Thank you!

hat tip Last Refuge commenter getfitnow

Highlighted tonight: illegal immigration

This article by Sam Smith in PJ Media would seem to indicate that illegal immigration will be in the forefront of tonight's State of the Union discussions.

Are "super-bugs" a national security threat?

Does your family doctor prescribe antibiotics for just about everything? We had one who did that. The New York Times tells us that the World Health Organization is concerned about "Super Bugs" that are resistant to drugs.

“We are fast running out of treatment options,” said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, the W.H.O. assistant director general who released the list. “If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time.”

Britain’s chief medical officer, Sally C. Davies, has described drug-resistant pathogens as a national security threat equivalent to terrorism, and Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the recently retired director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called them “one of our most serious health threats.”

Last week, the European Food Safety Authority and European Center for Disease Prevention and Control estimated that superbugs kill 25,000 Europeans each year; the C.D.C. has estimated that they kill at least 23,000 Americans a year. (For comparison, about 38,000 Americans die in car crashes yearly.)

Most of these deaths occur among older patients in hospitals or nursing homes, or among transplant and cancer patients whose immune systems are suppressed. But some are among the young and healthy: A new study of 48 American pediatric hospitals found that drug-resistant infections in children, while still rare, had increased sevenfold in eight years, which the authors called “ominous.”

Read more here.

What a fifteen dollar minimum wage and Obamacare will get you

From the Detroit Free Press:

Fast food giant Wendy’s plans to install self-ordering kiosks in about one out of six of the burger chain’s franchises nationwide by the end of this year.

A typical location would get three kiosks for about $15,000, The Columbus Dispatch reported. David Trimm, Wendy’s chief information officer, estimates that payback on those machines would come in less than two years thanks to labor savings and increased sales.

The kiosks have two purposes according to Trimm: appeasing younger customers by given them an ordering experience they prefer and reducing labor costs.

Would they be doing this if politicians were not demanding $15 per hour minimum wage and the provision of Obamacare?
Read more here.

hat tip Stephen Green

Trump gives wide-ranging interview to Fox and Friends

President Trump sits down with Fox and Friends for a wide-ranging interview. Any news? He thinks Nancy Pelosi is incompetent.

"Like my eyebrows?"

Daniel Nussbaum reports in Breitbart,

Leonardo DiCaprio apparently spared no expense while getting ready for last weekend’s Academy Awards — the Oscar-winning actor and environmental activist reportedly flew a renowned “eyebrow artist” to the stars more than 7,000 miles around the world to have his face tended to ahead of Hollywood’s big night.
According to reports in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Independent, the 42-year-old Revenant star and fellow actor Tobey Maguire enlisted the services of beautician Sharon-Lee Hamilton, who made the 7,500-mile trip from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles to ensure the stars’ brows were just right for the big show.

While the artist’s eyebrow services are reported to cost a relatively affordable $200, Hamilton — whose previous clients are said to include Beyoncé, George Clooney and Kim Kardashian — told the Herald that when traveling for work, her costs are covered by her clients.

Read more here.

For brainless protesters, Soros-funded groups provide scripts to use at town hall meetings

At Breitbart, Aaron Klein reports that Soros financed groups are providing scripts for leftists to use in disrupting town halls.

Lowering prices

Target's CEO says they are now going to lower prices. Will it be too late? Walmart figured that out a long time ago, and has crushed Target and JCPenney, as well as grocers. In the city where I lived and worked before moving to New Mexico, there were always lots of cars in the huge Walmart parking lot. One block away sat Target, where you could always find a parking space up close. Penney was in a fancy mall. The Denver Bronco tee shirt that sold for $30 at Walmart could be had at Penney for $100!

Today's Wall Street Journal has stories about how Trump's idea to tax products coming across the border could have devastating effects on Target and Best Buy. I would think that would apply to Walmart and JCPenney, too.

"Trump absolutely intends on keeping his promises."

Kurt Schlichter reports on this year's CPAC.

President Trump entered the ballroom like a rock star, at least up front with the attendees. In the back in the media area, there was stony silence – except for me and my pal Stephen Kruiser. As opinion folk, we aren’t bound by the whole fake objectivity thing that only applies when it’s a conservative. Looking around at the collection of geebos and durwoods who made up the majority of the press, you could almost see the tracks of their tears on their sad faces from their abject boo-hooing when Hillary lost. And when Trump laid into them, they were most unhappy.

...the real story was that President Trump absolutely intends on keeping his promises. Obamacare will be repealed. There will be a wall. We are deporting illegals. We are cutting taxes. The clock is ticking. Congress better understand – this guy’s patience is not unlimited. If they think they can slide back into the big talk in election years/big walks in off years mode, they are going to find Trump in their districts rallying for their primary opponents.

Read more here:

Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, smart robots

Stu Woo reports in the Wall Street Journal,

Within 30 years, artificial intelligence will be smarter than the human brain.

That is according to Masayoshi Son, chief executive of SoftBank Group Corp., who says that supersmart robots will outnumber humans and more than a trillion objects will be connected to the internet within three decades.

These beliefs underpin the wave of large and surprising deals the Japanese internet and telecommunications company has pulled off in the past year, he said Monday. These include starting a $100 billion technology-investment fund with a Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, buying British microprocessor designer ARM Holdings PLC for $32 billion and acquiring U.S. asset manager Fortress Investment Group PLC for $3.3 billion.

“Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, smart robots: Those are the three main things I’m interested in,” he said.

The Internet of Things is the technology world’s term for connecting everyday objects, such as refrigerators and sneakers, to the web.

...In his speech, Mr. Son said that while average humans had an IQ of roughly 100 and that geniuses such as Albert Einstein were believed to score about 200, superintelligent computers would have IQs of 10,000. He said computer chips possessing superintelligence would be put into robots big and small that can fly and swim. These robots would number in the billions and would be greater than the human population within 30 years, he said.

The chips would also be in everyday objects. “One of the chips in our shoes will be smarter than our brain,” he said. “We will be less than our shoes, and we will be stepping on them.”

Read more here.

The alternative to Merkel is worse

David Goldman writes at Pajamas Media,

...Merkel’s migration policy is bad, but it is neither stupidly bad, nor wickedly bad. Rather, it is tragically bad. Germany has a gap in its soul. In between the citizen-of-the-world liberalism that characterizes its elite and the atavistic nationalism that attracts a small fringe, there is nothing there at all.

...It is useful to step back from the problems of political character and consider American interests in the cold light of day. Brexit isn’t bad for America; it reinforces the special relationship with Britain. If France, however, were to elect Marine Le Pen and put into play French membership in the EU, Germany would tilt eastward. The single most important news from Europe in the past year is the fact that Germany and China are now each other’s largest trading partners. Germany’s export confederation told the daily Handelsblatt, the country’s main financial newspaper, that if the U.S. goes protectionist, one could count on much closer relations between Germany and China. Russia, of course, is part of the bargain.

The last thing America should want is a Berlin that looks eastward rather than westward. Migrants in Germany can make all the mayhem they want, and we Americans may deplore it, but if the Germans choose to tolerate more crime and even more terrorism, that is their misery and of minor consequence to us. The idea that Germany is using the European Union as a blind behind which to cheapen its currency and cheat us in export markets comes (as I wrote Feb. 1 in Asia Times) from “Navarro-Navarro Land.” The U.S. stood godfather to the European Union, as the saying goes, to keep the Germans down, the Russians out, and the Americans in.

