Ahead of its time!

From the satirical Babylon Bee:

The LGBTQ community has praised Bob the Tomato as being "stunning and brave" after it was revealed that he is actually a fruit who identifies as a vegetable.

"VeggieTales was ahead of its time," said non-binary person Pech Bonzai, LGBTQ activist and verified Twitter user with just over 500 followers. "Most kids' shows just try to be entertaining and rely on an outdated, binary depiction of gender. But the VeggieTales writers were pioneers, willing to show a tomato publicly identifying as a vegetable despite clearly being a fruit."

Other characters on the show have also been praised for being fruits but presenting themselves as vegetables, including The Peach, the Bad Apple, Madame Blueberry, and the entire Grape family.

"A whole family of fruits going against traditional vegetable norms! How progressive is that?" said Bonzai.

Rumors from the VeggieTales set even suggest that Larry the Cucumber may be a fruit, but he has not come out of the cabinet yet.

"Woke me up and tell me why!"

In Spiked, Julie Burchill asks,

So how come Trudeau got away with it?

She is referring to his innumerable experiences wearing "Blackface." She answers her own question.

It’s part of a broader dodge – what the commentator Daniel Norris calls the Wokescreen.

...if the Black and White Minstrels are insulting and reactionary, why aren’t drag queens? If someone can explain to me why race-based parody is bad and sex-based parody ‘a bit of fun’, I’d love to know. Woke me up and tell me why!

Read more here.

"...in 2019, the Pentagon named the operation to arrest or kill al-Baghdadi Operation Kayla Mueller."

In Strategy Page, Austin Bay writes in part,

...But in 2019, the Pentagon named the operation to arrest or kill al-Baghdadi Operation Kayla Mueller.

Due to Beltway brawling, that name has received little notice. However, it puts a woman who'd been raped, a dead lady's face, on the Delta Force assault and signals that the U.S. military attack on al-Baghdadi and his henchmen sought personal justice for the slaughter of an innocent human being who came to Syria to aid refugees.

This is information warfare kudos to the Pentagon and Trump administration, for at some psycho core, zealot killer creeps like al-Baghdadi think they are untouchable. Like Osama bin Laden, al-Baghdadi thought he had divine sanction. There's a good chance he told followers that his personal survival indicated that ISIS' loss of territorial caliphate was a temporary setback.

...ISIS continues to cast itself as a global social media power, using Facebook and Twitter to reach millions of young Muslims worldwide.

...After Delta Force nailed al-Baghdadi, President Trump used Twitter and television to attack al-Baghdadi's arrogance, swagger and narrative of invincibility. Trump said: "He died after running into a dead-end tunnel. ... The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread." The ghoul detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and three of his children.

Trump targeted potential recruits the fanatic might inspire: "(I)t's something that should be brought out so that his followers and all of these young kids that want to leave various countries ... see how he died. ... He didn't die a hero. He died a coward -- crying, whimpering, screaming."

Overblown language, a "yuge" exaggeration? Perhaps, but useful, strategic information warfare. Trump's global damning damages al-Baghdadi as a terrorist icon.

In comparison, The Washington Post's coddling in its now-changed headline "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48" was a depraved distortion of reality that undermines anti-terror efforts.

Read more here.

On second thought...

My initial reaction was favorable to Jack Dorsey's decision to ban political ads on Twitter, but in PJ Media Tyler O'Neill causes me to rethink.

If every news outlet will be able to advertise and be able to "promote" certain stories with a political bias, that could be an effective work-around of the new rules on political issue ads. But in order to prevent this, Twitter will either have to prevent news outlets from advertising or prevent them from promoting political stories. That again raises the issue: what counts as political?

...If political ads are banned on Twitter, what about right-leaning or left-leaning news outlets and their often biased stories on political issues? This is likely to be a thorny gray area for Twitter's new rules.

...Paid ads can perform an important public service by alerting voters who are obsessed with the big national issues to the existence of local candidates and causes.

...Dorsey announced that Twitter would not just ban candidate ads but also issue ads, by which he means advertising on issues Twitter deems to be political or of national importance. That raises the thorny question: "What makes an issue political?"

...Social media allows politics at a larger scale — but these massive movements are very different from local and state elections, where political and issue ads are most necessary.

...Dorsey rightly admitted that critics will claim the new policy helps incumbents. People who hold political office have a huge advantage over candidates who would challenge them for their seats. Voters likely already know who the incumbent is, while challengers have a long uphill climb to just make themselves known to voters.

...Dorsey had many reasons to impose this kind of blanket ban, but he decided to frame the issue as one of moral superiority over Facebook. He suggested that Facebook's policy of allowing all candidates to buy ads undercuts the platform's efforts to stop spreading misleading information. While this may be true, Facebook has decided not to assert itself as the arbiter of truth in politics — a wise and humble decision in America's politically-charged culture.

Read more here.

Unnecessary deaths and blindness

David Nield reports in science alert,

Government red tape and vocal opposition to a genetically modified strain of rice has led to millions of unnecessary deaths and blindness in impoverished children, according to science writer Ed Regis, who details the plight of Golden Rice in a new book.

Golden Rice was genetically engineered to include beta-carotene, a chemical that our bodies can use to produce vitamin A. Deficiency in this vitamin is a leading cause of preventable childhood blindness worldwide, with up to 500,000 children becoming blind every year.

Lacking vitamin A can increase the risk of death from childhood illnesses and infections, too. The problem is prevalent in more than half of all the world's countries, especially in Africa and South-East Asia, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Read more here.

California's sad state

Victor Davis Hanson's latest is in National Review. He writes there about the current state of California.

What are the implications?

Ben Davis writes in the Caldron Pool,

It’s ironic how abortion is often portrayed as benefiting women, and yet when the decision to abort a baby is made on the basis of sex, girls are far more likely to be killed than boys.

A huge analysis of worldwide population data suggests sex-selective abortions have led to the slaughter of at least 23 million unborn girls, the majority of whom are from China and India.

According to researchers, evidence was found of an unnatural excess of males in 12 countries since the 1970s. It’s no coincidence that this imbalance coincided with the rise in availability of sex-selective abortions.

The sex-imbalance is so great that authorities in China and India are desperately trying to come to grips with the policies that have resulted in men outnumbering women by a staggering 70 million.

Last year, The Washington Post reported:

Out of China’s population of 1.4 billion, there are nearly 34 million more males than females — the equivalent of almost the entire population of California, or Poland, who will never find wives and only rarely have sex. China’s official one-child policy, in effect from 1979 to 2015, was a huge factor in creating this imbalance, as millions of couples were determined that their child should be a son.

India, a country that has a deeply held preference for sons and male heirs, has an excess of 37 million males, according to its most recent census. The number of newborn female babies compared with males has continued to plummet, even as the country grows more developed and prosperous. The imbalance creates a surplus of bachelors and exacerbates human trafficking, both for brides and, possibly, prostitution. Officials attribute this to the advent of sex-selective technology in the last 30 years, which is now banned but still in widespread practice.

In the two countries, 50 million excess males are under age 20.

Ironically we’re told, when it comes to abortion, nobody can tell a woman what she can and can’t do with her own body. Only, that’s exactly what abortion does to the unborn.

The delusion that abortion is somehow a mark of “female liberation” and “women’s rights” has resulted in the mass-extermination of millions of unborn girls at a rate that can be compared to the entire population of Australia.

How many selfies have you posed for this week?

Were you confident? Did you squinch? Read more by Dan Solomon in Pocket.com.

Now the truth comes out

The satirical Babylon Bee brings us the true story of the death of Al-Baghdadi:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a press conference about the death of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, President Trump claimed he personally stopped the terrorist from taking over Nakatomi Plaza and pushed him off the top of the Los Angeles tower, ending in his death.

"These terrorists came in and started shooting while we were having this party, and I took action, crawling into the ventilation ducts," Trump said. "I had to walk across this broken glass while I was firing at them, but I toughed it out."

The president said the terrorists, led by Al-Baghdadi, were attempting to steal $640 million from the building's vault. "Not on my watch," he said. "I had to make sure the terrorist scum died like a dog."

Trump says he's thinking about releasing the footage, which clearly shows him killing one of the ISIS members and then sending a grisly message to the terrorists via a dead body: "Now I have a machine gun. Not good! Sad!" Finally, in a climactic scene, the terrorist is trying to hang on for dear life, holding onto Melania Trump's wrist. But Trump takes off her watch and sends Al-Baghdadi to his doom.

