About that $1.3 Trillion Dollar Spending Bill

Sitting here thinking about the hysterical reaction on the Right about the budget deal. 

Foremost among those saying that this is the end of the Trump presidency is Rush Limbaugh. I love Rush and admire his intellect and his instincts.  He reflects the opinion of millions of ordinary people, the people that elected Donald Trump.

So I decided to do a little research. I’m a number guy and when I heard about a budget deal that allocated $1.3 trillion dollars for the next six months I began looking for numbers.  That's a lot of money but what is the perspective?  We always want to ask: compared to what?

Total federal spending has been rising almost every year since 1900, the exception being the years just after WWI and WWII. Federal spending fell sharply after we were no longer at war.  In 2008 spending was $2.98 trillion and in 2009 that figure rose to $3.65 trillion, a 22% jump in one year. The Obama budget for 2017 was $4.15 trillion.

With that as background, it’s hard to determine just how bad the bill that Congress just passed was.  That $1.3 trillion funds the government through October.  Although I have not read the bill I’m willing to admit that the bill apparently funds just about everything that Democrats wanted. That’s just the rumor. Not in the bill  (I’m told) is funding for The Wall, something that Trump campaigned on, his supporters want, and most Congressional Republicans never really supported.

One thing it does is increase defense spending, giving the military an opportunity to rebuild after years of malign neglect by the Obama administration. In an increasingly dangerous world, with challenges from a resurgent Russia, an aggressive China, the global cancer of Islamo-Fascism, and a very dangerous nuclear armed North Korea, fixing the military should be the number one priority of the Trump administration.

But back to the topic: looking at this bill dispassionately, we may register disappointment that the Welfare state is getting a transfusion instead of shrinking, but we refuse to engage in apocalyptic pronouncements with all due respect to our hero, Rush Limbaugh. It could be as bad as he says, but I need to be persuaded that it’s time to give up on Trump.

As a parting thought, the guy in charge of all that spending, the holder of the $1.3 trillion dollar checkbook is none other than Donald John Trump. It will make a big difference.

You're not Facebook's customer. You're Facebook's product.

From Ed Morrissey in The Week

But should anyone really be surprised that Facebook allowed access to the personal data of 50 million people to outside firms? After all, Facebook has been selling such access to advertisers for many years — and no one forces users to provide the data in the first place. Of all Cambridge Analytica's alleged sins, the data grabbing may be the least of all.

Facebook remains one of the most valuable companies in the world. Where, we might ask, is that value derived? After all, its 1.4 billion daily active users pay nothing for access to the platform, no matter how much they use it. It's free from top to bottom. The money comes from ads. And Facebook's entire advantage in selling ads is that because its user base is so big, it can promise advertisers the ability to target virtually any demographic group it wishes. (Want millennial homeowners in Kansas? Facebook surely has them. Retirees in Japan? It has them, too.)

Facebook sells ads based on what it knows about you. That's its core business. To think otherwise is foolish.

Facebook’s sole reason for being is to gather the most intimate data on its users and sell it to people who want out influence you. It’s their reason for being. And if you didn’t understand that you self-identify as an idiot.

John Brennan’s Thwarted Coup

George Neumayr in The American Spectator

As his plot to destroy Trump backfires, his squeals grow louder.

It was the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky who coined the phrase the “dustbin of history.” To his political opponents, he sputtered, “You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!”

It is no coincidence that John Brennan, who supported the Soviet-controlled American Communist Party in the 1970s (he has acknowledged that he thought his vote for its presidential candidate Gus Hall threatened his prospects at the CIA; unfortunately, it didn’t), would borrow from Trotsky’s rhetoric in his fulminations against Donald Trump. His tweet last week, shortly after the firing of Andrew McCabe, reeked of Trotskyite revolutionary schlock: “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America… America will triumph over you.”

America will triumph over a president it elected? That’s the raw language of coup, and of course it is not the first time Brennan has indulged it. In 2017, he was calling for members of the executive branch to defy the chief executive. They should “refuse to carry out” his lawful directives if they don’t agree with them, he said.

Trump has said that the Russians are “laughing their asses off” over the turmoil caused by Obamagate. No doubt many of the laughs come at the sight of Brennan, a supporter of Soviet stooges like Gus Hall, conducting a de facto coup from the top of the CIA and then continuing it after his ouster. Who needs Gus Hall when John Brennan is around? This time the Russians don’t even have to pay for the anti-American activity....

Trotsky would have understood the shorthand of all the tweets, polemics, and posturing perfectly. Nothing in this show trial bears any relationship to reality or justice. It is simply an expression of power politics, which doesn’t always end well for its exponents. As even an old Gus Hall supporter like John Brennan must know, and perhaps his fulminating panic indicates a dawning awareness of it, those who talk the loudest about their enemies heading for the ash heap of history often end up in it.

Read the whole thing.

Scandal Questions Never Asked, Much Less Answered

Victor Davis Hanson

Sometimes the hysteria of crowds causes them to overlook the obvious. Here is a series of 12 questions that do not seem to trouble anyone, but the answers to these should expose why so many of the people today alleging scandals should themselves be considered scandalous.

1) Had Hillary Clinton won the election, would we now even know of a Fusion GPS dossier? Would assorted miscreants such as Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page, Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele, or Peter Strzok now be under a cloud of suspicion? Or would they instead have been quietly lionized by a President Clinton grateful for noble services in the shadows rendered during the campaign?

2) If Clinton had won, would we now know of any Russian-supplied smears against Donald Trump? ...

NOAA Data Tampering Approaching 2.5 Degrees

The coldest spring in memory needs lies to morph into the warmest.

NOAA’s US temperature record shows that US was warmest in the 1930’s and has generally cooled as CO2 has increased. This wrecks greenhouse gas theory, so they “adjust” the data to make it look like the US is warming.

 

The NOAA data tampering produces a spectacular hockey stick of scientific fraud, which becomes the basis of vast amounts of downstream junk climate science. Pre-2000 temperatures are progressively cooled, and post-2000 temperatures are warmed. This year has been a particularly spectacular episode of data tampering by NOAA, as they introduce nearly 2.5 degrees of fake warming since 1895.

Most of these adjustments are due to simply making up data. Every month, a certain percentage of the 1,218 United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations fail to report their data, and the temperature gets estimated by NOAA using a computer model. Missing data is marked in the USHCN database with an “E” – meaning “estimated.” In 1970, about 10% of the data was missing, but that number has increased to almost 50%, meaning that almost half of the current adjusted data is fake.

Facebook Forces NYT to Quietly Delete Unflattering Reference to Sheryl Sandberg

OTOH the headline could well say that the NY Times and Facebook collude to cover up facts that are inconvenient to THE NARRATIVE.

The New York Times apparently offers powerful third parties the ability to edit away–that is, to delete from the internet–unfavorable coverage appearing in the paper of record’s online edition.

