You mean they don't trust Chairman Xi?

Over one million protesters filled the streets of Hong Kong yesterday, wanting to make Hong Kong Great Again. What are they protesting? James Pomfret and Sumeet Chatterjee report in Reuters,

Hong Kong was plunged into a fresh political crisis on Sunday night after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to thwart a proposed extradition law that would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China to face trial.

Sunday's outpouring was already raising the pressure on the administration of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her official backers in Beijing.

"She has to withdraw the bill and resign," veteran Democratic Party lawmaker James To told crowds gathering outside the city's parliament and government headquarters in the Admiralty business district on Sunday night.

"The whole of Hong Kong is against her."

...Schoolteacher Garry Chiu joined the protest with his wife and 1-year-old daughter, saying, "It is no longer about me."

"I need to save my daughter. If the law is implemented anyone can disappear from Hong Kong. No one will get justice in China. We know there are no human rights," Chiu added.

"The extradition bill will directly threaten the core values of Hong Kong and rule of law," said 21-year-old Kelvin Tam, a student in London. "It will remove the firewall of Hong Kong judicial independence."

Protests against the bill were also planned on Sunday in 26 cities globally, including London, Sydney, New York and Chicago.

...The amendments would simplify case-by-case arrangements to allow extradition of wanted suspects to jurisdictions, including mainland China, Macau and Taiwan, beyond the 20 with which Hong Kong already has extradition treaties.

Opponents of the bill question the fairness and transparency of the Chinese court system and worry about Chinese security forces contriving charges.

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, said on Thursday the bill would "strike a terrible blow ... against the rule of law, against Hong Kong's stability and security, against Hong Kong's position as a great international trading hub".

Foreign governments have also expressed concern, warning of the impact on Hong Kong's reputation as an international financial hub, and noting that foreigners wanted in China risk getting ensnared in Hong Kong.

...Human rights groups have repeatedly cited the alleged use of torture, arbitrary detentions, forced confessions and problems accessing lawyers in China.

Read more here.

Faster please

Yep, that's how we do it!

How do I speak truth to my supervisor without suffering consequences? "You can't! If we are not willing to pay some price for speaking truth, they win!"

In this speech at Hillsdale College, Andrew reminds us that "After all, no one had to devise an ideology to justify kindness, charity, or love. ...There is always moral madness somewhere, and there is always someone who will call it justice. "

Andrew attributes the wonders of America to capitalism, science, and liberalism. By liberalism, he means the commitment to self-government and individual human rights. But Andrew looks for "three symptoms of patches of fog of bad ideology that seem to be gathering in the cultural centers where the future is often made: inordinate fear of catastrophe, silencing of dissent, and the steady progress from moral error to atrocity. These are appearing in the realm of the economy, race, and sex. In a world gone mad, we cannot be silent!"

One person asks Andrew in the question and answer session, "What would you have us do?" Andrew says, "Speak up! Every one of us holds a piece of the culture in our hands. It belongs to everybody. It is the way we treat each other, and it is what we are ready to say. Speak the truth with ultimate kindness and compassion."

In response to another question, Andrew talks about the importance of starting with a shared premise, such as the desire to be free.

Whenever someone says to Andrew, "There is no truth," he asks, "Is that true?"

Bad ideas collapse. Andrew spent most of his life as an atheist or agnostic, then was baptized at age 49. The truth in Jesus is simple logic.

How do I speak truth to my supervisor without suffering consequences? You can't! If we are not willing to pay some price for speaking truth, they win!

China puts on the dragon mask

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports on meetings in China in which the communist regime made threats to American companies such as Microsoft and Dell.

Indeed the depth of the Chinese influence is becoming increasingly clear. In Washington, DC Congressman Justin Amash has been pushing heavily for President Trump’s impeachment. In addition to being an elected representative, Mr. Amash operates a manufacturing company in China. [link] These positions are directly related.

Keep an eye out for those who raise the strongest objections toward the Trump administration confronting China; there’s almost a guarantee the scale of opposition will be in direct alignment to their financial interests in Beijing.

Yes, as with all things Trump, the president is likely to expose much more than just political opposition based on ideology. President Trump’s America-First stance is putting the spotlight on all those politicians who bet against our nation, took the indulgences from a happy Panda, and swore a greater allegiance to their net worth.

Read more here.

Who are you?

via Easter Worshipper

Remember the Iraq War? Remember Obama calling ISIS the "JV team?"

Dianne Apen-Sadler reports in Mail Online,

Christians are facing extinction in Iraq after ISIS forced 125,000 people to flee their homes, the Archbishop of Irbil has warned.

Rt Rev Bashar Warda said the Christian community had been reduced by 83 per cent between the end of Saddam Hussein's regime and 2014.

It then dwindled further when the so-called Islamic State invaded the country, Warda said at a speech in London, reports the BBC.

He said: 'Christianity in Iraq, one of the oldest Churches, if not the oldest Church in the world, is perilously close to extinction. Those of us who remain must be ready to face martyrdom.'

...He accused Britain's Christian leaders of bowing to 'political correctness'.

Warda added: 'Friends, we may be facing our end in the land of our ancestors. We acknowledge this. In our end, the entire world faces a moment of truth.

'Will a peaceful and innocent people be allowed to be persecuted and eliminated because of their faith? And, for the sake of not wanting to speak the truth to the persecutors, will the world be complicit in our elimination?'

Read more here.

Can Xi’s quest for economic and political dominance succeed?

In City Journal, Judith Miller writes,

Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin was there. So was President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, along with the heads of Italy, Portugal, Austria, Cyprus, and eight other smaller European states, all ostensible American allies. In late April, 150 nations sent some 5,000 delegates to the second summit in Beijing on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s signature economic project—the Belt and Road Initiative.

An invitation to discuss BRI—the sprawling network of roads, power plants, ports, pipelines, and more than 900 projects underway in 70 countries to create new land and sea corridors linking China with the rest of Asia and beyond—was a de facto summons. The leaders assembled in the giant convention center, all dutifully awaiting Xi’s remarks, testified to China’s new financial clout and political position in the world. China, not the United States, has become the largest trading partner of some 130 nations. For those trading with China, or seeking to do so, the BRI invitation could not be refused.

Notably absent, however, were leaders of the U.S. and its key European allies—Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. The abstentions reflected growing concern about not only the influence accompanying Beijing’s generous infrastructure loans and grants through BRI and China’s recently created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, but more broadly, Xi’s leadership—his ominous authoritarianism, unprecedented consolidation of power, his reversal of economic reform at home, and his increasing assertiveness in projecting China’s military and economic influence abroad.

In her compelling book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State, veteran China watcher Elizabeth C. Economy carefully chronicles the sweeping, dangerous changes implemented by Xi, asserting that they constitute a veritable “third revolution”—or, more accurately, a “counterrevolution,” as Orville Schell, a respected China scholar who praises her work, prefers to call it. Economy also analyzes why China’s challenge to the U.S.-led global order is so serious, as are the fundamental contradictions in China’s policies that threaten Xi’s ambitions. Finally, she dispassionately explores the paradox inherent in Xi’s strategy and the key question raised by the pursuit of his “Chinese Dream,” which represents the “rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation”: In an “illiberal state seeking leadership in a liberal world order,” can Xi’s quest for economic and political dominance succeed?

...But Xi’s soothing pledges were soon undermined by his contradictory conduct, often “diametrically opposed” to the national interests of the U.S. and other liberal democracies. Contrary to Western expectations, China’s increasingly egregious behavior accelerated with engagement. Economy and other scholars point to China’s imprisonment of as many as 1 million non-Chinese Uighurs and members of other Muslim ethnic groups in reeducation camps in Xinjiang; the development of technology to provide the omnipresent, all-seeing, infallible surveillance required for an Orwellian police state; and Beijing’s systemic, state-supported cyber hacking and institutionalized grand theft of America’s scientific, technical, corporate and intellectual property. Republican and Democratic presidents alike quietly tried, but largely failed, to dissuade Xi from insisting on admission to national markets and international institutions while closing his own to foreign competitors. Under Xi, the suppression of domestic critics and barring of foreign students and nongovernmental activist groups has intensified. So has China’s military buildup in the South China Sea and far beyond. These trends, coupled with Xi’s elimination of presidential term limits and the revival of a cult of personality reminiscent of Mao around “Xi Dada”—or “Uncle Xi,” as he is known on social media—have sparked a backlash among scholars and policymakers.

