Thursday, December 5, 2019

President Trump: Merry Christmas, everybody!

President Trump delivers remarks at the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at The Ellipse in Washington D.C. TUNE IN to watch live!
 Merry Christmas to the entire First Family!

Washington Post Reporter Claims the Media Doesn’t Push Conspiracies, Gets Fact-Checked Hard


The lack of self-awareness within the media-sphere never ceases to amaze me. The same people who’ve spent the better part of three years pushing every inane, orange man bad conspiracy theory will turn around and claim to be the level-headed ones when confronted. RedState may be an ideological blog, but at least we are honest about it. There’s something to be said for that in the face of the larger mainstream media, which are just as partisan but gnash their teeth at anyone who points it out.

Take Dave Weigel, a “reporter” for The Washington Post who was once a favorite among some conservatives on Twitter. I’m blocked by him because I had the audacity to question a false premise he made once, but I digress.

He made this claim yesterday.



Weigel apparently resides in another universe. Keep in mind, his own paper pushed out near hourly conspiratorial rantings about Russia collusion from the moment Trump took office, only moving to Ukrainian trutherism when the well ran dry.

But you see, Weigel and his cohorts are the high-minded ones here. They wouldn’t dare gnaw on interesting conspiracy theories like those dirty right-wingers. Well, except for all this evidence to the contrary.


Want to hear something more hilarious? CNN’s Brian Stelter, who’s literally part of the montage above of the media pushing conspiracy theories retweeted Weigels post. I did say these people lack self-awareness, didn’t I?



Weigel’s outfit is certainly guilty, but Stelter’s network is basically Infowars for liberals. This is a man who kept a running calendar on Melania Trump “disappearing.” He pushed body double conspiracy theories. Stelter also ran with the Walter Reed story, bringing on a doctor to riff about how Trump probably had a heart attack.

Look, do some conservatives sometimes have suspicions about things they don’t have definitive proof of yet? Sure. That’s part of questioning government and there’s nothing wrong with that. But what’s ridiculous is having a mainstream media that will clutch their pearls over someone questioning the FBI but will then dive in conspiracy theories about the First Lady being abducted. These people need to look in the mirror because they are far more guilty of the same things they accuse others of.

Senate holds hearing to address poor conditions of military base housing

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 12:50 PM PT — Thursday, December 5, 2019
The poor condition of military housing continues to be a massive problem in America. The Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing this week to discuss the results of the Government Accountability Office’s recent report, which detailed the collapsing state of base housing.

The committee said the report showed private contractors, who run base housing, let their tenants live in inhospitable conditions and have largely ignored maintenance requests.
Hundreds of service members across the country have reportedly been forced to stay in housing with faulty appliances, rodent infestations and mold. Recent lawsuits indicated that families living in these units have suffered health issues, including memory loss and lifelong illnesses such as lupus.
Senators also said contractors gave misleading reports on the conditions of their housing. One 2017 report said overall resident satisfaction was at 86 percent.
 Some senators have blamed the situation on a delay in government funding. Both sides of the aisle have suggested using the National Defense Authorization Act to allocate funds from the Department Of Defense to help alleviate some of the issues.

The pentagon is also finalizing a draft of a tenant bill of rights, which will mandate that service members are given better living conditions.
Despite this, Accountability Office official Elizabeth Field said new legislation isn’t necessary to make positive changes. She suggested that the solution will come from the proper enforcement of current laws.
“I think the most important thing that this committee can do is to keep the pressure on both the services as well as the partners,” said Field. “A lot of the things that are in, for example, the Bill of Rights are things that could be done right now, they don’t necessarily need to be legislatively mandated.”
Without an immediate fix, many military families will be forced to stay in hotels for extended periods of time as their lawsuits make their way through the courts.
https://www.oann.com/senate-holds-hearing-to-address-poor-conditions-of-military-base-housing/

Secretary Sonny Perdue Discusses Return to Prior Guidelines for SNAP Assistance


The U.S. government limits the amount of time adults aged 18-49, who do not have dependents or a disability, can receive food stamps to three months in a 36-month period, unless they meet certain work requirements.  However, during tough economic times the Dept. of Agriculture has provided waivers to extend the limits.

With a strong economy and low unemployment the Trump administration has now finalized a rule tightening guidelines on when and where states can waive federal limits on how long certain residents can receive benefits. The changes will move more “able-bodied” adults into the workplace, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue explains:


Common sense spending reform is a key part of MAGAnomics. Under the America First economic program the economy expands, tax receipts increase, and the federal government has no need to provide supplemental benefits. The treasury takes in an extra dollar and has no need to spend a dollar, the savings are doubled.