One such entity afforded the privilege is Facebook. And this has legal experts raising antitrust concerns.

It's why all of the MSM gives you the same version of a story.  They're not competitors, they're partners in propaganda.

Read the whole thing.

Britain ..."an entire nation that sits back and accepts that its women are to be preyed upon"

A nation of cuckolds: 

Nevertheless, I think we should make an exception to our general "cuck"-free-zone rule for the case of contemporary Britain, which is literally descending into the United Cuckdom - that is to say, an entire nation that sits back and accepts that its women are to be preyed upon. Eight days ago The Sunday Mirror reported on "Britain's 'worst ever' child grooming scandal". The headline editor's sub-quotes are most prudent: This is the "worst ever" at the time of writing, but who knows what'll come along next week? This time it's the Shropshire town of Telford:

Hundreds of young girls raped, beaten, sold for sex and some even KILLED

If you're saying, "Hey, wait a minute. Telford? Surely you mean Rotherham? Or Rochdale? Or Oxford? Or [Your Town Here]?", well, yes, this story reads (especially for yours truly, who spent several days with the poor damaged young 'uns of Rotherham) with a certain numbing familiarity:

"Hours after my second termination, I was taken by one of my abusers to be raped by more men.

"The worst moment came just after my 16th birthday when I was drugged and gang raped by five men.

"Days later, the ringleader turned up at my house and told me he'd burn it down if I breathed a word of what had happened."

Mark Steyn on "cuckservatives"

Mark comes up with as good a definition of the Modern Concervative as I have seen, but then he is a master wordsmith:

As the purveyor of a family-friendly website, I have been reluctant to join in the popularization of the epithet "cuck" - as in "cuckold", as in "cuckservatives", etc. Yes, yes, as a practical matter, most mainstream conservatives are hopeless squishes who haven't conserved a single thing and for whom, as I complained to John Oakley in Toronto the other day, no hill is ever the hill to die on.

The Coming Collusion Bloodbath

... while the Russians attempted mass chaos. The more serious scandal appears to have covered up criminal behavior, illicit manipulation of the FISA process, and an attempt to undo the quite serious results of an election.
Is there anything more sacred in our representative republic?

The scandal that goes mostly unmentioned began before the election had even occurred but appears to have continued well past the final results of election night, with one candidate winning 30 of 50 states, and racking up a 304 to 227 victory in the electoral college.

A victory that looks increasingly historic in light of what increasingly appears to be the collusion of the then current administration with one campaign, and in instance after instance attempting to push their thumb on the scale of the outcome.

The Democrats’ illicit partnership with the Obama Justice Department and what appears to be an increasingly corrupted leadership at the Federal Bureau of Investigation was yet one more logistical hurdle that President Trump would have to overcome in his surprising and transformational win.
Few remember, though my radio show discussed at length, the reports that surfaced in October of 2016. In reaction to the bizarre July 5th announcement by then FBI director James Comey, FBI officials revealed that members of the DOJ and FBI investigative teams that had worked the Hillary email case were “angered & disgusted” that the co-opted DOJ and FBI leadership ignored the very real analysis of evidence and decided against bringing criminal indictment against Hillary Clinton for the handling of top secret information. More than 100 FBI agents that worked the case, and more than 6 DOJ attorneys expressed their disgust, according to a source within the group.

Samantha Power Issues Veiled Threat At Trump After McCabe Firing

Power was first identified by the Washington Free Beacon last month as a central figure in a congressional investigation into efforts by senior Obama administration officials to obtain classified intelligence information in what many allege was an effort to undermine President Donald Trump and his incoming national security team.

Power is believed to be the anonymous official responsible for “hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration,” according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Free Beacon about the ongoing investigation.

They seem to believe that they still run the government and can punish their enemies.

Cankles is STILL not my president

Gerard Vander Leun

Vile, raddled, drunk old shrike takes yet another tumble – If Trump never accomplished one single thing other than pulling this monstrous, power-mad harpy’s fangs for good, the nation would still owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. Instead of receiving even the slightest sympathy from real Americans, the Hildebeast ought to be attacked and/or mocked every time the opportunity presents itself—vigorously, venomously, and without mercy or hesitation, right up until the day when she takes yet another of her habitual dipsomaniacal tumbles and breaks her filthy fucking neck at last.

And from Cold Fury

Even statements such as those [in India], offensive as they are, don’t quite give the loathsome shrew her due. This is a woman who feels it her Divine Right to rule this nation—the ENTIRE nation, not just the coastal urban specks of it she’s so pleased and proud of having won. The rest of the country—you know, that vast but negligible (to her) part where the majority of us live, the part she famously dismissed as being “a basket of deplorables”—she hates down to her very marrow.

But no, to say she hates it doesn’t quite meet the case either. She DESPISES it, and all the people in it who also happen to be the people who make the country work. The people who, to quote dear old George Bailey again, do most of the living and the working and the paying and the dying in this country. The people who enable termagants like Hillary!™ to go right on sneering at them from the comfort, security, and luxury of their crumbling urban ratholes.

...

Sympathy for such an odious example of damned near everything wrong with not just feminism but “liberalism” itself? Not a chance. This is a woman who, had she been able to defraud her way into the White House, intended to A) disarm us; B) enact more strangling, prosperity-killing regulation; C) continue ignoring border security and importing more unassimilable hordes of unskilled Mexican perpetual dependents and Muslim killers; D) reinforce the Deep State status quo in any way she could contrive; E) never miss a single opportunity to lecture Normals about how “deplorable” we all are; F) forestall the energy independence we currently enjoy by harassing oil companies and propping up “green energy” scam artists with federal funds distributed in the most profligate fashion imaginable; G) extend and entrench the federal Leviathan’s power over us; H) in general, make the “American decline” she and her fellow shitlibs so fervently long for a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sympathy? Sorry, not from here. Not ever. Fuck her. In her cirrhotic liver, with a rusty railroad spike. And her little dog Huma, too.

Here’s dash cam footage of the collapse of the bridge in Florida

Contreras Recusal Conflict – FBI Agent Peter Strzok Friends With Flynn Judge Rudolph Contreras…

For those following the increasingly curious case against General Mike Flynn, events take another unusual turn today. Congressional investigators have shared a set of unredacted text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his cohort DOJ Attorney Lisa Page which reveal a personal friendship between Agent Strzok and Flynn’s initial presiding judge Rudolph Contreras.

Read the whole thing.

Book: Obama Had Longstanding Relationship with FusionGPS, Employing Them in 2012 to Dig Opposition Dirt on Mitt Romney

Oh, Washington Consensus, tell me more about the straight-shooting hard-nosed investigative reporter Glenn Simpson and how you can totally trust everything his clients want you to print.

A new book claims former President Barack Obama hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Romney

Obama used law firm Perkins Coie to hide payment to Fusion GPS

The Clinton campaign would later do the same thing to investigate Trump

The Barack Obama presidential campaign hired Fusion GPS in 2012 to dig up dirt on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, according to a book released on Tuesday.

