Leftist Jews Ally with Suit-Wearing Jihadists in New Group [Part One] by Andrew Harrod

/in , , , , , , /by

Anwar Khan “has been doing outreach to the Jewish community on behalf of the Muslim community for decades,” stated former American Jewish Committee (AJC) official Robert Silverman at Washington, DC’s Newseum on December 3. His praise for Khan, the director of the Hamas ally Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA), typified the unsettling leftist Jewish ignorance of jihadist threats at this launch event for the Inter Jewish Muslim Alliance (IJMA).

Silverman addressed an audience that ultimately grew during the daylong conference to about 50. This included his fellow IJMA organizer, Microsoft External Affairs Director Suhail Khan, a “conservative” political operative with deep, longstanding personal Muslim Brotherhood (MB) ties. Other faces familiar to this author included the Gülenist Rumi Forum’s public relations director, Jena Luedtke, and the Iraqi-American co-founder of the American Islamic Congress, Zainab al-Suwaij.

Silverman’s association with the dubious Khan replicated Silverman’s experience as the first director of the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, previously rightly mocked as the “Wolf-Sheep Advisory Council.” Therein the left-leaning American Jewish Committee (AJC) had joined with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a nefarious MB-legacy organization, supposedly to combat hate crimes and other manifestations of bigotry. An IJMA statement distributed among the conference handouts and now available at IJMA’s new website proclaimed that IJMA members wanted, “as a Muslim-Jewish alliance, to counter voices of hatred and bigotry within our own communities.”

Yet the day’s proceedings demonstrated a decidedly one-sided view of prejudice among Jews and Muslims, as indicated by the seminar’s first presentation by Elana Hain from the Shalom Hartman Institute (SHI) of North America. “Antisemitism is converging on Jews from both the right and the left,” she correctly noted, but while “everybody in this room knows about antisemitism on the right,” leftist antisemitism “is much harder to talk about.” Today “what we are seeing on the progressive left is a type of conversionist antisemitism that says, ‘Jew, we will accept you if you disavow your commitment to the state of Israel.’” She noted particularly that “my spouse works on a college campus, and I have seen how Jewish students are increasingly unwelcome in progressive spaces.”

However true, Hain’s remarks surprisingly contained not a single reference to antisemitism involving Muslims or Islam. Excerpts from three publications (see here, here, and here) in her handout included several dubious allegations of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and administration inciting antisemitism. By contrast, “Muslims” appeared only once in a Tablet article’s reference to hate crimes, even though the American Interest article she quoted briefly discussed “Islamic antisemitism” in an uncited paragraph. Meanwhile, internet searches of the Tablet for “Islamic antisemitism” find numerous articles (e.g. here).

Hain’s blind spot seemed particularly disturbing given the annual conference in Chicago of the viciously anti-Semitic American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) just days before (November 28-30). The conference featured inflammatory condemnations of Israel’s right to exist from prominent American Muslims. This included former Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad, and CAIR San Francisco chapter leader Zahra Billoo.

This author accordingly presented to Hain an audience question noting the AMP conference and that AJC CEO David Harris has previously called for “trifocal lenses” to confront antisemitism from the “far left, the far right, and the jihadists.” She responded that she was “including in progressive antisemitism” the “antisemitism that comes from the Muslim community around Israel.” She added that she had not devoted particular study to Islamic antisemitism and suggested that Muslim conference attendees might be better qualified to discuss this topic.

Just as Hain only circuitously referenced Islamic antisemitism, she similarly indulged questionable tropes commonplace among many Muslims. For example, without any indication of whether Jews or others had any valid objections to Islamic beliefs and/or behaviors she used the Orwellian phrase “Islamophobia.” Conflicts between Israel and Palestinians should not “lead to antisemitism or ‘Islamophobia,’” she said, as if irrational Jew-hatred were the same as critical inquiry into Islam.

Audience member Imam Abdullah Antepli, a leader of SHI’s Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), reflected Hain’s remarks with questions about “Islamophobic elements within the Jewish community.” “Within this organized anti-Muslim campaign in the United States, there are so many visible Jews,” he stated. Jews have a “fear of losing the state of Israel” and “when many Jews meet Muslims, that fear is all that they see,” she responded while again not explaining why such perceptions are meritless (consider Israel, Muslims, and Britain’s Labour Party).

Hain also equated Jewish national liberation in Israel with baseless claims that “Palestinians” represent a unique, historical nation and not merely a local collection of Levantine Arab communities. The statement “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” is equally false as “Jews don’t have a history in that region” of Israel, she said. This is “mutual denial of peoples’ actual historical experiences,” notwithstanding numerous modern “Palestinian” fictions.

A veiled female Muslim audience member from the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a group obsessed with all real and imagined “white supremacy,” prompted more historical revisionism from Hain. The Muslim claimed that historically the term “antisemitism” encompassed prejudice against both Jews and Muslims, and Hain suggested that antisemitism could include both “Judeophobia” and “Islamophobia.” In reality, the German publicist Wilhelm Marr invented the word “antisemitism” in 1879 in order to impart a scientific veneer to his rabid Jew-hatred.

The appeasing Hain, who called the leftist American rabbi Jill Jacobs a “colleague and a friend,” paralleled the reaction to Islamic antisemitism of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an IJMA sponsor. As Islamic antisemitism scholar Andrew Bostom has documented, ADL global surveys of antisemitism in recent years have identified Muslims as world leaders in prejudice against Jews. Yet the ADL has minimized such facts.

While Hain acted conciliatory towards Muslims, they often show little reciprocity, as a following article will analyze. Conference speakers after her like the radical “Islamophobia” expert Wajahat Ali were far more direct in their accusations of bigotry against various Jews while exhibiting little interest in the anti-Semitic milieus of conference participants like ISNA members.

RELATED ARTICLES:

CAIR attacks Trump’s defense of Jews on campus on grounds of “free speech”

True Tales from the Annals of Adult-Onset Islam

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. The views are those solely of the author.

7 Things I’d Do if I Wanted to Keep Poor People Poor

/in , , , , , , /by

Spoiler: we’re already doing all of these things.

If I wanted to keep poor people poor, there are several government policies I would favor. Let’s count them down.

For starters, I would advocate for a robust and ever-expanding welfare state—programs like Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc.

I would recognize that an effective recipe for keeping poor people poor is to create incentives that push them into decisions that prevent them from climbing out of poverty.

Case in point: A 2012 study by Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare analyzed the decisions confronting individuals and families enrolled in various government welfare programs. Specifically, the study concluded that in the case of a single mother with two children ages 1 and 4 earning $29,000 a year through work would be eligible for government benefits (such as Medicaid, housing vouchers, and subsidized daycare) equivalent to roughly an additional $28,000.

Such a scenario puts this woman in a bind. If she finds a better job paying more, or picks up more hours, she risks losing substantial amounts of benefits. She would make her family financially worse off even though her paycheck would be bigger. Just to come out even, once taxes are factored in, she would need to find work paying about $69,000 a year to compensate for the lost welfare benefits. Not many low-skilled workers can make such a leap.

This scenario is commonly referred to as the welfare cliff. Confronted with this situation, many individuals understandably opt to continue receiving the government benefits. Rather than help individuals, the perverse economic incentives created by the “social safety net” trap aid recipients on welfare. And the longer they remain out of the workforce, or at lower levels of employment, the less employable they become. It is a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle that keeps people poor and dependent on the state.

