Good morning! Here is your news briefing for Thursday november 7, 2019.
THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON
THE DAILY SIGNAL
| Nov 07, 2019 |
| Good morning from Washington, where President Trump celebrates record success in placing judges on the federal bench. Fred Lucas reports. On the podcast, White House communications official Adam Kennedy talks impeachment, judges, and other pressing concerns. Plus: “Relatable” host Allie Stuckey gets problematic, Lenin’s horrific legacy, do-it-yourself abortions, and the historic failures of socialism. Seventy-five years ago today, Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president; he dies five months later. |
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Commentary
Liberal
Policy Failures Are the Reason for Socialism’s New Appeal
By Victor Davis Hanson The middle class is struggling, thanks to liberal policies on college, immigration, and more. More Analysis How Trump Is Reshaping the Courts By Rob Bluey “One out of every 4 active judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals have been appointed by President Trump,” says Adam Kennedy, deputy assistant to the president. More Commentary The Troubling Rise of Do-It-Yourself Abortions By Tessa Longbons Aid Access’ illegal distribution of abortion pills, which goes undocumented in official reporting, may be changing the U.S. abortion landscape by artificially lowering reported abortion rates in some states and driving up abortions overall. More Analysis Problematic Women: Allie Stuckey on Millennials, Mentors, and Motherhood By Virginia Allen “It takes laying down arrogance and ego, which all young people … have at some point, and humbling ourselves to realize we don’t know everything, and there are some people who have gone before us that do,” says Allie Stuckey of her advice to fellow millennials. More News Trump Touts Success in Appointing Conservative Judges By Fred Lucas Trump so far has appointed 157 judges who have won Senate confirmation, and that is expected to be 161 by the end of the week. At this point in his presidency, Obama had 103 judges confirmed. More Commentary Russia Became a Communist Hellhole Because of This Man By Richard Lim Lenin’s streak of cruelty began long before he came to power. By his early 20s, his zealous dedication to Marxism led him to believe that anything justified revolution. More | ||
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THE EPOCH TIMES
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Truthfinder – “I Typed in My Name and the Results Had Me Speechless.”
“Always do everything you ask of those you command.” GENERAL GEORGE PATTON Good morning, According to investigative journalist Lee Smith, the FBI’s spying on the Trump campaign is a modern-day Watergate scandal. “It was an electronic break-in,” Smith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Epoch Times. Smith believes the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign will fundamentally affect U.S. intelligence agencies down the road. “We don’t want unelected bureaucrats trying to take out the president that has been elected by the American public,” Smith said. Read the full story here Trump Celebrates Milestones in Federal Judiciary Appointments Amid Drive to Reshape Federal Judiciary Flynn Case Prosecutors Mixed Up Evidence, Prompting Rebuke From His Lawyer Trump Touts Confirmation of More Than 150 Federal Judges Supreme Court Seems Open to Limiting Federal Regulation of Water Pollution When the whistleblower who triggered the current presidential impeachment inquiry submitted his complaint on Aug. 12, Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson acted promptly to investigate the complaint and escalated it to the director of national intelligence within the timeline prescribed by the law. Read more As the U.S. Army hunkered down for the war on terror, phrases such as “counter-insurgency” and “IEDs” became familiar to most Americans, along with the “shock and awe” introduced during the earlier Gulf War. But now, if Army modernizers have read the runes right, two new phrases are set to dominate the future of U.S. warfare: “multi-domain operations” and “great power competition.” Read more It’s been 30 years since the world watched in awe and tears as thousands helped bring down the Berlin Wall with hammers and axes. The physical wall—a 97-mile-long guarded concrete barrier that divided Berlin—came down quickly, as did the Iron Curtain, the symbol of ideological division between the East and the West. Read more Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok, massively popular among teens in the United States, is facing a national security review over its $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly. In a recent letter to U.S. lawmakers, the company insisted it’s not controlled by the Chinese communist regime, but experts and politicians are becoming increasingly wary due to mounting concerns. Read more The Hong Kong protest movement is one built on online organizing, and the police are working to find out the identities of individuals who are using social media apps to spread information on the protests. Since mass protests began in June over a now-withdrawn extradition bill that many Hongkongers feared would be the final straw in Beijing’s encroachment over the city’s affairs… Read more See More Top Stories Attention: Have you looked up your name on the internet yet? This new search engine Truthfinder exposes personal records of millions of Americans with a simple computer search. TruthFinder scans hundreds of millions of available public records, social network data, and more to provide you with a complete report about any person you want to find. Uncover arrest records, contact information, address history, online profiles, and more. You’d be surprised by what’s publicly available on you. Look up your own name to see what others could potentially see about you, or search anyone you know. The process is simple: Step 1) Enter Name and State Step 2) See Results This might be the most important web search that you do. Click here to get started on your free search with Truthfinder. The Growing Epidemic of Suicide Among Men By David Brown The National Center for Health Statistics has released its report on teen deaths by suicide and homicide. The numbers illustrated in the report and by the Center for Disease Control are staggering. Between 2007 and 2017, the suicide rate among individuals aged 15 to 24 rose by 50 percent. Read more Gratitude Versus Entitlement By Paul Adams We have much to be grateful for. Developing and practicing gratitude as a habit and outlook on life is important to our well-being and that of society. So why do we teach children and young people the opposite: an attitude of entitlement and grievance, of resentment and victimhood? Read more See More Opinions China Rebalancing Could Take 25 Years Says Peking University Professor By Valentin Schmid (December 4, 2015) Exports, manufacturing, and investment in China are slowing down. So everyone who still believes the Chinese growth story must believe in the regime’s rebalancing story: Move from an investment and export model to a consumption-driven economy. This means China will manufacture and export less, and build less infrastructure and houses. Both of which the world and China arguably have too much of. Read more Just why does investigative journalist Lee Smith believe the so-called “Steele dossier” was not actually written by Christopher Steele? Who does he think did the authoring? How has the mainstream media been complicit in the Spygate scandal? What are the broader implications for America? And why does Smith believe that all of this, including the current impeachment inquiry against President Trump, is part of a broad coup attempt against the President? The Plot Against Trump, From Spygate to the Impeachment Inquiry—Lee Smith Advertisement: Copyright © 2019 The Epoch Times, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can unsubscribe from this list or remove my account. |
POLITICO PLAYBOOK
The one bipartisan thing in Washington that seems to be moving
By JAKE SHERMAN and ANNA PALMER
11/07/2019 05:54 AM EST
DRIVING THE DAY
WE PROMISED YOU A FEW MONTHS BACK that we would keep you up to date on the progress of USMCA, the tweaked NAFTA, which the White House has told us is President DONALD TRUMP’S single biggest legislative priority this Congress.
REPUBLICANS INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS LAY OUT THIS TIMETABLE: a deal announcement before Thanksgiving, and a vote before the end of the year. Democrats don’t necessarily disagree with this timetable, but caution that it could change. Substance will determine timeframe, they say. Dems do say they are down to figuring out a handful of issues, as Ways and Means Chairman RICHIE NEAL (D-Mass.) said on a caucus call earlier this week. Both sides are working well together, and, despite the din of impeachment-fueled madness, this process is moving along in a very non-Trump-like normal fashion.
OF COURSE, all sides caution there are many ways this process can go off the rails. Republicans are privately frustrated that Democrats still seem to have some issues with labor. Some in the TRUMP administration are at their wits’ end with the Dems and want them to schedule a vote soon. SENATE REPUBLICANS are quite bearish and think the calendar is working against the whole process, given the oxygen impeachment and government funding will take up in the next six weeks.
ALSO … REUTERS: “U.S.-China trade deal signing could be delayed to December; London a possible venue”
DRAIN THE WHAT? SINCE LEAVING FLORIDA STATE GOVERNMENT, PAM BONDI — who is now helping the White House on impeachment — has been registered to lobby the federal government on behalf of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, Balsam Brands Inc. …
… Bakers Financial Corp., Carnival North America, General Motors, KGL Investment Company, Major League Baseball, Republic Services Procurement, the Geo Group and the Children’s Hospital Association. She has also been a foreign agent for the Qatari government.
Good Thursday morning. OBAMA ALUMNI turned out in force for Joe Biden on Wednesday night, with more than 50 attending a fundraiser at the home of Jeff Zients, former Obama White House national economic director. SPOTTED, via pooler Isaac Dovere of The Atlantic: Pete Rouse, Kathy Ruemmler, Tom Daschle, Bill Daley, Anthony Foxx, Mike Froman, Bob Bauer, Anita Dunn and Steve Ricchetti.
NEW … WAPO: “Trump wanted Barr to hold news conference saying the president broke no laws in call with Ukrainian leader,” by Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Carol Leonnig: “President Trump wanted Attorney General William P. Barr to hold a news conference declaring that the commander in chief had broken no laws during a phone call in which he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate a political rival, though Barr ultimately declined to do so, people familiar with the matter said.
“The request from Trump traveled from the president to other White House officials and eventually to the Justice Department. The president has mentioned Barr’s demurral to associates in recent weeks, saying he wished Barr would have held the news conference, Trump advisers say.” WaPo
FROM 30,000 FEET … ANDREW DESIDERIO: “Impeachment transcripts reveal a consistent, damaging narrative for Trump”: “Rudy Giuliani was President Donald Trump’s enforcer, circumventing official channels and bewildering professional diplomats as he pressured Ukraine to target Trump’s political opponents.
“Along the way, career foreign service officers became collateral damage — and questions of a Trump-authorized quid pro quo emerged, blowing up into a scandal that now imperils the Trump presidency.
“Those are the unchallenged details revealed so far in five transcripts of depositions released this week as part of the House impeachment inquiry. And as Democrats prepare for public hearings next week, they are underscoring the common thread running through the witnesses’ accounts.”
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WAPO’S PAUL KANE: “Election results reassure House Democrats as they pursue impeachment inquiry of Trump”: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was not on the ballot Tuesday in state and local elections across the country, but she and her Democratic majority were among the biggest winners.
“The results ratified the 2018 midterm election map, in which Pelosi’s Democrats won back the House majority by storming through the suburban blocs that were onetime GOP strongholds and tapping into the energy there of a massive backlash against President Trump. On Tuesday voters sent the same message outside Philadelphia, throughout Virginia’s suburbs and in parts of northern Kentucky, reassuring Democrats of the path they are on and strengthening their political spines as they grow closer to impeaching the president.
“One key sign of strength in their strategy came in the special election for a state legislative seat outside Houston, where a Democrat gained the most votes and heads into a runoff election as a possible favorite. This comes in a region where early last decade a GOP enforcer, then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), carved up the state’s map to bolster the Republican majority on Capitol Hill, only to now see that terrain slip away.” WaPo
IMPORTANT STORY … BURGESS EVERETT and JOHN BRESNAHAN: “Trump’s impeachment trial hinges on McConnell and Schumer”: “Before the Senate can deliver a verdict on whether to oust Trump from office, the ‘world’s greatest deliberative body’ must first set ground rules on the president’s impeachment trial. At issue is what kind of amendments or witnesses to consider, as well as how long the proceedings will go on and what kind of evidence can be introduced, all of which will shape the trial and its fallout.
“It’s a process fraught with uncertainty and political peril, particularly with an impeachment trial to come right in the heat of a Democratic presidential primary in which six senators are running to defeat Trump. Whether the Senate can show some semblance of unity before plunging into what’s sure to be a deeply acrimonious trial will depend on McConnell and Schumer and their ability to keep their caucuses in line.
“‘There’s no reason we can’t come up with an agreement. … I’m open to trying to be fair and down the middle and letting the facts come out and be nonpartisan,’ Schumer said in an interview on Wednesday. ‘There’s no reason we can’t come up with good, fair and honest rules.’ …
“Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has quietly met with McConnell and Schumer to ask for a senators-only meeting — similar to the famous session that occurred in the Old Senate Chamber on Jan. 8, 1999 — to hash out a deal on how to proceed with a Trump trial, if it comes to that. The 1999 impeachment rules package, crafted by then-Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Phil Gramm (R-Texas), passed on a 100-0 vote, which was hailed by senators as a momentous achievement, yet seems nearly impossible to imagine occurring in today’s Senate.” POLITICO
RUDY’S WOES … NYT’S MAGGIE HABERMAN, WILLIAM RASHBAUM and MICHAEL ROTHFELD: “President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said on Wednesday that he had assembled a legal team to represent him in the criminal investigation into his activities related to Ukraine, an announcement that came after weeks of sputtered attempts to find a lawyer willing to take him on as a client.
“Mr. Giuliani said on Twitter that he would be represented by three lawyers, including his longtime friend, Robert J. Costello. The hires show how serious Mr. Giuliani is treating the inquiry by federal prosectors in Manhattan, who are investigating whether he violated lobbying laws in his efforts to dig up damaging information about Mr. Trump’s rivals. …
“[A]t least four prominent attorneys declined for various reasons, according to people familiar with the matter. They included Mary Jo White, who also once led the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District, as well as Theodore V. Wells Jr., a trial lawyer at Paul, Weiss, according to people familiar with those discussions.
“Another was Daniel L. Stein, a former senior prosecutor who recently held top posts in the Southern District, where he oversaw the prosecutions of public officials including Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the New York State Assembly, and Dean Skelos, the State Senate majority leader.” NYT
— NYT: “Behind the Deal That Put Giuliani Together With a Dirt-Hunting Partner,” by Ken Vogel, Ben Protess and Sarah Maslin Nir
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ABOUT LAST NIGHT …
— AP/MONROE, LA.: “President Donald Trump worked up a sweat in a steamy Louisiana arena Wednesday night as he attempted to boost Republican businessman Eddie Rispone’s effort to unseat incumbent Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in the nation’s last governor’s race of the year. …
“The gubernatorial runoff election in Louisiana offers Trump an opportunity to pick up a win in a rare Democratic-held governor’s seat in the Deep South and change the narrative after a pair of apparent setbacks this week for the Republican party in Kentucky and Virginia. ‘You’re going out to replace a radical, liberal Democrat as your governor,’ Trump said. ‘John Bel Edwards has not done the job.’” AP
— THE BACKSTORY: “Trump races to avoid a second electoral debacle in Louisiana,” by Alex Isenstadt: “Donald Trump couldn’t save Matt Bevin in Kentucky. Now, the pressure is on the president to avoid a second black eye in Louisiana next week.
