http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/
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If The Democrat Party cannot respond by defending itself do you honestly think they have the guts to defend our nation against, an external threat?
This is the same party that loves and is quick to destroy reputations but is too cowardly to defend itself. (See 1, 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d below.)
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Is goose stepping Nadler off on a contrived goose chase? (See 2 below.)
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Additional op eds:
Democrats Are Losing to Trump on the Issues Daniel McCarthy, The Spectator
DNC Blacklisting of Fox News Is a Spectacular MistakeThomas Lifson, Am. Thinker
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Where I am:
Franklin replied: " we have a republic if we can keep it" and Madison said: " the political parties would become our worst enemies." Are we there? Is our republic finished? The trends are un-favorable.
In my opinion, the Democrat Party is showing it's true colors because it has always been edgy, always sought change and much of the change it sought and legislated was counterproductive.
The Republican Party comes in for its share of blame as well. It sought status quo and embraced many of the Democrat policies either affirmatively or by looking away, ie. deficit spending.
When it came to segregation the Democrats resisted and the Republicans favored de-segregation. That is an established fact.
In the matter of economics, I believe when America staturized the common man rule it became easier for the employer to disconnect from the employee. The rise of the disproportionate strength of unions was in response to the advantage employers had gained over the worker and employers were anxious to cut the retirement dependency chord. Then came the desire to increase profits by seeking offshore sources and this resulted in the decline in middle class employment, increased wages and overall standard of living.
Democrats continued to manipulate various disconnects which developed like wealth disparity, and magnified the political differences between both parties. They sought Supreme Court Justices who broke with traditions of interpreting versus seeking to legislate outcomes from the bench.
Obama sought to transform America in a direction that was the equivalent of throwing salt into yet unhealed wounds and the Democrats used Trump's election as a foil to deny both his legitimacy as well as a platform to obstruct. Obama used guilt, colonialism and Christian sensitivity towards Muslim refugees seeking immigration to widen the divide.
The Democrats have now become a radicalized party and their leadership has buckled, ignoring anti-Semitic attacks and accusations against constitutional safeguards.
Obviously, I have not covered the entire waterfront but the seeds for the destruction of our republic have been planted, are being watered and Democrats are aggressively manipulating our vulnerabilities as relate to education, fiscal deficits, border sanctity, racial discord and a variety of other unresolved social fissures.
Trump is seeking to rectify many of the negative policies he believes we allowed to occur and is doing so through trade policy alterations, which are naturally meeting resistance, intellectual property theft, aggressive expansion of military power by adversaries and is getting push back from so called allies as well as the mass media, Democrats and the Hollywood Hypocrites.
Democrats are undertaking a variety of measures to insure his defeat and will stop at nothing. As mentioned previously, Pelosi has caved and lost control of any agenda she had in mind.
I submit our republic is in danger of imploding.
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Dick
1)
Speaker Ocasio-Cortez
House leaders seem to be afraid of their radical backbenchers.
This week’s amazing House revolt involves a leadership attempt to discipline Ms. Omar for her latest “vile, anti-Semitic slur,” as Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel described the comments she made at a public forum last week. Referring to the U.S.-Israel relationship, Ms. Omar said, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
After New York Democrat Nita Lowey also criticized her remark, Ms. Omar doubled down, writing “I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee.” Accusing American Jews of putting allegiance to the Jewish state above loyalty to America is an anti-Semitic classic.
This came a mere two weeks after House leaders leaned on Ms. Omar, who is Muslim, to apologize for earlier remarks that indulged in anti-Semitic tropes. So this time House leaders went further and decided to draft a resolution denouncing anti-Semitism that was supposed to get a vote on the House floor on Wednesday. The draft language didn’t mention Ms. Omar by name, but it did at least condemn smears such as “accusing Jews of dual loyalty.”
But then came the backlash from the progressive left. “We need to have equity in our outrage,” said Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley. “Islamaphobia needs to be included in this. We need to denounce all forms of hate.”
Kate Bachelder Odell, Mary O'Grady, Allysia Finley and Dan Henninger discuss their hits and misses of the week which include the Trump administration’s tax reforms, Wisconsin governor Tony Evers and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Image: Getty
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said she supported Ms. Omar and alerted her 3.43 million Twitter followers: “One of the things that is hurtful about the extent to which reprimand is sought of Ilhan is that no one seeks this level of reprimand when members make statements about Latinx + other communities (during the shutdown, a GOP member yelled ‘Go back to Puerto Rico!’ on the floor).”
House leaders promptly backed down. They postponed the floor vote on their resolution and on Wednesday were rewriting it to denounce not merely anti-Semitism but “hatred” of all kinds including “Islamaphobia.”
