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Useful Idiots on the Right: The Never Trumpers By Richard Moss

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/useful_idiots_on_the_right_nevertrumpers_.html

One could perhaps have excused them their earlier indiscretions of November 2016.  He was, after all, an unknown quantity, an outsider of questionable conservative pedigree.  Indeed, Donald Trump had been a fairly typical New York liberal Democrat for much of his life.  And he had led a less than stellar moral life.  And so the pile-on at the time by National Review and others could perhaps have been forgiven, although not really, when one considered the alternative.  As I had written at the time:

Do we not grow weary of the sanctimonious ones?  The Never Trumpers that endlessly hector and scold, and hold themselves up as paragons of moral virtue? They display their good taste by showing contempt for Trump and his supporters.  Some of them claim they will vote down ballot, skipping the Presidential slot, or vote for Evan what’s his name (McMullin).  Some will write in a candidate or go Libertarian, neither of who will have any chance of winning.  Other pious Republicans will even cast their vote for Hillary.

But how much more compelling is the argument today, three years later, in light of the horrendous behavior of the Left, their naked will-to-power and demonic “rule or ruin” ethos?  And what of Trump, his incredible and unexpected victory in 2016, and then his very favorable performance as president and conservative standard-bearer?  What accounts for the odd and self-immolating behavior of the Never Trump crowd, most if not all of them former card-carrying members of the right?

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Iranian People Vs. The Mullahs “Death to liars!” – “Death to the dictator!” Joseph Klein

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/protests-erupt-again-iran-joseph-klein/

After the Iranian regime first denied and then finally admitted that it had shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane killing all 176 people aboard, protests broke out against the government in Tehran as well as in other Iranian cities. As many as tens of thousands of Iranian people are said to be involved. Protesters are risking their lives denouncing the government, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

“Khamenei is a murderer!” some protesters exclaimed. Others shouted slogans such as “Death to liars!”, “Death to the dictator!”, and “You have no shame!” Whatever national unity there was in the immediate aftermath of the American killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani is now gone. Indeed, protesters were seen ripping up pictures of Soleimani. Even some hardline conservatives in Iran, who generally support the regime, were critical of how the government had handled the downing of the plane.

Riot police, plainclothes security men, and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have been out in full force, trying to keep things under control. Police even arrested the British ambassador to Iran, Rob Macaire, who was attending a vigil for the victims. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described Ambassador Macaire as “an unknown foreigner in an illegal gathering” before confirming the ambassador’s identity and allowing him to be freed. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab denounced the arrest of Ambassador Macaire as “a flagrant violation of international law.”

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Obama vs. Bernie Two socialists. One party. Only one can survive. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/obama-vs-bernie-daniel-greenfield/

In November, Barack Obama paid a call on George Soros. After maintaining a low profile since leaving office, the former chosen one showed up at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington D.C. where the Democracy Alliance was having its annual conclave to decide how to destroy the United States.

After a long Friday afternoon of hearing from assorted minions, members of the Democracy Alliance, who had contributed at least $200,000 to be part of Soros’ real-life SPECTRE alliance, minus the white cat, trooped into the Grand Ballroom for a “fireside chat” before a private dinner with Valerie Jarrett.

And Obama had a simple message for the mandarins in the Mandarin Oriental who had spent fortunes to elect lefties and transform the country. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it,” he told his radical audience. And warned that the Democrat agenda should not be driven by “certain left-leaning Twitter feeds or the activist wing of our party.”

Soros and the Democracy Alliance’s activist wing elected Obama to implement a radical agenda. Now he was warning his old backers that they were in danger of backing agendas that were just too radical.

The outreach was striking because Obama had tried to keep his distance from George Soros. In an interview, Soros had complained about being frozen out by Obama. “He made one phone call thanking me for my support, which was meant to last for five minutes,” the leftist billionaire whined.

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The New Racism More bizarre – and toxic – ideas from the Left about inclusion and diversity. Walter Williams

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/new-racism-walter-williams/

A voter may dislike a black, homosexual or female candidate, but it’s not likely that he would openly admit it. However, diversity-crazed leftist/progressive Democrats have openly condemned the physical characteristics of some of their 2020 presidential candidates. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are leading the polls despite the fact that they have been condemned as old white men. While Pete Buttigieg is homosexual, something that pleases diversity crazies, he is also a white man, young and religious. With Kamala Harris’ departure from the race, the Democratic field has lost one of its persons of color. Another, Senator Cory Booker, stands at 2% in the polls; his days are numbered. That means the only Democratic candidates polling high are those condemned as old white people — two men and one woman, Elizabeth Warren.