If Diplomats Are Retiring Because of Trump, He Just Won My Vote in 2020



The State Department is self-destructing and Trump is the reason. This according the Julia Ioffe (she’s the woman who was fired from her job at politico over a tweet in which she alleged President Trump had an incestuous relationship with his daughter).
This incident, which has not been previously reported, offers a stark example of the politicization of the foreign service under Trump. It’s also a grim illustration of how the administration—through three years of attempted budget cuts, hiring freezes, and grotesquely personal attacks—has eviscerated the country’s diplomatic corps and put highly sensitive matters of national security in the hands of politically appointed novices. They are people like Gordon Sondland, the Trump donor who became America’s ambassador to the European Union, who is now playing a starring role in the Ukrainian imbroglio that imperils the Trump presidency. It is no accident that impeachment hangs on a matter of diplomacy—and a stand-off between the country’s top foreign policy professionals and the president’s political allies, national security amateurs installed to do Trump’s bidding rather than the country’s.
The “incident” that precipitated the defenestration of this luckless schlub was, allegedly, that he gave a speech to a bunch of Brit college students on the “special relationship” between the US and the UK and managed to work in a fawning anecdote involving the man-god of the left, Barack Obama, and president of Senegal on the subject of homosexual activism. The new ambassador heard of it and sent him packing.

I’d also like to point out that Trump is the president and if diplomats are not doing his bidding, they might being freelancing but they aren’t doing the bidding of the “the country” as “the country” has no independent foreign policy.

She goes into a lengthy whine over how Rex Tillerson took a machete to the sclerotic and overstaffed State Department headquarters and manages to make me see him in much more favorable light.
What’s more, the attrition continues unabated. Career foreign service officers work long hours in difficult conditions, making less money than they would in the private sector. Often, they are driven by their sense of mission—say, promoting American values abroad—but when President Trump began attacking the pillars of American national security and smearing diplomats by name on Twitter, “suddenly,” says one senior foreign service officer who was pushed out on a scheduling technicality, “the equation didn’t make sense anymore.” What had started as a trickle of people leaving at the highest levels—often, people who were close to retirement—has turned into a flood of mid-career and junior officers heading for the door. The departure of top talent, people who had decades’ worth of wisdom that could have passed on to people below them, as well as the exodus of mid-level officers who had years to go before their retirements, will continue to resonate for quite a while, says Nicholas Burns, a retired career foreign service officer who is now at the Harvard Kennedy School. “That gap will show up years later,” he told me.
“What’s striking is both the decapitation of the State Department and the loss of people who should have been the next leadership of the department,” says the foreign service officer who was forced out. “It’s a hollowing out of the foreign service. You can’t replace those mid-level people easily at the numbers at which they’re losing them. That will take a generation to rebuild.”
Previously unpublished data from the AFSA shows that the foreign service is losing people at an alarming clip. In the first two years of Trump’s presidency, nearly half of the State Department’s Career Ministers retired or were pushed out. Another 20 percent of its Minister Counselors, one rank level down, also left.
Sorry, I couldn’t read “Career Ministers” and “Minister Counselors” without imagining a lot of folks wearing elaborate, befeathered hats singing Gilbert and Sullivan tunes.
Ioffe, other than weeping of the lost man-years the left has invested in taking control of the diplomatic corps and the State Department, in general, makes a good point. Soft power, diplomatic power, is cheaper and and often more effective than military or economic coercion:
Meanwhile, China continues staffing up across the world, including in Africa, where the U.S. has an especially high number of unfilled jobs. According to Australia’s Lowy Institute, which issues an annual Diplomacy Index, China just surpassed the United States in diplomatic muscle. The United States, which for decades after World War II had the highest number of embassies and consulates, has been outpaced by a rising adversary.
The index she uses, however doesn’t make her case all that well. The US diplomatic presence abroad is now larger than it was under Obama, the difference is that China has added to its diplomatic presence and now has 1 more embassy and 8 more consulates than does the US. I’m not sure that is a sign of a diplomatic Armageddon.
American diplomatic strength, foreign service veterans say, is further undercut by the high number of political appointees Trump has named to ambassadorships. While many political appointees are quick studies and do a good job of representing American interests abroad—career FSOs point to Kay Bailey Hutchison, Trump’s ambassador to NATO, as an example of excellence—many others are woefully unprepared for the job. Unlike career foreign service officers who are often experts in the country in which they are stationed, political nominees are usually top campaign donors and lack the knowledge of either the country to which they’re posted or the diplomatic protocols on which host countries insist. One foreign service officer described a politically appointed ambassador inquiring about the difference between the NSA and CIA.
And yet Trump has appointed more political allies to ambassadorships than any other postwar president. According to AFSA, 52 percent of America’s ambassadors are political appointees. This is the highest proportion since AFSA started keeping count in 1960. The last time the number of politically appointed ambassadors was this high was Ronald Reagan’s second term, when the proportion of political ambassadors peaked at 37 percent. “We are concerned that the percentage of political appointees is the highest it’s ever been,” says Rubin, the AFSA president. “This really hurts us overseas to carry out the president’s policy and to defend national security interests.”