An exercise that began with trying to distance Democrats from an anti-Semitic slur has evolved into a display of political cowardice that equates smears against Jews that have a horrific historical meaning with generalized “hate.” Thus does a specific hatred get consumed, and trivialized, in today’s Democratic identity politics. And Ms. Omar can keep her Foreign Affairs Committee seat.
The most important question after this moral fiasco may be who’s really the Speaker of the House—Ms. Pelosi, or the young radicals led by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez?
1a)
Roll Call Smears Jewish Groups That Called for Omar’s Removal From House Committee
By Adam Kredo
Rep. Ilhan Omar / Getty Images
Roll Call is facing backlash after one of its reporters attempted to discredit a recent effort by a group of leading Jewish and pro-Israel organizations to see Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee following a series of anti-Semitic statements that drew widespread condemnation.
Roll Call writer Emily Kopp, a former intern for Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif), came under intense scrutiny on Wednesday for what observers widely described as lazy and factually inaccurate reporting on a recent call by Jewish groups to see Omar unseated from the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee.
Kopp, in a report headlined "Among the ‘Jewish groups' Trump cites, one with neo-Nazi ties," attempted to paint several of the groups included on the letter as "anti-Muslim hate groups," a claim that was debunked hours after she published her report.
Kopp relied on research from the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, claiming that two of the groups—ACT for America and the Center for Security Policy—engage in hateful bigotry. Kopp also attempted to tie the Center for Security Policy to neo-Nazis, a spurious claim that has been debunked time and time again.
The letter, which was exclusively reported by the Washington Free Beacon earlier in the week, drew the attention of President Donald Trump, who endorsed the call for Omar to be removed by Democratic leadership from the Foreign Affairs Committee, which works on the U.S.-Israel alliance and funding for the Jewish state's joint defense priorities.
Kopp did not cite the Free Beacon‘s original reporting on the letter.
In what is now being dubbed "the Roll Call smear campaign," the publication is facing an avalanche of criticism for relying solely on the SPLC's debunked research in its bid to criticize Trump and defend Omar under the guise of neutral journalism.
The letter demanding Omar's removal from the Committee for her series of anti-Semitic smears was spearheaded by the Endowment for Middle East Truth, or EMET, a longtime pro-Israel advocacy group, and was signed by 12 organizations.
Sarah Stern, EMET's founder, penned a lengthy response to the still brewing controversy and provided it to the Free Beacon:
The Roll Call Smear Campaign
Rather than go high, Roll Call decided to go low. When reporting about the letter we authored to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chairman Eliot Engel discussing Representative Ilhan Omar's highly anti-Semitic comments, tweets and associations with a group tied to known terrorists, they made vicious, ad hominem attacks at some of our esteemed colleagues who are among the 12 signatories of the letter.
We find it revealing that Roll Call never reported on the substance of our letter, which is that Rep. Omar exposed her real sentiments when she delivered a fundraising speech two weeks ago before Islamic Relief USA, a "charity" that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and Israel. International banks Credit Suisse, UBS and HSBC have refused to do any banking with Islamic Relief because of fears of ties to terrorist financing.
Instead of focusing on the substance of Rep. Omar's poor decision to speak before the group, whose leadership also has openly called for the murder of Jews, Roll Call's first article on the subject is a smear against two of the 12 signatories of this letter.
We have known both the founders of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, and ACT for America, Brigitte Gabrielle, for years. They are led by distinguished individuals who have fought against hate in all its forms, including anti-Semitism. We personally know they are compassionate, loving individuals. That is why it was important to have them join our group letter.
It is ironic that rather than respond to a real and obvious hatred, the anti-Semitism and Judeophobia that Ilhan Omar so obviously has, the author of this article tried to manufacture some fictitious bias of two such incredibly wonderful human beings.
The Roll Call article is not good journalism. If it were, they would have reported on the substance of the letter, a poor attempt to smear good people as a substitute to discussing the substance at hand: Rep. Omar's vile anti-Semitic attacks against the Jewish people and her decision to align herself with groups which openly have ties to terrorism.
That is where the debate is.
UPDATE 6:08 p.m.: Following publication of this article, EMET wrote a letter to Roll Call editor Ed Timms demanding a retraction and criticizing the outlet for publishing poor journalism. The letter also called Kopp's former work on behalf of Democrats a clear conflict of interest.
"It is also a very apparent conflict of interest that the author of this article, Emily Kopp, had once worked for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is one of the people our letter had been addressed to," wrote EMET founder Stern.
Full letter:
Dear Mr. Timms,
Rather than go high, Roll Call decided to go low. When reporting about the letter we authored to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chairman Eliot Engel discussing Representative Ilhan Omar’s highly anti-Semitic comments, tweets and associations with a group tied to known terrorists, the author of this story, made vicious, ad hominem attacks at some of our esteemed colleagues who are among the 12 signatories of the letter.
