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The Priest coughs a few times to get his attention, but the drunk continues to sit there.
Finally, the Priest pounds three times on the wall.
The drunk mumbles, 'Ain't no use knockin, there's no paper on this side either.
Why is this the message radical Democrats, an assortment of fascists and those who believe in chaos send to our nation's youth? Why do liberals, who dominate the faculties of our public educational institutions, want, to destroy statutes that depict our history - both glorious and tragic?
Why do these same professors and teachers no longer want our youth to be challenged by a rigorous education and curriculum?Why do they want to intimidate students who think for themselves and why do they not believe history and civics are worthy courses?
To anyone capable of reasoning it should be obvious. They hate our republic and want to destroy it.
Meanwhile, our youth seem to be buying the message because they are too uneducated to reason.
(See 1 below.)
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Nothing Trump does finds favor with the Obama crowd who chose to pervert our nation's laws, agencies and spy upon its citizens etc.
Trump has other things to do like fight impeachment.
"Susan Rice: Trump Didn’t Extend ‘Common Courtesy’ of Telling Obama About Al-Baghdadi Mission - Read More"
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Another Rant. (See 2 below.)
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Will on Rauch.(See 3 below.)
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Pelosi trapped in Schiff head's garbage. The charade continues. By caving to the radicals and Trump haters in her party she runs the risk of losing her majority and will back seat herself.
The Republicans finally forced her hand and gave her the rope with which she will hang herself. (See 4 below.)
The Republicans finally forced her hand and gave her the rope with which she will hang herself. (See 4 below.)
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1)
'Your Past Is Terrible, And Your Future Is Terrible': What the Left Tells Young Americans
By Dennis Prager
Here are some of the messages the left has been giving America's young people:
-- Your past is terrible, and your future is terrible.
The American past is a story of genocide, slavery, racism, patriarchy and colonialism. You should be ashamed of it.
As regards your future, your very existence is in jeopardy. You may well die at a young age unless society completely shifts from fossil fuels to wind and solar power. In fact, your future is so bleak you should probably not consider getting married and having children.
-- If you are a girl, you should know that American society has contempt for you. You will be paid less than a man for the exact same work and exact same number of hours of work. You will have between a 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 chance of being sexually assaulted if you attend college. There is a glass ceiling that will prevent you from professional success. And professional success, not marriage and family, is what you should concentrate on.
That none of the above is true is irrelevant to the left. What is relevant to the left is that these messages make young women leftists -- because they make them angry (virtually all leftists are angry), sad (there are happy liberals and happy conservatives but very few happy leftists) and lonely (singles are overwhelmingly on the left).
-- If you are a young black, the most important thing for you to know is that this country loathes you -- that racism is "part of our DNA," as President Barack Obama put it -- and that just being black gets you suspended or expelled from school, shot by police, denied the vote whenever possible and disproportionately imprisoned.
Again, almost none of that is true. But a happy black -- let alone a black grateful for being an American -- is much less likely to support the left.
-- If you are a young Latino, know the white majority is so xenophobic that if it could, it would expel you from the country.
-- If you are a white male, you are the recipient of unearned privilege, and you are a racist.
-- Boys and girls, you need to know from as young an age as possible that there is actually no such thing as "boys and girls." That is why your teachers have been told not to refer to you as "boys and girls" but only as "students."
-- Young people, you should know that there is no God. So don't look to God or religion for meaning. They are for the emotionally handicapped and for intellectual lightweights. For meaning, look to social action.
-- Western civilization is nothing for you to be proud of. It is neither culturally nor morally superior to any other civilization or culture. And in many ways, it is worse: It is largely a record of persecution and genocide. That's why you will no longer celebrate Columbus Day but rather Indigenous Peoples Day.
-- Columbus Day will not be the only national holiday we will either erase or minimize in importance. Whereas Americans have always had meaningful holidays to celebrate and enrich their lives, you will have few or none (aside from Halloween). Previous generations found great meaning in Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays. You won't. Their birthdays are no longer celebrated. Throughout American history, July Fourth meant a great deal to nearly all Americans. They celebrated it with patriotic marches, parades and speeches. No longer. Anyway, America wasn't founded in 1776: According to The New York Times, it was founded in 1619, when the first slaves arrived. As for Memorial Day, this once solemn day in which Americans placed flowers at the graves of those who died to preserve our freedoms, is just another day off. And most of the deceased probably died in vain anyway.