Moreover, there is the impact the welfare state has on the family unit. Welfare programs break up families by replacing a father’s paycheck with a government check and benefits. Nationally, since LBJ’s Great Society ratcheted up government welfare programs in the mid-1960s, the rate of unmarried births has tripled.

In my home state of North Carolina, families are roughly five times as likely to be in poverty when there is no father in the home.

If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I also would finance the welfare state poverty trap through punitive taxes on the job and wealth creators of society.

The key ingredient to economic growth, and thus a higher standard of living for society’s poor, is through productivity gains made possible by capital investment. High marginal taxes on profitable companies and small businesses alike discourage capital investment. As businesses decide to either not expand or take their businesses to more investment-friendly countries, job opportunities dry up.

If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would advocate for higher government-enforced minimum wages. The law of supply and demand tells us that the higher the price of a good or service, the less of it will be demanded (other things held equal, of course).

Higher minimum wages will price more and more low-skilled people out of the labor market.Meanwhile, the higher wages will attract more job seekers willing to supply their labor at the higher price. Employers will be able to be more selective in their hiring, and as such the lower-skilled job seekers will be crowded out of these opportunities by higher-skilled, less-needy candidates. Minimum wage laws are an effective tool to cut off the bottom rung of the career ladder for those most in need of establishing work experience.

If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would support government “green energy” initiatives that make energy more expensive. State and federal initiatives that mandate more expensive “renewable” energy mean that—in the words of President Obama—utility bills “necessarily skyrocket.” Poor people trying to scrape by just to stay even can scarcely afford higher electricity bills.

If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would see to it that government imposes many costly regulations on businesses.

meaning fewer job openings for those most in need of opportunity. And mountains of red tape force business to expend scarce resources on compliance costs rather than investing in their businesses and creating jobs. Higher-skilled compliance officer jobs will consume payroll that could have potentially gone toward opportunities for lower-skilled job seekers.

If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would support “quantitative easing” policies. Under such programs, the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air. The inflated money supply then erodes the value of the dollars sitting in your wallet or bank account. The poor are hit hardest by this inflation because their limited skill set makes it far more difficult for their incomes to keep up with the rising cost of living.

If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would impose heavy tariffs on foreign goods in order to limit imports. Sure, the domestic industries protected from competition by these tariffs would prosper, but at what cost? For example, tariffs on foreign steel may help the 170,000 American workers employed by the steel industry, but higher steel prices will harm those industries using steel as inputs—and the 6.5 million workers they employ. Ultimately, more jobs are likely to be destroyed than saved.

Furthermore, the price increases passed along to consumers disproportionately harm low-income households. The combination of fewer job opportunities and a higher cost of living certainly makes it harder for the poor to climb out of poverty.

Finally, if I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would most definitely not support a competitive, free market economy. As Milton Friedman once famously schooled Phil Donahue:

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

COLUMN BY

Brian Balfour

Brian Balfour is Executive Vice President for the Civitas Institute, a free-market advocacy organization in Raleigh, NC. He is the author of the high school economics iBook Economics in Action, creator of the Austrian Economics educational app, and has served as an adjunct economics instructor at Mount Olive University.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Twelve Economic Concepts Everyone Should Know

16 Children’s Books You Didn’t Know Were Anti-Authoritarian

RELATED VIDEO: Donald Trump Jr. Video: I’ve Seen the Bread Lines of Communism. The evil ideas that spawned them have become the hallmark of the Democratic Party.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Pius XII, Francis, and the Media

/in , , , , , /by

William Kilpatrick: Pope Francis seems not to see a problem meeting with and embracing an anti-Semite like the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb.

John Cornwell’s 1999 smear of Pius XII, Hitler’s Pope, became a best-seller, lauded by reviewers and excerpted in major magazines.  Cornwell portrayed Pope Pius as an anti-Semite, a supporter of Hitler, and an enabler of the Holocaust.

None of this is true, of course.  Eugenio Pacelli despised Hitler, denounced Nazi ideology on numerous occasions, and – according to historian Martin Gilbert – was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Jews.  During the German occupation of Rome, hundreds of Jews were housed within the Vatican, 3,000 found sanctuary in Castel Gandolfo, and at Pius’s request, Roman convents and monasteries hid 5,000 Jews.

The book’s calumny was captured in the cover photo, which shows Cardinal Pacelli leaving a government building and being saluted by two German soldiers. All meant to insinuate that Pope Pius XII has just emerged from an important meeting with Hitler. But the picture was taken in 1927, long before Hitler came to power.  Nuncio Pacelli was leaving a reception for German president, Paul von Hindenburg, and the soldiers were members of the Weimar Republic, not the Third Reich. Pacelli never met Hitler. Indeed, when Hitler visited Rome in 1938, Pacelli, along with Pope Pius XI, publicly snubbed him by leaving town.  No photo of Pope Pius XII with Hitler exists. If it did, the world press would probably feature it on a regular basis along with stories condemning Pius for anti-Semitism.

Jump ahead to the present, and what do we find?  Why, it’s a photo of Pope Francis kissing a well-known anti-Semite. No need to go digging to find it.  In fact, there are several photos taken on several occasions of the pope embracing the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb.  Yet, the Grand Imam’s anti-Semitic views are no secret, and the pope must surely have been aware of them.

During the Second Intifada, al-Tayyeb said that “The solution to Israeli terror lies in the proliferation of suicide attacks that spread terror into the hearts of Allah’s enemies.” He added, “the Palestinians have the right to blow up everything they want.”

Why, then, isn’t an outraged press running the photo on the front pages accompanied by captions such as “Pope embraces anti-Semitic Imam”?

The short answer is that they’re not outraged – at the pope or the Grand Imam.

The media, of course, does display outrage at anti-Semitism when it arises among groups or individuals considered to be white nationalists, Christian extremists, alt-right, or just plain conservatives.  But other groups and individuals seem exempt from charges of anti-Semitism.

When leftists, liberals, and Democrats express anti-Jewish sentiments, the mainstream media tends to look the other way. The other exempt group is Muslims.  They can’t be blamed because . . . well, because it’s a part of their culture.  Besides, considering all the evils that the Jewish State has visited upon Palestinians, it’s perfectly understandable that Muslims would respond with anti-Jewish sentiments – or, so the reasoning goes.

Since liberal journalists tend to favor Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and since they are very sensitive to cultural differences, it’s not surprising that the Grand Imam, too, is given a free pass on his anti-Semitism.

Pope Francis also gets a pass because the liberal press correctly perceives him to be a fellow liberal.  So, even if they thought the embrace of al-Tayyeb to be unfortunate (which they don’t), it would be quickly forgotten in light of all of Francis’s good deeds on behalf of the environment, the poor, migrants, and world peace.  Indeed, the signing of the Abu Dhabi “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” would by itself, for liberal media, be enough to absolve both men of any prejudicial thoughts.

The media is friendly to Francis because he’s part of the club of bien-pensants who only wish well for the world.  The proof of their protective attitude toward Francis is that, although Francis’s papacy is possibly the most scandal-ridden in modern history, with new scandals emerging on a weekly basis, most of the media has never looked deeply into the myriad charges.

The most serious charges have to do with cover-ups for abusive prelates in which Francis has been directly involved.  How has the media responded to these cover-ups? Basically, with a cover-up of their own.  Not that the press doesn’t run stories about the abuse cover-ups, but they are strangely restrained and muted stories, often blaming “conservatives” for using the scandals to oppose the pope.  By-and-large, they assign only minimal responsibility to Pope Francis.  Just as the media wants us to believe that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, it would also have us believe that the abuse crisis has nothing to do with Francis even when some of his closest collaborators are implicated.