...“Constraints on education and the Internet, intellectual property theft, and a perverted system of rewards for research all hinder the development of an environment that fosters top-quality basic research,” she writes. So, too, does Xi’s return to favoring state-owned enterprises over individual-owned and smaller, more innovative businesses. China’s continuing brain drain also hurts. Thanks to China’s risk-averse bureaucrats and state-dominated R&D model, only 2.2 million of the 4 million Chinese students who studied abroad since 1987 have returned home.

(I wonder how many of them are spies).
Read more here.

Germany looks down at Americans

In National Review, Victor Davis Hanson writes that

...for less cosmopolitan Americans far from the eastern seaboard, Europe seems a distant perennial headache. For them, it might appear much easier to write off Europe as hopelessly fractious and thus not deserving of yet another bailout requiring American blood and treasure. If the U.S. came late into both World War I and II, it was because of the same sort of weariness with European internecine quarreling, albeit now in a milder form, that we currently see fracturing the EU.

...No one quite knows the strange driving force behind Angela Merkel’s demand that the European Union open its borders to millions of mostly young men from the war-torn Middle East and the chaotic lands of North Africa. Cynics might suggest that a shrinking Germany wants young, cheap manual laborers. Post-war guilt may play a role as Germany’s cure for its past becomes nearly as obsessive as the behavior that led to the disease in the first place.

German postmodern multiculturalism encourages a naïve acceptance of millions of unassimilated Middle Eastern Muslims, and it demands the same from neighbors without Germany’s resources. A largely atheistic or agnostic Germany also has few religious worries about Islamic immigrants, given that secular affluence and leisure long ago proved far more deleterious to German Christianity than did radical Islam.

Recent Pew international polls reveal that Germany of all the countries of the European Union is by far the most anti-American, with scarcely 52 percent expressing a positive appraisal of the United States — well before Donald Trump ran for office. Media polls show that the German press ran the most negative appraisals of Trump of all global news (98 percent of all coverage was critical). A fair summary of current German views of the United States would be not much different from the stereotypes of the 1930s: undisciplined, prone to wild swings in policy, a bastardized and commercialized culture of poorly informed and highly indebted consumers.

Read more here.

Merkel and the German mindset

Victor Davis Hanson writes in National Review that German Chancellor Angela Merkel

...insisted that Germany views the democratic United States as not much different from autocratic Russia and Communist China: Urging Europe to present a united front in the face of Russia, China, and the U.S., she said, “They are forcing us, time and again, to find common positions.” And Merkel concluded that therefore Germany must find “political power” commensurate with its economic clout to forge a new independent European path.

In other words, in the calculus of the supposedly sober and judicious Merkel, the democracy that saved Europe twice from a carnivorous Germany — and Germany once from itself and once from becoming a Soviet vassal — is now similar to the world’s two largest authoritarian dictatorships, nations that not so long ago murdered respectively 30 million and 70 million of their own citizens. And how odd a sentiment for someone who grew up in Communist East Germany, a nightmarish state whose collapse was largely attributable to the Reagan-era effort to bankrupt and roll back the Soviet empire.

Perhaps imagine something akin to Donald Trump’s traveling to Munich to address a hard-right audience of Alternative für Deutschland members — and then winning their applause by systematically attacking Merkel’s disastrous solar and wind energy policies, disastrous open-borders immigration dictates, disastrous subversion of NATO by her deliberate reneging on past promises on defense investments — and then, without saying the word “Merkel,” calling her an abject liar for breaking her promises. The irony, of course, is that the supposedly reckless Trump, who is not shy about replying in kind anywhere in the world to ad hominem attacks from various foreign officials — would probably not fly to Germany to attack Merkel in a partisan setting in the way the supposedly stateswoman-like Merkel just did at Harvard. And if Trump had done so, the media — and the German — response would have been unhinged furor.

...Why the angst? A skeptic might note that an America that is for the first time pushing back on Germany’s refusal to meet its NATO requirements, that leaves the Paris climate accord and the Iran Deal, that complains about asymmetrical German trade and tariffs, and that is at odds with Germany’s role in global illegal immigration would naturally offend German sensibilities, which have long assumed an acquiescent United States.

...There are many reasons that Germany might not like Donald Trump’s America. Germany certainly does not approve of American fracking or its abandonment of the Iran deal and the Paris climate accord. Trump is too close to Israel for Germany’s comfort. Trump has an old-fashioned view that allies especially should practice trade reciprocity, and that what would not be tolerated with an enemy should certainly not be indulged with a friend. Trump’s idea of sovereignty and the need for a secure border is at odds with Merkel’s instance that eastern and southern Europeans follow her own disastrous immigration debacles. Trump then, in Al Czervik style, sees no reason not to point out these obvious contradictions between Merkel’s soaring humanitarian rhetoric and Berlin’s often quite selfish and provocative commercial, political, and financial policies.

But true to past form, Germany antipathy may also persist because America at this late date simply was not supposed to have the world’s most dynamic economy, or to have become the world’s greatest oil and gas producer, or to have achieved a virtual monopoly on high tech, social media, and the Internet, or to have remained the essence of the NATO alliance that still subsidizes German security — or to have dared to ask for reciprocity among friends and demanded it with rivals.

After all, the idea that America is not supposed, or should not be able, to do many things (fill in the blanks) has been baked into the German mindset for nearly 150 years.

Read more here.

Consequences

In the Legal Insurrection blog, William Jacobson reports that a jury awarded Gibsons Bakery $11 million dollars against Oberlin College.

The verdict sends a strong message that colleges and universities cannot simply wind up and set loose student social justice warriors and then wash their hands of the consequences. In this case, a wholly innocent 5th-generation bakery was falsely accused of being racist and having a history racial profiling after stopping three black Oberlin College students from shoplifting. The students eventually pleaded guilty, but not before large protests and boycotts intended to destroy the bakery and defame the owners. The jury appears to have accepted that Oberlin College facilitated the wrongful conduct against the bakery.

Read much more here.

Antioxidants don't do what scientists hoped

Ross Pomeroy writes in Real Clear Science about the great antioxidant lie. What? I didn't know about that lie.

...But then, in the early 2000s, results from randomized, controlled trials on humans began flowing in, and the stream of positive results soon turned into a torrent of negative findings. Perhaps the trials weren't long enough, or were conducted on the wrong study populations, some scientists wondered. Over the next decade, more experiments concluded, with more inconclusive or outright negative results. Antioxidant intake didn't boost cognitive performance, or stall dementia, or halt heart disease, or prevent cancer, or lower the risk of Parkinson's.

...The health effects of antioxidants are a lie, one we told to ourselves. It's time to admit our failure and learn from the mistakes. Here are four takeaways:

1. In vitro is not in vivo. Results from a test tube rarely translate to humans, yet we always seem to forget that when discussing studies about human health.

2. Scientists can get too attached to ideas. Though negative findings about antioxidants started rolling in more than fifteen years ago, research and hope has persisted. Treasured ideas are hard to let go, even for supposedly rational scientists.

3. If something seems too good to be true... How many times has the public at large fallen for health panaceas? When will we learn that there is no simple pill-form or supplement solution to a healthy life?

4. Food marketing is mostly meaningless. Eat more protein! Take your vitamins! Antioxidant boost! If there's a hyped health call-out on a food label, you can probably disregard it.

Read more here, and please pass the blueberries!

