The Heinous Crime of “Blackface”

The Heinous Crime of “Blackface”

Is anyone besides this writer tired of the Media/Left dictating what is moral and immoral to the rest of the country? Since most among their ranks seem to have rejected the Ten Commandments (note the recent attempt of at least one newly-minted Democratic Committee Chairmen to remove “so help you God” from his swearing-in ceremony),[1] they clearly feel the need to replace the Directives from Mt. Sinai with something more in vogue by today’s “standards.” Let’s have a look.

We can start with the apparent gravest sin of all time: Racism. Aside from the fact that the Left’s fixation on this issue is completely one-sided (only White Conservatives are or can be racist), and accepting what every good and decent human being already knows (except, of course, the deplorable “Trump” supporters with their racially-charged MAGA ball caps) without being bludgeoned with the new revelation, on a daily basis, by the high priests in the Media, this grievous sin now undeniably trumps even the murder of the innocent. (Only the truly uninformed will fail to recognize my reference to both the newly-celebrated New York Legislature’s license-to-kill-up-to-the-moment-of-birth law, and the Pediatric Neurologist Governor of Virginia’s “comfortable” acknowledgement that his own state’s version would extend even beyond an actual delivery – his indignant protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.)

We witnessed the public confirmation of this by the Democrats in Congress twice in this past week. First in the refusal of 183 of 188 House Democrats[2] to support a bill prohibiting the abhorrent practice of either killing or “allowing to die” any child who survives an attempted abortion. (Five voted “Yes,” in support of the bill, one voted “Present,” while five other Democrats and three Republicans did not cast a vote – i.e., did not support the all-important bill.) Second in the refusal of virtually every Democratic woman  – deceitfully decked out in once-virtuous white during the State of the Union – and the majority of their male counterparts, to stand or applaud the President’s denunciation of the New York bill and its failed sister bill in Virginia. We witnessed the same reaction to his call for a bill that would end all third-trimester abortions – including wanton partial-birth abortions – as well.

But let’s put this all in perspective….

Not only did the New York bill and the Virginia Governor’s sordid and calloused description of what would happen if a child should unexpectedly (and inconveniently) survive a last-minute, last-ditch effort to prevent him or her from being born alive fail to receive any serious backlash from the Media or from Democrats at large, it was barely noticed (much less objected to). Then, of course, we learned of a far more despicable (and apparently unforgivable) sin on the part of the Governor, from not last week, but from decades ago, while he was still in med school. He had actually dressed up and (unimaginably) been photographed in “blackface”!

Now before I’m excoriated for not mentioning the hooded Klansman also seen in the Governor’s yearbook picture – which was originally thought to have possibly been the governor (but subsequently noted to be too short to have been he) – I will point out that the question of which of the the two pictured had been he, had never been a concern in the midst of the universal media outcry. In other words, whichever person in the picture – the Klansman or the jacketed “blackface” – the governor may have been was irrelevant. Each was despicable…and apparently equally so!

But the story didn’t end there. Yes, there was the also-Democrat Virginia Lieutenant Governor, who was slated to take the reins once the disgraced current head of state was forced to resign. The presumed replacement was also-inconveniently charged with sexual assault. That was no big deal, however, according to “Spartacus” himself, also-Presidential hopeful Corey Booker (another recent #MeToo casualty) – or at least not worthy of taking questions about, much less focusing on.

Now we get to the meat of the story. The third in line, Virginia’s State Attorney General (yet another Democrat), after enthusiastically (if not disinterestedly) piling on the Governor for his appalling youthful “Kodak moment,” had himself hurriedly confessed soon thereafter that he too had been photographed in “blackface” – not in drag (that would simply have been a matter of his now-sacrosanct “sexual preference”) – but in a far worse offense, the apparent Crime-of-Crimes, “blackface?! Both stunning and outrageous!

But wait, there’s more…. He wasn’t attempting to portray a black slave or plantation worker. An ABC affiliate in New Orleans fills us in:[3]

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring admitted Wednesday that he appeared in blackface at a 1980 party, further plunging Richmond into chaos as Democrats here struggle to overcome a trio of scandals rocking their three top statewide elected officials.

Herring said Wednesday that he wore blackface as a 19-year-old to dress up as a rapper at a party. The admission comes days after the Virginia Democrat called on Gov. Ralph Northam to resign after he admitted a racist photo in his medical school yearbook featured him, a charge Northam later denied.

“In 1980, when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow, and perform a song,” Herring said in a statement. “It sounds ridiculous even now writing it. But because of our ignorance and glib attitudes — and because we did not have an appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of others — we dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup.”

He added: “This was a onetime occurrence and I accept full responsibility for my conduct. That conduct clearly shows that, as a young man, I had a callous and inexcusable lack of awareness and insensitivity to the pain my behavior could inflict on others. It was really a minimization of both people of color, and a minimization of a horrific history I knew well even then.” [Emphasis added.]

So the youthful AG (not yet twenty, and just shy of thirty years ago), unimaginably decided to imitate a Black rapper, Kurtis Blow, whom he and his friends “listened to” and ostensibly liked; and he is now compelled to say that at that time in his young life he “had a callous and inexcusable lack of awareness and insensitivity to the pain my behavior could inflict on others. It was really a minimization of both people of color, and a minimization of a horrific history I knew well even then.” I’m sure.

So in the wake of the heroic rise to stardom of the likes of Joe Lewis and Jackie Robinson; followed by the adoration and idolization of Willie Mays and Hank Aaron by an entire generation of American youth (Black AND White), during my own boyhood; and then the near-deification of Michael Jordan, and now LeBron James – by boys and even girls (as well as adults) of all ages and races, while purchasing and wearing their jerseys and exorbitantly-priced footwear; doing their best to imitate them both on and off the court, we’re supposed to simply shut up and accept the idea that imitating any Black athlete or entertainer is both “callous” and “insensitive.”

Sorry, but I’m not buying it!

When I was perhaps eight or nine years old, Roy Rogers was my personal hero. I still recall going into our bathroom, and scrunching up my forehead to make it wrinkle like Roy’s did; then putting soap on it, and nervously waiting for my skin to dry; thus – I hoped – freezing in place my version of the revered cowboy’s cooler-than-cool look. How “calloused” and “insensitive” I must have been! Seriously?! What was that whole thing about “imitation [being] the sincerest form of flattery”?

This whole thing – while I can obviously see that some (though by no means all) forms of the dreaded “blackface,” could be insulting – reminds me of the virulent concern (only shared by those on the Left) over offending the hypersensitive with a careless and thoughtless “Merry Christmas!” Those that might, in fact, be offended represent such a minuscule number as to be statistically nonexistent; while the remainder of the vast population is mindlessly subjected to the absurd and insulting (not to mention oppressive) requirement of not mentioning, by name at least, the holiday which we are all celebrating – across the entire country and much of the rest of the world – and have been now for more than two millennia!

There are, of course, a few who truly are offended by the calloused expression (“Merry Christmas!”), but they, in fact, live to be offended; so go ahead, and make their day! Meanwhile, while the killing of the most innocent among us is no longer even objectionable in the “polite company” of the Left, best not to try to imitate your favorite athlete or entertainer by doing your level best to look like them. That, as it turns out, is the “Sin of Sins” – and utterly unforgivable… no matter when, or at what age, you might have done it!

REFERENCES

[1] http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1230865/pg1

[2] https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/177-house-members-vote-against-bill-makes-killing-born-baby-murder

[3] https://wgno.com/2019/02/07/virginia-attorney-general-admits-to-wearing-blackface-at-1980-college-party/

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Julien Mériot on Unsplash.

INTO THE FRAY: Unilateral concessions — The latent agenda for the April elections

Despite claims to the contrary, the Palestinian-Arabs, territory and the fate of the Jewish settlements will permeate the agenda of the April elections, lurking below and hovering above all other issues. 

Almost inevitably, elections in Israel revolve—one way or another—around one issue…even when everyone insists they don’t. This is the “Palestinian problem” and its unavoidable derivative, the fate of the Jewish communities across the Green Line.

The Palestinian Problem: Hovering above, lurking below

Take for example the previous elections, in 2015, in which there was widespread consensus among pundits that the conflict with the Palestinian-Arabs was largely a non-issue. Indeed, barely a week before polling began, a Reuters report on the electoral campaign, headlined, “As Israeli election nears, peace earns barely a mention”, noted: “While social issues and the economy were grappled over at length, the conflict with the Palestinians and efforts to forge a two-state solution to the crisis … drew little…comment or insight.”  

However, despite this apparent marginalization of the Palestinian issue, in broad brush strokes, the parties left in opposition—arguably, with the perverse exception of Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu—all embraced, as matter of political preference, the idea of territorial withdrawal and Palestinian statehood.

By contrast, all the parties, who comprised the coalition, were parties with a political aversion to territorial withdrawal and the prospect of a Palestinian state, being ready to express grudging acceptance of the idea only with great reluctance—and subject to unrealistic and unattainable provisos.

Indeed, even Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial statement about the “Arabs heading in drove for the polling stations” had clear connotations as to their collective sentiments of affiliation with their kinfolk across the 1967 “Green Line” and identification with their political aspirations for statehood.

The underlying bone of contention

Moreover, even the dissolution of the previous coalition, that precipitated the 2015 election, took place over a dispute between Netanyahu and two proponents of “two-states” in his government, Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid.

Although several other reasons were cited for the breakup, they were all in the final analysis, an upshot of inherent differences over the underlying bone of contention, the Palestinian issue—and the eagerness of Livni and Lapid to push for “separation” from the Palestinians—i.e. to concede territory for a self-governing Palestinian entity. Thus, “Time” cited one source of Netanyahu’s ire at Linvi as being due to her meeting with Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, despite his explicit instructions not to.

Moreover, although Lapid has made perceptible efforts to downplay the Left-wing image that he cultivated before entering politics, when he even endorsed the division of Jerusalem, predicting that “the Palestinian flag will fly on public buildings in East Jerusalem”, he was still stridently at odds with Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue.

