I saw a report where 54% of Californians are considering leaving the state.
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https://www.nationalreview.
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A beautiful woman ran a red traffic light and crashed into a man's car. Both of their cars are demolished, but amazingly neither of them was hurt.
After they crawled out of their cars, the woman said, "Wow, just look at our cars! There's nothing left, but fortunately we are unhurt. This must be a sign from God that we should meet and be friends and live together in peace for the rest of our days."
The man replied," I agree with you completely. This must be a sign from God!"
The woman continued, "And look at this, here's another miracle. My car is completely demolished, but my bottle of 75 year old scotch didn't break. Surely God meant for us to drink this vintage delicacy and celebrate our good fortune."
Then she handed the bottle to the man. The man noded his head in agreement, opened it, drank half the bottle and then handed it back to the woman. The woman took the bottle, immediately put the cap back on, and handed it back to the man.
The man asks, "Aren't you having any?"
She replies, "Nah. I'll just wait for the police."
Many years ago Adam ate the apple. Men will never learn!
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AOS has become The Speaker replacing Pelosi who cowers in fear of offending radicals who now are in control of the party .(See 2, 2a , 2b, 2c and 2d below.)
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I have had some time to think about various generations who had different experiences but they remained empathetic, respectful and connected. Then along came those who sought chaos through a variety of methods. PC'ism led to intersectionality. Now differences have separated us and created discord.
As I have noted, more ads show black and white families married, socializing and this is the world my grandchildren will grow up in and I am glad. I did not necessarily grow up in that world because I lived in Birmingham. Fortunately Birmingham did not poison me. My parents pointed the way and I had the good sense to follow.
Is it the job of our universities to educate or indoctrinate? Is it the job of the mass media to take it upon themselves to change our society and do so in a biased manner that creates more disunity for political purposes. Intersectionality divides Americans into select groups that defy/mock the fact that we call ourselves The United States. We are more divided than ever because we have allowed radicals, who want to destroy our nation, to spread ideas that are foreign and do not work. These radicals have convinced many we are an evil nationsl because we reject the idea that everyone is entitled to what they want.
The new war is conducted by using social media technology to spread doubt and discontent and the radicals, among us, are paid to stir the cauldron of hatred and suspicion by those who seek chaos.
We have a republic if we can keep it. I ain't so sure we can anymore because we have turned our nation into a checkerboard. Intersectionality sounds good but it is causing great divisions. We are allowing ourselves to be manipulated,. We are falling for distinctions that separate rather than unite.Wealth disparity, guilt, entitlements, politics of distinction all wrapped in the cocoon of doing goodism. These are the tools of ghouls and we have allowed them to infect/poison our nation.
This was Obama's goal all along as he transformed America. What is the saddest is that cowardly Jews like Sanders, Schiff, Schumer and Nadler are leading the parade of their own people's destruction and are resorting to hatred of Trump as one of their methods.
They are the new Quislings and Hamans.
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A new Rant. (See 3 below.)
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How big is MS 13? (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
The Democratic Crackup
Pelosi and her chaotic caucus manage to overshadow Trump—a dubious achievement.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks during event in Austin, Texas, March 5. PHOTO:SERGIO FLORES/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Americans love a good political brawl, and that’s terrible news for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Her Democratic Party has commenced a full throw-down—with itself.
Few things have benefited Democrats more in the past few years than the Donald Trump show. The president likes to be the center of attention, and the media likes nothing more than to oblige him. This dynamic helped make the 2018 election a referendum on the man himself rather than his policies, and that made Mrs. Pelosi speaker of the House.
Democrats envisioned the same dynamic helping them win the White House in 2020. Mrs. Pelosi has been to that rodeo before, after the 2006 election, when she was first elected speaker. She mobilized her committee chairmen to launch focused investigations to keep the spotlight on George W. Bush’s Iraq war, energy policy, detainee treatment, etc. She corralled a diverse caucus to pass a modest agenda, “Six in ’06,” that showed Democrats could get things done but didn’t put them in the limelight, much less make them look crazy. This paved the way to the election of Barack Obama in 2008, and Democrats figured Mr. Trump would make a repeat even easier.
Instead, Mrs. Pelosi this week accomplished the remarkable feat of sidelining Mr. Trump and owning most of the unpleasant headlines herself. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler explained that his sprawling Trump investigation was primarily designed to convince voters that Democrats were “not just trying to steal the last—to reverse the results of the last election.” This required his colleagues to deny furiously that the party has already decided on impeachment.
Then there was the crackup between House party elders who wanted Democrats to condemn the anti-Semitism of Rep. Ilhan Omar, and woke freshmen who wanted to turn smears against Jews into a fuzzy discussion of hurt feelings. Members battled for days, only for Mrs. Pelosi on Thursday to roll over to the progressive left’s demand that any resolution condemn “hate” in general and not anti-Semitism specifically. Even CNN described all this as “chaos.”