I’m not sure that is a great selling point. Any president should prefer a responsive ambassador to one who is primarily loyal to State or “the Interagency,” as we’ve heard the professional defense/foreign policy/intelligence establishment referred to.

While you can get crappy political appointees as a ambassadors, getting someone who has wormed their way up through the State Department bureaucracy is hardly a guarantee of intelligence or even loyalty. Far too often, our ambassadors become advocates for the nation in which they are stationed or start confusing international interests with American interests. There is a great story about former Secretary of State George Schultz and how he’d bring ambassadors going off to their first assignment to a country and ask them to “point out their country” on a globe. Invariably, the ambassador would point to the country where he was to be stationed…and Schultz would gently move his finger to the United States.

I’m not convinced–and haven’t been for two or three decades–that the State Department cares about US national interests as much as it cares about institutional prerogatives and ambassadors care about lining up that nice, lucrative post-retirement gig in a think tank. I see no evidence that our diplomatic corps has been terribly effective at anything beyond feathering its own nest. I’m not convinced career ambassadors are more effective that political ones. I definitely believe that for diplomacy to work, the President can’t feel like his diplomats are part of the enemy forces arrayed against him. If gutting the State Department is what it takes to rid it of these hyper-politicized would-be Metternichs, then I say let’s gut it. And if Ioffe thinks she’s doing anything but making an in-kind contribution to Trump-Pence 2020 by writing this, she is sadly mistaken.

Are Facts White Nationalist?

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own 
and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall

Are Facts White Nationalist?


Are Facts White Nationalist?
Source: peterspiro/iStock/Getty Images Plus
I gather it would be proof positive of “white nationalism” to point out that the only group discriminated against in college admissions is white people.

We’ve heard a lot about discrimination against Asians lately, which reminds me: Asians are SO lucky they’re not white! Otherwise, America’s leading hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, would be churning out reports on the worrying rise in Asian Supremacy.

In fact, however, a recent study by Georgetown University (probably White Nationalist), funded by the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation (presumed hate group), found that if colleges admitted students based solely on SAT scores, every single ethnic group would decline, except one: whites.

Yes, even fewer Asian students would be admitted on an SAT-only admission standard. (I presume this is because Asians have better GPAs than white students.)

Obviously, this was NOT the purpose of the study. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to ferret out some small pocket of racism that had somehow passed undenounced. But when the only race being discriminated against turned out to be whites, the study was locked in a lead casket and dropped to the bottom of the sea.

This isn’t a new phenomenon: The New York Times was writing about it 30 years ago. In the late 1980s, whites were about 62 percent of California’s high school graduates, but constituted only 45 percent of those admitted to its universities. As a university official told the Times, “Whites are the only group underrepresented.”

Today, the Times would be tracking down that official to make sure he was fired.

The lie of “white privilege” is treated as an implacable fact throughout our cultural institutions, no matter how manifestly absurd it is. Thus, in the discredited book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh,” authors Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly act as if a half-Puerto Rican girl entering Yale in the 1980s deserves a place in the civil rights pantheon along with the Little Rock Nine.

[If it seems like that is the only New York Times article I’ve read this year, it practically is. Every counterfactual, hateful, lunatic impulse of the left was contained in that single book excerpt, so it’s all you need.]

The authors write: “Yale in the 1980s was in the early stages of integrating more minority students into its historically privileged white male population. The college had admitted its first black student in the 1850s, but by [Debbie] Ramirez’s time there, people of color comprised less than a fifth of the student body."