Thus, as Finance Minister in Netanyahu’s government, Lapid asserted that Israel should make every effort to bring about two states for two peoples, warning that if a Palestinian state was not established, this would spell “the end of Zionism.” He reiterated this position several months after the election, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, in which he urged: “What we need to do is separate from the Palestinians ”– i.e. withdraw from territory and hand over its control to the Palestinian-Arabs.

Summing up the mounting tension within the coalition between Netanyahu and his recalcitrant pro-withdrawal adversaries, “Time” quoted one expert on Israeli politics as remarking: “Netanyahu didn’t want this government in the first place, and he prefers what he calls, his ‘natural allies ’”–-i.e. those not bent on “separation”, a.k.a. “withdrawal”.

“The Palestinians, peace talks, & settlements seem irrelevant…”

A similar situation might well be emerging in the run up to the 2019 April election, in which the Palestinian issue is widely considered, at best, marginal to the competing factions.

Reflecting this view, the Jerusalem Post wrote in a recent piece headlined, “Does Peace With The Palestinians Matter This Israeli Election?”: The Palestinians, peace talks, and settlements seem to be almost entirely irrelevant to this election season”.

However, this may prove to be as deceptive as it was in the past. For indeed, as in past, the real divide between the rivalrous political alignments in the parliament is still likely to be shaped by the differing attitudes of the various factions to the Palestinian-Arabs, the territories in Judea-Samaria, and the fate of the Jewish settlements there, rather than by differences on any other issues such as education, transport or health services.

Moreover, even if the term “peace” has become somewhat discredited, its erstwhile devotees, who once insisted that withdrawal from territory and transferal of its control to a Palestinian-Arab regime would usher in the yearned-for “peace”, today –despite disproven hopes—they persist in prescribing the very same measures as before!! However this time, no longer for the sake of unfashionable “peace,” but for the sake of a new false deity, “separation”.

In this regard, careful attention should be paid to things being said—or rather blurted out—by the new rising star on the April electoral horizon, former IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz.

Gantz is widely seen as the leading challenger to Netanyahu, and to the incumbent alignment comprising his “natural allies”—and as a potential leader of an anti-Netanyahu alignment that has a tangible chance of wresting power from it.

Ominously reminiscent ring

In this regard there appear, to be much room for concern regarding Gantz’s political predilections.

For after soon breaking his long—and exasperating—silence, he has come out with public statements in which he used language disturbingly reminiscent of a “plan” (for want of a better word) being aggressively promoted by two copiously funded civil society organizations: the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS).

Sadly, it is a “plan” that is borderline moronic in its underlying assumptions, hopelessly myopic in its strategic vision and callously malevolent in its attitude to tens of thousands of Israeli citizens, (indeed up to 150,000 by some estimates), resident in communities beyond the security barrier in Judea-Samaria.

Adding to this sense of unease is Gantz’s long standing association with these two organizations and/or with many of their prominent members. Indeed, at the time of writing this column, Gantz was still registered as part of the INSS team and is even reported to have been involved in the formulation of its currently proposed “plan”.

In broad outline, the “plan” is based on the idea of unilateral Israeli “initiatives” (read “concessions”) to keep the increasingly discredited two-state formula on life support, including renouncing Israeli claims to sovereignty over any territory beyond the security barrier, freezing all construction in, and funding of, Jewish communities in that territory, but, allegedly to avoid the errors of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, keep the IDF deployed there.

Eerie echoes

In a recent interview on the widely viewed Hebrew site, Ynet, Gantz made remarks that eerily echoed the “rationale” of the INSS-CIS “plan” and which were widely interpreted as being favorable to the 2005 Gaza disengagement—and as endorsing the implementation of additional unilateral measures, involving withdrawal and evacuation of Jewish communities.

According to Gantz: “The disengagement was carried out with Israel’s political considerations in mind”. He added that “we must find the way in which we don’t have control over others…we need to take the lessons [of the Gaza disengagement] and implement them elsewhere.”

Although it is difficult to misconstrue these words, Gantz did try to walk them back later –but to little avail.

Indeed, a later clarification, after the interview, from his party that “under a Gantz government there not will be any unilateral measures regarding evacuation of settlements” is hardly reassuring. After all, while the INSS-CIS plan does not call for the unilateral evacuation of settlements, it does recommend stifling and strangling them, until they wither away and are abandoned.

But if Gantz’s benign perspective of past debacles is troubling enough, his apparent endorsement of a future fiascos is even more so—and casts a heavy shadow over his judgment.

Foreseeable foregone fiasco

After all, the “plan” advanced by INSS-CIS is an almost certain formula for disaster.

For, it will unavoidably:

– Replicate the conditions that prevailed in South Lebanon prior to 2000—on the fringes of Greater Tel Aviv

– Entrap the IDF in open-ended occupation, whose duration is dependent exclusively on Palestinian-Arabs

– Culminate in unilateral withdrawal without any agreement

None of this is difficult for foresee.

Clearly, by advocating renunciation of claims to sovereignty over all of Judea-Samaria beyond the security barrier, on the one hand; with the continued deployment of the IDF in that territory, on the other, the INSS-CIS “plan” is in effect, calling for replicating precisely the conditions that prevailed in South Lebanon until the hasty unilateral IDF retreat in 2000.

The “plan” envisions this IDF deployment continuing until some acceptable arrangement with the Palestinian-Arabs can be reached. But what if no such agreement materializes?

Obviously then, this formula for deploying the IDF for an indeterminate period, in territory over which Israel lays no sovereign claim—and hence, by implication, acknowledges that others have such claims—creates an unsustainable political configuration.

Indeed, all the Palestinian-Arabs need to do to ensnare the IDF in an open-ended “occupation” is… well, nothing.

All they need to do is wait for the IDF to become caught up in what will inevitably become an ongoing guerrilla campaign — an easy target for attacks by a hostile population, backed by armed Palestinian security services (which neither INSS nor CIS recommends dismantling).

Unilateral withdrawal in slow motion

Soon, a combination of mounting domestic and international pressure will build up for the IDF to withdraw—similar to that which precipitated the IDF pullout from South Lebanon.

On the domestic front, recurring IDF casualties in a “foreign land” will result in incessant calls to “bring our boys back home”.

On the international front, increasing impatience with open-ended “occupation” will create growing demands for the removal of Israeli troops.

Eventually, continued IDF deployment will no longer be tenable and evacuation will become inevitable—without any adequate political settlement or sustainable security arrangements.

Just like in South Lebanon.

This then, is the inevitable chain of events that will result from adopting the INSS-CIS plan.

Given the troubling evidence, there seems a definite chance that, if elected Prime Minister, Gantz may well embark on the course charted by INSS-CIS.

Accordingly, whether raised explicitly during the campaign or not, support or opposition for it will be the latent agenda in the April election—and voters ought to be aware of what they are really voting for—or against.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from Israeli Prime Minisiter Benjamin Netanyahu’s Facebook page.

Suicidal Jews

When individuals kill themselves, we look for answers in their DNA, their environments, their personal reactions to feelings of impotent rage, rejection, disappointment, heartbreak.

But how to explain group suicide? Wikipedia lists numerous cases, starting in 206 B.C., and these relatively recent cases:

  • In 1943, in the final phase of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, many of the Jewish fighters besieged in the “bunker” at Miła 18 committed mass suicide by ingesting poison rather than surrender to the Nazis.
  • In 1945, about 1,000 residents of Demmin, Germany, committed mass suicide after the Red Army had sacked the town.
  • In 1978, 918 Americans––including 276 children––died of cyanide poisoning in the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana.
  • In 1997, 39 followers of the Heaven’s Gate cult in California died in a mass suicide, believing they would travel on a spaceship that followed comet Hale–Bopp.

Clearly, some groups took their lives en masse for ideological reasons, while others––particularly vulnerable people in dire need of a “leader”––simply followed orders.

In all the mass suicides in recorded history, dozens, hundreds, and up to one-thousand people took their own lives.

But today, when looking at suicidal Jews, the numbers could be in the millions!

LOOK AT THE NUMBERS

Currently, out of a worldwide population of eight-billion people, there are 14-million Jews: approximately six-and-a-half million in Israel, six-and-a-half million in the United States, and about one-million throughout the world––by any measure, a few grains of sand compared to the massive total population of the world.

According to U.S. voting patterns, Jews are overwhelmingly liberal…up to 80 percent, which means they vote in huge numbers for leftists like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton––whose staffs were comprised almost exclusively of career anti-Semites and who did everything in their power to effect anti-Israel policies like the Iran deal, knowing that the fanatical mission of the mullahs in Teheran was––and is––to wipe Israel off the map and exterminate every Jew.

As Karin McQuillan explains in “Lefist Jew Hatred Has Come to America”: “The Left began with blacklisting and boycotting conservatives. Now American Jews are in the crosshairs, no matter how liberal their politics.”

But they won’t jump off the bandwagon, she says, because that would mean “losing your friends, being shunned at synagogue, and stunting your career… changing party affiliation is a such a tall cliff, it feels suicidal, that is, the loss of their entire identity. The identity politics, blame-America crowd can’t stand the Jewish-American success story.”

McQuillan quotes the estimable Daniel Greenfield: “There is no future for Jews on the left except as collaborators in anti-Semitism.”

Look no further than the full-bodied ideological and financial support that liberal––suicidal––Jews lend to virulently anti-Israel organizations, many of them founded and financed by leftist Jews, such as the Woman’s March, Black Lives Matter, the fascistic Antifa, J Street,  If Not Now, Americans for Peace Now,  B’Tselem, Bend the Arc, Breaking the Silence, New Israel FundJews for Racial and Economic Justice, The  Forward newspaper (recently defunct), Michael Lerner’s Tikkun magazine; Reform Action Center, T’ruah  (formerly Rabbis for Human Rights), Jewish Voice for Peace, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, et al.

