Chick-fil-A’s abandonment of The Salvation Army has left a poor taste in the mouths of 2ndVote Americans. Thankfully, other companies refuse to bow to the Left’s absurdities – such as Hanes (3.9), which for the 10th year in a row is donating 250,000 pairs of socks to groups which fight homelessness, including The Salvation Army.
Hanes is functionally neutral in its corporate donations. It focuses on providing great products to its customers – and, as Christmas approaches, it continues its annual tradition of helping the poor.
You can help Hanes by buying socks online. They have announced that purchases made on Hanes.com will translate into more socks donated to homeless shelters during the month of December.
More than 10 Salvation Army locations will benefit from Hanes’ generosity. This is the season to do your part to show corporate America that just because Chick-fil-A caved doesn’t mean that you have to. You can prove that “woke” Twitter warriors aren’t the only act in town – and that you care deeply about helping others all year ‘round by supporting Hanes every time you buy socks, shirts, and underwear.
Interested in making a donation through Hanes? Check out their website to learn more.
Your example can slow the drive to leftism – and perhaps even be part of putting American values back into the workplace.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png002ndvote .comhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png2ndvote .com2019-12-15 05:28:512019-12-15 05:28:51Support Your Values And The Homeless By Buying Hanes
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” – Frédéric Bastiat
“Honesty is of God and dishonesty of the devil; the devil was a liar from the beginning.” – Joseph B. Wirthlin
“‘Liar’ is just as ugly a word as ‘thief,’ because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law.” – Theodore Roosevelt
The absence of God leaves a void of darkness; without the light, evil prevails. We have seen this evil in its full horrible array since the day Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president. We know there was full bias by many in the DOJ, especially the FBI and CIA. Strzok and Page called Mr. Trump “awful,” “loathsome,” a “disaster,” a “f***ing idiot,” an “enormous do*che,” and other disparaging names that were laced with profanity. And those of us who supported this billionaire businessman were branded as “hillbillies,” “deplorables,” “retards,” and “crazies” who “smell.” Strzok and Page sent over 50,000 texts to each other while at work in the FBI.
Their hatred of Donald Trump poisoned their entire investigation into Russian Collusion, their secret “insurance policy” to rid America of the man the electorate put in our White House. When it failed, Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler, along with the new breed of young hardcore socialist Congress creatures pushed for another attack, this time against Trump for doing what all Presidents prior to Trump have done…talking to leaders of other countries. And no quid pro quo like so many previous presidents and vice presidents, i.e. Biden and Al Gore. This impeachment scam was corruptly formed and is being corruptly pursued.
Pelosi Appoints Shifty Schiff
When Pelosi put Congressman Schiff in charge of the impeachment inquiry, she had to know he would trample the law and abrogate legal responsibility to justify going after President Trump. Trump Derangement Syndrome has proven the Democrats hate Trump far more than they love this country, as their desire to turn it into a socialist third world nation has become obvious.
There has been little effort to disguise the relentless desire by the Democrats to remove Trump from office come hell or high water, from the moment he won the 2016 election. We know that Obama’s intel community spied on Trump from the moment he announced his candidacy and the bias was evident.
The Russia Collusion came to naught, but impeachment was on the back burner. On January 20, 2017, The Washington Post published an article entitled The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun. Matea Gold wrote about how the website, ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org went live right as Trump took his oath. This is the evil of the socialist leftists. They will destroy America because they cannot accept an exchange of executive power to another party, a party who may undo their globalist agenda, especially when the executive is not one of their chosen establishment elitists.
Pelosi Prays for the President
After Pelosi’s crazed announcement of impeachment plans, reporter James Rosen asked her if she hated Trump. She went ballistic and answered that she doesn’t hate anyone, and that she’s a Catholic and she prays for Trump. Well, Speaker Pelosi, I’d like to know exactly what you pray for regarding our President, certainly not for his success as a president. And as for not hating anyone, you certainly seem to hate unborn human babies who are dismembered, burned, murdered at the point of delivery, their body parts sold by the evil entity, Planned Parenthood, to the highest bidders and their pain upon death seems to not even enter your Christian Catholic conscience.
And Nancy, you seem to have no trouble as a Catholic with the organs of these babies being taken while they’re still alive, I’m talking about their hearts. How dare you call yourself a Christian who loves everyone. Your hatred is an abomination in God’s eyes and you should be denied communion and ex-communicated from the Church via Canon 915 for your filthy stances against the unborn human babies who cry out to God for mercy.
Nadler’s Law Professors
Oh yes, the most Obama/Hillary supporting law professors were chosen by Nadler to speak about whether or not President Trump was impeachable for his phone conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky. I want to scream when I look at the three leftist professors chosen by Schiff and the ultra-weak leftist chosen by our Republicans to represent us, Jonathan Turley. They couldn’t find someone better?
Pamela Karlan is a professor of public interest law at Stanford Law School, oversaw voting rights at the Justice Department under former President Barack Obama and served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Harry Blackmun at the U.S. Supreme Court. Karlan was on Hillary’s short list for the Supreme Court. Yep, she’s ticked she didn’t get the appointment, so this academic attacked young Barron Trump’s name thinking her boorish humor would gain her points. Link
Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor, said that President Donald Trump’s behavior is “worse than the misconduct of any prior president.” The remarks were submitted as part of his prepared opening statement.
Schiff Subpoenas Phone Records
Pelosi’s Consigliore, House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Adam Schiff, extended his smear campaign by subpoenaing the phone records from AT&T and Verizon of Republican Devin Nunes, Nunes’ aide, and Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow. Initially it was reported that John Solomon, former Hill journalist was also subpoenaed, but they were not. Schiff also went after former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, and the White House itself. Requested data included phone numbers and length of calls but not the content of the calls.
Congressman Nunes said that a new precedent has been set by obtaining phone records with a subpoena without a warrant and the phone companies complied without question! Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton said the subpoena of Trump’s lawyers’ conversations most likely violated attorney-client privilege, but that didn’t stop the FBI from doing the same thing to Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen.
When the democrats gained control of the House, they had subpoena powers but it’s quite evident that the civil rights of Republicans have been violated by Schiff and his cadre of corrupt democrats.
In a series of Twitter posts during his travels this month, Giuliani alleged that billions of dollars were “stolen by crooks, from both countries, at the highest levels.”
One America News is doing a three-part series with Giuliani on Ukraine. Part three is in the works now, and parts one and two have already aired. Both the Wall Street Journal and The Epoch Times have covered the investigation by OANN.
Former Ukrainian MP, Alexandr Onyshchenko, says Burisma financed the Clinton Campaign with $10 million of unmarked cash and Biden personally prevented the money laundering witness from entering America.
The former MP describes in this article how he was approached by prosecutors in the U.S. to testify in the United States on American corruption in Ukraine. He produced a copy of the letter from the Department of Justice in 2016 where they provided him a temporary visa to come to the U.S. to testify on the theft and money laundering aid to Ukraine as well as the illegal cash to the Clintons. Then his visa was cancelled due to personal involvement by Vice President Joe Biden.
Onyshchenko also reiterated that former FBI agent Karen Greenaway was pushing hard during this time for him to not talk to the press about his knowledge of the Biden scandal, holding the threat of American law enforcement action against him to do so. Greenaway has since retired from the FBI but remains in Ukraine involved with one of the Soros foundations. “She was pushing hard…for me to say nothing,” he declared. “She was running everything for the Democrats, all the coverup for the corruption.” CD Media reported corroborating information on his testimony. Here is their investigative reporting on the entire story.
Mayor Giuliani recently made the comment that the worst thing he did was pass by the opportunity to be President Trump’s Attorney General. The former New York Mayor is a champion against corruption. He should have accepted the job.
Greenaway, Soros and Ambassador Yovanovitch
In a March 2019 Hill article, investigative journalist John Solomon reported that in 2016 Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC was an investigation to see if $4.4 million in American aide to fight corruption in the Ukraine had been improperly diverted.
Obama’s Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch was following orders from the President to press the Ukrainian government to back off of its investigation of U.S. aide and the AntAC. Yuri Lutsenko replaced prosecutor Shokin after Vice President Biden held back American funds from Ukraine to force out Shokin because of his investigation of Hunter Biden and Burisma. Yovanovitch testified for Schiff’s impeachment inquiry, but she never heard the call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky. She’s sour grapes for being fired by President Trump.
Lutsenko told John Solomon that he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda.
It turns out the group that Ukrainian law enforcement was probing was co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros, who has extensive business interests in Ukraine. And it was collaborating with the FBI agents investigating then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s business activities with pro-Russian figures in Ukraine.
The U.S.-Soros collaboration was visible in Kiev. Several senior DOJ officials and FBI agents appeared in pictures as participants or attendees at Soros-sponsored events and conferences. One attendee was Karen Greenaway, then the FBI supervisor in charge of international fraud cases and one of the lead agents in the Manafort investigation in Ukraine. She attended multiple such events and won glowing praise in a social media post from AntAC’s executive director.
The implied message to Ukraine’s prosecutors was clear: Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama, Ukrainian officials said.
FBI agent Greenaway recently retired, and Soros’s AntAC soon after announced she was joining its supervisory board.
Inspector General’s Report
Despite mainstream media hosts slobbering over Inspector General Horowitz’s report, the FBI is not exonerated. What the report said was that the FBI screwed up at every level, and they failed to pay attention to problems with Christopher Steele and his past work which was never investigated. That’s an understatement if there ever was one, Steele’s dossier was absurd from day one. Even the Washington Post stayed away from the dossier, it was Buzzfeed who printed it. Yet the Obama administration used this POS to spy on the Trump campaign in an effort to destroy Hillary’s opposition.