"It was sad to lose that watch. A very nice watch! But America was more important."

In the footage, Trump is also allegedly heard clearly yelling, "Yippie-Ki-Yay, Mister Falcon!"

Big tech begins to tackle heart health

In CNBC, Christina Farr reports that

heart disease remains the leading cause of death for men and women in the U.S.

She reports that Apple is hiring medical experts, but

Heart health isn’t just a focus area at Apple. As Big Tech continues to explore whether it can penetrate the $3.5 trillion medical sector, cardiologists are often hired early and given senior roles. Alphabet’s health unit Verily chose a cardiologist, Jessica Mega, as its chief medical officer. And Amazon hired Dr. Maulik Majmudar, also a cardiologist, as a resident medical expert as it moves into health.

Read more here.

Don't forget the goats!

In Instapundit, Gail Heriot reports that dogs are not the only animals performing heroic duties this week. The Reagan Library hired a herd of 500 goats to

clear flammable scrub surrounding the complex as a preventative measure.

The goats ate the brush, creating a fire break that slowed the flames and gave firefighters extra time to react.

Read more and view photos of various animals being rescued here.

"Why Haven’t We Heard A Peep From Islamic Powers About China Brutalizing 1 Million Muslims?"

In the Federalist, Sumantra Maitra asks,

Why Haven’t We Heard A Peep From Islamic Powers About China Brutalizing 1 Million Muslims?
It’s unthinkable that any other great power would get away without any backlash from either Islamic powers, Islamic civil society, or jihadist groups. And that is one of the biggest puzzles in foreign policy worth probing.

...So how did China manage to earn the subservience, when more than 1 million Muslims are interned in Chinese concentration camps? And what does that mean for Western policy that we couldn’t manage that feat through continuous appeasement?

...But what explains the muted reaction from the Islamic world? This is an important question. While for liberals and neoconservatives every two-penny authoritarian looks like the next Adolf Hitler, only one great power that we know of is actively running concentration camps, where reportedly more than 1 million people are enslaved with no rights or freedom, women are being raped, and Mengeleian experiments are being conducted on live human subjects.

...Where are the mass protests? Where are the flag burnings? Where are the embassy attacks? Where are the jihadist bombings of Chinese economic interests in Africa and elsewhere? That question as to why there aren’t any needs to be probed for strictly strategic reasons. What did the Chinese manage to do that we couldn’t, after billions in aid, hundreds of thousands of refugees resettled, and humanitarian wars?

Read more here.

...only 47% of white Democrats call themselves Christians. 10% are members of other faiths, and 42% have no religion."

In FrontPage Magazine, Daniel Greenfield reports,

In Obama's first year in office, 68% of white Democrats described themselves as Christians, 7% claimed to be members of other faiths, and 24% said that they had no religious affiliation.

A decade later, only 47% of white Democrats call themselves Christians. 10% are members of other faiths, and 42% have no religion.

...America is not entering uncharted territory. It’s following in the footsteps of Europe. In the UK, only 3% of 18-24 year olds identify as Anglicans, and only 5% as Catholics, among 25-34 year olds, 5% identify as Anglicans and 9% as Catholics. 64% of 18-24 year olds say that they have no religion, as do 57% of 25-34 year olds, and 60% of 35-44 year olds.

Read much more here.

Almost believable

BREAKING: Lower court rules Trump administration must unkill ISIS leader.

— Jacob Hibbard (@hibbardj) October 27, 2019

Why capitalization is important

Capitalization is important: pic.twitter.com/JD8qWOdOUj

— Craigé Schmuckatelli (@CraigR3521) October 30, 2019

When should we change our clocks for Daylight Saving Time?

In a website called Rare, Moriah Gill asks and answers,

When to Change the Clock for Daylight Saving Time?

So, don’t forget to set any analog watches/clocks back an hour on Sunday, November 3rd! Some digital accessories like solar-powered/home appliances may need to be manually adjusted, too. And pro-tip, this will be a great time to also check the batteries in warning detectors in your home to ensure everything is working properly!

2020? Americans will "likely opt for a continued resurgent U.S. and a strong economy over socialism and finger-wagging at a sinful America."

In National Review, some excerpts from Victor Davis Hanson on impeachment.

...That the once-coveted whistleblower will likely fade back into the bureaucratic abyss — without Democrats wanting him to be seen, heard, or cross-examined — is a testament to just how ridiculous is the latest iteration of impeaching Trump.

The word “Ukraine” now conjures up Joe and Hunter Biden as much as Trump. So its evocation serves as a boomerang, in either hurting or eventually taking out the stubborn Democratic front-runner.

...If impeachment does not occur by Christmas, and it may well not, then the news cycle will preempt coverage of Schiff’s fading melodrama, especially if there are referrals for, or actual, indictments of, Obama-era intelligence officials. The extremism voiced on the Democratic stage will not help impeachment. The candidates themselves may come to resent the diversion of media coverage away from their candidacies and chafe if there is no compelling evidence for the impeachment stampede. In any case, far from the Horowitz, Barr, and Durham investigations being diversions from impeachment, the latest round of impeachment frenzy was likely designed to divert from the final unfolding of the greatest political scandal of the last half-century: the Obama-era intelligence agencies’ efforts to derail a campaign and then subvert a presidency.

Rather than introduce any of these agendas in Congress, Democratic House and Senate members obsess over Trump. Democrats may scream “Now Trump has a record,” and he certainly does. But it is mainly characterized by near-record-low unemployment, massive new gas and oil production, strong growth, and a vibrant stock market. Trump pushed, as he promised, his four signature agendas, designed to separate him from all 16 of the 2016 primary candidates — being tough on China, unfair trade, and open borders; and having fewer optional overseas military interventions — often against congressional and court opposition.

Rather than introduce any of these agendas in Congress, Democratic House and Senate members obsess over Trump. Democrats may scream “Now Trump has a record,” and he certainly does. But it is mainly characterized by near-record-low unemployment, massive new gas and oil production, strong growth, and a vibrant stock market. Trump pushed, as he promised, his four signature agendas, designed to separate him from all 16 of the 2016 primary candidates — being tough on China, unfair trade, and open borders; and having fewer optional overseas military interventions — often against congressional and court opposition.

The Democratic field resembles that of 2003 as it was entering Bush’s reelection year of 2004, when unhinged Howard Dean was the front-runner, and blow-dried phony John Edwards seemed the only alternative — until old warhorse John Kerry entered to reassure Democratic donors that they would have a choice between a quasi-socialist and a helium-filled suit. The tripartite choice now is between a 78-year old who is an avowed but increasingly frail socialist; a 70-year-old who has in the past fabricated her identity and is running as a socialist in all but name; and a 76-year-old white guy who has trouble stringing together simple sentences and thoughts, and who failed in two earlier presidential bids due to plagiarism, lies about his bio, and racially insensitive remarks.

Impeachments and scandals, as the case of Bill Clinton reminds us, are two different things. So far, Donald Trump is the most transparent, investigated, and cross-examined president in history. The result is not much dirt, but a lot of now-predictable and boring duds — the voting machines, impeachment 1.0, the emoluments clause, Stormy, Michael Avenatti, Michael Cohen, the 25th Amendment, the McCabe-Rosenstein Keystone Kops coup, Robert Mueller’s investigation, taxes, and now Ukraine.

...The public may find the latest blood sport amusing at first and support an inquiry. But as it drags on and Schiff burns up the Constitution, they will tire and prefer to weigh in during the election — when they will likely opt for a continued resurgent U.S. and a strong economy over socialism and finger-wagging at a sinful America.

Read more here.

"America’s Founding was not defined by slavery and white supremacy—quite the contrary."

Arthur Milikh writes in City Journal,

For decades, much of academia, the liberal activist class, and the public school system have operated on the premise that America is fundamentally racist. The latest manifestation of this outlook is the 1619 Project, rolled out last month by the New York Times. Claiming that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country,” it “aims to reframe the country’s history” by making 1619—the year slavery was first introduced by the British to Virginia—the year of “our true founding.”

This narrative is akin to the Jacobins’ alteration of the calendar to make their revolution the decisive turning point in human history. Just as they would save France from the monarchy, so, too, will the Times save America from white supremacy. The Times encourages public schools to adopt an accompanying curriculum that spreads the 1619 Project’s message to young Americans. Its goal is to brand our founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—as immoral and thus unworthy of our allegiance.