Few Americans really know how close we came to losing Germany to the Soviet orbit during the Cold War, or what risks we took to keep it in the West (I reported what I know of the story here). Helmut Schmidt, Germany’s chancellor during the 1980s, reasoned that if war came to Europe, the Germans would never know who won. He thought it best to surrender in advance. Helmut Kohl replaced him (probably with a bit of American help) in 1982, and stood at America’s side in return for American support for reunification. Angela Merkel was Kohl’s protégé, but forced him out over his improper use of funds for party purposes.

We should not risk giving back what we won at great risk during the Cold War. From an American standpoint, Germany’s decision to admit 1.3 million Muslim migrants seems foolish and self-destructive. We must be coldhearted enough to leave the Germans to sleep in the bed they have made for themselves.

Tragically, Angela Merkel is the best leader that Germany can produce at present.

I use the term “tragic” advisedly; Germany is doing the wrong thing because there is no right thing to do. Germany’s total fertility rate is just 1.4 children per female, but foreign-born women (8% of the population) accounted for 17% of all births as of 2010, which means that the native German TFR is around 1.3.

...In the meantime, Angela Merkel is as good a partner as the United States will find in Germany. That is deplorable but true. I predict that she will win the September elections, because the Germans are not so dumb as to ignore wes Geistes Kind lurks in the alternative. To the extent America can help her to do so, we should help Merkel.

Read more here.

Media elites have been caught

Economic growth, tax policy, fair trade

Steve Mnuchin appears on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartriomo to discuss President Trump economics. She is one of my favorite journalists. Actually, she is one of the few I can stand! Mnuchin is impressive, too.

Hat tip The Last Refuge

Mexico's most profitable export

Tom Tancredo writes in Breitbart,

Because of the relative ease of crossing the border and Mexico’s liberal definition of Mexican citizenship, we have the situation recently described by author Ann Coulter, who discovered that persons of Mexican origin now residing in the United States — legal and illegal– are equal in number to over 25 percent of the 130 million population of Mexico.

Let me put this in stark economic terms: Mexico’s national income grows in direct proportion to the size of the illegal Mexican population inside the United States. Does that help explain the Mexican fixation on U.S. politics? Mexico’s most profitable export to the U.S. is not oil or avocados or automobile parts, it is people.

...Mexicans living and working in the U.S. send home over $20 billion annually in cash remittances — more than Mexico earns in foreign currency from tourism or any export commodity.

In 1979, Mexico received only $177,000 (U.S. Dollars) in remittances; in 2016 it was $26.1 BILLION — over 90 percent of it from persons living in the United States.

Read more here.

Donald Trump sneaks out of the White House to go to dinner

Saturday night Trump eluded the press once again (all but one, Benny Johnson of Independent Judicial Review got a tip from a source at the White House) to go out to dinner at his new flagship hotel in Washington D.C. Johnson gives us photographs and almost a minute-by-minute detail of the happenings here.

hat tip The Last Refuge

"We're thrilled with your initial steps to stabilize the health care markets!"

hat tip Conservative Treehouse

This can't be true: illegal voting discovered in Ohio!

nbc4i.com reports,

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced an investigation has uncovered that hundreds of non-US citizens are registered to vote in the state, and dozens of them voted illegally.

According to a release from Husted, 385 people who are not citizens of the United States are registered to vote in Ohio. Out of those, 82 voted in at least one election in the last year.

Husted’s office says the 82 non-citizens who are registered to vote and cast ballots will be immediately referred to law enforcement for further investigation and possible prosecution.

“In light of the national discussion about illegal voting it is important to inform our discussions with facts. The fact is voter fraud happens, it is rare and when it happens, we hold people accountable,” Secretary Husted said.

...“I have a responsibility to preserve the integrity of Ohio’s elections system,” Secretary Husted said. “When you consider that in Ohio we have had 112 elections decided by one vote or tied in the last three years, every case of illegal voting must be taken seriously and elections officials must have every resource available to them to respond accordingly.”

Read more here.

hat tip Conservative Treehouse

Systematic Muslim persecution of Christians

Front Page Magazine has an article by Raymond Ibrahim. He details

Muslim Attacks on (and because of) Christian Churches in Indonesia, Philippined, Egypt, and Bangladesh.

Moreover, he details

Muslim Slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, France, and Egypt

Then he details Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom:

No to Apostasy, Blasphemy, and Evangelism in Liberia, Uganda, Europe, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan.

Finally, he details

Muslim Contempt for and Abuse of Christians in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey.

Read the details here.

Last night's embarrassing moment

"A hedge against tyranny"

hat tip Bookworm Room

DNC Required Voter ID and Paper Ballots for Chair Vote.

krakatoa reports at Ace of Spades,

Irony: DNC Required Voter ID and Paper Ballots for Chair Vote.

You could feed all the villages of the world with the intellectual pretzels baked by Progressives.

“We have to make sure that we can not just count the ballots but verify every name and signature,” Brazile said as party members began applauding. “And I want to make sure that at the conclusion of all of our votes, that you, the members of this party, will be able to review those ballots.”

Commenter TheJamesMadison writes,

It's voter suppression.

Why won't they let undocumented Democrats vote?

Commenter Broseidon writes,

Well duh, this is an important vote, it's not something picayune like, uh...President of the United States....

Roland THTG explains,

They just didn't want that mukin fuzzy to be the DNC chair.

Astro Mike further explains,

Well, see they have to check the IDs and ballots because...these are after all democrats, and they will lie and cheat without remorse to win.

They understand each other better than you think.

Read more comments here.

The harvest awaits you.

At A Holy Experience, Jeff Manion writes,

...Tragedy strikes.

Conversely, goodness rarely “strikes.” It arrives on the stage with little drama.

...As I reflect on my own life, I recognize the formative impact of both jarring tragedy and steady love.

The snail’s pace at which goodness travels will require extreme devotion to the journey.

...Goodness demands staying power. The question is whether we will summon the requisite endurance for a slow, faithful, consistent outpouring of love.

I believe this is why the apostle Paul urged an early community of Jesus’ followers:

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)

Paul addresses the issue of weariness because a life of goodness can be tedious and redundant.

...We will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.

...Because you can’t rush a harvest. You plow, you plant, and you wait.

...Goodness grows slowly.

It arrives through the repeated kindness of the diligent faithful.

It arrives quietly, traveling the slow path of devoted love.

Dream Big but Think Small.

Day by day, one loving act of kindness after another, you have an opportunity to grow a life of greatness.

So keep showing up. Keep planting.

Do not grow weary in doing good. The harvest awaits you.

Read more here.

Who left the most debt?

The Congressional Budget Office has produced a graph showing how much debt as a percentage of GDP each American president accumulated while in office. You can see it at the Washington Examiner.

Who is the authoritarian?

David French points out that so far Trump is way less authoritarian than was Obama. Some examples, relinquishing

federal authority over gender-identity policy in the nation’s federally funded schools and colleges; Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, a man known not just for his intellect and integrity but also for his powerful legal argument against executive-branch overreach. Education activists are terrified that Betsy DeVos will take children out of government schools or roll back government mandates regarding campus sexual assault tribunals. Environmentalists are terrified that Scott Pruitt will make the EPA less activist. Civil-rights lawyers are alarmed at the notion that Jeff Sessions will inject the federal government into fewer state and local disputes over everything from school bathrooms to police traffic stops.

Read more here.

"The law of the United States is back to being the law of the United States."

Andrew McCarthy reports at PJ Media,

On Tuesday, John Kelly, President Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, published a six-page, single-spaced memorandum detailing new guidance on immigration enforcement. Thereupon, I spent about 1,500 words summarizing the guidance in a column at National Review. Brevity being the soul of wit, both the memo and my description of it could have been reduced to a single, easy-to-remember sentence:

Henceforth, the United States shall be governed by the laws of the United States.
That it was necessary for Secretary Kelly to say more than this -- and, sadly, that such alarm has greeted a memo that merely announces the return of the rule of law in immigration enforcement -- owes to the Obama administration abuses of three legal doctrines: prosecutorial discretion, preemption, and separation of powers (specifically, the executive usurpation of legislative power).