“Trump is thrusting himself into the state’s gubernatorial contest: He
[rallied]
there on Wednesday evening … for Republican candidate Eddie Rispone, who is trying to unseat Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, and will make another visit two days before the Nov. 16 election. The president is also expected to record get-out-the-vote videos and robocalls, and on Wednesday morning he called into a popular Louisiana morning radio show to talk about the race.
“Trump also plans to attend the Louisiana State vs. Alabama college football game on Saturday. Though the game is Alabama, the marquee match-up is expected to draw wide viewership among Louisianans. The blitz underscores the importance of the race to the president. Trump has been heavily focused on the Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana gubernatorial contests this fall, gambling that a sweep would bolster his political standing in the face of impeachment and heading into 2020.” POLITICO
BUT, BUT, BUT … NOT GOING DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT … “Bevin cites ‘irregularities’ in asking for Kentucky recanvass,” by Steven Shepard: “Matt Bevin isn’t going quietly. Kentucky’s Republican governor is broadly casting doubt on the results of Tuesday’s election, with the unofficial tally showing him trailing Democrat Andy Beshear by just over 5,000 votes, or about four-tenths of a percentage point.
“Speaking before reporters Wednesday night in Frankfort, the state capital, Bevin said his campaign would be seeking an official recanvass of the results — but it is also compiling evidence of ‘irregularities’ in the voting process to be investigated. ‘What we know is that there really are a number of irregularities,’ he said, adding that ‘there’s more than a little bit of history of vote fraud in our state.’” POLITICO
TRUMP’S THURSDAY — The president will participate in a greeting to recognize the National Day for the Victims of Communism in the Oval Office at 2:15 p.m. He will present the Presidential Citizens Medal at 6 p.m. in the East Room. Trump will leave the White House at 7:35 p.m. en route to the Trump International Hotel. He will give a speech at a fundraising reception at 8 p.m. before returning to the White House.
PLAYBOOK READS
JOSH GERSTEIN and DARREN SAMUELSOHN: “5 takeaways from Roger Stone’s first major day in court”: “Call it the Cliff Notes version of the Mueller report. That’s what a new panel of Washington, D.C., jurors heard Wednesday morning as federal prosecutors delivered a tight synopsis of how Roger Stone came to be a defendant in the last indictment to come from the special counsel’s office.
“It was a powerful moment delivered exclusively to a courtroom audience. Anyone who’s been following Robert Mueller’s work closely would recognize all the pieces of the story. But to the 12 jurors who might be coming in cold, it was a stark and concise opening narrative explaining how the colorful characters in Trumpworld gossiped and plotted around Russia’s digital thefts of Democratic emails during the 2016 election — and the role Stone played in that story.” POLITICO
HAPPENING TODAY — Former A.G. Jeff Sessions is expected to announce his candidacy for his old Senate seat. He’s also expected to appear on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, a Trump favorite, this evening. AP’s Brian Slodysko in D.C. with Kim Chandler in Montgomery
— AL.com: “Sessions would join a Republican primary field that includes U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne of Fairhope, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, Secretary of State John Merrill, state Rep. Arnold Mooney of Birmingham, and businessman Stanley Adair of Haleyville.”
— NOTE: Trump is heading to Tuscaloosa to watch Saturday’s Alabama-LSU game. ELIZABETH CRISP, The Advocate’s D.C. correspondent, notes that Trump said he’d stay neutral between the two SEC powerhouse teams.
YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN: Here’s an exchange between Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his former deputy Tom Watson, who just resigned his seat amid a dispute over the leftward lurch of the party under Corbyn.
— WATSON: “Our many shared interests are less well known than our political differences, but I will continue to devote myself to the things we often talk about: gambling reform, music and arts, stopping press intrusion, obesity and public health and of course horticulture and cycling.” CORBYN: “I hope the horseradish plants I gave you thrive.” More on Labour’s leadership shakeup from London Playbook
WHAT THE LEFT IS READING — “Joe Biden: An Anti-Endorsement,” by The Nation:“His long record of poor judgment and cozying up to bankers make him the wrong candidate to take on Donald Trump.”
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THE TV-WATCHER-IN-CHIEF … CNN: “As Democrats move toward the public phase of their inquiry with an eye to boosting support for Trump’s impeachment, White House officials are gripping for another consequence: a President consumed by the developments.
“Trump has already found the specter of impeachment hard to ignore, interspersing references to the ‘scam’ he believes Democrats are pursuing into nearly every White House meeting and set of unrelated public remarks.” CNN
VALLEY TALK — “Google Weighs Changes to Political Ad Policy,” by WSJ’s Emily Glazer: “Alphabet Inc.’s Google is in discussions about changing its political ad policy, according to people familiar with the matter, about a week after Facebook and Twitter publicly diverged on how to handle those ads amid the spread of misinformation.
“Google has been holding internal meetings about changing its political ad policy and is expected to share more information with employees this week, the people said, though it is unclear what the changes will be. Some Google employees are speculating the changes could be related to what type of audience targeting the company allows ad buyers to place.” WSJ
— “Former Twitter employees charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by digging into the accounts of kingdom critics,” by WaPo’s Ellen Nakashima and Greg Bensinger: “The Justice Department has charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia by accessing the company’s information on dissidents who use the platform, marking the first time federal prosecutors have publicly accused the kingdom of running agents in the United States.
“One of those implicated in the scheme, according to court papers, is an associate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA has concluded likely ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last year.” WaPo … The complaint
— AP: “The complaint also alleged that the employees — whose jobs did not require access to Twitter users’ private information — were rewarded with a designer watch and tens of thousands of dollars funneled into secret bank accounts. Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen, and Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, were charged with acting as agents of Saudi Arabia without registering with the U.S. government.”
MEDIAWATCH — “Fox News brass to network hosts and personalities: Do not identify the whistleblower,” by CNN’s Oliver Darcy and Brian Stelter: “[O]n October 31, a Fox executive sent an email to staffers that said the network had not ‘independently confirmed [the] name or identification of the anonymous whistleblower.’ A copy of the email was obtained by CNN Business. The executive further advised production staffers to ‘NOT fulfill any video or graphic requests’ related to the whistleblower’s identity.” CNN
— VANITY FAIR’S JOE POMPEO: “News Outlets Grapple With Unmasking the Whistleblower”: “Don. Jr. may not have been able to corner the mainstream press into a position where it had no choice but to acknowledge the information he was putting out into the world. But his tweet did seem to alter the landscape a bit. What happens if, say, his father, or someone else unignorable, were encouraged to do the same thing?” Vanity Fair
PLAYBOOKERS
Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at politicoplaybook@politico.com.
SPOTTED: Rod Rosenstein at the Prettyman Federal Courthouse on Wednesday afternoon for a lecture. … Ted and Lynn Leonsis and Chris Wallace and Lorraine Smothers at BLT Steak on Wednesday night.
TRANSITIONS — Former Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.) is now chief commercial officer at Leading Edge Power Solutions. … Departing New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill will be SVP and global head of physical security at Visa. AP
K STREET WATCH — Erik Smith’s Seven Letters communications and public affairs shop is expanding again. The firm is acquiring Tessio Labs, which is headed up by John Corrigan and Michael Treon, and will expand its digital strategies offering with Seven Letter Labs.
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Liz Allen, SVP at the Glover Park Group and former Obama White House deputy comms director, is 35. What she thinks deserves more attention: “Less a trend than something I hope we start talking more about is elder care and end-of-life preparation — from both the personal and systemic perspectives. Especially the tragedy of dementia and Alzheimer’s touches families regardless of geography, race, class or politics — including my own — and I want to see a greater collective discussion about how to tackle it and make people feel less alone in caregiving for loved ones.” Playbook Q&A
BIRTHDAYS: Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) … Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) is 56 … Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) is 53 … Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) is 68 … former CIA Director David Petraeus, now a partner at KKR and chairman of the KKR Global Institute … Sheila Nix … POLITICO’s Elena Schneider … Brad Woodhouse, executive director of Protect Our Care … Jen Friedman, SVP for global public affairs at Blackstone … Caroline Tabler, comms director for Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) … Adams Nager … ABC’s Kaylee Hartung … Jonathan Tannenwald … Meghan Roh, director of public relations at Epic … Ben Golnik … former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.) is 89 … POLITICO Europe’s Agathe Legris …
… Siobhan Gorman, partner at Brunswick Group (h/ts Tim Griffin and George Little) … Facebook’s Erin Green … Avi Zvi Zenilman is 35 … Jeff Bjornstad is 52 … Trey Graham … Daniel Libit … Olivia Lucas … Phil LaRue … Max Viscio … Perry Goffner … Kate Murphy … Betsy Bourassa … Burson Taylor Snyder, deputy COS for Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) … George Thompson, partner at Banner Public Affairs (h/t Jon Haber) … Jamila Bey … Liz Llorente … Kathy Killeavy … Kyle Kerchaert … Jeanneane Maxon … Adnaan Muslim, partner at Deliver Strategies (h/t Gabby Adler) … Jackie Lemaire … Glennis Meagher … Pat Devlin … Democracy Partners’ David Grossman … Tory Mazzola
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THE FLIP SIDE
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Thursday, November 7, 2019 Election Results State and local elections were held on Tuesday. In Virginia, Democrats took control of the legislature. In Kentucky, Democrat Andy Beshear leads incumbent Republican Matt Bevin by 5,000 votes; Bevin has yet to concede. Ballotpedia From the Left The left is encouraged by the results, arguing that they bode well for Democrats in 2020. “In 2017, Democrats were severely disadvantaged by a Republican-drawn racial gerrymander that trapped a huge number of black voters in a handful of noncompetitive districts for nearly a decade. By 2019, that gerrymander was dead, killed off by the courts… “Tuesday’s blowout demonstrates that there’s no mysterious or insurmountable hurdle that organically prevents Democrats from translating a landslide (in overall votes) into a majority in the General Assembly. The problem was not that Democratic voters tend to cluster in urban regions, as some Republicans have long claimed. The problem was illicit redistricting. Now the chief question facing Virginia Democrats is whether they will engage in tit-for-tat gerrymandering after the 2020 census, capitalizing upon their power to entrench Republicans in the minority.” Mark Joseph Stern, Slate The co-executive director of New Virginia Majority writes, “We talk to people, all year, about issues that are important to them: affordable health care, access to a good education, reforming the criminal justice system, protecting voting rights and making sure our communities have clean air, water and public lands. That is what voters responded to this fall… Democrats and national progressive organizations have the resources to take their case to the people and win, but they have to start early and organize relentlessly. When they lose, they have to stay in place and keep fighting for every political inch they can get. No place is unwinnable forever.” Tram Nguyen, New York Times “Some of the forces at work were demographic: an influx of immigrants, a tech boom that brought a surge of highly educated and affluent residents to the northern suburbs. But the wounds the Republicans have suffered have also been self-inflicted, as their party in Virginia was taken over by hard-line forces on the right… “After the state was shaken by a mass shooting in Virginia Beach that left a dozen people dead, these were the Republicans who abruptly shut down a special legislative session on gun control after only 90 minutes without considering a single bill… they were not even willing to contemplate expanding background checks or ‘red flag’ laws to take weapons away from people deemed to be dangerous.” Karen Tumulty, Washington Post “In Virginia, voters demonstrated that support for gun control is now an asset, not a liability, in American politics. More broadly: Railing against impeachment and attacking Democrats as ‘socialists’ won’t get the job done for Republicans when the GOP finds itself on the wrong end of questions such as health care and education… Trump’s failure to rally Republicans with his anti-impeachment message in Kentucky — a state the president carried by 30 points and that is home to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), up for reelection next year — should give Republicans pause about a Trump-centric approach to their own political futures… Voters want elections to be about them, not the narcissist in the White House.” E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post “Matt Bevin made it his top priority as governor to shred the ACA… He shifted 31,000 people off Medicaid and S-Chip, the state children’s health-insurance plan. He added work requirements for Medicaid, and other practical barriers to coverage. Bevin’s personal behavior may have been extreme, but his policy priorities as governor were squarely in the GOP mainstream. Squeezing the ACA has been Trump policy, too. Nationwide, Medicaid and S-Chip enrollment has declined by 1.7 million over the past two years, a decline too big to be explained solely by improvements in the job market…Trump is a historically unpopular president, delivering a historically unpopular agenda. If that message failed in Kentucky, where will it succeed?” David Frum, The Atlantic Some caution that “To interpret [Mr. Beshear’s win] as a sign of Mr. Trump’s and Mr. McConnell’s waning power in a Republican stronghold is shortsighted. One glance at the other statewide races tells the tale: As Mr. Trump himself tweeted Wednesday morning, all were won handily by Republicans. Mr. McConnell’s fabled political organization appears to remain intact… those breaking out the bourbon in the belief that Trump Fever is abating in Kentucky should put away their glasses.” Jason Kyle Howard, New York Times “The real winners [were] Medicaid expansion and education… Republicans in Arizona, Oklahoma and elsewhere have seen that tangling with teachers usually doesn’t work out well; they’ve also learned that as much as they may dislike the Affordable Care Act, it’s a political nightmare to mess with. Every time an election like this happens, it makes politicians more likely to heed those lessons.” Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg Finally, “There’s been much discussion of the Republican Party’s high-profile losses on Tuesday in Kentucky and Virginia, but historic GOP losses in Pennsylvania might be more concerning for the party in 2020… Pennsylvania is a key swing state that went for President Donald Trump in 2016 and will be a central battleground state in 2020. Trump won the state by less than 1 percentage point — or about 44,000 votes of the more than 6 million cast — handing him Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.” Eliza Relman, Business Insider From the Right The right argues that Bevin’s loss was an outlier, but nevertheless is concerned about what the overall results say about GOP prospects. “Bevin is the most unpopular governor in the country, according to data from Morning Consult, which at last count found that just 32 percent of registered voters in the state approved of the job he was doing while 56 percent disapproved… He attempted to push hugely unpopular reforms to the state’s pension and entitlement programs, as well as to its education system, earning him powerful enemies in both parties. His abrasive style turned off voters and legislators alike. These weaknesses were likely the biggest factor in his loss to Beshear… “[Moreover] until Bevin’s election in 2015, Democrats had held the governorship in Kentucky for almost the entirety of the past two decades. Though Bevin’s loss isn’t a great sign for the GOP, it also isn’t evidence that the party is collapsing in Kentucky, especially given that the other five major statewide contests last night went to Republicans. Republican attorney-general candidate Daniel Cameron, for instance, defeated his Democratic opponent by about 15 points, and in the process raked in well over 100,000 more votes than either Bevin or Beshear. Every other GOP candidate on the ballot won his or her contest by at least 15 points.” Alexandra DeSanctis, National Review “Given how close this race was — Bevin lost by less than 5,000 votes — it’s understandable he’d want a recount, or a recanvass at the very least, to ensure that all the tallies were conducted correctly. But as soon as that process is complete, Bevin should put an end to this chaos and concede. If he doesn’t, he risks becoming the next Stacey Abrams, the failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate, who to this day pretends she was robbed of the governorship despite losing to Gov. Brian Kemp by over 50,000 votes… “Instead of admitting her loss, Abrams vilified Kemp and encouraged the creation of a myth that voter suppression somehow caused her narrow defeat. Republicans rightly criticized Abrams for playing the victim and abandoning individual responsibility. They should now demand the same from Bevin, who is crying foul play without evidence, just like Abrams. Bevin lost the Kentucky race not because Democrats skewed the results, but because he was so deeply unpopular among his own red-leaning electorate that they chose a Democrat instead.” Kaylee McGhee, Washington Examiner “Democrats watched to their dismay as the political reaction to Barack Obama’s polarizing governance cost them the House, most governorships and state legislatures, and finally the Senate and the White House. Republicans are now experiencing the reverse effect under President Trump… This turnout trend has now continued for three Novembers, and Republicans who try to explain it away are fooling themselves. The GOP under Mr. Trump is losing more college-educated suburban voters, especially women, than it is gaining rural voters or working-class former Democrats… “The fair judgment a year from Election Day in 2020 is that Mr. Trump is highly vulnerable in his bid for a second term. He could benefit if the economy rebounds from its recent 2% rate of growth, and perhaps Democrats bent on impeachment will overreach. But Mr. Trump may need Democrats to nominate an opponent whose agenda is far enough to the left to scare suburban voters who are tired of the daily melodrama of the Trump Presidency.” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal “A down-on-its-heels, opioid-ravaged, working-class, alienated electorate found its champion in Trump… Trump has made Trump voters, but not Republicans, out of working-class independents and Democrats, and he has made Democratic voters out of independents and Republicans. Trump has also motivated Democrats to unprecedented levels. The net effect is a massive shift of the electorate towards Democrats… “The results in 2018 and 2019 don’t mean the white working-class independents have soured on Trump. They mean that the populist love of Trump was never a love of the GOP… For Trump, it may look like an even trade: lose the wealthy whites and gain the working-class whites. But for the rest of his party, it’s one-sided: lose the wealthy whites but don’t gain anything.” Timothy P. Carney, Washington Examiner It’s worth noting that “conservative ideas were much more popular when not associated with the Republican party. In Washington State, voters narrowly rejected bringing affirmative action back to state contracting and university admissions… “In Seattle, the self-proclaimed socialist city-council member appears to have lost her seat to a pro-business challenger. In Colorado, voters gave fiscal conservatives a big win by rejecting letting the state keep any tax revenues above the state spending cap, money that the state Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights currently guarantees as refunds to taxpayers. In Sussex County, N.J., voters approved, by a 2-to-1 margin, a referendum directing the local freeholder board to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Washington, Colorado, New Jersey — notice these are places where Republican candidates have had no luck lately.)” Jim Geraghty, National Review On the bright side… 650 people formed a human chain to move children’s books from one library to another. Washington Post Our volunteer team spends hours each night scanning the news, fact-checking, and debating one another, so your 5 minutes each morning can be well spent. If you’ve found value in our work, we welcome you to help sustain our efforts and expand our reach. Any support you can provide is greatly appreciated! Share Tweet Forward Sign Up Here Copyright © 2019 The Flip Side, All rights reserved. You can unsubscribe from this list here. |
LARRY J. SABATo’S CRYSTAL BALL
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IN THIS ISSUE: – Election 2019: Another Win for Democrats in Virginia Pushes State Further off the Competitive Map – Outside of D.C., Governors Remain Popular in the States ELECTION 2019: ANOTHER WIN FOR DEMOCRATS IN VIRGINIA PUSHES STATE FURTHER OFF THE COMPETITIVE MAP Bevin blows it in Kentucky; Mississippi remains out of reach for Democrats; mixed signals confirm larger trends By Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman Sabato’s Crystal Ball |
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KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Virginia moves from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic in our Electoral College ratings in the wake of a fourth straight November that has broken in the Democrats’ favor. — Gov. Matt Bevin’s (R) apparent loss in Kentucky is more of a personal repudiation of him than a broader loss for Republicans. — Mississippi remains elusive for Democrats, and other results nationally represented a mixed bag for the parties. Table 1: Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings change State Old Rating New Rating Virginia Leans Democratic Likely Democratic Virginia: The New Democratic Dominion In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Virginia by five points while winning the national popular vote by two (and losing the Electoral College). This was the most Democratic the state had voted for president, relative to the nation, since FDR was in the White House. The following year, Democrats held all three statewide offices by surprisingly large margins, and made an eye-popping gain of 15 net seats in the state House of Delegates, coming within a drawing in a tied race from forging a 50-50 tie in the body. Last year, Democrats netted three U.S. House seats and Sen. Tim Kaine (D) was reelected easily. And then on Tuesday night, Democrats netted what appears to be a half-dozen seats in the state House and two in the state Senate to win total control of state government in Richmond. Are you sensing a theme? We are. Virginia was trending Democratic even before Donald Trump, with the party boosted by growing shares of Democratic-leaning demographic groups in the state’s three big urban areas (Northern Virginia, Greater Richmond, and Hampton Roads). And since Trump arrived on the scene, the state’s Democratic trend has continued, as once-Republican suburban areas have moved ever-further to the left. There has been a lot of debate this week in election circles about the presidential election, now one year away. Two respected polls fueled this debate: In one, a poll of six key swing states from the New York Times Upshot/Siena College, Trump was locked in close races against the top-polling Democrats (Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren), with Biden performing the best against Trump and Warren the worst. A national ABC News/Washington Post poll, meanwhile, showed all three Democrats trouncing Trump, with leads ranging from 14-17 points. Even if one grants that Trump is likely to again run better in the most decisive states than he does nationally, these polls don’t really tell the same story. But what we do feel fairly confident saying is that 1. Trump is a clear underdog to win the national popular vote, if not the Electoral College, and 2. Recent results suggest that Virginia should once again vote more Democratic than the nation. So we’re moving the state further toward the Democrats for president, shifting it from Leans Democratic in our ratings to Likely Democratic. In terms of the actual results, Democrats ended up doing better in the state House of Delegates than the state Senate, although a lot of this was because the close races broke toward the Republicans in the Senate but more toward the Democrats in the House. It appears that the Democrats won only 21 of the 40 state Senate seats, creating just a narrow majority, but their two pickups were by nearly 10 points apiece, and no Democratic incumbent was seriously threatened. Meanwhile, Republicans held on to four of the 19 seats they apparently won by margins ranging from less than a point to about 4.5 points. In the House of Delegates, a court-ordered new district map clearly helped Democrats: Four of their six apparent pickups came in seats that got a lot more Democratic in redistricting. That said, Democrats also picked up two additional seats that were unaffected by redistricting, and they only needed two seats to take control. So the redistricting clearly helped, although perhaps Democrats could have won the House on the old map: It’s hard to know definitively one way or the other and a statewide campaign on the old map would have been run differently than the one run on the new one. Speaking of redistricting, newly-empowered Democrats now face a test on that question. Last year, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed the first reading of a proposed state constitutional amendment that would establish an independent redistricting commission. The new Democratic-controlled General Assembly will have to decide whether to pass it a second time, which would trigger a statewide vote on the commission next November, or scuttle it and exercise gerrymandering power themselves in 2021. It’s a test of principle for Democrats, who have nationally called for nonpartisan redistricting as a response to aggressive GOP gerrymandering in many key states following the 2010 elections. Richmond will be a hotbed of activity early next year as legislators descend on the former capital of the Confederacy with an agenda that will be as liberal as any that the once solidly-conservative state has ever seen. But by the time the presidential general election begins in earnest, the national focus seems very likely to be elsewhere. If Virginia is truly in play for president next year, something has gone wrong for Democrats. Kentucky: Bevin’s flop obscures GOP trend “He’s such a pain in the a–, but that’s what you want.” — Donald Trump at a Monday night rally in Lexington for Gov. Matt Bevin (R-KY). Well, actually, they didn’t. In the upset of the evening, Bevin apparently lost to state Attorney General Andy Beshear (D), 49.2%-48.8%. Beshear was powered to victory by an anti-Bevin vote in ancestrally Democratic counties in eastern Kentucky combined with big margins in Louisville and Lexington and a good showing in Northern Kentucky (which features suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio). In our preview last week, we flagged Campbell County in Northern Kentucky as a must-win for Beshear; he won it by five points, and he carried its neighbor, Kenton, as well. So Beshear cobbled together enough of a coalition of old Democratic areas of Kentucky and newer ones to beat Bevin, who arguably is the most unpopular governor in the United States. Bevin has not yet conceded and may try to contest the result. Breaking the state down into congressional districts, Bevin lost ground in five of the state’s six districts (Map 1). The Louisville-based 3rd District — where both candidates hail from — saw the largest swing to Beshear. In the 2015 gubernatorial race, then-state Attorney General Jack Conway (D) carried it by a handsome 21.5%; this week, Beshear took that up to an outright punishing 37.4% margin. Map 1: Kentucky 2015 – 2019 gubernatorial change by congressional district Districts 2, 4 and 6 are all anchored in metro areas (Bowling Green/Owensboro, Cincinnati, and Lexington, respectively), but also take in broad rural swaths. They all swung at least 5% to Beshear. Of these, Bevin’s showing in KY-6 may be his most embarrassing. President Trump campaigned there the night before the election — only for the district to move 11% more Democratic, greater than the overall statewide shift. Outside of the major Bluegrass State metros, its two most rural districts saw a divergence. In western Kentucky, the governor slightly improved in the 1st Congressional District. Interestingly, this seat is held by Rep. James Comer (R), who nearly beat Bevin in the 2015 gubernatorial primary because of his strength in this region. Earlier this cycle, Comer considered running for a rematch — in hindsight, had he followed through and won the primary, he would have been a much clearer favorite to keep the governorship red. KY-1 is 63% rural by composition, so it’s exactly the type of area that has drifted rightward in the Trump era. In a vacuum, the Appalachian KY-5 would have been susceptible to the same trends. However, state Rep. Rocky Adkins (D), who hails from the region, likely proved to be an effective surrogate for Beshear in the rural east, and the region also has some clearer ancestral pockets of Democratic strength. Bevin also performed weakly in this area in his primary, a warning sign that manifested itself in the general election. The race appeared very close but most expected Kentucky’s Republicanism to carry Bevin over the finish line. But he couldn’t dig his way out of the hole he dug for himself through his abrasive personality and battles with key constituencies, namely teachers. The statewide turn to the GOP outside of the gubernatorial race was evident down the ballot: Beshear was the only statewide Democratic candidate who won, and Republicans won open-seat races for secretary of state and attorney general in addition to holding the rest of the other statewide offices. Those interpreting Beshear’s victory as a major warning sign for unpopular Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) need to reckon with what happened in these other races, as well as the fact that McConnell will be running as a federal incumbent, not a state-level one, and that he will be sharing the ballot with Donald Trump, who still should win statewide in a landslide. We continue to rate the Senate race as Likely Republican. In the end, Bevin’s nationalization message in the closing days of the campaign couldn’t quite get him a second term. Our sense is that the problem was less the message than the messenger. A Republican running statewide in Kentucky these days has to try to lose. Bevin tried for four years, and succeeded. That said, the president chose to stake his personal capital on Bevin through his Election Eve appearance. From that standpoint, the result is a loss for the president, even though we don’t think it has broader significance beyond Kentucky. Mississippi stays Republican, mixed signals elsewhere Of the three big races on Tuesday night, Mississippi seemed like the best bet to stick with the Republicans, and it did in the gubernatorial race. Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves (R) beat state Attorney General Jim Hood (D) by a little less than six points. That margin was a little bit closer than but fairly similar to last year’s Senate special election, when Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) beat former Rep. Mike Espy (D) by seven points. Compared to Espy’s 2018 showing, Hood posted modest gains in metro Jackson and along the Gulf Coast, but couldn’t match Espy’s numbers in the heavily African-American delta, or near the Memphis exurbs (Map 2). Hood’s most acute improvements came in his home region, the northeast, but the area cast relatively few votes and Hood himself took under 25% in most counties there. Trump rallied in the northeast late last week, and here the evidence is better for the president’s argument that he helped his party (as opposed to the Kentucky rally in Lexington). In order to make up Espy’s deficit, Hood needed to improve on Espy’s showing in more places than he did. Map 2: Change from 2018 to 2019 in Mississippi Republicans also won the open attorney general’s office held by Hood — this was the first time the party won that race since Reconstruction. Other results across the nation showed the confirmation of larger trends, with suburban areas moving more toward Democrats and other kinds of places, specifically rural and/or white-working class ones, trending Democratic. We aren’t going to offer a total rundown of every race, but here are some potentially illuminating results: — Democrats did well in local races in some suburban counties in greater Philadelphia, helping solidify an anti-Republican trend in those places, but Republicans made some local gains in some ancestrally Democratic western Pennsylvania counties that have been trending Republican at the federal level. — In New Jersey, Republicans won a special election for the state Senate seat previously held by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D, NJ-2) in South Jersey and also captured the Trump-won district’s two state assembly seats. While New Jersey as a whole is trending Democratic, Republicans made up some ground in the state legislature and confirmed the GOP trend in this part of the state. Meanwhile, Van Drew’s decision to vote against the Trump impeachment inquiry last week — he was one of only two House Democrats to do so — makes even more sense now, given the political terrain he is trying to defend. — Democrats won a special election to capture a previously-GOP held seat in the Missouri House of Representatives contained within the suburban U.S. House district held by Rep. Ann Wagner (R, MO-2), who had a tougher race than she is accustomed to in 2018. Missouri itself is moving toward the Republicans, but again we see some signs of GOP weakness in the suburbs. Overall, the changes reflected what we’ve been seeing over the past few years, although there are of course exceptions on any Election Day. These results don’t necessarily have predictive value for the future, but they do show the persistence of the big-picture factors that have been driving the nation’s political geography. One thing we ask readers to consider is this: Don’t just focus on the trends that benefit your respective political party. Republicans have reason to be worried about big-city suburbs with higher levels of formal educational attainment, but Democrats have reason to be worried about rural and white working-class areas with lower levels of college attainment. We sometimes feel like the former development gets more widespread attention, but the latter one matters quite a bit, too. On to 2020! |
| OUTSIDE OF D.C., GOVERNORS REMAIN POPULAR IN THE STATES |
| By Louis Jacobson Senior Columnist, Sabato’s Crystal Ball |