How many POCs do Pogrebin and Kelly think should have been at Yale? According to the U.S. Census, the country barely reached 20 percent minority by the end of the 1980s. By miraculous coincidence, the ethnic composition of the Yale student body matched the country exactly. It’s almost as if the university was basing admissions on strict ethnic quotas!

It’s said that every generation thinks it invented sex. I say, every generation thinks it invented race and gender consciousness. Pogrebin and Kelly claim that “college campuses of the 1980s had yet to be galvanized by the identity and sexual politics that course through today’s cultural debates.”

Were they both in a coma in the 1980s?

In 1987, the year Ramirez and Kavanaugh graduated from Yale, Jesse Jackson led hundreds of protesters in a march on Stanford University chanting “Hey hey ho ho! Western Civ has got to go!”

The following year, the Times reported on a decades-long assault on the accepted canon of great literature as merely the choices of “elitist” “white men.”

Throughout the period that the authors imagine Yale was wall-to-wall white privilege, our media produced daily “Racism Updates,” leading to Joe Sobran’s parody of a New York Times headline: Earthquake Destroys New York; Women and Minorities Hit Hardest.

If Ramirez had applied to Yale Law School after college, she would have had a five times better chance of being admitted than a white applicant like Kavanaugh -- simply because she had one Puerto Rican parent.

Talk about privilege!

This is based on a massive study of law school admissions in the 1990s conducted by Linda F. Wightman -- again, intended to prove the opposite of what it actually did prove. Her study fell into the hands of Stephan Thernstrom, who analyzed the data, and his results were published in the New York University Law Review in 1998. (WHITE SUPREMACISTS, ALL!)

With the same grades and scores, Puerto Ricans were 5.3 times more likely to be admitted to a top-tier law school like Yale than a white applicant. Every ethnic group except whites got a boost -- African Americans, Asians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and “Other Hispanic.” The more prestigious the law school, the stronger the preferences.

To every color in the rainbow coalition: YOU’RE NOT BLACK! Affirmative action is supposed to be for the descendants of American slaves. See? We owe them something. Nobody else. Without the legacy of slavery, affirmative action is just institutionalized anti-white racism.

By now, race discrimination against whites is de rigueur. Forget being embarrassed, this is race discrimination with attitude. And it’s all justified by the nonsensical phrase: “white privilege.”

If you mention it -- citing such white nationalist front groups as Georgetown University, the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, The New York Times and the New York University Law Review -- you, too, could be a white nationalist.

WATCH: Joe Biden calls retired farmer “fat” at town hall event

Joe Biden has called an Iowa voter and retired farmer “fat” after he questioned the Democratic presidential candidate for his alleged Ukrainian nepotism incident.
During a town hall event, the Iowa voter who identified himself as a retired farmer asked Biden about his son, stating “you sent your son over there to work for a gas company that he had no experience for … your selling access to the president.”
Biden responded that the voter was a “goddamn liar … that’s just not true.” When the voter exclaimed that he saw it on the TV, Biden mocked the voter: “you saw it on the TV? I’m not sedentary, I get up.

Biden then went on to explain why he was running for president, but in the process, made several conceited jabs at the voter, saying “if you wanna judge my shape, let’s do push-ups together, man, let’s run together … look fat, here’s the deal.”
After this exchange, the voter angrily insulted Biden, which drew the exchange to a close.
https://www.thepostmillennial.com/watch-joe-biden-calls-voter-fat-at-town-hall-event/


Nancy drives the Democrats off the Impeachment cliff

Nancy is Thelma & Louising it right off the cliff
and taking the Democrat House Majority with her.


This morning, in a completely slurred and somewhat comical “faux serious” speech, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that the Democrats will be Thelma & Louising it clean off the Impeachment cliff.



Yeah, right. So sadly, in fact, that once she gets to the “proceed with articles of impeachment,” a little smile emerges on her face.

None of this is a surprise.  We’ve known since January 20, 2017 that the Democrats planned to impeach President Trump.

The fact is, even if those wack-a-doodle “Constitutional scholars” and the C-word Shrew the Democrats paraded before the Judiciary Committee yesterday did nothing but sit in stony silence for eight hours, Nancy would’ve made this same announcement.

It’s too late to turn around or even tap the breaks on this suicide mission.

Nancy has no choice but to put the pedal to the metal and drive headlong off the cliff — taking her House majority with her. Because if she doesn’t, the Democrats’ psychotic ResistanceLOL base will descend on Washington and drag Nancy to the gallows.

So damn the election, full steam ahead!

