Ace of Spades on taking down NYTimes writer Bruni "professional homosexual and bulimic"

Funny, I always thought (and was taught) that the proper approach for reporters was to be strictly impartial, and that opinion was the purview of the columnists and pundits. Frank Bruni: professional homosexual and bulimic, seems to think that is an antiquated technique, and President Trump should receive negative coverage, with the intensity of its cant presumably decided upon by our betters at the Old Gray Whore on 43rd St.

Too bad Bruni has no sense of the arrant stupidity and arrogance of his beliefs, because otherwise he might begin to understand why Donald Trump is President of The United States of America, and Hillary Clinton is desperately grasping at whatever relevancy is available by cawing and screeching at every camera in sight, and fanatically trying to revisit her and her husband's popularity by booking large venues and then selling dozens of tickets!

Strictly down-the-middle and unbiased is the only way to go, and for Bruni to suggest otherwise is disgusting. He should stick to food writing (he wasn't bad) and tales of his struggles with eating disorders and being gay (he was tedious). At least they will be topics he has some passing familiarity with, because the proper function of the 4th Estate is far beyond his intellectual capacity.

Russian Lawyer Who Worked With Fusion GPS and Met With Trump Jr. Charged With Obstruction of Justice

Ace of Spades:

"Nowhere in this Washington Post article does it mention that Veselnitskya worked with Fusion GPS to both roll back the Magnitsky Act and entrap Trump Jr."

President Trump's Border Control Speech

Two Reporters Ejected from Newsom Inauguration

One appeared to have done absolutely nothing to merit exclusion

The second fellow hadn’t said a single word or disrupted the proceedings in any way. He was just sitting there with his iPhone stabilizer and headset. His ejection appeared to be entirely based on some kind of association with the first fellow.

That’s not a good look for the capital press people.

Another interesting element is that not a single one of the 20 or so reporters in the immediate area spoke up in defense of the second ejectee. Myself included. Speaking only for myself, the reason I failed to speak up is that I was so startled by the turn of events. When you cover enough of these things you’re used to seeing ordinary protesters stand up and sometimes get ejected but never journalists.

As the second man was being led out—we’ll surely learn his identity soon enough—he began shouting “What did I do wrong?” and referring to Jim Acosta and the way the CNN reporter’s chastisement by the president is treated as a cause célèbre. Why weren’t other journalists standing up to protest this poor guy’s no-cause ejection?

It’s hard not to conclude that at least part of it has to do with the perception that a journalist who is tough on Trump is somehow more righteous than one who is tough on a progressive leader like Newsom.

After the ceremony, the second fellow was standing on the Capital grounds when someone who had seen the ruckus came up to him and scolded him: “Build bridges not walls.” The aggravated blogger let loose a string of invective against the unsolicited advice giver and said “Where were you when they were throwing me out and depriving me of my First Amendment rights for no reason?” He has a point.

A few minutes later a panhandler—a white guy in his 30s—approached the crowd that was gathering near N Street. He loudly berated everyone, “You fucking liberals won’t help me out.” A well-dressed black man told the panhandler to “get a job and stop criticizing liberals.” The panhandler yelled, “How do you know this isn’t my day off, asshole? Were you an affirmative action hire?”

The seams are starting to show in America today. It’s hard to know how much longer we can keep it together.

Nazis are always Left Wing.

Victor Davis Hanson: "An Epidemic of Erasures, Redactions, Omissions, and Perjuries"

Imagine the following: The IRS sends you, John Q. Citizen, a letter alleging you have not complied with U.S. tax law. In the next paragraph, the tax agency then informs you that it needs a series of personal and business documents. Indeed, it will be sending agents out to discuss your dilemma and collect the necessary records.

But when the IRS agents arrive, you explain to them that you cannot find about 50 percent of the documents requested, and have no idea whether they even exist. You sigh that both hard copies of pertinent information have unfortunately disappeared and hard drives were mysteriously lost.

You nonchalantly add that you smashed your phone, tablet, and computer with a hammer. You volunteer that, of those documents you do have, you had to cut out, blacken or render unreadable about 30 percent of the contents. After all, you have judged that the redacted material either pertains to superfluous and personal matters such as weddings and yoga, or is of such a sensitive nature that its release would endanger your company or business or perhaps even the country at large.

You also keep silent that you have a number of pertinent documents locked up in a safe hidden in your attic unknown to the IRS. Let them find it, you muse. And when the agents question your unilateral decisions over hours of interrogatories, you remark to them on 245 occasions that you have no memory of your acts—or you simply do not have an answer for them.