Carter Page was a former naval officer, an Annapolis grad, and had done nothing wrong, but his life was destroyed by the lies within the Steele dossier. Horowitz’s report stated that the FISA applications were in many ways incomplete, inaccurate and unsupported. The FISA warrant to spy on Page was repeatedly renewed and the FBI not only lied, but excluded exculpatory information in order to keep the FISA warrant alive. The FBI lied to the FISA judges.
This report was looking into whether there was abuse in the FISA process, and there is no doubt the IG found rampant abuse of the FISA process.
It was recently reported that we will not hear from federal prosecutor John Durham regarding his investigation until June or early summer. And to date, we’ve seen no indictments by AG Barr.
Conclusion
Mueller supporter, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell have said there will be no trial in the Senate on impeachment. The President would like to have his day in court to call witnesses and prove his innocence, but it’s a given according to some recent reports that the Senate has their own skeletons in the closet regarding the Ukraine and corruption. Biden’s son Hunter, Romney’s top advisor, Cofer Black, Pelosi’s son Paul Jr., and Kerry’s stepson were all involved.
Since the evidence adduced thus far fails to establish treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, Congress should not vote to impeach. If it does vote to do so along party lines, it will be acting unconstitutionally and placing itself above the supreme law of the land.
President Trump’s battle is against unknown entities. The Democrats are just the footmen for the powers that be…pawns in the game of America’s destruction.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Kelleigh Nelsonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKelleigh Nelson2019-12-15 05:17:252019-12-15 07:48:30Pelosi and Her Consigliore, Adam Schiff [+Videos]
The Christmas Season is a wonderful time in America—with charming music, people are happily busy with preparations for Christmas. The year 2019 has been different. The venom of hatred toward President Trump and the sounds of war between Democrats and Republicans has brought a threatening and very scary revelation–IG Horovitz’s testimony and the two articles of impeachment against President Trump produced by the Dems. Americans found out that for a decade Democrats, the FBI and CIA had not defended them from enemies foreign and domestic—on the contrary, they betrayed Americans. The Dems’ leadership, the leadership of FBI and CIA committed crime against the American Republic. The team criminally collaborated in a massive abuse of power against the leader of Republican opposition Donald J. Trump and his campaign.
Impeachment procedures revealed spectacular ignorance on the Dems’ part. Like most Americans, Mr. Ciccolini and Ms. Bass, have no knowledge pertaining the real Russia and Ukraine. I have written about those countries and the role of the KGB in the lives of their people for over thirty years. We, the former citizens of the USSR, had known the KGB as a mind-control agency and we were stunned watching the same deceit so familiar to us; distortions scam, sham, and abuse of the American system of jurisprudence, by the Dems’ House committee using a party-line vote impeachment as a political tool. Without any evidence, the Dems are trying to influence the public opinion before the upcoming election 2020, mocking the U.S. President before the world…
Knowing well Russian history, and especially the crimes against Humanity committed by Stalin and his devoted Communistic disciples, we were shocked to see the Impeachment Spectacle performed by the hostile (to the American Republic) Stalinist Political Charlatans with the familiar behaviors of the KGB… It was a performance of enormous ignorance pertaining to geopolitics, Russia, Ukraine, and many other professional topics. Ignorance is running the ball. Please, read my column: The Ideology of Soviet Fascism VS. Trump. December 5, 2019.
For Americans to grasp what was very familiar to us, we have to discuss again Stalinist Political Correctness, the Dems use constantly against their enemies (Republicans). In short, PC is a semantic-linguistic fraud to hide the truth by presenting false arguments and deceiving you. Pay attention to the language of the persons well drilled in PC, wrapping up their lies in nice words like democracy, morality, Constitution, national security, and so on. All Communists, while lying, use the Stalinist order: “Never admit crime, but accuse the opposite leader in that exact crime” The best example is Adam Schiff and the Communist Rep. Debbie Dingell. Listen to them and recall my definition of PC.
“… Political correctness is a Stalinist policy, driven by the political agenda, a skillfully crafted design of a quintessential system of lies, fraud, and a long-term strategy of war against Western civilization to create of One World Socialist Government under Kremlin’s rule.”Political Correctness and Socialist Revolution in America, October 31, 2019
This Stalinist linguistic game was currently before us in the Schiff’s committee by three law-professors, the Dems’ Donnas. They performed as un-American lawyers, forgetting the spirit of presumption of innocence, showing the Soviet Style presumption of guilt. The same exact manner of searching for Trump’s crime was offered in Nadler’s committee by Daniel Goldman and Barry Berke. You saw how suddenly the words “corruption” and “scheme” had appeared substituting “bribery” and “extortion.” The constant repetition of the words “corruption” and “scheme” by the Dems with emphasis on Trump, while constructing his high crime—a typical Stalinist PC. This way they cooked up, manufactured and concocted a criminal act, un-Constitutional Articles of Impeachment, Soviet Style—a fraud designed by Stalin…
The real Tragedy of Ukraine
The year 2014 was a tough and crucial year for Ukraine: Russia invaded and occupied Crimea and directed the Russian mob to attack the Ukrainian territory in Donbas and Lugansk—the war against Ukrainian people had begun. And the tragedy is that Ukraine wasn’t ready to fight—the country didn’t have an army, weaponry and ammunition—Ukraine was naked due to the policy of Russian crony President of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych. Thousands of Ukrainians were killed, a lot of territory was lost. Death Toll Up To 13,000 In Ukraine Conflict, Says UN Rights Office. KYIV — Some 13,000 people have been killed, a quarter of them civilians, and as many as 30,000 wounded in the war in eastern Ukraine since it broke out in April 2014, the United Nations says. The blood of those Ukrainians is on the hands of the Obama administration that offered them no defensive weaponry..
It was then that the Ukrainian people lost respect for the government of the U.S. It was then in 2014 that the Ukrainian people took their destiny in their own hands. Volunteers with hunting rifles, some with knifes went to defend their country and died in the thousands, they sacrificed for their children to live in an Independent Ukraine. Patriots saved their country in 2014-2015. Books and movies will be produced about that tragic and heroic time in Ukraine and… America’s betrayal of Ukraine in 2014. The Obama administration committed TREASON, betraying Ukraine fighting with the naked hands against aggressive and expansionist Russian forces in 2014.
Yanukovych fled to Russia to escape the wrath of the Ukrainian people and President Obama sent Joe Biden to Ukraine as a point man in 2014. Vice-President Biden did not bring the arms, ammunition or weaponry, which Ukraine desperately needed: Biden brought his son—Hunter Biden with obvious corrupt intent. And America’s Socialist mafia very easily found a common language with the Ukrainian Socialist mob—their common denomination was corruption. Burisma Holding is an epitome of corruption in Ukraine. The very corruption Trump had suspected, talking with Ukraine’s new President Zelensky. Trump has faithfully executed the duties of his office in accordance with the Treaty with Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters 1999
Stalinist-Fascist Methods
Writing about the Obama/Putin conspiracy for the last 8-10 years, I considered Obama a Socialist in the worse sense of the word: he weaponized all security services, like Stalin did. In this respect, I’d like to return to Russian crony President of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych. As a matter of fact, Russia has patterns in the policy against targeted countries. To pursue this policy, Russia goes to the top officials of the country. As a Russian crony, Yanukovych made Ukraine even weaker than the country was after the collapse of Socialist economy. It is not a coincidence that Russia invaded Crimea in the last year of the Yanukovych Presidency…
I am reminding you about Yanukovych for a reason. President Trump inherited a collapsing Ukraine and… America from Obama in 2016 with the same conditions: naked, blind, and barely able to defend herself. Unlike Obama, he had to deal with all the weaponized security services against him. This is a Stalinist method to defeat Western civilization worldwide. An anti-Semitic shooting in New Jersey and the events in our Colleges prompted Trump to write an executive order targeting anti-Semitism in colleges. This is another reason I am insisting to change the name of the ideology of Socialism to Soviet Fascism, to call a spade a spade. For details, please, read my column The Global Spy Ring, January, 1, 2018.
At the opening session on Nadler’s Impeachment proceeding, a protester shouted: “Jerry Nadler and the Democrat Party are committing treason against this country,” Shroyer said in a video of his protest, which he later uploaded to Twitter. “America is sick of the treason committed by the Democrat Party,” he shouted.
I agree with him and I was writing about the death of Truman’s party and the birth of America’s Socialist mafia for over thirty years. Yet, Socialism is also dead in the country it was born and instead of failed Socialism, Russia has a Crony capitalism run by the Stalinist KGB, which is covering up under the term Socialism the reality of Soviet Fascism. Unfortunately, a fraudulent ideology of Socialism is reincarnated in America by Stalinist Charlatans and America’s Socialist mafia. To know the Truth, please read my book Socialist Lies: From Stalin to the Clintons, Obamas, and Sanders. Xlibris, 2016
Vladimir Putin is laughing hysterically in the Kremlin: the agenda of Stalinist devoted disciples to undermine and destroy America from within has been delivered by the American Democrat Party! America is divided and Republican President Donald J. Trump is impeached! What a Victory! The Kremlin rejoices! The existential threat to all Socialist Charlatans worldwide President Trump is mocked and defeated, defeated, defeated!
My fellow Americans!