It is rather surprising to me that Democrats from moderate and Trump-won districts aren’t begging to be let out of the car before Nancy drives them off the cliff. Then again, maybe they were just BS-ing voters in 2018 when they claimed to be “moderate.”

Of course, since this was a Nancy Pelosi press conference, I should probably point out that the Judiciary Committee is planning to hold another hearing on Monday. So either Nancy jumped the gun on this press conference or Jerry Nadler didn’t get her memo. Or, Nancy’s BIG ANNOUNCEMENT was just more sputtering, mumbling hot air amounting to nothing.

Or, maybe these Democrats are just a bunch of hapless idiots.

Or, all of the above.

They’d have to be idiots to willingly drive over the cliff this close to the 2020 election.

This shampeachment isn’t hurting the President.

In fact,





Yeah.  Funny how that happens.

And don’t think for a moment that Trump’s rising approval rating and this moronic shampeachment aren’t connected.

They are.

The more Democrats and the media shove impeachment at the public, the worse the numbers get – for them.  And the higher President Trump’s approval goes.

So go ahead, Nancy.  Drive your party off the cliff.  I really don’t think you’re going to like where you end up.


Off the cliff
And speaking of Shampeachment, take a few minutes to check out Kurt Schlichter’s latest column “The Democrats’ Massive Impeachment Fail.”  It’s hilarious.  And not just because he refers to Jerry Nadler as the “legendary legislative Oompa Loompa” and the “human garden gnome.”

Jim Jordan Busts Dem Law Prof Pam Karlan For Misrepresenting Trump’s Words on Ukraine Call



Among the law professors Democrats called to support their impeachment narrative at the House hearing on Wednesday was Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan. 

Karlan had a history of being anti-Trump and wasn’t able to keep up the veneer of being an “objective” witness. 

Of course as we noted earlier, they weren’t there to actually be fact witnesses, they didn’t have any knowledge on the facts of the case to offer. They were only there to do a dog and pony show to offer their opinion to help Democrats convince more Americans to support impeachment. And in that, they failed spectacularly, in large measure because of Karlan’s very apparent bias. 

Karlan misrepresented what President Donald Trump said in the July 25th Ukraine call. She said that he used the royal “do us a favor” to President Volodymyr Zelensky. “When the president said ‘do us a favor,’ he was using the royal we there,” she claimed. “It wasn’t a favor for the United States. He should have said do me a favor. because only kings say us when they mean we.”



How obnoxious and completely inaccurate is that? 

But Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) busted her falsehood big time, explaining that Trump wasn’t referring to himself but specifically to the United States, that Trump actually said the favor was because the U.S. had been through so much in the very next sentence of the call.

One set of rules for them.



Jordan blasted Karlan, that her false characterization ignored the entire context of the conversation upon which she was supposedly rendering an opinion. 

The “do us a favor” was about helping out with the investigation of the meddling against the United States in 2016. It had nothing to do with Biden and nothing to do with a personal favor. And about as far from being a “king” as you can get. 

But it just exposed how crazy the bias was and how empty the whole Democrat case is.

Bill Barr Indicts 8 For Illegally Funneling Foreign Money To Adam Schiff And Multiple Dem Senators



Bill Barr just dropped the hammer on the hypocritical Democrats
and this wound will take years to heal.

Bill Barr just broke up a massive scheme to illegally funnel foreign money into darn near every Democratic political candidate and organization.

The list of the Dem organizations taking this illegal money is astounding – almost every Dem state organization and many super PAC’s including the big one Priorities USA.

All of the leading names in the Democratic party took in this money including Adam Schiff and Ted Lieu, Jon Tester, Cory Booker, Hillary Clinton, etc.

A real rogues gallery if ever there was.

To add insult to Adam Schiff’s injury, one of those charged is George Nader a key witness in the Mueller investigation.

Nader is a convicted child molester. Nader works as a straw man for the middle east sheiks and it is clear now he was to influence certain members of Trump’s team as well as the entire Democratic party establishment.

