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With Dignity, Trump Crosses the Delaware By Michael Walsh

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

The tax-cut bill is the beginning of the end of the Cult of Victimization. With its passage, the Republican majority in Congress, however tenuous, has scored its first (and only) major legislative victory, handing president Trump and the American people an early Christmas present. That it was passed without a single opposition-party vote in either house should tell you all you need to know about the socialist ethos that has seized control of the criminal organization masquerading as a political party known as the Democrats.https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/21/with-dignity-trump-crosses-the-delaware/

As it happens, this gift—to all Americans, not just the “rich” and “corporations,” as the socialists would have you believe—nearly coincides with Washington’s famous surprise attack on the sleeping Hessian mercenaries in 1776. While the Democrats were not caught off-guard to quite the same extent as the frozen German soldiers, they were just as thoroughly routed, as you can tell from the bitter denunciations coming from such veteran party apparatchiks as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), along with their party mouthpieces, such as the New York Times.

Quoth Schumer: “There are only two places where America is popping champagne—the White House and the corporate board rooms, including Trump Tower.”

If not quite as sweeping and simplifying as Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 or the reforms of 1986, the bill rectifies some of our tax code’s worst distortions, with remedies such as reducing the corporate tax rate to more internationally competitive levels and eliminating Obamacare’s individual “mandate,” which financed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (passed with zero Republican votes) at IRS gunpoint.

That these two selling points were immediately decried as “tax cuts for the wealthy” and “destroying poor people’s health care” tells you all you need to know about the poverty of the Democrats’ ideological pro forma response. But then to these people, everything is the End of the World As We Know It, including rolling back Obama’s “net neutrality,” restoring state lands in Utah, and letting you keep some more of your own money. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut’s reaction was typical:

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Trump Links Immigration Law Enforcement To National Security America’s borders are its first and last line of defense. Michael Cutler

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

On December 18, 2017 two important documents were published that illustrate that President Trump is determined to keep his campaign promises and protect America and Americans.

First of all, on that day the official White House website posted a document that laid out President Trump’s national security strategy to “advance America’s interests.” His national security strategy includes border security and meaningful enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. Here is the excerpt from that document:

PROTECT THE HOMELAND: President Trump’s fundamental responsibility is to protect the American people, the homeland, and the American way of life.

We will strengthen control of our borders and reform our immigration system to protect the homeland and restore our sovereignty.

The greatest transnational threats to the homeland are:

Jihadist terrorists, using barbaric cruelty to commit murder, repression, and slavery, and virtual networks to exploit vulnerable populations and inspire and direct plots.

Transnational criminal organizations, tearing apart our communities with drugs and violence and weakening our allies and partners by corrupting democratic institutions.

America will target threats at their source: we will confront threats before they ever reach our borders or cause harm to our people.

The second document to consider is the Government Executive Magazine report, “Trump Administration Seeks Outside Help to Hire 26,000 New Immigration Enforcement Personnel.”

According to the article, the administration is seeking to hire 10,000 more ICE personnel and 5,000 additional employees for the Border Patrol and continue to hire even more personnel over time. Clearly the administration is determined to not just talk about the need to secure our nation’s borders and enforce our immigration laws but to actually achieve these critical goals.

However, it is imperative that if the administration is able to overcome Congressional resistance to hiring enforcement personnel that ICE not distract them from the immigration law enforcement mission. Indeed there are many ways that this workforce can and must be deployed to achieve maximum results.

Obviously more agents could and should seek to locate and apprehend aliens who either entered the United States without inspection or subsequent to having been admitted into the United States, violated their terms of admission. However, there are many more missions that must be effectively addressed by ICE.

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Europe’s Tolerance for Terrorists The outrage in Amsterdam continues. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

Saleh Ali was one of 64,000 Syrian refugees living in the Netherlands. The vast majority, like Ali, are young men. And the largest number of these migrants spend their days idling in Amsterdam.

On Thursday morning, Saleh Ali took a walk to trendy Amstelveenseweg while wearing a keffiyah and waving a terrorist PLO flag. He stopped in front of a Jewish restaurant, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and began smashing the windows. The Amsterdam police stood by and watched quizzically until he was done. Then when he entered the restaurant, they finally called him out and arrested him.

And in two days he was back on the street.

Amsterdam is a very tolerant place. Not just of drugs or prostitution, but of Islamic violence.

Saleh Ali had lied about his past to get his temporary residence permit while claiming to be a refugee. He had combat training and had fought with Jihadists in and out of Syria. He told the police that he had been prepared to die in the attack on the restaurant and that he will continue engaging in violence.