Trump applies new tariffs as China facing problems

Dean Cheng reports in War On The Rocks,

The November 2018 letter from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office outlining why the United States was preparing to impose additional tariffs listed four key complaints. First, China uses foreign ownership restrictions, such as joint venture requirements, as well as administrative processes to compel U.S. companies to transfer technology to the People’s Republic. Second, U.S. companies seeking to license technologies to Chinese firms must often transfer key information and processes. Third, Chinese technology acquisition includes unfair methods such as access to the state banking system for funds. Finally, China engages in a variety of cyber economic espionage activities. This last element contradicts a commitment made by Xi to President Barack Obama in 2015, in which both sides agreed not to engage in economic cyber espionage. While China appears to have reduced the level of such actions, it has certainly not suspended them, a point made clear in the 2018 National Counterintelligence and Security Center report.

The Chinese have offered, in response to Trump’s pressure, to address the trade deficit. China has floated, at various points over the past two years, increasing purchases of American goods by $200 billion to $1 trillion. But Beijing has been far less forthcoming on the issue of intellectual property, as the U.S. Trade Representative letter notes.

In the last several weeks, the Chinese have taken an increasingly hard line. American officials claim that China was reversing changes it had previously agreed to implement, effectively overturning the results of months of negotiations. Trump promptly applied new tariffs to a variety of Chinese goods, elevating them to 25 percent, effective May 10. Chinese officials in turn have now raised the possibility of embargoes on rare earth exports and blacklisting American companies like FedEx.

...Unfortunately, Xi is now confronted with a double-barreled threat. First, fall armyworm has arrived in China. Since it was first detected in January, the pest has spread across some 8,500 hectares of Chinese grain production areas, affecting six provinces mostly in southern China. The U.S. Department of Agriculture worries that this voracious creature may affect staple crop production such as corn, rice, wheat, and sorghum, as well as others to include soybeans and cotton. “Experts report that there is a high probability that the pest will spread across all of China’s grain production area within the next 12 months.” There is no natural predator in China that feeds on the fall armyworm, nor are there any registered pesticides in China to counter it.

At the same time, African Swine Fever is now threatening China’s pigs, spreading across the country since the first confirmed case in northeast China last year. Cases of this disease have now been reported in every province. As the world’s largest producer and consumer of pork, African Swine Fever is a direct threat to the livelihood and diet of a substantial portion of China. Unfortunately, there is no cure; the only solution is to cull herds, impose quarantines on affected farms, and hopefully halt the disease from spreading.

...In a year that marks both the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, Xi may yet regret assuming the mantle of concentrated power.

Read more here.

Wow, Mom, What is that?

Why Politics Matter

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

Some people seem to think that politics don’t matter. And, even I have to admit that there are times I feel they are way down on my list of priorities. But, then, I see a headline or social media post that reminds me why politics matter. Politics matter ‘cause my family matters. Yes, you read that right. Politics are important ‘cause my family is important.

Some of y’all may still be wondering why, but it is really very simple. Politics affect our government and our society. Politics affects each and every community across America ‘cause governments exist in our communities all across America. Therefore every person, every family, and every home is affected by politics. Politics affect our schools, our churches, our hospitals, our shopping venues, and our restaurants.

If you doubt any of these things, let me share some recent headlines from news and social media:

Chick-fil-A banned from second airport in two weeks


Concealed Carry in Church and Houses of Worship


School bond and tax elections in Texas


Trump Rescues Pro-Life Docs and Nurses


Shopping Malls Are Increasingly Putting Restrictions on Teens

These are just a few of the headlines showing aspects of community life that are affected by politics. If you search for almost anything in your life you can find a political tie-in. One thing alone is taxes.

Virtually everything in our lives is taxed, one way or another. Whether it is taxed to us directly, like property taxes or sales tax, or taxed indirectly by government subsidies and the like, we manage to pay some kind of government fee or tax for pert near anything. And, it is politics that decide how high those taxes are going to be! Yes, that’s right. Government sets the rates and whichever party is in power decides how much of your money they are going to take.

So, the next time you are thinking that politics don’t matter, ask yourself if your family matters. Does your home matter? Your kids’ schools? Your pets? Your medical care? Your grocery store? Your dinner dates? ‘Cause I can guarantee that whatever you care about, some way somehow there is a politician out there who wants to tax it, restrict it, control it, or ban it. And, I, for one, want to do everything in my power to keep as many of the big spender politicians out of office as possible. As well as out of the personal aspects of my life. And, that’s why politics matter!!!

Here is tonight's sunset, happening right now.

No one can paint like God

U.S. and Mexico reach agreement. Tariffs indefinitely suspended.

USA Today reports that Trump's proposed tariffs against Mexican goods is indefinitely suspended after negotiations at our State Department. Read more here.

Michael believes this demonetizing of Steven Crowder is the most significant change in the character of the internet since YouTube first came online 14 years ago.

On YouTube, Michael Knowles reports,

YouTube Declares War On Conservatives.

I wonder how long this podcast will stay up on YouTube!

Michael believes this demonetizing of Steven Crowder is the most significant change in the character of the internet since YouTube first came online 14 years ago. This is monumental. It means none of us are safe. Coincidentally, it comes right as we head into the 2020 elections. Crowder has almost 4 million subscribers.

Michael does a beautiful job of showing clips of another YouTuber using the same words Crowder used: "queer, gay, etc." Who was it? Carlos Maza, from Leftwing website Vox.com, the man who started this whole pressure on YouTube to get Crowder demonetized for using the same words Maza used to describe himself!

YouTube picking winners and losers, based on ideology, based on opinions they agree with. It is a huge in-kind contribution to the Democratic party and YouTube does not have to disclose the amount of the contribution.

Although Big Tech is protected as platforms, they now are being publishers, even though the government gives them special protections. Michael says now is the time to say enough is enough. This has been creeping up and it is time to stop it.

Zo Rachel is Michael's guest. He points out that leftists are the ones who have created the platforms that conservatives have depended on to get their message out. We are going to have to come up with a conservative competitor and get out of "Crazy folks" back yard. Will this energize conservatives? Leftists world is imagination, not reason.

Michael notes that Big tech gets it both ways, pretending to be platforms when it suits them, then being publishers when promoting ideology. However, Michael believes this behavior by Big Tech will actually help us in 2020, when it is so clear that the culture is stacked against us and the mainstream media is so clearly stacked against us. Donald Trump does very well when he has an adversary.

Michael opens the mailbag with a question about the PRIDE movement (this being Pride month.) The whole purpose of leftist movements is to create enemies, then to create solidarity among everyone who isn't the enemy.

We have a bizarre belief that the purpose of life is to feel happy all the time. We all have to endure suffering at some time in our lives.

A tightened labor pool

Sundance analyzes in the Conservative Treehouse on the May jobs report.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides the May jobs report. Top line job gains were moderate at 75,000 and the unemployment rate holds steady at 3.6%. However wage growth of 3.1%, and a monthly shift of 299,000 jobs from part-time to full-time reflects tight labor market in specific Main Street (blue and white collar) jobs.

The overall gain of 75,000 for May is low considering the economic growth. However, a review of the underlying data tells a story of a tightened labor pool; specifically inside the Main Street, middle-class, blue and white collar labor market.

Overall wage growth of 3.1% is very strong, and driven primarily by increased wages in “non-supervisory” payroll; ie. the actual workers (non mgmt). May was the 10th straight month with annual wage gains of at least 3 percent. Wages for non-supervisory workers continue to rise at a faster rate of 3.4 percent.

With inflation remaining low (1.4%); and assuming inflation is unchanged in May; the 3.4% non-supervisory wage growth, at current wage rates, is equivalent to nearly $900 per year in real wage growth for a blue-collar worker at 40 hours per week. [Table B-8]

We see the second large indicator of a tight Main Street labor market in the shift from part-time to full-time employment:


The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) declined by 299,000 in May to 4.4 million. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. (BLS Link)

In addition to the wage growth, the PT to FT shift is a key metric. You might be familiar with how many people in the Obama economy were shifted from Full-Time status to Part-Time status as a result of prior administration policy (Obamacare, etc.). The chief complaint was people having to take two PT jobs instead of one FT job etc.

We are now seeing a reversal pattern where part-time workers are being shifted into full-time positions. In the past 12 months 565,000 people have shifted from PT to FT. With more hours and higher wages it is Main Street workers who are benefiting.