Opinion: Socialism Versus Capitalism In Sanders’ 2020 Presidential Bid
Senator Bernie Sanders, who started pulling the Democratic Party towards a socialist agenda in 2016, kicked off his second presidential campaign Saturday, predicting he would win in 2020. Image: AFP
These are not the only incidents. They follow a high-profile moment in which moderate Democrats bucked their party to vote with Republicans on gun control, as well as furious backlash to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s threat last week to put those Democrats on a “list” for a primary challenge if they don’t get with her program. And of course radical-left House members for weeks have overshadowed the Pelosi agenda with their own proposals for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, giant tax hikes and more.
It’s tempting to write these moments off as growing pains or the type of backbencher grandstanding that debilitated John Boehner’s speakership. But that ignores how huge and fundamental the fissures are becoming in the Democratic Party. This isn’t a tea-party moment, which was fueled by conservatives who felt their Republican members weren’t living up to principles that most in the party share. The Democratic Party is moving in two different directions.
Ideologically, how do you mesh a party whose members variously embrace and reject capitalism? Hillary Clinton, in a remarkable moment last year, said she believes her decision in 2016 to call herself a “capitalist” hurt her in places like Iowa, where “41% of Democrats are socialists or self-described socialists.” In other words, well over a third of Iowa caucus-goers reject the economic and political basis upon which the Democratic Party was founded.
The moderates who won Mrs. Pelosi the gavel ran on deficit reduction, border security and market reforms. Today’s progressive movement subscribes to “modern monetary theory,” in which debt no longer matters; wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and believes markets are immoral. These aren’t degrees of separation. They’re completely separate philosophies.
That the party is going in opposite directions was beautifully illustrated this week by the heated public fight between Wisconsin Democrats who want the 2020 convention in Milwaukee and Florida Democrats who want it in Miami. The Wisconsin contingent says the party needs to stop snubbing labor unions and the white working class Mr. Trump won over in the 2016 election. The Florida crowd says the party needs to embrace more passionately the multicultural, minority, progressive microcosms of coastal America. What nobody is admitting is that no Democratic politician has yet to articulate a strategy for catering to both. Because it is impossible.
The reigning political wisdom is that none of this will matter in the end. Democrats will brawl, but their anti-Trump fervor will ultimately unite them around a standard-bearer. Then again, these are not usual political times. And it seems equally possible that the same anti-Trump contempt will push them to overreach in their investigations and indulge in policy prescriptions that prove too extreme for a center-right country.
It’s too soon to know. For now, all we can do is sit back and enjoy the Democratic show.
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2)The DEMOCRATS failed on anti-Semitism and Ilhan Omar. Do most Jews care?
Her party’s failure to condemn her was appalling. But partisanship will likely prevent most Jews from drawing conclusions about what has happened.
Back in November, I wrote that the election of radicals like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) wouldn’t have much impact on the U.S.-Israel relationship. I reasoned that the trio of newly elected radicals would be backbenchers without power or influence, while the Democratic leadership of the House remained solidly pro-Israel and friends of the Jewish community.
But as the events of the last week have shown, I was wrong about that, especially in thinking that Democrats would speak out specifically against anti-Semitism if a member of their caucus acted as Omar has done.
Yet now that it has happened, I wouldn’t be surprised if their faithful Jewish Democratic supporters simply shrug it off.
The Democratic Party as a whole is shifting to the left. But with the bulk of Democrats, especially officeholders, still reliably pro-Israel, there could be no comparison between it and Britain’s Labour Party, which under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn has been captured by anti-Semitic radicals.
But while the Democrats are not yet the moral equivalent of Labour, there can no longer be any doubt that AOC, Omar and Tlaib are far from powerless. Indeed, they have not only intimidated the Democratic leadership, but also demonstrated their ability to rally much of the party, including leading presidential candidates, around the cause of defending Omar from facing any consequences for her anti-Semitic hate. This feat calls into question not only the future of a bipartisan consensus on behalf of Israel, but also the future of the Democratic Party as a political home for centrist Americans.
But above and beyond the political implications of Omar’s evading consequences for her spreading of hate, this should shock American Jews out of any remaining complacency they might have had about the willingness of the Democrats to stand with them against anti-Jewish bias.
What may be even more depressing is that most of American Jewry won’t take any of this seriously or draw any conclusions about it. That’s because history has taught us that liberal Jews will do nothing to hold the Democrats accountable for their shocking failure.
Omar had twice before issued anti-Semitic statements, one of which she had been forced to apologize for by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership. But her apology and disingenuous claim that she was unaware of the meaning of the anti-Semitic tropes about Jews controlling the world or attempting to buy off members of Congress were meaningless. Last week, she doubled down on her hate by spouting off about supporters of Israel being guilty of dual loyalty, another classic anti-Semitic trope.
Yet when some demanded action, what the Democrats did was worse than inaction. Much of the House Democratic caucus revolted at the idea of a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, even if it didn’t name Omar. They embraced Omar’s claim that she was the victim in this drama. Omar had singled out “Jewish colleagues” as being guilty of targeting her and Tlaib—another serial purveyor of anti-Semitism—for discrimination because they were Muslims. Three of the leading Democratic candidates for president—Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren—supported these claims when, while condemning anti-Semitism out of one side of their mouths, they also defended Omar and opposed any specific condemnation of her hate.