But this information was kept secret until an anonymous source in the police department leaked it. The lawyer for HaCarmel, the restaurant that had been assaulted by the Islamic terrorist, issued a statement expressing outrage that the attacker who had pledged to commit more attacks was back on the street.

“It is incomprehensible and shocking that this man with a terrorist background, who claims to be prepared to commit violence, has been released,” wrote Herman Loonstein, a lawyer and Jewish civil rights activist. He warned that the attacker poses “a serious danger to society.”

And the prosecutor’s office took immediate action by filing a complaint against the restaurant’s lawyer. The Chief Officer of the Public Prosecution Service objected that, “sharing of information from the police interrogation report is ’inappropriate’”. It’s inappropriate because it revealed that Saleh Ali should never have been in the Netherlands and that the authorities had stood around watching while a trained terrorist attacked a Jewish restaurant and then let him go even after he vowed to launch further attacks.

While the prosecutors went after the restaurant for exposing the terrorist past of the attacker, the attacker was headed back to court for an appearance before a three judge panel.

Saleh Ali wore camouflage to court. According to Matthys van Raalten, a conservative commentator, he told the court that, “he feels like a volcano that is waiting to erupt”. He had already informed an officer that “the attack on the kosher restaurant was only the “first step” and that a next step would come.

He refused to discuss what the next step would be.

So of course they let him go a second time.

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The international community and the liberal media Caroline Glick

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley glared at her colleagues at the UN Security Council Monday as she cast the lone nay vote against a draft resolution presented by Egypt to nullify US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. http://carolineglick.com/the-international-community-and-the-liberal-media/

Haley then berated her UN colleagues for their assault against US sovereignty and for their prolonged efforts to delegitimize Israel and blame the Jewish state for the absence of peace. In her words, “The United States refuses to accept the double standard that says we are not impartial when we stand by the will of the American people by moving our US embassy, but somehow the United Nations is a neutral party when it consistently singles out Israel for condemnation.”

The liberal media, led by The New York Times chastised her.

“Punctuating America’s increasing international isolation, the United Nations Security Council demanded on Monday that the Trump administration rescind its decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to put the United States Embassy there,” the Times wrote in a purported news article.

While attacking Trump and Haley for isolating the US, the Times and its colleagues failed to explain what an international community-aligned US foreign policy looks like.

Notably, just such a policy and its consequences were the subject of a 15,000-word investigative report published Monday morning by Politico.

“The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook,” by Josh Meyer, detailed how in the interest of advancing a policy supported by the international community, then president Barack Obama imperiled US public health, national security and its allies.

As Meyer recalled, Obama entered office in 2009 promising to turn over a new leaf with Iran.

By promising to turn over a new leaf in US-Iran relations, Obama signaled his belief that the sorry state of those relations was America’s fault. Because if it wasn’t America’s fault, then no American president could change the situation.

Obama’s assumption was entirely wrong.

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Eight Countries Stand with U.S. as UN Condemns Recognition of Jerusalem By Bridget Johnson see note please

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

Even more important than the nations that voted with the United States, are those that abstained, which included many African nations that formerly voted against Israel in lock step with all Arab states-Togo voted no, and Rwanda, Malawi, Uganda, Lesotho, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan abstained. Kenya was absent. Looking ahead it may be a nascent trend….rsk

The United Nations General Assembly today voted to condemn the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and demand that all member nations comply with UN Security Council resolutions on the status of the city.

The emergency special session vote was scheduled after the U.S. used its veto power to block a similar resolution at the Security Council on Monday. There is no veto power in the General Assembly.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned that America would be “taking names” of countries who voted against the United States. President Trump said Wednesday, “They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”

The final vote was 128 in favor of the resolution, nine against and 35 abstentions. The “no” votes came from the U.S., Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo, Honduras, and Guatemala. Britain voted in favor of the resolution, while Canada and Mexico abstained.

Explaining the UK’s stance at the Security Council earlier this week, UK Ambassador to the UN Matthew Rycroft said Washington’s move was “unhelpful to the prospects for peace in the region, an aim that all of us in this Council remain committed to — the British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it.”

Unlike votes in the Security Council, General Assembly resolutions are non-binding. Today’s resolution calls on all states to “comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.”

Haley said today at the General Assembly that she’s “often wondered why, in the face of such hostility, Israel has chosen to remain a member of this body.”

