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“Sol Sanders”

How many cars are there on Mars? by Victor Sharpe

The title of this essay may seem odd at first, but read on and all will be revealed.

When President elect, Barack Obama, chose members of his new administration back in 2008, he selected physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner to lead a White House council on energy and climate. Ms. Browner had headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration. Mr. Chu was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a leading advocate of reducing greenhouse gases.

Carol Browner was described as a “neon-green radical” in an early article by Michelle Malkin titled, “The Trouble with Obama’s Energy Czar.” With both Chu and Browner at Obama’s energy helm, the United States was destined to be in a world of trouble, and that too became clear when Obama later uttered the dread words: “I have come to fundamentally transform America.”

Obama’s notorious Cap in Trade policy thankfully died in the Republican controlled Congress. His baleful eight long year term of “fundamentally transforming America” finally ended but, if President Trump loses the general election in 2020 and the Left come to power, a similar and perilous version of a Cap in Trade policy is almost certain to rise from its erstwhile deathbed. It will inevitably saddle the middle class with higher taxes and cause painful job losses to Americans. 

The Global Warming Children’s Crusade Exploiting callow youth as props in a trendy and sinister farce. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/global-warming-childrens-crusade-bruce-thornton/

In 1212, thousands of children and teens in France and England set off for the Holy Land to convert Muslims to Christianity. Led by shepherds, these mostly poor and dispossessed young people headed for the Mediterranean, believing it would miraculously part and allow them to cross on dry land. Instead, the children, promised free passage by a couple of unscrupulous merchants, were sold into slavery or died in a shipwreck.

Last week’s Climate Strike by schoolchildren to “save the planet” is a grotesque parody of this legend of faith and courage, yet no more likely to accomplish anything useful. The strike was the first act of this week’s UN’s “Global Climate Week,” along with blocking traffic in DC (with the help of Antifa and Black Lives Matter), a “Youth Climate Summit,” and an orgy of hypocrisy at the UN General Assembly. No doubt we’ll see “world leaders” dramatically call for “global action,” then pass symbolic resolutions that, like every “climate summit” since 1979, will do absolutely nothing to lower temperatures enough to stop the warmists’ alleged apocalypse.

But instead of young pilgrims risking and losing their lives on behalf of their faith, the Climate “pilgrims” are mostly the global comfortable and affluent enjoying a day off from school as they preen and pontificate about a subject they know little about, and bask in the attention and flattery of important “grown-ups” like Hollywood stars and venal politicians equally ignorant about how global climate works.

The groveling Jewish lefties By Joan Swirsky

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/swirsky/190923

Not long ago, I received a lengthy e-mail – “Why We Must Renew Our Commitment to the Civil Rights Movement” – from a woman named Melanie Roth Gorelick, who identified herself as Senior Vice President of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA).

Honestly, I thought it was one of the preposterous spoofs of that satirical publication, The Onion.

But no… it was the real thing.

In short, Ms. Gorelick recommended that Jews concentrate their attention not on the pandemic of anti-Semitism and violent acts against Jews throughout the world and in the United States of America, but instead on those poor oppressed blacks who have never had it better in the good ole U.S.A., thanks to President Trump!

While Ms. Gorelick briefly mentioned that there is an “increase in anti-Semitism and hate crimes” in America, her entire discourse was devoted to a plea for the Jewish community (2.8 percent of the U.S. population) to turn their impassioned efforts and energies to supporting the cause of blacks in the U.S. (14 percent of the U.S. population), who she claimed still experience grave discrimination.

This in spite of the fact that since President Trump was elected, blacks have never experienced a higher degree of employment, independence, wealth, home ownership, and freedom from discrimination in the history of our country!

KENNETH BURNS AND COUNTRY MUSIC AND HARD TIMES *****

https://spectator.org/hard-times-u-s-a/

Dwight Yoakam had me in tears Sunday night. I was watching the new Ken Burns PBS documentary series about the history of country music, and Yoakam quoted a Merle Haggard song, “Holding Things Together,” which is about a man trying to raise his children after his wife has left the family. When Yoakam sang the verse about a heartbroken father attempting to comfort his daughter on her birthday, he choked up, and suddenly the tears were streaming from my eyes, too.

They just don’t write ’em like that anymore, not even in Nashville. Those old songs about hard times and broken hearts, crying in your beer over a cheating woman — you can literally feel the pain in the twanging voices and the whining steel guitars. And the men and women who sang those songs knew a thing or two about hard times, having come from backgrounds of poverty that few Americans in the 21st century can imagine.

Give credit to Burns for this: His eight-part series reminds us that what our contemporary progressives denounce as “white privilege” has never been universal in America, and it certainly didn’t typify the backgrounds of the folks who made Nashville famous as “Music City, U.S.A.” Haggard, for example, was born in Kern County, California, in 1937, the youngest of three children in a family that had left a farm in Oklahoma after their barn burned down. The Haggards were “Okies,” characters right out of a Steinbeck novel, at the bottom of the heap in one of the worst economic eras in American history. Merle’s life didn’t get any easier when his father died in 1945. The future country music star was only eight at the time, and after his father’s death he became a juvenile delinquent. He was later sentenced to San Quentin prison, which inspired one of his most famous lyrics:

How Hard Are Democrats Trying To Lose In 2020? Their cockiness can be seen in the degree to which Democrats act as if they have stopped caring about persuading swing voters. Warren Henry

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/23/how-hard-are-democrats-trying-to-lose-in-2020/

Democrats are feeling pretty cocky about the upcoming presidential campaign. They look at polls showing their top three candidates all lead President Trump and start feeling like it doesn’t matter who they nominate.