To make America’s Founding contemptible, one must hide, ignore, and distort the Founders’ writings and thoughts. Irresponsibly omitted from this narrative is the fact that not a single major Founder endorsed slavery. On the contrary, the Founders unambiguously saw slavery as evil. George Washington said, “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it,” and Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence calls the slave trade an “execrable commerce” and an affront “against human nature itself.” Gouverneur Morris called slavery a “nefarious institution” and “the curse of heaven,” and John Jay said, “It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. . . . To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.”

Franklin, Madison, Adams, and Hamilton spoke strongly against the institution of slavery, too. One could argue that these are merely hypocritical statements that the Founders did not believe, but they faced no pressure to dissimulate, whether in their private or public writing. Nor do any statements exist from the Founders elaborating a defense of human inequality or arguing that natural rights are based on race. Slavery was a prerevolutionary inheritance that the principles of the American Revolution unequivocally condemned. The Founders were self-consciously creating a nation based on natural human equality, a foundation intended to overturn the old world’s supremacist theories—both feudalism and monarchy. The Revolution’s equality principle, they hoped, formed the basis on which America would eventually abolish slavery.

...Ample evidence shows that the Founders wished for an end to slavery, contrary to the Times’s assertion that “neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery.” John Adams argued, “every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.” He hoped that the inequalities of the Old World would eventually disappear. In 1778, Jefferson introduced a bill in the Virginia legislature banning the importation of slavery, which he hoped would lead to the institution’s “final eradication.”

Not only are the Founders evil, the narrative goes—so, too, is their major achievement, the Constitution. As the Times writes, “The framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word.” Yet the facts point to the contrary. The Founders laid the constitutional ground for abolishing slavery. One example is Article I, Section 9, Clause 1, which states that Congress could prohibit importation of slaves starting in 1808. On the first day that this clause became operative, Congress passed, and President Thomas Jefferson signed, this prohibition into law. Congress took additional steps to restrict slavery. It passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territories. Seven years later, Congress made it illegal to build ships for the purpose of the slave trade.

...Black Americans have been treated in a grossly unjust fashion throughout our history. But the Declaration and the Constitution themselves, according to the Founders’ intentions, contain the principles through which justice would come, as Fredrick Douglass and, later, Martin Luther King, Jr. believed. These countervailing facts and statements, should produce a more balanced view of America’s Founding. Why, then, are they so thoroughly and carefully avoided by today’s narrative-creators, who intend to persuade through distortion?

Rather than indulge in recrimination, we should follow Lincoln in seeking “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and “to achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves.” Manipulating the next generation to disdain the American Founding will not accomplish this.

Read more here.

Good for Twitter and Jack Dorsey!

Mikael Thalen reports in the Daily Dot,

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced a ban on Wednesday of all political advertising on the social media platform.

In a lengthy Twitter thread, Dorsey outlined his company’s decision and argued that a political message’s reach “should be earned, not bought.”

“A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet,” Dorsey said. “Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.”

...“Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes,” Dorsey said. “All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.”

...“Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes,” Dorsey said. “All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.”

...The statement appears to be in reference to fellow tech giant Facebook, which has stated that it will allow political advertisements even if they include false information.

“We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent,” Dorsey continued. “Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we’re stopping these too.”

Dorsey further called for regulators to create a framework for online political advertising to help “ensure a level playing field.”

...Twitter plans to reveal its final policy and begin enforcement in mid-November. Dorsey noted that some exemptions would exist, such as ads surrounding voter registration.

Read more here.

Who canceled the recession?

That is the question asked by Sundance in the Conservative Treehouse as new economic numbers were announced today.

Remember when the financial media and democrats were assuring everyone the U.S. economy was g.u.a.r.a.n.t.e.e.d to enter a recessionary phase? Well, apparently MAGA Trump canceled it… with the help of millions of U.S. middle-class workers who are spending their wage increases, bigly.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the third quarter (Q3) GDP growth estimate today, and the overall Q3 GDP growth is +1.9 percent. However, behind the economic growth stats the scale of U.S. Main Street strength is the real story.

Main Street consumer spending was up $64 billion on goods and $36 billion on services. As those who follow MAGAnomics closely will remember, the Main Street economy is founded upon middle-class spending. Strong jobs, wage growth, low taxes, low inflation, and low energy costs, means more disposable income. Disposable income grew 4.5% in the third quarter.

The U.S. economy is strong because approximately 80% of everything produced inside our economy is consumed inside our economy. As long as the underlying jobs market stays strong, consumer spending leads to self-fulfilling economic expansion. Main Street is doing very well.

The weakness is Wall Street investment into expanded production of goods in the U.S.

For 30+ years Wall Street has been investing overseas for production of goods; and with that process U.S. jobs were lost. President Trump has positioned the best return on production investment as the U.S. Tariffs on China and the EU bolster that approach.

For 30+ years Wall Street has been investing overseas for production of goods; and with that process U.S. jobs were lost. President Trump has positioned the best return on production investment as the U.S. Tariffs on China and the EU bolster that approach.

The key to reignite domestic investment is to pass the USMCA trade agreement which will provide certainty and allow corporate CFO’s to calculate Total Cost of Production (TCP). Once TCP can be calculated within the 5-year and 10-year rolling business plans, manufacturers will be able to determine specifics of U.S. investment; and/or retraction from Asian investment.

Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi knows the USMCA ratification is the key corporate investors are looking toward. As a result, and with the intent to keep the Trump economy as favorable as possible for her 2020 ambitions, Pelosi is stalling the passage of USMCA.

China and the EU continue to struggle as the U.S. economy remains strong. China and the EU devaluing their currency is driving up the value of the dollar, and dropping the import cost of goods. As a result, despite the tariffs, the U.S. continues to import deflation (lower prices of imports). Domestic production is healthy and inventories are turning.

Read more here.

7th graders demand free tampons

The Daily Dot has a story about 7th graders demanding free tampons in the girls' bathroom. Read the story here.

For what it's worth, my daughter would be satisfied if her school just had either soap or paper towels!

Two heroes

via Steven Hayward

"Transparent catering to teachers unions"

In the Daily Caller, Peter Hasson reports,

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pledging to crack down on school choice if elected, despite the fact that she sent her own son to an elite private school, publicly available records

...Warren has pledged to reduce education options for families, but she chose to send her son Alexander to Kirby Hall, an elite private school near Austin.

Read more here.

Pay Pal censors Sabo

In PJ Media, Matt Margolis has the story of how Pay Pal has silenced California street artist Sabo. Read it here.

"O.B.A.M.A. = One Big Ass Mistake, America!"

That is JJ Sefton's description of our former president, and I agree. Sefton links to Julie Kelly, who writes in American Greatness,

...rather than successfully hunting down terrorists including Kayla Mueller’s captors, Obama and his top national security officials hunted down Trump campaign aides. Baghdadi’s death should be a reminder—an infuriating one at that—of how the Obama administration, particularly the CIA and FBI, squandered vital resources in service to a politically motivated investigation into Trump and his presidential campaign rather than focusing their efforts on the legitimate threats facing the country.

...At the same time, Peter Strzok, the deputy assistant director for the FBI’s counterintelligence division which is supposed to protect Americans from a variety of foreign-based threats, kept himself busy by texting his girlfriend on an hourly basis about how they could get Trump. Tens of thousands of texts between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page between late 2015 and mid-2017 show that the pair was concerned not with how to prevent terrorists from attacking America but how to prevent Donald Trump from being president. The only mention of the name “Mueller” is Special Counsel Robert Mueller, not the young American woman kidnapped and tortured by one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.

...For more than a year, the leaders entrusted to protect the country and administer justice on behalf of Americans victimized by terrorists instead used their awesome reach and influence against a domestic political rival. They illegally leaked classified information; spied on American citizens solely based on their political activity; deceived a secret court; circulated political dirt disguised as official intelligence; withheld information from Congress; ambushed Trump advisors; and repeatedly misled the American people about an imaginary threat posed by “Russian collusion.”

...This is why the multiple inquiries underway at the Justice Department into the activities of Obama’s team in 2016 and early 2017 are so vital. The very people who have warned for nearly three years that Donald Trump poses a risk to national security are the people who actually have jeopardized our safety. Baghdadi’s delayed demise is just the latest example.

Read more here.

Is it now illegal to dispute any part of the trans extremist agenda?

Ace of Spades: "YouTube deletes Elgintensity video arguing the controversial position that men should not be permitted to compete in women's sports, apparently because it's now illegal to dispute any part of the trans extremist agenda." Ace then links to this Twitter post.