Employment in professional and business services continued to trend up over the month (+33,000) and has increased by 498,000 over the past 12 months.

Employment in health care continued its upward trend in May (+16,000). The industry has added 391,000 jobs over the past 12 months.

Construction employment changed little in May (+4,000), following an increase of 30,000 in April. The industry has added 215,000 jobs over the past 12 months.

Employment showed little change in May in other major industries, including mining, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, transportation and warehousing, information, financial activities, leisure and hospitality, and government

Read more here.

Globalization: "It is a process that is entirely controlled, promoted and utilized by large conglomerates, lobbyists, purchased politicians and massive financial corporations."

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports that the US Chamber of Commerce is threatening to sue President Trump over Mexican tariffs.

The supply chain results completely refute U.S. CoC Tom Donohue;s doomsayer-promised economic proclamations. If tariffs are so destructive, why was/is everyone ‘except the U.S’ using them to protect their industry segments and economies?

The truth is, the financial class and professional multinational lobbyists don’t want people to realize the modern trade system was designed to reduce American wealth. It’s a feature not a flaw.

The collapse of U.S. manufacturing did not happen accidentally. The rust-belt was not created accidentally. NAFTA was not designed accidentally. The back-door to the U.S. market was not created accidentally. Middle-class jobs were not lost accidentally. Wages did not stagnate accidentally…. All of these results were brought about by specific design.

Who or what was in charge of the plan?

At the heart of trade agreements over the past 30 years you will find the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Yes, a Wall Street multinational corporate lobbying group actually wrote three decades of trade agreement language.

A team of business “experts” from within the U.S. CoC wrote the terms and conditions of actual trade agreements for Reagan/Reagan, Bush, Clinton/Clinton, Bush/Bush and Obama/Obama. Add it up, that’s 30 years….. now look back to when the rust started, not coincidentally that’s 30 years ago.

All that stopped with Donald Trump.

...Influential people with vested financial interests in the process have sold a narrative that global manufacturing, global sourcing, and global production was the inherent way of the future. The same voices claimed the American economy was consigned to become a “service-driven economy.”

What was always missed in these discussions is that advocates selling this global-economy message have a vested financial and ideological interest in convincing the information consumer it is all just a natural outcome of economic progress.

It’s not.

It’s not natural at all. It is a process that is entirely controlled, promoted and utilized by large conglomerates, lobbyists, purchased politicians and massive financial corporations.

...Bulletpoint #1: ♦ Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.

...Bulletpoint #2 ♦ The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.

...Bulletpoint #3 ♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).

...Bulletpoint #4 ♦ With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.

Read more here.

USA on top!

Remembert this gif of Trump at NATO?


Well, he has done something similar with a D-Day proclamation he and other leaders signed yesterday.


Thanks to Sundance

"We are manufacturing transgender kids!"

"I became addicted to the affirmation and attention. Schools are indoctrinating them. Parents are encouraging them. It's a fad. Online they are in chatrooms. Many were sexually abused. I ask them one simple thing: "Tell me what caused you to not want to be who you are." 100% of the time they can tell me. It is horrible, ugly. It has turned into a huge industry."

Is using social media platforms a civil right?

Will Chamberlain is a lawyer and the publisher of Human Events. He advocates making it a civil right for any citizen to use social media platforms. Read his arguments here.

Putting the screws on a political prisoner

Prosecutors in the Southern District of Manhattan are throwing Paul Manafort into solitary confinement in the notorious Rikers Island prison. Monica Showalter writes in the American Thinker,

Manafort was convicted earlier and is doing time in Pennsylvania for white collar crimes around taxable income and foreign agent registration. These are crimes few are ever prosecuted for, but they were real enough. Now he's a wedge player in a new and very dirty deep-state political game. The Manhattan district attorney's office is throwing the elderly, now wheelchair-bound former campaign manager into Rikers Island prison, not because of any Rikers Island-worthy thuggery he could have done, but because they want to pressure him to cooperate with them to deliver Trump's head on a platter to them.

Rikers is in Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's Congressional district, and she opposes the move.

It's unprecedented. Attorney Alan Dershowitz is horrified. Even the Daily Beast is horrified. Ocasio-Cortez is not saying something out of left field this time, and she has allies.

What we are seeing is Manafort now becoming a political prisoner. Which is insane, yet part of a believable continuum of fourth-world events coming from Trump's enemies. We have just come off an attempted coup d'etat attempt by the Deep State, which went down in flames after the Mueller investigation and report. Yet this same Deep-State left, with its hands still on the levers of state power in an area outside Trump's chain of command, is now responding with a new bid to Get Trump through its Manhattan district attorney's office prosecutors. This measure against Manafort is a bid to secure his cooperation to take down Trump in unrelated real estate cases, and Dershowitz cites a quote from a judge stating exactly that. Manafort may not even have much information anyway, given that he was Trump's campaign manager only for a few months. But that doesn't matter to them, they want Manafort there to put the screws on. And they are willing to take hostages -- political prisoners -- to do it.

And like any political prisoner operation from a fourth-world banana republic, they're putting him through torture - from a nightmarish insanity-inducing solitary confinement, which is the de facto condition that Manafort is going to get "for his own protection," to the heat of the summer without air conditioning or ice water in the confined space with only a wall slot for food deliveries. Rikers, remember, is the prison where at least one prisoner, Jerome Murdough, died in a 2014 heat wave. It's a jail so bad prisoners plea guilty to crimes they didn't commit in order to be sent to real prisons just to escape the Rikers conditions. It's so bad the entire complex is set for destruction based on human rights considerations. The Manhattan prosecutors doing this to Manafort, who is in ailing health anyway, may well kill him, and we know they may be trying to kill him. That's based on widespread knowledge of the incarceration complex's conditions, coupled with their unneccessary act of moving him from a Pennsylvania complex where he is serving time for unrelated crimes, to be available for them - and to pressure, pressure, pressure him based on the execrable conditions.

We are looking at a travesty of justice here, based on a deep state still way out of control. Ocasio-Cortez has put her finger on something important and for once, she's right.

Read more here.

How modern diversity training betrays Dr. King's vision

Martin Luther King Jr. got some bad publicity this week regarding his sexual behavior. Why do we revere him? Chloé Valdary writes in City Journal,

King sought to defeat injustice by embracing love over hatred.

Underpinning King’s philosophy was his belief in the sanctity of the individual and the “amazing potential for goodness” within human beings. “We do not wish to triumph over the white community,” he wrote. “That would only result in transferring those now on the bottom to the top. But, if we can live up to nonviolence in thought and deed, there will emerge an interracial society based on freedom for all.”

Unfortunately, most major institutions’ diversity and inclusion programs ignore these lessons and betray King’s vision. Robin Di Angelo, an academic and diversity consultant who counts Amazon, Unilever, the YMCA, and the City of Oakland, among others, as clients, coined the term “white fragility,” calling it “inevitable” that whites are racist.

...In “The Current Crisis in Race Relations,” King wrote that “the important thing about a man is not the color of his skin or the texture of his hair but the texture and quality of his soul.” For Di Angelo, no distinction exists between skin and soul. She and other purveyors of such thinking embrace a reductive and repellent vision of racial guilt.

...What is the aim of diversity and inclusion training? Should it embrace the beloved community and its transcendent vision of human beings working through conflict—racial or otherwise? Or should it bring about a hierarchical inversion, in which one group of people is favored over another, which is perpetually castigated for sins, real or imagined? How we answer this question may shape our institutions, and the workplace, for decades to come.

Read more here.

Clinton/Obama Anti-Trump Coup and Mueller Deception

As he introduced his links for us to consider clicking on, JJSefton writes in Ace of Spades,

On to the Clinton/Obama Anti-Trump Coup and Mueller Deception where the more everything that has been thrown at Trump and pimped by the agitprop media has been exposed to the public as lies, and soon to be shown as much worse than that thanks to AG Barr and his team, the Democrat-Left have become more brazen and naked in their madness and desperation. First we had Nancy Palsi not just calling for impeachment but for the imprisonment of the President. Presumably she meant after he leaves office and returns to being a private citizen, but doubtless she'd love that to happen immediately. Some say she's only saying this as just red meat to placate her base and the growing calls within her own caucus to pursue what would be political suicide for her party in the form of impeachment proceedings. But this is what totalitarians do.