Compare this to the media feeding frenzy that followed the 1963 premier of Rolf Hochhuth’s play “The Deputy” – which vilified Pope Pius Xll as a Nazi collaborator. For the next four decades, one sloppily researched book after another portrayed Pius as an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer.

The slur has never really gone away.  It hangs heavily in the air waiting for the next scandalous book about the man who supposedly welcomed the Holocaust.  As I wrote five years ago, “the ‘Hitler’s Pope’ campaign was highly successful, with the result that the calumny against Pius is now almost universally accepted by the opinion-making elites and by plenty of average citizens as well.”

Despite the fact that there now exist a number of well-documented books refuting the “Hitler’s Pope” myth, there have been, as far as I know, no retractions or apologies by those who helped spread the myth.  The myth has been so widely disseminated, that few know that, in the years after World War II, Pius Xll was considered a hero by Jews throughout the world. And fewer still are aware that he was actually involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

The media seems to have a double standard about popes.  They’ll believe anything derogatory about the pope who was known to be a staunch defender of tradition and doctrine, and they’ll forgive everything for a pope who shares their own liberal views.  On the one hand, they’re eager to display a “fake news” photo of Pius in what appears to be a compromising position; on the other hand, they’re quite willing to ignore a photo of Francis embracing a contemporary anti-Semite.

None of this is meant to suggest that Francis himself is anti-Semitic, but it does suggest a certain carelessness on his part.  Pope Pius Xll knew enough not to give photo ops to Hitler. But Francis doesn’t seem to understand that there is a problem with showering affection on a man with pronounced anti-Semitic views, so long as they are promoting interreligious relations.

Unlike Pius, he doesn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of his office or the responsibilities that go with it.  He does seem, however, to understand that the media will put a positive spin on just about anything he does. So, perhaps, he thinks he can afford to be careless.

COLUMN BY

William Kilpatrick

William Kilpatrick is the author of Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, and a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad. His work is supported in part by the Shillman Foundation. For more on his work and writings, visit his website, The Turning Point Project

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Trump Pushes Back Against Campus Anti-Semitism

/in , , , , , /by

Video: President Trump signs antisemitism executive order – News 19 WLTX

Pro-Palestinian thuggery on campus finally gets a rebuke. My latest in FrontPage:

President Trump made history again on Wednesday, when he signed an executive order authorizing the Department of Education to act against anti-Semitism on American college and university campuses, and making it clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal money, “would apply to institutions that traffic in anti-Semitic hate,” that is, virtually every public institution of higher learning in America.

This executive order is long overdue. The Jerusalem Post reported that as far back as 2015, “more than 30 organizations, including Jewish fraternity AEPI, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Zionist Organization of America wrote to University of California regent Bruce D. Varner in July, requesting that substantive measures be taken to combat rising anti-Semitism on UC-affiliated campuses.”

The problem wasn’t restricted to the University of California, either, but nothing was done. And it is virtually inconceivable that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or any presidential hopeful on the scene today would have signed the executive order that Trump signed Wednesday. Trump pointed out that earlier efforts to combat campus anti-Semitism “didn’t get it done,” and declared: “This year, there’s no roadblock.”

There have been roadblocks for years. Campus groups, most notably the notorious Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), have grown increasingly aggressive as the Left has intensified its embrace of opposition to Israel and open anti-Semitism. Jewish students and supporters of Israel on campuses have been shouted down, defamed, vilified, and physically menaced, with only a handful of groups, particularly the David Horowitz Freedom Center, providing any support for those students.

The Freedom Center has fought back, virtually alone, demanding that universities withdraw their support for pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic groups such as the SJP that spread Jew-hatred on campus for well over a decade. The Center provides students who support Israel with valuable intellectual resources and helping them to stand strong against the furious onslaught from Leftists and the Muslim Brotherhood juggernaut.

There are so many incidents illustrating that furious onslaught that they could fill an entire good-sized book. Nor have only students been targeted: in February 2010 at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, attempted to give a speech there on relations between the United States and Israel but was ultimately unable to do so: after Muslim students heckled and interrupted him repeatedly, he left the stage.
Before Oren appeared, the UCI Muslim Student Union (MSU) chapter had issued a statement that read, in part:

As people of conscience, we oppose Michael Oren’s invitation to our campus. Propagating murder is not a responsible expression of free speech. . . .

We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined. . . .

The most important aspect of this statement was its claim that the university was “inadvertently supporting” Oren’s views just by cosponsoring the event. This was a complete rejection of the idea of the university as a place where all ideas can be discussed and accepted or rejected on their own merits. As far as the Muslim Student Union was concerned, giving someone a platform was tantamount to endorsing his views—so only those with acceptable opinions, that is, anti-Israel opinions, should be given a platform.

Applying that principle has turned universities into one-party states in which only one point of view is allowed. Trump’s executive order opens up the possibility that they might become institutions of higher learning again.

It will take a great deal of effort. At Temple University in August 2014, SJP members called Daniel Vessal, a Camera on Campus fellow and a member of the Jewish fraternity AEPi, “kike” and “baby killer,” and punched him in the face. Vessal explained that when he tried to engage SJP members in dialogue, but “people at the table were calling me a ‘baby killer’…And then this kid just rocks me in the face as hard as he can. My glasses flew off. After a two-second blur I had no clue what had happened. I couldn’t believe the kid actually hit me. When the police came over and were filing the report the kids at the table were screaming ‘You Zionist pig, you racist, that’s what you get.’” Police did not arrest the attacker.

In May 2016, Eliana Kopley, a sophomore at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), was trying to enter a screening of an Israeli documentary about the IDF called “Beneath the Helmet” when she was accosted by an angry mob screaming “Long live the Intifada!” and “F**k Israel!” The protesters prevented her from entering the building where the film was being shown, and even chased her into a nearby building, where they pounded on the doors and windows while continuing to scream their slogans. Police ultimately escorted Kopley into the screening. The UCI chapter of the SJP was thrilled with this thuggery, and praised the mob.

Likewise in a November 2015 rally organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Hunter College, a campus of the City University of New York (CUNY), protesters brandishing signs reading “Boycott Israel” and “Zionists out of CUNY” screamed at Jewish students: “Zionists go home!,” “Zionists out of CUNY!,” “Jews out of CUNY!,” “Get out of America!,” and “We should drag the Zionist down the street!” In February 2016 at Brooklyn College, a group of hard-Left students burst into a Faculty Council meeting and began chanting “Zionists off campus!” When a Jewish professor tried to get students to end their disruption of a Faculty Council meeting at Brooklyn College, they called him a “Zionist pig.”

The Muslim students’ behavior toward Oren and at Hunter College rapidly became the norm across U.S. campuses: it has become unsafe to be pro-Israel at an American university. As colleges grow more authoritarian in their Leftism, they have become increasingly inhospitable to students who oppose the Left’s pet causes.

But now President Trump has ensured that universities and colleges that actively allow anti-Semitic activity will face consequences. At the signing of the executive order, Alan Dershowitz said: “No more important event to turn universities away from being bastions of hatred and discrimination than this executive order being signed today. It is a game changer. It will go down in history as one of the most important events in 2,000 battle against anti-Semitism.”