The next year election 2020 is pivotal for our country to secure the unique, most humane political system designed and left to us by our Founding Fathers. The Dems’ Socialist Charlatans had a minute of revenge, yet, a brilliant design of our system gives us an incredible opportunity to totally expose them before the world. This opportunity is the Senate Trial. Like the Nuremberg Trial exposed the German brand of fascism, we now have the chance to expose before the world Socialist Charlatans and their ideology of Soviet Fascism. To educate Americans and for the sake of the humanity-we must do it!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Simona Pipkohttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngSimona Pipko2019-12-15 05:02:122019-12-15 05:02:12Stalinist Political Charlatans in America
Anwar Khan “has been doing outreach to the Jewish community on behalf of the Muslim community for decades,” stated former American Jewish Committee (AJC) official Robert Silverman at Washington, DC’s Newseum on December 3. His praise for Khan, the director of the Hamas ally Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA), typified the unsettling leftist Jewish ignorance of jihadist threats at this launch event for the Inter Jewish Muslim Alliance (IJMA).
Silverman addressed an audience that ultimately grew during the daylong conference to about 50. This included his fellow IJMA organizer, Microsoft External Affairs Director Suhail Khan, a “conservative” political operative with deep, longstanding personal Muslim Brotherhood (MB) ties. Other faces familiar to this author included the Gülenist Rumi Forum’s public relations director, Jena Luedtke, and the Iraqi-American co-founder of the American Islamic Congress, Zainab al-Suwaij.
Silverman’s association with the dubious Khan replicated Silverman’s experience as the first director of the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, previously rightly mocked as the “Wolf-Sheep Advisory Council.” Therein the left-leaning American Jewish Committee (AJC) had joined with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a nefarious MB-legacy organization, supposedly to combat hate crimes and other manifestations of bigotry. An IJMA statement distributed among the conference handouts and now available at IJMA’s new website proclaimed that IJMA members wanted, “as a Muslim-Jewish alliance, to counter voices of hatred and bigotry within our own communities.”
Yet the day’s proceedings demonstrated a decidedly one-sided view of prejudice among Jews and Muslims, as indicated by the seminar’s first presentation by Elana Hain from the Shalom Hartman Institute (SHI) of North America. “Antisemitism is converging on Jews from both the right and the left,” she correctly noted, but while “everybody in this room knows about antisemitism on the right,” leftist antisemitism “is much harder to talk about.” Today “what we are seeing on the progressive left is a type of conversionist antisemitism that says, ‘Jew, we will accept you if you disavow your commitment to the state of Israel.’” She noted particularly that “my spouse works on a college campus, and I have seen how Jewish students are increasingly unwelcome in progressive spaces.”
However true, Hain’s remarks surprisingly contained not a single reference to antisemitism involving Muslims or Islam. Excerpts from three publications (see here, here, and here) in her handout included several dubious allegations of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and administration inciting antisemitism. By contrast, “Muslims” appeared only once in a Tablet article’s reference to hate crimes, even though the American Interest article she quoted briefly discussed “Islamic antisemitism” in an uncited paragraph. Meanwhile, internet searches of the Tablet for “Islamic antisemitism” find numerous articles (e.g. here).
Hain’s blind spot seemed particularly disturbing given the annual conference in Chicago of the viciously anti-Semitic American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) just days before (November 28-30). The conference featured inflammatory condemnations of Israel’s right to exist from prominent American Muslims. This included former Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad, and CAIR San Francisco chapter leader Zahra Billoo.
This author accordingly presented to Hain an audience question noting the AMP conference and that AJC CEO David Harris has previously called for “trifocal lenses” to confront antisemitism from the “far left, the far right, and the jihadists.” She responded that she was “including in progressive antisemitism” the “antisemitism that comes from the Muslim community around Israel.” She added that she had not devoted particular study to Islamic antisemitism and suggested that Muslim conference attendees might be better qualified to discuss this topic.
Just as Hain only circuitously referenced Islamic antisemitism, she similarly indulged questionable tropes commonplace among many Muslims. For example, without any indication of whether Jews or others had any valid objections to Islamic beliefs and/or behaviors she used the Orwellian phrase “Islamophobia.” Conflicts between Israel and Palestinians should not “lead to antisemitism or ‘Islamophobia,’” she said, as if irrational Jew-hatred were the same as critical inquiry into Islam.
Audience member Imam Abdullah Antepli, a leader of SHI’s Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), reflected Hain’s remarks with questions about “Islamophobic elements within the Jewish community.” “Within this organized anti-Muslim campaign in the United States, there are so many visible Jews,” he stated. Jews have a “fear of losing the state of Israel” and “when many Jews meet Muslims, that fear is all that they see,” she responded while again not explaining why such perceptions are meritless (consider Israel, Muslims, and Britain’s Labour Party).
Hain also equated Jewish national liberation in Israel with baseless claims that “Palestinians” represent a unique, historical nation and not merely a local collection of Levantine Arab communities. The statement “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” is equally false as “Jews don’t have a history in that region” of Israel, she said. This is “mutual denial of peoples’ actual historical experiences,” notwithstanding numerous modern “Palestinian” fictions.
A veiled female Muslim audience member from the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a group obsessed with all real and imagined “white supremacy,” prompted more historical revisionism from Hain. The Muslim claimed that historically the term “antisemitism” encompassed prejudice against both Jews and Muslims, and Hain suggested that antisemitism could include both “Judeophobia” and “Islamophobia.” In reality, the German publicist Wilhelm Marr invented the word “antisemitism” in 1879 in order to impart a scientific veneer to his rabid Jew-hatred.
The appeasing Hain, who called the leftist American rabbi Jill Jacobs a “colleague and a friend,” paralleled the reaction to Islamic antisemitism of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an IJMA sponsor. As Islamic antisemitism scholar Andrew Bostom has documented, ADL global surveys of antisemitism in recent years have identified Muslims as world leaders in prejudice against Jews. Yet the ADL has minimized such facts.
While Hain acted conciliatory towards Muslims, they often show little reciprocity, as a following article will analyze. Conference speakers after her like the radical “Islamophobia” expert Wajahat Ali were far more direct in their accusations of bigotry against various Jews while exhibiting little interest in the anti-Semitic milieus of conference participants like ISNA members.
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. The views are those solely of the author.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2019-12-15 04:44:372019-12-15 04:45:46Leftist Jews Ally with Suit-Wearing Jihadists in New Group [Part One] by Andrew Harrod
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, there are several government policies I would favor. Let’s count them down.
1: An Expanding Welfare State
For starters, I would advocate for a robust and ever-expanding welfare state—programs like Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc.
I would recognize that an effective recipe for keeping poor people poor is to create incentives that push them into decisions that prevent them from climbing out of poverty.
Case in point: A 2012 study by Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare analyzed the decisions confronting individuals and families enrolled in various government welfare programs. Specifically, the study concluded that in the case of a single mother with two children ages 1 and 4 earning $29,000 a year through work would be eligible for government benefits (such as Medicaid, housing vouchers, and subsidized daycare) equivalent to roughly an additional $28,000.
Such a scenario puts this woman in a bind. If she finds a better job paying more, or picks up more hours, she risks losing substantial amounts of benefits. She would make her family financially worse off even though her paycheck would be bigger. Just to come out even, once taxes are factored in, she would need to find work paying about $69,000 a year to compensate for the lost welfare benefits. Not many low-skilled workers can make such a leap.
This scenario is commonly referred to as the welfare cliff. Confronted with this situation, many individuals understandably opt to continue receiving the government benefits. Rather than help individuals, the perverse economic incentives created by the “social safety net” trap aid recipients on welfare. And the longer they remain out of the workforce, or at lower levels of employment, the less employable they become. It is a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle that keeps people poor and dependent on the state.
Moreover, there is the impact the welfare state has on the family unit. Welfare programs break up families by replacing a father’s paycheck with a government check and benefits. Nationally, since LBJ’s Great Society ratcheted up government welfare programs in the mid-1960s, the rate of unmarried births has tripled.
In my home state of North Carolina, families are roughly five times as likely to be in poverty when there is no father in the home.
2: Progressive Taxation Policy
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I also would finance the welfare state poverty trap through punitive taxes on the job and wealth creators of society.
The key ingredient to economic growth, and thus a higher standard of living for society’s poor, is through productivity gains made possible by capital investment. High marginal taxes on profitable companies and small businesses alike discourage capital investment. As businesses decide to either not expand or take their businesses to more investment-friendly countries, job opportunities dry up.
3: Increase the Minimum Wage
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would advocate for higher government-enforced minimum wages. The law of supply and demand tells us that the higher the price of a good or service, the less of it will be demanded (other things held equal, of course).
Higher minimum wages will price more and more low-skilled people out of the labor market.Meanwhile, the higher wages will attract more job seekers willing to supply their labor at the higher price. Employers will be able to be more selective in their hiring, and as such the lower-skilled job seekers will be crowded out of these opportunities by higher-skilled, less-needy candidates. Minimum wage laws are an effective tool to cut off the bottom rung of the career ladder for those most in need of establishing work experience.
4: Support Restrictive “Green Energy” Policies
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would support government “green energy” initiatives that make energy more expensive. State and federal initiatives that mandate more expensive “renewable” energy mean that—in the words of President Obama—utility bills “necessarily skyrocket.” Poor people trying to scrape by just to stay even can scarcely afford higher electricity bills.