LaTosha Brown, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said she was initially eager for Joe Biden to enter the race but now has second thoughts. Brown said: “I’m over white men running the country. I don’t know if him [sic] getting in changes the field. He has name recognition, but his strength is also his weakness.” Former presidential candidate Howard Dean lamented, “If we have two old white guys at the top of this ticket, we will lose.” The newest entry into the presidential sweepstakes, Michael Bloomberg, had to apologize for what some see as his diversity insensitivity, namely that of calling fellow presidential candidate Cory Booker “well-spoken” in a TV interview. The New Jersey senator said he was “taken aback” by what he saw as Bloomberg’s racist “trope.”

Michael Moore gave us his racist warning: “Two-thirds of all white guys voted for Trump. That means anytime you see three white guys walking at you, down the street toward you, two of them voted for Trump. You need to move over to the other sidewalk because these are not good people that are walking toward you. You should be afraid of them.”

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Germany’s Year Of Jihad 2019 is the new norm for Islamic terror in Germany. Stephen Brown

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/germanys-year-islamic-terrorism-stephen-brown/

Last year, like preceding years, was a busy year for Islamic terrorists in Germany.

Germany’s year of terrorism began in March with a lovely Muslim couple — the husband a Tunisian, the wife a German citizen — arrested for planning a chemical attack. The federal prosecutor’s office said the husband, 30-year-old Sief Allah A., had acquired knowledge of how to turn ricin into a weapon and had ordered 3,300 grams of the poison online.

Arrested in Cologne, the married pair also face charges of planning attacks using metal balls and homemade explosives. They also both had sought membership in the Islamic State (IS). They had started planning their attacks in 2018 after Sief Ali had failed twice to cross over Turkey’s border into Syria.

Also in March, German police raided and arrested 11 Salafists in the Hesse and Rhineland-Pfalz areas, two of whom were brothers. According to the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, they “jointly agreed to carry out an Islamic terrorist attack employing a vehicle and firearms in order to kill as many ‘unbelievers’ as possible.”

The men were between 20 and 42 years of age and had contacted weapons dealers, rented a large truck and gathered money for the attack, $22,000 of which was seized in the raid. They had even committed a crime to get money for their evil plan.

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Trump Speaks Directly to the Iranian People It’s impossible to overestimate the power of the president’s words. Michael Ledeen

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/trump-speaks-directly-iranian-people-michael-ledeen/

The Iranian people are demonstrating. You can see the protests on Twitter, and read about the internal ferment online at the Free Iran Herald, which appears on Gateway Pundit.

The current round of demonstrations erupted all over the country after the destruction of the Ukrainian commercial airplane taking off from Tehran. The security forces are reacting with even greater than usual violence, shooting the protesters with live ammunition. At the same time, supporters of deceased General Qassem Soleimani within the Revolutionary Guards are being rounded up in significant numbers, suggesting that there was a power struggle underway within his Quds Force for the succession after the death of the supreme leader—Ali Khamenei—who is now eighty years old.

According to the Free Iran Herald, published in the Gateway Pundit blog,

This news is increasing the speculation that Soleimani, who was known to act on his own initiatives, and who was being seen as a possible future dictator-in-waiting for Tehran, was betrayed to American intelligence by his own colleagues within the regime, who feared that he would deprive them of their power and privileges.

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A Bailout for Criminals New York’s reform is freeing violent offenders who will harm again.

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bailout-for-criminals-11578865016?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Label something “criminal-justice reform” these days and it’s likely to be whisked into law in left-leaning states with little thought to the consequences. Witness the fiasco of New York’s bail reform that took effect Jan. 1 and is already producing ill effects across the state.

The reform that passed last year eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and certain nonviolent felonies. The idea was that people who were no threat to the community were locked up only because they couldn’t afford bail, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo pitched it as a victory for fairness.

It turns out that some of those now going free aren’t as harmless as promised. Strict new timelines for evidence prosecutors must provide defendants means folks who otherwise should be locked up are also going free, especially on drug offenses.

In New York City, a woman was arrested three times in a week after initially assaulting Jews. After the third arrest she was finally detained in a psych ward—but only after the intervention of an embarrassed Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had said when the bail measure passed that he was “thrilled.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Forgotten Failures of the Great Society By Fred Siegel

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/01/27/the-forgotten-failures-of-the-great-society/

Amity Shlaes has written a powerful book. It is the most interesting and substantive account of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon’s “war on poverty” to date — and just in time. In Great Society: A New History, she notes that “just as the 1960s forgot the failures of the 1930s, we today forget the failures of the 1960s.” Shlaes has written 510 pages of argumentation, with detailed description and telling digression that traces the arc from the unbridled hopes of the early Sixties to the enormous administrative expansion of the “second New Deal” to the missteps in implementing it that became all too apparent in the Seventies.