We find it revealing that Roll Call never reported on the substance of our letter, which is that Rep. Omar exposed her real sentiments when she delivered a fundraising speech two weeks ago before Islamic Relief USA, a "charity" that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and Israel. International banks Credit Suisse, UBS and HSBC have refused to do any banking with Islamic Relief because of fears of ties to terrorist financing.
Instead of focusing on the substance of Rep. Omar's poor decision to speak before the group, whose leadership also have openly called for the murder of Jews, Roll Call's first article on the subject is a smear against two of the 12 signatories of this letter.
We have known both the founders of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, and ACT for America, Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese American of Arab descent, for years. They are led by distinguished individuals who have fought against hate in all its forms, including anti-Semitism. We personally know they are compassionate, loving individuals. That is why it was important to have them join our group letter.
I am also attaching a letter that Brigitte Gabriel ,just sent to me when she had found out that someone who had associated himself with her organization, of well over one million individuals, was, in fact, a white supremacist, and how she immediately demanded that this individual leave any association with her organization, at once.
The article relies on The Southern Poverty Law Center, an outfit which has had to pay a hefty price for its continuous smear campaigns, against individuals, including a $3.375 million judgement for the defamation of Majaad Nawaaz, a former Muslim extremist turned whistle-blower.
It is also a very apparent conflict of interest that the author of this article, Emily Kopp, had once worked for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is one of the people our letter had been addressed to.
It is ironic that rather than respond to a real and obvious hatred, the anti-Semitism and Judeophobia that Ilhan Omar so obviously has, the author of this article tried to manufacture some fictitious bias of two such incredibly wonderful human beings.
The Roll Call article is not good journalism. If it were, they would have reported on the substance of the letter. It is a poor attempt to smear good people as a substitute to discussing the substance at hand: Rep. Omar's vile anti-Semitic attacks against the Jewish people and her decision to align herself with groups which openly have ties to terrorism.
And because of this, we demand that you immediately issue a retraction.
1b)
Democrats back off anti-Semitism resolution amid dissent over Omar remarks
Rift opens in party as lawmakers decry measure as being rushed by Pelosi, back freshman representative under fire over comments on ‘allegiance’ to Israel
WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Wednesday postponed indefinitely a vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism after a contentious meeting in which some new members confronted leaders over their push to rebuke Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
In the party’s weekly closed meeting, Democrats protested the way Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaders tried to rush out a resolution this week responding to Omar’s latest remark about Israel. Omar last week suggested the Jewish state’s supporters are pushing lawmakers to pledge “allegiance” to a foreign country.
That forced Democratic leaders to respond, but their draft of the resolution condemning anti-Semitism angered Omar’s fellow freshmen and their liberal supporters. Pelosi had already said the measure would be broadened to decry anti-Muslim bias. But that didn’t quiet the ranks, and the party’s first major dissension broke out in an uncomfortable confrontation, according to three officials familiar with the episode, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters.
The upheaval prompted Democrats, who regularly celebrate their diversity, to push off a decision about the resolution.
Number two House Democrat Steny Hoyer said the language of the resolution was still being worked out, and that a vote date had yet to be set.
The resolution as it stands condemns the “dual loyalty” trope Omar invoked, but also condemns tropes that Democrats have accused leading Republicans of peddling, including the slander that rich Jews buy political favors.
A Washington Examiner reporter said on Twitter that the House Foreign Relations Committee will draft the revised resolution. Omar is a member of the committee. It’s head, New York Rep. Eliot Engel, has publicly rebuked Omar, but said he will not call for her to leave the influential panel.
“It is shameful that House Democrats won’t take a stronger stand against Anti-Semitism in their conference,” US President Donald Trump tweeted. “Anti-Semitism has fueled atrocities throughout history and it’s inconceivable they will not act to condemn it!”
Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut complained that Pelosi left Democrats out of the loop on the resolution’s details.
“My comments were about the process we are using when concerns arise,” Hayes said in a statement. “As a member of Congress I should not get important information from cable news.”
Two people with knowledge of the situation said Hayes was engaged in conversation with a colleague when Pelosi asked her a question. The congresswoman did not respond because she did not hear the speaker address her, these people say. Most lawmakers had left the room at the time.
Then Pelosi said, “If you’re not going to listen to me, I’m done talking,” according to a person in the room.
A senior Democratic aide said Pelosi had earlier acknowledged the issues and said the resolution was not final. One person in the room quoted the speaker as saying the leaders had tried to increase communication so that members stay united and have “a clearer understanding of what our purpose is as a caucus, how we proceed.”
Some Democrats hugged Omar, one of two Muslim women in Congress, during the meeting, according to other officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. She’s also received powerful boosts from fellow Democratic freshmen Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
Opposition to the resolution, which did not mention Omar by name, came from the most junior ranks of Democrats to the most senior and spanned some of the party’s caucuses.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is running for president on the Democratic ticket, spoke out against the resolution.
