise.

And since each of the left’s arguments is being made not in support of Islam or blacks or women or anyone else, but in support of a bigger government with an eye toward ultimately achieving socialism, leftists can’t afford to accept or even hear the arguments from the other side.

Thus we end up with a press corps full of idiots: leftists too stupid to deliver the straight news about an act of Islamist terror. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump Brings a New Seriousness With Him to Asia At least when it comes to security policy, the president has his priorities straight.

Donald Trump’s 12-day trip to Asia—on Monday he will be in Japan, followed by stops in South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines—is the longest presidential visit to the region in a generation. That’s no accident: Although many in Washington see only Mr. Trump’s disruption, Asian leaders know his administration has brought a new seriousness and a nuanced agenda to Pacific policy.

The immediate problem is North Korea’s nuclear adventurism. The broader challenge is China’s growing power and ambition. The overarching goal is managing Asia policy in a way that enhances the security and prosperity of the U.S. and its allies.

The Trump administration begins with a hardheaded view of deterrence. Mr. Trump has rattled some Americans with his threat “to totally destroy North Korea” in “fire and fury” if it attacks the U.S. or an ally. But there is no ambiguity in the message this sends Kim Jong Un. To whatever extent North Korea can be deterred, Mr. Trump has done the job by laying down a clear marker of what war will cost Pyongyang: everything.

Previous presidents’ policies toward North Korea were naive in the extreme. Neither the Agreed Framework in 1994 nor the “six party talks” last decade prevented Pyongyang from getting nuclear weapons. Mr. Trump rightly believes rushing into new negotiations would further enable North Korean deception and stalling, while the regime would continue to develop a nuclear-armed missile capable of hitting the U.S. Negotiating holds the most promise when it is done from a position of American strength.

The White House rightly believes that the best chance of shifting Mr. Kim’s course is with pressure from the Chinese. Although Mr. Trump often invoked China as a nemesis during the presidential campaign, he has since dealt deftly, winning unexpected Chinese support for a Security Council resolution this past September imposing stiff sanctions on Pyongyang. Far from having a rancorous relationship, Mr. Trump has reached out regularly to President Xi Jinping.

Increased cooperation from Beijing isn’t the product of any newly benevolent view of America. On the contrary, pressure from the U.S. has helped to cause the turnaround. The Chinese have heard Mr. Trump’s sharp criticisms of their trade and currency policies. But despite his previous threats, the administration so far hasn’t labeled China a currency manipulator. “Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem?” Mr. Trump cagily tweeted in April. “We will see what happens!” When Mr. Trump stops in Beijing on Wednesday, expect blunt talk urging specific promises from China to further tighten the screws on North Korea.

The Saudi Cauldron Weekend events show the Middle East conflicts to come.

Authoritarian governments tend to be most vulnerable when they are trying to change, so the weekend events in Saudi Arabia are worth watching for more than the usual royal family Kremlinology. They reflect the drive for Saudi reform and the contest between the Saudis and Iran for regional influence.

Saudi authorities made a wave of arrests Saturday, including members of the royal family and cabinet members. The targets include Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a billionaire investor in Apple and Twitter and once a major investor in the Journal’s parent company, News Corp .

The arrests are being advertised as part of an anti-corruption campaign endorsed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is trying to consolidate power as the heir apparent to his father, King Salman. The Crown Prince has been making enemies among royals no longer in favor and the arrests are a sign that he is brooking little dissent as he tries to reform the Kingdom’s economy and even some of its social mores. While the U.S. has a stake in the Kingdom’s successful evolution, the arrests are a sign that the transition will be rocky.

All the more so given that Iran will try to exploit any instability. That’s the message sent by the resignation of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri Saturday on a trip to Saudi Arabia. He said he feared an assassination plot and he blamed Iran for causing “devastation and chaos.” Iran and its Hezbollah militia in Lebanon blamed the Saudis and U.S., and the resignation ends the alliance between the Sunni Muslim Mr. Hariri and the Shiite Hezbollah. Israel welcomed the resignation, and one reading is that this will open the way for Israel or Saudi Arabia to attack Hezbollah to reduce its growing influence in Syria and the Levant.

Texas Church Gunman Was Discharged From Air Force for Bad Conduct Devin P. Kelley was sentenced to confinement for a year, reduction in rank By Zusha Elinson and Ben Kesling

The gunman who killed 26 people Sunday at a Texas church was discharged from the Air Force for bad conduct, according to court documents.

Authorities identified Devin Patrick Kelley, 26 years old, as the shooter. He was clad in black and wearing a ballistic vest when he opened fire at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, authorities said. Twenty people were injured in the attack.

Kelley fled the scene and was later found dead in his vehicle, police said. Police were investigating the circumstances of his death.

Kelley served in the U.S. Air Force but was court-martialed in 2012 and ultimately received a “bad conduct discharge,” according to court records. He was sentenced to confinement for 12 months and a reduction in rank to E-1.

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek confirmed that Devin P. Kelley served in Logistics Readiness at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2010 until his discharge in 2014.

Kelley was court-martialed in 2012 for two counts of assault on his spouse and on their child, Ms. Stefanek said.

Kelley lived in lived in the New Braunfels, Texas, area northeast of San Antonio, where he graduated from high school in 2009.