Many Democrats forget that four years ago, polls showed Donald Trump as the only Republican losing to Hillary Clinton. They also forget that the Republicans are raising tons of cash to spend on ads defining Democrats’ nominee. Their cockiness can be seen in the degree to which Democrats act as if they have stopped caring about persuading swing voters.

In fairness, both sides are focused on a base turnout strategy for 2020 over a persuasion strategy. Team Trump may have the financial advantage necessary to work on expanding the electoral map, at a minimum causing his opponent to spend time and money on states a Democrat would like to take for granted. The president will also continue pitching moderates on his record, because he is always closing. Nevertheless, his campaign is founded on retaining the coalition that won 2016.

Democrats have their own base turnout strategy. Their current debate over “electability“ assumes they can win if they turn out the “rising American electorate” of unmarried women, minorities, and younger voters. They don’t remember—or don’t want to remember—that Barack Obama may not have eagerly sought votes from blue-collar white voters, but he made the effort not to lose too many of them.

Nate Cohn, who covers elections, polling, and demographics for The New York Times, recently warned Democrats on Twitter: “I think the salience of ‘persuasion’ in elections – whether voters flipping is a major force explaining variance in election results – might be the single area where I most completely disagree with the conventional wisdom on Twitter, or at least what the CW looks like to me. My ‘interactions’ are full of people asserting things like: there are no swing voters; the only thing that changed in 2018 is turnout, Democrats can’t and haven’t won over any Trump voters. And whatever you think of the optimal strategy for Democrats, this is all facially untrue… In our final polls of GA06, IL14, CA48 over the last days of the race, the sample was R+6 or more in all. Dems led in all, and ultimately won. Dems had huge inroads with past GOP voters.”

The 2019 “Muslim Man Of The Year”, The Antisemitism Envoy, and The Pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism Andrew Bostom

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/09/the-2019-muslim-man-of-the-year-the-antisemitism-envoy-and-the-pandemic-of-muslim-antisemitism/

Appositely, Columbia University Jewish students are protesting the slated appearance of “proud” Jew-hating Malaysian Muslim Prime Minister Mahathir ibn Mohamad, Wednesday, September 25th at Columbia’s World Leadership Forum. Their protest petition references a comment this bigoted Muslim head of state made October 16, 2003, at the Putrajaya (Malaysia) summit for the leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now dubbed Organization of Islamic Cooperation), a de facto Sharia supremacist global Islamintern.

…the Jews rule this world by proxy and get others to fight and die for them.

But this isolated remark is completely de-contextualized from Mohamad’s mainstream Muslim worldview, rooted in sacralized Islamic jihadism and Jew-hatred, which these overarching statements from the same 2003 address, elucidate:

To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand…on Palestine…We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships…We may want to re-create the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practice what we think to be the true Islamic way of life. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter-attack. As Muslims, we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet (i.e., Muhammad who waged a bloody proto-jihad which slaughtered and subjugated the Medinan Jews). Surely the 23 years’ struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do.

 

Moreover the Columbia student protest petition also ignores this baleful reality: Mahathir Mohamad was designated the 2019 Muslim Man Of The Year in the 2019 Muslim 500, a yearly publication of the highly influential, mainstream, moderate Jordanian Muslim think tank, The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Institute/Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, renowned for its very active role in “interfaith dialogue.”    

SPARTACUS BOOKER NEEDS MONEY TO STAY IN THE RACE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/09/after-polling-9-new-jersey-cory-booker-threatens-daniel-greenfield/

After Polling at 9% in New Jersey, Cory Booker Threatens to Drop Out Unless He Gets $1.7 Mil Daniel Greenfield

Senator Cory Booker has a perverse talent for making his own tics into issues.

Every 2020 Dem is sending out a spate of frantic fundraising emails, but Booker turns his into an event billing it as “radical transparency” when he warns that he’s going to drop out if he doesn’t get $1.7 million in 10 days.

Here’s the bottom line: Cory 2020 needs to raise an additional $1.7 million by September 30 to be in a position to build the organization necessary to continue competing for the nomination. Without a fundraising surge to close out this quarter, we do not see a legitimate long-term path forward.

Every other candidate in the race would have to die or be convicted of raping fire hydrants for Cory to have a shot.

It’s not happening.

We’ve known since the very beginning that he entered this race with some challenges — he didn’t have the near-100% name recognition of some candidates who’ve been on the national stage before… If we do hit our goal, we believe we will ultimately win the nomination

Sorry, no.

Booker’s problem isn’t name recognition. He’s polling at 9% in New Jersey. His own state.