Impossible, you may say. To the contrary, it’s not only possible but a hard, cold reality that these unJews, as political commentator Dan Friedman calls them, support the very people identical to those who annihilated the entire population of Europe’s Jews during Hitler’s reign of terror during the 1930s and ‘40s. 

Why? Because it’s hard to be a Jew, and liberal Jews are simply not up to the task. The desperate need to be liked, accepted, admired and embraced are the historical downfalls of weak Jews.

That is why so many Jews adored President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who stacked his administration with Court Jews and then stabbed every Jew in the world in the back…. refusing refuge to the few who escaped Hitler’s murderous onslaught by turning away thousands from our shores and sending them back to their grisly deaths. And he counted on––who else?––weak liberal Jews and a complicit leftist media––to cover for his mortal sins!

Even if only 50-percent––and not the actual 80 percent––of liberal Jews support candidates who hate Jews and hate Israel, that means that seven-million of the 14-million Jews on earth are paving the way to another Holocaust.

HERE IS WHY

Liberal-turned-conservative icon Norman Podhoretz, author and longtime editor of Commentary magazine, further explains this aberration in his latest article, “Why Are Jews Liberal?”

“Most American Jews sincerely believe that their liberalism, together with their commitment to the Democratic Party…stems from the teachings of Judaism and…the heritage of ‘Jewish values.’ But if this theory were valid, the Orthodox would be the most liberal sector of the Jewish community. [Yet] on every single cultural issue, the Orthodox oppose the politically correct liberal positions taken by most other American Jews precisely because these positions conflict with Jewish law.”

Podhoretz continues: “Liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right….indeed, many such secular Jews, when asked how they would define ‘a good Jew,’ reply that it is equivalent to being a good liberal.”

Precisely! And, I would add, a good Democrat!

Another reason why Jews in our country are liberals is because, unlike those who lived for thousands of years before them––and were forced into a cruel diaspora, ejected from every country they tried to call home––American Jews grew up in the freest, most bountiful, most law-and-order country in world history, where none of them suffered the indignities and life-threatening specters of annihilation from pogroms or Crusades or an Inquisition or forced conversions or a Holocaust––and few of their parents or teachers taught them about these historical obscenities!

Yes, there was prejudice from the likes of Hitler admirers Henry Ford, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and Charles Lindbergh, Yes, there were quotas for Jews in American universities and medical schools, so Jews built the most prominent medical centers in the U.S. Yes, it was hard to get jobs in the entertainment business, so Jews invented Hollywood. Yes, it may have been difficult for some nerdy guys to get dates or get noticed, so Jews created Facebook and Google and Twitter, among other leftist enterprises.

By the way, that’s why there is and always has been so much antisemitism––pure green-eyed jealousy! How did a tiny people who were slaves in ancient Egypt for over 200 years and then marginalized for thousands more years wherever they went manage to survive and thrive and flourish so spectacularly?

Instead of emulating the seemingly superhuman power of Jews to survive millennia of oppression, ostracism, and outright murder, the antisemites among us would rather kill them off!

That’s what the strongest human emotion––jealousy––does to the human psyche. When they see that the Bloomberg Innovation Index for 2019 lists the fledgling state of Israel––only 70 years old––as the 5th most innovative country in the world––ahead of Singapore, Japan, the U.S., France, Norway and China––it drives those pathetic envious Jew haters stark raving mad!

CONVERSION

In this bastion of American liberty, the freedom of religion Jews had never experienced led many to abandon what they considered the oppressive strict observances they were accustomed to. At the same time, an awareness of their painful history inspired tremendous empathy for the underdog, the oppressed, the maligned––the victims of society. Hence, the liberal Jews converted from Judaism to a religion called Social Justice.

But according to Noah Rothman, author of Unjust: Social Justice and The Unmaking of America, so-called social justice “has become the antithesis of blind, objective justice…its essential nature compels its believers to treat individuals unequally in the name of equality.”

For leftist American Jews, going the “social justice” route allows them to bask in self-congratulatory narcissism, while distorting the Bible’s teachings and replacing them with a universalist theology they call “tikkun olam” or what they delude themselves into believing is “repairing the world.” These are the same people who applaud the new NY State law to engage in the premeditated murder of in utero babies of nine-months gestation the day before––actually the minute before––they’re born.  Some repair!

And in the midterm elections of November 2018, the American electorate––including those leftist suicidal Jews––voted for not one, not two, but three in-your-face Jew haters and Israel haters! Here is a relatively short list of the Jew haters that liberal/leftist/progressive American Jews continue to support.

WHO HATES THE SUICIDAL LIBERAL JEWS?
  • Black leftists. According to historian Rafael Medoff, “American Jews played a significant role in assisting the African-American community throughout the past century––having a central role in creating the NAACP, building more than 5,000 schools for rural African Americans from 1914 to 1932, and participating actively in the black civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.” But when the Black Power movement arose in the mid-‘60s, the first people blacks irrationally turned against were the Jews.
  • The World Council of Churches, which represents 350 member churches in 110 countries, and half a billion Christians throughout the world…fully embraces the vicious Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) campaign to destroy Israel.
  • Amnesty International, which just issued a report that isn’t just anti-Israel, it obliterates Jewish history. The organization, as you can read here, has gone full-blown antisemitic.
  • Doctors Without Borders prides itself on its neutrality, but consistently launches venomous anti-Israel political campaigns.
  • AirBNB, an American company offering short-term lodging services to lease or rent internationally, removed all listings of Jewish homes in of Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) although not in other disputed territories owned by Turks in Cyprus, Moroccans in Sahara, Chinese in Tibet, or Russians in the Crimea, et al.
  • The American Friends (Quakers), which “boasts,”says writer Tabitha Korol, “of their history of non-violent activism, yet work to ultimately destroy the Jewish people and their ancient homeland, Israel, by inciting others to strive for Israel’s annihilation, often through violence.”
  • The unhallowed halls of academia are a hotbed of virulent antisemitism throughout the country, with  Columbia University leading the pack. Here is an example of how J Street U and Students for Justice in [so-called] Palestine torture Jewish students at the University of Vermont.
  • The Anti-Defamation League under the leadership of Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Obama official. As Daniel Greenfield expresses: “Once upon a time, the ADL was a Jewish civil rights organization. Now it’s just another generic lefty group that pretends to care about Jewish causes only long enough to fleece some of its donors. As the Left goes antisemitic, the ADL is becoming a threat to Jews.”
  • The United Nations, a cesspool of tin-pot dictators and anti-Semites on 2nd Avenue in NY City, has a virtual fetish with the “Palestinian” issue. From 2012 to 2015, the U.N. General Assembly criticized individual nations 97 times, of which 83 were against Israel! Here, prolific author, former Harvard Law Professor, and longtime liberal Alan Dershowitz explains that, “The suffering of the Palestinians, which does not compare to the suffering of other groups, has been largely self-inflicted. They could have had a state, with no occupation, if they had accepted the Peel Commission Report of 1937, the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, the Clinton-Barak offer of 2000-2001, the Ehud Olmert offer of 2008. They rejected all these offers––responding with violence and terrorism––because they would have required them to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people––something they are unwilling to do even today.”
  • The heads of the Women’s March: Linda Sarsour (“nothing creepier than Zionism”), Tamika Mallory (“white Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy”), and Carmen Perez––all ardent admirers of hate preacher and head of the Nation of Islam Louis Farrakhan (Jews “are termites”). All of them share Ms. Mallory’s sentiment that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist.
  • Newly-elected Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the vulgarian who thought it appropriate to announce to the entire world (and worse, her nine-year-old son) her intentions re President Trump: “We’re gonna go in there and impeach the motherf—er.'” Rep. Tlaib is a Muslim and daughter of people who call themselves Palestinians. She took her oath of office on Thomas Jefferson’s Koran, which the third U.S. president obtained in order to understand the Muslim Barbary Pirates against whom he went to war, wrapped herself in a “Palestinian” flag (but accuses Jews  of dual loyalty), aggressively supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement––which is a front for terrorist groups––designed to destroy Israel, and opposes aid to Israel.
  • Newly-elected Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who also supports the antisemitic BDS movement, and has wished: “may Allah awaken the people and see the evil doings of Israel”––a country she has said should not exist and has accused of apartheid. And she has also appealed to a federal judge to get lighter sentences for 33 Islamic State jihadists. Amazingly––talk about a crooked media––PJ Media  documented that “105 articles covered Ilhan Omar’s win but zero covered her antisemitism.”
  • Newly-elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) also fully supports the BDS movement, speaks constantly of “the occupation of Palestine” (which is nowhere on any map or Atlas in existence), and says that she descends from Sephardic Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition to Puerto Rico but disclaimed this lineage by saying: “culture isn’t DNA.” And now she’s having an oh-so-simpatico lovefest on Twitter with one of the world’s most virulent antisemites, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labor Party, who says that Jews, not Islam, are the source of global terrorism.

Wannabe president Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) called these Jew haters “the suffragists of our time.”

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi––she with the Jewish grandchildren––appointed these Jew-and-Israel haters to prestigious positions: Rep. Tlaib to the Financial Services Committee; Rep. Omar to the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, which give her a platform to push her pro-Muslim, anti-Israel, anti-American agenda; Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to the influential House Oversight Committee.

It’s relevant to mention here that Rep. Pelosi secretly hosted a fundraising event in 2012 with Hamas-tied CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) with a price tag of $5,000 per person and $30,000 per couple. CAIR was named “unindicted co-conspirator” in the largest terrorist-funding trial in American history, but the indictment never happened because Barack Obama––who 80 percent of liberal, suicidal Jews voted for––shut it down.

And––surprise, surprise––the woman who ran the country from 2009 to 2016, Valerie Jarrett, told these antisemites she’s backing them up!

WHY ARE LIBERAL JEWS SUICIDAL?

Because, as I’ve documented, all the people and organizations they embrace, vote for, give money to, and teach their children to support HATE THEM and WISH THEM DEAD!

Proof? Where are the voices in the Democrat Party of protest or outrage at the blatant antisemitism spewing every minute of every day from Democrat office holders and the huge crowd of Democrat presidential wannabes?