McCarthy explains the ways Obama abused those doctrines here.

The International Women’s Strike on March 8

At the New York Post Kyle Smith reports that the next women's march will have a convicted terrorist as one of its leaders. March 8 is the date, and organizers are calling for women to spend their day

“blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work” and “boycotting” pro-Trump businesses. Also, every woman is supposed to wear red in solidarity.

...Anti-Trump activism seems to have little to do with the political arts required to win elections — finding common ground, forging alliances, making friends. Instead, all of these demonstrations are about denouncing enemies and making yourself feel better about the November defeat by gathering publicly with those who share your rage. This sort of thinking leads to such self-defeating acts as interrupting traffic in places like New York City (where Trump got 18 percent of the vote) or San Francisco (9 percent).

If you want to persuade working-class Trump voters in Wisconsin to join your cause, annoying rich liberal Democrats trying to get to work a thousand miles away is a strange way to go about it.

...In a manifesto published in The Guardian on Feb. 6, the brains behind the movement are calling for a “new wave of militant feminist struggle.” That’s right: militant, not peaceful.

The document was co-authored by, among others, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a convicted terrorist. Odeh, a Palestinian, was convicted in Israel in 1970 for her part in two terrorist bombings, one of which killed two students while they were shopping for groceries. She spent 10 years in prison for her crimes. She then managed to become a US citizen in 2004 by lying about her past (great detective work, INS: Next time, use Google) but was subsequently convicted, in 2014, of immigration fraud for the falsehoods. However, she won the right to a new trial (set for this spring) by claiming she had been suffering from PTSD at the time she lied on her application. Oh, and in her time as a citizen, she worked for a while as an ObamaCare navigator.

...You can see why she’s a hero to the left. Another co-author, Angela Davis, is a Stalinist professor and longtime supporter of the Black Panthers. Davis is best known for being acquitted in a 1972 trial after three guns she bought were used in a courtroom shootout that resulted in the death of a judge. She celebrated by going to Cuba.

A third co-author, Tithi Bhattacharya, praised Maoism in an essay for the International Socialist Review, noting that Maoists are “on the terrorist list of the US State Department, Canada, and the European Union,” which she called an indication that “Maoists are back in the news and by all accounts they are fighting against all the right people.” You know you’re dealing with extremism when someone admits to hating Canada.

The International Women’s Strike is meant to be a grass-roots affair, with womensmarch.com promising more information about how to participate in local protests across the US. Women around the country are being urged to walk off their jobs and join a demonstration near them.

Wahhabi Islam

Bookworm has before and after pictures of women around the world; before Wahhabi Islam came to their countries, and after it came.

...a vile, criminal, Stone Age belief is taking over much of the world while the weak leaders of the Western World say we have to respect it . . . because it is a religion.

See the photos here.

What if?

Bookworm reminds us of the 1970s days of rage. She links to this post by David Zhines at a blog called Status 451.

Zhines recently read the book in the photo above.

“People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” — Max Noel, FBI (ret.)

...A reminder: during this period Weatherman is being hunted by the FBI. So how are they staying fed, sheltered, alive? Part of it is fake I.D.s. The other part of Weatherman staying alive and free is: they are being funded and supported by the National Lawyers’ Guild.

I just want to emphasize this: radical lawyers are literally giving fugitive domestic terrorists who are still bombing money and support.

And it’s harder for hippies to sneak bombs into places. What’s great cover? Parents with children. Weatherman used radical lawyers’ kids. Dohrn actually convinced a radical lawyer’s wife to leave her husband and take the kids and go under with the Weather Underground.

Weatherman bombed the Pentagon in ’72, but by 1974, they’re fighting among themselves, arguing about feminism (hence their name change to Weather Underground). And this is where Weather Underground becomes incredibly relevant to 2016 again: because they decided to re-enter mainstream politics. To do this, they decided, they would take over the radical left, and use that as wedge/entry point to change society.

...Everything goes smoothly in Weather’s plan until the PFOC conference happens, which looks stunningly like what we’re seeing emerge in today’s Democratic party politics. The white leftist elites (Weather) are stunned to discover that the diverse radicals (black, American Indian, Puerto Rican) they’ve imagined leading actually have opinions of their own, and perfectly rational desires for their own power, and no desire to be ruled by Weather’s upper-crust radicals.

...Institutions are one of two major assets that the Left has and the Right lacks. The other is Shock Troops.


...What if fanatics made a serious and nearly successful attempt on the life of the President of the United States?

What if those fanatics got into the Capitol building and committed a mass shooting on Congress while it was in session?

What if those fanatics conducted bombing sprees, for years, in multiple American cities?

And what if people really did do every one of those things, and you’d never heard of them? That’s the story of Puerto Rican separatists.

...FALN had an amazing set-up in the hard left. Not only were they trained in bomb-making by Weather Underground, they had possibly the best Institution any radical group has ever had: the Episcopal Church.

...Puerto Rican terrorists were being paid thousands of dollars by the Episcopal Church. Like cannibalizing and repurposing a nonprofit. It may be the greatest Institution in American radical history. FALN was literally using a charity run by the Episcopal Church as a front.

...Their bombmaker returned to them, FALN embarked on a new campaign of robberies, bombing, and interfering with elections.

Wait, what? Yeah. In 1980, the FALN attacked the NYC campaign HQ of George H.W. Bush in an effort to destroy voter-registration lists. Another team smashed up the Carter-Mondale HQ in Chicago. The FALN even threatened delegates to the party conventions. Nobody remembers!

Let me ask you a question: how the hell did I not know this story? Forget the presidential assassination attempt. Forget the mass shooting in the Congressional chamber. Just look at the FALN stuff: a years-long bombing campaign in multiple American cities, by perpetrators trained and initiated by a foreign power. A terrorist organization that parasitized a church so effectively, it got the church infrastructure to act on its behalf. A stunning escape from custody almost too astounding to believe.

Why is this not a movie? Why is this not two or three movies? This story is amazing! And it’s just totally memory-holed. Here’s how memory-holed it is: I didn’t even know that, in 1999, seeking Puerto Rican voter support in New York for HRC’s senate run, President Clinton offered clemency to 16 imprisoned FALN. 14 accepted. Congress condemned it at the time. But people remember the Mark Rich pardon. Not FALN.

...That’s everything I want to cover from Days of Rage. There’s more in it. Buy the book; read it; you won’t regret it. It’s amazing history.

But it’s the implications of Bryan Burrough’s book that scare the willies out of me.

I am afraid that the United States is in for political violence in 2017. It could be as bad as or worse than the 1970s. I have some ideas as to what some of it may look like. It really isn’t pleasant to think about.

...Let’s not mince words: the United States of America is currently engaged in a cold Civil War.

(I have heard Dennis Prager say the same thing).

In North Carolina, the Republican governor lost re-election, so the Republican legislature convened a special session to limit powers of the post. Democrats nationwide howled with justified outrage; as we all know, legislators who dislike a governor should flee the state to block quorum, facilitate occupation of government buildings by mobs, and have allies execute secret raids on homes on the governor’s supporters. All of those are things that the Democrats did to oppose a Republican governor in Wisconsin, and the Democrats were pretty cool with it.

...The mental model we have for domestic terrorism in 2017 is shaped by what scares us: mass shooters and jihad. ’70s radicals were different. ’70s radicals wanted to get away with their crimes. They wanted to avoid detection, they didn’t want to get arrested, and they didn’t want to die. Most ’70s bombers had no moral objection to killing people, but they also didn’t go to any great lengths to maximize body count. That’s pretty different from 21st-century mass shooters (who tend suicidal) & jihadists (for whom a high body count is part of the message).