5: Increase the Business Regulatory Burden
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would see to it that government imposes many costly regulations on businesses.
meaning fewer job openings for those most in need of opportunity. And mountains of red tape force business to expend scarce resources on compliance costs rather than investing in their businesses and creating jobs. Higher-skilled compliance officer jobs will consume payroll that could have potentially gone toward opportunities for lower-skilled job seekers.
6: Inflate the Money Supply
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would support “quantitative easing” policies. Under such programs, the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air. The inflated money supply then erodes the value of the dollars sitting in your wallet or bank account. The poor are hit hardest by this inflation because their limited skill set makes it far more difficult for their incomes to keep up with the rising cost of living.
7: Impose High Tariffs
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would impose heavy tariffs on foreign goods in order to limit imports. Sure, the domestic industries protected from competition by these tariffs would prosper, but at what cost? For example, tariffs on foreign steel may help the 170,000 American workers employed by the steel industry, but higher steel prices will harm those industries using steel as inputs—and the 6.5 million workers they employ. Ultimately, more jobs are likely to be destroyed than saved.
Furthermore, the price increases passed along to consumers disproportionately harm low-income households. The combination of fewer job opportunities and a higher cost of living certainly makes it harder for the poor to climb out of poverty.
Finally, if I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would most definitely not support a competitive, free market economy. As Milton Friedman once famously schooled Phil Donahue:
So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
Brian Balfour is Executive Vice President for the Civitas Institute, a free-market advocacy organization in Raleigh, NC. He is the author of the high school economics iBook Economics in Action, creator of the Austrian Economics educational app, and has served as an adjunct economics instructor at Mount Olive University.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2019-12-14 07:11:462019-12-16 05:27:117 Things I’d Do if I Wanted to Keep Poor People Poor
If you’re indifferent about the crisis of pornography, the New York Times can change that — almost instantly. The paper jolted an entire nation into caring last year with its jarring exposé, “What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn” (warning: extremely graphic). What kids think is normal will shock and sober you. Because these aren’t Playboy magazines stashed under a teenage boy’s bed. These are raw, violent, and nauseating videos that they don’t have to sneak into a store for. Every time they hold a cell phone or log on to a laptop, the door is open to a life-changing experience that could kill the relationships in their lives forever.
Girls talk about learning how to “perform” from what they see online, using the scenes like a study guide. The boys’ stories are even more disturbing. They talk about aggressively hurting, choking, and punishing women as if it’s routine. “Women in porn like it,” one said. So, they assume all women do. They don’t realize that these are actors who are being exploited for an industry that’s tied to the dark world of sex trafficking, domestic violence, child abuse, and abortion. They don’t realize that this is a sinister trade that’s teaching men to dehumanize women, leading spouses to stray from marriages, and killing love and intimacy the world over.
To dads like Congressman Jim Banks (R-Ind.), the idea that his daughters could get caught up in this world is terrifying. “There are political issues that we deal with on Capitol Hill that are important,” he explained on “Washington Watch,” “but then there are political issues that are personal. And this is a very personal issue because I have three daughters 10 and under.” Like a lot of parents, he’s amazed at how much they’re in front of a screen or on the Internet watching YouTube videos. “As much as my wife and I try to police the amount of time they’re in front of a screen,” he says, “we find that they are sometimes we just can’t stop it. That’s just a part of the era that we’re in. And I’m horrified when I read stories or see statistics about the prevalence of obscene pornography that’s so readily available that our kids, even at a young age… That’s why I led this letter.”
For eight years, conservatives like Banks watched the Obama administration look the other way on pornography cases. Then, in 2010, the Justice Department quietly closed the doors on the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which was prosecuting hard-core offenders. It’s time, he insisted, to bring the issue back and make it a priority. Together with Reps. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), and Brian Babin (R-Texas), the group is asking Attorney General William Barr to start cracking down on a cancer that’s destroying our country from the inside out.
“Attorney General Barr can declare the prosecution of pornography a criminal justice priority. He hasn’t done that yet. I’m not attacking him or the administration. He’s new to the job, and he has a lot of other issues on his plate — like this impeachment fiasco… But he can direct the U.S. attorneys to investigate and bring prosecutions against the major producers and distributors of obscene pornography, just like he did under President George H.W. Bush. That’s what we’re hoping that our letter will motivate him to do,” Banks explained.
Luckily, the president’s team wouldn’t have to start from scratch. As Jim pointed out, there are already laws on the books to outlaw the worst kinds of material. The problem is, no one’s enforcing them. And a time when the states are lining up to declare pornography a public health hazard, it only makes sense for the administration to do the same. Too many people, including Christians, know how deadly pornography can be — to relationships, children’s innocence, and the thousands of women lured into an industry that exploits, demeans, and ensnares them. It affects our playgrounds, our politics, even our pulpits.
In surveys like Barna’s Porn Phenomenon, almost two-thirds of Christian men admitted to viewing porn at least once a month. For church leaders, the struggle is just as real: 57 percent of pastors and 64 percent of youth pastors admit they’ve used porn, “either currently or in the past.” There is a deep spiritual component to this crisis that’s corrupting people’s hearts and minds. It ties us up to the point that we’re not effective in our families. We’re not effective in the kingdom. And it stops us from speaking truth because we’re convicted of ourselves.
It’s time to deal with this, as a community, yes — but also as a church. FRC has some compelling resources, including Patrina Mosley’s “Women and Porn” publication. It starts: “I’m not being dramatic when I say that one wrong click changed by life…” But we also had the privilege of hosting one of the most authoritative voices on the subject, Josh McDowell. I strongly urge you to take the time to watch and share what he had to say at one of our recent pastors’ conferences. It just might change your life.
Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2019-12-14 06:48:482019-12-14 06:48:48PODCAST: Returning to the Obscene of the Crime
William Kilpatrick: Pope Francis seems not to see a problem meeting with and embracing an anti-Semite like the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb.
John Cornwell’s 1999 smear of Pius XII, Hitler’s Pope, became a best-seller, lauded by reviewers and excerpted in major magazines. Cornwell portrayed Pope Pius as an anti-Semite, a supporter of Hitler, and an enabler of the Holocaust.
None of this is true, of course. Eugenio Pacelli despised Hitler, denounced Nazi ideology on numerous occasions, and – according to historian Martin Gilbert – was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Jews. During the German occupation of Rome, hundreds of Jews were housed within the Vatican, 3,000 found sanctuary in Castel Gandolfo, and at Pius’s request, Roman convents and monasteries hid 5,000 Jews.
The book’s calumny was captured in the cover photo, which shows Cardinal Pacelli leaving a government building and being saluted by two German soldiers. All meant to insinuate that Pope Pius XII has just emerged from an important meeting with Hitler. But the picture was taken in 1927, long before Hitler came to power. Nuncio Pacelli was leaving a reception for German president, Paul von Hindenburg, and the soldiers were members of the Weimar Republic, not the Third Reich. Pacelli never met Hitler. Indeed, when Hitler visited Rome in 1938, Pacelli, along with Pope Pius XI, publicly snubbed him by leaving town. No photo of Pope Pius XII with Hitler exists. If it did, the world press would probably feature it on a regular basis along with stories condemning Pius for anti-Semitism.
Jump ahead to the present, and what do we find? Why, it’s a photo of Pope Francis kissing a well-known anti-Semite. No need to go digging to find it. In fact, there are several photos taken on several occasions of the pope embracing the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb. Yet, the Grand Imam’s anti-Semitic views are no secret, and the pope must surely have been aware of them.
During the Second Intifada, al-Tayyeb said that “The solution to Israeli terror lies in the proliferation of suicide attacks that spread terror into the hearts of Allah’s enemies.” He added, “the Palestinians have the right to blow up everything they want.”
Why, then, isn’t an outraged press running the photo on the front pages accompanied by captions such as “Pope embraces anti-Semitic Imam”?
The short answer is that they’re not outraged – at the pope or the Grand Imam.
The media, of course, does display outrage at anti-Semitism when it arises among groups or individuals considered to be white nationalists, Christian extremists, alt-right, or just plain conservatives. But other groups and individuals seem exempt from charges of anti-Semitism.
When leftists, liberals, and Democrats express anti-Jewish sentiments, the mainstream media tends to look the other way. The other exempt group is Muslims. They can’t be blamed because . . . well, because it’s a part of their culture. Besides, considering all the evils that the Jewish State has visited upon Palestinians, it’s perfectly understandable that Muslims would respond with anti-Jewish sentiments – or, so the reasoning goes.
Since liberal journalists tend to favor Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and since they are very sensitive to cultural differences, it’s not surprising that the Grand Imam, too, is given a free pass on his anti-Semitism.
Pope Francis also gets a pass because the liberal press correctly perceives him to be a fellow liberal. So, even if they thought the embrace of al-Tayyeb to be unfortunate (which they don’t), it would be quickly forgotten in light of all of Francis’s good deeds on behalf of the environment, the poor, migrants, and world peace. Indeed, the signing of the Abu Dhabi “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” would by itself, for liberal media, be enough to absolve both men of any prejudicial thoughts.
The media is friendly to Francis because he’s part of the club of bien-pensants who only wish well for the world. The proof of their protective attitude toward Francis is that, although Francis’s papacy is possibly the most scandal-ridden in modern history, with new scandals emerging on a weekly basis, most of the media has never looked deeply into the myriad charges.