Where is there a single word about the beauty of diversity and multiculturalism when it comes to Jews?

Where is there even a whisper of support for Israel, our longtime ally and the only democratic nation in the entire Middle East?

From Democrats: NOT A SINGLE WORD!

Where, asks longtime Israeli columnist Isi Liebler, are “American Jewish leaders?” The Jew hatred today in the U.S., he says, goes “back to the Obama administration,” when Mr. Obama “began to treat Israel as a rogue state, grovel to the Iranians, describe Israeli defenders and Arab terrorists as moral equivalents, and finally declined to veto the most biased and despicable resolution ever passed against Israel by the UN Security Council. The response by the majority of the American Jewish establishment, who were previously never reticent about raising their voices, was a deafening silence.”

And the past decade, Liebler continues, “has been one of unprecedented passivity and cowardice by the Jewish establishment––including the ADL, J Street, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the National Council of Jewish Women, progressive rabbis….[and] the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, comprising 51 affiliates…”

“If the Jewish leaders do not reverse the tide,” Liebler concludes, “most American Jews will be betraying Israel and, in the process, obliterating what little is left of Jewish identity.” 

TOO LATE!

It’s too late to reignite the love and pride and passion American Jews once had for Israel and the miraculous rebirth of their ancestral home in 1948, thanks to the heroic courage of President Harry Truman.

Because of assimilation and intermarriage and the massive influx––actually invasion––of millions of Muslims into Europe (including the Scandinavian countries) and America, and the capitulation of the multiculturalist and diversity crowd to their money, as well as acceptance of Sharia law ––including the barbaric female genital mutilation and sadistic  honor killings that exist in great numbers in the United States––there is once again a pandemic of antisemitism, only this time with the passive acquiescence of liberal Jews.

We Jews are taught by our sages to accept and embrace all Jews, no matter their flaws or shortcomings. We are a tiny people and only by understanding the imperative for unity will we survive. Look for the good in even the most egregious behavior of our fellow Jew––does he or she help the poor, take in the widow and orphan, donate generously to charity, et al? Then accept that Jew, embrace him, love her.

In Genesis 12.3, God tells Abram (before he became Abraham): “I will make you into a great nation…I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”

Personally, I don’t embrace the quisling Jews and other antisemites who opt for the toxic American liberalism that vilifies Jews and Israel. I curse them. And I promise them that their determination to destroy the Jewish state––because of their rancid hatred and obsessive jealousy––will fail as thunderously as all attempts over the past 5,000 years have failed.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured images is by Pixabay.

Killer Party: Dems Stand Alone on Infanticide

Years from now, when history looks back on the Democratic Party, one date will almost certainly stand out: July 25, 2016. That was the Tuesday, in the capital of the Revolution, when everything changed. For the first time in America’s 240 years, a major political party threw its full support behind one of the most savage and violent practices of the modern age: full-term, no-apologies abortion.

It’s just a party platform, some said. It doesn’t mean anything. Try telling that to Americans today, who watched in stunned silence last night as a leader of the U.S. Senate walked to the same floor where giants of freedom have stood and defended the killing of a perfect, fully-born child. It was not just a party platform when another senator, Ben Sasse (R-Nebr.), looked at the other side of the aisle and saw a group of men and women willing to “betray the universal truth of human dignity and [turn] the stomachs of civilized people… in every country on earth.” And it wasn’t just a party platform when, the only other time this issue came up for a vote, every Senate Democrat agreed: infanticide is wrong.

The moment Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) rose to her feet and objected to protecting the survivors of abortion will be a defining one for Democrats. It should have signified to everyone that the radicalization of the party that started in 2016 is now complete. And like so many others, Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) could only look on in horror. “This is the world’s greatest deliberative body,” she said. But “there is nothing great, there is nothing moral or even humane, about the discussion that we have before us today.”

New Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) stood in disbelief. “Is this really the extremism of the Democratic party?” After decades of proving that there was still some scrap of moderation in their abortion agenda, liberals have thrown off any pretense of solemnity or restraint. And just like the Brett Kavanaugh debate, they’ve significantly overplayed their hand. “I can’t imagine a vision less just or less consistent with the goodness and compassion of the American people,” Hawley argued.

He’s right. “Gallup polling from 2018 found that only 13 percent of Americans favor making third-trimester abortions ‘generally’ legal, and only 18 percent of Democrats shared that position,” Alexandra Desanctis warns. Less than a quarter of their own party is willing to follow them into the most radical terrain on abortion ever broached. “Women reject late-term abortion at an even higher rate than men. A Marist survey from earlier this year found that 75 percent of Americans would limit abortion to, at most, the first three months of pregnancy, and majorities of Democrats and those who describe themselves as pro-choice agreed.”

With almost an eerie detachment to the issue at hand, Murray tried to frame the bill as unnecessary. “We have laws against infanticide in this country,” she claimed in her brief justification for stopping its passage. But, as so many have pointed out, only 26 states have “affirmative protections” for born-alive babies. Even if all 50 did, what’s the harm in reaffirming the Senate’s commitment to protecting these innocent survivors? Surely a party that can eat up hours of the legislative clock with a passionate plea to save the Delta Smelt can spare some sympathy for endangered children.

Even after yesterday’s disgrace, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has no intentions of walking away from survivors like Melissa Ohden and Gianna Jessen, who wouldn’t be alive today if Democrats got their way. Before the vote, McConnell cautioned that if the other side stopped the bill, it “would make quite a disturbing statement.” If they do, he vowed, “I can assure them that this will not be the last time we try to ensure that all newborns are afforded this fundamental legal protection.”

To almost every American, “health care” does not include the killing of innocent newborns. “But in defending bills that expand the right to abort [living children], Democrats are giving away the game,” Desanctis predicts. “Most people, even those who favor some abortion access, instinctively recoil from what they see. These late-term abortion bills do more than reveal Democratic radicalism. They draw back the veil of euphemism to expose abortion for what it is: At every stage of pregnancy, it is the taking of a human life. For the anti-abortion movement, it is a pivotal moment to insist upon that truth.”

That’s where you come in. If you haven’t contacted your senators about the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act, make sure you do today. Let them know that extremists like Patty Murray stand alone!


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


RELATED ARTICLES:

Cory Booker Defends Voting for Infanticide: Bill to Care for Babies Born Alive Just “Creates Schisms”

WATCH: Bernie Sanders Supports Abortions Up to Birth, Okay to Kill Babies Up to Birth Because “It’s Rare”

Slaughter of Innocents Shows Our Culture’s Moral Rot

The Rediscovery of the Born-Alive Act

SOTU 2019: What to Watch For

Pope and Change

‘Never Trump’ Conservative Bill Kristol Donated To Ralph Northam’s Campaign

“Never Trump” conservative and The Weekly Standard co-founder Bill Kristol donated to Democrat Ralph Northam’s campaign during the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial election, but hasn’t indicated if he regrets that decision in light of Northam’s recent scandals.

Northam, who defeated Republican Ed Gillespie to take the governor’s seat, is now the subject of intense scrutiny over comments he made about late-term abortions and a racist photo that appeared in his medical school yearbook.

Last February in an interview with The New Yorker, Kristol explained that he and his wife donated to Northam’s campaign after being “infuriated” by President Donald Trump’s response to white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia. In a tweet in November 2017, Kristol was publicly questioning whether he should vote for the Democrat in order to stick it to the “Trumpy” campaign run by Gillespie.

The Daily Caller confirmed through Virginia State Election records that Kristol donated $200 to Northam’s campaign in August 2017.

Kristol told The New Yorker that he was “pleased” when Northam won, adding, “I really could make a case that the country would be better off with the Democrats running the House, because, if the Republicans aren’t willing to check Trump, someone has to.”

Kristol has waxed poetic about Northam’s comments on a late-term abortion bill in the Virginia General Assembly and Northam’s racist yearbook photo, but has seemingly abdicated any responsibility for supporting the Democrat. Kristol has not yet indicated if he regrets supporting Northam’s campaign and did not return a request for comment.

“The party line vote on tabling HB 2491 in the subcommittee of the Virginia General Assembly is yet another reminder — an important one — of why many of us Republican #NeverTrumpers haven’t become Democrats but rather are doing our best to save the GOP,” Kristol said referencing the late-term abortion bill, not mentioning his Northam donation.

Kristol retweeted a comment from Hayden Black mocking Northam’s excuse for the blackface/KKK photo in his medical school yearbook, but largely avoided directly criticizing the governor. For example, when former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said that Virginians “deserve better representation,” Kristol spun the remark against Trump, writing, “So do the people of the United States.”

Bill Kristol Retweet (Twitter Screenshot)
Bill Kristol (Twitter Screenshot)

In another set of tweets about the yearbook photo, Kristol joked about yearbooks gaining ground in American politics — likely a reference to failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore — and blasted the Republican Party’s ability to conduct and use opposition research.

Bill Kristol (Twitter Screenshot)

Bill Kristol (Twitter Screenshot)

Kristol has repeatedly toed the line on supporting Democrats in his attempt to turn the Republican Party away from Trump. Prior to the 2018 midterms, Kristol floated the idea that if Democrats swept the elections then Republicans would finally have an incentive to turn against the president.

“Can’t do anything about the fact that he’s president. So maybe you have to work with him. That’s been the general Republican attitude,” Kristol said during an MSNBC interview. “I think the day after election day, things change more than people realize in terms of Republican psychology and dynamics.”

“They’ll need a little help from people like me,” Kristol added with a laugh.

“Bill Kristol must have missed the class on party building where you are taught not to actively help your opponent while trying to rebuild your own party,” a GOP strategist told The Daily Caller.

COLUMN BY

Amber Athey

Amber Athey

White House Correspondent. Follow Amber on Twitter

RELATED ARTICLES:

Gov. Northam: ‘I Don’t Have Any Regrets About Infanticide Comments

Half Of Virginia Dems Still Approve Of Gov. Northam

Ben Sasse Is Putting Senators On The Record Over Stance On Infanticide

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission.