Earlier today, an indictment was unsealed against the CEO of an online payment processing company, and seven others, charging them with conspiring to make and conceal conduit and excessive campaign contributions, and related offenses, during the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and thereafter.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Assistant Director in Charge Timothy R. Slater of the FBI’s Washington Field Office made the announcement.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, 48, of Los Angeles, California, on Nov. 7, 2019, along with George Nader, Roy Boulos, Rudy Dekermenjian, Mohammad “Moe” Diab, Rani El-Saadi, Stevan Hill and Thayne Whipple. The 53 count indictment charges Khawaja with two counts of conspiracy, three counts of making conduit contributions, three counts of causing excessive contributions, 13 counts of making false statements, 13 counts of causing false records to be filed, and one count of obstruction of a federal grand jury investigation. Nader is charged with conspiring with Khawaja to make conduit campaign contributions, and related offenses. Boulos, Dekermenjian, Diab, El-Saadi, Hill, and Whipple are charged with conspiring with Khawaja and each other to make conduit campaign contributions and conceal excessive contributions, and related offenses.

According to the indictment, from March 2016 through January 2017, Khawaja conspired with Nader to conceal the source of more than $3.5 million in campaign contributions, directed to political committees associated with a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 election. By design, these contributions appeared to be in the names of Khawaja, his wife, and his company. In reality, they allegedly were funded by Nader. Khawaja and Nader allegedly made these contributions in an effort to gain influence with high-level political figures, including the candidate. As Khawaja and Nader arranged these payments, Nader allegedly reported to an official from a foreign government about his efforts to gain influence.

The indictment also alleges that, from March 2016 through 2018, Khawaja conspired with Boulos, Dekermenjian, Diab, El-Saadi, Hill, and Whipple to conceal Khawaja’s excessive contributions, which totaled more than $1.8 million, to various political committees. Among other things, these contributions allegedly allowed Khawaja to host a private fundraiser for a presidential candidate in 2016 and a private fundraising dinner for an elected official in 2018.

The indictment further alleges that, from June 2019 through July 2019, Khawaja obstructed a grand jury investigation of this matter in the District of Columbia. Knowing that a witness had been called to testify before the grand jury, Khawaja allegedly provided that witness with false information about Nader and his connection to Khawaja’s company. Boulos, Diab, Hill, and Whipple also are charged with obstructing the grand jury’s investigation by lying to the FBI.

Currently, Nader is in federal custody on other charges.

You can see a list of all the donations here.



No, Trump Isn’t Threatening Our Constitutional System

by David Harsanyi for National Review






Recently, Tom Nichols, a leading anti-Trump voice (and a former colleague), informed me that “Trump has already changed our constitutional system in ways that will outlast us both. You think it’s worth it. I don’t.

I hear this claim all the time. Trump’s antagonists keep telling me that conservatives, unable to win through democratic institutions, have adopted extreme policies that are corroding the constitutional order. How is still a mystery.

When I point out that religious freedom, one of the issues social conservatives tend to worry about, doesn’t depend on democratic institutions, Nichols tells me: “I remember when conservatives swore to stop liberals from getting things through the courts as fundamentally inimical to our system of government.”

What policies have Trump-era conservatives conspired to push through the courts that are “fundamentally inimical to our system of government,” I wondered?

“Outlawing abortion, changing the meaning of the second amendment to mean Home Bazookas are two that come to mind,” he answered, “but you’re being slippery here: You want the courts, not the legislature or the public, to be the vessel of ideas. The same thing cons once hated about liberals.”

Now, I understand it’s become routine to scare the public about guns, but there’s never been any political desire or effort to make Home Bazookas, or even fully automatic weapons, more easily available. (Though Tom is free to a buy a Bazooka if he pleases.) In the Heller decision, decided long before Trump’s presidency, Justice Scalia defined protected firearms as weapons in “common use.” It’s the left that wants overturn settled law.

But here’s the thing: Even if conservatives were pushing to make Tommy Guns a household item, that still wouldn’t be “fundamentally inimical to our system of government and courts.” The proper place to adjudicate the constitutionality of issues related to firearms — religious liberty, free speech etc. — is in the courts, not the legislature. That’s why the Founders wrote these things down in the Bill of Rights. If you feel that Second Amendment is antiquated, you can always overturn it using the prescribed constitutional remedy.

On the other hand, the legislature ought to be the “vessel of ideas” on abortion. Politicians ought to debate the morality of aborting viable human beings. I don’t know of any originalist who argues that SCOTUS should “outlaw” abortion. I’m relatively certain, in fact, that most believe the court should send the issue back to the states where the “legislature or the public” can determine its fate. Yet Tom and others tell me that the courts, not the states, are the place to have a “donnybrook” over abortion, because too many voters are too dumb to make sound decisions on the matter.

Though it’s no doubt incredibly convenient to treat all your political preferences as “constitutional norms” and all your partisan efforts as patriotic imperatives, these risible arguments do not point to a system in peril.