The Obama campaign hid its payments to Fusion GPS through its law firm, Perkins Coie. The arrangement is similar to the one that the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee used to pay Fusion for its investigation of then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016.

...

"As had become standard practice in the shadowy world of 'oppo' research, the Obama campaign’s payments to Fusion GPS were never publicly disclosed; the money paid to the investigative firm was reported on campaign disclosure reports as legal bills to the campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie," the book reads.

Mollie Hemingway: Diehard Conspiracy Theorists In Media and NeverTrump Can't Figure Out if Tillerson Was a Lapdog of Putin or a Dogged Opponent

Ace of Spades does a fairly good job of cutting Jonah Goldberg's nuts off.

Last night on Special Report, Jonah Goldberg insisted that the House Intelligence Committee report that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump actually vindicated the "Washington Consensus," which he claimed only believed that Russia had interfered with the election, but did not believe anything about collusion.

Are you kidding me? Look through Mollie Hemingway's tweets from the Conspiracy Theorists -- all in the media, or formerly in the media, like Twitter activist Bill Kristol -- and try selling me on this jackass notion that the "Washington Consensus" has not been pushing the "Trump's a traitor and Manchurian Candidate in cahoots with Putin" line for sixteen long hysterical months.

But Jonah Goldberg did rise up vociferously to claim the "Washington Consensus," which must no doubt include his buddies at CNN who push this literally all day long, never really believed there was any "collusion," just interference on Russia's part but without any collusion with Trump.

It's insane. It's literally insane.

Does he literally never watch CNN? That would shock me -- I have a feeling he watches CNN a lot, in between watching MSNBC.

Mollie Hemingway comments:

Just last night I was told on national television that the general consensus in D.C. is that Russia is bad but that Trump and Russia didn't collude. That a treasonous collusion narrative isn’t even "remotely" the general consensus. Someone might want to tell... everyone in the media who has been pushing it non-stop for more than a year no matter the facts on the ground.

As the media reaction to Tillerson's nomination and firing show, we're witnessing the Unified Theory Of Russia Collusion at work. If it's true that the "general consensus" in D.C. is nothing remotely near the idea that Trump and Russia colluded to steal the 2016 election, people should stop pushing the theory. Better yet, if they buy into the theory -- as so many of our supposed media elites obviously do -- they should start to be more specific about the theory. And if they don’t, they should not nibble around the margins of the theory.

Hear, hear. Less "Just Asking Questions" about whether fire can really melt steel, and more straightforward declarative assertions about what Trump either did do or did not do.

There is a game in politics. The Truthers played this game; some politicians hoping to curry favors with the Truthers played it. Like John Kerry.

The game goes like this: While not explicitly endorsing a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence, you sort of talk it up to maintain its viability as a political attack point. You don't say definitively you believe it -- you just say, as Patterico says today, it raises "interesting" questions.

You keep your "Clean Skin" as far as being a Conspiracy Theorist, and yet you do all you can to suggest to the conspiracy-minded that the conspiracy is All Too Real.

It's a way to speak as Yasser Arafat did, to two different audiences telling two different stories. You encourage conspiracy theorizing, while (mostly) not committing yourself to any particular version of the conspiracy theory.

Just Askin' Questions, you know.

It's one thing for politicians to do this -- they lie.

But pundits and analysts and "thinkers" and "experts" are supposed to tell you exactly what they think.

If Jonah Goldberg, for lo these many months (sixteen or thereabouts) has known that the "Washington Consensus" was actually that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia, why did he keep that on the Q.T. and the D.L.?

Why didn't he tell people?

Why did he enable a conspiracy theory he's now telling us that those In-the-Know always knew was pretty much bullshit?

It's the equivalent of a guy who never quite declares that "Bush knew" that the 9/11 attack was coming but let it happen anyway to enable the PNAC warplan but who is careful never to pour cold water on such conspiracy theories to keep #TheResistance agitated and animated.

You are paid, supposedly, for the truth, and what you know, and what you don't quite know but think to a reasonable certainty.

If Jonah Goldberg is claiming that there is no, and was no, "Washington Consensus" about the Manchurian Apprentice conspiracy theory, why has he been so shy about saying so?

And why is he not throwing cold water on the various members of the Washington Consensus -- such as Patterico, Erick Erickson, Bill Kristol, and of course various and sundry members of the legacy media -- currently spinning out new conspiracy theories about Tillerson's long-expected firing?

If you don't believe in the Conspiracy Theory, then say so firmly.

And if you do believe in it -- then say that too. Do not hide your beliefs with equivocation, evasion, and insinuation.

Where's Jonah on this? Will he ever say? Will he just talk around it without doing his basic job -- You Had One Job, you know -- of telling his readers what he really thinks?

Those pushing this theory should stop being cowards and dishonest hacks and tell us what they believe the quid was in this collusion, what was the quo, and how it was all agreed to.

And, as bonus: They should clue us in as to whether US troops killing Russian troops in Syria was done on Putin's orders.

And as another bonus: Given that the House Intelligence Committee is set to announce no evidence of any collusion -- are they now part of the conspiracy?

Or are they, the people with first-hand knowledge of witness statements and reams of classified reports the average blogger or Twitter blowhard does not possess, somehow less informed by the Washington Consensus Elites?

MARK STEYN: Speakers Cornered

[F]ree speech is now so imperiled in much of the "free world" that simply scheduling a debate on a controversial subject will attract the attentions of the mob - and by "controversial subject" I don't mean Islam or abortion or gay marriage or climate change; a debate on the subject of free speech is now so provocative that, as I noted the other day, the "progressive" thugs will descend to break it up, throw smoke bombs, smash the windows of ancient listed buildings, and put the security guards in hospital.

As repulsive as these goons are, the reaction of officialdom is worse: They take the side of the mob, and thereby incentivize them. For example, Martin Sellner (of the Austrian wing of the European "hipster-right" movement Generation Identity) was originally scheduled to speak at a British free speech conference organized by UKIP's youth branch. However, this was canceled "due to security threats from the far left".

That's disgraceful: the heckler's veto turned pre-emptive and given official sanction.

So, instead, it was arranged for Herr Sellner to give a speech at Speakers' Corner at Hyde Park in London. Speakers' Corner has been a global symbol of free speech for a century and a half: Marx and Lenin both spoke there, and George Orwell and Marcus Garvey, and the first generation of African nationalist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah. If I recall correctly, the only form of speech prohibited there was "insulting the Queen", but in a 1999 court decision Lord Justice Sedley removed even that genteel restraint.

Nevertheless, flying in from Vienna to give a speech on the very subject for which Speakers' Corner is famous - freedom of expression - Herr Sellner and his girlfriend Brittany Pettibone were detained upon the arrival of their flight on Friday. After twelve hours of separate detention at Luton Airport, the UK Border Force then moved them at 1am on Saturday to the main detention facility at Heathrow.