For the sake of simple justice, and for the sake of the freedom of inquiry on college and university campuses, and for the sake of the truths that the Freedom Center has been fighting for all these years, all people of good will should hope that Dershowitz will be proven correct.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Audio: Robert Spencer discusses The Palestinian Delusion with Dr. Michael Brown

Rep. Ilhan Omar defended Nation of Islam-influenced group behind kosher market attack in Jersey City

Neighbor says couple that murdered Jews in Jersey City kosher market was inspired by Nation of Islam’s Farrakhan

Ukrainian man converts to Islam, plots jihad massacre on mall in Poland

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Bloomberg: Unacceptable Presidential Candidate — An unapologetic advocate for open borders.

/in , , , , , , , , /by

New York City’s former Mayor Mike Bloomberg has announced his candidacy for the Presidency. Not unlike virtually all candidates for elected office, he has promised to help create jobs and improve opportunities for Americans.

However, as my mom used to say, “Talk is cheap” and his open-borders advocacy is inconsistent with the best interests of our nation and our fellow Americans.

Immigration is not a single issue but a singular issue that profoundly impacts nearly every challenge and threat that confronts America and Americans. The critical question therefore, is “Where does Mike Bloomberg stand on immigration?”

As it turns out, Mike Bloomberg is an unapologetic advocate for open borders. This is no surprise. After all, when he was the Big Apple’s mayor he was a strong supporter of New York City’s “sanctuary” policies that shield illegal aliens from detection from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

So while Bloomberg has promised to help create new jobs, in fact he does not care who actually gets those jobs. I have often made the point that while it is good to create jobs, liberating jobs is a quicker and cheaper way to provide jobs for American and lawful immigrant workers. (Jobs are liberated when illegal aliens are removed from the jobs that they illegally take.) This is one of many missions for ICE, an agency that has come to be reviled by the globalist, open-borders immigration anarchists such as Mike.

In fact, it would appear that Mike Bloomberg would be happy if illegal aliens get those jobs and not American workers, as a means of suppressing wages.

Although Bloomberg has reportedly amassed $50 billion, making him one of the very wealthiest people on earth, in a recent interview he actually publicly stated that golf courses could not survive if they had to pay more for grass cutters, thereby acknowledging that while we are frequently told that illegal aliens do the work Americans won’t do, in reality Americans would gladly do those jobs, but for a living wage under lawful working conditions.

For Mike, screwing Americans out of jobs and wages is preferable to suffering a “hardship” that he and his super-wealthy friends would suffer if they had to pay more for their greens fees on golf courses and their country club memberships!

If you think I am making this up, the November 10, 2019 Irish Central article, “Mike Bloomberg outspoken on the Irish and the huge benefits of immigration” provides the strongest possible argument against Bloomberg’s presidential aspirations.

In that article he not only addressed the wonders of cheap labor but carefully blurred the essential distinction between illegal immigration from lawful immigration.

To provide a bit of much-needed clarity, the difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar.

Here is an excerpt from that article:

On immigration, a hot topic back then, he was adamant that hardworking immigrants help.

“We should open the borders, not close them. And you need to open them in tough times more than you need to open them in good times. And government has to lead, and I don’t think most of our leaders are willing to do that.

What nobody quite understands about the undocumented, and I think it’s true no matter where they come from, all the conventional wisdoms of Lou Dobbs — who has done an enormous amount of damage to this country – the undocumented have very low (rates of) crime. Why? Because they don’t want to go near the government.

“Undocumented pay taxes. Why? Because their company deducts and there’s no place to send the refund. Undocumented don’t use our schools very much. They tend to be young people coming here who don’t go and have families. They tend to send money back home.

“Undocumented don’t use our hospitals much. Why? Because most of us use three-quarters of our medical expenses in the last three years of our life, and these are young people who come here. And the argument that undocumented take jobs away from Americans is just not true. You cannot get Americans generally to do these jobs.

“Now you can say wait a minute and pay them more, but if you did that, yes, more Americans would take them, but the organizations couldn’t survive. Golf courses can’t survive if they have high-cost grass cutters. To answer your question on what do you do, it’s the elected officials (who must act).”

We must begin by making the distinction that Bloomberg and the other open-borders advocates refuse to make: the one between lawful immigrants and illegal aliens.

I addressed that bit of linguistic sleight-of-tongue in my article, “Language Wars: The Road to Tyranny Is Paved with Language Censorship.”

On June 13th of this year I was a guest on Fox & Friends First and ended my interview by asking cohosts Jillian and Rob if they would be willing to board an airliner if they saw some of the passengers on their flight sneaking past the TSA inspectors. They reacted as I expected them to, so I then asked, “Why then are we being forced to live among millions of people who snuck past a similar vetting process conducted at ports of entry?”

America is indeed a “nation of immigrants”; however, it is not a “nation of trespassers”!

In the article Bloomberg made a number of assertions that are utterly bogus.

While it is true that lawful immigrants are among the most law-abiding segment of our nation, illegal aliens are the most crime-prone individuals. I addressed this incontrovertible fact in my earlier article which I urge you to read in its entirety, “Illegal Immigration And Crime.”

New York City’s schools are prohibited from asking students about their immigration status so there is no easy way to determine the immigration status of these students; however, each year increasing amounts of money in the Board of Education budget are allocated to providing ESL (English as a Second Language) training. This would certainly seem to suggest that many of the students in our public schools are aliens. Furthermore, so-called “sanctuary” policies attract illegal aliens.

Additionally, New York State now provides illegal aliens with driver’s licenses, which not only serves as a magnet to attract increasing numbers of illegal aliens but also undermines national security and public safety. I laid out my concerns on this lunacy in my article, “New York Will Provide Illegal Aliens With Driver’s Licenses,” in which I rhetorically asked, “Where is Gov. Cuomo’s MVP Award from terrorists?”

Make no mistake, “Sanctuary Cities Protect Crooked Employers And Human Traffickers.”

The real question that Bloomberg and all candidates for the Presidency and other elected offices on all levels of government should be asked is, “Have you read, in their entirety, the The 9/11 Commission Report and the companion report 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel?

As a follow-up, Bloomberg and the other candidates should be asked how their abhorrence for secure borders and fair but effective immigration law enforcement as evidenced in their statements square with the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Those reports made it clear that terror attacks, and not only the attacks of 9/11, were only possible because of multiple failures of the immigration system — a system Bloomberg is determined to undermine and obstruct in order to achieve his globalist agenda.

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Tlaib Falsely Blames Jersey Shooting on ‘White Supremacy’

/in , , , , , /by

Rep. Rashida Tlaib took to social media Thursday to falsely blame white supremacy for Tuesday’s murderous shooting in Jersey City targeting Jews.

“This is heartbreaking,” Tlaib tweeted. “White supremacy kills.” This came more than a day after the two perpetrators had been identified as David Andersen and Francine Grahm, both black. Police found anti-Semitic posts online written by the suspects, who were killed in a shootout with police. A manifesto of some sort was left in their car. Anderson reportedly was associated with the Black Hebrew Israelites, a black nationalist group made up of racists and anti-Semites.

Tlaib eventually deleted her racist tweet without comment.

“It’s telling, and frankly sick, that Tlaib tweeted out sympathies for the Jews that were murdered blaming it on white supremacists,” tweeted journalist Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll. “Didn’t care enough to find out what happened. Just enough to use dead Jews for her political agenda.”