In some instances, you state things that are not true, cannot be true by any stretch of the imagination, and contradict things you have said in the past—and you make it clear that you don’t think much of such inconsistencies. When pressed with contradictory evidence, you nonchalantly reply that you gave the “least untruthful” answer.

What would happen to you, a typical American citizen, should you follow this current Washington model of erasing, redacting, omitting, forgetting, and lying?

Of course, you are a citizen and so must obey the law. Therefore, you might well find yourself either broke, out on bail, in jail, or mired in endless litigation. But since 2016 we have seen how many high government officials involved in any number of such investigations, were not so much citizens as hyper-citizens above the law, who felt they were not subject to audit. And they were largely right in their assumptions.

Read the whole thing.

The Flight 93 Election

Worth re-reading.

Media’s Anti-White Bias Makes Houston Drive-By Shooting National News

Her murder was a national story




When the mother identified the killer as white.

But here are the actual killers.

 

Larry Woodruffe, 24, was the shooter, and was riding with Eric Black Jr., 20, according to the police, when Woodruffe spotted the vehicle that Jazmine’s mother was driving and, apparently, mistook it for the vehicle of one of their drug-gang rivals. Woodruffe opened fire with a 9mm pistol and he and Black didn’t realize they had targeted an innocent family until they saw news reports the next day. So the “white killer” angle that made this story a subject of “nationwide attention” was false, and now the media that exploited the death of Jazmine Barnes to gin up a firestorm of racial fear will now drop the story entirely.

Now the story goes away.

Mark Steyn: A Forest of Bare Branches

China has a problem,, and it's a demographic problem that is masked by the fact that the nation has such a huge population ... for now.  Mark Steyn lays it out.

In 2006 I wrote an international bestseller about demography. Which is harder to do than you might think. But it was leavened with Dean Martin gags and whatnot. Nevertheless, it made some big-picture points:

Will China be the hyperpower of the 21st century? Answer: No. Its population will get old before it's got rich.

That's a cute line. I've been using it since the dawn of the millennium and I've been interested to watch it catch on. A few years back, I had the pleasure of hearing Henry Kissinger use it: It sounds so much more geopolitically persuasive in his gravelly voice. And the point is a serious one: Japan's demographic crisis began after they'd got rich, which is the better way to arrange things. In China, alas, the statistics are catching up with Steynian doom-mongering:

China's population shrank last year for the first time in 70 years, experts said, warning of a "demographic crisis" that puts pressure on the country's slowing economy...

The number of live births nationwide in 2018 fell by 2.5 million year-on-year, contrary to a predicted increase of 790,000 births, according to analysis by U.S.-based academic Yi Fuxian.

Yi is at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and he's been tracking just how old China's getting:

China's median age was 22 in 1980. By 2018, it was 40. That will rise to 46 in 2030 and 56 in 2050. In the US, the median age was 30 in 1980 and 38 in 2018. In 2030, it will be 40, and 44 in 2050. India, by comparison, had a median age of 20 in 1980 and 28 in 2018.

What happened between 1980 and 2018 to make a country age that fast? Well, for two generations Chinese mothers gave birth to boys and aborted all the girls.

And here's the problem, even though the Chinese government now permits two children, the Chinese are accustomed to one child and are not changing.

China wound up with an unintended Cultural Revolution: The cultural norm of having households with multiple children faded away so totally that, even when it's no longer illegal to have two kids, very few Chinese want to; they've gotten out of the habit.

Chinese leaders may realize their self-created dilemma and that may make them dangerous.

But a comparatively large number of comparatively poor Chinese will face cruder, tougher choices. As we see in trade negotiations, China today is an aggressive and demanding power - and for very good reasons: It has to use its moment, because the moment is already passing.

Mark Steyn on Totalitarians in Canadian Academia

On Mitt Romney

This man is not fond of Mitt Romney.

The man who twice ran for president and lost, first to Obama which was embarrassing enough but four years earlier in a primary to the guy who originally lost to Obama (as I look back, I think McStains and Romney took a dive), takes to the pages of one of the premier house organs of the anti-American Democrat-Socialist project to attack President Trump's character. Are you fucking kidding me?! This Reed Richards-looking stooge stood silent as his wife, family and church got slimed on a daily basis and he has the unmitigated temerity to rail against our president?

The Romney/Establishment Attack on Trump Is All About Open Borders, and Always Has Been

Ace of Spades:

Dave Reaboi makes different points than I have in mind, but he makes the basic point: all this shrieking about "character" by the neocons, liberal Republicans, and Establishment types is just some ideological camouflage to disguise the real objection to Trump, that is, that it's racist to oppose Open Borders.