Austria is a member of the European Union, as is (almost two years after the Brexit vote) the United Kingdom. There is supposed to be freedom of movement between EU member states - Austrians, for example, have the right to work in the UK. Yet the same "Border Force" that breezily waves through the family of the Ariana Grande bomber, and the Parsons Green Tube terrorist, and the jihadist loon who killed a Japanese man in Dundalk will not even permit Mr Sellner and Miss Pettibone to set foot on UK soil to give a speech on free speech for fear that such an exercise of free speech might be too provocative to those who revile it.

So much for freedom of movement within the EU. What about freedom of movement within Her Majesty's Dominions? Lauren Southern, formerly of The Rebel and a Canadian subject of the Queen, has just been denied entry to the UK by Home Secretary Amber Rudd on the grounds that she represents "a threat to the fundamental interests of society and to the public policy of the United Kingdom".

Those are not legal concepts in a free society: they're all-purpose control mechanisms. A government that's entirely incompetent when it comes to keeping out people who want to bomb and stab and decapitate you is suddenly "the most competent Border Force in the world" when it comes to keeping out people who talk and interview and argue - people whose only weapons are words. This will not end well for English liberties.

HOW THE NEW ARISTOCRACY MASKS ITS PRIVILEGE

The ruling class denies that they really are a self-perpetuating elite that has not only inherited certain advantages but also seeks to pass them on. To mask this fact, they describe themselves as the vanguard of equality, in effect denying the very fact of their elevated status and the deleterious consequences of their perpetuation of a class divide that has left their less fortunate countrymen in a dire and perilous condition. Indeed, one is tempted to conclude that their insistent defense of equality is a way of freeing themselves from any real duties to the lower classes that are increasingly out of geographical sight and mind. Because they repudiate inequality, they need not consciously consider themselves to be a ruling class. Denying that they are deeply self-interested in maintaining their elite position, they easily assume that they believe in common kinship—so long as their position is unthreatened. The part of the “noble lie” that once would have horrified the elites—the claim of common kinship—is irrelevant; instead, they resist the inegalitarian part of the myth that would then, as now, have seemed self-evident to the elites as well as the underclass. Today’s underclass is as likely to recognize its unequal position as Plato’s. It is elites that seem most prone to the condition of “false consciousness.”

Welcome to the New Class Warfare

Steven Allen in American Greatness:

The Democratic Party was once considered the home of working people. That changed as mainstream liberals of the 1960s such as Hubert Humphrey, John and Bobby Kennedy, and AFL-CIO leader George Meany were replaced by radicals and their ideological offspring.

A key moment in that transition came during Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. Before a group of wealthy supporters in California, Obama spoke condescendingly of people in small towns in Pennsylvania and the Midwest where “the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. . . . And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

In 2011, Thomas Edsall wrote in the New York Times:

(P)reparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment—professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists—and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

After the 2014 election, in which 64 percent of “white” voters without college degrees favored Republicans, political analyst Ronald Brownstein said of such voters: “You’re talking about people who are deeply alienated from American life, both culturally and economically.”

Soon, those “alienated” people had a candidate. In August 2015, the British newsmagazine The Economist called Donald Trump’s base “relatively uneducated supporters who don’t have much disposable income, are relatively unlikely to volunteer on his behalf, and who may not even show up at the polls on primary day.”

Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (and a regular contributor to American Greatness) wrote in National Review:

Thanks to Donald Trump, American elites are finally paying attention to blue-collar, white America. They do not like what they see.

Racist. Bigoted. Irrational. Angry. How many times have you read or heard one or more of these words used to describe Trump’s followers? Whether they are the academic, media, and entertainment elites of the Left or the political and business elites of the Right, America’s self-appointed best and brightest uniformly view the passions unleashed by Trump as the modern-day equivalent of a medieval peasants’ revolt. And, like their medieval forebears, they mean to crush it.

Angelo Codevilla, professor emeritus at Boston University, noted that “America is now ruled by a uniformly educated class of persons that occupies the commanding heights of the bureaucracy, of the judiciary, education, the media, and of large corporations, and that wields political power through the Democratic Party. Its control of access to prestige, power, privilege, and wealth exerts a gravitational pull that has made the Republican Party’s elites into its satellites.”

Indeed, rabidly anti-Trump Republicans shared Democrats’ disdain for Trump supporters. Kevin Williamson of National Review wrote, “The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.”

From there, it was a short walk to Hillary’s Clinton’s description of half of Trump supporters as “deplorables.”

What you’re seeing now, played out every night on the news, is class warfare.

America’s privileged elites refuse to accept Trump as president and support any effort, no matter how absurd, to bring him down. (Impeach him! He’s a Russian spy!)

Trump may be a New York billionaire, but to the elites, he’s a man of Queens—the Queens of working-class history and Archie Bunker stereotype—rather than a sophisticated Manhattanite, who would be fit for the presidency.

Worse, he is a stand-in for his supporters. Too many of them are the kind of folks who work on farms or in factories or on construction projects. Too many are the sort who take showers after they get home from work rather than before they leave for work.

It’s a pattern repeated throughout history: Members of one group—say, the British aristocracy, or the Bourbon planter class in the South—come to dominate members of another group—the peasantry, or poor African-Americans and white farmers. In the minds of the elites, the advantages they experience must be the result of their innate superiority; they are more moral, more sophisticated, more intelligent than the lower classes. They’re just better.

We Now Have Proof Susan Rice Gave the ‘Stand Down’ Order

You may recall Susan Rice’s pivotal role in lying about the Benghazi affair where Americans on the ground said they were given a stand down order, delaying them from rescuing the Americans who were under fire at the mission.

But now there’s new information that Rice figured prominently in another ‘stand down’ order of some weight.

Many have questioned why the Obama administration didn’t respond to the supposed Russian involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC and the leaking of John Podesta’s emails during the 2016 campaign.

As it turns out, it was Rice who prevented actions from being taken, according to a new book by Michael Isikoff and David Korn, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”

From Biz Pac Review:

The former National Security Adviser, who chaired a number of high-ranking intelligence principals, told an official to “stand down” on developing cyber-espionage countermeasures because they had not been approved by President Obama.

Trump pardons Kristian Saucier, former sailor jailed for submarine pictures

President Trump issued the second pardon of his presidency Friday to former Navy sailor Kristian Saucier, who learned the news while driving a garbage truck, the only job he could find with a felony conviction.

Saucier was sentenced to a year in prison during the 2016 campaign for taking pictures inside a nuclear submarine. Trump invoked his case repeatedly on the campaign trail, saying he was “ruined” for doing “nothing” compared to Hillary Clinton.

Saucier, now 31, was 22 years old when he took the cellphone photos in 2009. He pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information and his attorneys unsuccessfully requested the "Clinton deal," meaning little if any punishment.

