“Recent rulings from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals are a major contributing factor in the sharp rise in the number of family units and unaccompanied minors that have made the trek from Central America to the United States’ southwest border in the last few months, according to Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Since 2000, law enforcement officials have investigated no fewer than 32 Philadelphia Democrats. The allegations seem to get more debasing — more Robin Hood-in-reverse — every year. Seth Williams, the sitting district attorney, was indicted in March for allegedly stealing from his own mother and seeking thousands of dollars’ worth of bribes in exchange for making people’s legal problems go away. Chaka Fattah, the former 11-term Congressman, was sentenced in December to a decade in prison for using cash from taxpayers and a charity to pay back an illegal campaign loan. Leslie Acosta, the ex-state rep, pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiring to commit money laundering.
Those are only the biggest and baddest examples of graft in the past year. The city’s traffic court was abolished altogether after nine judges were charged with ticket fixing in 2013. (Seven were later convicted on various charges.) In 2014, five state lawmakers — nearly a quarter of Philadelphia’s Harrisburg delegation — were accused of taking petty bribes; four have been convicted, some of lesser charges. The avalanche of indictments has left Philadelphians wondering whether their elected officials run for office to help anyone other than themselves.
It is the common practice of Social Justice Warriors to infiltrate organizations and hobbies in which they have little to no interest — videogames, comic books, sports, science-fiction awards organizations, all academic fields, etc. — for the sole purpose of seizing “key nodes and critical infrastructure,” as Diversity and Comics notes (echoing US military doctrine), in order to turn non-political pastimes into never-ending propaganda echo chambers — or destroy them outright, if they cannot be made to serve the regressive left’s propaganda mission.
They’re deadly parasites for any organization that allows them to crawl inside their bodies.
But these organizations let them in — hell, they actively seek them out — just so that social justice blogs and websites like The Mary Sue or Buzzfeed will give them the Social Justice Warrior Stamp of Approval.
Trouble is, as Marvel Comics is finding out, Social Justice Warriors are not consumers of any of these products, and will not buy them even if they have been converted into full Social Justice Warrior propaganda outfits.
These organizations are being infiltrated by Social Justice Warriors not because Social Justice Warriors like them or the cultural products they produce, but because Social Justice Warriors know that non- Social Justice Warriors enjoy these products, and thus these cultural artifacts must be seized and repurposed to serve leftist indoctrination ends or simply destroyed.
If they cannot be remade to be useful indoctrination centers, then they must be destroyed, so that, at least, non-Social Justice Warriors will have one less enjoyable thing in their lives, and may be forced to seek Social Justice Warrior-controlled entertainments as an alternative.
“Reclusive Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss — one of the Democrats’ biggest and most secretive donors — is currently under investigation for a 2011 sexual assault, as originally reported in a handwritten complaint by his former employee Jacqueline Long.”
Herzog has awakened from “woke,” as it were, because she found herself attacked by her progressive comrades for Thoughtcrime. She has disagreed with transgender activists and defended Aziz Ansari, among other examples of her political incorrectness. Independent thinking by members of official victim groups — women, racial minorities, homosexuals — is dangerous to the Left because dissent undermines the identity-politics illusion of solidarity against the white heterosexual males who allegedly oppress everyone else. In the 21st century, belief in the pervasive evil of heterosexual white men has become the organizing principle of the Democrat Party, its raison d’être. To suggest to a Democrat in 2018 that perhaps this fathomless contempt for white males is misguided, or that not every member of an official victim group is suffering from oppression, is to commit a sort of political heresy, like denying the existence of witchcraft in 17th-century Salem.
Democrats have become vendors of ethnic outrage, gender resentment and economic envy, with no other commodity to provide voters in the political marketplace. Because everyone inside the cult of social justice is fanatically devoted to this zero-sum-game mentality, there is a constant competition among Democrats to strike a “more progressive than thou” posture and, as Professor Reynolds says, “when sanctimony is your only coin, people will try to accumulate it.” Sooner or later, however, intelligent people wise up to the hustle. After the defeat of Hillary Clinton, many who had cast their lot with the party of victimhood may realize how badly they have been hoodwinked and bamboozled.
Is it bad that I read the word “Seattle lesbian” and, even before I saw the picture, instantly thought “flannel”?
David Brooks wants new Americans because Original Recipe Americans, with our disgusting epidemic of improperly creased trousers, disappoint him so.