They don't want to say that -- they believe it intensely, but they don't want to admit they share yet another key ideological premise with their close cousins on the globalist hard left -- so they pretend this is all about a rather small difference in free trade and the tactics to achieve actual free trade and, of course, about "character."

It's not. It's just that these people have such low character -- they are inveterate liars and are long practiced in misrepresenting their beliefs and their intentions to the voters they con into voting them into power -- that they lie without a thought about it.

They will go on lying about it. Bill Kristol, Mitt Romney, Jonah Goldberg, almost all of National Review, etc., will continue playing hide-the-ball regarding their real views on immigration -- which are open borders in all but name, just keep doing what we're doing, which is virtually nothing (which is why the open borders people endorse our current #FakeNews immigration enforcement) -- acting as perfect cowards in refusing to clearly announce their actual beliefs and preferences and pretending this is all merely a dispute about "character."

Well it is -- in a way. They believe that anyone who opposes their de facto open borders position is a racist and therefore has bad "character."

They just won't say so. They've grown accustomed to lying to their readers, constituents, and voters about just how monstrously racist and evil they believe them to be. They only gain the courage to state these beliefs forthrightly when, like Max Boot, they officially defect to the liberal Democrat camp.

Read the whole thing.

THE VALUE OF THE PLACENTA

Stop the presses!

No, it’s not a joke.

It’s not satire from “The Onion.”  

This is the Virginian Pilot banner headline - front page center - on New Year’s Eve. 

And if you think that this is an aberration, the following day’s front page features “Norfolk doctor turns 180 pounds of sugar into Chrysler Museum.”  Complete with a color photograph of this creation.   

Happy New Year?

This is not some rinky-dink student publication.  The Pilot is Virginia’s largest daily, serving Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News and smaller communities in Southeastern Virginia and parts of North Carolina.

It’s all because of Trump.  

Following Trump’s election something snapped in the editorial offices of the Pilot.  The staff, never tightly wound, lost their marbles.  They joined the Resistance.  Whether it’s news or opinion it’s all Trump hate all the time.

They news section is anti-Trump cut-and-paste from the AP and the Washington Post.  

The editorial page is a Trump haters primal scream.  

Each edition accuses Trump and those around him of being ignorant, greedy, corrupt, unqualified, biased, crooked, profane, criminal, racist liars who want to destroy the planet.  According to the people whose letters the editors choose to publish Trump is Putin’s puppet; the “corrupt and destructive agent of a foreign enemy who is wreaking damage from the White House."  Trump’s supporters are “either blind or willfully ignorant,”  when they're not toothles racist bigots marrying their sisters.

The Pilot alternates between blaming Trump for the death of children and the destruction of humanity via Global Warming.  Few days pass that don’t contain the dire threat of Norfolk sinking beneath the waves as the result of global warming  … climate change that, according to the ladies that run the Pilot, represent an “existential threat” to the area.  To be fair to the ladies, Norfolk’s inundation has been forecast by the Pilot even before it became Trump’s fault.  Yet somehow, decades after the end of life as we know it was predicted, Norfolk and Virginia Beach are still here.

To stop the rising oceans the Pilot implores you to change your lifestyle: stop flying, stop driving, go meatless, recycle and buy carbon credits.  Once you’re a vegan using all the money you’re saving composting at home to buy carbon credits you are encouraged bicycle to workshops and public meetings to “help make more effective climate initiatives.”   

That would make you a hermit (except for the meetings), take you back to the 19^th century (except for the meat eating), or attract someone like Colin Arnold, recent Old Dominion University graduate with a degree in fine arts, seeking to volunteer and work in non-profits (according to his LinkedIn profile) and contributor to the Pilot editorial page.

This is simply a small, small part of why the press in this country is not dying … it’s committing suicide.

Women's March Leader: Yeah, Jews Are White Supremacists

Not surprising; some of  the leaders are followers of Islam whose religion calls for Jews to be exterminated.

Here is a Women’s March cofounder and leader, who has repeatedly voiced anti-Semitism, telling the NYT *in a prepared statement* that Jews are responsible for their own deaths at the hands of modern day Nazis. pic.twitter.com/hgTbN2izWM

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) December 24, 2018

'Armageddon' Comedy Sketch Spoofs #MeToo Insanity

Are the Investigations the Cover-Up?

We have been assured that there are several investigations looking into the various aspect of this abuse of power. Inspector General Michael Horowitz, prosecutor John Huber, and others are looking into the corruption. Mueller is supposedly tasked with exposing foreign influence on the Presidential election.

But what if the ‘investigations’ are really the cover-up? What if the investigations are carefully structured to protect criminal actions rather than expose them? What if the investigations are actually being used to hide evidence from the citizenry?