“What I fear is going on in the House now is an effort to target Congresswoman Omar as a way of stifling that debate,” Sanders, who is Jewish, said Wednesday in a statement. “That’s wrong.”
Also weighing in was Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., another presidential candidate.
“Like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk,” Harris said in a statement. She added: “You can both support Israel and be loyal to our country.”
Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif., said she spoke up in a leadership meeting earlier this week about the original draft being “reactionary” to Omar’s most recent comment. The dissension over the issue, Hill said, “has been building for a while.”
House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, D-Ky., suggested Omar and her comments about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, will loom over any such measure, however it’s worded.
“Whatever we do it’s going to look like we’re responding specifically to her and to AIPAC and so I’m leaning against,” he said.
Many have pointed to the fact that Omar was the target of an anti-Muslim poster that appeared last week at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, with her picture over an image of the World Trade Center’s burning towers.
“We’re very concerned about that and we want that paid attention to,” said Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif. “Many members of the D caucus are concerned and concerned over the general rise in hatred that we have seen. And so we want to make clear that we make a stand against all forms of bigotry and hatred.”
There was also dissent among the Democrats on whether a resolution condemning anti-Semitism was even necessary, given that the House voted on a similar measure already.
“I’m not sure we need to continue to do this every single time,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The upheaval was a striking change from the heady first days of Democratic control, which installed Pelosi as speaker for the second time. Omar is among the most prominent freshman, as evidenced by her appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone’s March issue with Pelosi, Hayes and Ocasio-Cortez. The resolution has created friction among Pelosi and all three of the women in the photo.
Omar, one of two Muslim women in Congress, has declined to comment, but a series of remarks about US-Israel policy have forced the Democrats to respond. Word of the resolution came out hours after the Anti-Defamation League published an open letter urging Pelosi to push such a measure.
Pelosi, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and other Democrats have condemned Omar’s remarks about divided loyalties. She did not apologize.
The Democratic dissension was noted by Republicans with not just a little glee.
“It looks like the Democrats are doing a nice job of chewing themselves up,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.
JTA, AFP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
1c)
Clear Majority of Americans Continue to Hold Favorable View of Israel, New Gallup Poll Shows
An Israeli flag and an American one are projected on a part of the walls surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City. Reuters / Ronen Zvulun.
A comfortable majority of Americans continue to sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians in 2019, according to the annual World Affairs survey published on Wednesday by top polling firm Gallup.
“Americans’ overall views toward Israel and the Palestinian Authority have changed little in the past year, with roughly seven in 10 viewing Israel very or mostly favorably and two in 10 viewing the Palestinian Authority in the same terms,” a Gallup analysis of the poll stated.
The latest poll “finds a slight softening of Americans’ partiality toward Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly among moderate/liberal Republicans and, to a lesser extent, liberal Democrats,” the analysis said.
Conducted during the first ten days of February — nearly a month before the present row in Washington, DC, over antisemitic comments made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in relation to US support for Israel — the poll also showed that Americans remain largely unmoved by the Palestinian case against the Jewish state. “Twenty-one percent view the Palestinian Authority favorably, identical to last year and similar to the finding most years since 2010,” the Gallup analysis said.
Gallup’s figures for 2019 reveal that 69 percent of Americans have a “mostly” or “very” favorable view of Israel; in stark contrast, 70 percent hold a “mostly” or “very” unfavorable view of the Palestinian Authority. Fifty percent of respondents said that they would support the creation of an independent Palestinian state “on the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” with 39 percent opposing it, while a majority — 55 percent — did not regard the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as a “critical threat” to US security.
In political terms, support for Israel remains highest among “conservative” Republicans, followed by “moderate/liberal” Republicans, “moderate/conservative” Democrats and lastly, “liberal” Democrats.
“Nearly as many liberal Democrats now sympathize more with the Palestinians (38 percent) as with the Israelis (41 percent), with the rest favoring neither side or unsure,” the analysis said, before emphasizing that “all groups, including liberal Democrats, have maintained a largely favorable view of Israel since 2001.”
1d) The Left's Hate-Crime Hoax Machine
Hoax hate crimes belong to a larger category of ideologically motivated hoaxes, meant to sway public opinion and impact policy and legislation. There are broadly three types of ideological hoaxes.
First, one finds journalistic hoaxes. Among these are the hoax of the Duke lacrosse-players and the UVA rape case. Such cases are fabricated and sensationalized in order to support the ideological claim of "rape culture on campuses."
Second, there are academic hoaxes, which are "studies" based on fabricated data and cherry-picked samples designed to provide an ideological outcome. For example, there was a study that showed that gays die much earlier because people do not support calling two men in a romantic relationship a marriage.