Do the Democrats know this speech is being televised?? They keep making faces when he talks about low unemployment, wages up, and the flag? They don’t realize Americans are watching them?? #StateOfTheUnion
There’s a lot of freaking out over President Donald Trump’s DACA proposal by Republicans who like to freak out over everything Trump says.
You would think, having been through previous freakouts over previous Trump statements, his Republican critics would have learned something by now. Obviously that’s not the case.
His plan would couple the amnesty for Dreamers with a $25 billion request for wall funding, limiting family sponsorship of migration to spouses and minor children, eliminating the Diversity Visa Lottery that gives away immigration passes based on chance, and a number of policy changes to stop abuse of the asylum system and speed deportations of illegal immigrants.
The biggest problem with the proposal is the lack of universal implementation of E-Verify, which would be a cornerstone of any real border enforcement solution. But otherwise there are a number of solid policy ideas for fixing a broken immigration and border control system.
Critics harping on President Trump increasing the number of “dreamers” legalized from 800,000 to 1.8 million are missing the bigger picture. As Rush Limbaugh observes: “I think it was offered knowing that the Democrats would reject this.”
Trump can say, “Hey, I offered it. I’m trying to meet ’em halfway. We’re trying to do something for the kids, and once again it’s the Democrats who say they’re not interested! It’s the Democrats who are walking away.
“It’s the Democrats who cannot accept this seemingly generous offer from the president of the United States.” Chuck Schumer has already rejected it, you just heard Pelosi reject it, and Dick Durbin has rejected it. How many of you were thinking that the Democrats would glom onto this and sign up for it instantly because this would translate to Trump losing? You have to notice that they’re rejecting this. Now, you might say, “Yeah, because they don’t want 1.8! They want 3.6 million. They want 15 million!”
Well, they’re never gonna get that. They’re falling… I think they’re falling into this trap again, and Durbin is being made a fool of… I better stop. I actually should shut up here. I may be giving away too much of the game here to these dingbats. You know, they listen here when they want to. The Democrats have already started smearing Trump’s proposal as white supremacist policy? We’re talking about the DREAMer kids!
Now, part of Trump’s offer does require meritocracy, and that’s what the Democrats can’t stand. That’s another thing. Donald Trump is saying, “We want the best people coming into our country. We want people who love America. We want people who can support themselves. We want people who are gonna become American. We want people are gonna grow our economy.” And what are the Democrats saying? “The hell with that! That’s white supremacy! We need the invigoration that our country gets from immigration.”
They want their permanent underclass. They want the current illegal crop to be granted amnesty. They want nothing more than a never-ending group of people in total dependency, and they are rejecting this. They’ve just been offered a deal that grants amnesty to the children — that’s their number one constituency group, 1.6 or 1.8 million of ’em — and they’re turning it down. They cannot accept it. This is a reasonable offer that the Democrats have to refuse because their prime constituency group is not seen by them as benefiting.
Remember how many observers (especially the #NeverTrump variety) opined that President Trump was mishandling the shutdown and undercutting his Republican allies? How did that work out?
It should be obvious to most observers by now that President Trump argues, debate and negotiates in a way unlike any other President. After some initial stumbles, his unorthodox style has produced obvious results.
President Trump has three big advantages going into any negotiations over DACA:
The rule of law: Obama’s DACA was illegal in the first place, given how it ignored existing immigration law.
Republican majorities in the House and Senate: Even if Republican squishes wanted to cave, ala the Gang of Eight, they would still have to convince Republican colleagues to go along with them. (For those who posit that several Republican leaders are just itching to go Full Amnesty, I point out that 2016 happened. For some amnesty was a cynical ploy for more votes, or to avoid getting called racists in the MSM. Neither of those magic spells work anymore. For a Republican in 2018, going full amnesty is tantamount to political suicide.)
A ticking clock: The DACA reprieve runs out in March, and then deportations start. Democrats can make a deal, or they can watch “dreamers” get deported and get nothing in return, except for the chance to keep pounding them as cynics who spurned his generous offer and don’t really care about “Dreamers” if they can’t harvest them for votes.
There are many scenarios in which Trump wins this fight and gets most-to-all of what he wants on border control, very few where Democrats can even earn a tie, and zero for what Democrats really want (full amnesty, open borders and unlimited “undocumented Democrats” boosting their electoral chances well into the future).
President Donald Trump is pitching America at Davos (and evidently doing well). Meanwhile, a lot of this week’s news has focused on the still-developing FBI scandal, which will probably wait until the next Clinton Corruption update.