Yes, next question.

Here Are The Most Egregious Fake News Stories Of 2018

You're going to need a bigger blog

If there is a government shut down .....

Roger Kimball: "The so-called ‘adults’ in the Trump administration are surprisingly childish"

OK, so maybe I overestimated Mad Dog Mattis.

Like President Trump, I liked the fact that Mattis’s nickname was ‘Mad Dog,’ though I understand he dislikes the soubriquet. After the America-last, apologize-first foreign policy of Obama, it was nice to have a Secretary of Defense with sufficient backbone to compliment the steeliness of a robust Commender-in-Chief such as Donald Trump.

At the same time, I remember several conservative friends expressing reservations about Mattis when his nomination for the post of SecDef was announced. He was, it was widely rumored, a Hillary supporter and, what’s more, his view of foreign policy was much more in line with the Bush-Obama species of moralism than Trump’s ‘we’ll-do-what’s-in-our-national-interest’ pragmatism.
[snip]
The sad thing about Jim Mattis’s exit is his grandstanding, not to say petulant and immature, mode of departure. The letter announcing his resignation, circulated yesterday, is half bureaucratic boilerplate (‘I have been privileged to serve,’ ‘proud of the progress,’ etc., etc.).

But those nuggets are set in a jelly of snarky recrimination about how he, Jim Mattis, has always believed that our strength as a nation is ‘inextricably linked’ to our system of ‘alliance and partnerships.’ Further, he says we must treat our allies ‘with respect’ while remaining ‘resolute and unambiguous’ about ‘those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours,’ e.g., Russia and China.

You do not need an advance degree in hermeneutics to unpack the implications of such statements. ‘I, Jim Mattis, am the adult in the room. I want to foster our partnerships with our allies — unlike some people — and I want to be tough with respect to opponents like Russia and China’ — again, not stated but clearly implied, unlike some.

The implication is made all-but-explicit in the next paragraph which begins ‘Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects…’ Well, because of all this, I quit. In other words, I am the good guy who wants to reward our friends and stand up to our enemies, whereas you, Donald Trump, do not.

I think there is plenty of room for disagreement and shades of opinion about how the United States ought to conduct its foreign policy. I can understand how Donald Trump’s heterodox behavior and rhetoric raises eyebrows among establishment diplomats. The President speaks a novel language most of us are unused to hearing among politicians. I believe that thus far the he has been admirably resolute in his dealings with Russia and China while at the same time regularly reminding us that ‘it would be a good thing, not a bad thing’ to have good relations with both countries. I think that is true, notwithstanding the thuggishness of Putin and the neo-Maoist ambitions of Xi.

In any event, the larger point here is that Secretary Mattis’s letter of resignation exhibits a petulance and smallness unbecoming a man of his distinction, accomplishments, and position. I was sorry to see it. Curiously, however, it was of a piece with the behavior of other former high-ranking officials in the Trump administration. The most conspicuous is Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first Secretary of State, whose chief qualification for the job seems to have been that he looked the part. Since being abruptly fired, he has taken to sniping at the President publicly, an unbecoming and counterproductive habit. The takeaway, alas, is that many of the figures who were hailed as the adults in the Trump administration have turned out to be grandstanding partisans. In the aftermath of Mattis’s resignation, the spigots of fake news are gleefully disgorging dire predictions of ‘global chaos’ and ‘international shock waves.’ The whole spectacle is childish and distasteful, and it reminds us that it is not always as easy to tell who are the real adults in the room as we might think.

There's more tha a little truth in that.  So far Trump has been one of the most successful Presidents in my memeory and I'm unwilling to concede that despite this his enemies are right and Trump's wrong.

Too Many Vested Interests Against Peace With Russia

Conclusion: True

Peace comes only when the balance of power is found or one side in a conflict defeats the other. It is obvious that neither Russia nor the West is going to defeat the other, so a solution in Ukraine and other conflicts must be found.

Currently we are in the middle of a real reset, not one of the Hillary Clinton variety, but a reset of expectations after the disastrous weakness, appeasement and outright deception of the Obama years, an example of the floundering Jimmy Carter presidency on steroids and anti-Americanism at its finest.

Russia, and China and Iran for that matter, took full advantage, as any self-respecting totalitarian state naturally would.


So the balance of power has to be found. The issues of Ukraine, of Syria, of cybercrime and of interference in the internal politics of others must be solved. In addition, Russia has to be worried about the consequences of any further malign behavior against the West.

We are not there yet.

We need to find the equilibrium; then maybe we can have peace.

How will we find this nirvana? By talking, of course. Unfortunately, we have to talk softly and carry a big stick.