The most serious charges have to do with cover-ups for abusive prelates in which Francis has been directly involved. How has the media responded to these cover-ups? Basically, with a cover-up of their own. Not that the press doesn’t run stories about the abuse cover-ups, but they are strangely restrained and muted stories, often blaming “conservatives” for using the scandals to oppose the pope. By-and-large, they assign only minimal responsibility to Pope Francis. Just as the media wants us to believe that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, it would also have us believe that the abuse crisis has nothing to do with Francis even when some of his closest collaborators are implicated.
Compare this to the media feeding frenzy that followed the 1963 premier of Rolf Hochhuth’s play “The Deputy” – which vilified Pope Pius Xll as a Nazi collaborator. For the next four decades, one sloppily researched book after another portrayed Pius as an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer.
The slur has never really gone away. It hangs heavily in the air waiting for the next scandalous book about the man who supposedly welcomed the Holocaust. As I wrote five years ago, “the ‘Hitler’s Pope’ campaign was highly successful, with the result that the calumny against Pius is now almost universally accepted by the opinion-making elites and by plenty of average citizens as well.”
Despite the fact that there now exist a number of well-documented books refuting the “Hitler’s Pope” myth, there have been, as far as I know, no retractions or apologies by those who helped spread the myth. The myth has been so widely disseminated, that few know that, in the years after World War II, Pius Xll was considered a hero by Jews throughout the world. And fewer still are aware that he was actually involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler.
The media seems to have a double standard about popes. They’ll believe anything derogatory about the pope who was known to be a staunch defender of tradition and doctrine, and they’ll forgive everything for a pope who shares their own liberal views. On the one hand, they’re eager to display a “fake news” photo of Pius in what appears to be a compromising position; on the other hand, they’re quite willing to ignore a photo of Francis embracing a contemporary anti-Semite.
None of this is meant to suggest that Francis himself is anti-Semitic, but it does suggest a certain carelessness on his part. Pope Pius Xll knew enough not to give photo ops to Hitler. But Francis doesn’t seem to understand that there is a problem with showering affection on a man with pronounced anti-Semitic views, so long as they are promoting interreligious relations.
Unlike Pius, he doesn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of his office or the responsibilities that go with it. He does seem, however, to understand that the media will put a positive spin on just about anything he does. So, perhaps, he thinks he can afford to be careless.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Catholic Thinghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Catholic Thing2019-12-14 06:37:402019-12-14 06:37:58Pius XII, Francis, and the Media
As I told the press today in a statement, the Judiciary Committee’s vote on the articles of impeachment was both a tragedy and a farce. Truly, it was a sad day for America because a grave injustice was committed. There is no abuse of power by President Trump, however, it is clear that abuses were committed against him by the DOJ, the State Department, the FISA court, and certainly by Democrats in the House.
This impeachment scam was corruptly formed and is being corruptly pursued. A coup cabal has hijacked the House to violate the rights of President Trump and undermine our constitutional republic. It is not too late to “stop the coup.” Americans should call their members of Congress to share their views on this wild attack on self-government.
The House vote is set for next week, so contact your congressman ASAP. You can find all the contact details here: www.house.gov.
The FBI and DOJ Massively Violated the Law
As the coup proceeds against President Trump, the Justice Department’s inspector general finally issued his report on the Russiagate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse this week, and it provides abundant evidence that the FBI and DOJ massively violated the law to obtain the Carter Page spy warrants targeting President Trump.
As IG reports are both exposés and cover-ups at the same time, it is no surprise that the IG punted on implicating senior officials directly in the spy scandal.
President Trump should appoint a special counsel from outside of the DOJ and FBI to investigate the Obama/Clinton/Deep State Spygate scandal and other crimes that are in plain sight.
In the meantime, we will continue our dozens of FOIA lawsuits and investigations, which have already revealed much of what is known about Spygate – the biggest corruption scandal of all time.
Truth is, President Trump is actually the victim of a crime, as I explain here and here. The IG report provided our team with many investigative leads – so you can be sure that your Judicial Watch will continue to uncover more truths (and get more accountability) on what is the worst corruption scandal in American history.
Court Hearing on House Democrat IT Awan Bros Scandal
While the House Democrat leadership fiddles with impeaching it President, it is also has been long busy trying to squelch a serious scandal involving the contractors who managed information technology for top Democrats.Now it seems that Deep State bureaucrats in the Justice Department are sticking their heads in the sand as well. We’re not. We sued in November 2018 to dig out the details, and this week we were in court for a hearing on the matter.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered the hearing in our lawsuit, which we filed after the FBI failed to respond adequately to our two separate FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-02563)).
Our first request, filed on May 26, 2017, sought:
All records related to any investigations or preliminary investigations involving former congressional IT support staffers Abid Awan, Imran Awan, Jamal Awan, and Hina R. Alvi. As part of this request, searches should of records [sic] should include, but not be limited to, the FBI automated indices, its older manual indices, and its Electronic Surveillance (ELSUR) Data Management System (EDMS), as well as cross-referenced files.
All records of communication sent to or from FBI employees, officials or contractors involving the subjects in bullet item 1.
We are seeking records from May 2015 to the present.
Our second request, submitted on July 3, 2018, sought:
All records related to any investigations or preliminary investigations involving former congressional IT support staffers Abid Awan, Imran Awan, Jamal Awan, Hina R. Alvi and Rao Abbas. As part of this request, searches of records should include, but not be limited to, the FBI automated indices, its older manual indices, and its Electronic Surveillance (ELSUR) Data Management System (EDMS), as well as cross-referenced files.
All records of communications, including but not limited to emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages, instant chats or messages on the Lync system, sent to or from FBI employees, officials or contractors involving the Awan brothers, Ms. Alvi and Mr. Abbas. Records of communications searched should include but not be limited to those between FBI officials, employees and contractors and officials with the Capitol Police, the Office of the Inspector General of the House, and the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the House.
In August 2019, the Justice Department told the court that it would begin producing records by November 5, 2019. After producing no records, the agency told us on November 13, 2019, that it was having “technical difficulties,” and in a recent email claimed that, “difficulties with the production remain.”In a joint status report filed on December 5, 2019, we reported to the court that the DOJ claimed in a phone call that it was now unable to produce any records to either of the FOIA requests “because the agency was waiting for some unspecified action by Judge [Tanya S.] Chutkan in some other matter so as to avoid having to produce records in this case.” In that same report the DOJ told the court that Judge Chutkan is “presiding over a related sealed criminal matter” that prohibits the government from releasing the requested FOIA information. [Emphasis added]
At the court hearing today, the Court ordered the Justice Department to provide, by January 10, an explanation to him on the issues Judicial Watch raised.
Imran Awan and his family were banned from the House of Representatives computer network in February 2017 after the House’s top law enforcement officer wrote that Imran is “an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems,” and that a server containing evidence had gone “missing.” The inspector general said server logs showed “unauthorized access” and procurement records were falsified.
Imran Awan was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) top information technology aide. Most lawmakers fired Awan in February, but Wasserman Schultz kept him on until he was arrested in July 2017 trying to board a flight for Pakistan.
In July 2018, Imran Awan was given a plea deal, and pled guilty to federal bank fraud, but prosecutors found no evidence that Awan “violated federal law with respect to the House computer systems.”
The Awan brothers reportedly “were not given background checks before being given access to highly sensitive government information and no explanations have been given as to why.” Additionally, “If they would have run this background check it would have found out not only multiple criminal convictions, but $1 million bankruptcy, a dozen lawsuits … it would have found a whole host of major red flags and the Democrats didn’t do any of those checks.”
This scandal is a matter of national security. It involves a cover-up by House Democrat leadership and, now, the Deep State DOJ. We won’t let this go.
New York Becomes 13th State to Give Illegal Immigrants Driver’s Licenses
Given the murders committed by a Saudi national in Pensacola this week, and daily reports of violent crimes by illegal aliens across the country, everyone is more alert to who comes into our country. Everyone but New York state politicians, that is. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports on that state’s move to make it easier for illegal aliens to reside here in violation of the law:
This month New York will become the 13th state in the U.S. to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, and officials in counties throughout the Empire State warn they are not equipped to handle the predicted onslaught. One state lawmaker is offering free care for the children of illegal aliens who attend a workshop to help them navigate the process of obtaining a license. More than half a million undocumented immigrants are expected to qualify, and all they need is an expired passport, consulate identification or license from their country of citizenship.
Local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) clerks throughout New York are deeply concerned about their ability to authenticate the unfamiliar documents—written in foreign languages—acceptable under the new law to obtain a license. One county clerk in the state’s eastern region said in a local news report that his office, which services a population of about 160,000, will not issue licenses to illegal aliens and instead will let the state deal with the applicants. “They want to us to make a decision right at the window as to whether something is fraudulent or acceptable,” Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola said in the article. “I’m not going to make a major mistake.” In the state’s southern tier, Chemung County Clerk Catherine Hughes blasted lawmakers for leaving her and her colleagues to deal with the mess. “They don’t really realize the ramifications that it causes by doing something like this,” said Hughes, who serves a population of about 90,000. “There are no set of rules and regulations on how to get it done. And that puts us county clerks in a very precarious situation because we don’t know how to do it.”
Officials in some New York counties have filed lawsuits to block the measure, officially called the Driver’s license Access and Privacy Act but popularly known as the Green Light Law, from being implemented. It was passed by the legislature over the summer and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo after he was assured federal immigration officials would not be able to obtain DMV records. That’s where the “privacy” portion of the bill’s language comes in. Officials in several counties—including Erie, Monroe and Rensselaer—are suing to thwart the law, which is scheduled to take effect on December 14. New York State Senator Julia Salazar, a former community organizer and proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, announced this week that she is holding an “informational session” to guide illegal immigrants through the process of obtaining a license. Free childcare will be provided, according to the announcements, which were issued in English and Spanish.