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KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Even as public approval of President Trump and Congress remain in the basement, 50-state opinion polling shows that Americans as a whole are pretty enamored of their governors. — In fact, 47 of the nation’s 50 governors are outperforming Trump in their states, and this group includes governors from all regions and partisan affiliations, and in states of every political leaning. — The governors, Democratic and Republican alike, seem to have pulled off this trick by eschewing the divisive rhetoric of Donald Trump and taking a pragmatic approach to governing. Why are the governors so popular? If you just look at polls measuring approval for the president and Congress, you’d assume that Americans are in a profound funk. According to the FiveThirtyEight.com polling average, President Donald Trump has been mired at roughly 40% approval and 54% disapproval for about two years. Approval of Congress only recently rose above 20% following seven years when it was mostly even lower, according to the RealClearPolitics.com average. But when you turn away to the states, this portrait becomes significantly less bleak. Net approval rates for governors are shockingly good, given our era’s widespread political grumbling. Consider the most recent survey work by Morning Consult. While other independent outlets conduct gubernatorial approval surveys, only Morning Consult does so in all 50 states, providing the most standardized way to look at the governors. In the company’s third-quarter 2019 surveys, just six of the 50 governors are “underwater” — that is, they have a disapproval percentage that’s higher than their approval percentage. Two of those six are Republicans: Jim Justice of West Virginia (-5 percentage points) and Matt Bevin of Kentucky (-19 points). The four Democrats are Kate Brown of Oregon (-12 points), Ned Lamont of Connecticut (-13 points), David Ige of Hawaii (-14 points) and Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island (-20). Bevin paid for his low approval rating on Tuesday night, losing his reelection bid narrowly. However, the four unpopular Democrats all won just last November: Brown, Ige, and Raimondo won second terms, while Lamont held Connecticut as an unpopular Democratic incumbent was leaving office. Justice, elected as a Democrat in 2016 before switching parties in 2017, is up for reelection next year. In other words, 88% of governors today are above water. That’s an improvement from the 78% who were above water in the May 2016 Morning Consult gubernatorial surveys. More to the point, that’s a lot better than Trump is doing nationally. We can compare the governors and Trump on approval because Morning Consult also does regular surveys of Trump’s approval ratings in the 50 states. In the most recent numbers, Morning Consult found Trump above water in 19 states (38%) and underwater in 31 (62%). Putting these two measures together, we can gauge how much more popular the nation’s governors are than Trump. Here’s a breakdown, running from the biggest gubernatorial leads over Trump to the few governors who are doing worse than Trump is: Table 1: Approval ratings of governors compared to Trump |
| Note: Democratic governors are shaded blue, Republican governors are shaded red. Source: Morning Consult The first thing to note: Only three governors are faring worse in their states than Trump. One of the three, Rhode Island’s Raimondo, is doing just a point worse than Trump, so that’s a virtual tie. The other two are unpopular governors in solidly red states where Trump continues to poll well: Bevin in Kentucky and Justice in West Virginia. In all, then, 47 governors — 94% of all governors now serving — have higher approval ratings in their state than Trump does. And some of them are leading Trump by a whopping margin. Six governors are outpacing Trump in their states by at least 40 percentage points: Republicans Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Larry Hogan of Maryland, Phil Scott of Vermont, and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, plus Democrats John Carney of Delaware and Jay Inslee of Washington state. Not surprisingly, these are all mostly solidly blue states, meaning that the comparison starts with an especially low approval score for the president. However, the list of governors besting Trump in their states is much longer than just these six. Another nine governors are outpacing Trump by between 30 and 39 percentage points. Another 19 are outpacing him by between 20 and 29 percentage points. And another 13 are outpacing him by between one and 19 percentage points. It should also be noted that this is a bipartisan bunch. Among those with net approval ratings that exceed Trump’s by 30 points or more, the partisan breakdown is nine Republicans and six Democrats. Indeed, seemingly every type of governor has shown an ability to outperform Trump by a large margin. — Moderate Republicans governing Hillary Clinton-won states who have been able to separate their brand from Trump’s (this includes Baker, Hogan, Scott, and Sununu). — Democrats representing solidly blue states where Trump is deeply unpopular (Carney, Inslee, Gavin Newsom of California, Andrew Cuomo of New York, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Phil Murphy of New Jersey). — Republican governors who are even more popular than Trump is in their solidly red states (Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, Gary Herbert of Utah, Eric Holcomb of Indiana, Bill Lee of Tennessee, and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska). — First-term Democrats representing battleground states (Tony Evers in Wisconsin, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, and Roy Cooper in North Carolina). — And even a few moderate Democrats governing red states (Laura Kelly of Kansas and Steve Bullock of Montana). How have these governors managed to do it? We asked this question of political observers in these states. We found three common themes: They’ve taken advantage of the strong economy. Most governors have seen their popularity benefit from today’s good economic conditions to a greater degree than Trump’s has, because they aren’t laden with his non-economic baggage. “Governors, like presidents typically do, get credit for the state of the economy in their state,” said Andrew E. Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. This takes shape in a virtuous cycle, in which a booming economy translates into higher tax revenues, which in turn provides more budgetary resources to enact policies that make voters happy, Smith said. They’ve followed the old Michael Dukakis motto: competence, not ideology. The defining characteristic of Trump’s presidency has been the aggressive prosecution of the culture wars. Not so for the nation’s governors. The quartet of popular northeastern Republican governors has certainly followed this approach, but several Republican governors in solidly red states have also taken this advice to heart. In Idaho, for instance, Republican Brad Little has “tried to stick to something like a middle course in most controversial areas,” said Randy Stapilus, a journalist who covers Idaho politics. In similarly red Arkansas, Republican Asa Hutchinson has been “thoroughly pragmatic in maintaining the state’s Medicaid expansion and stymying some of the most conservative legislators’ efforts on social issues,” said Hendrix College political scientist Jay Barth. And in Oklahoma, Republican Kevin Stitt has “typified the Generation X mantra of ‘just hand us the tool box and we’ll fix it,’” said University of Oklahoma political scientist Keith Gaddie. “He’s a businessman who ran a positive campaign and has engaged in substantive problems.” The same approach has worked for some Democratic governors, too. In Kansas, for instance, Democrat Laura Kelly is “low-key and a problem-solver,” said Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political scientist. Reach beyond your base and don’t gratuitously offend voters. Trump has aggressively ignored this advice, but with the retirement of controversial Maine Gov. Paul LePage in 2018, there are few governors who seem to enjoy stirring the pot just because they can. Consider Republican Greg Abbott in Texas. Despite being a credentialed conservative, he has “made a concerted effort to reach out to groups outside of the GOP base, in particular Latinos,” said Rice University political scientist Mark P. Jones. Abbott’s leadership style “is relatively low-key and his demeanor is calm, collected, and thoughtful,” Jones said. “His rhetoric is generally free of the type of polarizing hyperbole that Trump is famous for. A large majority of Texans view him as the governor of all Texans, not just of Republican Texans.” Stitt has taken the same approach in neighboring Oklahoma, Gaddie said. “He is not divisive,” he said. “Style matters.” Of course, there’s one possible explanation for the gubernatorial edge over federal officeholders: That the political narrative has become so focused on national politics that, for most voters, state governance is flying under the radar. In other words, many governors may be experiencing the benefits of voters’ benign neglect. “None of the governors who are above water tweet constantly, and none of them appear on their local news with anything like the frequency of Donald Trump on the national news,” said veteran Georgia political journalist Tom Baxter. Louis Jacobson is a Senior Columnist for Sabato’s Crystal Ball. He is also the senior correspondent at the fact-checking website PolitiFact and was senior author of the 2016, 2018, and 2020 editions of the Almanac of American Politics and a contributing writer for the 2000 and 2004 editions. Out Now: The Blue Wave, the UVA Center for Politics’ book on the 2018 election Our new book on the 2018 midterm elections, The Blue Wave: The 2018 Midterms and What They Mean for the 2020 Elections, is now available from Rowman and Littlefield. Edited by University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato and Crystal Ball managing editor Kyle Kondik, The Blue Wave features top journalists, academics, and analysts who explore the 2018 midterm from all angles and look ahead to the monumental presidential election coming in 2020. Use code RLFANDF30 for 30% off at Rowman and Littlefield’s website. The Blue Wave features the following contributors and chapters: — Larry J. Sabato: The Blue Wave: Trump at Midterm — Alan I. Abramowitz: The Trump Effect: The 2018 Midterm Election as a Referendum on a Polarizing President — Rhodes Cook: The Primaries: Democrats Shine in the Shadow of Trump — David Byler: Humpty Dumpty’s Fall: How Trump’s Winning Presidential Coalition Broke Down in 2018 — Kyle Kondik: The House: Where the Blue Wave Hit the Hardest — James Hohmann: The Senate: The Republicans’ Bright Spot — Madelaine Pisani: The Governors: Democratic Wave Falls Short of a Wipeout — Michael Toner and Karen Trainer: The Money Wars: Emerging Campaign Finance Trends and Their Impact on 2018 and Beyond — Emily C. Singer: Women Rule: The Surge of Women in Congress — Theodore R. Johnson: Hindsight in 2020: Black Voting Behavior and the Next Presidential Election — Matt Barreto, Gary Segura, and Albert Morales: The Brown Tide and the Blue Wave in 2018 — Diana Owen: Presidential Media and the Midterm Elections — Joshua T. Putnam: Foresight is 2020: New Features of the Democratic Delegate Selection Rules — Sean Trende: Was 2018 a Wave Election? Read the fine print Learn more about the Crystal Ball and find out how to contact us here. Sign up to receive Crystal Ball e-mails like this one delivered straight to your inbox. Use caution with Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and remember: “He who lives by the Crystal Ball ends up eating ground glass!” |
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THE WASHINGTON POST MORNING MIX
| Sign up for this newsletter Read online The morning’s most important stories, curated by Post editors. Trump wanted Barr to hold news conference saying no laws were broken in call with Ukrainian leader Attorney General William P. Barr ultimately declined to do so, leaving President Trump feeling frustrated, people familiar with the matter said. Trump’s irritation comes as Barr and the Justice Department have sought some distance from the White House, particularly on matters relating to Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY ● By Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Carol Leonnig ● Read more » Ambassador’s vivid testimony offers window into impeachment inquiry’s first public hearing The release of the account by acting ambassador William B. Taylor Jr., in which he described a “Washington snake pit” of bad actors who were willing to cut off aid to Ukraine, came as Democrats said that the first public impeachment hearings will be held next Wednesday. By John Hudson, Mike DeBonis, Karoun Demirjian and Elise Viebeck ● Read more » Jeff Sessions plans to run for former Senate seat in Ala. The wild card in the race will be President Trump and whether he will weigh in against his former attorney general and in favor of other Republicans who have already announced their candidacies. By Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey and Sean Sullivan ● Read more » Election results reassure House Democrats as they pursue impeachment inquiry of Trump Tuesday’s wins for Democrats, especially in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Northern Virginia, strengthened their political spines. @PKCapitol | Analysis ● By Paul Kane ● Read more » Dozens of audio messages reveal a family’s struggle to piece together a massacre in Mexico The WhatsApp group chats were normally a place for family photos and stories. On this day, they turned into live feeds of the chaos unfolding in Mexico. By Brittany Shammas ● Read more » ADVERTISEMENT Opinions Trump is in trouble. Tuesday’s elections are proof. By E.J. Dionne ● Read more » Republicans in Virginia are toast — because they toasted themselves By Editorial Board ● Read more » Are Bill Taylor’s notebooks Trump’s Nixon tapes? Impeachment Diary ● By Dana Milbank ● Read more » The Senate must not legitimize the House’s sham impeachment By Hugh Hewitt ● Read more » ADVERTISEMENT Women were the first Trump whistleblowers By Natasha Stoynoff ● Read more » Why our oldest law could drive impeachment By James Comey ● Read more » More News China hints at progress in U.S. trade talks, raising hopes of a breakthrough Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said that simultaneous tariff reductions should be part of a phase-one deal. By Gerry Shih ● Read more » Trump administration sues drugmaker Gilead Sciences over patent on Truvada for HIV prevention The government won patents for Truvada for PrEP in 2015, but Gilead contends they are invalid. By Christopher Rowland ● Read more » Warren faces new line of attack: That she’s angry and antagonistic. Allies say that plays on gender stereotypes. The new attacks, marking a more vigorous phase of the race, get at something far beyond her policy positions and into one of the most fraught areas for a female candidate: Is she likable? Campaign 2020 ● By Matt Viser and Annie Linskey ● Read more » Ex-Twitter employees charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by digging into the accounts of kingdom critics The case raises concerns about the ability of tech firms to protect users’ data from repressive governments. By Ellen Nakashima and Greg Bensinger ● Read more » Rapper T.I. tells podcast hosts he takes his teen to the gynecologist to confirm her hymen is ‘still intact’ United Nations agencies — including the World Health Organization, UN Human Rights and UN Women — have said virginity testing is inhumane and has no scientific or clinical basis. By Michael Brice-Saddler ● Read more » What Tuesday’s election results could mean for 2020 Robert Costa with the major takeaways from Tuesday’s elections. Abby Ohlheiser explains how a tracking app is transforming parent-child relationships. Plus, Rick Noack on what a 10-year-old burger says about capitalism. Post Reports | Listen Now ● By The Washington Post ● Read more » We think you’ll like this newsletter Check out Lean & Fit for expert advice on how to eat right, get lean and stay fit, including curated healthy recipes every Wednesday. Sign up » |
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THE RESURGENT
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The Resurgent’s Morning Briefing for November 7,2019
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Good morning, Here is all the news conservatives need to know to start their day. At 4pm ET, you can catch me on radio to bring you up to speed on developments throughout the day. You can listen live here. The Whistleblower Needs to Publicly Testify On January 30, 2017, Mark S. Zaid tweeted: That was less than ten days after Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to President Trump at the inauguration. How convenient that Zaid is now representing the whistleblower. I have an extraordinary number of friends who tell me the whistleblower no longer matters. They […] The post The Whistleblower Needs to Publicly Testify appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Jen Gunter should stick to what she’s good at…and it isn’t medicine Simply based on what I’ve seen of her commentaries and online sloganeering, I would have never believed you if you’d have told me that Dr. Jen Gunter was an actual medical doctor. Even if you said it with a straight face. And to be completely candid, even after seeing her credentials online – including a […] The post Jen Gunter should stick to what she’s good at…and it isn’t medicine appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Bill Taylor Transcript Links Trump Directly To Quid Pro Quo For Aid The transcript of Ambassador Bill Taylor’s testimony is the latest to be released by House Democrats. The post Bill Taylor Transcript Links Trump Directly To Quid Pro Quo For Aid appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Impeachment or Election Here are my thoughts: The post Impeachment or Election appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Here’s What Happened in Virginia (Explained) Like many Republican voters in Virginia, I was very disappointed to see our General Assembly flip to Democrat control last night. Yet, it didn’t surprise me. It was to be expected. Despite gifts in the forms of scandals that should have implicated our Governor, LG, and AG—blackface/infanticide, sexual assault, and blackface, respectively—the Republicans didn’t seize […] The post Here’s What Happened in Virginia (Explained) appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » WATCH: There Are Plenty Of Warning Signs For The GOP But Bevin Isn’t One Of Them Here’s my opening monologue on radio today. It’s important to understand what really happened last night in Kentucky. The post WATCH: There Are Plenty Of Warning Signs For The GOP But Bevin Isn’t One Of Them appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Advice from the Last Person Who Should Hand it Out to the Dems Clearly Hillary didn’t learn a thing in 2016. The post Advice from the Last Person Who Should Hand it Out to the Dems appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Democrats Eke Out Victory In Kentucky Governor Race Republican Matt Bevin refuses to concede. The post Democrats Eke Out Victory In Kentucky Governor Race appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » LIVE: The Erick Erickson Show – Election Day Problems For The GOP The Erick Erickson Show is live! Here’s the plan for today: Hour 1 Election Day problems for the GOP Not Bevin VA goes to Dems Trendlines still not good for the GOP But Upshot data 2/3 of Trump voters voted D in 2018, will vote Trump 2020 There really are swing voters Major GOP warning […] The post LIVE: The Erick Erickson Show – Election Day Problems For The GOP appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Sen. Josh Hawley: TikTok Allows China To Build Profiles of American Children The post Sen. Josh Hawley: TikTok Allows China To Build Profiles of American Children appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Recent Items: Remember, you can listen to the Erick Erickson Show anytime and anywhere via WSB Radio, iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundcloud. As always, you can find pretty much anything and everything I’m writing about throughout the day via The Resurgent. Thanks for reading and tuning in. Erick Erickson THE RESURGENT Facebook Twitter Instagram Copyright © 2019 The Resurgent Media Group, LLC, All rights reserved. unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences |
AXIOS
By Mike Allen
☕ Good Thursday morning. Today’s Smart Brevity™ count: 1,352 words … 5 minutes.