RNC Chair Calls On DNC Chair To Address Party’s Ties To ‘America’s Leading Anti-Semite’ Louis Farrakhan

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called on her Democratic National Committee counterpart, Tom Perez, Friday to address the ties DNC vice chair Keith Ellison and other members of the party have to Louis Farrakhan.

The Democrats can't disavow one of their leading spokesmen: Louis Farrakhan.

It's all about Black Racism.

Twitter refuses to comment on Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic tweets

Twitter has refused to comment on anti-Semitic tweets from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, including one where he writes "the Jews have control over those agencies [FBI] of government."

Twitter management is anti-semitic.

Ignoring Democrats’ Farrakhan Ties Is The Epitome Of Media Bias

A congressman reaffirmed his ties to an avowed anti-Semite this week, but you wouldn’t know about it if you get your news from the establishment media.

The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Peter Hasson broke the story of Democratic Rep. Danny Davis doubling down on claiming Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is an “outstanding human being.”...

In January, a photo emerged of then-Senator Barack Obama shaking hands with Farrakhan at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting in 2005. Little attention was paid to the photograph outside of conservative media.

In February, Hasson broke the news that Democratic National Committee deputy chairman Keith Ellison had met with Farrakhan multiple times since he supposedly disavowed the NOI leader in 2006. Ellison has faced very little scrutiny for these continuing ties to a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group.

When 21 members of the Congressional Black Caucus were asked by Hasson to disavow Farrakhan, all declined. But that shouldn’t be too surprising when Ellison himself says his fellow Democrats aren’t bothered by his Farrakhan connection. 

Multiple leaders of Women’s March — one of the biggest left-wing organizations at the moment — have strong ties to Farrakhan and aren’t ashamed about it. “Thank God this man is still alive and doing well. He is definitely the GOAT [Greatest Of All Time],” Women’s March co-president Tamika Mallory once said of Farrakhan. She has refused to disavow the NOI leader and praised the group’s work as recently as Wednesday. (It would seem like all of these prominent Democrats and progressives having ties to a hate figure would be a huge news story. But the only establishment media figure to cover it is CNN’s Jake Tapper, who devoted a brief segment of his show to the story on Monday.

Who Believes in Russiagate?

Knowledgeable reporters on the left and right are frightened by the spread of an elite conspiracy theory among American media

The specter of an intelligence bureaucracy working in tandem with the press to preserve the prerogatives of a ruling clique is the kind of thing that someone who knows Russia from the inside and actually fears the specter of authoritarian government would naturally find worrying. And not surprisingly, concerns over the role of the intelligence community and its increasingly intrusive methods motivate other Russiagate critics on the left, like Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept, historian Jackson Lears writing at the London Review of Books, and Stephen Cohen at The Nation.

“One of the most bizarre aspects of Russiagate,” writes Lears, “is the magical transformation of intelligence agency heads into paragons of truth-telling—a trick performed not by reactionary apologists for domestic spying, as one would expect, but by people who consider themselves liberals.”

Cohen, a distinguished if often overly sympathetic historian of the Soviet Union, was even more alarmed. “Was Russiagate produced by the primary leaders of the US intelligence community?” asks Cohen, referring to former CIA director John Brennan as well as ex-FBI chief James Comey. “If so, it is the most perilous political scandal in modern American history and the most detrimental to American democracy.”

This is what it is.

What unites Gessen, Greenwald, Lears, and McCarthy obviously isn’t politics—rather, it’s the recognition that the Russiagate campaign represents an attack on American political and social institutions, an attack on our liberties, an attack on us. Russiagate is a conspiracy theory, weaponized by political operatives, much of the press, as well as high-level intelligence and law enforcement bureaucrats to delegitimize an American election and protect their own interests, which coincide with those of the country’s larger professional and bureaucratic elite.

Adam Entous: threat to Democracy.

If you think Russiagate is real, then you will probably conclude that Sessions, Prince, and Page are all part of a single, monstrous criminal conspiracy—and that Adam Entous is one of the most important journalists in American history, an indefatigable shoe-leather reporter who helped whistleblowers inside the federal government put the truth before the American public, like Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and Neil Sheehan combined. If you think the collusion story is nonsense, then Entous is just a political operative with a convenient byline. And if you think Russiagate is a campaign of political warfare waged in the shadows by bureaucrats who violated the privacy of American citizens in order to undo election results they disagreed with, then Entous is something worse—an asset whom sectors of the intelligence community have come to rely on in order to manipulate the public.

THE REAL REASON WE NEED ‘FAHRENHEIT 451’ NOW MORE THAN EVER

Because it's the Left who are the book burners.

Need proof? Consider the following examples. See how each ties too neatly into the freedom-snuffing themes Bradbury conjured 65 years ago.

• Progressive activist Chelsea Handler wants comedians who tell racially-charged jokes arrested.

• Actors Alyssa Milano, Evan Handler, Misha Collins and Tara Strong are trying to shut down NRA TV by demanding Amazon.com stop streaming the pro-Second Amendment news service.

• Liberals like Julianne Moore support pulling down Confederate statues and renaming schools connected to the pre-Civil War south.

• Colleges across America are censoring conservatives. Firebrands (Milo Yiannopoulos), right-leaning feminists (Christina Hoff Sommers), Jewish intellectuals (Ben Shapiro), conservative researchers (Charles Murray), pundits (Heather MacDonald) and Canadian iconoclasts (Jordan Peterson) all have faced liberal mobs eager to shut them down. Or worse.

• Musicians attempted to stop a concert conducted by radio talker Dennis Prager due to his traditional, conservative philosophies.

• Liberal outlets like The New York Times and The Atlantic screamed that HBO should pull the plug on “Confederate,” a “what if” series imagining an America where slavery never went away … sight unseen. Judd Apatow was one of the few progressives to be shocked by the effort.

• “Girls” creator Lena Dunham wanted media outlets to avoid using certain words while covering then-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

• A Gallup survey of college students found 24 percent of white students and 41 percent of black students felt certain political ideologies should be banned if they offend some groups.

• Massive media sites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are routinely, and credibly, accused of diminishing conservative voices.

• Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel faced an uproar after news broke he gave more than $1 million to the GOP. Leftists tried to remove him from Facebook’s board but Mark Zuckerberg defended Thiel.

• Two scribes responsible for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” recently argued that the “Death Wish” remake should be pulled from theaters.

• The studio behind “The Death of Stalin” airbrushed actor Jeffrey Tambor out of its poster following allegations the “Transparent” star sexually harassed co-workers.

• This is just a sample of what’s happening in America these days with nary a whisper of protest from liberals, academia, Hollywood or other bastions of progressive thought.

It’s precisely why a story like “Fahrenheit 451” will resonate with audiences come May, even if the usual voices will distract us from that cold, hard truth.