Rashida Tlaib

35 Known Connections

Upon winning the Democratic primary on August 7, Tlaib draped herself in a Palestinian flag while celebrating with her supporters. In her victory speech, she promised to “fight back against every racist and oppressive structure that needs to be dismantled.” When she was subsequently asked by Great Britain’s Channel 4 News if she planned to vote against U.S. military aid to Israel, Tlaib responded: “Absolutely, if it has something to do with inequality and not access to people having justice…. If you’re going to be a country that discriminates on somebody solely based on their faith, solely based on their skin color … I will be using my position in Congress so that no country, not one, should be able to get aid from the U.S. when they still promote that kind of injustice….”

When Tlaib won her congressional election on November 6, 2018, CAIR founder and CEO Nihad Awad congratulated her on her “historic victory of becoming the first Muslim and Palestinian woman in the U.S. Congress.”

In December 2018, Tlaib become just the second U.S. lawmaker — the first was Ilhan Omar — to publicly voice support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. “I personally support the BDS movement,” Tlaib said in an interview with the news website The Intercept. “I want us to see that segregation and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region.”

To learn more about Rashida Tlaib, click on the profile link here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Rep. Rashida Tlaib Deletes Inflammatory Tweet Falsely Blaming ‘White Supremacy’ for Jersey City Murders

Rep. Ilhan Omar defended Nation of Islam-influenced group behind kosher market attack in Jersey City

Neighbor says couple that murdered Jews in Jersey City kosher market was inspired by Nation of Islam’s Farrakhan

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Trump Is Delivering Economic Wins for Rural America

/in , , , , /by

Following the Great Recession in 2008, many economists and liberal thinkers argued that rural America would never again be an engine for economic growth.

While more folks today reside in metropolitan areas, I can tell you from firsthand experience that rural communities continue to play an integral role in job creation and our national economy. Thankfully, President Donald Trump has been steadfast in advancing pro-growth policies that help residents living in these areas of our country.

According to the Brookings Institution, “redder, smaller, more rural communities really are ‘winning’ a little more.” Brookings found that rural areas outperformed their share of the economy to generate around 16.6% of the nation’s job growth during Trump’s first year in office.

The jobs numbers are pretty clear cut. Coming out of the recession, the economic picture for rural communities was bleak at best. Residents were growing older, population was in decline, and more people were moving to metropolitan areas.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

And while the Obama administration did little to help the people in these communities, Trump has pursued a bold agenda that empowers these communities to grow and prosper. The keys to growth have been lower taxes, less burdensome regulations, and market certainty.

The results back this up, especially in manufacturing. In Trump’s first 30 months in office, manufacturing produced 314,000 more jobs than during the same period in Barack Obama’s presidency.

Manufacturing is especially important in rural communities because roughly 2.5 million manufacturing jobs exist in these areas. Many manufacturing firms are attracted to areas due to lower property taxes, operating expenses, and land prices.

At the end of the day, I realize that elites in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles aren’t going to highlight the successful policies that Trump has championed. But I can tell you that North Carolinians and folks from rural communities are thankful to have a president that listens to and fights for the American worker.

Many lawmakers in Washington come from very urban districts where the population is concentrated. I represent a district that is predominantly rural. I’ve had nearly three years to see how rural workers in manufacturing, health care, retail, textiles, and construction have benefited from Trump’s economic freedom agenda.

I will keep fighting for these policies because they represent economic hope for communities like mine.

COMMENTARY BY

Ted Budd

Ted Budd is the U.S. representative for North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District. He is a member of the House Financial Services Committee. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

Podcast: Alaska Attorney General Talks Workers’ Rights

Challenging Beijing’s Distortions About Human Rights in China

Greta Thunberg Is the Perfect Hero for an Unserious Time

A Note for our Readers:

With the demand for socialism at an all-time high among our young people—our future leaders and decisionmakers—the experts at Heritage stopped and asked a question that not many have asked:

Is socialism really morally sound?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you and our fellow Americans better understand the 9 Ways That Socialism Will Morally Bankrupt America.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Guilty! I Support the Iranian Protestors

/in , , , , , /by

As protests continue to wreak havoc in Iran with a breadth and intensity not seen since the 1978 revolution against the Shah, Tehran’s clerical rulers and their Revolutionary Guards enforcers have become increasingly desperate.

That could be seen in videos that recently surfaced of the horrific massacre of hundreds of unarmed protestors in Bandar-e Mahshahr, an oil town on the Persian Gulf near Iraq. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his top Iran advisor, Brian Hook, both condemned the regime for sheer evil of this deed, worthy of Hitler’s executioners.

So what is the regime to do? Why, blame the Americans, of course!

In every Iranian media today you will find articles and columns blaming President Trump, Secretary of State Pompeo, and yes – even me! – for fueling the protests.

Hossein Shariatmadari, the executive editor of Kayhan, a daily that is run by Iran’s intelligence ministry, is a top regime propagandist. When things go wrong for his clerical brethren, he reassures them that it’s not their fault: it’s the Americans.

Over the years, he has repeatedly identified me as the head of some secret-spooky CIA HUMINT program to assist the Iranian opposition.

I’m flattered he thinks that one person, unfunded, unsupported, with only a voice, can have such an impact. And I’m positively thrilled that he actually believes that the CIA has such a program (alas, they do not).

Nevertheless, in his latest screed, published in Kayhan on December 4, he positively fumed.

“Didn’t Trump officially support the protests as soon as they started? And didn’t he announce that America will meet the needs of the rioters? I say, Damn him! Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, and Kenneth Timmerman, former CIA member and currently director of the American institute NED [National Endowment for Democracy], also acknowledged that the CIA has not only helped the Iranian rioters by providing software systems but also has delivered them hardware.”

For years, the State Department has funded software developers to provide Persian-language messaging apps and encrypted web-browsers for Iranians. That’s a matter of public record.

Early iterations of these apps were woefully deficient, and actually caused more harm than good, since Iranian statehackers were able to penetrate them and expose the Iranians who were using them.

I am guessing that the technology has gotten better since then. Why? Because the regime felt so threatened that immediately when the protests erupted in response to the gasoline price hikes on November 15, they cut off all access to the Internet nation-wide, starting with the popular Telegram app that reportedly is now used by forty million Iranians (half the entire population).

Iran’s so-called Cyber Army monitors traffic on these apps on a regular basis. And they monitor opposition news sites, especially those that have tentacles into the regime itself and expose the abject corruption of the regime’s leaders.

Iran’s intelligence services goes to great lengths to neutralize these opponents, not just by hacking their websites, which they do frequently, but by sending assassins out to kill them.

In early November, an Iranian regime assassin gunned down a cyber activist, Massood Molavi, in the streets of Istanbul, in a brazen attack caught on live video surveillance cameras. Molavi’s sin? Exposing secret documents from within the regime’s intelligence services on a Telegram channel known as “Black Box.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to Molavi in a recent press conference where he blasted Iran’s clerical and military leaders for their murderous crackdown on protesters and dissident.

Just one month earlier, the regime boasted of capturing the publisher of a popular opposition news site, Ruhollah Zam, luring him from Europe to Iraq with promises of big money. After they forced him to make a televised confession, he disappeared.

But no amount of bluster, and clearly, no amount of bullets, can check the will of the Iranian people to resist the tyranny of their usurper rulers.

As I wrote in 2009, on a previous occasion when IRGC Brig. Gen. Hossein Shariatmadari and others in the state-run media in Iran tried to lay the “blame” on me and my foundation for an earlier run of nation-wide protests, I would be happy to accept such an honor, however misplaced.