🇨🇳 Breaking: China’s Ministry of Commerce said Beijing and the U.S. have agreed to roll back tariffs on each other’s goods in phases as they work toward a deal. (Bloomberg)
1 big thing: Warren bets the White House on Medicare for All
Elizabeth Warren speaks last month in Norfolk, Va. Photo: Kristen Zeis/The Virginian-Pilot via AP
Elizabeth Warren, who rose to the top with big liberal bets, is banking a big slice of her presidential run on full-throated support for Medicare for All.
- Why it matters: Warren is taking a beating on social media after claiming middle-class Americans won’t pay higher taxes to fund health care coverage fully paid for by taxpayers, according to data from NewsWhip provided exclusively to Axios’ Neal Rothschild.
- At the same time, her poll numbers nationally are slipping.
Numerous prominent Democrats have told us President Trump will feast on Warren’s plan to eliminate private insurance to force everyone onto Medicare.
- They worry she has no wiggle room to backtrack if she wins the nomination because her entire reputation is wrapped around not buckling on big debates like health care.
Of the 50 most engaging online stories (likes, shares, comments) over the last two weeks about Warren’s plan to pay for Medicare for All, 70% were negative, according to the NewsWhip data.
- Criticism about how to pay for the plan has been accompanied by a rapid descent in the polls. After briefly overtaking Joe Biden atop the 2020 Democratic polling average on Oct. 8, Warren has tumbled and now trails Biden by 7.2 points.
The state of play: A Yahoo Finance article from last month that calculates the taxes necessary to pay for Medicare for All was the year’s hottest online article related to Warren (820,000 interactions).
- The criticism picked up steam in the wake of her announcement of how to pay for the plan, which requires an additional $20.5 trillion of federal spending.
- Go deeper: See past editions of our 2020 Attention Tracker here.
2. Facebook, Google may tighten political ads
Under pressure, Google and Facebook are both mulling tighter political ad policies, sources tell Axios’ Sara Fischer.
- There’s no indication at this point that either company will stop running political ads. Rather, both are weighing policy changes that have been floated as compromise ideas, like limiting micro-targeting or disclosing more info about the advertiser.
Why it matters: Google and Facebook are by far the two biggest online ad firms in the U.S. Presidential candidates have spent well over $50 million on both platforms this year.
- Changes to the platforms’ policies could affect that race, as well as hundreds of others at the state and local levels.
- Hundreds of issue advertisers, like nonprofits that advocate for climate change or gun reform, could also be affected.
Between the lines: Both companies are likely more worried about pressure coming from Democrats than from Republicans.
3. Trump tops predecessors for staff exits
Data: Partnership for Public Service, Center for Presidential Transition. Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios
President Trump has lost 41% of the Cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries and undersecretaries appointed in his first year in office, Axios’ Stef Kight reports from new data by the Partnership for Public Service‘s Center for Presidential Transition.
- Why it matters: This far outpaces the turnover rate for recent predecessors at the same stage of their presidencies — and underscores the challenges Trump would face in recruiting a new stable of top officials if he wins re-election.
The center looked at historical turnover data for high-level positions requiring Senate confirmation from Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, each of whom was elected to a second term.
- Each had lower turnover levels than Trump at this point in their tenure, measured across 15 Cabinet-level departments.
- Go deeper: Every high-profile Trump administration departure.
4. Pic du jour
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
President Trump pretends to check his watch after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) mentions an upcoming Senate vote, during an East Room event yesterday about judicial confirmations.
5. Bob Iger: “Too late to worry now”
Courtesy Bloomberg Businessweek
Ahead of next week’s launch of the Disney+ streaming service, Disney CEO Bob Iger, 68, tells Devin Leonard for a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story: “This is, no question about it, the future of media.”
- “Iger says the wake-up call came one day in August 2015, when he revealed that Disney was feeling the effects of cord cutting — people canceling their cable memberships and signing up for streaming services — and that ESPN had suffered modest cable subscription losses. Disney’s shares tumbled 9%. He’d known the stock would take a hit, but not that it would fall that far.”
Asked what Disney+ means for his legacy, he smiles and says:
- “Too late to worry now.”
6. Jon Meacham: Next week’s “singular American moment”
Courtesy TIME
Jon Meacham writes for TIME that the start of public impeachment hearings next Wednesday, Nov. 13, “marks the beginning of a test for the country”:
As the debate over impeachment and removal unfolds, the nation’s immediate and long-term future depends on whether Americans will be guided by reason rather than passion, fact rather than faith, evidence rather than tribe. …
Here we are, … trapped in a time of demagoguery, reflexive partisanship and a Hobbesian world of constant and total political warfare. We know all the factors: the return of the kind of partisan media that shaped us in the 18th and 19th centuries; relentless gerrymandering that has produced few swing congressional districts; the allure of reality-TV programming that has blurred lines between entertainment and governance. …
The fate of this presidency, of the ensuing elections and of our true course lies in two sets of hands. The first is the House and the Senate, the second the electorate that will determine the outcome of the 2020 campaign.
The past and the present tell us that a demagogue can thrive only when a substantial portion of the demos — the people — want him to.
7. RBG questions confidential #MeToo agreements
Justice Ginsburg sits in her chambers in 2002. Photo: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images
A new book on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she hopes that non-disclosure agreements, which have come under fire in sexual misconduct cases, “will not be enforced by the courts,” AP’s Maryclaire Dale reports.
- In “Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law,” out this week, the 86-year-old feminist icon questions whether the #MeToo movement will render such secrecy clauses obsolete.
- Why it matters: Several women, after signing NDAs, had to take financial and legal risks to speak out about their encounters with male predators.
The other side: Some lawyers who represent women today in sexual misconduct cases, including Debra Katz and Gloria Allred, said NDAs are essential.
- “Employers would not be willing to pay the kind of settlement that they pay now if they believe that all other employees would know,” said Katz, who represented Christine Blasey Ford in her Senate testimony.
8. Pence is Trump’s retailer
Vice President Pence flies to New Hampshire today as part of an amped-up travel schedule as the White House tries to show it isn’t buckling under the strain of impeachment, Axios’ Alayna Treene reports.
- Flipping New Hampshire has been on President Trump’s wish list since he lost there in 2016 by a margin of less than a half a percentage point.
Why it matters: Pence chief of staff Marc Short told Axios, “When Trump does things, it’s a much larger footprint. He likes the large rallies and big fundraising events, but the V.P. will be deployed in markets large and small.”
Trump campaign officials tell Axios that Pence will focus on:
- The Midwest: One official said polling shows that Pence, as a former Indiana governor, greatly appeals to farmers and families in the Midwest.
- Evangelical Christians: Pence will again woo evangelicals and the Christian community, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told Axios.
- Suburban women: Second Lady Karen Pence will help.
9. Power shift: Europeans look to China as global partner
Emmanuel Macron shakes hands with Xi Jinping following a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing yesterday. Photo: Nicolas Asfouri/Pool via AP
Remember this photo!
When French President Emmanuel Macron wants to take European concerns to the world stage — climate, trade, Iran — he no longer calls Washington. He flies to Beijing, AP’s Sylvie Corbet reports from Paris.
- Why it matters: Macron’s visit to China this week suggests that the U.S. risks being sidelined on the global stage.
- One moment spoke volumes: Chinese President Xi Jinping sampled French wines, which the Trump administration recently slapped with heavy tariffs.
10. 1 fun thing
For the 40th anniversary of the Happy Meal, McDonald’s is bringing back some of its classic toys (available today through Monday), including:
- Cowboy McNugget, Fireman McNugget, Mail Carrier McNugget (1988)
- Hamburglar (1995)
- Furby (1999)
📬 Thanks for reading! Please tell a friend about AM/PM.