And while seemingly no one was looking, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. ordered that Paul Manafort, who has been tried, convicted and imprisoned on charges that have nothing to do with his involvement as Trump's campaign manager in 2016, and that would never have come to trial had he not been involved with him, be moved to NYC's Rikers Island correctional facility and held in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement, at what is a notoriously hellish institution. So we have the leader of a political party advocating the permanent persecution of a political opponent and a leading law enforcement official chucking a political enemy, and a now elderly and broken man, into solitary confinement for no other reason than to see him rot in prison or die. And make no mistake; both are intended to serve as a warning to any and all of us who go against them.

Just what country is this? Cuba? North Korea, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union? I have to pinch myself considering yesterday we commemorated the 75th anniversary of D-Day when thousands of Americans met their doom in the attempt to liberate the world from the oppression that Vance and Pelosi are engaged in. Yes, I went there because that is exactly what they are doing. I know she's buck-toothed, big-boobed, bug-eyed and brain-dead, but even Chiquita Khruschev AOC was disgusted enough about what Vance did to take to Twitter to blast him. Yeah, blind squirrels and broken clocks aside, where the hell was anyone - ANYONE putatively on our side in Congress or in our own alleged conservative media (I know Bill Kristol was busy serving crab salad on the Lido Deck of the SS Greasy Bastard). Unreal. Meh, all too real.

Just ask Steven Crowder!

via Oregon Muse

"They found that none of the over 100 couples that had been together for more than 5 years had been sexually monogamous or exclusive."

Warden posts in the Ace of Spades blog some facts about homosexuality that I did not know. Read it here.

Uranium and Mueller

Via Bookworm

Amassing an army of lobbyists

In the New York Times, Cecilia Kang and Kenneth P. Vogel write about the lobbying efforts being made by Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple.

Faced with the growing possibility of antitrust actions and legislation to curb their power, four of the biggest technology companies are amassing an army of lobbyists as they prepare for what could be an epic fight over their futures.

Initially slow to develop a presence in Washington, the tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google — have rapidly built themselves into some of the largest players in the influence and access industry as they confront threats from the Trump administration and both parties on Capitol Hill.

The four companies spent a combined $55 million on lobbying last year, doubling their combined spending of $27.4 million in 2016, and some are spending at a higher rate so far this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks lobbying and political contributions. That puts them on a par with long-established lobbying powerhouses like the defense, automobile and banking industries.

...Ms. Pelosi received nearly $43,000 in total donations for her 2018 re-election campaign from employees and political action committees of Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet, Google’s corporate parent — each of which ranked among her top half-dozen sources of campaign cash.

...It is hard to avoid the increasing prominence of the companies in Washington.

They finance some of the most influential think tanks from across the political spectrum, sometimes making it difficult for critical voices to win funding.

Google and Facebook have provided funding to hundreds of influential trade groups and think tanks across the ideological spectrum, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Conservative Union, the Brookings Institution and the Center for American Progress.

Read more here.

Turning journalism into a spying operation

In Tablet, Lee Smith writes,

spies are the new journalists and with the help of big names in the media they are turning journalism into an intelligence operation.

After giving many details to support the above sentence, he concludes with this paragraph:

There is little chance the Post or Times reporters will be prosecuted for doing what Assange did—and much worse. However, the Assange indictments coupled with the rewards reaped by America’s premier newspapers for their role in a spy agency information campaign send a clear message not only to journalists but also to the public at large. In abusing both the rights of a free press and national security programs designed to keep Americans safe from terrorism, the press and intelligence bureaucracy have made us less free and less safe. The larger message they’re sending is, it’s not your country anymore. It’s ours.

Read more here.

It's about time somebody wrote about this.

CoBlogger CBD wrote in Ace of Spades

Tariffs Are A Legitimate And Effective Tool In American Foreign Policy

Read it here.

They understood what was at stake

Today is D-Day. On June 6, 1944, we and our allies landed in Normandy.



AP reports,

French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Donald Trump praised the soldiers, sailors and airmen who took part in the invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, saying it was the turning point that ended Nazi tyranny and ensured peace for Europe.

“You are the pride of our nation, you are the glory of our republic, and we thank you from the bottom of our heart,” Trump said of the warriors who took part in what he called the ultimate fight of good against evil in World War II.

“They battled not for control and domination, but for liberty, democracy and self-rule,” Trump said in a speech at the Normandy American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of five landing beaches.

Read more here.

Andrew Klavan points out that there is a reason that Make America Great Again slogan resonates among those of us who support Trump. Yesterday, President Trump read a prayer given by FDR on the occasion of the Normandy invasion. Andrew brings us that video. Andrew points out that, unlike FDR, the Democrats in more recent years have done everything they could to chase God out of the public square.

The Left is a corporate power base. YouTube has now demonetized Stephen Crowder's videos. When you get rid of this idea of life as a spiritual enterprise, what are you left with? More power, more control from the elites, who don't have to sacrifice anything, unlike those who landed amidst machine gun fire in Normandy.
When they come with guns to take your freedom away, people find the courage to fight, but when they suck slowly our freedom, today Stephen Crowder, tomorrow someone on Twitter as we get closer to the 2020 election, who is going to stand up for those individuals who are being silenced by the big tech corporations?

?

"If the DOJ, FBI, and CIA have to repeatedly lie about when and why this investigation started, that's proof that even they know that what they did was illegal from the start."

In Real Clear Politics, Charles Lipson summarizes the issues raised by the Mueller report.

Ace highly recommends we read the Lipson article and adds his own views:

This last bit is the most important, I think: If the DOJ, FBI, and CIA have to repeatedly lie about when and why this investigation started, that's proof that even they know that what they did was illegal from the start.

They want to claim the investigation only began when Papadopolous mentioned the rumor that Russia had Hillary's emails. But of course that's a lie, and already proven to be one; Josef Misfud, acting as a US agent, mentioned this rumor to Papadopolous, and then Alexander Downer, also acting as a US agent, catfished the rumor out of him and then reported it to his buddies in US intelligence.

But that means, of course, that Papadopolous was already the target of a spying/entrapment effort -- and that means the investigation began before the DOJ, CIA, and FBI will admit it did.

Why?

Well, here's one simple theory: They started the investigation based on the unverified, and often provably false, claims contained in a "dossier" based on Kremlin sources paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. I would wager real money that never before in the history of the US has an investigation into a rival presidential campaign ever been predicated on such a vaporous foundation, and the DOJ, FBI, and CIA know damn well that this was unprecedented and very much Third World in practice, and so they're pretending the investigation began after they got some extraordinarily weak "confirmation" of the "dossier's" claims.

But, in fact, they began the investigation -- the spying, the framing, the inviting-Russians-to-a-dinner-which-Michael-Flynn-was-attending-to-claim-"Michael-Flynn-was-seen-dining-with-Russians" -- before the "confirmation." They began the investigation to get confirmation.

They began hiring spies and calling upon foreign intelligence services to infiltrate/frame the Trump investigation so then they'd have the pretext to investigate.

But that means, again, that investigation preceded "confirmation," and did not follow it, as they continue lying that it did.

At some point, this will become obvious, and the people pushing this lie are going to be exposed to perjury and jail time.

But they won't be charged and won't go to jail -- establishing beyond doubt that we live in a country in which government officials put citizens in jails for crimes that they themselves may blatantly commit and know they have full immunity for any prosecution for those crimes.

So long as those officials are acting in accordance with the Deep State's preferred liberal/Democrat politics, of course.

Read more here.

Here is one sector of the economy that is losing jobs

Two founders of a non-profit Save Journalism Project estimate that 2,400 journalists have lost their jobs so far in the first five months of 2019. Ace has more details and lots of commentary and helpful suggestions here.