The country’s top news organizations have targeted Trump with an unprecedented barrage of negative stories, with some no longer making much attempt to hide their contempt. Some stories are legitimate, some are not, and others are generated by the president’s own falsehoods and exaggerations. But the mainstream media, subconsciously at first, has lurched into the opposition camp and is appealing to an anti-Trump base of viewers and readers, failing to grasp how deeply it is distrusted by a wide swath of the country.
Liberals on shutdown fight: “Our leaders betrayed us!” Stephen Green: “Welcome to our world.”
Why Schumer’s shutdown gambit failed: “Seeing the media commit itself to plainly stating the facts and resisting its usual role as the Democrats’ built-in spin machine was genuinely refreshing.” More:
Democrats love to pretend that the media doesn’t routinely shield them from inconvenient truths. But the freak-out that ensured the second that shield was removed exposed just how badly they rely on positive press coverage to accomplish their political goals.
West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (who recently filed for re-election): “We do need a wall.”
For today’s progressives, humans are the sole species on this planet where gender differentiation has no clear basis in nature, science, evolution, or biology. This is where they are as hostile to Darwin as any creationist.
And this is stupid. The alternative explanation — that these core natural differences between men and women have been supplemented by centuries of conscious oppression — is staring us in the face. The fascinating conundrum is where one ends and the other begins. How much of this difference is natural and how much is social? That is the question. And the answer is a tricky one. Is the fact that the vast majority of construction workers are male and the huge majority of nurses are female a function of sexism or nature? Is male sexual aggression and horniness a function of patriarchy or testosterone? Is the fact that women now outnumber men among college graduates a function of reverse sexism or nature?
You might want to scratch Vang Vieng, Laos off your tourist destination list. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer waved the white flag Monday, paving the way for an end to the three-day government shutdown many have named after the New York Democrat — and prompting liberal fury and conservatives’ mockery.
Democratic lawmakers initially refused Friday to support a continuing resolution to fund the government — unless the measure included amnesty for an estimated 800,000 individuals who qualified under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to remain in the U.S. with the parents who brought them here illegally.
But that changed on Monday as Schumer conceded, saying he would allow a vote without the DACA amnesty provision included. Republican leaders agreed, in return, to hold a Senate vote on an amnesty bill in February.
What did they get for abandoning their “deeply held principles” that illegal alien amnesty was more important than keeping the federal government running?
Democrats came away with two important things from the shutdown:
The Media, Democrats & Twitter now have egg on their face after promoting #TrumpShutdown Now it the truth comes out that it was #SchumerShutdown as he embrasingly walks it back after realizing he just committed political suicide for Democrats #SchumerSellout Sen. Chuck Schumer
For Democrats to cave so fast the internal polling most be even worse than we think. Did no one on the Democratic Party’s leadership team think to themselves “Hey, maybe caring more about the fate of some illegal aliens over those of the American people may not be a winning electoral strategy”?
Let’s let Willy explain just what Sen. Schumer earned from his little shutdown stunt:
(*Seriously, I have no idea how that whole Bills Mafia Folding Table thing came about and would like some Bills fan to explain it to me. SooperMexican, perhaps?)
Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign just put out an ad hitting Democrats over crimes committed by illegal aliens:
A few thoughts:
Has any President ever launched a reelection ad three years before his term is up?
Or used it to hit members of the opposing party over a then-contentious issue?
Either polling or Trump’s gut tells him that this is a deeply unpopular issue for Democrats, and I think he’s right. In the current shutdown fight, Democrats have chosen illegal aliens over American citizens, and they need to pay the political price for it.
Rick Perry used this issue effectively in his 2010 gubernatorial reelection campaign against Democrat Bill White. In that ad, a Houston police officer talked about how her husband (another police officer) had been killed by a multi-arrested illegal alien while White, Houston’s mayor at the time, was touting Houston as a “sanctuary city.”
My suspicion is that Democrats will get clobbered in this fight. We’ll see…
Here’s another case where CNN assembled a focus group, in this case Democrats from Youngstown, Ohio who voted for Donald Trump the Candidate in 2016, and are shocked to discover that they think Donald Trump the President is doing a great job.
A few takeaways:
They think he’s doing a great job on the economy and see signs of economic improvement, even though Youngstown itself isn’t booming.
They agree with Trump on immigration.
They like that Trump keeps tweeting, given how the media lies about him.