“And then I remember that Israel has chosen to remain in this institution because it’s important to stand up for yourself. Israel must stand up for its own survival as a nation, but it also stands up for the ideals of freedom and human dignity that the United Nations is supposed to be about,” she said. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Former Obama Staffer Ben Rhodes Dreams of Ryan, McConnell, Pence Obituaries By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

On Thursday morning, a former staffer for President Obama infamous for the Iran Deal daydreamed about the deaths of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Vice President Mike Pence. He joined the chorus of liberals attacking the tax reform bill President Donald Trump signed into law Wednesday.

“I hope this is the photo they use on the front page of the Times on the day Trump is indicted,” former Obama national security advisor and CNN contributor Dan Pfeiffer tweeted Tuesday night. Pfeiffer implied that Ryan, McConnell, and Pence would be remembered as willing accomplices to treason in the history books.As if this insult were not enough, Ben Rhodes chimed in, “And alongside the obits for Ryan, McConnell, and Pence.”
Ben Rhodes

✔ @brhodes

And alongside the obits for Ryan, McConnell, and Pence https://twitter.com/danpfeiffer/status/943708505491456005 …
12:10 AM – Dec 21, 2017

Rhodes is infamous for his role in propping up the Iran nuclear deal. A New York Times profile on Rhodes revealed that he was a speechwriter without any foreign policy educational experience, military experience, or international experience, and yet Obama tapped him to become deputy national security advisor for strategic communications and speechwriting.

In September of this year, The Washington Post published a fake news story at the top of the front page about President Obama allegedly prodding Facebook on Russia’s role during the 2016 election. After the story ran, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg corrected the report, pointing out that Russia was not discussed at the Obama meeting.

Rhodes traveled with Obama to Lima, Peru, at the time of the meeting. He did not attend the Obama-Zuckerberg meeting in person, but likely knew a great deal about it. This separation would give him plausible deniability if called out on leaking the false story to The Washington Post. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Now, Tax Reform Gets Real The left and the press foretold disaster for the middle class. Such claims will be tested.By Kimberley A. Strassel

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

In the wake of last year’s election, a humiliated press corps was forced to reassess, to explain how it had gotten the presidential race so monumentally wrong. Conclusions: It had been too blinded by its own biases, too sheltered from Middle America. It apologized. It promised to do better.

Or not.

Yahoo News: “Meet some victims of the Trump tax bill.” Washington Post: “10 Reasons Democrats think the tax bill will be a political loser for Trump’s GOP.” New York Times: “In Tax Overhaul, Trump Tries to Defy Economic Odds.” Business Insider: “Americans have already made up their minds about the tax bill—and it looks brutal for the GOP.”

To read all this coverage, you’d be justified in believing that the entire Republican Party had been hit with a stupid stick. Its members united to jack up the taxes of millions of middle-income voters, throw the country into recession, and saddle today’s toddlers with a future debt crisis—all to enable the transfer of tax plunder to fat-cat donors. And not only did it pass this colossally idiotic policy, it did so enthusiastically, in full view of the public—guaranteeing a 2018 GOP midterm wipeout. What dimwits!

This is the Democratic line, and the media is embracing it. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi bet that the GOP would fail to enact tax reform, so they pressed their members to boycott negotiations. Instead, Republicans are delivering bigger paychecks and the prospect of accelerated economic growth, and not a single Democrat can take credit. The Democratic Party’s only path is therefore to spin an obvious GOP victory into a disaster. The press, with all its biases and insularity, once again is all in, with another attack on reality.

Nearly every story quotes a variation of Mrs. Pelosi’s line that the bill is “wholesale robbery of the middle class.” Mr. Schumer continues to claim the reform helps “only the wealthiest few.” These are Trumpian-size whoppers, which the media eagerly repeats. Yet even the liberal Tax Policy Center has acknowledged that 90% of the middle class will get a tax cut in 2018, and that the average cut will be $1,600.

USA Today was so desperate to depict the bill as a tax hike that its analysis of “5 household situations” included a childless single renter earning $1 million a year, paying $50,000 in state and local taxes, and claiming $40,000 in charitable deductions. The paper triumphantly pointed out that this downtrodden soul would pay $1,887 more in taxes. And therefore have to forgo a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild.

Democrats spent months insisting that corporations would pocket their tax cuts rather than invest in their workers. The press continues to parrot this line—even as AT&T, Comcast, Wells Fargo and others immediately announced bonuses, pay hikes, higher starting wages, better benefits and plans for new hiring. Democrats call these PR stunts, but so what? Workers are benefiting. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Israel Rejects U.N. Vote as Palestinians Hail It Netanyahu highlights absentions on vote rebuking U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital By Rory Jones

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

Thursday’s United Nations vote admonishing the U.S. move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital underscored the overwhelming international support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and dealt a blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the voting pattern on the resolution, with nine objections and 35 abstentions, also highlighted pockets of diplomatic support for Israel. The result was less unanimously against Israel than the vote on many other U.N. resolutions on Israel.

“Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement. “But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refused to participate in the theater of the absurd.”

Mr. Netanyahu has said countries around the world are changing their attitudes toward Israel due to its offers of intelligence sharing and technology cooperation. Even Arab states with which Israel has no diplomatic relations are willing to work with his government in private, Mr. Netanyahu has said.

Publicly, Arab states have indicated they will engage with Israel diplomatically only after the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thursday’s resolution, introduced by Turkey and Yemen, was co-sponsored by many other Arab and Muslim governments, underscoring their support for a two-state solution.

The vote proved a diplomatic coup for Palestinian officials after the U.S decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announce a plan to move its embassy there from Tel Aviv. Palestinian officials have said they would boycott the Trump administration’s effort to launch peace talks and seek greater support for their own state from bodies such as the U.N. CONTINUE AT SITE

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U.N. Vote Rebukes U.S. for Jerusalem Move General Assembly votes overwhelmingly in favor of resolution despite Trump’s threats of consequences By Farnaz Fassihi

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

UNITED NATIONS—The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday for a resolution effectively rebuking U.S. President Donald Trump for recognizing the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and pledging to move the U.S. embassy there.

The vote came despite threats by Mr. Trump and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley that the U.S. would take punitive measures, such as reducing foreign aid and cutting contributions to the U.N., against countries voting in favor of the resolution.

The General Assembly resolution didn’t explicitly refer to the U.S., instead asserting that unilateral decisions such as Mr. Trump’s have no legal effect and must be rescinded. In the vote, 128 countries voted in favor and 9 against, with 35 abstaining.

“The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation,” Ms. Haley said during the debate, adding Mr. Trump’s decision to move the embassy would not be affected.

“We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations,” she said, appearing visibly angry and leaving the chamber after speaking.

President Trump’s plan to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is a calculated gamble, running the risk of stirring up protests and violence. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib explains why Mr. Trump thinks now is the time to act, when past administrations made similar promises but decided not to. Photo: AP

It remained unclear immediately after the vote precisely what the U.S. would do in retaliation for the vote. Neither Ms. Haley nor the White House spelled out specific responses.

Many U.N. diplomats said Thursday that while they valued their alliance with the U.S., their own longstanding policies on the status of Jerusalem are in line with international law and U.N. resolutions that don’t recognize the city as the capital of Israel in the absence of a peace deal.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu denounced the approach taken by Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley, who said in an email to representatives of more than 180 countries a day earlier that the U.S. would take down the names of those who vote against it. CONTINUE AT SITE

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How Many Times Did You Beat Your Wife? by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on December 22nd, 2017

The essential element in the question, “How many times did you beat your wife?” is its presupposition that the husband beat his wife.

Perhaps the best way to understand the ongoing debate surrounding Net Neutrality is to consider Noam Chomsky’s incisive observations on presuppositions in his book The Common Good (1998).

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” p43

Millennials have been indoctrinated with the presuppositions of the Leftist narrative for two decades. Climate change is a classic example. The climate change argument presupposes the validity of its foundational premise of global warming. When it became abundantly clear that the earth’s temperature always fluctuates and was in fact cooling the global warming enthusiasts disingenuously changed the name of their campaign from “global warming” to “climate change” without ever accepting the scientific facts of the earth’s cooling. Why? Because global warming/climate change was never about the weather – it was always about the redistribution of wealth from rich industrialized countries to poorer non-industrialized countries in the form of taxes, fees, fines, and non-compliance penalties.

Even testimony by Patrick Moore former co-founder of Greenpeace before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was not enough to convince millennials that global warming was a hoax because they had accepted the presupposition of the argument and were ideologically convinced they were saving the planet.

Oppositional views on climate change have actually been litigated. The court case against Mark Steyn attempted to silence Steyn’s oppositional views on climate change. Steyn argued that if courts can silence free and open debate on scientific inquiry then freedom of speech is functionally dead. The pressure to conform in climate science is very real and the viciousness and hostility toward people who disagree is overwhelming. Anyone in the science community who challenges the “settled” science of climate change is considered unhinged or a dissident to be silenced – not a respected scientist or a climatologist to be heard. Climate science is functionally political science because redistribution of wealth is a political matter unrelated to weather.