The third type is the fake hate crime. They are meant to prove the existence of violent bigots who attack the heroic victims, such as Jussie Smollett, Mathew Shepherd, and Tyler Clementi. These function as morality tales, with a victim hero and a religious martyr who proves the existence of endemic hate and violence. At the center exists the brave innocent who suffered for all our sins. These, by eliciting pity, prove victimhood and the harms of homophobia, racism, and sexism.
Taken together these hoaxes represent a large-scale, coordinated campaign of misinformation and cultural lies.
Many academic hoaxes are clustered in sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) studies. These studies sway public opinion and serve as "hard evidence" or "real science" and are used to change policy and create legislation.
Exposed hoaxes do not often get much media attention. As Austin Ruse notes:
Fake science is more dangerous than fake news because it takes more than a 24-hour news cycle to debunk fake science. Fake science can take years to dislodge. Even then, it remains part of the "common knowledge." For one paper on homosexuality, it has taken five years for it to be retracted. The paper, cited by more than 100 other scholarly papers, has been withdrawn from Social Science and Medicine because its results could not be replicated. What's more, they found a serious error in coding of the data rendering the initial finding unproven.
Often, hoaxes work because the postmodern doctrine of intersectionality demands that the general public play a pick-up game of "find the martyr." Like all workable belief systems, or long cons, it works because there is just enough truth. For the postmodern social-justice position, truth does not matter. Intersectionality stands as complete moral relativism. Intersectional doctrine repeats the ideological proposition that there are two positions: victim and oppressor. In reality, there's a third position used to accrue power: the oppressor masquerading as victim. Basically, those occupying this third position publicly attack people at their psychological core by asserting:
1. Nothing you believe (have been told or taught or know or is common sense) is true. Brain scrub.
2. Everything you or your kind have achieved was taken by violence and exploitation from the rightful owners. Not agreeing means you are a bigoted hater. Bad person.
3. You are complicit in all historical crimes and reap the benefits from them. Guilty person.
4. There can be no dissent. We are the voice of the new God, and the sky is falling. Heed us now. Saved person complies.
5. We are right and will not trifle with your Western logic, ethics, or facts; literature; history. They are all the tools of exploitation and oppression that you have used to destroy us and others. In fact, we will not even be seen speaking to you. Isolated person.
Hoaxes are not isolated from one another and do not take place in a vacuum. Regarding the Jussie Smollett incident, the media declared, "This is America 2019." Both Cory Booker and Kamala Harris called the incident "a modern day lynching." The LGBT news and cultural magazine The Advocate explained Harris's and Booker's legislative intentions: "The federal law they hope to amend, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, was signed into law by President Obama in 2009."
The Advocate further noted: "Booker spoke on the floor about the importance of the anti-lynching legislation and referenced actor Jussie Smollett, hours after the actor was on Good Morning America. The openly gay star was the victim of an alleged hate crime last month where a rope was put around his neck by two white men, according to local police reports."
Cory Booker himself tweeted twice: "The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I'm glad he's safe." Before the vote, he tweeted: "To those in Congress who don't feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime — I urge you to pay attention."
This bill added sexual and gender identity (the enforced claim that some women have a penis) to groups under hate crime law that incur enhanced mandatory penalties
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Intersectionality is easy — just pose as, say, speaking as an XYZ. We recognize it immediately when Ellen Page vents her oppressed spleen on national TV. On The Late Show with Colbert, Page shrieked, "Kids are going to be abused, and they're going to kill themselves and people are going to be beaten on the street."
Really?
Over 300 politically motivated hate crime hoaxes predate "Trump's America," that anti-Narnia, Mad-Max violent landscape where church fish fries serve as covers for cross-burnings and where brutal homophobic attacks are mapped out.
If you thought Ellen Page sounded unhinged, imagine the LGBT activist who set fire to her own home and burned two of her German Shepherds alive, along with three cats, because she was upset that the Pride Parade did not bring out enough hate groups to protest.
The fabrications need to be reinforced and enshrined in the public imagination and consciousness. Truth no longer matters. In an exhaustive study of Mathew Shepard, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard, journalist Stephen Jimenez shows that Shepard socialized with the killers and that all three parties to Shepard's murder were involved in, among other things, the sale of crystal meth.
Recently, amid much publicity and fanfare, Shepard was reinterred at the National Cathedral, a new heroic martyr. This widespread deception by trusted institutions and legislation erodes people's basic civil rights, reduces religion to "hate doctrine," and quells free speech.
This activism is about ideological conformity or isolation. Identity is authoritarian, a new form of totalitarianism masquerading as "civil rights." It has gutted the academy and turned the press in the public's eye into a pack of hucksters who can't be trusted.