Will Starbucks Values Hit the Campaign Trail in 2020?

Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, tweeted his interest in running for president of the United States… as an independent.

Now, with an outspoken CEO who regularly leveraged his position to push an agenda, Starbucks could hardly be considered a centrist entity under Schultz’s leadership—that would essentially require neutrality on the issues, or at least some semblance of playing both sides. Looking at Starbucks’ long receipt of liberal activism over the years, you can understand why we view this new-found moderation with healthy skepticism.

After his voluntary departure in 2000, Schultz returned in 2008 after the company reported serious financial troubles. The return also marked a jumpstart in the activism that has earned Starbucks a 2ndVote score of 1 (Liberal).

During his second tenure, Schultz told Christian shareholders to take a hike if they didn’t agree with the company’s support for same-sex marriage. Later that year, Starbucks banned all customers from legally carrying firearms in their stores.

Additionally, in what is surely a carry-over from Schultz’s time as CEO, the new Starbucks chief has been forced to defend his company’s financial support for abortion giant Planned Parenthood. 

Click here to see more on Starbucks’ support for the Paris Climate Accords, sanctuary cities, and more!

Obviously, conservatives are unlikely to cast their first vote for Schultz in 2020. What should concern the new leadership at Starbucks is the fact that they won’t cast their 2ndVote buying their coffee until the stain of activism is erased from the kitchens.

Hold Starbucks accountable by buying your coffee from these better alternatives.Contact Starbucks!

Reach Out to Starbucks on Facebook!

Help us continue highlighting how corporations support the left’s agenda by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

A Non-citizen Who Voted in Three Elections Gets a Small Fine

The judge in the case said the Election Board officials who registered her “don’t know what they are doing.”  Or do they?

I’ve had this story for a few days (thanks to reader Nancy), but am just getting to it because of the more pressing news from NevadaOhio and Virginia.

From Newsweek (I am actually surprised it is even being reported nationally!):

GREEN CARD HOLDER, 70, AVOIDS JAIL TIME AFTER VOTING ILLEGALLY THREE TIMES IN NORTH CAROLINA

A permanent resident of North Carolina will not face prison time after she was illegally allowed to vote in three separate elections.

voted stickers

Hyo Suk George, 70, was charged with illegal voting by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after she reportedly voted in 2008, 2010 and 2016 in Columbus County. Instead of sentencing George to six months in prison, U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle fined George $100.

George arrived in the United States from South Korea in 1989. She got a green card in 1995 and has worked in housekeeping and the fast-food industry, her federal public defender Sherri Alspaugh said. She registered to vote “next to the senior center” after taking the advice of a town council member, according to the News & Observer. [They should be naming the town council member!]

Alspaugh said her client did not remember whether she registered at the county board or a library, but said there were likely volunteers working registration.

judge boyle

In his ruling, Boyle also expressed frustration toward the election board in Whiteville, North Carolina, because it allowed George to register to vote using her green card, Social Security number and driver’s license, the News & Observerreported.

“So they see a green card and say, ‘That’s OK’ because they don’t know what they’re doing,” the judge said. “They ought to be a little smarter than that.”

Boyle added that the same amount of attention that is placed on voters should be placed on educating election officials. Green cards give immigrants permanent residency in the United States but not citizenship. Only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote.

An investigation by the North Carolina Board of Elections found that 508 voters who cast ballots in the 2016 election were ineligible to vote. Of those, 441 voters were individuals serving active felony sentences. Only convicted felons who have completed their sentences are allowed to vote in North Carolina.

The election board also found that 41 noncitizens voted and 24 voters cast ballots twice. Two individuals reportedly voted using the names of family members who had recently died, the News & Observer reported at the time.

More here.

As I’ve said before, if you are looking for something to do, watch-dogging your local Board of Elections would be a very useful project. 

RELATED ARTICLE: SPLC feeling the heat, hires top defamation lawyer to defend its tax-exempt status in RICO lawsuit

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

The Perils of Cash

People have been asking me as of late about holding cash, at least those that are reading the writing on the wall. Besides the fact that there is a war on cash and a cashless society coming soon,  there are other reasons as to the perils of cash. With the talk of a global financial reset, coupled with the stock market gyrations and the unsustainable debt, many people have gone to cash. It used to be known as “cash is king”. Well today, I say “cash is trash”. So what are the perils of holding an excessive amount of cash?

Perils of Cash

Low Interest:  Cash and cash equivalent accounts these days are paying perhaps about 1%-2% at best, often times less than that. If you are not keeping pace with the real rate of inflation, you are falling behind in purchasing power and may run out of money down the line.

Inflation: The government reports the inflation rate today to be at around 2%, but like the unemployment numbers, this is not really the case upon further inspection. You see back in the days of Bill Clinton, changes were made to just how it is that the government reports the inflation rate to the American people. It is known as the Boskin Commission. The Boskin Commission, formally called the “Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index”, was appointed by the United States Senate in 1995 to study possible bias in the computation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is used to measure inflation in the United States. How To Rewrite Economic History? Here’s how.

The real rate of inflation as reported by Kirk Elliott, PhD, is at 6.12% today. Based upon Trump’s weak dollar policy and the Fed’s raising of interest rates, we can expect inflation to be on the rise. Interest rate cycles run 28 years on average. We just finished a 30-year declining interest rate environment and as of November 2016, we have embarked upon a rising interest rate cycle. So cash for now is trash. Hold some in the bank and perhaps some at home for emergencies and opportunities.

Global Financial Reset: What exactly is being reset? The debt is being reset and the value of the dollar will decline over time until sound money is restored. Easier said than done. Stay tuned. So once again excess cash may not be wise at this particular time in history. President Trump is now taking on the Federal Reserve, Rothschild World Banking Dynasty and the IMF as a move to restore sound money in order to MAGA. We will more than likely see a gold backed currency. So, buy gold (and silver). There is a reason you hear and use the expression, “it’s as good as gold”, own some. The signs are there indicating the reset is in motion. President Trump takes on the Fed.

Bank Bail-In: We learned all about the bank bail out in 2008-2009. How about the bank bail-in? A bail-inand a bailout are both designed to prevent the complete collapse of a failing bank. With a bank bail-in, the bank uses the money of its unsecured creditors, including depositors and bondholders, to restructure their capital so it can stay afloat. How much of your funds do you want caught in the bail-in? Again, right now cash is trash. Oh yeah, FDIC barely covers a fraction of the trillions on deposit. Take note. So what to do?

GOOTS

Get Out of the System: Well you cant really get out of the system unless you leave the planet. But there are alternative asset classes to consider in this paradigm shift of global economic and monetary policy to consider. I have a proprietary model which is truly a paradigm shift in thinking offering a new sound, superior, proactive approach to protecting and preserving wealth, utilizing both alternative paper assets as well as tangible assets. Follow the trend. The trend is your friend. The goal as wise and prudent investors is to identify and minimize risks and maximize returns keeping pace with inflation.

Does Wall Street have Main Street’s best interest in mind? I think we know the answer to this. While so many others will continue to operate in the deceitful and flawed modalities being advised by an industry they no longer trust. A great change is now upon us. The time for action is now. Better a day early than a day late. Request a copy of the Global Financial Reset Report here. To be continued…

EDITORS NOTE: This John Michael Chambers column with images is republished with permission.

“Is it lawful [for the President] to do good…?”

When I read the following recently I was struck by the parallel between the Democrats and the Media of our day, and the Pharisees and the Herodians of Christ’s day:

1 And he [Christ] entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.

2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.

3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.

4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.

5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.

6 And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.  (Mark 3: 1-6)

So are we getting this?

Christ had entered into the synagogue, on the Sabbath, and saw a man there with “a withered hand.” And the Pharisees were waiting, watching to see if he, Jesus, had the temerity to heal this man on the Sabbath…thereby profaning it in their debauched minds. 

And He, of course, would do just that, but not before asking pointedly: “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?” Was the view of these religious zealots regarding “the Law” so warped that they actually considered it wrong (or “immoral”) to heal on the sabbath?

Clearly they did, as they “straightway took counsel with the Herodians…how they might destroy him.” And that reminded me of what the Media and the Democrats (with either the active or tacit support of Establishment Republicans) do to the President on a daily basis…no matter what his latest “crime” or offense.

The President is not a religious leader. That is not the point. The point is that his enemies – and he has rightly identified the Media as “the enemy of the People” (of those who elected him, at least) – takes “counsel…against him,” seeking “how they might destroy him” even when he is seeking to do good – or, at the very least, seeking to do the exact things that current and former Democrats – politicians and presidents – have either done or spoken strongly in favor of over the years. Now suddenly, these same things are “racist,” “immoral,” or a “symbol of hate.”

Dropping unemployment to a fifty-year low – including among Blacks and Hispanics, as well as women: BAD!   Bringing back record numbers of manufacturing job openings, and more jobs overall than people looking for work: WRONG!   Raising consumer confidence levels to near record highs: SELFISH!  

Renegotiating major international trade deals to benefit American workers and consumers, while reducing federal spending by hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as boosting the expansion of the GDP to near 4% (the average annual expansion rate during Barack Obama’s two terms was just below 1.5%): UNFAIR!   

Closing down our Southern Border to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants (which cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $113 Billion a year), and doing all in his power to complete the construction of a wall (on our Southern Border) like some 65 nations (including the U.S.) have done. (There are 196 nations in the world, so one-third of them have walls.) IMMORAL!  

Bringing together the leaders of North and South Korea for the first time in nearly 70 years, and extracting a commitment from North Korean President Kim Jong Un to “pursue ‘complete’ denuclearization” – with no mention of an increase in U.S. foreign aid to North Korea to date; pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord which was costing us “a vast fortune” (the effects of which were “quantitatively trivial”); and canceling Barack Obama’s disastrous Iranian nuclear deal: EVIL!