This morning starts with Republican house members calling for the release of a deeply disturbing secret memo that evidently relates to the whole FISA/Clinton/Obama misuse of America’s national security assets to spy on Domestic political opponents, including Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign. House members who have read the memo say the scandal unveiled is “worse than Watergate.” Those reading this blog should already be broadly familiar with the outlines of the scandal.
However, since that memo hasn’t been released as of this writing, on with a regular Friday LinkSwarm.
Oh, and Democrats are still threatening a government shutdown over illegal alien amnesty for Obama’s “Dreamers.” So you’ve got that to look forward to as well.
“Analysis: Leftism is a status machine. A very, very successful status machine. Conservatives have lost status battle after status battle, often because they fought it as a policy battle. It rarely is.”
The media offers people clues about what things are high status within the areas they cover. People notice, and act accordingly. Yet most conservatives still don’t understand Trump’s response:
If I lower the media’s status, I will wreck their power.
So The Donald says that the media has “some of the most dishonest people” he has ever seen. Not an arm’s length complaint. A direct and personal status attack, rooted in truth.
Trump also acts in ways that cause journalists to fulfill his pre-suasion labeling. He makes “outrageous” statements, which many people outside the Beltway Bubble agree with. Those statements receive over-the-top media attacks, which make his enemies look ridiculous. Then events swiftly show that Trump had a point. Trump rubs it in, using the media’s own “Fake News” term against them and pouncing on every sloppy and dishonest mistake. As a final topper, Trump makes the dishonest media a focus during every massive rally. Which strengthens his out-grouping effect among participants and viewers.
He uses ridicule and lèse majesté, not bended knee and appeals — note that subordinating word — to logical argument.
In terms of life expectancy, Norway leads the pack at 81.8 years. Then comes the USA (79.3), with a sudden drop to 63.5 years for Haitians and a mere 55.0 years for Somalians.
Norway also wins the blue ribbon when it comes to per-capita income, which is a staggering 38 times that of Haitians and 173 times that of Somalians.
The noble Norsemen also win when it comes to their nation’s mean IQ, which is 100 compared to the USA’s 98. Somalia (68) and Haiti (67) both suffer a mean IQ that is below the commonly accepted cutoff line for “retarded.”
The only category where the USA comes out on top is the percentage of the population with access to improved sanitation facilities—one index claims that 100% of Americans can find a functional toilet if they try. Next comes Norway at 98.1%. Haiti (27.6%) and Somalia (23.5%) are far, far worse. According to Wikipedia, “Sewer systems and wastewater treatment are nonexistent” in Haiti, which would mean the country is a literal shithole.
Andrew McCarthy goes into great detail about what a nothingburger the entire Trump-Russia conspiracy fantasy is. Though larded up with the requisite National Review distaste for Trump, it does include a few valuable nuggets I hadn’t chanced across heretofore, including that the law firm of BakerHostetler was who was funneling payments from Natalia Veselnitskaya and Prevezon Holdings to Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Democratic Senator Patty Murray’s office: “We don’t care about anti-Semitism in this office,” Murray’s senior adviser said. “We care about transgenders, we care about blacks, we care about Hispanics, we care about gays, we care about lesbians, we care about the disabled.”
Former Senator, Republican Majority leader, Presidential candidate and World War II veteran Bob Dole just received the Congressional Gold Medal. Best tweet from the event:
If 94-year old Bob Dole can stand for the anthem so can everyone else
This Daniel Greenfield piece articulates the Democratic Party’s urgent political need to guarantee an endless flow of illegal aliens into the U.S.:
97% of immigrants in the appropriate grouping identify themselves as Hispanic, but by the fourth generation that number falls to half. Only 7% of immigrants describe themselves as Americans, but 56% in the third generation call themselves Americans. Even the use of Spanish is slowly declining.
If a minority stops existing after a few generations, did it ever actually exist?
The Democrats had abandoned their working class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration.
In the economics of identity politics, Hispanics, unlike African-Americans, are not an enduring group. And that is a serious challenge for Democrats and their leftist allies who treat politics as a game of demographic Risk played with minorities across the states and cities of the United States.
Democrats have pinned their hopes for a national majority on a European origin group whose minority status is cultural and linguistic. And even without the old melting pot, foreign languages and cultural affinities decline across generations as immigrants become Americans. What Democrats really want aren’t a lot of Hispanics, but an endless firehose of first generation immigrants.