Intersectionality rates victim against oppressor as a template for good versus evil.
I have little doubt that if the police had found some poor homeless white men, Smollett would have identified them as his attackers. This is a man who campaigned for Kamala Harris and who knows Cory Booker. Smollett is a 36-year-old wealthy man, a celebrity. If he had been given the chance, he would have sent innocent people to prison — and who would have done so with support of the media and elected representatives.
This is America 2019.
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2)Pigs on Two Legs Turn on Each Other
March 3rd, 2019
Tennis great Martina Navratilova until recently had long been coronated as a social justice trailblazer. She was one of the first marquee celebrity athletes to come out as gay, and then to advocate lesbian issues in and out of sports. But suddenly the icon seems out of step with her progressive legend status.
Navratilova had the temerity to suggest that one’s sex is biologically determined. In other words, transgenderism, even with the imprimatur of the social and biological sciences, cannot trump our innate genetic codes.
A frustrated Navratilova was editorializing mostly in the context of men “transitioning” to women, while in many cases still enjoying innate muscular and size advantages over females in same-sex sporting events. As a result, she is being demonized unfairly as an intersectional traitor (“transphobic”) and thus increasingly disinvited from a number of events by what is known as the LGBTQ community.
In other words, her intersectional femaleness and gayness are revoked by improper ideology.
Barack Obama, once the progressive “god” who was acclaimed to have the power to cool the planet and halt the rising of the seas, had the recent audacity to suggest, quite understandably, that young black teens need not ostentatiously show their wealth with gaudy chains, or highlight their sexuality with a cadre of “twerking” girls. Worse, the now multi-million-dollar-mansion-
Now even the divine Obama is having his ankles bitten on social media as a counterrevolutionary, despite his prior denunciations of white bitter clingers, “the 1 percent,” and greedy capitalists who delusionally believed they had built their own businesses.
The new generation has forgotten that the now graying Obama once had the audacity to invite Kendrick Lamar into the White House. He also celebrated as his official portrait painter Kehinde Wiley.
Remember the former was lauded for his album-cover showing a dead white judge, with eyes x-ed out, whose demise was being celebrating by toasting rappers on the White House lawn, while the latter for a while had a cachet of taking a couple of Old Master paintings of decapitations and redoing them with black decapitators and white decapitated—e.g., “It’s sort of a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing.” Was that not revolutionary enough?
No, no—that was yesterday. Today the revolution has passed over the once-edgy Obama (“bring a gun to a knife fight”). Now to the Left he sounds more like a crabby Bill Cosby ranting about falling-down trousers.
At 86, six-term U.S. senator and lifelong liberal Dianne Feinstein should have no reason in her twilight years to remind progressives that she has been a front-line social justice warrior, most recently as an inquisitor during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.
After all, to bring down Kavanaugh, she had her staff improperly leak the accusations and name of the once anonymous accuser Christine Blasey Ford, while doing her best to present as fact 35-year old uncorroborated rumors and allegations.
Omnis effusus labor as the poet Virgil once wrote. “All labor for nothing”—given that Feinstein recently grew snarly with some school-age kids who were being used as props by a radical green group called the Sunrise Movement to embarrass her into accepting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s unhinged “Green New Deal.”
Feinstein, in apparently white-privilege establishment style, barked at her multiethnic visitors that she would not be bullied (“I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that.”) She added that she had just won a sixth term by 1 million votes, and had had enough of their whining. In other words, she was a dinosaur expecting deference due to her age, her office, and her progressive bona fides.
Instead, she was roundly denounced as emblematic of last-generation Democrats heading for the tar pits. As the 2020 race nears, Feinstein only confirmed that identity politics will be the new Democratic gospel, and that being a fabulously rich, elderly, and in-the-way politico makes one a rather low rung on the new intersectional ladder pole of progressive authenticity.
Senator Bernie Sanders, 77, also does not get it that the socialist moment of 2016 is now ancient history. Its ephemeral icons have largely been devoured by 2019 identity politics revolutionaries.
Yet in classic Marxist style, and in a fashion reminiscent of the ossified bolshies of the 1917 Russian revolution, the “democratic-socialist” from Vermont maintains that class will always trump all other racial, gender, and age claims. Or rather it will unite these disparate identities in a Manichean fight of good poor people against bad rich people—as if blacks, gays, Latinos, women, Asian, Native people, the transgendered and a host of other “sections” are like Cossacks, Ukrainians, Crimeans, and Georgians who inevitably could be pounded into the harmonious Soviet proletariat.
That Bernie wants to take things away from rich people and redistribute them to the poor in his view should negate the now bothersome fact that, in the new leftist lexicon, he is otherwise just an old white, and rather affluent career politician, still barking at the class-struggle moon.