However, neither I nor my board can take credit for such power or influence. As I wrote then,

“The people of Iran have shown through their courage, independence and determination that they don’t need help from anyone outside their country to get them to take to the streets. I have full confidence that they will get rid of the dictators of Tehran. Apparently, so do the regime’s leaders.”

Wonder if they’ve started fueling the Leader’s escape jet yet?

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Muslims Reject Hijabi Model Halima Aden

/in , , , , /by

Making headlines as the first mainstream hijabi model who appeared on Kanye West’s runway then again in Sports Illustrated, Halima Aden is turning heads again — this time as a headline speaker at the Reviving Islamic Spirit conference.

Taking place December 20-22, 2019 in Toronto, Canada, the choice of hijabi model Halima Aden has drawn mixed reviews from Muslims. While there’s always the group that loves the fanfare of celebrity Muslims, there is also the group of Muslims who are interested in faith for the sake of faith rather than the next fashionable identity brand (which is how some see Halima and social justice Muslims).

https://twitter.com/NourMGoda/status/1204071146632699905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1204071146632699905&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fclarionproject.org%2Fris-muslims-reject-hijabi-model-halima-aden%2F

Though I don’t wear the hijab and understand that Muslim women who do wear one tend to have their own reasons for it, I can sympathize with the frustration of seeing items of faith reduced to markers of diversity or fashion, or embraced by businesses as a marketable item. On that, conservatives, traditionalists, a reformer like myself and even Islamists disinterested in social justice causes, can all agree: Stop fetishizing what some women in Islam choose to wear as part of their faith.

While I’m sure Halima Aden is a wonderful person, leaning into bringing on board celebrity Muslims to draw an audience is against what I imagine is the spirit of Islam. We should be led by our ethics and ideas, and not by how loved we are by the material world.

RELATED STORIES:

Sports Illustrated: Halima Aden Poses in Burkini

Hijab, Female Oppression and the Left

Why I’m Sick of Talking About Hijab

Weaponizing Hijabs: A Slippery Slope to Fascism

EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Abortion Pills: The Do-It-Yourself, Back-Alley Methods by Patrina Mosley

/in , , , , , , , /by

It’s been no coincidence that the latest mainstream media, women’s magazines, and even Teen Vogue have been advertising abortion pills as the new wonders of women’s healthcare that can be taken in the privacy of their homes.They even have the audacity to applaud purchasing illegal abortion pills online. A New York Times columnist, a man at that, found that ordering illegal abortion pills online was quite easy during his investigation. Nothing should be scarier than a man ordering abortion pills and then titling his investigation piece “Abortion Pills Should Be Everywhere.” There have been numerous documented incidents (here, here, and here) of women being unknowingly slipped abortion pills by partners who were unwilling to become fathers or by family members who were unsupportive of the pregnancy. The abortion industry markets the abortion pill as straightforward and safe. In reality, chemical abortions are a multi-day traumatic process that comes with over 4,000 documented life-threatening and health endangering risks.

The rate at which chemical abortion is being used is currently at an all-time high. The latest statistics on abortion from the Guttmacher Institute show that 39 percent of abortions in 2017 were chemical (reported as “medical” or “medication abortion”), a 25 percent increase since 2014. This rapid increase in chemical abortions is part of the abortion industry’s long-term strategy to make abortions “self-managed” and unrestricted — despite the profound dangers such poorly-supervised medical care poses to women’s health.

Abortion lobbyists regard drug-based, do-it-yourself abortions as the best way to get around the many state-level pro-life laws being enacted around our country. Such abortions are accomplished through the abortion pill regimen, distributed under the brand name Mifeprex, which is subject to the FDA’s drug safety program — Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) — because it carries such life-threatening risks.

The abortion industry wants to remove the FDA’s REMS in order to have abortion pills available through the pharmacy, the mail, and even on college campuses (also currently being proposed in New York), making do-it-yourself abortions the future of the abortion industry. They have strategically discussed how the absence of the REMS would significantly expand abortion locations and providers, broaden remote prescription (in which a woman is never even examined by the prescriber), and eventually achieve over-the-counter (OTC) status for Mifeprex.

Abortion advocates once claimed that legal abortion would alleviate the danger of “back-alley” abortions for women, but now they want to place the burden of inducing abortions completely on women — despite the fact that the health complications that often result from an induced chemical abortion are eerily similar to those of “back-alley” abortions. They include severe bleeding, infection, retained fetal parts, the need for emergency surgery, and even death. In addition, the woman, who may or may not have health insurance coverage, is expected to bear the additional cost of these “chemical coat hanger” abortion complications.

Yet, abortion activists continue to market the abortion pill as “safe,” “effective,” and “simple” for women with visions of “privacy” and “simplicity.” This is demonstrably false, but it’s the lie they have to sell women so that the abortion industry can cut costs, expand their reach, and remove themselves from the pain and hurt they cause women. With all the documented dangers, it is increasingly evident that the advancement of the abortion industry’s agenda for the Mifeprex regimen is about political, ideological, and financial goals — not care for women.

To read more about the radical implications that OTC abortion drugs could have for women’s health and safety, especially as it pertains to intimate partner violence, sexual abuse and sex trafficking, and accurate patient assessment, see our new publication: The Next Abortion Battleground: Chemical Abortion. If you or a woman you know needs to know the facts about abortion drugs or wants to share their experience of a chemical abortion, please visit Abortiondrugfacts.com.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Comedian Michelle Wolf Says She Felt Like “God” After Having Her Abortion

2020 Dem Michael Bloomberg Allegedly Told Pregnant Staffer To “Kill It,” Planned Parenthood Defends Him

School Tests Parents’ Limits with Prostitute

Sheriff’s Office to Extremists: ‘Get behind Me, Satan!’

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column by Patrina Mosley is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

School Tests Parents’ Limits with Prostitute

/in , , , , , , /by

If it’s okay for drag queens to host story hour, what about prostitutes? At one Austin, Texas elementary school, students got both! In what some parents are calling “a sign of things to come” under the city’s radical new sex ed, the kids at Blackshear Fine Arts Academy had an unexpected visitor — with an even more unexpected background. But as shocked as parents were to learn that “Miss Kitty Litter ATX” was a convicted criminal, they were even more horrified to find out that the school district knew it!

That’s the most astonishing revelation from the open records request that Texas Values filed. Thanks to internal communications between Miss Kitty Litter (real name David Robinson) and the school librarian Roger Grape, moms and dads now know that not only did Blackshear expose their children to this wild and deviant ideology but to a felon too! In texts to Grape, David admitted that he might not pass the school background check. “the guidelines for submission automatically disqualify me if the deferred adjudication for prostitution is considered a conviction… so I don’t know if [it’s] ethical to submit.”

So either the school didn’t go through with the background check — or ignored it altogether. Either option is equally distressing. “According to emails sent to parents,” Texas Values points out, “the reading event was scheduled to take place at 11 a.m. and all readers had been screened by Austin ISD.” No one knows what that screening could’ve possibly entailed, since an arrest and conviction are the first things a basic search would uncover. Or maybe Austin officials don’t see the problem in bringing in a man who sells himself for sex as an acceptable guest speaker. Based on their latest curriculum decisions, which are stunningly pornographic, it wouldn’t surprise us.