Democrat political affiliation falls with each succeeding generation and Republican affiliation rises. A family that speaks English is less likely to vote Democrat or view themselves as an oppressed minority. Even in California, support for subsidized lawyers for illegal aliens falls from a decisive majority among immigrants to a near tie by the second generation. It’s why Trump improved on Romney’s numbers with Hispanic voters despite defying every politically correct recommendation of the post ‘12 RNC autopsy.
Hispanic immigration becomes less politically helpful with each generation. The Dem majorities grow thinner and less reliable. Hispanic immigration, unlike Islamic migration, produces diminishing political returns for its sponsors. The only solution to the retention problem lies with open borders.
The Democrats don’t value the DACA illegal aliens who benefited from Obama’s equally illegal amnesty because, as they claim, they’re really Americans. They only care about them to the extent that they aren’t. And even they’re useful only as a wedge issue for open borders and unlimited migration.
As long as the census counts heads instead of citizens, migration creates Dem districts. And in machine politics, illegal aliens and non-citizens can even vote in those districts. But it’s momentum, not minorities, that the Dems are really after. A constant flow of immigrants transforms America. But when the flow stops, then the immigrants are the ones who become transformed by America.
The decline of legal immigration makes illegal immigration into an even more urgent cause for the left. The troubled economy of the Obama years paradoxically dissuaded legal immigrants leading the Dems to lean more heavily on illegal migrants. Those statistics eventually led Obama to openly endorse illegal immigration, to implement an illegal unilateral amnesty and to push hard for a total alien amnesty.
He points to California as the test case. Democrats are so fervent about California being a sanctuary state because they believe their political survival depends on it.
“A wall doesn’t just cut off the pathway of illegal aliens into this country; it cuts off the pathway of the Democrats to their new majority.”
Pamela Harris, a Democratic Brooklyn assemblywoman, was indicted on “four counts of making false statements, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of bankruptcy fraud, and a single count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, witness tampering and conspiracy to obstruct justice.”
Important Florida Man safety tip: Do not pick up frozen iguanas and put them in your car intending to sell them for meat, because they will thaw out, revive, and bite you, causing your car to crash.
The most recent U.S. temporary funding bill runs out on January 19, and Democrats are making noises that they’ll force a shutdown if they don’t get illegal alien amnesty for Obama’s “Dreamers.”
If memory serves, Republicans didn’t particularly achieve much or come out smelling like a rose for their temporary shutdown gamesmanship under Obama.
A recent memo co-authored by former Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri confirms what everyone already knew: Democrats want to legalize “Dreamers” not because of any high moral principles, but because they need their votes:
The Center For American Progress (CAP) Action Fund circulated a memo on Monday calling illegal immigrants brought here at a young age — so-called “Dreamers” — a “critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”
The memo, co-authored by former Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri, was sent around to allies calling on Democrats to “refuse to offer any votes for Republican spending bills that do not offer a fix for Dreamers and instead appropriate funds to deport them.”
President Donald Trump’s administration moved to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy in September, which former President Barack Obama instituted through executive order to keep immigrants who came here as children from being deported.
Trump called on Congress to find a legislative fix for young immigrants, or “Dreamers,” facing deportation. House lawmakers recently put forward a bipartisan DACA compromise bill that also claims to address worries over chain migration. However, it’s unclear if the bill will pass.
CAP Action’s memo says protecting DACA is not only a “moral imperative” for Democrats, it also key to getting votes.
“The fight to protect Dreamers is not only a moral imperative, it is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success,” reads Palmieri’s memo, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“If Democrats don’t try to do everything in their power to defend Dreamers, that will jeopardize Democrats’ electoral chances in 2018 and beyond,” reads the memo. “In short, the next few weeks will tell us a lot about the Democratic Party and its long-term electoral prospects.”
President Donald Trump has been making noises about a “grand compromise” on immigration that will include an end to chain migration, an end to the visa lottery, and building the border wall. Democrats are having none of that, insisting they want a clean “Dreamer” amnesty in exchange for generously allowing the federal government to continue spending insanely more money than it actually has. RINOS are scurrying around wondering how they can sneak amnesty into a bill and not get primaried into oblivion. Conservative are saying a “Dreamer” amnesty will fracture the Trump coalition.
My guess is that this is all much ado about nothing, and that Democrats will cave on forcing a shutdown due to midterm election backlash fear. But #TheResistance has so deranged them you never know, and the Trump Russia Fantasy clearly isn’t getting the job done.
Tune in 9 days from now for another exciting episode of As the Amnesty Turns…