...The way I see it, domestic conflict in the United States could operate in basically four stages:

cold Civil War
targeted political violence, mostly short of murder
political violence with murder as the default
Civil War II
The United States should start seriously talking about National Divorce before we get to stage 3.

...The truth: the Left is a lot more organized & prepared for violence than the Right is, and has the advantage of a mainstream more supportive of it.

...Imagine an abortion clinic bomber getting a comfortable job at an elite university.

Outrageous, right? No way the Right could get away with that. But the Left does! And the press gives them cover.

...How extremists really get mainstreamed: because the extremists have organization, logistics, and manpower that the mainstream finds useful.

...Mainstream Lefties happily go to protests they favor that are organized by the literal Stalinists of ANSWER & the Worker’s World Party. Why? The commies are really good at getting people signs and making sure there are enough port-a-potties. When you’re great at organizing signs & port-a-potties, Lefties overlook that you’re into an ideology that murdered a hundred million people.

So how far would this go? Would mainstream Nazi-hating Righties be ok w/ literal Nazis on the street fighting squads that keep them safe?

... any righty organization designed from the ground up to be violent is doomed to fail.

What this means: hard Left violence will be coordinated. Hard Right violence will be distributed.

...If you notice who Lefties really tend to go after, it’s two kinds of people:

Righties who might be growing in popularity and/or influence, to make them radioactive and make others afraid to associate with them
regular people, who have employment and social fragility, to make them scared to admit WrongThink.

...So Lefties will target more people on top and on bottom, status-wise. Righties will target more in the middle, go for the Lefty NCO corps. That’s because the biggest impact the Right can make at this stage of conflict is to destroy, damage, or neutralize Lefty Institutions. But Lefty Institutions are massive cultural power centers. Universities, Media, Bureaucracies, Organizations/Foundations, Cities.

The Right is not big enough or organized enough to really destroy Lefty Institutions. Like the Left, they’ll be looking to intimidate people out of the game and take away enemy tools. Example: Institutional and media bias means radical Leftist tactics are accepted, which means radical Leftist tactics become normalized. Ergo, the only way the Right can delegitimize Lefty tactics is to use them, at which point they’ll become The Worst Things Ever Done By Man. My guess is the Right will start using Leftist tactics against members of Leftist Institutions: “This is what you ordered. Eat it.”

...Let’s recap and wind up:

The Left wants to disrupt the Right’s power, organizations, celebrations.

The Right is sick of Leftist disruption and wants to punish it with force.

The hard Left has an effective infrastructure. The hard Right is looking to build one.

The hard Left will use the tactics it’s already using.

The hard Right will use Leftist tactics, at which point the Press will become very interested in denormalizing those tactics.

Read more here.

Efforts to end the Trump presidency

Victor Davis Hanson warns in National Review,

...Currently, the political and media opponents of Donald Trump are seeking to subvert his presidency in a manner unprecedented in the recent history of American politics. The so-called resistance among EPA federal employees is trying to disrupt Trump administration reform; immigration activists promise to flood the judiciary to render executive orders inoperative.

I will excerpt his essay, but do go to the link and read the whole thing. Every paragraph is filled with important information.

Intelligence agencies had earlier leaked fake news briefings about the purported escapades of President-elect Trump in Moscow — stories that were quickly exposed as politically driven concoctions. Nearly one-third of House Democrats boycotted the Inauguration. Celebrities such as Ashley Judd and Madonna shouted obscenities to crowds of protesters; Madonna voiced her dreams of Trump’s death by saying she’d been thinking a lot about blowing up the White House.

But all that pushback was merely the clownish preliminary to the full-fledged assault in mid February. Career intelligence officers leaked their own transcripts of a phone call that National Security Advisor–designate Michael Flynn had made to a Russian official. The media charge against Flynn was that he had nefariously talked to higher-ups in Russia before he took office. Obama-administration officials did much the same, before Inauguration Day 2009, and spoke with Syrian, Iranian, and Russian counterparts. But they faced no interference from the outgoing Bush administration.

No doubt the designated security officials of most incoming administrations do not wait until being sworn in to sound out foreign officials. Most plan to reset the policies of their predecessors. The question, then, arises: Why were former Obama-administration appointees or careerist officials tapping the phone calls of an incoming Trump designate (and Trump himself?) and then leaking the tapes to their pets in the press? For what purpose?

Indeed, Trump’s own proposed outreach to Russia so far is not quite of the magnitude of Obama’s in 2009, when the State Department staged the red-reset-button event to appease Putin; at the time, Russia was getting set to swallow the Crimea and all but absorb Eastern Ukraine. Trump certainly did not approve the sale of some 20 percent of North American uranium holdings to Russian interests, in the quid pro quo fashion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did, apparently in concert with Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation — and to general indifference of both the press and the intelligence community.

In addition, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that career intelligence officers have decided to withhold information from the president, on the apparent premise that he is unfit, in their view, to receive it. If true, that disclosure would mean that elements of the federal government are now actively opposing the duly elected president of the United States. That chilling assessment gains credence from the likelihood that the president’s private calls to Mexican and Australian heads of state were likewise recorded, and selected segments were leaked to suggest that Trump was either trigger-happy or a buffoon.

Oddly, in early January, Senator Charles Schumer had essentially warned Trump that he would pay for his criticism of career intelligence officials. In an astounding shot across his bow, which was followed up by an onslaught in February, Schumer said: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. . . . So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.” Schumer was evidently not disturbed about rogue intelligence agencies conspiring to destroy a shared political enemy — the president of the United States. What surprised him was how naïve Trump was in not assessing the anti-constitutional forces arrayed against him.

...What has the often boisterous Trump done in his first month to earn calls for his death, forced removal, or resignation?

The stock market is reaching all-time highs. Polls show business optimism rising. The Rasmussen poll puts Trump’s approval rating at 55 percent. Compared with Obama in 2009, at the same point in his young administration, Trump has issued about the same number of executive orders. For all his war on the press, Trump has so far not ordered wiretaps on any reporter on the grounds that he is a “criminal co-conspirator,” nor has he gone after the phone records of the Associated Press — Barack Obama’s Justice Department did both, to little notice in the media.

Trump’s edicts are mostly common-sense and non-controversial: green-lighting the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, freezing federal hiring, resuming work on a previously approved wall along the Mexican border, prohibiting retiring federal officials from lobbying activity for five years, and pruning away regulations.

...ending Trump one way or another is apparently the tortured pathway his critics are taking to exit their self-created labyrinth of irrelevance.

Read the whole thing here.

"The chickens have come home to roost!"

Judge Andrew Napolitano writes,

...The chickens have come home to roost. In our misguided efforts to keep the country safe, we have neglected to keep it free. We have enabled a deep state to become powerful enough to control a powerful president. We have placed so much data and so much power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable, opaque spies that they can use it as they see fit -- even to the point of committing federal felonies. Now some have boasted that they can manipulate and thus control the president of the United States by selectively revealing and concealing what they know about anyone, including the president himself.

This is a perilous state of affairs, brought about by the maniacal passion for surveillance spawned under George W. Bush and perfected under Barack Obama -- all with utter indifference to the widespread constitutional violations and permanent destruction of personal liberties. This is not the government the Framers gave us. But it is one far more dangerous to human freedom than the one from which they seceded in 1776.

Read more here.

The shadow knows

Gerard Vanderleun is sad that so many people are seeing Trump everywhere, and still refusing to get professional help.