House Democrats backed down in the face of support for Omar from much of the party. Pelosi, who knew very well how insincere Omar’s previous apology had been, exonerated her of any intentional anti-Semitism. Democrats ignored the fact that as supporters of an anti-Semitic BDS movement, there was no doubt that the hate espoused by Omar and Tlaib was intentional and purposeful. The claim that their goal was to start a conversation about U.S. foreign policy or to speak up for Palestinian human rights is a blatant lie. As BDS supporters, their goal is Israel’s destruction and to delegitimize its Jewish supporters, not to merely initiate a debate about the peace process. The claim that supporters of Israel are guilty of Islamophobia is another brazen falsehood.
Equally disingenuous is the claim that the right is as guilty of anti-Semitism as the left. The claims that U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican members of Congress are also guilty anti-Semitism are bogus. There is simply no comparison to what the Democrats are enabling and even supporting from Omar and anything that GOP officeholders have done or said with respect to anti-Semitism.
The resolution that did pass was a joke. It not only avoided mentioning Omar, but was also turned into a laundry list of every conceivable sort of hatred (with the sole exception of bias against Catholics and evangelical Christians that has been demonstrated by many liberal Democrats in recent years). It was the moral equivalent of the response to the Black Lives Matter movement by some, who spoke instead of all lives mattering—a stand that most Democrats had condemned.
AOC and her leftist pals are setting the agenda for Democrats. This will have a genuine impact on the 2020 presidential race, which has already appeared to show that Democrats have been shifting to the left, and make it easier for attacks on Israel and Jews to become part of the campaign.
This ought to horrify the majority of American Jews who remain loyal supporters of the Democrats. But don’t expect many of them to take action or do anything to hold their party accountable. In this hyper-partisan era, most liberal Jews are more interested in defeating Trump than in confronting anti-Semitism.
Facing the truth about the state of the Democratic Party would force them to choose between their partisan interests and defense of the Jewish community. And that is not a choice that most American Jews are prepared to make, even if means supporting a party that treats anti-Semites and their enablers as rock stars. Along with the direction of a Democratic Party that just took another step towards being Corbynized, that is the sorriest aspect of this dismal chapter of American Jewish history.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate.
2a) The Democrats and Anti-Semitism
An inflection point in American political history.
"the moment at which the Democratic Party decided that it had to choose between Jews and intersectionality and chose the latter"
The struggle is over. At its highest levels, the Democratic Party is defending or excusing its newly minted superstar freshman anti-Semite.
Over the past week, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives has been trying to find a way to deal with a third set of remarks by Rep. Ilhan Omar that expressed anti-Semitic sentiments—words that followed a clearly disingenuous apology she had offered for earlier anti-Semitic remarks. A resolution to condemn Omar by name was floated at first only to be supplanted by a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism, then a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism and Islamophobia
And then, suddenly, everything was all right. Because according to the Speaker of the House, the House Majority Leader, the House Whip, the Senate Minority Leader, and at least three Democratic presidential candidates, Ilhan Omar is not an anti-Semite—and, in the view of some, people are saying so dishonestly for the purpose of shutting down debate on legitimate matters.
Speaker Pelosi said Omar’s words were not “intentionally anti-Semitic.”
Majority Leader Hoyer: “I don’t think she’s anti-Semitic.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—who has spent his career oleaginously assuring Jewish audiences his true purpose is to serve as a “shomer,” a guardian at the gates of Jerusalem, protecting and defending his people—said Omar had been “wrong and hurtful,” but then immediately sought to equalize her repeated offenses against his people with a poster someone hung up in the West Virginia statehouse—”and those who tried to connect 9/11 to all Muslims in West Virginia were wrong as well.”
He’s a shomer like I’m Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He’s Josephus, not Joseph.
More horrifying were the words of House Whip James Clyburn, who suggested—as my friend Seth Mandel says—that families of Holocaust survivors should check their white privilege in the face of Omar’s history as a Somali refugee: “There are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her.” Yes, more personal than the Holocaust. Thanks so much, Third Ranking Official in the House of Representatives.
Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders said that the attacks on Omar were intended to make it impossible to have serious discussion of Israel and the Palestinians. Fellow candidate Kamala Harris suggested that Omar was the real victim here: “I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk….I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism.”
Let’s be clear here. Nobody baited Ilhan Omar into saying Jews were hypnotizing the world, or that Jews were controlling American politics with their money, or that Jews were engaged in a conspiracy to force her to apologize for her words. She said these things herself, on her own, without prompting. They have nothing to do with “policy,” or with her pain as a Somali refugee, or anything else. They have to do with her idea that evil Jews are manipulating reality. This is as anti-Semitic as anti-Semitism gets.
People can play whataboutism games all they like, but not with me, people. I’ve attacked Donald Trump over Charlottesville. I’ve attacked Steve King for his racism. Ilhan Omar is a despicable anti-Semite and rather than trying to find away to separate themselves from her, the grandees of the Democratic Party are actually, or effectively, or implicitly embracing her.