Just as startling, the records from the October 7th day when Robinson came to school show that neither he nor the school were in any hurry for him to leave. Dressed head-to-toe as a woman, he walked through the doors at 7:25 a.m. and didn’t leave until the bell almost rang at 2:11 p.m. Why was he there for so long? No one seems to know. Maybe he did more than read to the first-, second-, third-, and fourth graders. Maybe he was consulting on the recently adopted lessons about anal sex (“What’s the best way to have it?“) or contraception (“What ages you can get birth control, abortions, or other health care without your parents“).

Unfortunately for the moms and dads in the area, this isn’t their first brush with the extreme. On the Willis side of the district, a man with the stage name Lynn Adonis also visited class — this time as a guest cosmetologist. There’s just one problem: he isn’t one. He’s an entertainer — and a drag queen one at that. Like Robinson, he spent twice as much time at the school as other visitors that day. When the inviting teacher was asked, she admitted that Jerred Bridges (his legal name) spent the day putting make-up on kids, “despite having no license to do so.”

Usually, the fact that a district is willing to host one of these drag queen events is sickening enough. Imagine finding out that the person they invited wasn’t even vetted — or worse, a confirmed sex trafficker. Schools are supposed to be safe learning spaces, not a catwalk for prostitutes. Their actions would suggest that Austin officials are more interested in the sexual exploitation of kids than their actual wellbeing. In any classroom, including this one, the only thing these drag queens should be reading are the directions to the nearest exit.

Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Sheriff’s Office to Extremists: ‘Get behind Me, Satan!’

Abortion Pills: The Do-It-Yourself, Back-Alley Methods

Lawmakers Call on Attorney General to Enforce Anti-Obscenity Laws, Make Good on Trump’s Campaign Pledge

Proposed Washington State Law Would Prevent Transgender Athletes from Competing Against Girls.

J.K. Rowling Faces Deluge of Attacks From LGBT Activists Over Transgender Tweet

RELATED VIDEO: Moms of The LGBT

EDITORS NOTE: This   column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Quote of the day: The hoax that started it all

/in , , , , , , /by

Moment by moment, the truth about corruption in Washington is coming out.

In a Senate hearing today, Michael Horowitz—Inspector General of the Justice Department—delivered a scathing blow to the narrative pushed by Democrats and their media allies about the FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

The Beltway media’s initial reaction to the report was predictable. Pundits cherry picked the parts they liked, while ignoring 17 separate falsehoods and omissions found across three surveillance applications used to justify the FBI monitoring a former Trump campaign adviser.

Fortunately, the truth often finds a way of coming to light. In today’s hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked the tough, obvious questions that most reporters didn’t.

“Former FBI Director James Comey said this week that your report vindicates him. Is that a fair assessment?” Sen. Graham asked Horowitz.

His reply: “I think the activities we found here don’t vindicate anybody who touched this.”

Rolling Stone: Horowitz report shows “years of breathless headlines were wrong.”

More: CNN grilled for refusing to cover opening statements in Horowitz testimony

A huge win for peace through strength!

Americans finally got some good news from Congress this week. In addition to an upcoming vote on USMCA, legislators have agreed to terms for the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which will fund our great American military.

All of President Trump’s top priorities were agreed to in the final deal, including:

  • The biggest pay raise for our troops in a decade
  • More funding to restore our military preparedness
  • More resources to secure our border
  • Paid parental leave to take care of our military families
  • Establishing the cutting-edge United States Space Force

After far too much obstruction from Congress this year, President Trump wants to close out 2019 with huge wins for working Americans. That includes this historic deal to fully fund our troops. Congress shouldn’t wait any longer to send it to his desk.

Something to share: President Trump is ready to sign the NDAA!

WATCH: The Swamp can’t take credit for President Trump’s work

Decades ago, as a private citizen, President Trump saw that Americans were being treated unfairly by NAFTA. So he ran for office—and won—on a promise to replace it.

Now, right on cue, Democrat career politicians are trying to claim credit for President Trump’s work. The reality is that he negotiated a new deal, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), and then House Democrats let it languish in Congress for more than a year. Finally, under pressure, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has at last agreed to bring the new deal to a vote.

That’s great news for American workers, and it should’ve happened long ago. After years of broken promises by Washington to fix NAFTA, it took President Trump to get it done.

Watch: Promises Made, Promises Kept!

The Swamp War

/in , , , , , , , /by

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D CA-12) made a formal request for articles of impeachment against President Trump on December 5th, it was tantamount to a declaration of war with the Republicans. As if the division between Democrats and Republicans wasn’t already bad enough, Speaker Pelosi drove a spike between the two sides that may never be repaired. Just about everyone understands this was politically motivated and certainly not a bipartisan effort. Of my liberal friends, I could only find three who honestly believed the Speaker did this as an unbiased move. Everyone else, including most Democrats grudgingly admit it was political in nature.

This was the same Nancy Pelosi who said in a Washington Post article from March 11, 2019,

“I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this, impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. He’s just not worth it.”

This was echoed by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D NY-10) who now chairs the House Judiciary Committee and has the responsibility of producing the charges of impeachment. Back in 1998, during the impeachment of President Clinton, a younger Rep. Nadler said,

“There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other.” He added, “Such an impeachment would lack legitimacy, would produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.”

No bipartisanship has surfaced, yet the Speaker and Rep. Nadler persevere with impeachment, meaning they are hypocrites and are pushing forward for political gain. Rep. Al Green (D TX-9) confirms this by stating in an interview, “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get reelected.” Let us not forget Rep. Green has been calling for the President to be impeached since May 20, 2017, more than two years before any alleged whistle blower surfaced.

As Republicans have known for a long time, this is all being orchestrated to negate the President’s election in 2016 and his re-election in 2020. Deep down, Democrats admit this as well.

All of this was predictable the moment the Democrats took back the House of Representatives in 2018. It has become glaringly obvious they have no evidence of any impeachable offense, no smoking gun, but they have painted themselves into a corner and must move forward with it. If they drop impeachment now, they lose face among their left-wing constituents and the news media. However, when the case is turned over to the Senate, their allegations will be overturned, the charges dismissed, and the House’s method of jurisprudence will be severely criticized. In other words, they will lose face with the American public who will likely vote them out of office in 2020.

I call this the “Swamp War” for there is more to it than just the Democrats at work here. Because he is an outsider, the President has been impeded by the Democrats, the Main Stream Media, Republicans In Name Only (RINO), and government bureaucrats (the “Deep State”). Plain and simple, President Trump represents a genuine threat to “The Swamp,” and naturally, they are fighting back. As such, we are witnessing a cultural revolution of huge proportions.

There has always been a political divide in this country, but not as pronounced as it is today as the underpinnings of America are being undermined, e.g., The Constitution, Capitalism, Christianity, and Conservative values (4-C’s).

Perhaps the best book I have read predicting this state of affairs was “This Town” (2013) by Mark Leibovich, the Chief National Correspondent for “The New York Times Magazine.” In the book, Leibovich describes an incestual relationship between the news media, journalists, and politicians. This was well before the expression “Fake News” was ever coined.

The reality is the Democrats have dug themselves into a hole, which will be impossible to crawl out of after the Senate trial. When it is over, they will not have destroyed the President’s political chances, but their own. Rep. Al Green (D TX-9) is correct, this will only serve to provide President Trump with a landslide win, and re-taking the House of Representatives.