Thomas Perez new chairman of Democrat National Committee

Diogenes' Middle Finger updates us on the new chairman of the Democrat National Committee here.

Radical Leftist lawyer Thomas Perez

No clean escape

ABC 13 reports,

A north Texas man made anything but a clean escape after allegedly breaking into a home, taking a shower and changing into the homeowner's Betty Boop pajamas.

According to a Facebook post from the Wichita Falls Police Department, officers responded to a reported burglary in process just after 5:00pm on Feb. 19. Homeowners told police that they heard someone showering in their bathroom and noticed signs of forced entry on an exterior door.

Inside the home, police say they found 37-year-old Brad Vaughan in the bedroom wearing nothing but the Betty Boop pajamas.

Vaughan has been charged with burglary of a habitation and is currently being held on $10,000 bond.

hat tip Dave Barry, who writes, "HE WON'T GET FAR WITHOUT PINK FURRY SLIPPERS!"

A big mousse-take

This image, which has begun circulating on social media on Tuesday, shows a mystery woman, believed to be from Eastern Europe, who mixed up hair mousse with builders' foam and ended up in hospital

hat tip Daily Mail

CNN anchor purchases pirated copy of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s prepared remarks

The Hard Times reports,

CNN anchor Don Lemon was spotted earlier today just outside the White House gates purchasing a pirated copy of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s prepared remarks from notorious D.C. contraband merchant Vincent “The Eel” Heller, according to witnesses.

“Well, you see, I ain’t namin’ names,” said Heller, “but I got a man comin’ up on me in desperate need of an audio recording of the President’s happenings. I hooked him up with a cassette of the briefing, a bottle of cologne, and some Spanx for his lady.”

Lemon, who was unexpectedly barred from a press gaggle, had to get creative to access information about the leader of the free world. “The President goes off about the press during his CPAC speech, and now, I can’t get into the room to hear about it! I’m not a proponent of piracy, but they gave me little recourse,” he said. “Also, I got Billy Joel tickets from Eel before. He’s a solid guy.”

The New York Times, Politico, and other banned outlets quickly caught wind of the recordings and tried to track Heller down at his usual spot in the Washington Highlands area of the nation’s capital. “They must be pretty desperate to come around to this part of town,” said resident Damien Dawkins. “I mean, we get the occasional congressman down here lookin for a pick me up, but damn!”

“I wouldn’t normally go to the inner-city without a cameraman and audio guy,” said Huffington Post reporter Allie Nelson nervously. “But the first amendment is as stake here, and I’ll do whatever it takes to find this Eel guy.”

“Excuse me, sir! Do you know a Mr. Eel?” she then shouted after a passerby.

Several of the banned outlets reportedly reached out to The Eel to try to get tickets to the next briefing. “Nah, man. Town’s dry,” Eel reportedly said. “But I got 2017 Global Prayer Gathering passes if you’re interested. Comes with mini-bluetooth speaker. $50 and it’s yours.”

When reached for comment, The Eel was unsure why so many reporters were interested in the tapes.

“I don’t get why these folks even want this junk,” the cloaked shadow of a man said. “It’s just some guy named Sean stuttering and saying ‘literally’ and ‘the President has made very clear’ over and over again. I thought my player was busted at first, but my hookup at Breitbart says, ‘Nope, that’s just how he talks.’”

What's the matter with this parking area? Don't you have any green grass?

Just kidding, neighbor!

hat tip Misanthropic Humanitarian

That's the way it is at our house!

hat tip Misanthropic Humanitarian

“But as soon as one of these companies stops making the world a shittier place,” Steven says, “three others start.”

At Foreign Policy, Michael Hobbes writes,

...In the early days, the ‘90s, when advocacy organizations were chasing down Nike in Indonesia and Shell in Nigeria, the relationship between NGOs and multinational corporations was adversarial, zero-sum, ranks of cavalry lined up waiting to charge.

Globalization was still new — in 1992, half the clothing sold in the United States was made there; by 1999, just 12 percent of it was1 — and Western consumers were still capable of being shocked by the conditions under which their shoes and their cars and their Coke were produced.

1For example, in 1992, nearly half (49 percent) of all retail apparel sold in the United States was made in the US, but by 1999, just seven years later, the proportion of domestically produced retail apparel had fallen to 12 percent (Rabon 2001 cf. UNIDO Report 2003:7). By 2003, developing countries accounted for nearly three quarters of the export flows in apparel which constituted more that half (57%) of the $408 billion in global textile and apparel trade that year.

Source: The Role of Price And Cost Competitiveness in Apparel Exports, Post-MFA: A Review, Meenu Tewari, November 2005

So NGOs told them. The boycott campaigns and protest signs almost wrote themselves. Just juxtapose a company’s gleaming marketing message — Just Do It, Can’t Beat The Real Thing, Have You Had Your Break Today? — with images of the stone-faced workers suffering behind it.

“It’s not the wrongdoing,” your old boss used to say. “It’s the hypocrisy.”

As the campaigns piled up, the corporations started doing what the protesters demanded. Clothing companies adopted codes of conduct, oil companies trained their managers, beverage brands inspected their farms. They looked for things like child labor and human trafficking in their supply chains and, when they found them, made their contractors prove that they wouldn’t happen again. Entire sectors started implementing the same environmental standards in Cambodia that they followed in Cleveland.

After a decade of this, an industry formed to help the growing number of companies making human rights commitments. Fair trade certifications, “socially responsible investment” criteria, human rights impact assessments — all of a sudden, it was easy to feel like companies and NGOs were playing for the same team. Local activists started receiving invitations to audit factories. Charities brokered meetings between corporations and their own workers. The researchers who used to investigate companies were hired by them, paid to provide them with an inside look at their own weaknesses.

...You are part of this ecosystem, a consultant at a think tank dedicated to preventing the private sector from violating human rights. Companies come to you and they tell you that their suppliers won’t stop hiring children, that government inspectors have been asking for bribes, that their factory managers slap employees for showing up late. You sign a non-disclosure agreement. You bill them 18 months of your salary for a 4-page memo telling them how to fix it.

...Across from you is the head of sustainability for the company with its name on the building. His suit fits him perfectly. You reach for the croissants before he does.

You are here to tell him about all issues he should care about — forced labor in his factories, corruption in his suppliers, HIV in his dormitories. As you speak, you watch him separate them into two categories: Breaking the Law, and We Should Look Into That.

We’ve received reports that workers in your factories may be inhaling chemicals, you tell him. Without masks and respiratory tests, they might be subject to health problems five, ten years down the line. He nods sympathetically, his pen untouched next to his glass of fizzy water. You can almost mouth the words along with him: “We should look into that.”

We’ve also heard reports, you tell him, that workers at your Vietnamese factories are regularly working up to 60 hours a week without overtime pay. He reaches for his pen; he knows where you’re going with this. According to Vietnamese law, employees can’t work more than 48 hours per week without overtime pay. Plus, Vietnamese law requires a 24-hour rest period between shifts.

He looks up from writing: “So you’re saying that’s a compliance issue,” he says. Compliance is the polite way of saying that his company might be breaking the law. You nod solemnly, victory yours.

None of the old tactics work anymore. Consumers have heard the sweatshop story too many times to find it galvanizing of much more than a few Facebook shares. Supply chains have stretched too far, with too many zig-zags, to trace transgressions back to a single company. The worst violations — slavery, human trafficking — are too intertwined with the economies and the policies of the places where they happen to find a villain behind them. You have stopped demanding changes because you do not know what to demand anymore.