-- You have few American heroes
Hey, kids, America's founders, known as heroes to every generation until the present one, were not heroes at all. They were rich white men who believed in patriarchy, the suppression of women and slavery. They were all racists, and some were rapists. In short, as an American, you have few, if any, heroes.
Only when one understands that the left -- the left, not liberalism -- has always and everywhere been a destructive force can one begin to understand what is happening to America. And the left has damaged no group more than America's youth. Leftists speak about "the children" -- but they care about "the children" as much as the communists cared about "the workers."
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is "The Rational Bible," a commentary on the book of Exodus. His film, "No Safe Spaces," comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
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2)The Fed is very likely to cut rates another 25BP, but as important, they have just begun a new, limited form of QE to provide more liquidity to the market. These two steps together will be a boost to the markets. In addition, the NY Fed has materially increased its repo facility to $120 billion to provide the liquidity that the banks and other require to keep that market liquid, and at low rates. All of this will be a real boost to stocks and the economy, and will likely cause stock prices to rise and bond prices to fall. The dollar will likely rise, which is not helping US manufacturers that export.
It appears from comments by the trade negotiators in the past days that there is a very good chance the phase I China deal may happen, and it may be better than many think. Navarro claims there is a section on IP that has enforcement provisions. We will see. There will still be major issues related to forced tech transfer, theft of IP, subsidies to state owned companies, and a range of other critical issues, but maybe this is a good start. Maybe the Chinese read the Moody Analytics models and now believe Trump will be reelected, and that they can do a better deal now than when he is reelected and has nothing to lose by being tougher. We will never know. It is also likely that Brexit is going to happen, we just do not know when. Parliament has sort of approved, but now wants to see details. The EU needs to get this done. If there is a new general election, Johnson will win, and then it gets done. Brexit most likely will be in place by Jan 31. If there is a phase I China deal and it is real, if USMCA passes in November or December, which now looks probable, and if Brexit happens by Jan 31, then the stock market rallies and companies start to reconsider capital investments. The economy in 2020 will grow again as some of the uncertainty goes away. All these could go off track, but I am assuming they happen. If the moves by the Fed happen, and if the trade deals do get approved and implemented, and if phase II looks like it could possibly deal with the serious IP issues, then equities will be where you want to have your money. Interest rates will rise and bonds will decline in value.
The new claims for unemployment are at a near record low as a percentage of working population at 212,000. It is not the number, it is the percentage of working people that matters. That means the labor market remains tight. Good news for holiday shopping. Now that GM has gone back to work, those numbers are likely to get even better as people impacted, but not employees of GM, will go back to work. All good news.
Argentina just elected a Peronist president. Expect that country to become a better version of Venezuela over the next few years. Chile is having violent demonstrations over the poor economy and lack of economic growth. Iraq has had hundreds killed or wounded in violent demonstrations about corruption and lack of economic growth and poor services. Lebanon is having similar protests. Honduras is also having protests over corruption and lack of economic growth. Catalonia is in upheaval over the conviction of their leaders. Then there is Hong Kong which just officially declared it is in recession. Merkel's party is suffering major defeats in local elections. We saw the yellow vests in Paris this year. In short, a lot of major nations are having very serious protests and upheaval due to a lack of economic opportunity, bad fiscal and monetary policies, and a lack of wage growth, combined with low standards of living with little hope of improvement. The EU economy is barely above recession. The world is a mess economically and little seems likely to happen to change this in the short run. If Argentina does deteriorate, as it is very likely to do, then Latin America as a whole suffers. There will be Venezuela and Argentina in a downward spiral, tow of the main countries in Latin America. Brazil may become the best hope for the region as it has a new conservative government which seems to be doing the right things. The EU is hopeless, and Brexit and a potential tariff war with the US are looming as real threats to their economy.
Yet the US thrives, although more slowly due to the slow world economy and the trade war. The new head of the IMF congratulated the US for having the guts to lower taxes which she attributed the improved economy to that. Keep in mind the Dems want to raise taxes back to high levels. Also note that factory production is now only 11% of GDP, down from 16%, and factory labor is only 8.5% of the workforce down from 11% 20 years ago. It is not that factory production is not very important, but it is much less a factor today than it once was, so slower production does not have the same degree of negative impact. It is all about services now. Also as technology and AI get put in place in factories, labor content will decrease at an increasing rate. So factory employment will become even less important. If there is a phase I China deal in two weeks, and if there is a postponement of the added tariffs in December, the economy will pick up a little, and we will not have a recession next year.