If you want to impeach Trump, knock yourself out. Impeachment isn’t contingent on the president destabilizing the constitutional order. But I’ve yet to hear a single instance of Trump ignoring courts or legislatures and acting as some kind of dictator. In most ways I can conceive, Trump is a far better bet to protect the Constitution than any Democratic candidate running for the presidency, most of whom openly advocate for overturning the system — from the way we vote to the way we adhere to the Bill of Rights.

Yet most Democrats, and many anti-Trumpers, simply dismiss the existence of these competing ideological concerns. Their position seems to be that deep down — sometimes buried so deep in their consciousness they don’t even understand it themselves — Trump voters are mostly bigots trying to stem the tide of progress so there’s no real need to address these concerns. And anyone who isn’t properly horrified (as they are) over everything the president says or does is either selling their souls out to a tyrant or working as “Russian assets.” These are exceptionally lazy and paranoid contentions, and I honestly don’t believe that most people who peddle them really believe it themselves. And if this turns into debate about the sanctity of the constitutional system, they don’t have much of a case.

Record Gun Sales Show Americans Are...

Record Sales Show Americans

Are Voting For Guns With Their Wallets


Americans are investing their hard-earned dollars to buy the firearms they want before gun-grabbing politicians attempt to regulate away their rights.

There’s no denying it: Americans still value gun ownership.

The total number of firearm background checks conducted on Nov. 29, 2019, was 202,465. That is the second-highest single day for the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) in history, dating back to 1998 when NICS was implemented. It also represents an 11 percent increase over last year’s Black Friday total.

The high-water mark occurred in 2017, with 203,086 checks. This year’s total was just 622 shy of that record. Checks for the entire month of November 2019 totaled 1,342,155, a 2.1 percent increase over November 2018.

This continues this year’s trend of near-record monthly background checks for retail firearms sales. The FBI reports NICS figures monthly, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry’s trade association, adjusts those figures to remove checks not associated with transferring a firearm to provide a more accurate proxy for firearms sales. NSSF-adjusted NICS data has shown an increase year over year for the past three months.

Black Friday also revealed guns are hot items. Americans are voting with their wallets as politicians on the national stage and in some states have become increasingly vocal about restricting Second Amendment rights.

Buying firearms is a significant investment. It’s not a financial decision made on a whim. Americans are investing their hard-earned dollars to buy the firearms they want before gun-grabbing politicians attempt to regulate away their rights.

This isn’t a “bitter clinger” moment. The trend line shows that as gun control politicians continue to assail on gun rights, Americans don’t get wary. They buy guns.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., told CNN in April when he launched his ill-fated presidential campaign that it would be centered on gun control. He was the first to openly propose outright forced confiscation of lawfully possessed firearms under the threat of felony conviction. The following month, 910,910 NICS checks were conducted for retail firearms sales, up from 904,834 in May 2018.

In the June Democratic presidential primary debate, former Vice President Joe Biden wagged his finger on stage, saying, “Our enemy is the gun manufacturers, not the NRA, the gun manufacturers.” Not a single other candidate condemned the remark. Americans noticed, though. June’s NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 924,054 showed a 3.5 percent increase over June 2018. And Swalwell dropped out of the race.

September’s Democratic debate featured former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s headline-grabbing outburst. “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he shouted from the debate stage. The viral moment electrified not just the gun control base, it also galvanized gun owners — who went shopping. September’s NICS figure topped out at 1,011,636, a 10 percent increase compared to September one year earlier.

That came after another banner month in August, with 1,113,535 NICS checks, a 15.2 percent jump compared to August 2018. O’Rourke’s campaign also folded.

Interestingly, guns and gun control barely made the Democratic debate in October. There were just two passing mentions of gun control, but nothing of substance. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota didn’t even mention her “Uncle Dick” and explain how her proposals to ban sales of modern sporting rifles, create a national firearms registry, or criminalize private firearms transfers somehow don’t violate his constitutional rights.

Maybe the candidates are taking campaign advice from Joy Behar of “The View.” “If you’re going to take people’s guns away, wait until you get elected — then take the guns away,” she said. “Don’t tell them ahead of time.”

The fashionably late, anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg made a splash in the Democratic primary race by announcing his candidacy and then telling everyone he wasn’t really going to participate. He’s been in the race and then out, and now he’s back in again.