All of which tells us that the answer to the question with which we started – “Is it lawful [for the President] to do good…?” – is a resounding NO!  according to the Media/Left in this country. So like the Pharisees of old, the new Sanhedrin in this country – the Global Elites – and their “Herodian” allies in the Deep State, while witnessing the President’s every effort to keep his campaign promises (as seen above) and fulfill his commitment “To Make America Great Again,” have continually sought ways that “they might destroy him.”

In the Meridian of Time, the cry went out with respect to the ‘King of the Jews’: “Let him be crucified! Let him be crucified!” Today, the equally-shrill cry on the part of the Democrats, the Deep State, a number of traitorous Republicans (Jeff Flake and Mitt Romney most notably), and virtually the entire Establishment Press regarding the man whom the People elected as their 45th President, Donald J. Trump, has been “Let him be investigated [until a crime can be found]!” and ultimately, “Let him be impeached!” 

In either case, the lust for blood has been the same…and the alleged “crimes” equally absurd.

Author’s Note:

Since the cry of impeachment is ALL that those who watch the Establishment Media ever see or hear, it is up to the rest of us to speak out, and post the TRUTH on Social Media (assuming it won’t be blocked)! While this may seem like a small thing, in the end it is HUGE, as what is trending effectively tells the world what WE are thinking…or, at least, what those who are not afraid to speak are thinking!  Have those of us who are Christians not all declared that had we been there in the crowd, on that dark day long ago, when Pilate asked the people what should be done with Jesus of Nazareth, WE would have cried out to save him? That we will never know…but do we remain silent now? Our President should not have to bear this, our burden, alone.

In speaking out we may not convince or sway the majority, but at least we may save ourselves, our family, and our friends. We ourselves are the only person whom any of us can control, but for each of us – and perhaps for the country and the world – that may just be enough!

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov.

Why We Have To Take Alexandria O’Casio-Cortez Seriously

Since she began running for Congress, most Republicans have considered Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as nothing more than a joke. Her gaffs when talking to the press have become legendary (see “Youth Will Have It’s…Oops!”). The fact she was elected and installed as the youngest member of the House of Representatives as a “Democrat-Socialist” should be noted. She may seem to be naive, but she is being warmly received by liberals as the savior of her party.


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)

Her latest gaffs have gone viral, particularly her assertion the world is coming to an end in twelve years if we do not address climate change, as well as her proposal to tax people up to 70% for earnings above $10 million, representing a bold redistribution of the wealth which would likely upset the economy. Whereas the Right giggles at her statements, the Left takes her rather seriously, and this is what should concern Republicans. A new poll produced by Axios/SurveyMonkey contends 74% of Democrats would consider voting for Miss Ocasio-Cortez for president if she was eligible (you have to be at least 35 years old to run for president, she is only 29). The poll also claims she is more popular than Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and almost as popular as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Axis was just founded in 2016 by former employees of Politico, which has shown sympathies to the Left for quite some time, so it is difficult to assess the accuracy of this poll.

Her meteoric rise in popularity is remarkable when you consider she hasn’t produced anything of substance other than serving on the 2016 presidential campaign for Sen. Bernie Sanders. The freshman representative possesses no prior experience in government and has not passed any legislation. The Left is quick to point out President Trump also had no political experience prior to his election, which is true, but as a businessman he was able to build a substantial empire involving real estate holdings and entertainment, and in the process put thousands of people to work.

In contrast, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has only delivered speeches and attended rallies preaching the Socialist gospel and has been active on social media. What she lacks in experience and know-how, she makes up for by youth and her communication skills which somehow appeals to naive millennials. All of this has made her a darling of the main stream media, who is grooming her for the future of the Democrats.

Even if Rep. Ocasio-Cortez fails to pass a single bit of legislation, the news media will broadcast her voice, provide coaching, cover-up her faux pas, and keep her relevant until she is of age to run in six more years. In other words, the news media has made her “The Chosen One,” as they have finally found a candidate they can easily program to suit their agenda, and this explains why we should all take her very seriously.

Keep the Faith!

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies. The featured image is from Democrat Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) Facebook page.

Utica, NY and the New American Economy’s Propaganda

On January first, when I welcomed you to my new blog, I said my first priority was to counter the media reports that have begun to spew from the Open Borders propaganda machine about how migrants of all stripes are just the ticket for saving America’s economy while bringing the joys of diversity to you, the deplorables.

And so it is funny that this news from Utica, NY published yesterday is exactly what I warned about one month ago.

You will be seeing news like this from sea to shining sea in the lead-up to the 2020 Presidential contest.

The Cities Refugees Saved

Of course, I question the premise of the story from CityLab in the first place.  Why must we save a city that is no longer providing jobs or has been poorly run by Democrats for decades?

First just so you know here are the ‘brains’ behind the New American Economy propaganda machine. Tell me if this bunch has anything more on their minds than cheap immigrant labor and more Democrat voters!

screenshot (826)
CityLab calls the New American Economy, a bipartisan immigration reform group!

This is my post from earlier this month on the New American Economy.

CityLab reports that the New American Economy gang has teamed up (has hired) a film company to put together a film that will showcase Utica’s booming refugee-driven economy. (They love films!)

Utica church becomes mosque
Symbol of the NEW Utica: Historic Methodist Church becomes a mosque

Film maker Adam Bedient (director of photography and editor at Off Ramp Films) says he grew up nearby and it was just a dying city but now, joy of joys the Bosnian Muslims that Bill Clinton welcomed to America have turned the city around.

Now, he’s working on a full-length feature about the refugee communities in Utica, and when he drives through town, he finds it simmering with new life. Old buildings are getting refurbished. Construction cranes bob up and down. And at the center of town is a long-vacant historic Methodist church that has been renovated and converted into a beautiful mosque—a symbol of the new Utica.

The CitiLab story goes on to report how the city is thriving. You can read it yourself.

When you see news like this, look to see if they have included any mention of problems, like the one I reported at Refugee Resettlement Watch in 2015 about the school funding crisis when the city of Utica sued the state of New York for a refugee-created school funding shortfall.

See if they mention anything about dollars from Washington (from you) that fuel the local ‘new American’ economy via welfare—food stamps, housing subsidies, healthcare, federal grants for myriad refugee/immigrant services, grants to non-profits that service migrants and so forth.

In other words , is Utica a prime example of simply shifting federal tax dollars to a dying city?

Screenshot (858)
Useful graphic from the story.  Heads up if you live in one of those cities, you might be next for a propaganda film about your growing refugee population. At RRW I wrote about problems in almost every one of them!

CityLab goes on (as expected) to bash the President and White House policy staffer Stephen Miller saying they don’t know what they are talking about when they express concerns about the cost of more refugee resettlement or any issues of safety and security.  You can read it all here.

The story wraps with a quote from Bedient about that on-going debate,

This kind of wrangling over the true impact of refugees doesn’t get much traction in Utica, where refugees now make up almost a quarter of the city’s population, Bedient says. It’s not really up for debate at this point—“it’s a part of the city’s identity now,” he says.

Bottomline, the New American Economy and the Open Borders cabal have decided, there is no longer any debate, so shut up!

Here is what I don’t get!

Utica, has been paraded out for over a decade as a city saved by refugees, but no group on the immigration control side of the debate has ever (to my knowledge) gone to Utica to investigate the claims and counter them. Why is that? 

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column with images is republished with permission.

Foreign Allegiance

Progressivism has exposed America to self-destruction by welcoming aliens who, by their own confession, brazenly declare that they are here to challenge and then destroy our way of life.

Whereas America’s doors have always been open to people of all races and religions who come with hope and gratitude for the opportunities granted in a free society, we were unprepared for those who want to erase our history and accomplishments, destroy our monuments and  customs, and replace our laws with their barbarism, in the hope of replicating their oppressive regimes here.  

Two Muslim women have been voted into officeunder the cover of deceptive manifestos.  They misrepresented their platform and have thereby candidly sullied the dignity of their positions, insulted the United States, the Executive Office of the President and, specifically, our esteemed President Donald J Trump. 


Ilhan Omar Photo: Facebook

Ilhan Omar, new congresswoman from Minnesota, a Somali immigrant with a history of making disparaging statements against Israel, our ally,was appointed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Nancy Pelosi, who has also turned her back on Israel and American interests and security.  Wasting no time to investigate and understand America’s ties to Saudi Arabia or to Israel, Omar, prompted by her personal defiance and beliefs as a Somalian Muslim, not as an American, called for decreased financial aid to Saudi Arabia and labelled Israel an evil regime, challenging the latter’s government and actual existence. 

First, the US provides little military aid; rather, we are selling 6,700 missiles as part of a $1 billion deal to Saudi Arabia for its anti-terrorism training and education and for food to civil-war-torn Yemen. Omar is either ignorant or else chooses to dismiss the essence of America’s financial transactions.  Second, she has brought with her the 1400-year history of Islamic hatred for Jews, Christians and Hindus, and Islam’s centuries of condoned torture, enslavement, and slaughter perpetrated on 900 million people who refused conversion to Islam. The slaughter continues to this day, as noted on the Religion of Peace website: 34,494 (at this writing) deadly Islamic terrorist attacks in 29 countries, since 9/11.  During the week of January 19th, 28 attacks in 12 countries, 135 killed, 171 injured, and 6 suicide blasts were reported.

Without once acknowledging Islam’s destructive role in world affairs, how Islamic countries are truly apartheid and violent, she denounces Israel as an authoritative apartheid regime rather than the parliamentary democracy that it is, representing and treating equally every segment of its multi-racial, -religious, -ethnic society.  Her comments are virulently anti-Semitic and, when challenged, she cannot provide a sliver of evidence for her accusations, but has no compunction about repeating them later.  Having been raised in deep-seated enmity, she ignores the Islamic wars waged against everyone, and the discord sown in what had previously been peaceful nations.  

In keeping with the Islamic dedication to taqiyya, an accepted Islamic war strategy, she denied her support of boycotting Israel before her election, but has now admitted her true position.