Although Amazon reported lower profits and somewhat slower growth, it is mainly that they are gearing up for 1 day delivery, and they are now at such high volumes on the cloud and retail, that it is impossible to continue 40% growth for a long period. 35% is still remarkable for a business that big. Once again Wall St analysts and traders showed how unrealistic and uninformed about business they are. At 40% compounded growth , Amazon would own the world in short order if it continued at that pace. The company also spends now to stay ahead of everyone else, and that costs a lot to set new systems for logistics. Ignore what the street says and look at Amazon as the long term king of online, closely followed by Wal Mart, which is also growing at a rapid rate. The more Amazon and Wal Mart sell and succeed, the lower inflation stays. If tariffs do not get raised in December, which is likely what gets agreed, then that is another step to keep inflation low. Bezos may be one of the smartest guys to ever run a company. Unlike many CEO's, he plays for the long term and so has become the wealthiest man on the planet. Playing for the short term next quarterly profit report, does not set the basis for long term success.
For many months I have said wait until the Durham-Barr report and the IG report on FISA come out. The Dems are already in panic mode. They are already trying to claim this is just Trump retaliation, when it is a very legit investigation of an attempted soft coup by a prosecutor who was hired into DOJ by Holder. The media are already parroting the Dem false claim that this is just retribution by Barr and Trump. It is a sad day for America that the press does not report honestly on what that investigation is really all about. It will be interesting to hear them when the indictments of top Obama officials start, and when Obama and Biden are connected. What did Obama know and when did he know it. Unfortunately it will take several months until a grand jury can issue indictments. Someone is going to talk during this process just as John Dean did in Watergate. My bet is it will be Strozk or Page. When the entire story is out and indictments are issued, it will be the worst political scandal in history, and the Dems up to Obama and Biden will be running for cover. Expect press attacks on the investigation and Durham and Barr to get really intense over the next few weeks. The mainstream media is already on that track because they know this will blow up the Democrats, and the whole impeachment script.
Schiff, who lied until the day the Mueller report was released, is going nowhere with the impeachment investigation as the president of Ukraine said publicly, and other witnesses have said, there was no quid pro quo. Even the NY Times has reported they did not even know the arms were held up until well after the phone call. You can't have a quid pro quo if the other party does not even know about it. The funding was given to Ukraine and no investigation happened, so there was no exchange. It is not unusual for a US president to withhold funds to get another country to do what he wants. It is proper to ask for help in uncovering the real story of what happened in 2016 with the election, which Durham is in the process of doing. Maybe Hunter Biden broke no law, but you have to be 5 years old not to understand why he was asked to be on the board of a criminally owned company he knows nothing at all about, and then paid what now seems to be $68,000 a month. Joe can claim he knew nothing, but then he must never have asked his only son who he was close to, what he was doing for a profession. Do you believe that one? We are seeking the same investigatory help from several other countries. Adam Schiff is conducting a political investigation to try to have media leaks setting the stage to diminish Trump's approval before the election. The House is likely to impeach, but the Senate will not. Regardless of your politics, this is very dangerous as it could be used next time there is a Democrat president. We cannot have a constitutional government of laws with this sort of action. They want to impeach Trump, Kavanaugh and even Justice Thomas. In short, they want to eliminate anyone in high office who does not align with their left wing ideology. They think they are still on campus where they learned they can do this and get support from the college deans. That is the root of what we are seeing, and it is egged on by a heavily biased press that forgot what journalism is supposed to be about-objectively reporting the news.
The Dems know they have no viable candidate. Even my friends who intensely hate Trump with a passion say they cannot vote for Warren. She cannot get the big dollars except from Soros. Butaboy cannot win as a far left gay. Biden is hopeless and Bernie is already out of it. Maybe they go for Klobachar, but she cannot win. Bloomberg is said to not be likely to go ahead. This is why they are pushing so hard on impeachment. They have nobody who can beat Trump. If the China deal gets signed, even Phase I, and if USMCA gets passed, Trump becomes unbeatable because the economy and stock market rally, and the value of 401Ks soars. Voters will have secure jobs, rising wages, savings, and some real money in their homes and 401K. They do not want to risk that. They understand they are far better off than they were four years ago. And now with the military rebuilt, and ISIS mostly defeated after Obama did nothing to deal with them, security is much better. That is a hard story for the Dems to defeat.