The former New York City mayor bankrolls anti-gun groups including Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, Students Demand Action, and March for Our Lives. He poured $2.5 million-plus into Virginia to flip it blue for gun control. Old Dominion Democrats quickly thanked him for the donations by pre-filing legislation that would dispossess law-abiding Virginians of their legally purchased modern sporting rifles and other commonly owned semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns.

We’ve seen this sort of ramp-up before — in 2016. That was the year Hillary Clinton ran on a platform of reinstating gun bans, clamping down on Americans’ gun rights, and blaming the law-abiding for criminals’ misdeeds. That was also the year Americans clocked in 27,538,673 firearms retail background checks — the most ever.

Lawrence G. Keane is a senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.

Is The Washington Post, New York Times and CNN Now Declaring Professor Mifsud is *NOT* A Russian Asset?

sourcesundance at CTH

The CIA primarily leaks PR spin to the Washington Post.  The FBI primarily leaks PR spin to the New York Times; and the State Dept. primarily leaks PR spin to CNN.  This narrative distribution model is the one constant in an ever changing universe.

Cue the audio visual…  Obviously the prior Washington Post effort to conflate the Durham investigation with the Horowitz investigation didn’t get the desired result.  As a consequence it only took a few days before the Washington Post was back at it (Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett again) to try obfuscation 2.0; this time with Joseph Mifsud.


For three years the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN have sold the FBI claim that Professor Joseph Mifsud was a Russian operative passing information about Clinton’s emails to George Papadopoulos.

That essential point underpins their defense of the predicate for the CIA and FBI to open the July 31st investigation of the Trump campaign.   Again, for three years Joseph Mifsud was sold as a Russian operative; working on behalf of Russian interests.

That “Mifsud is a Russian asset” claim is the fulcrum of Crossfire Hurricane.   Mifsud has to be a Russian asset, or else…  George Papadopoulos talking to Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer about Mifsud is simply political gossip without merit, value or bearing.

The key point is Mifsud has to be a Russian operative in order for all of the downstream FBI activity to be justified.   If Mifsud ain’t Russian, the CIA and FBI have a problem.

It doesn’t matter if Mifsud is Maltese, Taiwanese, Sicilian, Italian, British, Canadian, Chinese, or a half-breed Congolese migrant from Morocco… for the CIA and FBI justification to stick Professor Joseph Mifsud has to be a Russian operative.

Yet for some reason the PR outlet for the CIA and FBI are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to say Mifsud isn’t an American intelligence asset.   A ridiculous amount of energy spent on a claim that no-one has ever made.  The question remains: Is Joseph Mifsud a Russian Operative?

If no, the CIA and FBI have a world of sh!t on their hands.  Period.

Perhaps that’s the reason why the Washington Post are again trying to create and conflate an issue that doesn’t exist.  Example:
[…]  Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s office contacted U.S. Attorney John Durham, the prosecutor Barr personally tapped to lead a separate review of the 2016 probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, the people said. The inspector general also contacted several U.S. intelligence agencies.
Among Horowitz’s questions: whether a Maltese professor who interacted with a Trump campaign adviser was actually a U.S. intelligence assetdeployed to ensnare the campaign, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the inspector general’s findings have not been made public.
But the intelligence agencies said the professor was not among their assets, the people said. And Durham informed Horowitz’s office that his investigation had not produced any evidence that might contradict the inspector general’s findings on that point. (more)

No sh!t.. !!    Mifsud isn’t “a U.S. intelligence asset”…  and caterpillars never ever wear brown boots….  What’s the point?

No-one has ever said Mifsud was a U.S. intelligence asset.  However, for three years the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN have claimed Mifsud was a Russian intelligence asset.

Are these outlets now denying that point?

Or is this media group trying to distract people from remembering their claim of Mifsud being a Russian asset, by shifting the story to disprove something no-one ever claimed… so they don’t have to admit they told a false story for three years?

The problem the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN has is that we do not forget their claims.   If Mifsud is not a Russian asset then the primary evidence sold by the FBI and their complicit media -to justify the FBI origination- was all a bunch of horse-pucky.

…”Western Intelligence”

ABOVE (L-R) Joseph Mifsud, Boris Johnson and Prasenjit Kumar 

If, as FBI Director James Comey and the FBI investigators have claimed, Joseph Mifsud was a Russian asset… then every intelligence agency in the Western Intelligence Alliance has been compromised…. including our own State Department who invited Mifsud to lecture in Washington DC in January 2017; right before he “disappeared.”