IJR
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| Daily Briefing Conservative News | Libertarian News | Commentary VISIT LibertyNation.com FROM OUR NEWSROOM Latest Impeachment Testimony – Silver Bullet or Damp Squib? By Mark Angelides Does William Taylor’s testimony condemn the president? Click Here What America’s Thinking Just 31% of Likely U.S. Voters favor ranked-choice voting in their local elections. The president earned a monthly job approval of 46% in October, down two points from 48% in September. Economic Index held steady at 139.4 in October, virtually unchanged from last month and still among all-time highs to date. An online survey finds that Clinton and Trump earn 45% support each among Likely U.S. Voters. Will Durham Investigation Tank Impeachment Efforts? By Jeff Charles Rumors of arrests by prosecutor John Durham may put impeachment process on shaky ground. Click Here Washington Whispers Coming down the pipeline: Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is cashing in on former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ expected Senate run in an effort to revive her flagging campaign. President Trump went after Sen. Elizabeth Warren at a Louisiana rally reviving her controversial “Pocahontas” nickname. The dog that assisted in the mission that led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi will soon visit the White House. Rand Paul blocked a resolution Wednesday, reaffirming the Senate’s support for whistleblower protections. Read One of Our Books By Liberty Nation Staff Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Uprising of the Common Man Click Here Your Daily Political Devotional A Glimpse at What’s Hot in the PolitisphereFar from being the open and transparent investigation House Speaker Nancy Pelosi assured the American public it would be, access in the impeachment inquiry has been curtailed, elected representatives have been refused entry, and a whole host of other issues that scupper 45 years of bipartisan cooperation. Rep. Jim Jordan took the Committee to task demanding to know why minority members could only read transcripts in the presence of majority members. Buttigieg: Big Government Makes You Free By Joe Schaeffer Platitude Pete pushes a Swamp on steroids. Click Here News Roundup We’ve Surfed The Web for You Set Money Free By John Stossel McConnell: Twitter Political Ad Ban Clears the Field for Elites Surging Warren gets ‘Squad’ member’s backing as she fends off Dem rivals, billionaires Majority of voters expect Trump to be reelected: Poll Three Cheers for Refugee Reduction By Michelle Malkin Illegals Crime Report: Violence Against Women By Kelli Ballard Girls and women suffer at the hand of male illegal aliens. Click Here WATCH NOW FEATURED LNTV LNTV: New Car Stop Rules for Police? Supreme Court Challenge – WATCH NOW! LNTV: Farage’s Fire and Fury Over Fake Brexit – WATCH NOW LNTV: Privacy Scandal at BYU? – WATCH NOW The Uprising Podcast: Running for Justice Check out one of our podcasts! Subscribe and get notified of new arrivals. SUBSCRIBE LNTV: Farage’s Fire and Fury Over Fake Brexit – WATCH NOW Check out one of our videos! View the latest Liberty Nation videos on YouTube. WATCH NOW |
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Donald Trump and The Art of Political Warfare
Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Over the past three decades far too many Republicans and Establishment Conservatives have acquiesced to the conventional wisdom that the American Left (i.e. the Democratic Party), are superior tacticians in the arena of political warfare. Read More… Kentucky’s Real Lesson for Conservatives Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Figure out how to play the game now, or we will lose in 2020. Read More… The Democrats’ Nomination is Hillary’s to Lose Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Be afraid, be very afraid. Barring some serious event in her life, Hillary Clinton likely will be nominated for President of the United States by the Democrat party in mid-July next year. Read More… Democrats Must Really Hate Women Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Have you noticed that the #MeToo movement is dead to Democrats these days? Read More… Harriet Blows Away Democratic Racial Myths Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Harriet Tubman, a lifelong Republican, led slaves to freedom with a gun in her hand. Read More… Orwellian Fear Reigns in Vermont Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am The Green Mountain State’s problems were not caused by Donald Trump, though contempt toward him has served Vermont’s Democrats (and Republican governor) quite well. Read More… Recent Blog Posts The plot to impeach Trump already is falling apart Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Schiff’s latest folly is just another maneuver in the coup plotters’ game plan. It all needs to end with Schiff’s Joe McCarthy-like self-immolation for his lies and for his crimes. Read more… MSM ecstatic over young Somali woman newly elected in Maine Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Desperately seeking the next AOC and Ilhan Omar Read more… Hillary Derangement Syndrome, or its 2020 equivalent Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Should the election go against Trump, the suspicions of voter fraud will motivate many thousands of Trump supporters to rebel. Read more… The reasons the IG report has been delayed will delight Trump supporters Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am The delay on the OIG FISA report is “partially” due to John Durham’s new Grand Jury activity–which can only mean that Durham is already taking testimony from persons named in IG Horowitz’s report Read more… Where were the whistleblowers on foreign policy during Obama’s terms? Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Somehow, during the Obama/Biden/Hillary/Kerry eight years we never heard of journalists, career diplomats, FBI, Justice, intelligence agencies and other Democrats being concerned much about any of Obama’s foreign policies. Read more… America should take a page from Israel’s book on Mexico cartels Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Time for our president to deploy American military assets to engage these cartel terrorists, just as we would if we had the survival instincts of our courageous Jewish allies. Read more… Turns out NJ mayor who complained about DHS questioning has history of jihad support Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am Social media posts show Prospect Park mayor Mohamed Khairullah’s sympathies with various Syrian jihadist groups. Read more… Killer Greens Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am The death rates inherent in leftist policies aren’t a bug, they’re a feature. Read more… Newcomers to the shining city Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am “And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” Read more… Remember when President Trump spoke of corruption in Puerto Rico? Nov 07, 2019 01:00 am The chickens come home to roost in Puerto Rico. Read more… Promise kept: Trump gets us the heck out of that expensive Paris climate accord Nov 06, 2019 01:00 am A bad treaty for America from the get-go. Check out Sen. John Barrasso’s op-ed explaining just why. Read more… FBI admits (or concocts) mind-boggling mistake on notes taken on General Flynn interview that resulted in guilty plea Nov 06, 2019 01:00 am “Somebody is lying. Maybe, probably, more than just one person.” Read more… In a huge, shocking story, a career diplomat was fired Nov 06, 2019 01:00 am Most of the media are giving huge coverage that a seemingly blameless career diplomat was fired by an evil president. Her thoughts on foreign policy should never be questioned. Read more… Message from Kentucky: Strong candidates matter Nov 06, 2019 01:00 am Not even a mighty Trump endorsement is quite enough to put a weak candidate over the top. Read more… Message from Virginia: Blue states emerge from expanding federal governments Nov 06, 2019 01:00 am Virginia’s been expanding a lot these past years with abundant federal bureaucrats, and now it’s gone completely blue. Read more… View this email in your browser American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. |
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CHICAGO TRIBUNE
| View In BrowserNovember 7, 2019chicagotribune.comDaywatch1Inside Pete Buttigieg’s Iowa surge: Loud crowds, strong ground game as he emerges as moderate alternative to Joe Biden in 2020THURSDAY, NOV 7The Midwestern mayor has not only caught Biden in the polls, but his campaign is better funded, has drawn larger and louder crowds at
events, and has shown signs of a more effective ground operation in a
state where the former vice president is making his third bid for the
White House. The question remains whether Buttigieg can turn that
momentum into permanent support ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa
caucuses on Feb. 3.2Three Chicago hospitals earn Ds for safety, while U. of C. hospital gets 16th consecutive ‘A’THURSDAY, NOV 7Three Chicago hospitals have earned D grades for patient safety —
though Illinois, as a whole, has moved up three spots and now ranks
11th in the country for hospital safety, according to a widely watched
analysis. The three Chicago hospitals that received Ds were Stroger
Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital and University of Illinois Hospital,
according to the nonprofit Leapfrog Group, which releases grades twice a
year.In all, 46 Illinois hospitals earned As; 19 got Bs; and 39 earned Cs. No facility earned a F. 3Buffalo Wild Wings CEO comes to Naperville to meet with community leaders, employees in wake of racial incidentTHURSDAY, NOV 7Buffalo Wild Wings is working with Naperville officials and community leaders to
learn from an Oct. 26 incident in which a party of 18 was asked to move
to different tables because a restaurant patron did not want to be
seated near black people, according to the company. At the center of the
controversy are two restaurant managers at the 75th Street restaurant
who asked the group of six adults and 12 children to move. Those
employees have since been terminated after an investigation by the company. The customer who made the request has been banned for life from all Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants.4Google close to finalizing massive 800,000-square-foot office expansion in Fulton Market districtTHURSDAY, NOV 7Google
plans to more than double its space in Chicago’s Fulton Market
district, creating enough room to have thousands of new workers in the
city. Mountain View, California-based Google is finalizing deals to occupy all of the space,
or about 800,000 square feet combined, in two buildings planned by
Chicago developer Sterling Bay, according to people familiar with the
plans.The highly anticipated Time Out Market will open this month in Fulton Market. Here are the final additions to its chef and restaurateur mix.Two more Chicago marijuana stores approved to sell recreational weed 5A new strain of HIV has been found for the first time in almost 20 years — by a team of scientists based in the Chicago suburbsTHURSDAY, NOV 7Scientist
Mary Rodgers spends her days tracking killers — elusive, constantly
mutating viruses that travel the globe and are responsible for illness
or death in millions of people. Rodgers and her team at Lake
County-based Abbott, along with co-authors at the University of
Missouri, announced Wednesday their discovery of the first new subtype of the HIV virus identified since 2000.6Mike
Adamle, the former Bears running back and sportscaster, deals with
slowly advancing dementia: ‘I’ll wake up one day, and there goes another
part of me’THURSDAY, NOV 7It
was the Bears’ 100th season celebration last summer in Rosemont. Mike
Adamle was with all the other former players gathered in a room, some
the same as always and others mere shadows with faraway eyes.“I’d
see this guy I played with and I’d hug him, and he’d hug me, and we’d
both walk off in different directions going, ‘Who the hell was that?’” recalled Adamle,
once an undersized running back and then a sportscaster. “I mean, it’s
funny, but it’s terrible. I’m just glad we’re addressing this now.” 7New Cubs TV network will air in Des Moines, but still no Marquee deal for Comcast Chicago viewersTHURSDAY, NOV 7The Marquee Sports Network reached an agreement with another cable provider to carry the new Cubs TV network in February, but most Chicago pay-TV subscribers remain in the dark — at least for now — as the planned Feb. 22 launch nears.Cubs season ticket holders will see an average price decrease of about 2.5% next year, according to the team.The Cubs have parted ways with longtime bullpen coach Lester Strode after 31 years in the organization. 8Beloved Little Village paleta vendor Fidencio Sanchez, who was at the center of a record-breaking GoFundMe, dies at 92THURSDAY, NOV 7A
Little Village paletero whose photo went viral in 2016 after a stranger
saw him pushing a cart of Mexican ice pops, leading to 17,000 people
donating a total of more than $380,000 for his family, died Wednesday morning at age 92, according to his granddaughter..advertisement Unsubscribe | Newsletters | Privacy Policy | Terms of ServiceCopyright © 2019 | Chicago Tribune | 160 N. Stetson Ave., Third Floor, Chicago, IL 60601ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this email because you are following the Daywatch newsletter. |
THE WASHINGTON POST MORNING MIX
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ROLL CALL
Morning Headlines
Without Beto O’Rourke, Texas Senate primary is ‘wide open’
Senate speculation in Texas is still expected to swirl around Democrats Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro until the Dec. 9 filing deadline. But absent a big-name candidate who is known statewide, the Democratic primary remains in flux with largely unknown contenders. Read More…
Gloom and doom in Louisiana: Trump warns of deep ‘depression’ if he loses in 2020
Using his typical brash rhetoric, President Donald Trump on Wednesday night warned a Louisiana rally crowd to expect economic gloom and doom if he is defeated next November. Read More…
Taylor testimony: 5 key points expected to make a comeback at public hearings
The newly released transcripts of October testimony from William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, give a window into the next phase of the impeachment inquiry. Taylor will be the first witness to return to Capitol Hill and testify in an open hearing Nov. 13. Read More…Click here to subscribe to Fintech Beat for the latest market and regulatory developments in finance and financial technology.
Jeff Sessions to run for Senate in Alabama again
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to run for his old Senate seat in Alabama, a source familiar with his plans said. Read More…
The second day in the case of a female Capitol Police officer who alleges she was fired on the basis of her gender provided details indicating the department failed to follow its own policies regarding the supervision and termination of new employees and allowed male officers who were caught sleeping on duty to remain on the force. Read More…
House Intelligence withdraws subpoena for key Ukraine witness
The House Intelligence Committee told a federal judge Wednesday that it has withdrawn its subpoena in the impeachment inquiry for former National Security Council official Charles Kupperman and does not plan to reissue it. Read More…
Trump, GOP senators throw themselves a party to celebrate judicial overhaul
President Donald Trump and Republican senators took a victory lap Wednesday to celebrate their push to put nearly 150 of their picks on federal benches from coast to coast. Read More…
Capitol Christmas tree almost ready to get lit!
The U.S. Capitol Christmas tree is ready to make its 1,800-mile journey to Capitol Hill, following a rigorous “Bachelor”-like selection process, complete with its own cutting ceremony. Read More…
Democrats lean into 2019 victories to build case for 2020
The day after a Democrat declared victory in the Kentucky governor’s race and Virginia voters gave full control of state government to the party’s legislative candidates, national Democrats were eager to spin those victories as a sign of good things to come in 2020. Read More…
Tuesday elections show Trump coattails are mostly rural, experts say
Tuesday’s election results show Republican candidates should be wary of nationalizing their races and the Trump campaign continues to hemorrhage voters that have long been under the GOP tent, political experts and strategists say. Read More…
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ADVERTISEMENT HIGHLIGHTS ‘Deep throat’: Whistleblower lawyer says client’s identity could remain unknown for decades ‘Gazillion-dollar error’: Iowa Democrats afraid Warren ‘Medicare for all’ plan could be boon for Trump ‘FAKE NEWS’: Pence team denies anonymous op-ed author claim about 25th Amendment Quid Pro No: Senate Republicans shrugging off Trump impeachment allegations Weeks of leaked witness testimony from the House impeachment investigation may have painted an unflattering picture of President Trump in the media, but it has failed to weaken his GOP wall in the Senate, where lawmakers have shrugged off the proceedings. Labor is helping Trump keep unilateral power to impose tariffs Organized labor is coming to President Trump’s defense in one area: preserving his ability to unilaterally impose tariffs. ‘There’ll always be a very large asterisk’: Ralph Northam unlikely to atone with liberal agenda after blackface scandal Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has a chance to redeem himself by ushering in a raft of liberal reforms after he embarrassed the commonwealth by becoming embroiled in a blackface scandal. Biden running fourth in Iowa: Poll Joe Biden is in fourth place in Iowa, a new poll shows, offering a sobering assessment for the former vice president’s candidacy less than 100 days before the nation’s first nominating contest. ADVERTISEMENT Jeffrey Epstein brother claims unexplained wrist contusions and forearm abrasion point to possible murder Mark Epstein, the brother of Jeffrey Epstein, said he thinks his brother “might have been murdered” after he was found dead from hanging in his Manhattan prison cell in August. Rudy Giuliani hires legal defense team as feds investigate his Ukraine work Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has hired a legal defense team to represent him as he is investigated for his Ukraine work. Sandy Morgan, sister of John McCain, dies at 85 Jean Alexandra “Sandy” Morgan, the sister of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, died Wednesday morning at 85. Trump announces that Erdoğan will visit White House next week after uncertainty Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will soon be visiting the White House after weeks of tense relations between the two counties. Milwaukee man charged with hate crime after attacking immigrant with battery acid A 61-year-old Milwaukee man was charged with a hate crime after allegedly burning an immigrant with battery acid following a parking dispute. Trump administration accuses Gilead of infringing government patents for HIV prevention drugs The federal government accused the drugmaker Gilead in a lawsuit on Wednesday of infringing on government patents for the HIV prevention drugs Truvada and Descovy, fulfilling the wishes of some lawmakers and HIV activists to address the possibility of price gouging. ‘Sleazeball’: Trump condemns whistleblower’s attorney for calling for a coup in 2017 tweets President Trump criticized Mark Zaid, the whistleblower’s attorney, for his 2017 tweets calling for the president to be impeached. Netflix CEO defends decision to pull episode that offended Saudis: ‘We’re not trying to do’ truth to power Netflix’s CEO stood by the company’s decision to pull an episode of its show “Patriot Act” after it offended the royal family in Saudi Arabia. THE ROUNDUP Flint’s children are still suffering Trump wanted Barr to hold news conference saying no laws were broken in call with Ukrainian leader Pennsylvania suburbs revolt against Trump ADVERTISEMENT |
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Work To Reform Hearts And Minds, Not Just The Law
By Kelvey Vander Hart on Nov 06, 2019 04:00 pm Kelvey Vander Hart: William Wilberforce was a reformer in every aspect, and we should look to him as an example for modern activism. Read in browser » Ernst Blasts Democrats For Blocking Military Funding By Caffeinated Thoughts on Nov 06, 2019 03:30 pm U.S. Senator Joni Ernst: “What will it take in order to get our servicemembers at home and abroad the resources they need?” Read in browser » Recent Articles: Did Donald Trump Hurt Matt Bevin? Bossman Named Chairman of Iowa House RIIF/Transportation Budget Subcommittee Sweeney Replaces Miller-Meeks as Iowa Senate Human Resources Chair Taylor Announces Pro-Life Endorsement and “Defend Life” Policy Agenda The Stethoscope Is Not Just a Prop Launched in 2006, Caffeinated Thoughts reports news and shares commentary about culture, current events, faith and state and national politics from a Christian and conservative point of view. Caffeinated Thoughts P.O. Box 57184 Des Moines, IA 50317 (515) 321-5077 Editor, Shane Vander Hart Connect: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Share Tweet Share Forward Copyright © 2019 Caffeinated Thoughts, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. |
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CDN Daily News Blast
11/07/2019
Excerpts:
President Donald Trump’s Schedule for Thursday, November 7, 2019
By R. Mitchell –
President Donald Trump will receive his daily briefing, participate
in a National Day for Victims of Communism greeting, present the
Presidential Citizens Medal, and deliver remarks at a fundraiser in
Washington, D.C. Keep up with Trump on Our President’s Schedule Page.