This could be an inflection point in American political history—the moment at which the Democratic Party decided that it had to choose between Jews and intersectionality and chose the latter.
The question is what American Jews are going to do about it.
2b) MELANIE PHILLIPS
How anti-Semitism became unleashed in the West
Those with power can never be good; those without power can never be bad. Those who make money have power over those who don’t make money.
Those who make money are bad; those without money are good. Jews make money. Therefore, Jews are powerful and bad.
Why is anti-Semitism now out of control in the West?
Jew-hatred, alas, is always with us. The most we can expect is that it is kept down by unequivocal social disapproval. What causes it to explode into an uncontrolled epidemic is the weakening of that powerful social stigma.
After the Holocaust, the enormity of that crime was such that anti-Semitism went underground. Any such expressions that did occur were regarded as the province of cranks on the fringes of society who were accordingly shunned. What tells you the Jews are in trouble is when such expressions are regarded by a critical mass of the population with indifference or even approval.
That’s what is happening now in Britain, America and parts of mainland Europe.
Last weekend, participants in a street celebration for Lent in the Belgian city of Aalst paraded giant puppets of grotesquely caricatured Jews standing on gold coins with moneybags at their feet.
One, with a rat in his shoulder, was smoking a cigar and extending a hand as if to collect money. The Dutch Chief Rabbi, Binyomin Jacobs, condemned this display as “shocking, typical, anti-Semitic caricatures from 1939.”
The really shocking thing, however, was that the people who produced this float weren’t refused permission or driven from the carnival as social pariahs. On the contrary: They constructed this obscenity assuming that it would gain the approval and enthusiasm of the citizens of Aalst.
In America, freshman Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted soon after her election that AIPAC bought congressional support with “the Benjamins.” After a reminder that in 2012 she had accused Israel of “hypnotizing the world” and prayed that “Allah awaken the people and help them see [Israel’s] evil doings,” she issued a feeble apology before doubling down on her claim of a Jewish conspiracy.
Yet the Democrat House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, actually appointed Omar to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which gives her a platform from which to bash Israel. Worse still, the Democrats have also failed to act against other Jew and Israel-bashers, such as Omar’s fellow freshman representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, while prominent Democrats have also appeared on platforms with the virulent anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Omar further exacerbated her offence by claiming last week that she and Tlaib were being accused of anti-Semitism only because they were Muslims, and then suggesting that supporters of Israel in Congress were pushing for “allegiance to a foreign country.”
The proper response to such brazen and repeated anti-Semitism would be to remove Omar from Congress.
Yet Pelosi posed with Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, along with a black female novice congresswoman, on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, which Pelosi’s official website was promoting last weekend with the legend: “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and that this one was worth “millions of dreams to women and girls across America.”
Worse still, amid gathering uproar over Omar’s comments, the Democrats couldn’t even bring themselves to vote on a feeble motion condemning anti-Semitism in general, but which didn’t name Omar. They are now reportedly working on a motion to condemn all prejudice. Flinching from condemning the anti-Semites in their own ranks, they have failed to take any action against them at all.
Meanwhile, those supposed standard-bearers of liberal decency, The New York Times and The Washington Post suggested respectively that Omar’s attack on AIPAC raised important questions about the influence wielded by Zionists and Jews, and that if Pelosi unequivocally condemned anti-Semitism, she would provoke questions over America’s policy towards Israel.
All this suggests the Democrats are going the same way as Britain’s Labour Party, which is in an ever-deepening crisis over the virulent anti-Semitism that has erupted among, at minimum, hundreds of its members.
One tweeted “Jews murder people and children” and questioned whether Jewish parliamentarians had “human blood” with “their hearts and brains totally devoid of humanity.” Another ranted about “their double dealing, back stabbing, cheating chilling coldness.” Yet another reportedly wrote that Joan Ryan, the non-Jewish former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, should be “thrown in the ovens.”
The evidence is so appalling that almost 1,000 supporters of the party’s hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn have even signed an open letter apologizing to the Jewish community, saying Labour has been “too slow” to recognize the anti-Semitism in its ranks. Most perpetrators have not been called to account and are still in the party.
So why is there such tolerance for this intolerable bigotry? Anti-Semitism currently comes from four groups: the left, the Islamic world, neo-Nazis and, in the United States, radicalized African-Americans.
Of these, the left are the most important, as they control the levers of our culture. And the left are currently both incubators and facilitators of anti-Semitism.
This is why. First, many of them now subscribe to the Marxist view that life is a constant battle between the powerful and the powerless.
Under this dogma, those with power can never be good; those without power can never be bad. Those who make money have power over those who don’t make money. Those who make money are bad; those without money are good. Jews make money. Therefore, Jews are powerful and bad.
The second reason is the left’s signature motif of grievance culture and “intersectionality,” in which overlapping identity groups play the victim card. This gives such groups a moral free pass on the basis that victims can’t be held responsible for their own misdeeds.
So every group that does not conform to the left-wing definition of power—deemed to be pale, male, heterosexual and Western—claims victim status and that get-out-of-jail-free card. But Jews can’t be victims, under this rubric, because they are widely perceived to run the financial world, the media, the law, the arts, American foreign policy. So they are seen as all-powerful.