In a presidential preference test among Garden State Democratic voters and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party, Booker (9%) trails former Vice President Joe Biden (26%), Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (20%), and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (18%).  California Sen. Kamala Harris (6%) and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg (6%) are the only other candidates in a field of 19 who garner more than 2% support.

If you’re at 9% in your own state, your problem isn’t name recognition. Your problem is you.

Democrat Censured for Voting with Trump 19% of the Time. Bipartisanship Is Dead. By Fletch Daniels

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/09/democrat_censured_for_voting_with_trump_19_of_the_time_bipartisanship_is_dead.html

One of the more interesting news items this week was the revelation that Arizona Democrats were considering a censure vote against Senator Kyrsten Sinema for being too pro-Trump. 

Apparently, voting against the president 81% of the time constitutes being a raging right-wing reprobate in today’s liberal hive mind.

It is worth noting that the most anti-Obama senator in his last year in office was Richard Shelby, who voted against President Barack Obama 63.9% of the time.  That made the most anti-Obama senator far friendlier to the Democrat president than a Democrat who is being threatened with censure for her apostasy. 

Shelby supported Obama almost 40% of the time.  On average, Senate Republicans opposed Obama’s position less than half the time in 2016.  Bipartisanship was very much alive and well.

Sinema is not even close to being a moderate, unless you define moderation against how far to the left the Democratic Party has swung.  Sinema’s sin is voting for David Bernhardt for secretary of the interior, a name unlikely familiar to 99% of Americans.  She also voted for William Barr for attorney general and opposes the Democrats’ “net neutrality” internet scheme.

But, in today’s resistance-minded Democrat party, any sign of compromise is treated as a cardinal sin. 

Democratic Contenders Go Rogue The “derangement” over Trump is a rejection of the two-party system. Democracy means you sometimes need to accept defeat. The new Democrats reject that—and reject basic American values along with it. Karin McQuillan

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/17/democratic-contenders-go-rogue/

I’ve taken a break this summer, hiking in the mountains instead of paying attention to politics, so watching the last Democratic presidential primary debate was a shock. It was like coming face to face with a bear, but a lot less fun. I like bears. They mostly mind their own business. You cannot say that about Democrats. Plus, I’m always armed with bear spray when I hike.

Still, there’s that moment of fear when you look into the eyes of a massive creature that might decide to go rogue, knock you down, and gnaw off your arm. 

The Democratic Party’s contenders for the 2020 presidential nomination look like a collection of losers, but they are not harmless. They do want to knock us down and take more than an arm. 

Collectively, they represent their voters, a solid 40 percent of the American people. Most of them prefer socialists such as Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) to the conventionally liberal Joe Biden. These two promise an all-out assault on freedom, free enterprise, and our Constitution. 

Warren or Sanders may miss out on the nomination this time around, because they are splitting the leftist vote, but they represent the majority of their party. 

These voters are not going away. Some are Baby Boomer SDS-types like Sanders. Many more are campus neo-fascists like Warren who feel entitled to take over and purify corporate America, seize the wealth of the rich, and tell the rest of us what we may think and do. 

The white elite enjoys the guilt trip of white privilege harped on by Beto O’Rourke. Senator Kamala Harris’s race-baiting of Biden in the first primary debate was so popular among these voters, it temporarily made the U.S. senator from California look like a potential winner. Many Democrats adore identity grievance groups, like Pete Buttigieg, a mediocre Midwestern mayor whose one outstanding attribute is that he is gay. 

China and Trump Are Making Japan Nervous Tokyo is committed to the Pacific alliance. Can Washington get its act together? By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-and-trump-are-making-japan-nervous-11568673770

People often say the center of gravity in American foreign policy has shifted to the Indo-Pacific. But what exactly does that mean for America’s alliances and priorities? Many Americans have been slow to understand the critical importance that Japan now plays in American strategy. Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore and the rest all have roles to play, but without the economic, political and military assets Japan brings to the table, America’s Asia policy cannot succeed.

Fortunately for the U.S., Japan is committed. Japanese policy makers by and large understand that China’s rise is a global challenge perhaps on the scale of the Cold War—and that Japan is in the path of the storm. The country cannot defend its security and independence without a strong and effective alliance with the U.S.

The Trump presidency has in some ways fortified the relationship. The greater attention to the Indo-Pacific, the military buildup and the more aggressive approach to China on both trade and geopolitical issues are widely applauded in Japan.

Yet Mr. Trump has also caused sleepless nights in Tokyo. The president’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, his sometimes startling diplomacy with North Korea, his hard bargaining on trade and over Japan’s financial contributions to the U.S. military presence there have neither enhanced Japanese respect for American acumen nor convinced Tokyo that the U.S. is committed to the alliance.

If Mr. Trump is re-elected, policy makers here wonder, what would that mean for Japan? Would a second Trump term see a continuation of aggressive policies to reduce American trade deficits? Will the president withdraw U.S. troops from the country? What endgame does the administration have in mind for the meetings with Kim Jong Un ? And while broadly welcoming America’s newly hawkish approach to China, Japan also has important economic interests there. Will Mr. Trump’s decision-making on trade and China policy take Japanese concerns and priorities into account?