"Women had a good run. It’s over."

David Marcus writes an excellent satirical piece in the Federalist entitled In The New Transgender World, Women No Longer Exist.

The concept of being a woman is just a social construct, rooted of course in white supremacy, which is keeping men who are actually women from being their complete selves.

...The big point here is that there is no such thing as a woman. There never has been, and there is not now. “Woman” is a slur used by the patriarchy to keep non-binary, gender-neutral, trans people in a box. The very notion that women exist keeps so many people from being able to exist. This is why it must be absolutely clear that “women” do not exist.

Read more here.

God Bless America!

In a website called the BL, there is a video of a very moving ceremony honoring the newly appointed Joint Chiefs Of Staff. Watch it and read more here.

Epstein death homicide, not suicide!

Jeffrey Epstein's brother hired world-famous pathologist Dr. Michael Baden. Baden says the evidence points to homicide, rather than suicide. In fifty years of doing these exams, Dr. Baden has never had a case when two guards fell asleep at the same time! Whose DNA is on the sheets with which he supposedly hung himself? Dr. Baden is interviewed on Fox & Friends.

Woke history

In this episode of the Andrew Klavan show, Andrew compares the differing ways that Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis see human beings. Andrew also takes a look at the happenings in the Democrats' efforts to impeach President Trump. His guest is John Murawski, who wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled Woke History: Formula for National Demise.

"Sniffing a butt without consent"

From the satirical Babylon Bee:

U.S.—Everyone praised the classified "Hero Dog" for taking down ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Everyone, that is, except CNN, who quickly searched through the dog's internet history and college yearbooks. Sure enough, CNN found a picture of the Hero Dog partying at obedience school. In the picture, the dog is seen sniffing a butt without consent.

"Oh yeah, good old [redacted]? He was nuts!" said one German Shepherd who attended Old Yaler Obedience School with the hero dog, according to a CNN report. "He was always sniffing any butt he could find. Cats, dogs, humans, you name it. He didn't have a preference. He identified as pansniffual."

Troubling reports from classmates indicate that the dog sniffed all these butts without consent. The dog wrote cryptic things in his college yearbook, apparently referring to different butt-sniffing maneuvers such as the Surprise Sniffarooski and the Canine's Triangle.

The dog has issued a statement: "I like butts. I've always liked butts. I still like butts, but I never sniff butts to the point of excess. Who's a good boy? I am."

Democrats immediately called for the dog to be court-martialed and for the death of Baghdadi to be overturned.

How to lure Californians to your state

Here is another one from the satirical Babylon Bee.

U.S.—New billboards have been popping up in California with the slogan “Move to Texas: We have electricity!” Many see this as a play to lure jobs away from California, as many jobs rely on electricity, especially in the modern economy. This could especially be attractive to jobs in the tech sector.

Roy Rivera, a tech analyst with decades of experience in cutting edge technology, explained that “a lot of tech uses electricity.” He then pointed to a chart showing that tech businesses can be at least 300% more effective when they have power.

California Governor Gavin Newsom was dismissive of Texas's claims, though. “They’re making false claims of being able to deliver electricity 24/7,” Newsom said, “but it just can’t be done.” Newsom was also dismissive of the Lone Star State's other claims, such as affordable housing, plenty of water, cheap gas, plastic straws, and not constantly being on fire. “It sounds made up,” said Newsom. “I don’t even think there is a Texas.”

California plans to fight back. It’s now working on a wall to keep people and jobs from leaving California. The planned wall should extend along the entire California border, except for the southern part.

Warning: explicitly Christian!

Ironically, the satirical Babylon Bee reports,

U.S.—In a move designed to protect listeners from content deemed too offensive, the Recording Industry Association of America will add a new "Explicitly Christian" warning label to Kanye West’s latest album, Jesus Is King.

“The new ‘EC’ label will ensure that no one is accidentally exposed to the shockingly Christian messages Kanye is spouting,” a spokesperson for the RIAA told sources. “Consumers deserve to be warned about objectionable lyrics like ‘I b*w down to the K**g’ and ‘accept Him as your L*rd and S***ior’.”

“There’s even an entire song about Chick-fil-A on the album,” he added with a shudder.

At publishing time, the RIAA considered applying the label to all contemporary Christian music but found most of it was too watered down and not explicitly Christian enough to justify the warning.

"This is a free man talking!"

Ace has a post up featuring Kanye West talking about leaving the Democratic plantation. Read and listen here.

"Mellow out?" The evidence isn't there!

Nicoletta Lanese reports in LiveScience,

People may smoke weed to "mellow out," but experts say medicinal cannabis and its chemical relatives don’t effectively relieve mental health disorders like depression or anxiety. The evidence just isn't there.

That's according to the most comprehensive analysis of medical cannabinoids and mental health to date.

...The research included about 3,000 people and focused on six mental health disorders: depression, anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Tourette syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychosis.

...THC failed to meaningfully improve the major symptoms of any of the six disorders, and many patients on the drug experienced more adverse effects and withdrawal symptoms compared with those who took a placebo.

In addition, research suggests that repeated or heavy cannabis use can permanently disrupt the body's natural "endocannabinoid system," which produces chemicals that bind to the same receptors as cannabinoids do, though how this disruption affects people with different mental health disorders remains under investigation. Anecdotally, the drugs appear to have a "paradoxical effect" where they help people feel better in the short term, but worsen their symptoms over time, Krakower said. For example, recent research suggests that cannabis may reduce ratings of stress, depression, and anxiety, at first, but chronic use may worsen depressive symptoms over time.

In short, the experts agree: medicinal cannabinoids should be subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny of every other psychiatric medication.

In the future, Krakower hopes that both the public and health care providers stay informed about the actual science of cannabinoid use and make decisions based on solid data, rather than hearsay.

Read more here.

What our kids are learning in schools controlled by leftists

Dennis Prager explains in PJ Media,

Here are some of the messages the left has been giving America's young people:

Your past is terrible, and your future is terrible. The American past is a story of genocide, slavery, racism, patriarchy and colonialism. You should be ashamed of it. As regards your future, your very existence is in jeopardy. You may well die at a young age unless society completely shifts from fossil fuels to wind and solar power. In fact, your future is so bleak you should probably not consider getting married and having children.

If you are a girl, you should know that American society has contempt for you. You will be paid less than a man for the exact same work and exact same number of hours of work. You will have between a 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 chance of being sexually assaulted if you attend college. There is a glass ceiling that will prevent you from professional success. And professional success, not marriage and family, is what you should concentrate on.

That none of the above is true is irrelevant to the left. What is relevant to the left is that these messages make young women leftists -- because they make them angry (virtually all leftists are angry), sad (there are happy liberals and happy conservatives but very few happy leftists) and lonely (singles are overwhelmingly on the left).

If you are a young black, the most important thing for you to know is that this country loathes you -- that racism is "part of our DNA," as President Barack Obama put it -- and that just being black gets you suspended or expelled from school, shot by police, denied the vote whenever possible and disproportionately imprisoned.

Again, almost none of that is true. But a happy black -- let alone a black grateful for being an American -- is much less likely to support the left.

If you are a young Latino, know the white majority is so xenophobic that if it could, it would expel you from the country.
If you are a white male, you are the recipient of unearned privilege, and you are a racist.

Boys and girls, you need to know from as young an age as possible that there is actually no such thing as "boys and girls." That is why your teachers have been told not to refer to you as "boys and girls" but only as "students."

Young people, you should know that there is no God. So don't look to God or religion for meaning. They are for the emotionally handicapped and for intellectual lightweights. For meaning, look to social action.

Christianity, the religion of the great majority of Americans since America's founding, the religion of nearly all your parents or grandparents, justified slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans and the persecution of gays. And in our time, most people who call themselves believing Christians are bigots and hypocrites. Whatever good was achieved was done so by believers with secular Enlightenment values, not Judeo-Christian values. Islam, on the other hand, has always been a religion of peace.

Western civilization is nothing for you to be proud of. It is neither culturally nor morally superior to any other civilization or culture. And in many ways, it is worse: It is largely a record of persecution and genocide. That's why you will no longer celebrate Columbus Day but rather Indigenous Peoples Day.