Recently leftists have castigated Bernie for daring to run again in 2020, a gambit that would certainly drain support from a new generation of more deserving identity politics progressives. Or as National Review editor Rich Lowry recently put it, “In the language of the modern left, the straight, disgendered Sanders is burdened by his utter lack of intersectionality.”
Recently Ocasio-Cortez attacked former Democratic vice-presidential candidate and long-time Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman for not supporting her Green New Deal. Ocasio-Cortez simply Trotskyized Lieberman as someone of so little importance that the new Democrat 29-year-old had never even heard of him: “New party, who dis?”
Ocasio-Cortez, who now calls herself the “boss” in the matter of the porcine revolutionary leader “Napoleon” in Orwell’s Animal Farm, now claims that she is taking names and is making a “list” of counterrevolutionary “moderate” progressives (think of the ostracized “Snowball” of Animal Farm) who do unmentionable things like voting not to allow illegal aliens to purchase guns.
Liberals at warp speed became progressives who have now become radicals who are becoming before our eyes socialists—as ending capitalism, the internal combustion engine, and so-called white privilege become, for now, the new revolutionary agendas. The old party elite might be able to pay lip service to the first two tenets, in talking loudly of more redistribution and passing cap-and-trade, but the third canon of race unfortunately is not apparently, like gender, a social construct, but innate, unchanging and genetic—and historically an igniter of tribal strife every time it is elevated to being essential rather than incidental to identity.
The rosy-cheeked and blond Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) learned that. At least she early on grasped the nature of the revolution under way when she fabricated a Native-American identity and milked it for career advantage, but then crashed and burned with desperate pleas about high-cheekbones, plagiarized native cooking recipes, and suicidal DNA tests that unfortunately showed she was less an Indian than most of her 330 million fellow Americans. Under the new revolutionary rules, wealthy white female Warren is not all that much more intersectional than the harder left socialist Bernie Sanders.
Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, the Clintons and other senior Democratic grandees forged late-life careers on loudly talking about this and that “community”, and dropping “race and gender” into almost every sentence. But as in every historical leftwing stampede into extremism, and eventual nihilism, yesterday’s radical is today’s reactionary. Certainly, they never quite realized they themselves would eventually lose their exemption and be rendered white-privileged incorrect. Compared to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton may not be deemed a deplorable, but compared to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez she may be an elderly white and privileged irredeemable.
Not building most of the border wall, leads to not building any of the border wall, to Beto’s (whose Warrenization into a Latino is losing adherents) suggestion to tear down what wall is already up. Obama’s 39 percent top tax rate now looks passe compared to Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 percent, which is now right-wing compared to new calls for 90 percent rate, which in turn is not much compared to an additional wealth tax on private, already taxed capital. And on it goes.
For progressives, that revolutionary purity now is defined by race is an ironic return to the values of the Old South, which sought to calibrate privilege by skin color. The reprehensible Confederate idea of the whitest has now morphed into the least white being the most authentically grieved and thus deserving of the greatest reparatory privileges—the constant, of course, remains that superficial appearance based on race trumps all individual characteristics.
What started with affirmative action became “diversity,” which in turn during the Obama Administration was redefined not as minority groups with either historical grievances against the majority or accepted claims of ongoing racial victimization. Instead authentically diverse were all who claimed to be racially or linguistically distinguishable from the white majority.
Then diversity as a revolutionary moment was further expanded by including gays and woke women, which essentially took the initial African-American population whose plight was the aim of affirmative action and expanded it to in theory a majority of about 200 million Americans who were either non-white or women or both.
Now the revolution cannot figure out its own hierarchy of authentic grievance groups. So it has agreed on a loose “intersectionality,” in which over a dozen and often overlapping victim cadres agree that each degree of non-white-maleness adds authenticity and become a force multiplier of left-wing radicalism.
Among leftists, Kamala Harris, as black and female, trumps Cory Booker who is just black, who trumps Elizabeth Warren who is exposed as just female, who trumps Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders who are reverse threefers as white, male, and heterosexual. None of the progressive revolutionaries ever stopped to ponder whether much of the country targeted by the new racialism might not like it and mirror image this sad descent into tribalism.
In such a revolutionary scramble to be the most diverse and hard left, the logical trajectory ends up with a race to transcend the physical limits of victimhood. Think of the devolution of French anti-monarchists to republicans to Girondists to Jacobins—and on to Napoleon. Or remember how the anti-Czarists aristocrats were overwhelmed by Mensheviks who were crushed by the Bolsheviks as Lenin radicalized everything prior and in the end his Soviet became Stalinized.
So now appears Jussie Smollett.
He is not just left-wing, but a rabid hater of Donald Trump. And he is not just black, but gay as well. And he is not just a victim, but a hyper-victim of white bullies. And not just bullies, but bullies with MAGA hats. And he is not just a victim of white red-hats, but a victim of ski-masked racists. And not just of their blows, but of (frozen?) bleach.