Besides New York, a dozen states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. They include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Vermont and Washington. More than half of the states passed their measures in 2013. In 2019 several states—including Florida, Kansas, Minnesota and North Carolina—introduced legislation to grant illegal aliens driver’s licenses, but those haven’t been resolved and it’s not clear if they’ll pass. This week the Department of Justice (DOJ) challenged New York’s soon-to-be-implemented measure, writing in a federal court filing that it conflicts with federal law.
New York is also undermining national security, according to a report published by a Washington D.C. think tank dedicated to researching U.S. immigration policy. New York’s Green Light Law equips illegal aliens and others with nefarious intentions with legitimate, state-issued identification, prohibits federal authorities from using information maintained by the state’s DMV and inhibits public safety as well as immigration enforcement. “The federal government should not simply surrender to the unreasonable and potentially unconstitutional limitations imposed on federal immigration and local law enforcement agencies by this law,” the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) writes in its extensive report, which includes ideas to circumvent New York’s law. Among them is withholding federal funding and taking legal action. Over the summer a federal appellate court ruled that the Trump administration could withhold federal funding to local governments that offer illegal immigrants sanctuary.
Video: President Trump signs antisemitism executive order – News 19 WLTX
Pro-Palestinian thuggery on campus finally gets a rebuke. My latest in FrontPage:
President Trump made history again on Wednesday, when he signed an executive order authorizing the Department of Education to act against anti-Semitism on American college and university campuses, and making it clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal money, “would apply to institutions that traffic in anti-Semitic hate,” that is, virtually every public institution of higher learning in America.
This executive order is long overdue. The Jerusalem Post reported that as far back as 2015, “more than 30 organizations, including Jewish fraternity AEPI, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Zionist Organization of America wrote to University of California regent Bruce D. Varner in July, requesting that substantive measures be taken to combat rising anti-Semitism on UC-affiliated campuses.”
The problem wasn’t restricted to the University of California, either, but nothing was done. And it is virtually inconceivable that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or any presidential hopeful on the scene today would have signed the executive order that Trump signed Wednesday. Trump pointed out that earlier efforts to combat campus anti-Semitism “didn’t get it done,” and declared: “This year, there’s no roadblock.”
There have been roadblocks for years. Campus groups, most notably the notorious Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), have grown increasingly aggressive as the Left has intensified its embrace of opposition to Israel and open anti-Semitism. Jewish students and supporters of Israel on campuses have been shouted down, defamed, vilified, and physically menaced, with only a handful of groups, particularly the David Horowitz Freedom Center, providing any support for those students.
The Freedom Center has fought back, virtually alone, demanding that universities withdraw their support for pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic groups such as the SJP that spread Jew-hatred on campus for well over a decade. The Center provides students who support Israel with valuable intellectual resources and helping them to stand strong against the furious onslaught from Leftists and the Muslim Brotherhood juggernaut.
There are so many incidents illustrating that furious onslaught that they could fill an entire good-sized book. Nor have only students been targeted: in February 2010 at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, attempted to give a speech there on relations between the United States and Israel but was ultimately unable to do so: after Muslim students heckled and interrupted him repeatedly, he left the stage.
Before Oren appeared, the UCI Muslim Student Union (MSU) chapter had issued a statement that read, in part:
As people of conscience, we oppose Michael Oren’s invitation to our campus. Propagating murder is not a responsible expression of free speech. . . .
We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined. . . .
The most important aspect of this statement was its claim that the university was “inadvertently supporting” Oren’s views just by cosponsoring the event. This was a complete rejection of the idea of the university as a place where all ideas can be discussed and accepted or rejected on their own merits. As far as the Muslim Student Union was concerned, giving someone a platform was tantamount to endorsing his views—so only those with acceptable opinions, that is, anti-Israel opinions, should be given a platform.
Applying that principle has turned universities into one-party states in which only one point of view is allowed. Trump’s executive order opens up the possibility that they might become institutions of higher learning again.
It will take a great deal of effort. At Temple University in August 2014, SJP members called Daniel Vessal, a Camera on Campus fellow and a member of the Jewish fraternity AEPi, “kike” and “baby killer,” and punched him in the face. Vessal explained that when he tried to engage SJP members in dialogue, but “people at the table were calling me a ‘baby killer’…And then this kid just rocks me in the face as hard as he can. My glasses flew off. After a two-second blur I had no clue what had happened. I couldn’t believe the kid actually hit me. When the police came over and were filing the report the kids at the table were screaming ‘You Zionist pig, you racist, that’s what you get.’” Police did not arrest the attacker.
In May 2016, Eliana Kopley, a sophomore at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), was trying to enter a screening of an Israeli documentary about the IDF called “Beneath the Helmet” when she was accosted by an angry mob screaming “Long live the Intifada!” and “F**k Israel!” The protesters prevented her from entering the building where the film was being shown, and even chased her into a nearby building, where they pounded on the doors and windows while continuing to scream their slogans. Police ultimately escorted Kopley into the screening. The UCI chapter of the SJP was thrilled with this thuggery, and praised the mob.
Likewise in a November 2015 rally organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Hunter College, a campus of the City University of New York (CUNY), protesters brandishing signs reading “Boycott Israel” and “Zionists out of CUNY” screamed at Jewish students: “Zionists go home!,” “Zionists out of CUNY!,” “Jews out of CUNY!,” “Get out of America!,” and “We should drag the Zionist down the street!” In February 2016 at Brooklyn College, a group of hard-Left students burst into a Faculty Council meeting and began chanting “Zionists off campus!” When a Jewish professor tried to get students to end their disruption of a Faculty Council meeting at Brooklyn College, they called him a “Zionist pig.”
The Muslim students’ behavior toward Oren and at Hunter College rapidly became the norm across U.S. campuses: it has become unsafe to be pro-Israel at an American university. As colleges grow more authoritarian in their Leftism, they have become increasingly inhospitable to students who oppose the Left’s pet causes.
But now President Trump has ensured that universities and colleges that actively allow anti-Semitic activity will face consequences. At the signing of the executive order, Alan Dershowitz said: “No more important event to turn universities away from being bastions of hatred and discrimination than this executive order being signed today. It is a game changer. It will go down in history as one of the most important events in 2,000 battle against anti-Semitism.”
For the sake of simple justice, and for the sake of the freedom of inquiry on college and university campuses, and for the sake of the truths that the Freedom Center has been fighting for all these years, all people of good will should hope that Dershowitz will be proven correct.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2019-12-14 05:41:102019-12-14 05:42:32Trump Pushes Back Against Campus Anti-Semitism
New York City’s former Mayor Mike Bloomberg has announced his candidacy for the Presidency. Not unlike virtually all candidates for elected office, he has promised to help create jobs and improve opportunities for Americans.
However, as my mom used to say, “Talk is cheap” and his open-borders advocacy is inconsistent with the best interests of our nation and our fellow Americans.
Immigration is not a single issue but a singular issue that profoundly impacts nearly every challenge and threat that confronts America and Americans. The critical question therefore, is “Where does Mike Bloomberg stand on immigration?”
As it turns out, Mike Bloomberg is an unapologetic advocate for open borders. This is no surprise. After all, when he was the Big Apple’s mayor he was a strong supporter of New York City’s “sanctuary” policies that shield illegal aliens from detection from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
So while Bloomberg has promised to help create new jobs, in fact he does not care who actually gets those jobs. I have often made the point that while it is good to create jobs, liberating jobs is a quicker and cheaper way to provide jobs for American and lawful immigrant workers. (Jobs are liberated when illegal aliens are removed from the jobs that they illegally take.) This is one of many missions for ICE, an agency that has come to be reviled by the globalist, open-borders immigration anarchists such as Mike.
In fact, it would appear that Mike Bloomberg would be happy if illegal aliens get those jobs and not American workers, as a means of suppressing wages.
Although Bloomberg has reportedly amassed $50 billion, making him one of the very wealthiest people on earth, in a recent interview he actually publicly stated that golf courses could not survive if they had to pay more for grass cutters, thereby acknowledging that while we are frequently told that illegal aliens do the work Americans won’t do, in reality Americans would gladly do those jobs, but for a living wage under lawful working conditions.
For Mike, screwing Americans out of jobs and wages is preferable to suffering a “hardship” that he and his super-wealthy friends would suffer if they had to pay more for their greens fees on golf courses and their country club memberships!
In that article he not only addressed the wonders of cheap labor but carefully blurred the essential distinction between illegal immigration from lawful immigration.
To provide a bit of much-needed clarity, the difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar.
Here is an excerpt from that article:
On immigration, a hot topic back then, he was adamant that hardworking immigrants help.
“We should open the borders, not close them. And you need to open them in tough times more than you need to open them in good times. And government has to lead, and I don’t think most of our leaders are willing to do that.
What nobody quite understands about the undocumented, and I think it’s true no matter where they come from, all the conventional wisdoms of Lou Dobbs — who has done an enormous amount of damage to this country – the undocumented have very low (rates of) crime. Why? Because they don’t want to go near the government.
“Undocumented pay taxes. Why? Because their company deducts and there’s no place to send the refund. Undocumented don’t use our schools very much. They tend to be young people coming here who don’t go and have families. They tend to send money back home.
