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This is what progressives have dumped on America and we "deplorables" allowed them . Yes we are our own worst enemies.
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Get real! Lt. Gov. Driscoll wants Massachusetts families to house migrants
Biden now Bay State can’t solve crisis so turn to government
By Howie Carr:
Migrants sit in a queue outside of The Roosevelt Hotel that is being used by the city as temporary housing in New York City. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)Migrants sit in a queue outside of The Roosevelt Hotel that is being used by the city as temporary housing in New York City. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Is the state of emergency over yet?
I mean, it’s been a couple of days now since the governor and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts asked their big-hearted Democrat constituents to step up and offer free room and board in their gated communities to the teeming hordes of Third World criminals yearning to live, er, breathe free.
Surely the crisis has passed.
Every trust-funder in the Bay State surely must be stepping up to the plate, because we’ve all seen the yard signs outside their $5 million mansions.
“Hate Has No Home Here.”
Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll may have put it most brilliantly at her press conference:
“If you have an extra room or suite in your home, please consider hosting a family.”
An extra suite! It used to be that some real-estate listings would prominently mention the home’s “in-law suite.”
Now, the Commonwealth wants you to give foreign criminals their own “outlaw suites.”
So the Democrats are asking their compassionate comrades to step up to the plate. Driscoll continued:
“Safe housing and shelter is our most pressing need.”
Funny, that’s how Americans feel too. So how many machete-wielding Salvadorans can we put the lieutenant governor down for? And what about the governor? In the last 20 months or so, she’s bounced from Charlestown to the South End to Cambridge and now to Arlington, where she’s set up light housekeeping with her latest young gal pal.
Surely Gov. Healey has an extra “suite” for some sweethearts from south of the border.
“Become a sponsor family…. Have an additional family be a part of your family.”
Celebrate diversity, like they’ve been doing in, among so many other places, Cheektowaga, NY. The City of New York bussed 500 foreign freee loaders out of the Big Apple to Erie County, where they’ve been squatting in a hotel.
Now an undocumented Democrat is charged with raping a woman in their hotel room, in front of her 3-year-old illegal child.
The alleged rapist is named Jesus Guzman-Bermudez. What did those signs outside the wooden churches used to say – “What would Jesus do?”
Now we know what this particular Jesus would do.
Driscoll appealed to, among others, “faith leaders” and “college presidents.”
Which is an excellent suggestion. It used to be, American college kids would save up to do a year in a foreign country, as “exchange students.” Now, our students can get that unforgettable foreign experience without ever leaving the campus.
Every la-de-da college in the Commonwealth – Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, Amherst, Williams – can have their own homeless encampment.
Harvard Stadium can host its own Little Mogadishu. Alumni Stadium at BC can open a Little Port au Prince.
The prototypes of converting student dorms into Third World flophouses already exist. Just ask Lady Gaga’s 66-year-old father. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His name is Joe Germannota.
He lives near what until last month was a dorm for the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA). Now the students have been evicted and replaced by 500 very diverse members of the non-working classes.
“That’s when the mayhem began,” he told the New York Post. “Hookers are coming and going. In the mornings, you see prostitutes coming out of the building.”
Joe Biden et al. have turned what was a decent, if woke neighborhood, into a Bidenville. The illegals are up all night, driving their unregistered scooters everywhere. Needles litter the gutters. The illegals are harassing young American girls and “verbally abusing” adults.
“They’re guests in our neighborhood,” Lady Gaga’s father said. “And they have basically taken over.”
And now Maura Healey and Kim Driscoll want them to take over your neighborhood next.
If you have an unused “suite” in your manse, will the state allow you to pick who gets to flop in it and turn it into a crackhouse?
Is the state going to set up a website that runs like an online dating service, where you can pick and choose who you want to move in and ruin your property values?
Can the residents of, say, Dover or Weston choose between a MS-13 gangbanger and a member of Los Trinitarios?
How about facial tattoos? Some local swells might prefer to host someone with teardrops under their eyes – supposedly the mark of a Central American bandito – while others might prefer the more traditional spider web on the neck.
Personally, I hope Harvard opens its … gates … to the hordes swarming into Massachusetts. Once I might have felt differently, but then I sold my condo on Mass Ave, just across the street from Pennypacker dorm.