Take child labor. Solving it sounds simple, as straightforward as the catchphrase on one of your advocacy campaigns: Stop hiring children. In reality, however, it is a process that can take years. Employees show up with forged birth certificates. Suppliers lie about how many sites they have. Auditors sign off on factories without visiting them. Even when a company finds 15-year-olds working at its conveyor belts, what is it supposed to do, fire them? A lot of those kids are from rural areas, districts where there’s no school past eighth grade. Pushing them out of that factory means, in practice, sending them back to a place where there is nothing else for them to do.

...The way companies do it is, they create a department in charge of “sustainability” — or human rights, or corporate citizenship, or social responsibility, pick your buzzword — whose job is to keep the NGOs at bay. That’s who hires you, asks you for help, sends you to their factories in dictatorships. The 15 other departments of the company, meanwhile, do exactly what they always did. Only now, they’ve got a guy whose job is to dress it all up as “sustainability” and sell it to consumers.

Steven does something for the U.N., you’re not quite sure, and he’s answering the question you just asked him, the one you’re asking everyone: Are we winning?

“We don’t have the information,” he says. “Are there fewer sweatshops now than 15 years ago? Are there more land grabs by mining companies? Nobody has any idea.”

There are only two kinds of U.N. employees: Kool-Aid Drinkers, and Get Me Outta Heres. Steven appears to be one of the latter. He added you on LinkedIn three days ago, about 15 minutes after you met him.

“Without information,” he says, “we resort to narratives. There’s the hopeful narrative and there’s the cynical one.”

“Give me hopeful first,” you say.

“Since the Industrial Revolution,” he says, “companies have been held responsible for an expanding circle of impacts. Child labor, worker housing, environmental pollution, health and safety, overseas corruption, they’re all things that companies used to say weren’t their problem. And now they are.”

The circle keeps expanding. Soda companies are the target of campaigns to tax their products and pay for anti-obesity programs. Apparel companies, now that they’ve started auditing their factories and reporting their supply chains, are under pressure to buy cotton from countries without child labor. Jewelry companies and cellphone manufacturers have to certify that their raw materials don’t come from conflict zones. Yesterday you traded business cards with a guy who works for a big pension fund in Northern Europe. His job is to check their investments to make sure they’re “climate-sensitive.”

“Every time the circle expands,” Steven says, “the world gets a little bit better.”

“What’s the cynical narrative?”

“But as soon as one of these companies stops making the world a shittier place,” Steven says, “three others start.”

...“The biggest companies now,” Steven says, “are based in Brazil or China or South Africa. And there’s nothing we can do about them.”

Maher defends pedophilia

Here is a jackass defending pedophilia. He's the same jackass who proudly claims credit for the downfall of Milo Yiannopoulos.

They got him

The New York Post reports on this lovely man named Oscar Hernandez.

The man suspected of taking a 6-year-old Connecticut girl prompting an Amber Alert on Friday had previously been deported, federal immigration officials said.

Oscar Hernandez was taken into custody on Friday following a high-speed car chase and crash on Interstate 99 in Benner Township, Pennsylvania. State police said he had refused to pull over when a state trooper spotted the car, which had been the subject of an Amber Alert.

Federal immigration officials said Hernandez is a citizen of El Salvador and had been previously deported on Nov. 27, 2013. He has prior felony convictions including assault and threatening. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had placed a detainer on him, an agency spokesman said in a statement.

Hernandez is accused of taking his 6-year-old daughter Aylin Sofia Hernandez from her home in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Police issued a public alert about the girl at about 2:45 a.m. Friday.

Officers had gone to the girl’s Bridgeport home and found her mother, Nadia Gonzalez, fatally stabbed.

Another woman in the home also was stabbed multiple times and was hospitalized. Police said she’s expected to survive.

Police said the little girl suffered minor injuries in in the crash. . Two state troopers also suffered minor injuries.

Benner Township is about 300 miles from Bridgeport.

Hernandez was being held as a fugitive from justice in Pennsylvania and couldn’t be reached for comment. Bridgeport police have a warrant for his arrest.

Consequences

At The Last Refuge Sundance provides us with the 2009 Obamacare vote in the US Senate, which took place at 1:38 a.m. on December 23.

Senators with a line drawn through their names are no longer in the Senate.

Where to go to get news that isn't fake or biased

Are you trying to figure out where to go to get news that is not fake or biased? Alicia Colon has written a post at American Thinker with helpful suggestions.

Transgenderism in children is child abuse: American College of Pediatricians

Over one year ago,

The American College of Pediatricians issued a statement this week condemning gender reclassification in children by stating that transgenderism in children amounts to child abuse.

“The American College of Pediatricians urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.”

The policy statement, authored by Johns Hopkins Medical School Psychology Professor Paul McHugh, listed eight arguments on why gender reclassification is harmful.

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder.

2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one.

3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such.

4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty-blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.

5. According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.

6. Children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. Cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.

7. Rates of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBQT – affirming countries.

8. Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful as child abuse.


The left, as one might expect, reacted swiftly with claws fully extended.

Think Progress described the American College of Pediatricians as a “hate group masquerading as pediatricians.”

The Huffington Post said that “Once again, Paul McHugh has used the ever more tarnished name of Johns Hopkins to distort science and spread transphobic misinformation.”

McHugh, who formerly served as Johns Hopkins’ psychiatrist in chief, issued an opinion last year stating the transgenderism is a “mental disorder” and sex change is a “medical impossibility.”

The statement was also signed by Drs. Michelle A. Cretella, M.D., president of the American College of Pediatricians, and Quentin Van Meter, M.D., the organization’s vice president.

from March 25, 2016 Michael Dorstewitz at BizPacReview, "American College of Pediatrics reaches decision: Transgenderism of children is child abuse"

Run for Congress...What do you have to lose?'

Krak at Ace of Spades links to a report in the Washington Free Beacon about the fellow in the photo above, whose name is Jesse Jackson Jr.

Jesse Jackson Jr. Collects $138K Annually From Govt After Being Convicted of Illegally Spending Campaign Cash. The records, which were contained within documents for his divorce case, show that the former congressman receives $100,000 in tax-free workers compensation benefits. The rest of the money is coming from Social Security Disability insurance payments. Jackson is said to be receiving the funds because of his bipolar disorder and depression.

Ari Wilkenfeld, a D.C.-based employment lawyer, told the Chicago Tribune that it is highly unusual for an individual to collect federal workers' compensation for a condition such as bipolar disorder.

"What's remarkable here is by his getting workers' comp, it appears that Congressman Jackson's attorneys have convinced the government that his bipolar disorder was created by the rigors of being a member of Congress," Wilkenfeld said.

In 2013, Jackson Jr. was sentenced to 30 months in prison for spending $750,000 from his campaign on personal items such as luxury vacations and fur coats. His wife, Sandra, pled guilty to filing false tax returns and was sentenced to 12 months in prison.

Jackson ultimately spent 22 months in correctional facilities, a halfway house, and home detention. He currently is on supervised release.

Read more here.

Settled science

Tell me when this guy finally stops jumping up and down on his seat.

Trump and Churchill

Bookworm compares Donald Trump to Winston Churchill. Read it here.

Are people inherently cruel?

After reading a cruel obituary of Alan Colmes at Slate, Ace of Spades wrote,

1. People are inherently cruel. They enjoy inflicting cruelty on others. It makes them feel good to be cruel to others.

2. People are self-deluding and believe themselves good. It makes them feel good to think themselves good.

3. These two things are hard to reconcile, but not impossible, because people are also good at making up Reasons to justify doing bad things and even praise themselves for doing those bad things. As they say, you are the easiest person in the world for you to fool. You want to be fooled, after all. And why would you have reason to lie to yourself? As far as you know, you're the most reliable, honest person in the world, and you've never given yourself any reason to doubt your word before.