Killing Baghdadi was an extraordinary win for the US and the world, but the Dem leadership said nothing for over 6 hours, and then Pelosi issues a disgusting partisan political statement that was not even accurate. She could not even bring herself to congratulate the troops who are beyond extraordinary. At the same moment Trump finished speaking, Schiff was on ABC raging about how Barr and Durham are staging an improper retaliation on behalf of Trump. Does not say much for ABC trying to change the subject. What a hypocrite Schiff is. He is conducting an improper political attack over what was said in a phone call, and Durham is investigating what may be the worst scandal in American political history. Just one more example of how the Dems are going to attack the investigation because they know it is going to change the entire narrative of politics and make the Dems look terrible. We will see far more attacks on Barr and Durham and demands for Barr to recuse over the next two months as the noose closes. The Dems know impeachment is impossible and they just want to attack to try to deflect what is coming from Durham. I predict the indictments will not happen until January after the holidays when everyone can pay attention again. Meantime we get the Horowitz report in two weeks which will suck the air out of Schiff and impeachment. And the Washington Post referred to Baghdadi as an "austere religious scholar." How sick is that. And the press thinks we are supposed to give them any credibility?
One wonders why anyone still lives in CA. Gas prices are far above the rest of the country. Home prices are absurdly high. Homeless continue to flock to LA and San Fran, and are a health hazard. Regulation of everything is stifling. Taxes are the highest and going higher. Traffic is a nightmare. Fires continue to burn down homes. Blackouts will continue for years. Illegal immigrants flock to the state which even allows them to vote in local elections in some towns. In less than ten years whites will be a minority. Newsome blames PSE&G, but reality is they have been forced to use capital to support all sorts of entitlement programs for giving free or cheap power to various low income voters, and to do other things which took cash away from maintenance. Most of the new fires had nothing to do with the power company. They result from the refusal to allow brush clearing. Now the numbers are out, and it is clear the number of people leaving CA is very high and growing. The income producers are leaving, and are being replaced by the income takers. This cannot continue for much longer. Welcome to the progressive CA as an example of what the Democrats of 2020 will bring you.
This is pure speculation. I have a friend who went to undergrad with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. They both contracted pancreatic cancer the same year. They both had the same special operation at about the same time to deal with the cancer. It worked the same for both and gave them temporary remission. Now my friend is in relapse. Obviously I have no information on Ginsberg, but I would suggest she may also have a relapse and be forced to retire in the next few months. That will raise the Garland issue, and it will be more ugly than Kavanaugh if she does retire under Trump.
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There are political moments, and this might be one, in which worse is better. Moments, that is, when a society’s per capita quantity of conspicuous stupidity is so high and public manners are so low that a critical mass of people are jolted into saying “enough, already.” Looking on the bright side, as he wisely is disinclined to do, Jonathan Rauch thinks such a moment might be arriving.
Writing in National Affairs (“Rethinking Polarization”), Rauch, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, postulates a vast emptiness at the core of the politics that has engulfed us: “What if, to some significant extent, the increase in partisanship is not really (BEG ITAL)about(END ITAL) anything?” What if rival tribalisms are largely untethered from ideologies?
This is plausible. The angriest conservatives, or at least people brandishing this label, show no interest in what was, until recently, conservatism’s substance -- limited government, balanced budgets, free trade, curbs in executive power, entitlement reform, collective security. Conservatives’ anger is eerily unrelated to the comprehensive apostasy from what was, three years ago, conservatism’s catechism.
Of course, this catechism had long been (in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s formulation) avowed but not constraining: The conservative party did not allow professed beliefs to influence its behavior. So, on the right, a politics of passions unrelated to policy flooded into the vacuum of convictions unrelated to behavior.
Rauch’s thesis is that increased polarization has little to do with ideas and much to do with hostile feelings -- “negative partisanship” -- about others. “It’s not so much that we like our own party,” Rauch surmises, “as that we detest the other.” The left, like the right, has no plausible, meaning implementable, plan for solving pressing problems, from immigration to $1 trillion deficits at full employment. So, despising President Trump, who makes this easy, is a substitute for a politics of substance.