Liberals truly believe that all races commit crimes at exactly the same level, frequency and intensity; AND they are willing to have people die for their political agenda.

Ann Coulter on RACIAL QUOTAS KILL KIDS.

The "school-to-prison pipeline" argument for racial quotas in discipline was hatched in education schools and black studies departments. What I want to know is: How did they test the idea?

To validate the theory that recording students' criminal behavior produces students with criminal records, we divided students into two groups. Group A we continued to suspend when they acted up; Group B we would not suspend no matter what -- even when they engaged in their little mischief, like cracking heads with crowbars, dropping teachers off buildings, using a switchblade to cut other students' eyes out.

RESULT: At the end of the year, Group B had better records.

Were the researchers really in suspense about how the experiment was going to turn out? I could have told them at the beginning that their odds of success were tremendous -- unless they forgot halfway through and began accidentally suspending students in Group B.

But the Obama administration said: Wow! That's amazing. Do you think other schools could replicate those results?

One of the administration's models was Broward County, Florida. Which is kind of important, now that we know that it was Broward's official policy to make it impossible to arrest students like Nikolas Cruz, thus allowing him to amass a cache of firearms, walk into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and murder 17 people.

The "school-to-prison pipeline" nonsense may not be the explanation for every school shooting, but it is absolutely the explanation for THIS school shooting. No matter what Cruz did, no matter how many times his crimes were reported to the sheriff or school officials, there was no way a lad with a name like "Nikolas Cruz" was ever going to leave school with a record.

The once admirable Racial Equality movement in America has regrettably transformed itself within a mere 50 years into a Racial Inequity in Perpetuity Movement

Too true, unfortunately

I once thought, when I was drowned deep in the somnambulant 60s dreams of racial equality, that we could — as people of good will working together — achieve the dream of Dr. King. Now I know it is nothing but a chimera. The truth is that good seldom overcomes greed and there is simply too much money to be made and to many jobs to be handed out by the Racial Grievance Industry of America.

The once admirable Racial Equality movement in America has regrettably transformed itself within a mere 50 years into a Racial Inequity in Perpetuity Movement, and is probably more entrenched than a government bureaucracy — especially since many government bureaus and employees have a role in it. As a result, there is no sense in yearning any longer for a raceless or classless America.

The control of words and images by the Race Hustlers of America ensures that that day will never come about no matter how much the people yearn for it. As long as the cheap mouthpieces of a faux ghetto identity strut and fret their weary wares upon the stage of our corrupted culture, as long as there is one grill left to be set on one pair of greedy teeth, as long as the Holy Grail of a Big Reparations Check is dangled in front of all those that hold within their genes a single sequence of African DNA, the Race Hustling Religion of America will never fold up its tents and steal away. It is just too much of a Gold Cash Calf to walk away from.

WHY WE HATE THE MEDIA, CHAPTER 12, 879

A lot of liberal media types are deploring the deplorable people who deplore the media because of the result of this chart drawn from Gallup survey data showing that Democratic trust in the (Trump-hating) media is soaring, while discriminating people (that is, Republicans) continue to have less and less regard for the media:

 

Surprise, surprise! I wonder what could be causing this “polarization”? Maybe things like this, from the newspaper owned by the richest man in the world, the Washington Post:

It’s Time to Give Socialism a Try

News flash, Ms. Bruenig: Socialism has been tried. Lots of times. With the same result. If you send me your address, I’ll send you a hammer and you can try that experiment. Or Option 2, I’ll send you a one-way ticket to Venezuela. I’m sure you can help straighten them out. Won’t take but more than a dozen more columns like this. Or did I miss something and this column is actually an application for an academic appointment?

Free Markets and Evolution

Worth a read.

Of course it isn’t just free markets or free speech they have problems with. They actually have problems with lots of science and even with the “evolution” that they claim to believe in. Progressive ideology claims that we are all alike in terms of potential and that the difference in outcomes is purely due to racism/sexism/patriarchal privilege etc. This is, so course, completely nuts as any unbiased observer of humanity must notice. While it is true that, say, some women are physically stronger/faster than nearly all men there is no point where more women are stronger/faster than men.

Russians used social media to disrupt U.S. energy industry, report says

In the media reporting on Russian meddling in American political issues, this subject is lost: the Russians have been meddling in lots of ways to stop the development of American energy resources.

The same Russian-backed propaganda groups accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election used social media to try to disrupt U.S. energy policy, including inciting protests against pipeline projects, according to a new congressional report.

The House Science Committee report says it found evidence that Russian-sponsored agents used Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and Instagram to suppress research and development of fossil fuels and impede efforts to expand the use of natural gas and fracking in the U.S.

The groups targeted Energy Transfer Partners' (NYSE:ETP) Dakota Access pipeline and TransCanada's (NYSE:TRP) Keystone XL pipeline, as well as projects by Enbridge (NYSE:ENB) and other companies, according to the report.

"The Kremlin has a motive to disrupt U.S. energy markets and influence domestic energy policy, since American energy represents a direct threat to Russian energy interests," the report says.

The reason this does not get any press play? The press opposes energy development because it supports the Global Warming hoax.  That's why you won't see the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, PBS and the other alphabet networks give time or space to this.

The German cities and the migrants

The expected backlash has arrived.

Guns, and why the ideological screaming never stops

Where to place blame is a factor. It’s instructive that after Parkland liberal fire is aimed principally at the National Rifle Association (NRA) and not the FBI. This is though the FBI admits it didn't follow its own protocols, including not reacting to a tip that the reportedly-confessed killer wanted to be a “professional school shooter.”

Some ask what the FBI could have done even if it had acted. A person can’t be arrested for what they might do. However, that’s irrelevant. Whatever difference the FBI could have made was lost in the bureaucracy.

Why Did It Take Two Weeks To Discover Parkland Students’ Astroturfing?

Because the story's too good the way it's being told.

The response was professionalized. That’s not surprising, because this is what organization that gets results actually looks like. It’s not a bunch of magical kids in somebody’s living room....

On Twitter, I lost track of the number of bluechecks rhapsodizing over how effective the kids’ organizational instincts were. But organizing isn’t instinctive. It’s skilled work; you have to learn how to do it, and it takes really a lot of people. You don’t just get a few magical kids who’re amazing and naturally good at it.

The real tip-off should have been the $500,000 donations from Winfrey and Clooney. Big celebrities don’t give huge money to strangers on a whim. Somebody who knows Winfrey and Clooney called them and asked. But the press’s response was to be ever more impressed with the kids.

Read the whole thing.  The Left is organized for this sort of thing.  The Right doesn't have a clue.

ANN COULTER: THE SCHOOL-TO-MASS-MURDER PIPELINE

Note: the policy that allowed Cruz to murder 17 of his classmates was a product of the Obama Administration. 

Nikolas Cruz's psychosis ended in a bloody massacre not only because of the stunning incompetence of the Broward County Sheriff's Department. It was also the result of liberal insanity working exactly as it was intended to.