Worse, there is a burning resentment against the Jews’ perceived status as the world’s supreme victims. Under the surface bubbles the belief that the Holocaust has enabled the Jews to get a free pass.
From what, exactly? Why, from all the stuff that anti-Semites think about the Jews: that they are rapacious and disloyal, and are out to control the world. In other words, such people think these anti-Semitic libels are actually true, but the Jews’ status as ultimate victims prevents people from voicing them.
And now follows the shocking link to today’s victim culture: that if the Jews have got a free pass for their misdeeds, then so, too, can any group that claims to be victims. The difference, of course, is that while victim groups thus claim impunity for acts of irresponsibility, abuses of power or other bad behavior, the Jews are wholly innocent of the crimes that anti-Semites so falsely lay at their door.
So victim culture is innately anti-Jew. But victim culture lies at the very heart of progressive thinking.
In addition to this, the left supports the Palestine cause, which is based on anti-Semitism; and they pounce on any criticism of either Muslims or the black community as Islamophobia or racism.
In these ways, the profound anti-Semitism in their own ranks is being legitimized by, and is in turn legitimizing and emboldening, both the anti-Semitism spewing from both the Islamic world and from neo-Nazis and their ilk, whose utterances are often indistinguishable from Muslim or left-wing anti-Semites.
That is the shocking and truly appalling reason that anti-Semitism in the West is now out of control.
2c)
Ilhan Communication
Column: Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the collapse of the center-left
Hannah Yoest / Flickr
I have a new hobby. It's collecting the excuses Democrats make for Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democratic congresswoman who has an unhealthy fixation on Jewish influence, Jewish money, and Jewish loyalty. Omar has said that Israel "hypnotized the world," attributing Jews with the power of mind control in the service of manipulating public opinion. She's said the only reason Congress supports Israel is Jewish campaign donations. Most recently, using the classic anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty, she criticized supporters of Israel for having "allegiance to a foreign power." A real treasure, Omar is. A typical freshman congresswoman sees her mission as—forgive the expression—bringing home the bacon for her district. Not Ilhan. Her project is to mainstream anti-Semitic rhetoric within the Democratic Party. Once upon a time, you'd have to visit the invaluable website of the Middle East Media Research Institute to hear such tripe. Now you just need to flip on C-SPAN.
And Democrats are powerless to stop it. They're tripping over themselves, making rationalizations, dodging reality, and trying to clean up this anti-Semitic mess. Omar is new to this, they say. She never intended to come across as anti-Semitic. She can't help it. "She comes from a different culture." She didn't know what she was saying—she's a moron! She's just trying to "start a conversation" about the policies of Israel's government. And why are you singling her out, anyway. "She is living through a lot of pain." She's black, she's a woman, and she's Muslim. You can't condemn her without also condemning white men of privilege. What are you, racist? Islamophobic? Shame on you for picking on this poor lady, who just happens to say that American Jews serve a foreign power by buying off politicians and using the Force to blinker people's minds.
Before such "arguments"—they are really assertions of victimhood to intimidate critics—Nancy Pelosi shudders. She's supposed to be this Iron Lady, returned to power after exile, ruling her caucus with a vise-like grip. But her hands are covered in Palmolive. She's spent the first weeks of Congress doing little more than responding to the various insanities of Omar and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Pelosi will condemn Omar one minute, before appearing with her on the cover of Rolling Stone the next. She's lost a step. She can't hold her caucus together when Republicans call for motions to recommit on the House floor. The policies her candidates ran on in swing districts vanished under the solar-powered glare of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal. We're not talking about covering preexisting conditions, we're pledging to rid the world once and for all of the scourges of air travel and cow flatulence. Pelosi's trigger-happy committee chairmen, firing their subpoena cannons into the air at random, look like goofballs desperate to impeach President Trump.
Whatever control Pelosi had over her majority vanished the second she delayed the resolution condemning Omar. It then became undeniable that AOC & co. is in charge. Identity politics has rendered the Democrats incapable of criticizing anti-Semitism so long as it dons the wardrobe of intersectionality. It's nothing short of incredible that three women from three different cities—New York, Detroit, and Minneapolis—can run roughshod over 233 other House Democrats with a little help from social media, woke 24-year-olds in the digital press, and the Congressional Black Caucus. If you're Ocasio-Cortez right now, you must love life from the comfort of the test kitchen in your luxury D.C. apartment building. What's next for this trio—two of whom are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, two of whom support the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement that seeks Israel's destruction, and all three of whom combine radical anti-American politics with radical self-regard—finding a candidate to primary pro-Israel Democrat Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee on which Omar sits? Challenging Chuck Schumer in the Democratic primary when he's up for reelection in 2022?
The most pressing order of business has got to be the 2020 presidential election. Omar, AOC, and Tlaib don't strike me as Cory Booker supporters. Amy Klobuchar might be too much of a taskmaster for them. Most likely the radicals will line up behind the current frontrunner, Bernie Sanders, who has already surrounded himself with anti-Israel activists. Sanders has said criticism of Omar is just a means to "stifle debate" over Israel's government. He's too smart to believe that. As the most successful Jewish presidential candidate in history, he has a responsibility to draw lines. After all, he's no stranger to the dual loyalty charge—though of course in his case the other country was the Soviet Union.