“Undocumented don’t use our hospitals much. Why? Because most of us use three-quarters of our medical expenses in the last three years of our life, and these are young people who come here. And the argument that undocumented take jobs away from Americans is just not true. You cannot get Americans generally to do these jobs.
“Now you can say wait a minute and pay them more, but if you did that, yes, more Americans would take them, but the organizations couldn’t survive. Golf courses can’t survive if they have high-cost grass cutters. To answer your question on what do you do, it’s the elected officials (who must act).”
We must begin by making the distinction that Bloomberg and the other open-borders advocates refuse to make: the one between lawful immigrants and illegal aliens.
On June 13th of this year I was a guest on Fox & Friends First and ended my interview by asking cohosts Jillian and Rob if they would be willing to board an airliner if they saw some of the passengers on their flight sneaking past the TSA inspectors. They reacted as I expected them to, so I then asked, “Why then are we being forced to live among millions of people who snuck past a similar vetting process conducted at ports of entry?”
America is indeed a “nation of immigrants”; however, it is not a “nation of trespassers”!
In the article Bloomberg made a number of assertions that are utterly bogus.
While it is true that lawful immigrants are among the most law-abiding segment of our nation, illegal aliens are the most crime-prone individuals. I addressed this incontrovertible fact in my earlier article which I urge you to read in its entirety, “Illegal Immigration And Crime.”
New York City’s schools are prohibited from asking students about their immigration status so there is no easy way to determine the immigration status of these students; however, each year increasing amounts of money in the Board of Education budget are allocated to providing ESL (English as a Second Language) training. This would certainly seem to suggest that many of the students in our public schools are aliens. Furthermore, so-called “sanctuary” policies attract illegal aliens.
Additionally, New York State now provides illegal aliens with driver’s licenses, which not only serves as a magnet to attract increasing numbers of illegal aliens but also undermines national security and public safety. I laid out my concerns on this lunacy in my article, “New York Will Provide Illegal Aliens With Driver’s Licenses,” in which I rhetorically asked, “Where is Gov. Cuomo’s MVP Award from terrorists?”
The real question that Bloomberg and all candidates for the Presidency and other elected offices on all levels of government should be asked is, “Have you read, in their entirety, the The 9/11 Commission Report and the companion report 9/11 and Terrorist Travel?
As a follow-up, Bloomberg and the other candidates should be asked how their abhorrence for secure borders and fair but effective immigration law enforcement as evidenced in their statements square with the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
Those reports made it clear that terror attacks, and not only the attacks of 9/11, were only possible because of multiple failures of the immigration system — a system Bloomberg is determined to undermine and obstruct in order to achieve his globalist agenda.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Michael Cutlerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMichael Cutler2019-12-14 05:23:352019-12-14 05:23:35Bloomberg: Unacceptable Presidential Candidate — An unapologetic advocate for open borders.
Interestingly, the House Judiciary Committee members voted on articles of impeachment on of all days Friday, December 13th, 2019. Prophetic isn’t it.
The House Judiciary Committee adopted both articles alleging: 1. abuse of power and 2. obstruction of Congress, on a party-line vote of 23-17.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated on the Sean Hannity Show:
The case is so darn weak coming from the House. We know how it’s going to end. There’s no chance the president’s going to be removed from office. My hope is that there won’t be a single Republican who votes for either of these articles of impeachment, and, Sean, it wouldn’t surprise me if we got one or two Democrats.
The main issue is that Speaker Pelosi, Representatives Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler have focused on overturning the results of the 2016 election using every and all means available.
Because of their desperate stand to impeach President Donald J. Trump it is becoming clearer with each passing day that they cannot win at the ballot box in 2020.
Here are the top reasons that the Democrats are confused and spreading disorder within their own political party:
The Mueller Report debunked the malarkey that there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
President Trump releasing the transcripts of his two phone conversations with the President of the Ukraine debunked the malarkey of a quid pro quo.
The hearings in the House Intelligence Committee, both secret and public, debunked the malarkey of a quid pro quo.
The hearing in the House Judiciary Committee debunked the malarkey of a quid pro quo.
The hearing in the House Judiciary Committee ignored the quid pro quo of former VP Biden and his son Hunter.
Rep. @RepMattGaetz says an essential part of the Democrats' impeachment case is that the Bidens did nothing wrong. So Gaetz digs into the shady dealings of Hunter Biden. pic.twitter.com/12wUkPtMws
During all of this time since the election of Donald J. Trump the Democrats have been trying, unsuccessfully, to dig up dirt. Again, they have kept digging and they now find themselves in a deep hole that they cannot extricate themselves from.
These continuous investigations and hearings have hurt the candidates running for president during the Democratic primary. The media has focused on the investigations and have in large part ignored giving the limelight to the Democratic candidates.
To make matters worse the polling, if you believe the polls, show President Trump has remained steady in his popularity. If anything the polls indicate that the American people have grown tired of the constant malarkey.
More telling is how the President and the Republican Party continue to stand together as never before. The Republican Party is raising money from small donors for the President’s 2020 campaign and those Republicans on the 2020 ballot in record numbers.
Finally, the Trump campaign has used this opportunity to both emphasize the Democrat’s disarray and expose their malarkey.
The Republicans House members were fantastic yesterday. It always helps to have a much better case, in fact the Dems have no case at all, but the unity & sheer brilliance of these Republican warriors, all of them, was a beautiful sight to see. Dems had no answers and wanted out!
1. Trump and Zelensky deny conditionality 2. The transcript shows no quid pro quo 3. Ukraine wasn't aware of delay at the time of the call 4. The aid was ultimately delivered
The Democrats are hurting their candidates for president, those seeking reelection in 2020, those in both the House and Senate, and the party as a whole.
Question: Why?
Answer: Perhaps they can’t see that their malarkey is pure bunkum.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2019-12-13 10:16:032019-12-17 04:29:15Democrats in Disarray and Full of Malarkey!
P.J. and Nicole Marie Mongelli. President Trump made a surprise appearance at a wedding reception of P.J. and Nicole Marie Mongelli Saturday night that took place at his New Jersey golf club, prompting the bride, groom and attendees to break into chants of “USA! USA!”. Video circulating on social media Sunday showed Trump walk out to the reception and the bride and groom rush over to join him. The crowd then erupted in the patriotic chant.
TOPIC: Trump crashes wedding reception, crowd chants USA, USA!
Mark Meckler, President, Citizens for Self-Governance. Mark is one of the nation’s most effective grassroots activists. After he co-founded and was the national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, he founded Citizens for Self-Governance to revolutionize American government. this grassroots initiative expands and directs the ever-growing, bipartisan self-governance movement. Mark appears regularly on wide variety of television outlets, including MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He is the co-author of “Tea Party Patriots: The Second American Revolution,” and writes regularly on Breitbart, the American Spectator, and SelfGovern.com. He also is an attorney who specializes in internet privacy law.
TOPIC: Trump’s Plan To Deter Asylum Seekers.
James S. Davidson was an FBI special agent for 23 years. He investigated major crimes in Texas and California and served in Ukraine, Israel, and Washington, D.C. He is now president of Protect the FBI, a non-partisan organization whose mission is to safeguard the FBI from the partisan politics of both political parties.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Conservative Commandos Radio Showhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngConservative Commandos Radio Show2019-12-13 09:17:242019-12-13 09:18:35PODCAST: Trump crashes wedding reception, crowd chants USA, Trump’s Plan To Deter Asylum Seekers, How to watch Robert Mueller testify
Rep. Rashida Tlaib took to social media Thursday to falsely blame white supremacy for Tuesday’s murderous shooting in Jersey City targeting Jews.
“This is heartbreaking,” Tlaib tweeted. “White supremacy kills.” This came more than a day after the two perpetrators had been identified as David Andersen and Francine Grahm, both black. Police found anti-Semitic posts online written by the suspects, who were killed in a shootout with police. A manifesto of some sort was left in their car. Anderson reportedly was associated with the Black Hebrew Israelites, a black nationalist group made up of racists and anti-Semites.
Tlaib eventually deleted her racist tweet without comment.
“It’s telling, and frankly sick, that Tlaib tweeted out sympathies for the Jews that were murdered blaming it on white supremacists,” tweeted journalist Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll. “Didn’t care enough to find out what happened. Just enough to use dead Jews for her political agenda.”
Upon winning the Democratic primary on August 7, Tlaib draped herself in a Palestinian flag while celebrating with her supporters. In her victory speech, she promised to “fight back against every racist and oppressive structure that needs to be dismantled.” When she was subsequently asked by Great Britain’s Channel 4 News if she planned to vote against U.S. military aid to Israel, Tlaib responded: “Absolutely, if it has something to do with inequality and not access to people having justice…. If you’re going to be a country that discriminates on somebody solely based on their faith, solely based on their skin color … I will be using my position in Congress so that no country, not one, should be able to get aid from the U.S. when they still promote that kind of injustice….”
When Tlaib won her congressional election on November 6, 2018, CAIR founder and CEO Nihad Awad congratulated her on her “historic victory of becoming the first Muslim and Palestinian woman in the U.S. Congress.”
In December 2018, Tlaib become just the second U.S. lawmaker — the first was Ilhan Omar — to publicly voice support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. “I personally support the BDS movement,” Tlaib said in an interview with the news website The Intercept. “I want us to see that segregation and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2019-12-13 06:34:202019-12-14 05:48:26Tlaib Falsely Blames Jersey Shooting on ‘White Supremacy’
To say that We the People are outraged over the Democrats baseless absurd articles of impeachment against our president would be an understatement. Candidly, I’ve had to talk my Irish/Cherokee feisty wife down from throwing a brick through our TV. These arrogant scumbags, in essence, are saying screw you 63 million Americans who elected this guy. We’re smearing his a** with impeachment and y’all can’t stop us.