And not just of bleach and blows, but of lynch rope as well. And they did not just hit, but smeared and slurred. And not just MAGA sloganeering, but anti-gay, anti-black—and perhaps, worst of all, in our performance society, they slandered his “Empire” TV show!
Progressives are like a worn rope being pulling apart at both ends. At one end, there is an effort to radicalize prior radicalization, and on the other end victimhood is heading toward parody.
And what is left is the emblematic Jussie Smollett—the logical result of the revolution, who alone has staked out the only authentic and ultimate revolutionary stance: nihilism—a state where no one can possibly rival Jussie’s revolutionary grievance credentials because they cannot exist in a reality based world.
Or put another way, when no one is revolutionary enough, the revolutionary auditors end up ridiculous in their zeal for power and celebrity—sort of like Orwell’s radical pigs finally prancing about on two legs and feasting on silver, sort of like Jussie Smollett leveraging the ultimate state of victimhood for a better deal on “Empire.”
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2)
Nadler’s ‘Obstruction’ Quest
The examples he cites as crimes are legal presidential actions.
By The Editorial Board
Well, we’re off on the march to impeachment, as we predicted last year even as Democrats said it wasn’t on their minds. With Chairman Jerry Nadler’s subpoena swarm from House Judiciary this week, and his assertions that President Trump obstructed justice, the articles of impeachment are apparently awaiting only the collection of the readily available details to fill in the blanks.
“Do you think the President obstructed justice?” asked ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
“Yes, I do,” replied Mr. Nadler. “It’s very clear that the President obstructed justice. It’s very clear—1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a witch hunt, he tried to—he fired—he tried to protect [Michael] Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired [FBI director Jim] Comey in order to stop the Russian thing, as he told NBC News.”
Credit Mr. Nadler for candor that Democrats didn’t display when they campaigned last year. Then they talked only about holding the President “accountable.” Now they claim they already have enough to impeach Mr. Trump, though as Mr. Nadler admitted Sunday, “you have to persuade enough of the opposition party voters, Trump voters . . . that you’re not just trying to steal the last—to reverse the results of the last election.”
The case against Mr. Nadler’s obstruction theory has been made in these pages by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and appellate lawyer and our contributor David Rivkin. Attorney General William Barr also made the case in his 2018 memo to the Justice Department when he was still in private life.
A President can obstruct justice while in office but only if he is committing a per se illegal offense. That is, if he suborns perjury or destroys evidence, or commits “any act deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence,” as Mr. Barr put it. Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton committed such acts in Mr. Barr’s view, but Mr. Trump has not as far as we can see.
On the other hand, a President cannot obstruct justice when he takes actions that are consistent with his Article II powers under the Constitution. That includes in particular firing inferior executive-branch officers such as Mr. Comey. Such acts may be politically stupid, but they aren’t obstruction.
Mr. Trump’s motive in firing Mr. Comey doesn’t matter. If a President commits a legal act but can be accused of a crime because of his motive, then any presidential action can be called into question based on an accusation of motive. This would open a Pandora’s box that would leave any political officer vulnerable to charges of obstruction. That would include an Attorney General who declined to prosecute someone whom Members of Congress wanted him to indict. Congress could essentially rule the executive branch.
Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Comey about Mr. Flynn also aren’t obstruction for similar reasons. The President is the chief law enforcement officer and can advise on cases as he wants. Such meddling is unwise and politically dumb, but it isn’t obstruction.
“On their face, the President’s comments to Comey about Flynn seem unobjectionable,” Mr. Barr wrote in his 2018 memo.
“He made the accurate observation that Flynn’s call with the Russian Ambassador was perfectly proper and made the point that Flynn, who had now suffered public humiliation from losing his job, was a good man. Based on this, he expressed the ‘hope’ that Comey could ‘see his way clear’ to let the matter go. The formulation that Comey ‘see his way clear,’ explicitly leaves the decision to Comey. Most normal subordinates would not have found these comments obstructive.”
In any event, nothing was obstructed. Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate what Mr. Nadler calls “the Russian thing,” and Mr. Flynn was prosecuted. As for Mr. Nadler’s attempt to criminalize Mr. Trump’s charges of a “witch hunt,” try selling that to the public.
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Perhaps Mr. Mueller will report new facts that are damning. But it’s notable that Mr. Nadler and other Democrats are now saying they will expand their probes beyond Mr. Mueller’s ambit. They seem to be expecting a factual and political disappointment.
Democrats seem hell-bent on impeaching Mr. Trump, and most of the media will be cheering them on. We’ll wait to see all of the facts they assemble. But the legal bar should be high, the crimes real, and the Constitution protected if they want to “steal,” er, reverse, an election.
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