Bernie Sanders has no interest in stopping Omar. He recognizes that she represents the impending transformation of the Democratic Party into something more closely resembling the British Labour Party. Labourites elected avowed socialist Jeremy Corbyn party leader in September 2015. The years since have been spent in one anti-Semitism scandal after another. Sanders wants desperately to be the American Corbyn. If anti-Semitism is the price of a socialist America, so be it. Remember what Stalin said about the omelette. I'm sure Bernie does. If Democrats can't rebuke Omar swiftly and definitively, if they have trouble competing with Ocasio-Cortez's Instagram cooking show, how will they be able to stop Sanders from carrying his devoted bloc of supporters to plurality victories in the early primaries, and using the divided field to gain momentum just as Trump did?
So far this year the Democrats have floundered in a pit of racism, sexual assault, and anti-Semitism. They've embraced policies akin to infanticide, and announced plans to expropriate wealth, pay reparations for slavery, eliminate private health insurance within two years, and rebuild or retrofit every building in the United States before the world ends from climate change 12 years from now. Throughout it all, they've received a pass from the know-nothing media. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Sanders have all made the claim that Omar has done nothing but criticize the policies of Bibi Netanyahu. That's a bald-faced lie, a falsehood not one of the hundreds upon hundreds of reporters covering the Democratic field has scrutinized. These are the very people who have spent the past three years sermonizing on the importance of truth in politics, and they are doing Bernie's work for him. Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution insists that the Democratic Party continues to be center-left. But the election returns and public opinion data that support her thesis become much less important when the party's biggest stars make a hard-left turn. The Democrats seem ripe for a takeover by Bernie and his pals, or at least a blistering and incendiary battle for control similar to what the GOP experienced last time around.
Blame for Democratic radicalization is most often assigned to Trump—there's little he isn't blamed for—but it really ought to go to President Obama. It was Obama who established "daylight" between the United States and Israel, who blamed opposition to his Iran deal on "money" from "lobbyists," who failed to veto a U.N. resolution singling out the Jewish State and declaring its settlements to have "no legal validity." It was Obama's disastrous second term—when he handed the reins of governance to an administrative state immune from popular sovereignty, when he flouted the Constitution in expanding his administrative amnesty, when he made overtures to hostile governments in Iran and Cuba—that set into motion the decline of the American center-left. Now the Obama bros defend Omar on their podcast and in their newsletter, and bolster the presidential candidacy of Robert Francis "Beto" "Take the Wall Down" O'Rourke. If Obama really wanted to arrest the Democrats' slide into socialism and anti-Semitism, he'd speak out. Do you think Joe Biden will able to stop it? Fat chance. The odds of a Bernie Sanders nomination, a Howard Schultz candidacy, and a Donald Trump victory increase every time Ilhan Omar opens her mouth.
2d)
Thomas Sowell Sounds Warning Bell: US May Give In to Socialism, ‘We May Not Make It’
By Randy DeSoto
Renowned economist Thomas Sowell expressed significant concern that enough Americans might be persuaded by the siren call of socialism to take the country down that route.
The author of “Basic Economics” told Fox Business Network on Tuesday, “I do have a great fear that, in the long run, we may not make it.
“I hate to say that,” Sowell continued. “The one thing that keeps me from being despairing is that we don’t know. There are so many things that we can’t possibly know. And so, we may make it, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
The Hoover Institution senior fellow argued people seem to ignore what is happening in the world.
“So many people today, including in the leading universities, don’t pay much attention to evidence,” Sowell said.
“When you see people starving in Venezuela and fleeing into neighboring countries and realize that this is a country that once had the world’s largest oil reserves, you realize that they’ve ruined a very good prospect with ideas that sounded good but didn’t turn out well.”
Sowell related he used to be a Marxist in his youth.
“Before I was a Marxist, I was an empiricist and I stayed an empiricist. And with the passing years simply as I looked into more and more things I saw the difference between reality and the rhetoric,” he said.
“When you see people starving in Venezuela and fleeing into neighboring countries and realize that this is a country that once had the world’s largest oil reserves, you realize that they’ve ruined a very good prospect with ideas that sounded good but didn’t turn out well.”
Sowell related he used to be a Marxist in his youth.
“Before I was a Marxist, I was an empiricist and I stayed an empiricist. And with the passing years simply as I looked into more and more things I saw the difference between reality and the rhetoric,” he said.
Do you think the majority of Americans will chose socialism in 2020?
“Socialism is a wonderful sounding idea,” Sowell stated. “It’s only as a reality that it’s disastrous.”
In a 1999 interview with Salon.com, the economist explained how a stint working as an intern for the federal government in the early ’60s began to change his mind about government planned economies.
Sowell came to see while studying wage policy in Puerto Rico that the free enterprise system was better at helping people improve their lives than the government.
During his FBN interview, Sowell was asked if he thought self-described Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s popularity would continue to rise.