Our president is prevented from doing so by the rabid, power-hungry cabal of the legacy media and the Deep State. President Trump will not have the respect of other nations while he is still vulnerable to domestic enemies. Therefore, he will not be in a position to negotiate peace until his presidency is accepted and legitimized by our political process.

We aren’t there yet either.

Here is my suggested path to peace with Russia; it won’t be easy.

First, POTUS has to defeat the attempted coup against him. Only then will he be in a position of power to deal with his counterpart in Moscow on the basis of mutual respect. The Kremlin won’t respect a vulnerable president.

Second, unfortunately, we have to continue our military buildup. The peace dividend is gone. We have to keep our economy roaring as the Trump agenda has delivered. We then can deal with our fiscal problems and fund the modernization of our armed forces. Fiscal weakness is just as bad as military weakness. America must once again achieve overwhelming military superiority. Only then will there be peace.

Third, we have to confront Russian behavior that is at odds with our national security and with those of our allies. NATO must continue down the path of increased defense spending. Only when Moscow comes to understand that it will not gain from further annexations or bullying will the balance of power be found. We are not there yet either.

However, just because we have a lot of work to do does not mean that we should not be talking to Russia. We should. There is no downside to dialogue. Small victories can be achieved to slowly increase trust on both sides, or if not trust, then learning how to work together again. Finding a way to facilitate the return of Syrian migrants would be a start. That is a worthy goal that would help all sides, and the only way we will get there is through discussion.

China Showing It’s Real Communist Evil With Threats Against Canada

In addition, we have to be careful not to allow ourselves to be drawn into a conflict with Russia by third parties. The collapse of the Soviet Union is not over. It is still in its death throes. The “frozen conflicts” in Russia’s near abroad need to be resolved. Somewhere in this calculation needs to be an acknowledgment by the West that NATO’s encroachment to the very borders of Russia is obviously seen as a threat by Moscow, bringing up genetically branded memories of Hitler and Napoleon.

So, let’s talk to find that equilibrium.

Although the process I outlined will be extremely difficult, it is a necessity. For although Russia is a major problem and rightly a major focus of our defense establishment, it is not the existential threat to the United States.

China is.

China is steadily carrying out its long-term plan to dominate the West, if not the world. The quicker we realize where the primary threat lies, the quicker we can get to work to ensure peace for the next generations of Americans.

Three cheers for President Trump and General Mattis

Now that’s how things like this should be handled!

When a high government official and the President of the United States have a fundamental disagreement about government policy the government official should resign and do so stating the reason for his resignation.

The President, as Commander in Chief, is in charge of the military.  His Secretary of Defense is the one who carries out the hi policies.  Of course, he can advise the President, even argue his case, but he is required to carry out the President’s policies.

Why?

Because the President, not the Secretaryof Defense, was elected by the people. 

 

This does not mean that the President’s policies are the right ones, but they are the ones that count.  

I believed that President Obama’s policies – foreign and domestic – were wrong and made the country and the world worse off.  But I would not expect his Cabinet secretaries to obstruct him or defy his policies.

Are Trump’s policies of withdrawal from a number of long-term foreign wars right or wrong.  Time will tell.  

A case can be made that keeping American troops in in foreign wars will prevent adversaries from increasing their influence in those regions.  Withdrawal will signal admission of defeat and result in loss of face as well as trust of our allies.  I suspect that General Mattis believes this to be the case.

A case can also be made that participation in endless wars without a strategy for winning is wrong morally, financially and strategically.    

America is a wealthy country with a gargantuan debt and a dysfunctional political system that is unwilling to defend its own borders even as it attempts to defend foreign borders.

Spending billions, sending American men and women to die or be maimed in foreign lands with no prospect of victory is immoral.  Attempting to impose our values on cultures that don’t share out values – who, in many cases despises our values - is foolish.

   

What’s curious is that those who only yesterday opposed these wars are today demanding that we continue them.  The real reason for the screams of outrage on the Left is that (1) this is President Trump’s policy and they oppose Trump in everything and (2) they saw General Mattis as America’s real military leader who made military policy.  They simply can’t stand the fact that Donald Trump is actually telling everyone that he is the Commander in Chief.

I have the utmost respect for General Mattis and I believe he will be missed.  But I also believe that continuing to do what we have been doing, sending our military to hundreds of foreign fields to fight and die will be a slow-motion suicide for this nation.   

We need to define out national interest, defend those interests vigorously, and husband our resources so that when we go to war, we go to win.  I heard someone ask the question recently: “when was the last time America won a war?”  Putting American troops into the battle line for a stalemate is not the answer.