The most infuriating thing about Democrats and fake news medias’ fake-outrage over Trump’s alleged crimes is everyone knows Trump has done nothing wrong. He has functioned totally within his presidential authority. Democrats and media are attempting to criminalize Trump defending himself while exposing their corruption. The only thing Trump is guilty of is keeping his promise to do everything within his power to make America great again.
Folks, it feels like we are in an episode of the Twilight Zone in which Democrats’ and medias’ reality is the polar opposite of the truth. With straight faces, they authoritatively lie about every issue. Our economy is booming. And yet, Democrats and media say people are horribly suffering in Trump’s economy. Blacks are enjoying a historic low unemployment rate. Dems and media tell blacks Trump is a white supremacist seeking to harm them.
We are livid that bad actors in the FBI, CIA, DOJ, State Department and Obama Administration illegally conspired to kick Trump out of the White House. These arrogant treasonous scumbags continue their unlawful assault on president Trump in-plain-sight while they appear on TV with their noses in the air – talking down to We the People.
Our prayer is that these enemies of the Constitution will receive their just rewards. AG William Barr and federal prosecutor John Durham appear to be hot on their tails with indictments.
The revelation that government agencies are involved in the Democrats’ silent coup and smear campaign is extremely disturbing. It is pretty scary to realize that if you p*** off the Democrats, they will “get you”. Let us not forget that Obama’s IRS punished the Tea Party.
This whole impeachment scam reminds me of the 1938 Disney movie, “Snow White.” As a child, I could not understand why the wicked queen’s hatred for Snow White was so great that she was willing to sacrifice her beauty and even her life to destroy Snow White. We are witnessing the same obsession with Democrats irrationally moving forward with impeaching Trump.
Immediately after Trump was elected, Democrats began their impeachment scam. They have ignored numerous issues important to the American people such as prescription drug prices, border security and the opioid crisis. Democrats know their impeachment scam will crash and burn in the senate. And yet, they press forward.
President Reagan predicted the U.S.S.R. would collapse due to the weight of its evil. The Democrats’ 2020 presidential dreams are collapsing under the weight of their deranged hatred.
For years, Democrats and their media minions appeared to win every battle, chipping away at our constitutional freedoms. Who could imagine a day would come when Democrats’ deranged hatred for all things beneficial to America would cause Democrats to eat themselves? Like the wicked queen’s obsession with destroying Snow White, Democrats deem no cost too great to remove Trump.
I believe we owe the anti-Trump resistance a bit of gratitude. Their hatred created our America-first superhero president. Trump was not ideological. When the left immediately sought to block him from making America great again, Trump’s eyes were opened. I believe he was stunned by leftists’ vitriolic hatred for our country. This moved Trump closer to We the People.
We are in a spiritual battle of good verses evil.“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12
Spiritual wickedness is the root cause of Democrats’ hatred for everyday Americans. Democrats vehemently oppose Trump restoring religious liberty, restoring our constitutional freedoms, securing our borders and governing in the best interest of the American people.
Be of good cheer and hang in there folks. Our Sherlock Holmes, (William Barr) and his Doctor Watson (John Durham) are close to cracking the Democrats’ evil scam wide open. We The People are so looking forward to crushing the Democrats at the polls in November for their wicked crimes against our president and America.
Despite its many undoubted merits, democracy has one glaring detriment. There is never a dictator to blame for the fate that befalls the people. They alone are responsible for whatever befalls them.
“Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit (And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness). –Alcuin of York, an English scholar, clergyman, and poet (c. 735 –804 CE)
Israel is now hurtling towards its third national election within a year.
Not Force Majeure
This was not an outcome precipitated by some unforeseen or uncontrollable force majeure. On the contrary, it was entirely the result—albeit an entirely perverse and paradoxical one—of the free exercise of collective human volition.
It was perverse and paradoxical because it reflected the diametric opposite of the express–and expressed—desires of the individuals comprising the collectives involved in precipitating it.
Indeed, in the myriad of interviews in the national media—whether on radio or television, in the printed media or on the web—there was not a single politician, who did not voice opposition to yet another round of elections. Yet despite literally wall to wall individual resistance to sending voters back to the polls for a third time within a year, the motion to hold a new ballot on March 2, 2020, was passed with an overwhelming majority (96-7) in the wee hours of Thursday morning (December 12, 2019).
Toxic quagmire of irreconcilable demands
As the inevitability of a new election drew inexorably closer, and the quagmire of the irreconcilable political demands of the potential coalition partners grew more viscous and more noxious, so the blame-game, the endeavor to attribute guilt for the undesirable outcome, spiraled to evermore shrill and venomous levels. Every political faction pointed accusatory fingers at every other faction.
Each party extolled its own “flexibility” and underscored its own selfless willingness for sacrifice to hobble together a coalition—any coalition-to avoid a dreaded third national ballot.
Thus, the Likud castigated Blue and White for intractable anti-Netanyahu rejection and excoriated Avigdor Liberman for perfidy and betrayal of his Right-wing constituency. Blue and White condemned the Likud for obsequious subservience to Netanyahu and putting the wishes of their indicted party leader above the needs of the nation. Liberman slammed both for being inflexible and for secretly preferring new elections, in which they hope they would improve their positions, over forming a unity government with each other. In Blue and White itself, Left of Center members accused Right of Center members of preventing the creation of a coalition headed by their party, that relied on the support of the Arab Joint List.
So, to sum up so far on how the third round of elections came about: No-one wanted them, almost everyone voted for them and everyone blamed everyone else—except themselves—for causing them.
Another perverse paradox
This brings us to the second perverse paradox.
Apart from Liberman reneging on his pre-election pledges in April to help set up a Right-wing coalition (or, at least, what many saw as such), the subsequent rounds of elections were in fact precipitated by the various parties ostensibly insisting on honoring their electoral pledges to their voters.
The Right-wing parties maintained their ideological solidarity and allegiance to Netanyahu as their choice for premier. Blue and White refused to give up their undertaking not to join a government under an indicted prime minister; Liberman kept to his (relatively new) commitment to eschew participation in what he dubbed a “Messianic Ultra-Orthodox” coalition—despite the fact that he had done precisely that, on numerous times in the past.
Thus, the event, which no-one wanted (i.e. additional elections) came about precisely because the elected politicians strove to stick to their campaign promises and to provide their voters what they elected them for.
Dysfunctional or irrational?
Accordingly, the repeated failure to form a government is not really a failure of Israel’s democratic system as some have claimed, but rather a reflection of its success—and its ability to accurately convey the will of the electorate—including its view of Netanyahu’s legal situation and the moral implications thereof!
Indeed, if this is the case—and there seems little grounds to think otherwise—the ongoing political saga in Israel leads unavoidably to one of two gloomy conclusions regarding the Israeli electorate as a functioning collective:
(a) It is either dysfunctional in that it cannot agree to provide any elected political entity, or any combination thereof, the power to govern—i.e. it cannot generate the collective will to allow the formation of a viable elected government; or
(b) It is irrational in that it has a collective desire to install a viable government but insists on rewarding precisely those who thwart that desire.
Arguably, either possibility was clearly discernable in the last round of elections. After all, in the original elections in April, the formation of a viable Right-wing coalition was eminently feasible until Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu faction, which had pledged to facilitate precisely such a coalition under Netanyahu, refused to do so. Indeed, had Liberman honored his commitment, there would have been little difficulty in forming a governing coalition.
Perversely and paradoxically
However, when the next elections came about (in September) instead of punishing the very faction that frustrated the formation of a governing coalition, the electorate chose—perversely and paradoxically—to reward it, almost doubling Yisrael Beteinu’s strength in the Knesset; commensurately increasing its ability to torpedo the formation of any future coalition—which, of course, it did.
Worse, if current polls are anything to go by, Liberman’s faction will retain more or less the same number of seats as it has today, leaving its obstructive power undiminished.
Accordingly, it would appear, that as a collective, the Israeli electorate is still resolved to sustain the ongoing political limbo—whether it is unwilling to confer the power on any elected political grouping the ability to form a viable government; or despite the fact that it is willing to do so. In other words, it appears to be persisting with collective behavior that is either dysfunctional or irrational.
No dictator to blame
Of course, Israel’s elected politicians have been sorely reproached for the prevailing fiasco. Much has been made of the cost of the repeated elections and of how many classrooms could be built, hospital beds increased, and roads upgraded with the sums required to conduct them.
This, of course, is as true as it is irrelevant. For the necessity of holding and re-holding elections is due to one thing, and one thing alone—the election results, which reflect the will of the voters.
Had they voted differently, had they not empowered the very faction responsible for preventing the formation of a duly elected government (and which they knew to be responsible therefor); had Yisrael Beteinu been punished, rather than rewarded, in September for blatantly violating its April pledges and received less votes than the required threshold to be admitted to the Knesset, the country would, in all likelihood, have had a functioning government today.
There is an important lesson to be learnt from all this on free choice and civic responsibility. It is this:
Despite its many undoubted merits, democracy has one glaring detriment. There is never a dictator to blame for the fate that befalls the people. They, and they alone, hold the key to their destiny and for whatever befalls them.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Martin Shermanhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Martin Sherman2019-12-13 06:11:142019-12-13 12:31:41Israel’s dysfunctional electorate?