“It depends,” he responded. “If they go by rhetoric, she’s a rising star.”
Most of the prominent Democratic candidates for president — including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — have signed on to Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal.
The plan envisions massive government intervention in the economy in order to transition the United States to 100 percent renewable energy, including the goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Additionally, the Green New Deal contains new government entitlement programs, including free universal health care and college education, government-guaranteed employment and income, and paid family and medical leave.
A Fox News poll released last month showed 57 percent of respondents had a positive opinion of capitalism, while only 25 percent viewed socialism in a positive light.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found only 25 percent of respondents thought being a socialist a desirable trait for a candidate.
President Donald Trump clearly understands that most of the nation’s citizens do not support socialism.
During his State of the Union address in early February, the president differentiated himself from his would-be Democratic challengers’ vision of government, saying, “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination and control. We are born free and we will stay free.
“Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”
Trump added in a speech to Venezuelan Americans last month, “We know that socialism is not about justice, it’s not about equality, it’s not about lifting up the poor. Socialism is about one thing only: power for the ruling class.”
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
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3)The information is anecdotal, but someone who spends his time advising companies with international ops says that an increasing number of companies are moving operations out of China to Vietnam which has very good logistics infrastructure and also putting back up plants in northern Mexico. Mexico now has a much larger pool of skilled labor as a result of all the US companies who have manufacturing there already. The logistics infrastructure between northern Mexico and Dallas area is excellent now, and it is an easy flight from DFW to Monterrey, so US managers can easily go for a day or two and be back home in the same, or similar time zone. The costs of production and shipping is not much different than China now for many goods. With the new NAFTA, the risks of trade issues are eliminated. The issues of IP theft are nil in Mexico vs China, and the rules on ownership and operation are much better in Mexico. China has a growing problem that a trade deal will mitigate, but not resolve. There is also now a steep drop of 12% in the births in China and the population is beginning a long term decline. Productivity is declining, and real estate investment is much slower as there are tens of thousands of unoccupied apartments. Many economists question how the private and consumer sectors can service the massive debt outstanding as the economy slows. All of this pressure makes it look more and more like a China trade deal will happen. You can hate Trump and tariffs, but it is working. If there is a comprehensive deal, it will change world trade materially, and it will give Trump a huge win for his 2020 campaign.
Russia is nearly totally dependent on oil to sustain its budget. As the world shifts over the next ten years to electric and hydrogen powered cars, and other energy saving technology appears for buildings and other things, and as oil use declines over time, combined with US production from fracking, Russia is in long term serious trouble. In addition, the population in Russia is in decline. Russia is really a small country economically. Its GDP is only $1.8 trillion- the same as just Texas alone, or New York. The Russian economy is unsustainable over the next decade. Given how much they spend on weapons, the civilian economy will decline. Russia only has 147 million people and declining. Less than half the US, and a fraction of China and India. The real risk is that as Russia becomes less and less economically, Putin might start some sort of military confrontation to try to boost his support at home. Now that the Pentagon has stated that Russia is closing the weapons gap due to massive under funding by Obama for 8 years while Putin was rebuilding his military, Putin could decide to attack the Baltics or further into Ukraine. With the dysfunction in the EU, he might feel it is a good time sometime over the next few years, especially if we get another Obama like Dem as president. This is the perfect example of why a superior military is the best way to prevent war. Something the Dems do not seem to understand. I believe Xi realizes it is in China’s best interest to do trade not war with the US. China is in a very different place than Russia.
In ten years, the Mideast will have to make major changes as well. The Saudis already understand it, and that is why they are making such an effort to create new industries. Countries like Iran, Iraq, Oman and the UAE are likely at their peak right now. Forget climate change. The real issue is a slow shift to energy saving and alternative energy over the next ten years. It will completely change geopolitics, and the US is in a commanding position to take advantage. We have huge fossil fuel production capacity now with fracking, and a very active technology effort to create large energy savings without government intervention. We can make the transition better than any other country because we produce more natural gas and cheaper energy than anyone in Europe or China. Private enterprise is doing the job of energy saving on its own, and doing it well, because the payback now makes it worth the investment. The last thing we need is government intervention. Once battery life and functions are materially improved, and costs decline materially as volume ramps up, then over the next decade, major changes will occur in how things are powered in homes, cars and industry. It will take time for a major transition, but it is starting. We are at the beginning of a historic shift in energy production, economic power, and the resulting shift in geopolitics. The US is very well positioned now to be the world leader, provided the left wing does not ever get control in DC. As economies shift, and geopolitics change, it will be essential that the US maintains an overwhelming military power to prevent declining countries like Russia from starting a war to offset their decline. The world will be a volatile and dangerous place as these megatrends occur. It is why a real agreement with China is so critical now. They and we will be the dominant powers over the next decade, with India coming along right behind. The EU will break apart over the next 5-10 years, if not sooner. Brexit is just the first piece. We will know what happens there in the next three weeks. It is a giant game of chicken with no way to predict the outcome. The whole power balance of the world is shifting to Asia and the US.