I also used to live on Prescott Street. A lot of days I’d walk through Harvard Yard, past the Widener Library. You could house at least a thousand illegals on the steps alone leading up to the building, or maybe it would be better to set up tents, like Mass & Cass, where all the new Americans could shoot up 24/7, just like in Lady Gaga’s old neighborhood.
Kim Driscoll would like to make one more pitch to all her fellow Beautiful People here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts:
“Everyone has something they can offer.”
And you know what, Kim, everybody already is offering something – our tax dollars.
Maybe as much as five billion dollars a year, just in Massachusetts, so that you Democrat lunatics can virtue signal your compassion for Third World criminals – in our neighborhoods, but never, ever in your own.
(Pre-order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!
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Will Congress Save Itself by Stopping the Iran Deal and Biden's Imperial Presidency?
by Pete Hoekstra
The continuing trend of broad expansions of presidential powers... is eroding the powers of the legislative branch. Constitutionally, the vital decisions of government were not to be decided by the stroke of a pen from the president, with no congressional action from the duly elected representatives of the people. Pictured: The Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
The United States, rather than maintaining its status as a republic, has been backsliding toward a monarchy, according to a 2020 report by then-Cato Institute Constitutional researcher Trevor Burrus. The continuing trend of broad expansions of presidential powers, Burrus notes, is eroding the powers of the legislative branch. Two examples are the Obama Administration's 2016 "Dear Colleague" letter that had the effect of changing the definition of gender for choosing what bathroom one wished, and President Donald Trump's 2018 imposition of steel tariffs in the name of national security, a decision that was upheld in court.
Historically, these types of issues would have been debated vigorously in Congress, then the House and Senate would pass legislation setting the framework on these issues. Constitutionally, the vital decisions of government were not to be decided by the stroke of a pen from the president, with no congressional action from the duly elected representatives of the people.
This trend of expanding presidential authorities has continued under President Joe Biden. Recently, Biden tried to implement a massive student loan forgiveness program, but Congress refreshingly reasserted its authority: The House passed a resolution to block Biden's student loan cancellation effort.
A few weeks later, on June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that Biden's proposed student loan forgiveness program was indeed an overreach of presidential authority. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court determined that under the law, the president did not have the ability to cancel up to $430 billion in student loans. The decision upheld the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. The decision also determined that congressional legislation previously passed into law, and the president had unilaterally determined granted him the authority, did not in fact give the Executive Branch the sweeping authority it had attempted to seize with its loan forgiveness program. Significantly, the Supreme Court decision maintained the checks and balances of power between the congressional and executive branches of government.
By addressing the Iran nuclear deal that is not yet dead, Congress can reclaim some of
its constitutionally mandated powers by insisting that the initial steps taken regarding any Iran deal be reviewed by Congress, then followed up with strong action, as powerfully initiated by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul.
Letters of warning to the Executive Branch are just one instrument Congress has in its toolbox to control the excesses of the Executive Branch, especially when these letters are backed by Congress's "power of the purse." This means that all federal spending must originate in the House, and no federal dollars can be spent until legislation is passed by both bodies of Congress and signed into law by the President.
Regrettably, Congress has allowed its authority to be eroded for decades by the Executive Branch, and has insufficiently guarded its power under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
These examples of controlling or influencing presidential authority -- going to the courts and the power of the purse -- could play out in a significant way in the coming months.
Biden may reportedly be close to finalizing "agreements" with Iran on a prisoner swap in exchange for $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil funds and on its nuclear program to have legitimately as many nuclear weapons as it likes.
Congress should be particularly concerned that the administration might use extraordinary means to bypass and implement a nuclear agreement without congressional review, as is required by federal statute in the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015.
This legislation passed the House with 400 "yes" votes to 25 "no" votes, and passed the Senate with a vote of 98 - 1, a remarkably strong bipartisan response indicating deep support by Congress for exercising its rightful role in treaties and international agreements.
While it is unclear at this time whether there will be a new agreement between the United States and Iran in the near term, it is abundantly clear that Congress wants -- and needs -- to play a role in any future agreement. Given the uncertainty on whether Biden will follow the review steps outlined and required in the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, now is the time for Congress to assert itself fully and forcefully into this process.