4. The Reason usually offered to reconcile points one and two and is that there is a Higher Obligation to Something or Other which justifies cruelty on a (self-serving) philosophical, quasi-religious or actually religious basis. People tell themselves they are doing good by doing evil, and then this lets them feel both good about being "good people" and also lets them feel good about being cruel to innocuous nobodies. Not only can you do tremendously cruel things which would normally be completely unjustifiable and cause you to feel slightly bad for not being as good of a good person as you previously deluded yourself, but you can actually feel even better about yourself being an even better person than you previously thought, because you have the Bravery and Integrity to say cruel things which need saying, which many of the fussy-pants polite people just are too cowardly or too stupid to say.

5. The better someone tells me he is, the more certain I become that he is a monster. (Also: The tougher someone attempts to present himself on social media, the more confident I am that he is a physical and emotional weakling.)

6. People frequently insist to me how good and noble they are. The entire purpose of Twitter sometimes seems to be to provide a forum in which committed sociopaths can tell the world about their enormous hearts and pure spirits and noble intentions and grand ideals.

7. People in general are monsters and I have very little use for them.

Actually... Just to extend this: I have long believed that people tell you exactly who they are, right up front, if you bother to listen. I noticed some time ago that all the people I'd had failed relationships with told me within the first hour why the relationship would fail -- but I of course wasn't listening. I'm not saying they were bad people. I'm just saying they were pretty upfront about the reasons we were a bad match. I just didn't pick up on it.

I noticed a long time ago that anyone who claims to be "witty" in their Twitter profile is never witty, and is usually pretty dull.

When people describe themselves, they are not describing themselves. They are describing the self they aspire to be, what they aspire to be generally points out what they are currently failing to be.

It does seem to me a general rule that whatever someone bangs on about the loudest as a putative reason to recommend him is almost certainly actually telling you about his deepest insecurities and darkest failings.

In the comments, Notsothoreau writes, "It's just virtue signaling, as in "I am virtuous because I vote for people with a D after their name". You are somehow virtuous these days if you go on Amazon and bad mouthed Ivanka's perfume (which you didn't buy and have never smelled).

There was a time when people were virtuous boycotting grapes. Now they are virtuous by supporting the illegals that put Cesar Chavez's unionized pickers out of business. And the worst is saved up when someone they don't like dies."

Clinton fundraiser made video in case of his death

Daily Mail reports,

Illegal fundraiser for the Clintons made secret tape because he feared being ASSASSINATED over what he knew - and used it to reveal Democrats' bid to silence him.

Chung, one of the main players in the 'Chinagate' scandal, was accused of giving over $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee on behalf of the head of China's military intelligence agency during Clinton's reelection bid.
Chung cooperated with the Department of Justice during the investigation, and was sentenced to five years of probation for campaign finance violations, bank fraud and tax evasion in 1998.

Chung, one of the main players in the 'Chinagate' scandal, was accused of giving over $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee on behalf of the head of China's military intelligence agency during Clinton's reelection bid.
Chung cooperated with the Department of Justice during the investigation, and was sentenced to five years of probation for campaign finance violations, bank fraud and tax evasion in 1998.

...with assistance from the former government official, Johnny Chung produced an elaborate videotaped testimony that was secreted to friends and family to be forwarded to the media in the case of his death.'

Chung described on the tape how Democrats on the House Committee on Government Reform tried to dissuade him from testifying publicly before the committee by sending his attorney a letter telling him he could plead the Fifth Amendment.
Chung said his attorney thought the letter was 'ludicrous' and a veiled threat from Washington Democrats that they wanted Chung to stay quiet.

After Chung agreed to cooperate with prosecutors on the Chinagate investigation, he feared his knowledge of the Clinton campaign finance scandal and the Chinese influence operation could make him a target for assassination.

In total he visited the White House 57 times in a two-year span – eight of these meetings were 'off the books.'
Most of the meetings were with Hillary Clinton or her staff. During one of these trips, Chung personally handed a $50,000 check to Hillary Clinton's chief of staff Maggie Williams.

Chung even helped arrange for Bill Clinton to meet with the source of the money – a top Chinese military official – at a Los Angeles fundraiser.

His concern about his safety was understandable, given that there had been three attempts on his life which required FBI protection… and given his knowledge of what happened to people such as Ron Brown, who as Secretary of Commerce, was deeply involved in arranging – and selling seats on - Clinton administration trade missions to China,' added Abernethy.

Read more here.

"it’s probably best to avoid (a) excessive weight gain, and (b) feminism, both of which seem likely to engender alienation, resentment and fits of random hysteria."

David Thompson writes about a woman who is seething with empowerment here.

hat tip Ace

"Repeat until true: Islam isn't the problem!"

Krakatoa writes at Ace of Spades,

I'm not prone to conspiracy theories.

But it is becoming harder and harder to pretend that the current powers running the EU member states not only wouldn't mind if the ideological threats to their power structure are removed by any means possible, but are perhaps even supporting all means possible.

Geert Wilders has had to suspend his campaign movements because one of the Dutch Secret Service agents that had been assigned to his security detail was found passing his movement information to Moroccan (Islamist) criminal gangs.

In a sane world, this agent, whose name hasn't been released but whose superiors admit to having a "Moroccan background", would never have been put in such a sensitive position.

But in the world we live, law abiding people are forced into dangerous scenarios demanded by political correctness.

Wilders has been under police protection since the brutal killing of Theo van Gogh by a Muslim in 2004.

In security tests in 2010, his security detail permitted 2 out of 4 attempts at smuggling a firearm into secure areas.

And now the powers-that-be came close to participating in what for all intents looks like an assassination plot through either a bad vetting process, or outright indifference to the very life of an ideological enemy.

The only good news is that Mr. Wilders is likely going to be the next PM of the Netherlands, assuming he stays alive that long.

An "elected" woman

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen
Matthew 6:9-13

It is a mystery to me why there was outrage at Melania Trump for beginning a speech with the Lord’s prayer. If you believe in the biblical God, what is there to cause offense? If not, what in this prayer is offensive to the average moral and ethical person? If you do not believe in any god at all, are the words not a very nice, pleasant thought for the day?

While First Ladies do not run for office, they are put through the wringer of scrutiny every bit as much as their husbands who are actually vying for the office of President of the United States. Sometimes a wife can have a huge impact on her husband’s chances at winning or losing the Oval Office. They have an unpaid position for so long as their husband is in office. While not on the ballot at the polls, they are in many ways elected right along with their husband. Kinda mandatorily volunteered.

The bible speaks of the elect. Elect lady and elect sister are mentioned in various verses. An elect woman is one who exemplifies certain attributes. Often involving family and faith.

As a stay-at-home wife, mother, grandmother, Constitutional Conservative, and God-fearing woman, I am excited about Melania Trump as the First Lady. She seems to be a very positive role model, a loving wife, and devoted mother. She was successful in her own right before marrying her husband, yet seems to have no problem stepping into the role of supporter instead of star. Although, I think she is going to be a very brightly shining star of the political world for so long as her husband is President.

She is surrounded by an aura of graciousness and elegance. Despite living in the world of great wealth and power, she does not exude any hint of snobbery. While she does not have the down-to-earth persona of Laura Bush, you get the distinct feeling she would treat guests just as nicely.

I was intrigued when I read her cause célèbre will focus on Women’s Issues and Difficulties. Probably served with a sidecar of standing against Cyberbullying, which has plagued the Trump family from the get-go. Especially hateful have been attacks on President Trump’s wife, Melania, their 10-year old son, Barron, and his adult daughter, Ivanka.