Columbus Day will not be the only national holiday we will either erase or minimize in importance. Whereas Americans have always had meaningful holidays to celebrate and enrich their lives, you will have few or none (aside from Halloween). Previous generations found great meaning in Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays. You won't. Their birthdays are no longer celebrated. Throughout American history, July Fourth meant a great deal to nearly all Americans. They celebrated it with patriotic marches, parades and speeches. No longer. Anyway, America wasn't founded in 1776: According to The New York Times, it was founded in 1619, when the first slaves arrived. As for Memorial Day, this once solemn day in which Americans placed flowers at the graves of those who died to preserve our freedoms, is just another day off. And most of the deceased probably died in vain anyway.

You have few American heroes. Hey, kids, America's founders, known as heroes to every generation until the present one, were not heroes at all. They were rich white men who believed in patriarchy, the suppression of women and slavery. They were all racists, and some were rapists. In short, as an American, you have few, if any, heroes.

Only when one understands that the left -- the left, not liberalism -- has always and everywhere been a destructive force can one begin to understand what is happening to America. And the left has damaged no group more than America's youth. Leftists speak about "the children" -- but they care about "the children" as much as the communists cared about "the workers."

"It's time for every American patriot to rally around the president."

In PJ Media, Spengler writes,

...Nothing less than the American republic is at stake here. It's time for every American patriot to rally around the president. Some of my neo-conservative ex-friends are cheering for the wrong side. Shame on them.

For the record, I don't care whether there was quid pro quo with Ukraine or not. If President Trump used military aid as a bargaining chip to persuade the government of Ukraine to investigate foreign subversion of our political system, he was doing his job as commander-in-chief to protect this country from its external enemies. The parade of striped-pants cookie-pushers from the State Department feeding information to closed-door Democratic Party kangaroo courts in the House of Representatives is irrelevant. Trump is fighting a mutiny by the U.S. intelligence community. If the mutineers succeed, it will be the end of the republic. If a cabal of bureaucrats nestling in the bowels our $80 billion a year intelligence bureaucracy can bring down an elected president of the United States, the republic is finished.

...The power and capacity to abuse the power of America's intelligence services has grown to the point that it endangers our freedoms. Make no mistake: If they can railroad the president of the United States and members of the cabinet, they can do pretty much anything they want to you. Defend your freedoms. Support President Trump.

Read more here.

"The walls are closing in!" On whom?

Brian C Joondeph has written a very interesting article in the American Thinker. Read the whole thing here.

"Successes such as this one undercut the narratives they’re trying to force into the national conversation."

In the Federalist, Mollie Hemingway writes,

It takes effort to try to spin the unalloyed good news of the Trump administration’s success as a net negative, but corporate media were up for the challenge. That’s because successes such as this one undercut the narratives they’re trying to force into the national conversation.

...The 2016 campaign was a humiliating defeat for Hillary Clinton, but also for political media. Media outlets never understood the electorate they were paid big dollars to write and broadcast news about. They confidently asserted Trump had no chance to win and convinced themselves that casting off journalistic standards was defensible because of the certain ruin Trump would bring.

Instead, President Trump’s administration has been marked by success in the domestic and foreign spheres. The economy is humming, including job and wage growth the media had previously said was unlikely to impossible to achieve. This is due to tax cuts, tax reform, and unprecedented deregulation. No new wars have been launched, much less the apocalyptic nuclear wars the media predicted. A long-overdue recalibration with China is taking place.

What is good news for the country is bad news for the media and their political allies.

One of the tools they can utilize in their war on the president is to deny him honest media coverage of his successes, making it more difficult to clip news of them discussing those successes in an honest fashion. It’s not a conspiracy so much as a shared mindset that kicked into action this weekend.

...Impeaching the president who oversaw the operation looks even worse than just impeaching the president who has survived a non-stop, years-long campaign from the media, Democrats, and other Resistance members. For impeachment to have any chance of survival, the media need to both downplay and move quickly from the story back to their uncritical repetition of Democratic Party talking points.

That’s why the media quickly pivoted to a story of fans at the Washington Nationals’ World Series game booing the president on the day of the Baghdadi announcement. If it’s newsworthy that the town that went 96% (no exaggeration!) against Trump in 2016 before running the Resistance against the electorate is booing the president, it’s more because of what it says about them than what it says about the country or its president.

Still, it was a means to get back to their preferable push of impeachment and away from stories that make them appear foolish.

It’s understandable some in the media want to destroy their political opponent, but they could do a better job of hiding their anger at achievements that are undoubtedly good for America and make the country safer.

Read more here.

"...the President's decision to withdraw troops from Syria ahead of the Turkish incursion into Kurdish-held territory was a precursor."

JJ Sefton writes in his Morning Report at Ace of Spades blog,

...the reaction and fallout continues over the highly successful raid that took out ISIS leader al-Baghdadi. On a foreign policy level, there is no doubt that this raid cements, at least in the minds of anyone engaged in critical thinking and not having their brain marinated in both Trump derangement as well as the completely wrong globalist weltanschauung this President's correct instincts on foreign policy. By examining events that led up to the action, it is clear that the President's decision to withdraw troops from Syria ahead of the Turkish incursion into Kurdish-held territory was a precursor. It had the effect of both giving the Russians and the Turks reason to not interfere without really even knowing the plan as well as the side benefit of leaving egg on the face of every Leftist pundit, politician and military "expert" who shrieked about "abandoning our allies, Kurds, ZOMFG!"

What these imbeciles fail to realize is that Trump doesn't share their idiotic beliefs on geo-politics that for decades have proven completely wrong and with tragic results.

Read more and click on his links here.

Freedom, Liberty, and Self-determination

CBD writes today in the Ace of Spades blog,

In fact, Western political philosophy relies on a mindset that is rare, and getting rarer. Every idiot Millennial who waxes poetic about a socialist paradise, and every politician who chips away at free speech, and every soccer mom who embraces socialist policies because "it's for the children," erodes the 2,500 year-old bedrock of freedom and liberty and self-determination.

Are we becoming like the rest of the world? America was blissfully free of the sort of violent but pointless protest that much of the world favors. Sure, we have had our share, but for the most part, when Americans protested we had some sort of concrete goal in mind. But that seems to be changing, and the free-floating aggression that we see in most of the world has been embraced by the current crop of violent protesters. But what are they protesting? "We don't like the status quo?" Sounds rather 3rd-worldish to me.

Read more here.

Reverting back to their original pussy settings

As Trump announces that American forces also killed al Bagdaddi's replacement, Ace of Spades is ready with some sarcasm directed toward the inevitable #NeverTrump critics:

Don't you know that when you kill one replacement, ten other replacements take his place?

Say, remember how rootin'-tootin' kill-crazy our super-patriotic pro-war media was just ten days ago?

Why have they reverted to their original pussy settings all of a sudden, do you think?

It's almost as if they flip-flop on matters of literal life and death of American soldiers based on base, puerile partisan animus.

Did he miss anything?

Victor Davis Hanson is simply the best. No one is more thorough. He remembers everything! Here is a post a post he wrote yesterday in American Greatness.

Donald Trump is now in the midst of another coup frenzy that has the Left accusing him of being crazy. But he already took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test. It was a simple cognitive exam and he aced it, as would most people. The Left, remember, had called in a Yale psychiatrist to testify that Trump was demented, during the lulls between the first impeachment, the serial “Russian collusion” hoaxes, the emoluments clause psychodrama and Robert Mueller’s “walls-are-closing-in,” “turning-point,” and “bombshell” investigation.

Perhaps the wrong public figures took the test.

At times, former Vice President Joe Biden is unaware of which town, indeed which state, he is in. He slurs his words often. Biden strings together unconnected thoughts that result in utter incoherence—not alleviated by his near shouting emphatics or fits of pique at reporters.

Sometimes, Biden forgets names, and referents, and appears befuddled generally. His biography is mythical. He cannot address Ukraine and the role of his son, Hunter Biden, because, after all, what would a truthful person say? That the vice president of the United States allowed his wastrel son to become a multimillionaire by leveraging his father’s office with foreign corrupt governments? And was Biden’s moral lapse atypical, or rather reflective of prior ethical laxities that destroyed his two earlier presidential bids when he variously lied about his bio, plagiarized, and used a variety of racially insensitive remarks of the sort that would have characterized most others as racists.

Shouldn’t Hillary Clinton also take the MoCa Test? At times she seems completely delusional—or is she a bit unhinged?