Omar blatantly supports the effort to debilitate America’s greatest ally – the Democratic State of IsraelThe Arab attacks against Jews have been constant for centuries, throughout the Islamic world, in Israel, and across Europe.  The horrific jihadi attacks include stabbings, beheadings, and an ongoing fire jihad over 8,000-plus acres of forestry and agricultural land, its human and animal inhabitants, while also jeopardizing their own dispensable youth and women.  Jihad continues here in stealth from those who work to fundamentally change our laws and allegiances.   

Oddly, with the exception of a Muslim tribe, Yibir, that claims to have descended from Hebrews before the arrival of Somali nomads, there are no Jews in apartheid Somalia, so from where does Omar’s intense animus derive except from the Koran and Hadiths, which are rife with Mohammed’s scorn and teachings.  As he stated on his deathbed: “Let there not be two religions in Arabia,” thus sealing the eternal intolerance and fate of all who would not accept Islamic law and rule.  Mohammed commanded Muslims to fight the non-Muslims by “all means possible for all times.”

The centuries of persecution, forced conversion, expulsion and massacre began with the Jews of Khaybar and the Christians of Najran, and have been passed downto the present day. This, then, is the origin of the mindset of Ilhan Omar.


Rashida Tlaib Photo: Facebook

Muslima Rashida Tlaib, another new member of Congress who identifies as Palestinianand blatantly displays her detestation for our President, is unquestionably an expression of hate for America and our Constitution.  She opposes everything that President Trump stresses, particularly his articulation of friendship with Israel and acceptance of Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.  A sticky notewith the name “Palestine” covers Israel on her office map, and she asked to be sworn in on the Thomas Jefferson Koran, the Islamic prayer book that demands holy war and death to Jews and Christiansthroughout the world. The Koran allows no allegiance to our country or our values; Jefferson obtained it in order to understand the Barbary pirates (North African jihadis) who were attacking non-military ships belonging to America and eight other Christian nations in the 1700s.  When attempts to negotiate peace failed, our ambassador learned that the Muslims would always wage war in order to spread Islam, increase their slave trade, and to qualify for vigorous sexual activity inthe Islamic version of heaven.  It was then that Jefferson obtained a 1734 English translation of the Koran to understand the nature of ourexistential enemy.  It was not purchased and kept out of reverence, as Tlaib would have us believe.

Not only did Tlaib not display an American flag at her primary victory celebration, but she also wrapped herself in a Palestinian flag and invited rabid Israeli-hater, Abbas Hamideh, to her celebratory dinner party.  Hamideh is a co-founder of Al-Awda, a group dedicated to the platform of the delegitimization and eradication of Israel.  In a photo with him, she is wearing a keffiyeh, a scarf of jihad, holy war.  There is no doubt: she is not here as an American, and she will not legislate as an American.  She and her like-minded friends, including the vast membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, antisemitic jihadas Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory and others are working to control American policies and speech with the goal of establishing sharia law in the West and using the cry of “Islamophobia” against any criticism that might alert the public to the scheme. 

A member of the Democrat Socialists of America, Tlaib strongly supports the boycott-divestment-sanctions movement (BDS) to bring about Israel’s economic destruction, and to create an “Islamic state in Palestine” in its place.    She is tied to the designated-terrorist group, Hamas, known for its political, social, humanitarian and military activities committed to defeating Israel, and which recruits students for suicide attacks, supports intifada, guarantees support and homes for the martyrs’ families, and works to obstruct Israel’s trade agreements with international propaganda and boycotts, while working to flood Israel with terrorist-trained Palestinians.  Aligned with J Street, one of the most virulent anti-Israel organizations in the history of Zionism and Judaism, Tlaib plans to lead a taxpayer-funded mission of lawmakers to Israel’s Judea and Samaria at the same time that the traditional Israel mission is planned – to oppose the truth with the false Palestinian narrative.  To be noted: recent tax forms for a George Soros Open Society Foundation show an expenditure of $85,307 to Rashida Tlaib (p.97 of a 321-page report), which she failed to disclose when she ran for office. 

Both Omar and Tlaib deceived their voters on their views about America, presenting themselves as moderate American citizens, but later admitting their true course – Islamic supremacy.  They were brought here initiallyfor conquest by population, known as hijra, and they now seek to defeat our nation through our own laws.  Tlaib had the audacity to announce, “Each passing day brings more pain for the people most directly hurt by this president, and these are days we simply cannot get back. The time for impeachment proceedings is now.”  On 4 Jan 2019, 10:08 AM, she tweeted, “Americans have spent decades raping and pillaging my people.”  Her people are Palestinians, not Americans.

Clearly, both women have taken their positions not for their interest in America, but in order to promote their inherent Koranic beliefs, which focus on the destruction of Israel and the supplanting of freedom for worldwide sharia.  Islam is here to be the dominant religion on Earth.  Omar and Tlaib should be removed from their positions, not merely because they are a clear and present danger to our republic, but also because their positions were gained as a result of the misrepresentation of themselves to their constituents. 

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from Ilhan Omar’s Facebook page.

VIDEO: You Have Little Faith – Trust The Plan

Based on what I see on social media as well as the many people who have reached out to me, I must say that I am somewhat surprised that there seems to be a number of people who believe that President Trump has caved on both the wall negotiations and the most recent opening of the government based on the prepared speech given by the President. I see it differently. You have little faith. Change the channel and trust the plan.

Bait #1

From the executive branch comes the olive branch. Democrats shoot themselves in the foot.

While others are off vacationing in Hawaii and Puerto Rico refusing to meet and negotiate with the President, Trump positioned as not only willing to negotiate, but offering the Democrats much of what they have wanted all along such as:

  • Three years of legislative relief for some 700,000 recipients of the Obama-era initiative known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which protects some immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children from deportation. The Trump administration had moved to end DACA, but the decision was challenged in court and is currently held up in legal proceedings. Trump’s proposal would give an extension of legal status
  • A three-year extension of Temporary Protected Status for some 300,000 facing expiration
  • A mechanism to allow Central American minors to apply for asylum in their home countries
  • And more…

So what do the Democrats with Pelosi and Schumer at the helm do? They refuse to budge. From the executive branch comes the olive branch. Democrats shoot themselves in the foot.

Bait #2

From the executive branch comes the olive branch. Democrats, I believe, will once again shoot themselves in the foot.

President Trump then ends the longest government shutdown on record and reopens the government with promises to get all back pay to the 800,000+ furloughed federal employees. In doing so, he gains favor from some of them as an added benefit.

Trump stated in his recent speech, that we have no choice but to build a wall as part of other measures, to protect our border. The President stated the re-opening will be for just three weeks with a deadline for Congress of February 15, 2019. If a deal is not agreed upon, President Trump stated clearly that he will exercise the powers afforded to the President, both legally and constitutionally, to see that the border wall is in fact built. This leaves two possible choices come February 15, 2019; declaring another government shutdown or the declaration of a national state of emergency which will allow the President to procure the funds without approval from congress, and begin building the wall. In this event, we can rest assured this will be fought out in the courts as well.

M&M’s

I wrote about the real reason for the border backlash and it is all politically motivated as outlined in this recent article, “Illegal Immigration and the Cost of Stupidity“.  So we can clearly see, this is not about the three M’s.

* Morals

* Money

* Manufactured

Walls are moral when you look at the success rate of walls throughout the world, walls are preventing crimes, preventing murder and rape, child trafficking, terrorism, drugs, economic hardship and so on. Has nothing to do with money. This requires no further comment. Read the article in the above link to prove my point. And of course any clear thinking honest individual knows the crisis is not manufactured. It has been a crisis for decades which is why Clinton, Bush and Obama are all on the record talking about a border crisis. Only difference is they did nothing but make it worse.

Pelosi and the Italian Mamma

Pelosi and Schumer along with the Democrats are now cornered. Trump has positioned himself as a patient, tolerant leader, willing to bring both parties together to negotiate as clearly seen in Bait #1 above. Then Pelosi (recently stuck on the bus due to her grounded flight by the President) :), has been Trumped once again. They will own the mess. The wall will be built. Carry on “peeps”. Next battle…

It reminds me of my Mother. You know in the old days, back in N.Y. where the Italian Mamma is cooking sauce on a Sunday morning. She takes the spaghetti from the boiling pot and throws it up against the cabinet to see if it sticks. If it sticks, it is cooked and ready to be served. Well, since June of 2016 we have seen the left and deep state throw a lot of spaghetti around, only thing is… nothing sticks!

Based on what I see on social media as well as the many people who have reached out to me, I must say that I am somewhat surprised that there seems to be a number of people who believe that President Trump has caved on both the wall negotiations and the most recent opening of the government based on the prepared speech given by the President. I see it differently. You have little faith – trust the planChange the Channel.

The President’s final words in the recent speech were, “we will have great security”. Take him on his word. And so we will. And in my opinion it will end up with the declaration of a National State of Emergency. We shall see. Tic-toc…

RELATED ARTICLE: The President Blinked. Will Democrats Fail?

EDITORS NOTE: This column with video and images is republished with permission.

Cross Examining the 2020 Census [+Video]

The Trump Administration intends to appeal the decision of Judge Jesse Furman at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the Southern District of New York ruled that the Commerce Department must strike a question from the 2020 Census.

The question: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”

The use of his question has energized the usual suspects and some disparate interests, all of which take exception to it. There is precedent for asking Census respondents about citizenship status: The American Community Survey, an annual statistical canvass of 3.5 million U.S. households conducted by the Census Bureau, asks about citizenship, and the main Census itself has done so in the past.

A number of left-of-center groups like the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU), the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), American Federation of TeachersBend the ArcCenter for Popular DemocracyCommon CausePeople for the American WayRock the VoteSouthern Poverty Law CenterNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and scores of others have filed amicus briefs challenging the question or issued statements urging the Commerce Department and Census Bureau to drop the question on the grounds that the question will cause non-citizens not to respond to the decennial census. (The Census is required to count “the total resident population of the 50 states” for determining Congressional apportionment, or the number of Representatives to which each state is entitled.) At least 19 states and 10 cities have sued the Commerce Department over the question, citing violations of the Administrative Procedures Act and the Census Act.  These groups claim (among other things) that the citizenship question on the U.S. Census will deter certain groups, largely Hispanics and undocumented residents who fear deportation, from answering the census, depressing the number of respondents and leading to inaccuracies which have heavy political consequences.