Congress should indicate, clearly and immediately, that any perceived violation of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act will be met by the strongest means possible under the constitution: full use of the courts and the power of the purse to defend its position.
A potential Iran deal that Congress has clearly signaled it wants to reject is a perfect opportunity for Congress to reassert some of the authority it has tossed away or lost.
To make sure its voice is heard, Congress needs urgently to begin preparing for the fight that might materialize between the Executive and Legislative branches.
Congress must stop major national security decisions from being unilaterally imposed by an imperial president.
Peter Hoekstra is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. He was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He also served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Second District of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.
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Zito writes scathing report about Democrat mayor led Pittsburgh.
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The fall of a great American city: The societal and political decay that has upended Pittsburgh.
By SELENA ZITO:
Larry Ceisler, a Washington County native who has offices in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, was staying at the Even Hotel and came upon the scene moments after the police arrived.
Ceisler said he had just left dinner down the street when he attempted to enter the hotel and found out quickly why he could not immediately do so. He penned a letter to the editor at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, writing that what he saw happening at the hotel was an extension of a city he saw in decay after spending the week doing business.
“In all my years of living in and visiting Pittsburgh, I have never seen the Downtown look so bad. Empty, dirty, and unsafe. Personally, I experienced an attempted homicide in the lobby of my hotel on Forbes Avenue and was accosted twice walking to my office in Gateway Center,” he wrote.
In an interview with me Thursday, it was clear the respected media pro and prominent Democrat was rattled by the city’s descent, particularly because it was upending its very heart — “A city is only as strong its core.”
A drive throughout the city in mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and in the evening found a city in decay. Homelessness isn’t hidden; it is prevalent. Patches of open-air drug markets are brazenly conducted, the smell of urine and feces is prevalent, and reports of small businesses calling it quits grow in frequency.
Two weeks ago the once acclaimed women’s clothing boutique Peter Lawrence, a hopeful anchor for what city officials hoped would be a women’s shopping district along Wood Street, announced it is closing five years after it opened, with the owner telling the Pittsburgh Post Gazette his workers were “scared to work there a little bit” because of the frequent homelessness and drug trafficking.
The businesses that are not fleeing, yet, are not requiring their workers to come into the city to do their jobs, which has led to a whopping historic high 22.5% vacancy rate, according to a report conducted by real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
At the center of this collapse is Mayor Ed Gainey, who after taking office in January of 2022 has done little to nothing to address the city’s collapse. He is surrounded by people who are so wedded to ideology and the social justice movement that they failed to realize that you actually have to govern to run a city.
Campaign finance filings show the SEIU spent over $350,000 to elect Gainey, more than all of the other contributors to his campaign combined.
Gainey has steadfastly refused to meet with the largest employer in the city, UPMC, unless they agree to allow the SEIU to represent hospital workers, according to a detailed report done by KDKA investigative reporter Andy Sheehan. It is a curious decision to refuse to meet with the largest employer in the city and makes you wonder if he is the mayor of Pittsburgh or the mayor of SEIU.
To ask the question is to answer it. Incidentally, Pittsburgh’s last Republican mayor left office in 1934.
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Unidentified Violent Explosions Hit Iranian Militias’ Missile Depots West of Damascus
By David Israel
Violent explosions were heard at dawn Sunday in Syria’s capital Damascus and its environs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It turned out those explosions took place in missile depots belonging to Iranian-affiliated militias in a mountainous area west of Damascus.
It is not yet known whether the explosions were caused by an Israeli strike with a surface-to-surface missile, or an explosion on the ground. There were material losses, but no information has been received about human losses so far.
Syrian state television reported Sunday around 4:30 AM about the explosions that were heard in the Damascus area. An investigation is underway into the circumstances of the explosion. Following the Syrian reports, the Russian state news agency Sputnik reported that the air defense systems of the Assad army were activated Sunday morning against hostile targets in the Damascus area.
SOHR noted that on August 7, Israel targeted warehouses and military sites belonging to the Iranian militias north of Damascus, which led to the death of 6 people: 4 members of the regime forces and 2 unidentified persons, as well as at least 7 others who were injured. The bombing destroyed weapons and ammunition depots in the targeted locations.
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Did we truly get a special counsel? Only time will tell.
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A Not-So-Special Counsel for Hunter Biden
Merrick Garland belly flops again into the 2024 election campaign.