In one of the strangest paradoxes in American history, Clinton apparently does not accept or cannot remember that she hired Christopher Steele, a foreign national, through the use of three deceptive firewalls—the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS—in order to smear candidate Trump from bought Russian sources. She also simply will not admit that other campaign aides in 2016 were working to get dirt on Trump as well from disgruntled Ukrainians.

While fleeing from this reality, she had concocted a fantasy that Donald Trump won the Electoral College not because her hare-brained campaign team sent her southward to win a “mandate” by flipping unflippable red-states Georgia and Arizona, while neglecting a supposedly secure blue wall in the north.

Now she apparently believes an erstwhile, post-election ally, third-candidate leftist Jill Stein, was a Russian “asset” used by Moscow to draw votes from her candidacy, while current Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard likewise is in the de facto service of the Russians. Who knew that outsiders Trump, Stein, and Gabbard were all Russian moles variously working against Hillary’s interests?

And all this from Hillary Clinton, who inaugurated the 2009 disastrous Russian appeasement scheme known as “reset” by pushing a red plastic Jacuzzi button in Geneva, and who was instrumental in green-lighting North American uranium sales to Russian interests, which interests through third parties had donated to her foundation and indirectly paid Russians to interfere in the 2016 election to destroy her opponent?

Mitt Romney often was seen as the pinnacle of silk-stocking Republican sobriety and judiciousness. He was a gentleman who did not stoop to reply in kind to the smears leveled at him by the Obama team in the 2012 campaign—from putting dogs on his car roof, to being a youthful hazer, to an elevator-owning elite, to the husband of an equestrienne, to wishing to poison the air and starve the poor.

Romney used to like reality-television star and businessman Donald Trump, at least in the sense of making occasional trips to Trump Tower to enlist his endorsements. No doubt he thought he was legitimizing the outsider Trump by allowing the latter to endorse him. But after the implosion of the once impressive 2016 Republican primary field, Romney assumed the mantle of senior establishment Trump foe. If he played by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules with Barack Obama, he certainly did not with Donald Trump, blasting him frequently as a fraud, con, dishonest, a bully, and greedy—clueless that instead Trump served as some sort of sharp planer that ripped off the thin, shiny mahogany veneer pasted over our particle-board establishment.

Romney seems to have entered Hillary/Biden fantasyland by admitting to being a “lurker” on social media—one who adopts an anonymous and secret Twitter account (in Romney’s case under the nom de guerre “Pierre Delecto”), to channel and encourage nice stories about himself, and to attack vicariously those who do not share his views or self-admiration.

In other words, Romney, of all people, has now entered the unhinged territory of former Obama EPA director Lisa Jackson, who created a fictional royal persona “Richard Windsor” to communicate with green activists and others, without leaving an official EPA footprint. (Why do our government officials favor these foreign-sounding pseudonyms—or do we remember former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s handle “Carlos Danger”?)

These people should not be considered by any stretch of the imagination our “establishment” at least if there any positive sense left in the world. Yet they are typical, not aberrant of a habit of equating appearances, credentials, and demeanor of not necessarily talented people as proof of excellence and deserved authority. Where you live, what school branded you, what title, past and present, you can parlay, whom you know, and whom you married somehow have ended up far more important than what you actually have done. They remind one of played out “senators” from the last generations of the Roman Empire.

Eminent Scoundrels
The curious fact about the moral meltdowns and exposés of the sharks Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein was not that their respective sexual assaults were at all surprising in such polluted and target-rich waters.

The surprising development was that both were ever outed, given that their felonious behavior went on for years under the noses of the elite whom they enriched, befriended, leveraged and compromised—a fact often the object of jest among our celebrity social activists. Their downfall apparently was not due just to their own well-known sexual coercions and perversions, but mostly from becoming too ostentatious, too public, and too haughty about both.

That narcissism drew attention and put their elite compromisers and compromised in an untenable position of aiding and abetting molesters and assaulters. And so, when both became more liabilities than assets, then the elite was “shocked” about what had gone under their noses. Both Weinstein and Epstein were nefariously cynical. They grasped that the power, the money, the influence and the fun that these two parlayed far outweighed the ethical considerations of their friendly circles.

The top echelons of our intelligence agencies largely have been similarly discredited. Before Trump, both John Brennan and James Clapper, respectively CIA director and director of national intelligence, lied under oath to Congress—and paid nothing for doing so. Or rather their past prevarications became good CV items for the new fake news industry. From them, we respectively once learned that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was largely secular and that jihad was a mostly a non-violent expression of personal growth and discovery. In their world, drones never hit bystanders, the intelligence agencies never spy on Americans, and the two of them never lied under oath. Both leveraged their past service and security clearances into lucrative cable TV analyst contracts—and often editorialized about ongoing investigations in which they were either knee-deep or of which they later became targets.

The strange thing about James Comey was not his serial leaking to the press, his deception of a FISA court, his effort to subvert the Trump candidacy by peddling a false dossier and using informants, or even warping the Clinton email investigation. Rather, the rub was that Comey was not aberrant, but rather the apt expression of the Washington, D.C. culture of the FBI, at least as epitomized by his conniving and often deceitful associates such as James Baker, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, who did not worry much about ruining the lives of others.

Page and Strozk apparently post facto classified Comey’s presidential memos as merely confidential to preclude their ex-leaker-boss’s felonious exposure. And the two seemed to have texted about reworking the 302 interview memos of the Michael Flynn ambush, again post facto, to ensure he seemed guilty of lying. Anywhere there was a major FBI scandal of the last three years, Peter Strzok was to be found—the Comey-McCabe go-to fixer when there was rigging to do.

Perhaps once a Clapper, McCabe, or Strzok begins to spill his proverbial guts to preclude a felony charge, the entire structure may come crumbling down—and spark Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to hit the accelerator to use the impeachment hysteria as the last firewall between the complete collapse of the corrupt Obama elite intelligence hierarchy.

Celebrity Nothings
The National Basketball Association is going the way of Hollywood, as its hip, cool, woke athletes turn out to be lions as they so often trash their own culture of freedom, and mice when they squeak homilies about their Chinese paymasters.

We are learning that sports and film are industries of outspoken, moralistic scolds who as opportunists rail at supposed unwoke Americans as they do the bidding of fascistic Chinese authoritarians. Harvey Weinstein thrived in Hollywood for so long because he did on the sexual level what the Chinese did on a financial one—bet that almost every star, producer, and director would abdicate moral responsibility in return for power or money or both, and as Medieval penance, then virtue signal about the trivial to square the selling of the soul in matters fundamental.

Adam Schiff is a Harvard Law School graduate and, as he reminds us, for a time a federal attorney. But once he powered his way onto the national stage, it is hard to find any statement of his that has proved to be true. Were he not in Congress, but again a regional federal attorney he long ago would have been fired for unprofessionalism and perhaps illegal behavior as well.

For nearly two years, he winked and nodded to the country that he had seen damning classified information, which, of course, being upright Schiff, he could not disclose but would shortly lead to a Trump impeachment, removal, resignation—as he sped the process along with periodic leaks to pet journalists. When Schiff felt the presidential Ukrainian call transcript was too nondescript, he simply made his own up version, before redefining it as a parody when people noticed.

He has now created an impeachment hysteria on the basis of second- and third-hand gossip, bundled together by a former intelligence officer, Trump opponent, and Biden associate, who under the guise of a “whistleblower” first met Schiff’s staff to translate his rumors into legalese before notifying the inspector general—a process about which Schiff flat out lied.

Schiff’s notion of an impeachment inquiry is to forbid transparency, to hector hostile witnesses in closed session and to publicly praise obsequious ones, and then to step out to cameras, furrow his brow, bite his lip, and lecture that he had never seen such “incriminating” disclosures the substance of which he, unfortunately, cannot disclose, as he leaks distortions to the leftwing media. Schiff’s Star Chamber seems merely a desperate last stand to derail ongoing audits of Obama-era officials by damaging Trump to such a degree that he has no authority to ensure the continuation of Justice Department and inspector general investigations.

Cattle Brands
What explains the bankruptcy of the elite?

We have confused credentials with merit—as we learned when Hollywood stars and rich people tried to bribe and buy their mostly lackadaisical children into named schools, eager for the cattle brand BAs and without a care whether their offspring would be well educated.

Graduating from today’s Yale or Harvard law school is not necessarily a sign of achievement, much less legal expertise. Mostly, entrance into heralded schools is a reminder of past good prep school grades and test scores winning admittance—or using some sort of old-boy, networking, athletic, or affirmative action pull.