Trump's tariffs get results from Mexico

Kirk Semple reports in the New York Times that, after tariff pressure from Trump, Mexico is finally cracking down on the flow of migrants from Central America into the U.S. Read more here.

Ace of Spades comments,

Neocons are in favor of ALL THE WARS, except threats of trade wars, which they vow we can never win.

Plus, a trade war could result in a loss of money for business and mercantile interests, which is completely unacceptable.

On the other hand, American boys' lives are pretty cheap.

Anyway, Mexico is now cracking down on the Mexican cottage industry of waypoints and smuggling infrastructure between Central America and into the United States.

...It astonishes me that that the deposed Neocon establishment is willing to lay down the lives of thousands of US troops to guarantee Iraq's territorial integrity but won't lay down one fat nickel per burrito to defend America's.

Who are the religious conservatives, again? Because I detect some people possessed of an irrational, dogmatic zealotry, and it's not the Christian coalition.

Making the National Divorce happen, corporation by corporation

Steven Gutkowski reports in the Free Beacon,

Multibillion-dollar business software provider Salesforce announced on Thursday that it would no longer do business with anyone who legally sells certain firearms or ammunition magazines.

The corporation, worth around $120 billion, updated its Acceptable Use and External Facing Services Policy to ban anyone using their software from selling nearly all modern semiautomatic rifles and many other semiautomatic firearms.

Read more here.

Ace of Spades comments,

Salesforce Is The Newest #Woke Corporation, This Time Joining the Anti-Gun-Rights Movement
—Ace of Spades
Corporations are people too, my friend.

Very left-wing people, as it turns out.

The National Divorce is already happening, corporation by corporation. We are no longer acting as if we are one people, but instead managing our lives to only live with, and even sell to, our own kind.

This is good; with our affairs largely already separated, it will make the true, legal National Divorce super-easy, barely an inconvenience.

Four examples

England's deplorables also love Trump!

Hey @CNN looks like London wants Trump! Maybe @realDonaldTrump should do a rally right now and once again prove MSM wrong!!

pic.twitter.com/xoZEfvml2X

— Battle Born (@BattleBornThom) June 3, 2019

"Coup Cucks Clan"

More comments from Ace of Spades readers about Nader, the Mueller child porn witness:

Sharkman wrote,

Oh, and Nader is also well-connected to the Clintons.

Also left out of the WaPo story.

Another commenter linked to this photo of Bill Clinton partying with Nader (on the right) in Jan. 2017 in Palmilla, Bayahibe, an exclusive haven of warm waters and refuge, near the so-called Paso de Catuano, very close to Isla Saona. This Dominican Republic resort is only in accessible by private boat.

Another commenter wrote,

Wait an effing minute. He was just arrested Monday, but the child porn was found in his possession on January 17, 2018??

WTF? What's the rush?

That was answered by Joe Mannix: Then, there was coup to execute.
Now, there is a coup to cover up.

Teresa wrote,

Is this yet another trap set by the FBI? So that they could associate Trump's campaign with a known pervert?

Given the lengths that they were willing to go to frame Trump for colluding with Russians, I wouldn't put it past them to have many more dirty tricks up their sleeve.

If one aspect of their insurance policy didn't work, I am sure there are other landmines out there waiting to go off.

Another commenter wrote,

Per wiki, FBI agents working for Mueller found the kiddie porn on Nader's cell phone in January 2018.

But they kept him free for a year and a half until his usefulness ran out. Quality operation they're running there.

Another commenter suggested,

When Trump wins in 2020, the streets of DC should be lined with the screaming baby Trump balloons. Thousands of em.

Another commenter wrote,

FBI agents working for Mueller got a search warrant for unrelated issues in January 2018 and found kiddie porn on one of his three cell phones.

They indicted him in April 2018 and sealed the indictment for reasons. They saw fit to arrest him yesterday.

BTW, if I'm being too subtle, it was Mueller's actual guys who caught him so they knew his was compromised during the entire course of the investigation in which they cited him as a credible witness.

Read more here.

Ace of Spades commenters have their say on Mueller's witness arrested for child pornography

Don Q. wrote,

Note the timing.

He is no longer protected by Mueller, and is arrested.

His usefulness was over, time to destroy him to ensure he is not believed when he rolls over on Mueller.

REM wrote,

This was, informed speculation suggests, yet another attempt to frame the Trump campaign by the FBI and maybe Brennan.

Brennan consorts with pedos? Wouldn't surprise me.

Mikey NTH wrote,

Weissmann really tried to entrap Trump and just couldn't pull it off. I sincerely hope Barr takes a long and unfriendly look at this guy and his career.

Sharkman wrote,

Yes, Nader was working for the CIA/FBI/DOJ.

How do I know?

Because Nader's attorney all this time has been Katherine Reummler, who coincidently was also Ex-Prez'nit Cock-Curious' White House Counsel, and was known as Emperor Shit Midas' "Fixer".

Just a little fact the WaPo left out of their story.

Guy Smiley wrote,

He was arrested on Monday, BUT...

Investigators seized electronic devices from George Nader on January 17, 2018.


So. Much. Suspiciousness. There.


Mueller's a real straight-arrow boy scout all right.

FBI source caught with child pornography. Did Mueller and Comey let him walk free in exchange for dirt on Trump?

Did Mueller let an FBI source caught with child pornography walk free in exchange for dubious dirt on Trump? I can’t wait to learn more about this 2017 meeting that Nader set up, and at whose behest. Today is a very bad day for Mueller and Comey. https://t.co/z2kjBNwWSz

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) June 3, 2019

Standing up to London leftists

In London a Brish woman who proclaims Trump to be the best president ever popped the baby Trump balloon being paraded by anti-Trump protestors. She was then harassed by the politically correct police. I hope Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity features her on American t.v. soon.

Mark Steyn misses the counter-culture

"A counter-culture has to have a culture to be counter to. The counter-culture did such a good job countering the culture that it is now the establishment! Boring art. Boring pop culture."

No longer useful as a witness

A key Mueller witness has been arrested for child pornography. Ace has the story here.

"We don’t want immigrants who are going to create separate communities that reject the basic principles of our country."

Which immigrants whould we accept? In FrontPage Magazine, Michael Ledeen writes,

...I don’t believe our government, or any other, can reliably predict which people to accept, and which to keep out, just on the basis of their current abilities to go to work for Google or Facebook. Their children and grandchildren may turn out to be important contributors. We just don’t know how they are going to work out. My grandparents sure didn’t look like desirables at the start of the twentieth century, nor did millions of others who wanted in.

If we don’t have the wisdom to predict who will make good citizens, we do know at least some who won’t. We don’t want those who are indoctrinated in the various cults of radical Islam. Kids who have been “educated” in the madrassas of the Wahhabi fanatics, those who believe that all wisdom was handed down in the Koran and Mohammed’s hadiths, and who believe that sharia “law” is more important than constitutional law, are not likely to assimilate into American society. We don’t want immigrants who are going to create separate communities that reject the basic principles of our country.

Hence President Trump has long been on the right track in trying to block the inpouring of radical Muslims. Just as it was right to block committed Communists because we knew they would subvert American democracy, it is right to block those who will subvert democracy for other reasons. I don’t think that we should welcome Antifa leaders and activists. And I think the overwhelming majority of Americans agree. Don’t you?

Finally, if I’m right, we simply must insist on legal immigration, and stop the illegals. Otherwise we’re going to replicate the failed European open borders policies of recent years. In case you hadn’t noticed, those miserable policies have been roundly rejected in country after country, from Great Britain to Hungary. We don’t want to go through a similar convulsion.

Read more here.

30 years ago in China

In the Ace of Spades blog, CoBlogger CBD reminds us that it was 30 years ago that the man in China stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Commenter Tom Servo writes,

I have seen previous commentary about how no one knows for sure what happened to that man who bravely stood in front of that tank - his name was never known. But we DO know what happened to the first tank crew in that line, the one that stopped for him - they were all executed within 48 hours. And every member of the People's Army was told that was going to be the consequence of any further such disloyalty to orders.