The book opens with the roles played by socialist author Michael Harrington, famed for writing The Other America, a book on Appalachian poverty, and Tom Hayden of Students for a Democratic Society in forming the ethos of the ’60s. And then, by way of largely but not entirely biographical accounts, it shows how figures such as United Automobile Workers president Walter Reuther, Los Angeles mayor and Great Society critic Sam Yorty, Johnson-administration anti-poverty czar Sargent Shriver, policy intellectual Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and economist Arthur Burns shaped the Great Society and its aftermath. The advantage of such an approach is that it doesn’t neglect the “great men” of the time, while adding depth. Shlaes tells us that LBJ and Nixon conducted themselves as if they were “domestic commanders in chief.” But the book also incorporates the broader social and economic currents that centralized American life.

Walter Reuther was of a then-familiar type that many today find difficult to understand. As the militant leader of the United Automobile Workers, he wanted Scandinavian-style socialism for America, but he was also an ardent anti-Communist. In the early 1960s he hoped for a youth movement to help his cause. To that end he sponsored a conclave at the UAW’s retreat in Port Huron, Mich. It was there, with Michael Harrington in attendance, that Tom Hayden wrote the Port Huron Statement. Inspired by the direct action of the young black integrationists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who courageously insisted on being served at segregated southern lunch counters, the Port Huron Statement made the case for what it called “participatory democracy.” But Hayden’s aim, as he acknowledged, was to advance radicalism by “call[ing] socialism liberalism.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats No Longer Dismiss Bernie Sanders’s Odds By John Fund

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/democrats-no-longer-dismiss-bernie-sanderss-odds/

If he won Iowa, the party might unite behind an Anybody But Bernie candidate.

In 2016, insurgent candidates roiled the nomination process of both major parties. Donald Trump, running as a populist, won 44 percent of the primary vote against a divided field and won the GOP nomination. Bernie Sanders, running as an unabashed socialist, also won 44 percent in the Democratic race against Hillary Clinton, despite her success in using the Democratic National Committee to kneecap Sanders. But because Sanders faced only one opponent, he lost.

This year, Sanders is back, and the old saw that one way to win your party’s nomination is to have run for it before may apply. (See Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton).

In 2019, Sanders raised an eye-popping $100 million. The grassroots he cultivated in Iowa and New Hampshire four years ago have vaulted him into first place in both states in the RealClearPolitics average of all polls.

Sanders also has the backing of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and is the only candidate offering a full-throated defense of Medicare for All, now that Elizabeth Warren has admitted she wouldn’t push for it during the first two years of her presidency. For a 78-year-old who suffered a heart attack last fall and has always insisted on serving in Congress as an independent, he displays an astounding resilience that rivals that of Trump.

Sanders supporters insist that the only way to beat someone like Trump is with someone who shares with him his authenticity, his disdain for protocol, and, like him, offers a radical break from past policies. Only that will energize a disillusioned, nonvoting army of left-wingers that mirrors the blue-collar voters in the Midwest who turned out for Trump and delivered him the presidency.

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Taiwan Rejects Communist China as Hong Kong Watches By Bryan Preston

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/taiwan-rejects-communist-china-as-hong-kong-watches/

Taiwan’s voters went to the polls Saturday and sent a strong message to Beijing. The island also known as the Republic of China since 1945 re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen in a massive landslide. Tsai earned nearly 58% of the vote with more than 99% of precincts reporting, leaving no hanging doubts or chads in play. This was a clear victory that will ripple across Asia. Tsai’s victory hasn’t stopped the mainland’s state-run media of casting it as “evil” to undermine it.

President Tsai campaigned on taking a hard line against the mainland and in favor of independence. Today she wasted no time in sending another strong signal that Taiwan is not interested in adopting the “one country, two systems” Beijing insists on. Tsai met with the head of the American Institute in Taiwan today.

Fresh from a landslide re-election victory, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met Sunday with the de facto U.S. ambassador to Taipei.

William Brent Christensen, a U.S. diplomat who is director of the American Institute in Taiwan, congratulated Tsai on her victory in Saturday’s election, and she thanked him for his support.

The meeting came as China warned that countries should stick with recognizing communist-ruled Beijing as the rightful government of “one China,” including Taiwan.

This follows a strong statement of support from the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, observers from Hong Kong were on hand to witness Taiwan’s vote.

At a raucous election rally for Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, Hong Konger Karen Leung surveyed the huge crowd of excited flag-waving voters as a rap song blasted over the loudspeakers and sighed: “We want to have elections like this.”