Being a “senior” official at some alphabet government agency also means little any more outside of the nomenklatura. Academia, the media, and entertainment industries are likewise supposedly meritocratic without being based on demonstrable worth. Otherwise, why would college graduates know so little, the media so often report fantasies as truth, and Hollywood focus on poor remakes? Take all the signature brand names that the Baby Boomers inherited from prior generations—Harvard, Yale, the New York Times, NPR, CNN, the Oscars, the NFL, the NBA, the FBI, the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and a host of others. And then ask whether they enhanced or diminished such inheritances?

A country over $22 trillion in debt, with an open border, an existential conflict with China, and a West in cultural and demographic decline, for two years was told falsely that Donald Trump supposedly knew of a meeting in advance at Trump Tower, that James Comey would supposedly testify that he never told Trump he was not under investigation, and that Trump would soon be indicted, resign, or impeached. The amount of elite energy spent replaying the embarrassing progressive 2016 loss and trying to abort the Trump presidency before the 2020 election, remember, was the product of our best and brightest, the top echelon of our law enforcement and intelligence communities, and our most esteemed political and media elite.

To paraphrase an assessment found in Tacitus’s Agricola, the current American nomenklatura has all but ruined our institutions and branded all that success.

The hero dog is okay!

In Breitbart, Joshua Caplan reports that the dog who chased al Bagdadi into the tunnel is back on duty.

How sensitive of them!

From the satirical Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In order to ensure all headlines about Islamic terrorism are culturally sensitive and do not offend any brave freedom fighters in the Middle East, The Washington Post has retained an ISIS marketing representative.

All headlines published about terrorism will be run by the marketing rep. The PR rep was immediately put to work as headline writers worked to come up with a sensitive take on the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

"Do you think we should call him an extremist terrorist leader or is that considered offensive?" one intern asked the representative, Aarif al-Samarrai, in a brainstorming session Sunday.

An angered Samarrai began firing his AK-47 into the air and screamed, "ALLAHU AKBAR!" at this suggestion, apparently not happy with the angle. Post writers frantically tried to come up with different headlines to appease him, such as the following:

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, mischevious rapscallion, passes away of entirely natural causes and definitely not a raid ordered by Trump. Also Trump is bad.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, noted firearm and explosive enthusiast, dies at 48.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, prophet of God and all-around swell guy, rewarded with 72 virgins.

Evil Americans kill innocent Middle Eastern farmer.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48

He was finally appeased with the last suggestion, and the Post was able to run it. "This should make everybody on the internet happy," said one writer, excited to see what Twitter's reaction would be.

Why do so many millennials like socialism and communism?

In PJ Media, Stephen Green tries to figure out why so many millennials like socialism or communism.

...My first thought was that these young Americans are merely the victims of a bad education. They probably know nothing of the brutalities of Lenin's secret police, or of the millions of Ukrainians purposely starved to death so that Stalin could have his collectivized farms. Millennials have never been taught that Cambodia's energetic communists killed no less than a quarter of their own people. They might not know about the retributions and "re-education" camps that North Vietnam brought to the South after American forces left. Semi-capitalist China is today a wealthy country, but Millennials know little of the tens of millions of random deaths in Mao's attempt to fully communize the country. They've been taught nothing, at best, about the approximately 100 million deaths attributable directly to communism.

But then I had a second thought.

We're seeing the results of another one of Lenin's quotes: "The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses." The press, the universities, and even the dominant popular culture have all been co-opted by the progressive left, after a decades-long march through the institutions.

So if you've been taught that your victimhood group has rights superior to your own... If you've been told your whole life that economic progress is killing the planet... If you believe in your heart that needs and wants trump economic reality...

...well, then what's wrong with a little communism? Hell, a lot of communism? They've been taught this; no wonder they believe it. Or as Lenin also said, "Give me your four-year-olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state."

One misinformed Millennial, one vote... one time.

Read more here.

Who was protecting him?

Robert Spencer writes in PJ Media,

Islamic State (ISIS) caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead, killed by an American airstrike in northwest Syria. President Trump announced this morning: “U.S. Special operations forces executed a dangerous and daring night-time raid in northwestern Syria, and accomplished their mission in grand style. The U.S. personnel were incredible.”

But the question now should not be avoided: why was al-Baghdadi hiding so close to Turkey? Were the Turks protecting him? If not them, then who was?

It strains credulity that Turkey, with its interests in northern Syria, did not know he was there. Al-Baghdadi was killed in Barisha in the Idlib province, a town of no more than 2500 people right on the Turkish border. If the Turks didn’t know that the world’s most wanted terrorist was there, they’re incompetent beyond measure. If they did know, they’re complicit in protecting him.

Given the track record of the Turkish government in aiding the Islamic State, complicity is much more likely than cluelessness. There ought to be a full investigation of Turkey’s involvement, and if the Erdogan regime is definitively found to have been protecting al-Baghdadi, Turkey should be expelled from NATO and the sham alliance with the United States ended. Given, however, the determined head-in-the-sand policy of the State Department establishment, none of that is likely to happen.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State is likely to go on pretty much as it has for the last year or two, after losing almost all of the area of its former caliphate in Iraq and Syria. If al-Baghdadi has a successor, he will be, like al-Baghdadi himself, a caliph without a caliphate. The Islamic State is still very much a presence around the world, but doesn’t control any significant expanse of territory, as it did when Barack Obama was President.

Read more here.

Trump outsmarts Putin

Joseph Klein writes in FrontPage Magazine,

...Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is peeved that President Trump had not given her advance notice of the al-Baghdadi mission, insulted the president to his face about ten days ago when she accused him of helping Russian President Vladimir Putin by withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria. "All roads with you lead to Putin," Pelosi said before storming out of a White House meeting. President Trump was right not to trust erratic Pelosi or her leak-prone Democrat colleagues like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff with advance notice of such a dangerous mission. It could have ended disastrously if they had allowed information about the raid to get out before our troops had returned safely.

President Trump made clear that U.S. forces would remain in Syria as long as necessary to combat ISIS and to protect the oil fields in northern Syria from ISIS or Iranian seizure. Neither Russia nor the Syrian Assad regime will be getting their hands on the oil fields either, so long as the U.S. maintains its military presence there. What exactly then will Russia be gaining from the U.S. withdrawal in northeastern Syria, where the Syrian Kurds had been relying on U.S. protection from Turkey’s forces? Not as much as President Trump’s critics think, according to Zev Chafets, a prolific writer who was a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Magazine. In an article entitled “Trump Outsmarts Putin With Syria Retreat,” Mr. Chafets wrote that Russia will, by necessity, have to take on more responsibility for fighting ISIS and other jihadists as well as reconstructing Syria.

Read more here.

"Maybe behind all the self-righteous indignation over Trump’s rhetoric, there is some real grief."

In FrontPage Magazine, Robert Spencer writes,

the reaction on the Left to al-Baghdadi’s death is telling, but it is more for their having to deal with yet another success of a President they’re determined to destroy than for any actual love for al-Baghdadi. Then again, the “austere religious scholar” did hate America as much as they do. Maybe behind all the self-righteous indignation over Trump’s rhetoric, there is some real grief.

Read more here.

"...yet another national security and policy win for President Trump"

In his Morning Report in the Ace of Spades blog. JJ Sefton gives us his thoughts on Trump's most recent victory:

The raid that took out ISIS "caliph" Al-Baghdadi was yet another national security and policy win for President Trump on a number of levels. First, despite the blasting of the President for our withdrawal from the area, the so-called "abandoned" Kurds actually helped and participated in the operation. Ironically as the mission was completed, the culturally irrelevant and unfunny Saturday Night Live aired a sketch depicting Trump as a coddler/enabler of ISIS, which has essentially been the party line in the Democrat-Media Complex since the withdrawal of our ground forces.


The reaction from those quarters to the President's description of the target and the raid itself has ranged from idiotic to disgusting. Here we have a medieval bloodthirsty thug who has committed murder, mayhem and rape, including that of American citizens, and the Washington Post describes him as "an austere cleric." Meanwhile the eggheads and Sergeant Pepper generals are having the vapors because the President's accurate description of Baghdadi as a coward who died like a dog might enrage terrorists to strike us. Um, what the actual fuck have they been doing to us for the past 30 years and, in fact, 1,400, geniuses? It's the insane inversion of these evil vermin and their sick totalitarian political ideology-cum-pseudo religion into peace loving victims of America, western civilization and Jooz that has amped up and ramped up their rage. Obama gave Osama a dignified burial at sea with an imam (or a chaplain acting as a stand-in IIRC) presiding over the affair and what did that get us? In fact, Obama's precipitous bug-out from Iraq in the first place left a power vacuum that created ISIS in the first place, or has everyone forgotten that? I'm sure the troll contingent will be quick to point the finger at Trump for "abandoning the Kurds and inciting ISIS" despite the fact of what this raid has done, and the lack of a geopolitical/strategic understanding of the area in question. No matter. The fact is the President is willing not to sugarcoat things in PC gobbledygook and call things as it and normal people see them. That's what makes him so appealing as a political figure and as a leader. What's done is done and it's another good day to be an American.