Trump may be on the verge of doing a historic deal with China which will change everything. Geopolitics and world economics. N Korea will be back to talk further. Brexit will happen, or not, shortly. And the Dems want to talk about who really paid a porn star, seeing tax returns, 80 subpoenas, did Trump really think about a real estate deal in Moscow in July 2016 that never happened, how many times did Trump call the Mueller investigation a witch hunt which we now know it was, and listening to a convicted lair and fraudster. Did I get my priorities mixed up? It is my belief that the voters are starting to realize there is no free lunch, and there is no free Medicare for all, no free tuition, no free anything. There is not enough tax revenue from the rich to even start to pay for these things. Everyone would get tax increases. The tide is starting to shift as the bartender from the Bronx is shown to be an idiot, and her Muslim buddies to be virulent anti- Semites. What is astonishing is the Dems were not able this week to pass a simple resolution against anti-Semitism, and the far left is supporting the Muslim who is blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. The Dems are risking losing the Jewish vote if they screw this up, which they are doing.
The real difference now in politics is, the left wants to tell everyone what to do, and how to do it, and the rest of us want to freely decide for ourselves. That is the essence of US politics we now see. The real issue is the kiddies no longer take any history classes, so they know nothing of how the US and the world got here. They know nothing of the US constitution. They do not know that John Adams defended the British redcoats who shot the tea party participants, because he believed in the right to a competent defense. They know nothing of Joe McCarthy and his hearings. They seem to know nothing of the socialist Soviet Union and its decline vs capitalism, and the end of the cold war. They know nothing about the total failure of socialism over decades. They are ignorant.
A group of people with whom I am involved is working to bring free speech back to campus, and is working to really push this issue to inform kids and their parents of which universities really do honor free speech, and which do not, in the hope that applicants will vote with their checkbooks. Donors need to demand schools allow free speech, and if they do not, then get no donations, and lower numbers of applicants, like happened at Evergreen and Missouri. Money is the only language schools understand. Now Trump is going to issue an executive order stating that unless a school has a true free speech policy, and not a restrictive speech policy, it gets no federal research funding. Money talks. We need all of you to push your Congressmen, senators, and governors to strongly support free speech on campus, and to demand that schools eliminate speech polices that restrict free speech. Stop donating to schools that restrict free speech. We are not taking sides on who can say what. We believe everyone has a right to say whatever they believe openly, and to then defend that in civil debate, and not with intimidation that occurs on so many campuses today, like we just saw at Berkley. The University of Chicago has the gold standard speech policy called the Chicago Principles. Free speech is the rule, and if you don’t like that, go elsewhere. I have attached descriptions of the Harvard lawyer issue that did not open on the last Rant. The whole campus free speech issue is critical to America, as we see these people who are recent graduates, like the bartender form the Bronx and her Muslim buddies, impacting the Democratic party in bad ways.
With SALT, the exodus from high tax Democratic run states is ramping up. CT is dying. Once the home to hedge funds and other wealthy people, you now can’t give away a house in Greenwich. NJ is dead. Manhattan is slowly starting to see the same impact of high taxes, as is NJ and IL. CA is losing tens of thousands to TX, AZ, NV and UT. Home prices in NY are already down. Amazon will accelerate that. It is why Cuomo is so desperate now to get Amazon back. It is no accident that the states losing population are Democratic, union dominated high tax states that have the exact policies the Dems now want to impose federally. Democrats answer to revenue shortfalls is to raise taxes even further, as the governor of NJ just proposed. Something about the definition of an idiot doing the same thing over and over. Do they ever learn. TX and FL are booming. They have low taxes and business friendly regulation, and are run by Republicans. Money walks, and regulation matters. All of these Democratic, union dominated, high tax states are losing population, revenue, and opportunity. There is a massive shift underway in the US which will change the political and demographic profile of states over the next ten years. The socialist agenda has no chance of happening as people realize it is not just the rich who get taxed to pay for all this. Fact, the top 1% pay 40% of all taxes already and the top 10% pay over 70%, and the bottom 50% pay just 3%, with many of those paying zero. The US tax system is already the fairest in the world. The Dem line that the rich need “to pay their fair share” is a total falsehood.
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4)
Here’s How Big MS-13 Really Is
MS-13 gangs, the Salvadorian organized crime organization, is so large and powerful that half of the arrests of gang members on the border are members of that organization. The Washington Examiner reports:
MS-13 members made up more than half of the 808 gang members Border Patrol agents apprehended at international boundaries in fiscal 2018, according to newly released data.Exactly 413 members of Mara Salvatrucha, comprised primarily of Salvadoran citizens, were encountered while illegally crossing into the U.S. at or between border crossings from Oct. 1, 2017, through Sept. 30, 2018.MS-13 apprehensions at the border are up significantly from 228 in 2017 and 253 in 2016, according to Customs and Border Protection data.Five years ago, a total 437 MS-13 affiliates were arrested. The total number of people encountered by CBP was around 690,000 both in 2016 and 2018.
MS-13 is not just a problem at the border, but in all major cities of the country, including the distant New York and Washington. Border security concerns all Americans, and is a federal issue. Will the Federal government take this public safety threat as seriously as they should?
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