Obtaining a reliable headcount through the census is of utmost importance to American civic life. The constitutionally mandated census determines how federal funding for government programs is distributed, how the states draw the maps of election districts which determine state elections, and how the states vote for members of Congress to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Why the Data Matters

As reported by Hayden Ludwig in early 2018, there is good reason to capture citizenship information. On a common-sense level, it is important for policymakers to know the makeup of their districts and to understand the size of (potentially) competing interests and policy agendas.

When it comes to ensuring that voting is indeed fair, citizenship data can be crucial to determine if the Justice Department needs to intervene in areas where there is suspected voter suppression. Right now, the Justice Department relies on sampling data derived from the American Community Survey. It’s especially unreliable for districts with smaller populations and in communities with high numbers of minority residents who aren’t eligible to vote.

The lawsuits also ignore the fact that the Census Bureau has been tracking citizenship data for a very long time. The now-defunct “long-form” census asked this question until it was eliminated in 2000 in favor of the American Community Survey. The American Community Survey, which is distributed to 2.6 percent of the population, asks this question of respondents every year. Furthermore, other government agencies, such as the FBI or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are not allowed to access this information.

But what’s emerging from the “resistance” to this question is a power-grab that is inherently political.

Groups on the left are concerned about supposed underreporting because areas with a high density of foreign nationals—including illegal immigrants—tend to vote for Democrats. (Many are also so-called “sanctuary cities” which do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.) A depressed population count in these areas could cost Democrats seats in the House of Representatives. After all, after the 2020 Census, the states are required to draw new district maps to reflect any changes in the population in accordance with Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution. This is the opportunity Democrats have been waiting for since 2010.

Moving Redistricting Out of the Shadows

After Republicans across the country won a wave of elections in 2010, they were in power to draw (most of) the required 2011 district maps. As is predictable, a number of GOP-controlled states drew maps favorable to Republicans. (This is hardly unusual. As a rule, both sides will draw maps favorable to themselves; indeed, both sides did it in states they controlled after 2010. Watch CRC’s video on gerrymandering here.)

The Democrats have been quietly working to break up Republican-drawn district maps since 2010, when Marc Elias, chair of the political law group at Perkins Coie and counsel to a host of Democratic lawmakers and left-leaning political and nonprofit organizations, secured an exemption from the Federal Elections Commission to raise money for a coordinated litigation effort. His efforts became the National Democratic Redistricting Trust.

The effort moved into the national spotlight after former Attorney General Eric Holder founded the National Democratic Redistricting Committee(NDRC)—a registered 527 political action committee which incorporated the former Trust. (Elias remains senior advisor and general counsel to NDRC.) Litigation funded by the PAC argued that the maps constituted racial or partisan gerrymanders that violated the Voting Rights Act. As a result, new maps were drawn in Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania to name a few. In the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans lost seats in both Virginia and Pennsylvania. (The new map in North Carolina had yet to be implemented: The GOP retained its seats, although one election is unresolved.) Elias and Holder definitely helped swing the 2018 mid-term elections.

But the Census question is too important for Holder, Obama, and Elias to sit out.

Holder issued a statement through the National Democratic Redistricting Committee in March 2018, promising to litigate the case. In April, Covington & Burling, a white-shoe law firm where Eric Holder is a partner, filed a lawsuit against the Commerce Department. The plaintiffs are voters from Arizona and Maryland—an attempt by Holder to illustrate that voters in Red and Blue states are affected by the citizenship question.

According to the Washington Post, the lawsuit is being coordinated by the National Redistricting Foundation, which is closely affiliated with NDRC.

In fact, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization shares two of its three officers with the political action committee. Kelly Ward serves as NDRC executive director and President and CEO of the National Redistricting Foundation; Elisabeth Pearson sits on the board of both organizations and formerly served as the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association. The third officer, Treasurer Mitch Stewart, is a Democratic consultant whose firm counted Organizing for America as client.

The group is only a year old, but its first Form 990 revealed the nonprofit organization already has $2.85 million to dedicate to its anti-gerrymandering efforts. The Form 990 also reveals that the Foundation is a direct controlling entity of the 501(c)(4) advocacy organization, the National Redistricting Action Fund. The National Redistricting Foundation, National Redistricting Action Fund, and the NDRC all indicate they are headquartered at 700 13th Street NW, Suite 600, in Washington, D.C.—the address of Perkins Coie’s D.C. offices, where Marc Elias works.

On its own, the National Redistricting Action Fund reports it has $1.15 million in available funds. Kelly Ward, Elisabeth Pearson, and Mitch Stewart are also the three officers on the (c)(4)’s board. The group recently announced it was absorbing Organizing for Action, former President Barack Obama’s 501(c)(4) advocacy group—a reincarnation of his presidential election campaign. Organizing for Action will cease to exist. Presumably this merger will add over $5 million to the Democrats’ redistricting project as well as make the Obama campaign’s much-coveted email list available to drum up support for its version of a supposedly less gerrymandered America.

Who Will Be Asking the Questions?

As the varied lawsuits make their way through the appellate courts, newly empowered House Democrats are keeping the issue alive. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross agreed today to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The Committee, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) released a statement: “Committee Members expect Secretary Ross to provide complete and truthful answers to a wide range of questions, including questions regarding the ongoing preparations for the census, the addition of a citizenship question, and other topics.”

While litigators and politicians make their case to strike or include the question, time is ticking. The 2020 Census Form needs to be finalized soon, before the counting begins next year. After that, the contentious redistricting process will begin. By then the Democrats at the heart of the party’s redistricting effort will have even more money to pay for ballot initiatives, campaign expenditures, and, of course, litigation.

COLUMN BY

Christine Ravold

Christine Ravold

Christine is the Capital Research Center’s Communications Officer. She writes, edits, and serves as a press contact. She is a graduate of Rosemont College in Pennsylvania. + MORE BY CHRISTINE RAVOLD

RELATED ARTICLE: Who Runs the Census? How the bureaucracy takes power away from elected officials. – WSJ

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EDITORS NOTE: This Capital Research Center column with images is republished with permission.

I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance

The Daily Caller is taking the rare step of publishing this anonymous op-ed at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose career would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.

Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.

The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.

On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.

Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade.

They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.

Process is what we serve, process keeps us safe, process is our core value. It takes a lot of people to maintain the process. Process provides jobs. In fact, there are process experts and certified process managers who protect the process. Then there are the 5 percent with moxy (career managers). At any given time they can change, clarify or add to the process — even to distort or block policy counsel for the president.

Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.

Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. One might think this is how government should function, but bureaucracies operate from the bottom up — a collective of self-generated ideas. Ideas become initiatives, formalize into offices, they seek funds from Congress and become bureaus or sub-agencies, and maybe one day grow to be their own independent agency, like ours. The nature of a big administrative bureaucracy is to grow to serve itself. I watch it and fight it daily.

When the agency is full, employees held liable for poor performance respond with threats, lawsuits, complaints and process in at least a dozen offices, taking years of mounting paperwork with no fear of accountability, extending their careers, while no real work is done. Do we succumb to such extortion? Yes. We pay them settlements, we waive bad reviews, and we promote them.

Many government agencies have adopted the position that more complaints are good because it shows inclusion in, you guessed it, the process. When complaints come, it is cheaper to pay them off than to hold public servants accountable. The result: People accused of serious offenses are not charged, and self-proclaimed victims are paid by you, the American taxpayer.

The message to federal supervisors is clear. Maintain the status quo, or face allegations. Many federal employees truly believe that doing tasks more efficiently and cutting out waste, by closing troubled programs instead of expanding them, “is morally wrong,” as one cried to me.

I get it. These are their pets. It is tough to put them down and let go, and many resist. This phenomenon was best summed up by a colleague who said, “The goal in government is to do nothing. If you try to get things done, that’s when you will run into trouble.”

But President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them. Sure, we empathize with families making tough financial decisions, like mine, and just like private citizens who have to find other work and bring competitive value every day, while paying more than a third of their salary in federal taxes.

President Trump has created more jobs in the private sector than the furloughed federal workforce. Now that we are shut down, not only are we identifying and eliminating much of the sabotage and waste, but we are finally working on the president’s agenda.

President Trump does not need Congress to address the border emergency, and yes, it is an emergency. Billions upon billions of hard-earned tax dollars are still being dumped into foreign aid programs every year that do nothing for America’s interest or national security. The president does not need congressional funding to deconstruct abusive agencies who work against his agenda. This is a chance to effect real change, and his leverage grows stronger every day the shutdown lasts.

The president should add to his demands, including a vote on all of his political nominees in the Senate. Send the career appointees back. Many are in the 5 percent of saboteurs and resistance leaders.

A word of caution: To be a victory, this shutdown must be different than those of the past and should achieve lasting disruption with two major changes, or it will hurt the president.

The first thing we need out of this is better security, particularly at the southern border. Our founders envisioned a free market night watchman state, not the bungled bloated bureaucracy our government has become. But we have to keep the uniformed officers paid, which is an emergency. Ideally, continue a resolution to pay the essential employees only, if they are truly working on national security. Furloughed employees should find other work, never return and not be paid.

Secondly, we need savings for taxpayers. If this fight is merely rhetorical bickering with Nancy Pelosi, we all lose, especially the president. But if it proves that government is better when smaller, focusing only on essential functions that serve Americans, then President Trump will achieve something great that Reagan was only bold enough to dream.

The president’s instincts are right. Most Americans will not miss non-essential government functions. A referendum to end government plunder must happen. Wasteful government agencies are fighting for relevance but they will lose. Now is the time to deliver historic change by cutting them down forever.

The author is a senior official in the Trump administration.


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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.