Go here to read more and click on his links.

This pisses me off

After our president held his press conference praising our military for their takedown of al Baghdadi, he and Melania attended the World Series game between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros. The crowd chanted "Lock him up, lock him up" when the Trumps appeared on the jumbotron. I say the sooner he moves those bureaucrats out of the DC swamp, the better. Amber Athey has more, including the "Lock him up" shouts in the Daily Caller here.

"Kayla"

I hope you watched every second of President Trump's wonderful speech this morning. If so, you may have wanted know more about the woman named Kayla that the President referred to several times. Her name was Kayla Mueller. She was an aid worker from Arizona. She was captured by ISIS and repeatedly raped by al Baghdadi. Chris White has more in The Daily Caller here.

"Obama was promising accountability for the extremely destructive financial crisis of 2008 and for the Iraq War before that. But he didn’t deliver; he became instead a protector of a corrupt ruling class, and a racial demagogue."

Someone who calls himself Bronze Age Pervert, and is the author of a book entitled Bronze Age Mindset, writes in the American Mind,

The new left has alienated large swathes of younger men especially who otherwise would have been sympathetic to its causes. Many voted for Obama and were very much of the “green” faction for example. They weren’t doing so because they were antifa or communists or radicals—in temperament, background, profession, many would have probably been young Republicans before George W. Bush—but did so because the Republican party of the time, the party of Romney and Paul Ryan, was bankrupt in ideas and spirit and had nothing to offer. Obama was promising accountability for the extremely destructive financial crisis of 2008 and for the Iraq War before that. But he didn’t deliver; he became instead a protector of a corrupt ruling class, and a racial demagogue.

...The anti-male and anti-White rhetoric of the new left is extreme. The racial attacks on whites in particular approaches exterminationist propaganda seen only in, e.g., the Hutu against the Tutsi in 1990’s Rwanda.

...state-funded universities routinely hold “white privilege” seminars and orientation sessions, promoting a concept the plain meaning of which is to dispossess people of property and civil rights based on their biology.

...strangely enough today it is the large corporations, Big Tech, high finance and other white collar institutions that promote the most restrictive and aggressive leftism. Conservative ideology, especially that pushed by the incompetent but much-hyped Paul Ryan, rather slavishly seems to serve and support the large monopolies that promote mass immigration, mass surveillance, and the most bizarre type of speech restrictions, not only on its own employees, but now on American society at large. Many are unapologetically censoring Americans and otherwise abusing their civil rights on behalf of foreign powers—Russia, however, generally not being one of these.

...The left completely abandoned Americanism in the 1960’s; at this point they’ve also abandoned biological reality. Vitalism is all that is left against their demented biological Leninism. Encouraging health, normality, and physical nobility against their celebration of deformity, obesity, and sexual catamitism must be one of the basic functions of conservatism in our time. It is one of the reasons my message is powerful among many who are fed up with the left’s gospel of wretchedness: what is your plan to take that on?

...If you fail to see that you live in the Soviet Union of the 1970’s or 1980’s, or rather something slightly even more repressive than the Eastern Bloc of that time, it may be you don’t know about the threats, financial ruin, and mob violence that Trump supporters and anyone really who steps out of line has been subject to since at least 2016—but actually since some time before that.

Read more here.

What to do about U.S. nukes in Turkey?

In Popular Mechanics, Joe Pappalardo writes about the 50 nuclear weapons the U.S. has at an airbase in Turkey.

The first thing to consider when contemplating any heist is the loot. At the center of the stage here are B61 nuclear bombs. Designed in 1963, these have what’s known as a variable yield; set a dial on the various versions and you get a blast as small as .3 kilotons or as high as 340 kt. For some scale, the U.S. dropped a 15 kt bomb on Hiroshima.

The bombs are sleek but heavy. They are each 11 feet long, and 13 inches thick, and weigh about 700 pounds. There are 25 underground secure vaults called Weapons Security Storage Systems dug into the ground inside aircraft protective shelters. Each W3 can hold up to four of these nuclear weapons, but there are only 50 at Incirlik, according to a report this week from The New York Times and confirmed by President Donald Trump's tweets.

The location of tactical nuclear weapons in aircraft shelters is part of the Cold War legacy, when airplanes remained on alert to drop tactical nukes on any Soviet hordes advancing along its southern flank. But today, no warplanes at Incirlik these days are even capable of carrying the nukes.

...Geopolitics, not strategy, kept the B61 bombs in place in Turkey. Now the situation on the ground is changing, as Turkey has defied the U.S. and pushed into Syria, attacking (now-former) U.S. allies and even bracketing U.S. advisor positions with artillery fire. To further complicate things, Incirlik is only 70 miles from the Syrian border, leading to questions over the security of the nuclear bombs.

But can you even set off a stolen nuke? It’s not easy — but that is not the only risk that a rogue nuke poses.

...Even if the Turks don’t talk about them, the nuclear weapons in Incirlik are on the table as bargaining chips in a dangerous geopolitical game between regional and global powers. The irony is that these weapons, located abroad to reassure an ally against a threat that no longer exists, are now a source of such destabilization and friction.

Read more here.

Committing a felony and getting away with it

Jonathan Turley writes in USA Today about that time James Clapper lied to Congress and got away with it.

Clapper will establish a standard that will be hard to overcome in the future. He lied about a massive, unconstitutional surveillance program and then admitted that he made an “untruthful” statement. That would seem to satisfy the most particular prosecutor in submitting a case to a grand jury, but this is Washington.

Read more here.

Remembering that ISIS was initially armed by Obama

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance presents evidence that ISIS was initially armed by Obama/Kerry. Read the whole thing here.

Trump on Syrian withdrawal: "forgot to mention we’ve got one last thing to do before we go…"

A commenter named Daniel in the Conservative Treehouse makes a good point about Trump's Syria actions:

Sounds pretty Trumpian! Tells the world we are out of the middle east then takes Bagdadi. Think about what the terrorists thought when they heard this? Turkey immediately moved in (though top be fair Turkey said they were going in and Trump pulled out in response) and all hell broke lose… Apparently there was some attack in Kentucky related to this as well.

But the short of it was he said we are not going to be there, they relaxed and BOOM! Trump turns around saying, oh yeah, forgot to mention we’ve got one last thing to do before we go…

What a great weekend.

Paul Joseph Watson calls our attention to the headline in the Washington Post:

This is like describing Osama Bin Laden as a "peace activist". #WaPoDeathNotices pic.twitter.com/MtYGN4gFpp

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) October 27, 2019

Now it is all over Twitter. Here is the Twitchy team:

The Washington Post's ridiculous headline for the death of al-Baghdadi inspires other #WaPoDeathNotices https://t.co/djoIQvWVtg

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) October 27, 2019

Go to #WaPoDeathNotices on Twitter to read all the tweets inspired by the idiots at the Washington Post!

"The coward was running and crying and blew up his own children!"

You want to watch Donald Trump at his best? Watch all 48 minutes of this press conference at the White House this morning.

A progressive utopia

From the satirical Babylon Bee:

SACRAMENTO, CA—California is being heralded as a progressive utopia after eliminating electricity entirely.

Working by candelight at his desk, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law that bans electricity, propelling the state into a progressive futuristic paradise. Newsom said he got the idea while experiencing the latest round of rolling blackouts in the state. He decided to make the blackouts the law of the land.

"Other, backward states still use carbon-heavy electricity, gas for heating and cooking, and wasteful air conditioning," he said proudly as people applauded around him. "But not on my watch. California has progressed beyond these archaic concepts."

The law also bans vehicles, forcing pedestrians to use innovative new horse-driven carriages.

Next on the legislative docket? The elimination of water-wasting toilets, to be replaced by just going on the sidewalk. A pilot program in San Francisco has been very successful, according to the homeless population there.