School and law enforcement officials knew Cruz was a ticking time bomb. They did nothing because of a deliberate, willful, bragged-about policy to end the "school-to-prison pipeline." This is the feature part of the story, not the bug part.

If Cruz had taken out full-page ads in the local newspapers, he could not have demonstrated more clearly that he was a dangerous psychotic. He assaulted students, cursed out teachers, kicked in classroom doors, started fist fights, threw chairs, threatened to kill other students, mutilated small animals, pulled a rifle on his mother, drank gasoline and cut himself, among other "red flags."

Over and over again, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reported Cruz's terrifying behavior to school administrators, including Kelvin Greenleaf, "security specialist," and Peter Mahmood, head of JROTC.

At least three students showed school administrators Cruz's near-constant messages threatening to kill them -- e.g., "I am going to enjoy seeing you down on the grass," "Im going to watch ypu bleed," "iam going to shoot you dead” — including one that came with a photo of Cruz’s guns. They warned school authorities that he was bringing weapons to school. They filed written reports.

Threatening to kill someone is a felony. In addition to locking Cruz away for a while, having a felony record would have prevented him from purchasing a gun.

All the school had to do was risk Cruz not going to college, and depriving Yale University of a Latino class member, by reporting a few of his felonies -- and there would have been no mass shooting.

Why It’s Time To Raise The Voting Age Back To 21

The teens going on television to agitate for gun control after the Parkland shooting make the case, not for lowering the voting age, but for raising it.

Read the whole thing. Excerpt:

Consider the case of David Hogg, the one you’ve probably seen on TV the most. A few days ago he was responding to the unraveling of the Parkland narrative—the revelation that armed sheriff’s deputies had arrived at the shooting while it was in progress but made no attempt to stop the killer—by excusing the deputy, asking, “Who wants to go down the barrel of an AR-15?” (Never mind that the deputy had no way of knowing what weapon was being used.) Just a few days later, Hogg was on television (again), blaming the deputy’s inaction on…Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

These elected officials are the boss of these sheriff personnel and just like the president is the boss of the FBI, Governor Rick Scott is essentially the boss of Scott Israel, the sheriff, and as such he should be held accountable. He can’t just blame this on the bureaucracy and expect to get re-elected.

Aside from the blatant contradiction of Hogg’s earlier views, the main thing you should notice about this statement is that it is factually wrong. Scott is not the “boss” of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel any more than Scott is the “boss” of the state’s mayors or legislators. The sheriff is an independently elected position. That’s a widespread feature of our Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement, which today’s young people might know if they weren’t too busy being taught to be shocked and offended by the phrase “Anglo-American.”

Chappaquiddick - the truth

All the President's Enemies

The Washington Times give us a good summary:

• Christopher Steele
• Glenn Simpson
• Andrew McCabe
• Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
• Bruce Ohr
• Hillary Clinton and her operatives
• Andrew Weissman
• Robert Mueller
• Adam Schiff
• John Brennan and James Clapper

Counterattack Hard Against Liberal Attacks on Our Gun Rights and Other Civil Liberties

Kurt Schlichter:

We’re now supposed to give up our guns because it's the 21st Century, people, and the cops will totally protect us and oh, you can’t dare criticize the FBI for failing to disarm yet another ticking time bomb and what kind of crazy nut would expect a police officer to actually confront a gunman?

I guess we both have blood on our hands for having this chat - the real heroes are Sheriff Israel and the Broward Cowards. Because of the children or something.

But at CPAC, the president was super clear - he is not wavering on the Second Amendment. Sure, gooey puff boys like Marco Rubio are eager to roll over and show belly, but a hard line on our rights is not going anywhere. Hey Little Marco, this is the Republican Party, not the Foam Party.

Rubio, displaying the political savvy that convinced him to don a studded leather collar and be led around on a leash by Chuck Schumer, talked Congressman Brian Mast into rolling too. Suckers. The New York Times was delighted that Mast agreed to commit career suicide by sticking his constituents in the back when he tried to leverage his being a vet into somehow qualifying him to tell everyone else what their rights are. Amazing, but those of us vets who don’t dance to the libs’ tune never seem to get a Golden Ticket to the NYT op-ed page....

We have our own political power, and we need to exercise it - ruthlessly. The first step is an executive order at the federal level directing that no federal contract can go to any company that discriminates against an organization based on its advocacy or exercise of an enumerated constitutional right. We wouldn't allow a company to do business with our federal government if it discriminated on other grounds, so why should we do it discriminate on political grounds? Why should taxpayers be subsidizing people who hate them? When those government employees start walking past the Hertz and National counters, the liberal jerks who run those companies are going to find that they're posing and posturing has a price.

Next, Congress needs to pass a comprehensive non-discrimination regime designed to protect us into law and allow individuals and entities the right to sue any business that discriminates on the basis of the advocacy for exercise of any constitutional right. We need to make sure there are huge penalties for non-compliance – how about $1 million a day? We also need attorneys’ fees provisions for the plaintiffs as well, because we want to turn lawyers into bounty hunters seeking out these posers who are doing so much damage to our society by collaborating in the suppression of speech that the elite does not approve of.

We could call it the “Civil Rights Anti-Discrimination Act” and dare the Democrats to vote against it. Now, of course, due to the filibuster, it might be tough to pass a law protecting our rights through Congress, but we own about 30 legislatures. That's 30 states that can each outlaw this kind of discrimination within their borders. So Hertz and National, welcome to a whole bunch of lawsuits in Texas and Wyoming and elsewhere. But hey, it's worth it because of the children, right?

The liberals are also pushing venues like Amazon and Roku to drop NRA News - to actively censor a news outlet because they don't like its agenda (I appear regularly on it). The difference between government censorship and corporate censorship is no difference at all. Again, the federal government and the states have the power to regulate. Once again, we must ban discrimination on the basis of advocacy for or exercise of constitutional rights, and empower individual plaintiffs to seek penalties and attorneys’ fees for violations. If these companies really believe what they're doing is right, they can hire lawyers in 30 states.

In fact, it’s clearly time to consider antitrust investigations and other legislation designed to bring to heel the massive, unaccountable, agenda-driven big Silicon Valley players.

Now, this all doesn't sound very conservative does it? Well, that's the response Democrats are counting on, that we will pretend the old rules still apply while they're jamming us with the new ones. These attacks are a fundamental assault on the liberty of normal Americans. We need to recognize them for what they are, and we need to exercise our own political power to defeat this attack on our ability to participate in our own governance. Bake us a cake, jerks. We warned you – you are going to hate the new rules.

Liberals guide to guns

North Korea’s Cheerleaders Are Forced to Have Sex with Party Leaders

New you won't get from the MSM who jut loved the Norks and their cheerleaders.

Too many in the media went gaga over Dear Leader’s wicked sister — after all, at least she’s not Pence! — and they cheered on the cult-victim North Korean cheerleaders as if they had something to cheer about.