Read more here.

Pelosi's strategy

While the President and First Lady are away in Britain, Pelosi moves forward with plans to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress. Read more here.

Smoke them out!

Dov Fischer writes in the American Spectator,

...So the concerns about Trump’s personal-character flaws are fair. But as so many prominent theologians throughout the G-d-conscious Christian community and the Orthodox Jewish community realize, our Presidents often have profound failings of character. Obama was a brazen liar, a financially corrupt cheat who got rich with the help of the felon Tony Rezko and who consorted with the worst racists in America: Louis Farrakhan, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton. Clinton’s private life was a stain on the American fabric. John Kennedy was a dossier that even Christopher Steele could not compile. By contrast, the two most honest and personally decent among the whole lot of them in the past half century were Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, and one can debate for years which of those two destroyed the American economy worse, presided over foreign affairs more disastrously and incompetently, and left behind a more bewildering mess.

Thus, on one hand, it is reasonable for serious Republican conservatives to harbor concern about aspects of the President’s personal demeanor. Yet he has proven himself to be a truly great President, one of our country’s ten best in more than two centuries. His policies are consistently better and more truly conservative than those of Ronald Reagan, the Republican Gold Standard, whether on border issues, the economy, staring down the enemy in the financial and trade sector, seeing the flaws of weakly negotiated free trade agreements, avoiding entangling Americans in areas overseas where we should not be (like 241 Marines blown up by Arab Muslim terrorists in Southern Lebanon), even on issues like social conservatism at home. Reagan condemned Israel’s bombing and eradication of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor in Iraq; by contrast, Trump has recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel, Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and has moved the American embassy there, something that Reagan promised to do but did not. Reagan extended amnesty to Illegals, setting in motion the border disaster that has unfolded over the next two generations and that has politically destroyed California and New Mexico, while politically imperiling Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. Reagan advanced the Free Trade Agreements that drove so much manufacturing out of America and almost ended our steel and aluminum industries that are essential to our national security. Reagan used the most important opportunity a President gets — the chance to fill Supreme Court openings — to name Sandra O’Connor and thereafter to name Anthony Kennedy. Yes, Antonin Scalia was a great pick, but one out of three does not compare to Trump’s selections of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Reagan, then, was Mount Rushmore material, but Donald Trump’s still-emerging legacy is even greater.

...Like a strong but heavily toxic antibiotic used to fight Lyme disease or some sepsis in the body, but which causes real pain as it drives the embedded poisons out into the bloodstream, Trump has driven so much of the foreign RINO bodies out of their embedded cells, but they have not yet been extracted completely from the body politic of the GOP. More time is needed to extract it all as the RINO Underground and outright Counterfeits get exposed, one-by-one. That, too, is the swamp Trump has uncovered for draining. It yet may be Trump’s greatest contribution to making America great again.

Read more here.

"Selectively Principled"

Joshua Sharf writes in American Greatness,

Many Republicans and Trump supporters are furious right now with Representative Justin Amash. The Michigan congressman is the only Republican in either house of Congress to call for President Trump’s impeachment in the wake of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. The announcement simultaneously made him the most sought-after Republican for interviews, and gave cover for CNN and fellow-travelers to describe the impeachment drive as “bipartisan.”

Sharf then goes on to accuse Amash of being "selectively principled." Read more here.

"It is 1984 all over again! Our former liberators now want to be our masters!"

Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center does a Prager U. video explaining how Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Apple are censoring conservatives. You can watch it here.

Sick rhetorical murder: celebrity-driven assassination chic

Victor Davis Hanson writes another essential post today in American Greatness. It is about celebrity-driven assassination chic. As usual, Victor does not forget anything.

If one believes the beachfront of Malibu reflects the norms of American behavior or thought, then he is seriously delusional. So expect celebrity-driven assassination chic to continue until either the country collectively says “enough”—or such sick rhetorical murder leads to the real thing.

You will want to read the whole thing here.

Putting down any student who excels!

NewNeo writes in her blog,

...Asian families tend to espouse values that lead to academic excellence, such as hard work. Since such values are now labeled by SJW educators as “white,” therefore Asians are supposedly benefiting from their “proximity” to white values that confer white privilege. All this despite the facts that Asians are not white.

...It’s a sort of institutionalized and authoritatively-approved version of the old schoolyard taunt that black children who display these traits and excel in school are “acting white.” Once upon a time educators fought that idea, but now they promote their own version of it, and use it to put down Asian students and/or anyone else who excels and is not in one of the specially approved victim groups.

Read more here.

"Lokhova’s lawsuit exposed the outline the intelligence community used to spread the Russia collusion fiction. It also revealed that the United Kingdom held a prominent role in the plot development."

In the Federalist, Margo Cleveland writes in part,

...If the media repeats the false narrative often enough, it becomes the conventional wisdom—it becomes the media’s truth—whether it is the press pushing the Russia collusion conspiracy with reports of the Steele’s dossier, Carter Page’s supposed spying-inducing behavior, George Papadopoulos’ purported inside knowledge of the WikiLeaks hack, the Trump Tower meeting, or stories that Trump’s team softened the Republican National Convention’s platform on Russia. The stories began with innuendo wrapped in unrelated facts, leaks from unnamed sources seemingly verified elements of the tale, and a complicit media then wove the strands into a growing Russia collusion narrative.

Unraveling that truth, though, is time-consuming and requires a depth of details that few Americans care to have. Trump understands this, which is why the terms “SpyGate” and “Fake News” regularly appear in his Twitter feed: Everyone understands what he means, even if they’ve never heard of a random academic in the U.K. named Svetlana Lokhova.

Read more here.

That's it, Rush!

What is she trying to tell us?

Notice the scarf.


Thanks to 90 Miles from Tyranny

Normal hair!

The main reason I chose to link to this story in PJ Media about President Trump going to church in Virginia today is Trump's hair. Look! It is normal!

Why did Maricopa County have to be sued for this to be released?

WARNING GRAPHIC.... #ARIZONA, #MARICOPA CO, OFFICER SHOOTS ISIS TERRORIST AFTER CHARGES WITH A KNIFE

How many heard about this? County had to be sued to release the info.

Ismail Ahmed stated he wanted to do something in protest on behalf of the people in Palestine & Middle East pic.twitter.com/fHy2x3qapn

— Cindyseestruth (@cs00582sc) February 17, 2019

The key part of new media?

Seth Godin writes, It’s the new part.

“How am I supposed to use this?” is the common question. You’re supposed to have a certain tone in your tweets, a certain format to your Facebook posts. You’re supposed to have comments on your blog and your YouTube videos should have a certain look, feel and length.

When MTV was the hitmaker of the music industry, it quickly became clear what a music video was supposed to look like.

Nonsense.

Matching the vernacular is a fine starting point if you don’t want to spend time or energy questioning the form. But in fact, questioning the form, embracing the new part of the medium is precisely where forward motion happens.

Our new Instagram account is pioneering minibooks and other non-traditional ways to use the medium. This blog hasn’t had comments in a long time. Trailblazers have run telethons, talk shows and other surprising formats on Facebook. I don’t use Twitter ‘properly’ but that’s okay. A podcast doesn’t have to have guests. In fact, it could be a minute long or eleven hours long.

The only right way is the way that helps you make the change you seek.

PS Here’s my favorite music video, done incorrectly of course. For inspiration, the best of Spike Jonze, breaking the rules of an older new media can be found here…

I am woman, Let me roar!

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

I am distressed by the prejudice and intolerance that is being aimed at women right now. There most assuredly is a “war on women”. But, contrary to what is spread so much by the Left, it is not a war waged by Conservatives, but by those who actually claim to be Feminists, as well as their cohorts in suppression.

In the so-called name of equality and tolerance the Left is decimating the rights of women. Real, biological, XY chromosome, born as a girl, identifies as female kind of women. Particularly if they are also heterosexual, Conservative, and Christian. For some reason, the Left has decided that transgenders have more rights as “women” than women have as “women”. Girls are being forced to give up their places in sports to boys who identify as “girls”, despite the unfairness of the biological advantages they have due
to natural bone, muscle, and hormonal differences.