I am interested to see what her take on Women’s Issues will constitute. I have a feeling it will be a much more practical approach than what some on the Progressive spectrum might prefer. I do not think she is going to be out there advocating about more freebies for women who are perfectly capable of buying their own birth control. I also do not think she is going to be in favor of ever expanding access to abortions at taxpayer expense. I realize that the Left pretty much thinks Women’s Issues start and stop at our reproductive organs (pun intended), but I think Mrs. Trump is looking to deal with the real difficulties facing some women in America.

I suspect she will be looking towards real life problems and possible solutions. Perhaps such areas as jobs, education, childcare, domestic abuse, and other concerns which have real world impact on women and their families. Not the never-never-land litany of never-ending free stuff that is demanded by Progressives, Which, if they don’t get causes them to call everyone else sexist and/or racist. Of course, most of them still call everyone else sexist and racist even when they get their free stuff ‘cause it is seemingly never enough of the free stuff.

As someone who was formerly involved, at a very low and very local level, in the beauty and fashion world, I am delighted that we have a First Lady who looks like a supermodel. Oh, that’s right, she was a supermodel! I have always enjoyed seeing attractive women, with great hair and makeup, wearing pretty clothes. When I was little it was Barbie, paper dolls and Disney Princesses. When I got older it was fashion shows, makeup artistry, and beauty magazines. So, I am going to enjoy seeing Melania and Ivanka looking fabulous!

But, I have to admit that the two things which most intrigue me about Melania Trump is her commitment to her son and her faith. As a woman who is very family and faith oriented, it is appealing to me when we have a woman of faith who is first and foremost a mother as First Lady. Someone who I feel will not be disparaging of those women who choose to put family and God first on their list of priorities. I am pretty sure Melania will not sneer at those of us who actually like to bake cookies and are clinging to our religion. At the same time, I believe she will have very real insight into the affairs faced by working women and business women, having seen life from that side as well.

I am not saying Melania Trump is perfect. I am not putting her up on a pedestal or nominating her for sainthood. I am simply saying this is a woman I can admire. She seems to have a love of family, country, and God. What’s not to like about that? The fact that she likes to wear pretty clothes and look nice is a bonus

One of my favorite scriptural passages is Proverbs 31:10-31:

10 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.
11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.
12 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
13 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
14 She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.
15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.
17 She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.
18 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.
19 She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
20 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.
21 She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
22 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.
23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.
24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
25 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.
27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
29 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
31 Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

To me, this quote speaks volumes about what each and every woman has the potential to become. Wife, mother, homemaker, business owner, woman of God. Prospects abound. I see a lil bit of this in Melania Trump. I strive to see this in myself. It is a pretty good goal.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all be elect women? Let’s hope we can support one another to be the best we can be. Build one another up. Not tear each other down. Not just women supporting women, but people supporting people. Let us all be elect. The chosen, the elite, the favored, the crème de la crème. And, just as importantly, let us all treat one another as if every person is just as special as any other.

Telling the truth on behalf of the people who elected her!

n. Janet Nguyen (R-Garden Grove). (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
State Senator Janet Nguyen is removed from the California Senate, where she was telling the truth about Tom Hayden's support of the communists who were killing Americans and members of her family in Viet Nam.
Read more here.

hat tip Instapundit

Caving

hat tip Milo

"If you think they are going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken!"

Steve Bannon at CPAC

The invasion of town hall meetings by progressives with professional signs.

At Ace of Spades Warden has some beautifully done satire about the town hall meetings that are being invaded by Soros-funded progressives.

Now they are asking America to lead!

Bookworm links to this Prager U. video on why America must lead. My reaction? Where was this guy during the eight years of Obama's failure to lead?

Persuasion versus coercion

There continues to be a lot of discussion about Milo's situation. Ace of Spades goes on lengthy essays. One of Ace's comments, someone named ShainS summarizes:

...there are basically two types of societies -- those based on persuasion (for which he is arguing and in which he, and most of us, want to live), and those based on coercion (the ends justify the means crowd, which includes ruling-class "conservatives").

Emmanuel!

Over on Ann Voskamp's front porch the guest post is written by Bob Goff. Have you had someone in your life who has said, "I'm with you?" Is there somebody in your life now who needs you to be with them?

The Trump revolution may not be on such solid ground

David Goldman writes,

The empire strikes back: After barely a month the tone in the Trump Administration has moderated. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was calm, assured and, well, moderate in his CNBC interview this morning. The single most important thing he said was that 3% growth was achievable. It certainly is; roll back some of Obama's business-killing regulations and cut corporate taxes almost any way you please and America can get back to 3% growth. That doesn't make America great again; it doesn't even restore the lost growth of Obama's non-recovery. But it is a lot better than Obama's 2%.

Mike Pence was just in Europe praising the European Community (while Steve Bannon reportedly told Germany's ambassador to the US that we would rather deal with Germany bilaterally, something that is simply impossible under the current treaties).

Mike Flynn is gone, not because he did anything wrong but because the president gave way to a wall of attacks claiming that no-one in the Pentagon or intelligence community could work with him. Movement conservatives like John Bolton are out; Gen McMaster is in, an officer who defended America's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan with eloquence and passion, e.g. here: "The professed war-weariness among populations who have sent only a small percentage of their sons and daughters to fight in recent wars may derive from a failure to communicate effectively what is at stake in those wars and explain why the efforts are worthy of the risks, resources and sacrifices necessary to sustain the strategy." (H/T Benjamin Bilski). That's exactly the opposite of the stance that won Trump the election, and a radically different attitude: "Professed war-weariness" sounds deplorable to me. Over at State, Rex Tillerson reportedly will hire Trump critic and Bush State Department official Brian Hook to run policy planning.

The problem is that having cast out the elite, we have no-one with a CV left to hire. Trump's revolutionaries tripped over their own shoelaces. Proposing to put the One China policy on the table in trade negotiations, or hinting at the breakup of the European Union, or extending overtures to the European alternative right, were really dangerous errors. China will fight a war to keep Taiwan in its territory--it is not a subject for negotiation. If the EU breaks up, Germany will move east (Germany and China are now each other's largest trading partners). Angela Merkel is awful (and I've attacked her in print for the past year and more) but she's better than the bunch of Putin puppets who would replace her. (I don't mind making a deal with Putin as long as it is from a position of American strength).

Trump has a cadre of people around him whose job it is to walk into the Oval Office and say, "Mr. President, you can't do that." Tinkering with the One China policy was one such no-can-do; suggesting that the EU should break up was another. It would be a shame if the Trump revolution lasted only for a month before it faced its Thermidor. If that happens, we revolutionaries will share some of the blame.

"The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid--I mean all the stuff that our ruling class is."

Tucker Carlson tells his Atlantic interviewer,

The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid--I mean all the stuff that our ruling class is."

...It’s this assumption—and it’s held by a lot of people I live around—that you’re on God’s side, everyone else is an infidel, and by calling them names you’re doing the Lord’s work. I just don’t think that’s admirable, and I’m not impressed by that.”

Fair or not, this is the essence of Carlson’s case against the educated elites and well-heeled technocrats that comprise America’s ruling class (not to mention his neighborhood). They are too certain of their own righteousness, too dismissive of dissenters, too unwilling to entertain new ideas.

When Carlson first joined primetime last year, he assigned his show a mission statement: “The sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.” To his critics, the slogan is crazy-making for the brazen hypocrisy they believe it displays. But the potency of the host’s performance is not rooted in personal purity—it’s in his ability to capture the sentiment of a rapidly mutating conservative movement.

“Putting smart people in charge of things is fine, but what you really want is wise people,” he tells me, and then quotes something his father used to say: “The beginning of wisdom is to know what an asshole you are.”

Read more here.