One last thought, ever wonder why Speaker Pelosi made her announcement on December 5th? She knew the government’s jobs report was coming out the next day and wanted to give a big splash to her announcement in order to cloud the remarkable jobs report which indicates the economy is booming under President Trump. The announcement was all about misdirection. In a way, it was like the end of the movie “The Wizard of Oz” – “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Today it is, “Pay no attention to the booming economy.”

The impeachment is nothing more than a clever subterfuge to keep people’s attention away from the President’s biggest achievement; the economy. Fortunately, it will backfire and likely cost the Democrats the Congress.

Make no mistake, this is war.

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – Also do not forget my new books, “How to Run a Nonprofit” and “Tim’s Senior Moments”, both available in Printed and eBook form. Great holiday gifts!

RELATED ARTICLE: IG’s Report Reveals 4 Spurious Allegations as Basis for FBI Spying on Trump Campaign Aide

RELATED VIDEO: New Hoax. Same Swamp

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

Those territories are not “occupied,” and there is no “West Bank” and no “Palestine”

/in , , , , , , /by

This article makes supremely important points that are all too often overlooked. Find out how and why the “Palestinians” were invented in The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.

“Losing the Semantic War on ‘Palestine,’” by Mitchell Bard, Algemeiner, December 5, 2019:

I have written before about the importance of semantics in the discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how frustrated many people are about losing various battles over nomenclature, such as references to the disputed territories as “occupied,” and “Judea and Samaria” as the West Bank. An arguably more important semantic battle regarding this area has gone largely unnoticed — and been lost without a fight.

Many of Israel’s detractors, professors, the media, and others now routinely refer to the conflict as “Israel-Palestine.” Here are a few examples:

  • Jewish Voice for Peace has a web page for Israel Palestine Conflict 101.
  • Human Rights Watch’s website has the header “Israel/Palestine” as does the respected journal Foreign Policy.
  • The Global Policy Forum goes one better with its page on “Israel, Palestine and the Occupied Territories.”
  • Brown University’s newspaper headlined its coverage of a discussion by two Middle East analysts, “Policy experts talk Israel-Palestine conflict.”
  • Tablet ran the story, “How To Talk About Israel And Palestine.”
  • Haaretz, Newsweek, NPR, and The Independent are just a sample of media outlets listing articles under “Israel-Palestine.”
  • The Middle East Studies Association routinely has panels and papers such as “Regional Politics and the Palestine/Israel Conflict” and “Memory and History in the Palestine/Israel Conflict.”
  • The University of Colorado has an endowed professor of Israel/Palestine Studies in the Program in Jewish Studies.

Why is this a problem?

Any scholar who is not pushing a political agenda knows Palestine ceased to exist in 1948 when Israel won its war of independence, and Jordan (which is also part of historic Palestine) seized the West Bank and Egypt captured the Gaza Strip.

The use of the word “Palestine” is sometimes unclear. Is it referencing the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Israel, Gaza, or some combination of these areas? Depending on the interpretation, this could delegitimize the existence of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland.

It is also problematic because it can imply that the conflict is over an area where the Palestinians were once sovereign. This feeds the narrative of Israel as an occupier. The Palestinians have never had a state, and had no interest in one during the Jordanian occupation.

Referring to the Israel-Palestine conflict also reinforces the idea that the dispute is over land. Often misleadingly described as a fight by two peoples over one land, the reality is more complex, as it involves politics, psychology, history, and religion. In recent years, the Islamization of the conflict has eclipsed other factors, as many Palestinians reject the historical Jewish connection to the land and will not contemplate Jews living on Islamic territory or ruling over Muslims.

The most pernicious aspect of the reference to “Palestine” is to create a false equivalency with the sovereign nation of Israel. Israel is a democracy that shares the values and interests of the West. Palestine does not exist; it may one day in the future, but for now, there is only the Palestinian Authority, which is autocratic, denies its people their basic rights, and does not share the values or interests of the West…

RELATED ARTICLES:

Trump Signs Executive Order Protecting Jewish Students on Campus

Muslim jihad against U.S. Jews has been constant since 9/11

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Marriage and Pregnancy Reduce Crime

/in , , , , , /by

There’s a general assumption in public policy discourse that economic policy and social policy are separate universes.

When economic policy is the topic, we think about taxes, government spending, business, jobs, etc. When social policy is the topic, we think about marriage, family, children, abortion, etc.

But, in reality, the line between economic policy and social policy is ambiguous, if it exists at all.

In recent years, for instance, family structure has gotten increasing attention as an important factor to consider in policy discussions about poverty.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

Now we have a new academic paper by economists—Maxim Massenkoff and Evan Rose, both doctoral candidates in economics at the University of California, Berkeley—that makes it even clearer that what we generally think of as social policy can fall into the realm of economic analysis.

The paper—”Family Formation and Crime”—examines the connection between the incidence of pregnancy, childbirth, and marriage, and the incidence of crime.

The conclusion, in the words of the authors: “Our event-study analysis indicates that pregnancy triggers sharp declines in crime rivaling any known intervention. For mothers, criminal offending drops precipitously in the first few months of pregnancy, stabilizing at half of pre-pregnancy levels three years after the birth. Men show a smaller, but still important 25 percent decline beginning at the onset of pregnancy, although domestic violence arrests spike for fathers immediately after birth.”

Marriage, according to the authors, “is a stopping point, marking the completion of a roughly 50 percent decline in offending for both men and women.”

The analysis, again per the authors, is “by far the largest such study ever conducted in the United States.” They tapped information on over a million births and, using data in the state of Washington, matched records on “criminal offenses, births, marriages, and divorces.”

George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok discusses the work on his enormously popular blog Marginal Revolution.

Tabarrok notes his own research on crime deterrence, which shows that in the case of three-strikes laws, the prospect of an additional 20 years to life imprisonment reduced criminal recidivism by 17%. Compared with this, notes Tabarrok, “the effect of pregnancy is astoundingly large.”

Of course, demonstrating statistical correlation and explaining why the occurrences correlate are different things. Why is incidence of pregnancy followed by significant drops in criminal activity in both women and men?

What is it about birth and marriage that contributes significantly to reducing crime?

Tabarrok conjectures it’s about “socializing and civilizing both men and women.”

I would speculate that it is similar to why, when a pregnant woman sees an ultrasound image of the child developing within her, she is less likely to abort that child.

It’s a wake-up call to the awe and mystery of life, which produces a sense of meaning and personal responsibility.

It follows that we ought to be concerned about the decline in Americans’ sense of importance of marriage and children.

In a newly published survey from Pew Research Center, 57% of men and 46% of women said “having a job or career they enjoy” is “essential for a … fulfilling life.”

Compared with this, only 16% of men and 17% of women said marriage is “essential for a … fulfilling life.”

And only 16% of men and 22% of women said children are “essential for a … fulfilling life.”

I love my work and agree that satisfying and meaningful work is rewarding. But I think something is wrong when Americans are saying work is three times more important for a fulfilling life than marriage and children.

The public policy implications of this research showing a drop in crime after pregnancy are not clear. But what is clear is we should be thinking more about how our culture can do a better job conveying the importance of marriage and children.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Star Parker

Star Parker is a columnist for The Daily Signal and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: Problematic Women: Beginning Motherhood in the NICU

A Note for our Readers:

With the demand for socialism at an all-time high among our young people—our future leaders and decisionmakers—the experts at Heritage stopped and asked a question that not many have asked:

Is socialism really morally sound?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you and our fellow Americans better understand the 9 Ways That Socialism Will Morally Bankrupt America.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.