Women are being forced to share their spaces with men who identify as “women”. Locker rooms, bathrooms, abused women shelters, etc. Despite evidence which shows it is frequently unsafe for the biological women, the biological women’s concerns are being swept aside for fairness and equality. Well, excuse me, but what is fair or equal about showing biological women into second place and removing many of the advances we fought for over the past centuries.

The hatred being allowed to thrive against women goes down into the babies still in the womb. All around the world the female babies are being aborted more than the male babies. The Left celebrates the destruction of motherhood by supporting abortions not only up to birth, but consenting to the murder of newborns as part of the abortion menu of horrors.

Then, there is the tragedy of Sharia Law and the basket of oppression it carries into each country where it gets implemented. Female genital mutilation, obligated to wear burqas and hijabs, honor killings, lesbians can be killed, stonings, thrown acid, beatings, and the denial of so many rights that women truly are second class citizens and even property under Sharia. But, in some ways, scariest of all is that there are both Feminists and members of the LGBTQ+ community who advocate for Sharia in America. This is a definite war on women and their freedom in particular.

Right now there is so much hatred generated by the Left against the true and natural woman. Born female and proud to be female is now being shoved into second class. Being forced to take second place to transgender, among other inequalities. Being made to feel shame for wanting to be wives and mothers. Taught that nurturing is wrong. So much anger against the woman who loves being a woman. So much hatred against a woman who wants to be as the Lord made her. Strong & soft, wise & kind, powerful & gentle. Woman can be all things, if allowed to first be herself.

"The web knows what you like and it’s working hard to surround you with reminders that you’re right."

Seth Godin writes,

It’s good news and bad news.

The web knows what you like and it’s working hard to surround you with reminders that you’re right.

This is good news because it can help an outsider feel more normal. If you have something you’re interested in, you’ll see more of it, news about it, affirmations… all of which will help you find the confidence to speak up and lead. Everywhere you look, you’ll see reminders that the world is actually just the way you hoped.

And this is bad news because it amplifies bad behavior. It normalizes behavior that successful cultures work hard to diminish. This reinforcement makes your bubble ever thicker and makes it easy to believe that in fact, the world does revolve around you.

Everyone doesn’t agree with you, the web just makes it feel that way.

Feeling depressed?

Natural News reports that

Instead of grabbing the nearest bottle of antidepressant or alcohol, people crippled by anxiety and depression should consider lifestyle changes based on older, simpler, and wiser times. By making life simpler and more meaningful, a person could improve his or her mental health far better than resorting to pharmaceutical drugs.

...The Therapeutic Lifestyle Change Project...
investigated low-tech societies like the American Amish and the Kaluli natives of Papua New Guinea. He found that depression is virtually unknown among those people. After studying the similarities between these depression-free societies, Ilardi identified six variables found in all of the groups. He used these variables to develop what he called the Therapeutic Lifestyle Change Project.

Participants implemented half a dozen changes in their lifestyles. They followed a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids, took up a daily dose of physical exercise, obtained plenty of exposure to natural sunlight, slept for sufficient periods during the night, participated in social activities where they could connect with other people, and performed useful tasks that kept them too busy to think of negative thoughts.

Read more here.

Clearing it up!

China dropping the Panda face and now goes for the Dragon face.

For many months now Sundance in the Conservative Treehouse has been predicting we might be seeing the Communist Chinese Dragon face. It now seems to be happening. Read more here.

Chris Wallace has the questions, and Mick Mulvaney has the answers!

I am very impressed with President Trump's Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney. Here he answers every question posed to him by Fox's Chris Wallace.

Ode to Joy

Thanks to Menagerie at the Conservative Treehouse, who writes,

For friends, sick and suffering. For those downtrodden, forgotten. For all who struggle to make ends meet, for the tired, the hopeless, the despairing, the lonely.

For those who face the end of this life, and those still, as my church calls us, members of the Church Militant, as we fight the good fight through the grace of God.

All joy is from God, and ultimately, if we trust, have faith, have hope, have love in Him, all becomes joy.

"It is past time to hold them to account!"

Roger Kimball writes in the New York Post,

...Last month at a conference in London, the distinguished British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton added his voice to this chorus when responding to a questioner who complained of the physical ­violence meted out to conservative students at Birkbeck University.

There were two possible responses to this situation, Sir Roger said. One was to start competing institutions, outside the academic establishment, that welcomed conservative voices.

The other possibility was “get rid of universities altogether.”

That response was met with enthusiastic applause.

Sir Roger went on to qualify his recommendation, noting that a modern society required institutions to pursue science and engineering. But the humanities, which at most colleges and universities have devolved into cesspools of identity politics and grievance studies, should be starved of funding and ultimately shut down.

It’s an idea that is getting more and more traction.

A huge amount of attention and public anxiety has been expended on the plight of free speech on campus. Every season the situation seems to get a little worse. Guest speakers are routinely shouted at, de-platformed, or disinvited. Students and teachers alike are bullied into ­silence or craven apology by self-appointed virtue-crats in college administrations and among designated victim groups among the students.

But the issue isn’t really, or not only, free speech. Bret Weinstein, a former biology professor, was hounded out of Evergreen State College when he objected to a “Day of Absence” rally that insisted that all whites stay off campus for a day.

Since then, he has been frequently invited to talk about free speech on college campuses. But he notes that the real crisis in education isn’t about free speech. Rather, it is about “a breakdown in the basic logic of civilization.”

Academia is the crucible, the engine room of this rot. But the breakdown of which Weinstein speaks isn’t confined to college campuses. The revolutionary ­intolerance that has made college campuses so inhospitable to free expression and the impulses of civilization has also deeply affected the woke mandarins of social media and Big Tech. It has made serious inroads into the HR departments of the Fortune 500 and elsewhere in the world of business. And it has insinuated itself into the values and practices of most governmental agencies, many of which have yet to meet a politically correct left-wing cause they do not embrace.

The economist Herb Stein once observed that what cannot go on forever, won’t. In the coming decade, we will see many so-called liberal-arts college close their doors. We will also see more alternatives to traditional colleges. Many of these will be on-line. Some will be local, ad hoc ventures. All will be rebelling against the poisonous hand of identity politics.

Thoughtful citizens will want to hasten this process. Their best bet is to pursue strategies to starve Academia Inc. of funds. No public monies should be feeding institutions that claim to be educating students but really are simply indoctrinating them. Parents and alumni, rightly disgusted by what these institutions have done to their children, should refuse to subsidize their perversion.

Once upon a time, universities were institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the transmission of the highest values of our civilization. Today, most are dedicated to the destruction of those values. It is past time to call them to account.

Read more here.

Comments about the New York City socialism

In his post about New York City under the leadership of de Blasio, CBD ended with this comment:

This is the country we can expect if the current crop of children, ignorant of the existential danger of socialism, usher in some grand experiment in "correctly implemented" socialism in America.

Another commenter changed the words of Frank Sinatra's song:

I want to wake up in that city
Piled with poop
And find I'm the queen of the shills
Czar of the sheep

Many more comments here.

"Bill de Blasio For President! At least His Campaign Will keep Him Out Of NYC"

In the Ace of Spades blog, Coblogger CBD has an enlightening article on what has happened to New York City since 2020 Democrat presidential candidate Bill de Blasio has been mayor. Read it here.

Police dog catches fleeing suspect

True!

Please carry ID

Via Woodsterman

WANTED...

Credit to MOTUS AD

"Are the Drug Lords, Cartels, and Coyotes really running Mexico? We'll soon find out!"

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance gives credit to President Trump for his honesty. Trump tweeted in part today, "Are the Drug Lords, Cartels, and Coyotes really running Mexico? We'll soon find out!"
Read more here.

"There is going to have to be a grand jury!"

How many people do we MAGA people have who can be as courageous and articulate as this woman in Michigan who confronts Justin Amash about his support of impeachment of President Trump? Not enough!