Group solidarity based on shared detestations is fun, and because fun can trigger dopamine bursts in the brain, it can be addictive. Rauch:
“One of the most important characteristics of this ‘new’ form of polarization is that there is nothing new about it. Tribalism has been the prevalent mode of social organization for all but approximately the most recent 2% of years that humans have lived on the planet.” The decline of civic organizations has people searching for connectedness. “The declining hold of organized religion ... [has] displaced apocalyptic and redemptive impulses into politics, where they don’t belong.” Economic stagnation among the less educated provides opportunities for demagogues on the left (despising a never-popular minority: the wealthy) as well as the right.
Rauch says “humans were designed for life in small, homogeneous groups where change was slow and choices were few.” If he is correct, both left and right, like scorpions in a bottle, are in diametrically opposed but symbiotic reactions against modernity -- against an open society “founded on compromise, toleration, and impersonal rules and institutions.” Hence, “in education, elite universities frequently encourage students to burrow into their tribal identities rather than transcend them. In media, new technologies enable and monetize outrage and extremism.”
All this began before Trump slouched onto the political stage, and because of his electoral success he already has emulators among his despisers. Consider Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s grotesque -- and classically demagogic -- ascription of blame to unpopular others for everyone else’s personal complaints -- which she says government can remedy: “You’ve got things that are broken in your life? I’ll tell you exactly why. It’s because giant corporations, billionaires have seized our government.”
All demagogues begin by rejecting Samuel Johnson’s wisdom: “How small, of all that human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.” Warren is a millimeter away from Trump’s “I alone can fix it,” where the antecedent of the pronoun “it” is: (BEG ITAL)everything(END ITAL).
Rauch believes that although political parties are instruments of partisan mobilization, it is their weakness that feeds today’s polarization by smoothing the way for demagogues. Time was, the parties vetted candidates, “screening out incompetents, sociopaths, and those with no interest in governing.” Now, “the more parties weaken as institutions whose members are united by loyalty to their organization, the more they strengthen as tribes whose members are united by hostility to their enemy.” As loyalty to parties’ organizations and doctrines is supplanted by parties as hostility-based tribes, polarization supplies solidarity in an era of empty politics.
Rauch hopes that America’s current public awfulness might “end up strengthening liberal norms and institutions by scaring us, at last, into defending them.” Isn’t it pretty to think so?
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4)
Pelosi Concedes on Inquiry Vote
A House impeachment resolution is the start of political accountability.
Senator Lindsey Graham tabled a resolution condemning the House of Representatives' impeachment process. A few days later, House Democrats announced a vote on an impeachment inquiry.
Vindication is overrated, but we’ll take it in the case of a House vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry. We’re referring to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s letter Monday to fellow Democrats that she’ll offer a resolution on the House floor this week that will set the terms of its impeachment investigation.
“This resolution establishes the procedure for hearings that are open to the American people, authorizes the disclosure of deposition transcripts, outlines procedures to transfer evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment, and sets forth due process rights for the President and his Counsel,” the Speaker wrote in her letter tacitly conceding that our advice of many weeks was right.
The Speaker’s letter asserts that no such vote is needed but nonetheless says the House will have one. This is what you say when you know your critics have been right but you don’t want to admit it. Thanks also to the Speaker for embarrassing the many media apologists for her previous skip-the-vote stance.
Perhaps Mrs. Pelosi realized that the House process so far has looked like a partisan railroad job. The vote should help the House as it fights in the courts for documents and make it politically more difficult for the White House to resist cooperation.
If her letter is sincere, the House resolution will follow the precedent of the resolutions offered in the impeachments of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. The resolution should end Adam Schiff’s secret Intelligence Committee hearings, make documents and the transcripts of testimony to date available to all House Members and the public, and make all future hearings public, preferably though the Judiciary Committee. The terms should also allow the GOP minority to call or subpoena witnesses.
Impeachment—calling for the removal of an elected President—isn’t run-of-the-mill Congressional oversight. It deserves a process that will be seen as fair to most Americans, even if they disagree on whether President Trump’s alleged behavior is a high crime and misdemeanor. The House remains a long way in our view from making such a credible case, but a floor vote is at least a start at making Members take political responsibility if they vote to oust Mr. Trump.
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