By The Editorial Board
Merrick Garland’s appointment Friday of David Weiss as a special counsel is best understood as political damage control after the Attorney General’s sweetheart plea deal with Hunter Biden blew up under judicial questioning. The result may be worse for the President’s son but better for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
The Justice Department is telling federal Judge Maryellen Noreika that it wants to withdraw its wrist-slap plea deal, and Hunter’s lawyers have until Monday to reply. The request vindicates critics of the deal, and it poses greater criminal risk for the younger Biden if Judge Noreika grants the Justice Department’s request. He may now end up facing some felony tax charges, as two investigating IRS whistleblowers told Congress they had recommended, or perhaps other charges.
Yet there’s reason to doubt that this special counsel decision will end up reassuring anybody about equal justice. Mr. Weiss is the same prosecutor who cut the discredited plea deal with Hunter Biden. He will now have some additional powers to bring an indictment in other jurisdictions if he wants. But as the U.S. Attorney for Delaware he has been investigating the Hunter case for five years.
The whistleblowers claim Mr. Weiss failed to follow the trail of foreign money that flowed to Hunter. They say he had previously sought special-counsel status from Justice but was denied. The whistleblowers also say Mr. Weiss asked to bring charges in California and Washington, D.C., but was blocked there too.
Mr. Weiss has denied that he previously sought special-counsel status, but on Friday Mr. Garland said Mr. Weiss had asked for it this week and he granted it. What changed to make this the right decision now, other than the embarrassing implosion of the plea deal and the political fallout around it? This is vindication for the whistleblowers in any case.
But is Mr. Weiss now going to pursue the Hunter money trail wherever it leads, including perhaps to other members of the Biden family? Keep in mind he isn’t “independent” in any legal sense and still must report to, and have his prosecutions approved by, Mr. Garland. As a career prosecutor, Mr. Weiss has to know that pursuing the Biden money trail with any vigor would make him a political target of the Democratic-media machine.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Christopher Clark, said Friday that he expects a “fair resolution” of the case whether it is charged in Delaware, where the plea bargain was struck, or in some other jurisdiction. That doesn’t sound as if he thinks Mr. Weiss is going to turn into Eliot Ness.
Special-counsel status is also politically convenient for Messrs. Weiss and Garland because it means both men can use the excuse of an “ongoing investigation” to refuse to answer questions from Congress. Justice is also likely to wall off FBI agents and others who have worked on the case. And forget about members of the Biden family. Congress’s probe may have hit a dead end.
Mr. Weiss is running up against the statute of limitations on tax and gun charges, and he may have to make an early decision on those. But if he wants to, he could draw out other matters all the way through the November 2024 election. Hunter Biden’s many shell companies, President Biden’s role, and other matters may vanish into the special counsel’s secret investigation.
Mr. Weiss will be obliged to file a report to the AG at the end of his investigation, but the AG doesn’t have to release it to the public. Meanwhile, President Biden will have the excuse of the investigation to refuse to answer questions about the Biden family business during the campaign, and the press corps may give him that pass.
This is another example of the way that Mr. Garland, supposedly a man of sound judgment, has belly flopped his department into the 2024 presidential campaign.
He unleashed special counsel Jack Smith to pursue Donald Trump, and Mr. Smith has obliged with two prosecutions. He named a special counsel to investigate Joe Biden’s mishandling of secret documents, but no one expects anything beyond a stern rebuke to come out of that. Now he’s doing the same with the Hunter prosecution to uncertain result.
Mr. Garland claims he has done all this to remove any political taint from the investigations, but this is having the opposite effect. We are now going to have a presidential election debate adjudicated in effect by special counsels. Don’t expect any of this to calm our partisan furies or restore faith in nonpartisan justice.
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When politicians hire advisers they have a 50% chance of being right. They are generally told they must change their tactics 100% from common sense to poll driven biases.
This is what happened to De Santis . When he was being himself and offering rational approaches to problems he was doing fine. However, when he divided himself into appealing to various factions he fractured himself and drifted away from his appealing messaging.
Shakespeare had it right when he wrote: "Polonius' Advice to Laertes:
This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."