Now, it turns out, those cheerleaders are forced to have sex with party leaders. From the New York Post story:

Members of the North Korean national cheerleading squad — who have been featured gleefully rooting at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics — are systematically forced to have sex with high-ranking members of Kim Jong Un’s twisted regime, according to a disturbing report.

Behind the scenes, the troupe — dubbed the “Pleasure Squad” by insiders — are forced to perform sex acts on party leaders during their trip to the Olympics, a defector with knowledge of the sexual slavery told Bloomberg News.

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“[The] troupe came here and performed with dances and songs, and it might seem like a fancy show on the outside [but] they also have to go to parties and provide sexual services,” said defector Lee So Yeon, a military musician who fled the country in 2008, during Kim Jong Un’s regime.

“They go to the central Politburo party’s events, and have to sleep with the people there, even if they don’t want it,” said Yeon, 42.

SPLC is a scam and a hate group

From Instapundit:

CONTINUING ITS DESCENT INTO ABJECT IDIOCY, the Southern Poverty Law Center is now calling my wife a “Male Supremacist.” I call the SPLC a scam and increasingly a hate group itself. The difference is, I’m right. And yes, Helen is “far more qualified than anyone from the SPLC,” a two-bit bunch of grifters that sells the media political cover for messages the media want to send anyway, while pretending to stand for something decent.

FL Shooting Survivor: Sheriff 'Virtue-Signaling Against the NRA', Must Resign After Officers' Inaction

.

Kashuv said Sheriff Scott Israel "outraged" him with his conduct at Wednesday's televised town hall event.

Israel railed against the National Rifle Association and its key spokeswoman, Dana Loesch.

Meanwhile, Kashuv said Israel likely knew about his department's shortcomings, in that several officers remained outside during the gunfire.

Kashuv said Israel was "virtue signaling against the NRA" and "didn't even act properly."

He said Israel's department failed the community and that the Democrat "absolutely needs to resign" his elected post.

Hillary colludes with Russians to rig the election

These are FACTS. 

• Hires law firm Perkins Coie – a cutout - to get political dirt on Republican nominee Donald Trump.
• Perkins Coie hires Fusion GPS - cutout #2 - for anti-Trump political research project.
• Fusion GPS hires x-British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Donald Trump.
• Steele uses info from Russian sources “close to Putin” to compile unverified “dossier” on Trump.
• Despite Clinton use of Russian sources close to Putin to try to smear Donald Trump she loses the election.
• Just because the theft of an election is unsuccessful, doesn’t mean it’s not a crime.

Delingpole: NOAA Caught Lying About Arctic Sea Ice

In reality: Arctic sea ice is getting thicker:

“Collusion against Trump” timeline

On the other side, evidence has emerged in the past year that makes it clear there were organized efforts to collude against candidate Donald Trump–and then President Trump. For example:

• Anti-Russian Ukrainians allegedly helped coordinate and execute a campaign against Trump in partnership with the Democratic National Committee and news reporters.
• A Yemen-born ex-British spy reportedly delivered political opposition research against Trump to reporters, Sen. John McCain, and the FBI; the latter of which used the material–in part–to obtain wiretaps against one or more Trump-related associates.
• There were orchestrated leaks of anti-Trump information and allegations to the press, including by ex-FBI Director James Comey.
• The U.S. intel community allegedly engaged in questionable surveillance practices and politially-motivated “unmaskings” of U.S. citizens, including Trump officials.
• Alleged conflicts of interests have surfaced regarding FBI officials who cleared Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information and who investigated Trump’s alleged Russia ties.

But it’s not so easy to find a timeline pertinent to the investigations into these events.

Here’s a work in progress.

911 What's Your Emergency?

"911, what's your emergency?"

"There's someone breaking into my house. Could you send the Broward County Sheriff's Department to water my garden while I kill the intruder?"

— Jesse Kelly® (@JesseKellyDC) February 24, 2018

Dana Loesch: Here’s The Real Story Of What Happened At CNN’s Garbage Town Hall

As Loesch and her security detail walked toward the stage, audience members shouted at her phrases like, “murderer,” “child killer,” and “burn her.” Jake Tapper, CNN’s chief washington correspondent and anchor of “The Lead,” was the event moderator.

What does @CillizzaCNN call a cowardly cop who acts in a fatally negligent way?

What does @CillizzaCNN call a cowardly cop who acts in a fatally negligent way? "A good guy." https://t.co/akglxhKFz2

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) February 24, 2018

Jake Tapper a Former Spokesman for Handgun Control, Inc.?

So says Gateway Pundit, quoting an old news story identifying one "Jake Tapper" as a spokesman for Handgun Control, Inc. (which would later become the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence).

Now, I suppose it's possible that the Jake Tapper mentioned here is not the same Jake Tapper who a large number of cucky "conservatives" have homoerotic (at the very least) crushes on, but I've scanned Jake Tapper's twitter feed for a claim like this -- "Wrong Jake Tapper," that kind of thing -- and as far as I can tell he's just completely ignoring it.

And when someone in the media simply ignores a charge that they obviously have the power to respond to -- well, you can decide for yourself.

Of course, CNN did not disclose this before, during, or after its rowdy, Beer Hall Putsch-style "townhall," nor have they ever disclosed it, as far as I know.

By the way, a father and daughter have come forward to accuse CNN not of "scripting" questions as another Parkland student alleged, but at least of only soliciting a certain kind of opinion for their political advertisement masquerading as news.

Strict restrictions put in place for Obama event in Boston

Democracy dies in darkness.

Canadian PM Trudeau roundly mocked for political, fashion blunders during disastrous trip to India

But the political blunders paled in comparison with the more visible cultural missteps. On several occasions Trudeau and his family appeared dressed in traditional Indian clothing, something other Western politicians don't usually attempt with such vigor.

Prominent Indian personalities expressed their distaste for Trudeau's dress, with India Today calling it "tacky." Trudeau showed up at an event full of Bollywood stars in full traditional dress, while the movie stars themselves simply wore black suits.

On social media, popular Indian personalities put it more bluntly, calling for Trudeau to "have some chill" and calling his outfit choices "fake and annoying."

Grassley: FBI didn’t contact Google during probe on Florida shooter

It's almost as if the FBI doesn't care about school shootings AND is grossly incompetent.

The FBI was told of a threat accused Florida shooter Nikolas Cruz made on YouTube last September but never contacted the company to track down its source, missing an early indicator, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said Friday.

Someone reported the online threat to the FBI and the bureau opened a counterterrorism investigation but closed it on Oct. 11 saying it never managed to identify the person behind the post.

It wasn’t until after last week’s school massacre that the FBI did track down the author and found it was the 19-year-old man now accused of slaying 17 people at his former high school, Mr. Grassley’s office said, after getting briefings from both the FBI and Google.