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Free Ron DeSantis
What he needs at the Republican primary debate isn’t a reset but a return to his winning message of September 2022.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
The Ron DeSantis campaign continues to reset its reset. At some point it might consider that what it needs isn’t a reset but a reversal—a return to the Ron DeSantis of yore.
Last September Mr. DeSantis stood on a stage near Miami and gave a speech to remember. He spoke enthusiastically about the Florida model, ably connecting its successes to free-market conservative philosophy. The state’s thriving economy was a product of low taxes, modest government, the quick abandonment of unscientific Covid lockdowns. Its surplus was thanks to fiscal prudence and policies that expand the “economic pie.” Widespread school choice produced rising test scores; accountability in public universities kept tuition low. Support for law enforcement equaled public safety.
People were flocking to Florida because “common sense” and “rational” policies provided better roads, trustworthy elections, good jobs. His comments about critical race theory and gender ideology were framed in the broader context of the need to protect parental and employee rights. He used Disney to make a compelling distinction between “free enterprise” and subsidized “corporatism.” He invoked Ronald Reagan’s most terrifying words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”—though the Floridian called to update them to take into account the modern bureaucratic state.
That Ron DeSantis came across as smart and optimistic, bold and absolutely in tune with needs of the “average” families he frequently mentioned. It’s the formula that six weeks later handed the Florida governor a landslide re-election victory, in which he won the rural vote, the suburban vote, even the urban vote, 62 of 67 counties and nearly every demographic. It’s the formula that made him the biggest threat to Donald Trump’s re-nomination.
Where’s that Ron DeSantis today? Smothered under a pile of polling data, focus groups and chattering advisers, which have spoiled his prior winning recipe. The problem isn’t the campaign’s tactics or its spending or where it is deploying resources. The problem is the governor’s adoption of Trump-style grievance politics, which has him chasing a slice of GOP primary voters that won’t have him anyway. For this, he’s ceding the rest of the electorate.
Consider Mr. DeSantis’s recent economic speech, part of the reset. It was a welcome pivot from his nonstop talk of woke culture wars, and buried in it were solid economic proposals—of the type that propelled Florida. Not that you could find them, or hear the Florida success story. Gone were the common-sense explanations, crowded out by Mr. DeSantis’s rants against “central planners,” “the ruling class,” “elites,” “progressive corporations,” “entrenched Washington politicians,” and “China.” It was a speech designed to rile people up, to reduce the election to class and ideological warfare, or as Mr. DeSantis summed it up: “We win. They lose.” This is light years away from the Ron DeSantis who last year winningly made the case that economic growth benefits all.
One irony is that Mr. DeSantis’s Miami speech last year was delivered to the National Conservatism conference, a gathering of intellectuals who style themselves populists. They want the Republican Party to become Bernie Sanders Lite, and they have a decidedly Trumpian bent. Mr. DeSantis didn’t feel the need to cater to them then, yet now can’t seem to evict them from his head. It isn’t that his policy agenda has changed, but his efforts to shoehorn it into a natcon framework has muddled his message, and sent him down rabbit holes and into cul-de-sacs. See his shifting and hedging on Ukraine funding, or his lost time complaining about Disney.
The question is why. A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed Mr. Trump with 44% of the Iowa vote, though 47% of those say they are open to switching candidates. That means less than 25% of Iowa voters are committed to the former president—though committed they most certainly are. National polls show roughly the same dynamic. These are the folks most motivated by demagogic politics—yet the folks least likely to think anyone will ever do it better than Mr. Trump. Mr. DeSantis is wasting his time.
He’s also losing out on the 70% to 75% of the GOP primary electorate that wants to hear a candidate who has ideas, optimism and a plan. Those voters are open to a contender who can showcase a solid record of conservative policy and electoral wins. They don’t need full-on Trump bashing, but won’t mind the occasional glancing zinger (another lost DeSantis strategy). They don’t want a GOP version of Elizabeth Warren, banging on about rich people and “corporate greed.” They might appreciate someone who doesn’t divide the world into “us” and “them,” but who preaches a message of broad American revival. That helps explain the rise of Vivek Ramaswamy.
It’s not too late, even after the resets. Mr. DeSantis has a perfect opportunity for reversal at the Aug. 23 GOP debate—the first time millions of Americans will truly focus on the candidates. Let the guy who shows up be the Florida governor of old. Free Ron DeSantis.
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