President Trump’s Itinerary for 11/7/19 – note: this page …
President Donald Trump’s Schedule for Thursday, November 7, 2019 is original content from Conservative
Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary
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Read on » Lettuce Pray: Climate Change, Neo-Paganism, And The End Of The World By Dion Pierre – The climate change movement has become the “modern world’s secular religion,” declared Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker recently. Climate activists preach a gospel of conservation that aims to redeem humanity’s environmental sins. They counsel us to abstain from eating meat to reduce our “carbon footprint,” and prophesy that Earth … Lettuce Pray: Climate Change, Neo-Paganism, And The End Of The World is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Dead Story – Al Goodwyn Cartoon By Al Goodwyn – Dead Story – Al Goodwyn Cartoon is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Karma: Washington Post Union Says Paper Underpays Non-White Employees, Recommends Hiring Diversity Consultant By Peter Hasson – The Washington Post underpays non-white employees compared to white employees, the paper’s union said Wednesday. “Collectively, employees of color are paid less than white men, even when controlling for age and job description” among newsroom employees, according to the Post Guild’s statement on its study on pay disparities at the … Karma: Washington Post Union Says Paper Underpays Non-White Employees, Recommends Hiring Diversity Consultant is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Democrats Release Deposition Of Their Star Witness In Impeachment Inquiry By Chuck Ross – House Democrats on Wednesday released a transcript of a deposition from Bill Taylor, the U.S. diplomat who Democrats consider one of their top witnesses in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. In his Oct. 22 deposition, Taylor testified at length about his work with two other diplomats, EU Ambassador … Democrats Release Deposition Of Their Star Witness In Impeachment Inquiry is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » The 1995 NYC Veterans Day Parade Had $1.21 In The Bank. Then Donald Trump Stepped In By Andrew Kerr – President Donald Trump will lead the New York City’s 100th annual Veterans Day Parade next week, becoming the first sitting president to accept the honor, the event’s organizers announced Wednesday. But while Trump will be making history on Monday as the first president to attend the parade, an offer the … The 1995 NYC Veterans Day Parade Had $1.21 In The Bank. Then Donald Trump Stepped In is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Swamp State Votes Democrat, Really! By Amanda Alverez – For many years, most of us have questioned how is it possible for adults in America to be so uninformed, ignorant, or even insane, right? At a time in American history when America is obviously at its best in so many ways, Swamp dwellers are miserable and revolting against everything … Swamp State Votes Democrat, Really! is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Tucson Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Sanctuary City Proposal By Jason Hopkins – In a major defeat for illegal alien advocates, voters in Tucson, Arizona overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to designate it at the state’s one and only “sanctuary city.” Tuscon voters on Tuesday resoundingly opposed an initiative, known as Proposition 205, that would have given sweeping protections to illegal aliens, and prohibit … Tucson Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Sanctuary City Proposal is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Schiff Announces Impeachment Hearings Schedule, Says ‘More To Come’ By Chuck Ross – House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff announced Wednesday that three diplomats will testify next week as part of the first wave of open hearings in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. Schiff announced on Twitter that William Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant … Schiff Announces Impeachment Hearings Schedule, Says ‘More To Come’ is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Watch: President Trump Holds KAG Rally in Louisiana Wednesday – 11/6/19 By R. Mitchell – President Donald Trump holds a Keep America Great rally in Monroe, Louisiana, Wednesday night. The president is scheduled to speak at 7 PM EST. Live Streams of President Trump’s Rally in Monroe, LA on 11-6-19 Donald J Trump Channel RSBN https://youtu.be/_a4sywARZlQ Golden State Times https://youtu.be/nA9a2oQSYMo Content created by Conservative Daily News … Watch: President Trump Holds KAG Rally in Louisiana Wednesday – 11/6/19 is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » New York Times Won’t Unmask Whistleblower, Top Editor Tells WaPo By Shelby Talcott – The executive editor for the New York Times told the Washington Post that the outlet doesn’t plan on unmasking the whistleblower, despite President Donald Trump urging the media to do so. Dean Baquet, NYT’s executive editor, said that he’s “not sure” he sees the point “in unmasking someone who wants … New York Times Won’t Unmask Whistleblower, Top Editor Tells WaPo is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » A Tight Fit – A.F. Branco Cartoon By A.F. Branco – The biggest problem Washington D.C. has with President Trump is that he isn’t playing by the deep state’s rules, so they want to remove him by any means possible. Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2019. See more Branco toons HERE A Tight Fit – A.F. Branco Cartoon is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Watch Live: President Trump Delivers Comments on Federal Judicial Confirmation Milestones By R. Mitchell – President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the number and quality of Federal Justices his administration and the Republican-led Senate have confirmed during his term. The president is scheduled to speak at 3:00 PM EST. Content created by Conservative Daily News and some content syndicated through CDN is available for re-publication without … Watch Live: President Trump Delivers Comments on Federal Judicial Confirmation Milestones is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Republican Tate Reeves Wins Mississippi Gubernatorial Race By Audrey Conklin – Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves won Mississippi’s 2019 gubernatorial race Tuesday evening in a race against Democratic state Attorney General Jim Hood. The results of the race were announced just before midnight, with Reeves securing 52.8% of the vote and Hood holding 45.9%, according to The New York Times’ live … Republican Tate Reeves Wins Mississippi Gubernatorial Race is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » New York Times Reporter Calls Out Biden’s Campaign For Sending Out ‘Inaccurate’ NYT Polling Graphic By Chris White – Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign altered a polling graphic from The New York Times to tout how the Democrat is fairing against President Donald Trump ahead of the election. The graphic appears to downplay Sen. Bernie Sanders’s polling relative to Trump in key battleground states, NYT political reporter Shane … New York Times Reporter Calls Out Biden’s Campaign For Sending Out ‘Inaccurate’ NYT Polling Graphic is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » Quid Pro Quo Joe Biden Could Be In Trouble By Jim Clayton – While Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff and his committee along with the biased mainstream media search desperately for a quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukraine that is not there for their impeachment fantasy, the media is circling the wagons around Joe ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Biden. It is well known now … Quid Pro Quo Joe Biden Could Be In Trouble is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more. Read on » See all breaking news, conservative commentary, political cartoons and more posted to CDN at our Home Page. Follow on Twitter Friend on Facebook Add on Google Plus Copyright © 2019 Conservative Daily News, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list |
DESERET NEWS
THE FEDERALIST
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Your daily update of new content from The Federalist Be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray November 7, 2019 What They Don’t Tell Women About Chemical Abortions Will Hurt You By Bradley Mattes Those who advocate for and provide chemical abortion drugs downplay the excruciating process that awaits unsuspecting women. ‘I had no idea what was coming. No idea.’ Full article Neverending Foreign Wars Are Keeping The United States From Fixing The Border Crisis By Ellis Domenech It’s time to overhaul the U.S. national security establishment. No subjects of failed policy are more evident than Afghanistan and our southern border. Full article CNN, MSNBC Give More Minutes To Middle East Violence Than Murders At The U.S. Border By Madeline Osburn CNN and MSNBC have alotted more air time to discussing the Kurds than the U.S. citizen victims of horrific violence just miles from the U.S. border. Full article The Jeffrey Epstein Story Is A Giant Rats’ Nest That Needs Dogged Investigation By Willis L. Krumholz From the media to government bureaucrats to Epstein himself, powerful people are getting away with execrable behavior. It’s time to investigate the Epstein-media-intelligence agency nexus. Full article Requiring The Bidens To Testify Would Help Determine If They Thought America Was For Sale By Erielle Davidson If impeaching President Donald Trump is truly about arriving at the truth, then Democrats should have no problem including Joe and Hunter Biden in the impeachment proceedings. Full article Relatives Of Family Slain In Mexico Say Cartel Attack Was No Accident By Madeline Osburn Relatives of the 9 women and children U.S. citizens murdered in Mexico say the family was used ‘as bait to lure one cartel against another.’ Full article Anti-Trump Whistleblower’s Attorney: ‘Coup Has Started,’ ‘We Will Get Rid’ Of Trump By Tristan Justice This is the same attorney who once threatened to get his federal intelligence contacts to doxx a random Twitter user and complained about the account’s anonymity. Full article Cancel Culture Comes For Hernán Cortés in Mexico By John Daniel Davidson On the 500th anniversary of Hernán Cortés’ meeting with Montezuma II, the conquistador deserves a reconsideration, not cancellation. Full article Want A European-Style Welfare State? Get Ready For European-Style Tax Rates By Tristan Justice ‘The reality is that progressive promises can only be funded by radical tax increases on the middle class, a dramatic increase in annual federal deficits and the national debt, or a combination of the two.’ Full article Pompeo: United States Fostered China’s Rise ‘At The Expense Of American Values By Ben Weingarten What was revelatory in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s remarks was his forthright recognition of the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and its ambitions. Full article ABC Investigating ‘Whistleblower’ Who Leaked Hot Mic Footage Of Amy Robach Discussing Jeffrey Epstein By Chrissy Clark ABC News confirmed they are investigating who leaked footage of Amy Robach on a hot mic discussing Jeffrey Epstein to investigative journalism outlet Project Veritas. Full article Biden Sinks To Fourth Place In Latest Iowa Poll By Tristan Justice Biden falls in Iowa poll, while Tulsi Gabbard and Amy Klobuchar hit the necessary thresholds for upcoming debates. Full article Rep. Ayanna Pressley Breaks From ‘The Squad’ With Endorsement Of Warren By Chrissy Clark Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a member of the “The Squad” endorsed her home state Massachusetts Senator, Elizabeth Warren for President. Full article Testimony Transcript Shows William Taylor Never Talked To Trump, Wasn’t Even On July 25 Phone Call By Sean Davis A top witness against President Donald Trump admitted in testimony that he wasn’t on the July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, didn’t see the transcript until it was released in late September, and has never even spoken to Trump. Full article Here’s What We Know About The Slaughter Of An American Family In Mexico By Madeline Osburn Early Monday morning, three mothers traveling with 14 children between them were ambushed and gunned down in Mexico by drug cartel members near the United States Arizona border. Here’s what we know so far. Full article Seattle’s Socialist City Councilwoman Loses After Amazon Dumps Money Into Race By Chrissy Clark Kshama Sawant, a socialist incumbent running for Seattle city council, lost her seat after Amazon dedicated approximately $1.5 million to defeat her. Full article Trump Derangement Is Destroying Political Analysis By Mollie Hemingway Coverage of a new poll out from Monmouth beautifully illustrates how Trump Derangement destroys what should be simple political analysis. The poll was brutal for impeachment fans in the media, but they didn’t report that. Full article It’s Not Just Republicans, Mainstream Senate Democrats Oppose ‘Medicare For All’ By Chrissy Clark “I’ve said consistently that I am not for Medicare for All,” said Democratic Senator Doug Jones, opposing Elizabeth Warren’s progressive agenda. Full article 2020 Democrats Ignore Mexican Drug Cartel Violence That Killed Nine Americans By Tristan Justice Not one of the seventeen Democrats still in the race issued a statement on Monday’s attacks that killed at least six children and three women. Full article I Watched What Happened Live At Bravo, But So Did You By Emily Jashinsky I went on set of Andy Cohen’s ‘Watch What Happens Live’ to report from the trenches of reality television. It was glorious. Full article ONE YEAR OUT, THE MEDIA IS WORRIED ABOUT WARREN Friday saw the departure of the American media’s most beloved candidate of 2018, Beto O’Rourke, from the 2020 stakes. In a field of candidates with much to admire personally on many counts, O’Rourke was the most woke, the most entitled, and arguably the least qualified of the so-called “top tier” to be considered for the presidency. It’s not just that he got Vanity Fair covers with Annie Leibovitz photos, it’s that he acted as if he deserved them for little more than regularly going viral with out-of-Texas voters. As a final insult on the way out the door, a UT/Texas Tribune poll showed Beto lagging Trump in the 2020 election in his home state by 6 points. http://vlt.tc/3sy6 O’Rourke regularly lit himself and his political future on fire, his signature policy on guns was incoherent and unconstitutional, and he leaves the 2020 stakes having wasted a bunch of people’s time with what amounts to a Gen X midlife crisis, streaming live. Good riddance. Read more of The Transom by signing up for a free trial today. follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend Copyright © 2019 The Federalist, All rights reserved. unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences |
NBC
From NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann
FIRST READ: Health care helped Dems win in Kentucky. So why are some of their White House candidates changing the playbook?
In Kentucky’s gubernatorial race, Democrats once again used the issue of health care to help them win a political contest in Red or Purple America.
Their playbook, as they also employed in 2018: attack Republicans for trying to take away health care; emphasize protections for those with pre-existing conditions; and promise to expand coverage to those who need it.
AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley
So why are some of their top presidential candidates changing the playbook – by calling for Medicare for All and eliminating private insurance?
“Matt Bevin is trying to take away their health care,” Democrat Andy Beshear said in one of his TV ads in Kentucky’s gubernatorial contest. “As attorney general, I’m helping lead a national effort to protect coverage for pre-existing conditions. As governor, I’ll work to lower health-care costs for all of us.”
“As governor, he’s trying to rip away health care from our families,” Beshear said in another ad.
The political challenge for Medicare for All supporters like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren is that their plans are also subject to the attack that someone is trying to take away their health care – i.e., their private insurance.
Yes, Sanders and Warren argue that private insurance costs more than the government doing it, and that Medicare for All could reduce health care COSTS for most Americans.
But note who ISN’T making the argument for Medicare for All: Andy Beshear in Kentucky. Or Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania. Or Sharice Davids in Kansas.
Interestingly, before the first Democratic debate, Elizabeth Warren’s top argument on health care was that Republicans are trying to take away health care – and that there many different paths to cover more Americans.
“So when we’re talking about health care in America right now, the first thing we need to be talking about is defend the Affordable Care Act, protection under the Affordable Care Act,” Warren said at CNN’s town hall back in March.
“And then when we talk about Medicare for All, there are a lot of different pathways. What we’re all looking for is the lowest cost way to make sure everybody gets covered. And some folks are talking about let’s start lowering the age, maybe bring it down to 60, 55, 50.”
That kind of rhetoric from Warren changed after the first debate when she said she supported eliminating private insurance.
Recanvass in Kentucky to take place on Nov. 14
Speaking of Tuesday’s race in Kentucky, Gov. Matt Bevin still isn’t conceding – and he filed a formal request for a recanvass.
“Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes tweeted that her office had received Bevin’s request and that the recount would be conducted on Thursday, Nov. 14,” per NBC News.
Bevin trails Beshear by more than 5,000 votes.
2020 VISION: In Sessions
The large – and eclectic – Republican field to take on Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., is getting more crowded.
And certainly more interesting.
Former Sen. and Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions intends to announce his intention to run for his old Senate seat, NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard reports, citing two sources familiar with the decision.
Sessions joins a field that already includes Roy Moore (whom Jones defeated after Sessions vacated the seat to become attorney general), Rep. Bradley Byrne, D-Ala., and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville.
Alabama’s primary is March 3, and the likely runoff is March 31.
Turning to the Democratic presidential race, a Quinnipiac poll released yesterday showed the Democratic horserace in Iowa this way: Warren 20 percent, Buttigieg 19 percent, Sanders 17 percent, Biden 15 percent, Klobuchar 5 percent, Harris 4 percent and Gabbard and Yang at 3 percent.
Gabbard’s 3 percent appears to get her into the Nov. 20 Dem debate in Atlanta.
On the campaign trail today: Vice President Pence files for President Trump in the New Hampshire primary… Andrew Yang also stumps in the Granite State… Amy Klobuchar campaigns in Iowa… Elizabeth Warren is in North Carolina, where she has a conversation with Angela Rye and holds a town hall in Raleigh… And Pete Buttigieg raises money in New York City.
Dispatches from NBC’s embeds: Pete Buttigieg is slightly altering his attack on Elizabeth Warren’s plan to pay for Medicare for All, NBC’s Priscilla Thompson points out. “During an interview on PBS’s News Hour, Buttigieg was asked for his thoughts on Warren’s plan to pay for Medicare for All. He said, ‘Well, there is a lot of aggressive math in there about cutting the military, assuming that immigration reform happens, and getting about a trillion out of that, and some other areas that are controversial among the economists. The point I’m making is that we don’t need to spend tens of trillions of dollars in order to address this problem.’ This is a sharper answer than he gave when asked this exact question during a gaggle on his bus on Sunday, and when discussing the issue on Morning Joe on Monday, when he said, ‘If you’re just counting on immigration reform for a trillion dollars-worth of the funding for a hallmark plan it raises some concerns about how achievable it is.’”
DATA DOWNLOAD: And the number of the day is … 97.25 percent.
97.25 percent.
That’s the percentage of the vote received by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions during his last reelection race in 2014, when he ran unopposed in the general election. The remainder of the votes were write-ins.
Sessions ran also ran unopposed in the Republican primary earlier that year.
TWEET OF THE DAY: Bernie releases his immigration plan
REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo
THE LID: Hot take
Don’t miss the pod from yesterday, when we asked what those Kentucky and Virginia results really meant for the GOP.
ICYMI: News clips you shouldn’t miss
The president has a new word to describe Democrats: “Totalitarian.”
Here are the rules of the road for the November debate.
Tulsi Gabbard appears to have qualified for the next Democratic primary debate.
The Washington Post reports that AG Bill Barr declined to hold a news conference — requested by the president — to say Trump had committed no crimes in his Ukraine call.
The first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry are set to begin next week.
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REALCLEARPOLITICS
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11/07/2019 Share: Carl Cannon’s Morning Note Presented by Fisher Investments: Election Analysis; Bernie vs. Liz; 2012 Revisited Good morning, it’s Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019. On this date seven years ago, Americans woke up after a tedious and sometimes disheartening status-quo election. Meet the new president, same as the old one. The political establishment was neither shocked, as it would be four years later, nor exhilarated, as it had been four years earlier. After waging an exceptionally inspirational campaign in 2008, Barack Obama had not always taken the high road in 2012. The media didn’t make the Democrats pay a price for their low blows at Mitt Romney, but when it was over the Republican nominee himself didn’t seem to bear any grudges. His election night concession call to President Obama, and subsequent remarks to the GOP faithful, were uncommonly gracious. Something tells me that won’t happen a year from now — no matter who wins or loses — though I’d love to be proven wrong. I’ll have more on Mitt Romney, who is now a U.S. senator, in a moment. First, I’d point you to RealClearPolitics’ front page, which presents our poll averages, videos, breaking news stories, and aggregated opinion columns spanning the political spectrum. We also offer original material from our own reporters and contributors, including the following: * * * 2019 as Precursor to 2020? Results Say Yes, No, and Maybe. Phil Wegmann reports on the two parties’ interpretations of Tuesday’s outcome. Three Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections. Sean Trende has this analysis of the results in Virginia, Kentucky and Mississippi. Restoring Our Faith in Redemption. By Foster Friess spotlights examples of forgiveness that exemplify the values on which America was based, and which the nation needs more of in this contentious age. Sanders vs. Warren Is the Battle to Watch. Reed Galen questions whether either of the progressive candidates has what it takes to go after the other as the primary contest moves forward. Why Warren’s Plan Will Lead to Worse Health Care. Brian Blase argues that Medicare for All will replace choice, competition, and innovation with bureaucracy, lobbying, and stagnation. Chicago Punts on Looming Teacher Pension Disaster. In RealClearPolicy, Nat Malkus and RJ Martin decry the strike settlement reached last week, which doesn’t address a gargantuan $11 billion funding shortfall. Afghanistan Election Isn’t Cause for U.S. Withdrawal. In RealClearWorld, Farhat Popal argues that the democratic gains remain fragile and need ongoing protection. The Biggest Myth About Protein. RealClearScience editor Ross Pomeroy explains why the “health halo” around the dietary nutrient is somewhat undeserved. * * * During the autumn of 2012, the presidential election seemed competitive, with polls in the swing states showing the race within the margin of error or close to it and with enough undecided voters out there to put the outcome in doubt. On Election Day, however, Democratic Party voters turned out for their guy and the undecided chose not to swap horses in the middle of the stream, in the words of another famous Illinois politician. In the end, nearly every one of those states we were watching closely — Virginia, Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Pennsylvania — went for the incumbent. When you lose an election thought to be winnable, as Mitt Romney did that year, no single reason is to blame. There are many factors. Tom Bevan and I came up with 21 of them. The last element on our list was attitudinal — on the part of the nominees, not the electorate: Romney seemed to view the presidency as a management job. And though U.S. history is rife with presidents who didn’t manage things well (many believe the current president is a prime example), the American people are usually looking for a leader, not a manager. Tom and I thought of this while watching Romney’s brief speech to his loyalists in Boston. We weren’t alone. Many commentators made a point of noting how classy he’d been in defeat, and this was true. But Democratic consultant Paul Begala and former Republican White House press secretary Ari Fleischer both found the speech notable for what wasn’t in it: There was no litany of issues and causes that Romney vowed to fight for in the years to come; no discussion of the policy choices Americans would have to make in the future. It was simply not, Fleischer and Begala observed, a concession speech from the leader of a political movement. This wasn’t a surprise. Romney’s adversaries on both the right and the left often accused him of lacking “a core,” but those closest to him found this critique to be widely off the mark. Core values to Mitt Romney were, and remain, his church and family, and to those two venerable institutions he is a consistently devoted servant. Mark McKinnon, a confidant of George W. Bush, described Romney to me at the time as a good man whose values run deep, but whose politics are “transactional.” That’s hardly a sin, given that the politics of America’s two major parties are also transactional. To liberal journalist Ezra Klein, Romney’s problem — in terms of how he was perceived in 2012 — is that he demonstrated to voters that what he most valued was empirical information, which complemented his natural management skills. “A lifetime of data has proven to him that he’s extraordinarily, even uniquely, good at managing and leading organizations, projects and people,” Klein wrote that year. “It’s those skills, rather than specific policy ideas, that he sees as his unique contribution. That has been the case everywhere else he has worked, and he assumes it will be the case in the White House, too.” Mitt never got the chance to prove his theory. The American people, albeit by a respectable 51% to 47% margin, didn’t choose a manager. For better or worse, the majority gravitated toward a man they viewed as leader — and it was a measure of Romney’s core that when he said publicly the night he lost that he’d be praying for Barack Obama to succeed, the people who knew him best believed what he said. Carl M. Cannon Washington Bureau chief, RealClearPolitics @CarlCannon (Twitter) ccannon@realclearpolitics.com For years, many pundits and politicians have claimed Internet behemoths are too powerful and monopolistic. Then, in June, the House announced they would launch a probe into several tech giants. Despite many possible outcomes, we don’t view these possibilities as a reason to avoid Tech now. Click here to read more of this message, brought to you by Fisher Investments. |
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NOQ REPORT
| NOQ Report Daily |
- Why the whistleblower shouldn’t remain anonymous
- Eric Ciaramella’s name appears in testimony transcript released by Adam Schiff
- Lifting tariffs as negotiations proceed offers hope of a trade war resolution in the works
- Bernie Sanders releases immigration plan and it’s worse than expected
- Words mean things: They can support liberty or they can destroy it
- Whistleblower’s lawyer Mark Zaid’s YouTube channel liked young Disney girl videos
- Rob Schneider understands California voters far too well
- Worst possible hot take: LA Times connected innocent Mormon murder victims to violence associated with family history
- Trump-critic Bill Gates isn’t sure he’d vote for Elizabeth Warren
- Jeff Sessions is running for his old Senate seat again
| Why the whistleblower shouldn’t remain anonymous Posted: 07 Nov 2019 05:13 AM PST Christopher Steele. This one man, who was responsible for putting together the infamous Steele Dossier that was used to justify FISA warrants against 2016 Trump campaign members, is the reason nearly two years and millions of dollars were spent on an investigation into Russian collusion. As we now know, the investigation yielded no fruit. We […] The post Why the whistleblower shouldn’t remain anonymous appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Eric Ciaramella’s name appears in testimony transcript released by Adam Schiff Posted: 07 Nov 2019 04:41 AM PST The transcript of Bill Taylor’s full testimony in Capitol Hill’s basement was released by House impeachment investigators on Wednesday. On page 236 of the PDF supplied to the press by the committee, the name of the man many believe to be the whistleblower was mentioned. There was no identifying context about why Eric Ciaramella‘s name was mentioned, […] The post Eric Ciaramella’s name appears in testimony transcript released by Adam Schiff appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Lifting tariffs as negotiations proceed offers hope of a trade war resolution in the works Posted: 07 Nov 2019 03:58 AM PST The trade war between the United States and China has affected the two biggest economies and a world that is dependent on one or both. Now, we’re seeing early signs of a resolution that has legs to work as China has acknowledged tariffs to and from both sides will start being reduced or even lifted. […] The post Lifting tariffs as negotiations proceed offers hope of a trade war resolution in the works appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Bernie Sanders releases immigration plan and it’s worse than expected Posted: 07 Nov 2019 03:43 AM PST The short version of Senator Bernie Sanders’s newly unveiled immigration and border security plan, which his campaign calls “A Welcoming and Safe America for All,” can be summed up in eight words: “Whatever President Trump wanted, Bernie wants the opposite.” President Trump wants to build the wall while Sanders wants it all taken down. President […] The post Bernie Sanders releases immigration plan and it’s worse than expected appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Words mean things: They can support liberty or they can destroy it Posted: 07 Nov 2019 03:16 AM PST Recent electoral victories by the authoritarian socialist left illustrate the importance of word selection. The authoritarian socialist left and the national socialist media [but we repeat ourselves] are now gloating over their victory in Virginia, promising “swift action on a host of liberal policy proposals” on what will result in more restrictions on liberty. If […] The post Words mean things: They can support liberty or they can destroy it appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Whistleblower’s lawyer Mark Zaid’s YouTube channel liked young Disney girl videos Posted: 06 Nov 2019 10:57 PM PST The Internet has a long memory. In fact, it’s eight years too long for the Ukraine whistleblower’s lawyer Mark Zaid. That was the last time he had activity on his YouTube page, and the three videos he liked at the time are pretty creepy. It seems the lawyer really enjoyed watching videos about the “prettiest” Disney […] The post Whistleblower’s lawyer Mark Zaid’s YouTube channel liked young Disney girl videos appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Rob Schneider understands California voters far too well Posted: 06 Nov 2019 09:49 PM PST Actor Rob Schneider has become one of the most unabashed Hollywood stars when it comes to expressing his political views even when they’re not necessarily aligned with the prescribed progressivism. A former Democrat, he converted to Republican in 2013 after watching progressive policies in California turn the state upside down. Despite his many battles with the […] The post Rob Schneider understands California voters far too well appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Worst possible hot take: LA Times connected innocent Mormon murder victims to violence associated with family history Posted: 06 Nov 2019 09:31 PM PST Donald Trump Jr. and a slew of conservatives aren’t happy with the Los Angeles Times. The progressive west coast newspaper thought it appropriate to attach the nine women and children who were murdered this week by a Mexican drug cartel to a family history that included targeted violence and decades-old conflicts. The Tweet they used […] The post Worst possible hot take: LA Times connected innocent Mormon murder victims to violence associated with family history appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Trump-critic Bill Gates isn’t sure he’d vote for Elizabeth Warren Posted: 06 Nov 2019 05:13 PM PST If there’s one group of people Senator Elizabeth Warren is alienating, it’s the ultra-rich. Her incessant attacks on billionaires has had an effect of propelling her to frontrunner status among Democrats who embrace socialism, but it has soured her in the eyes of some of the richest people in America. It’s a good bet for […] The post Trump-critic Bill Gates isn’t sure he’d vote for Elizabeth Warren appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Jeff Sessions is running for his old Senate seat again Posted: 06 Nov 2019 03:05 PM PST The Associated Press is reporting former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to try to return to Capitol Hill by running for the Senate seat he vacated when he took on the job in President Trump’s cabinet. He plans on making the announcement Thursday. The 72-year-old Sessions had a rocky tenure as Attorney General with […] The post Jeff Sessions is running for his old Senate seat again appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
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ARRA NEWS SERVICE
| ARRA News Service (in this message: 19 new items) |
- The Washington System is Sick – Here’s How.
- The Trump Doctrine: Deterrence without Intervention?
- Since 2006, Over a Million Californians Have Left the State
- Why Chicago’s Police Superintendent Really Snubbed President Trump
- Media Malfeasance, The Blue Dominion, Leaker Outed, Kudos To Mike Pence, More Judges!
- Sen. Warren’s Proposal to Divide Jerusalem is Not Only Immoral, But Dangerous
- Defining Racism Down
- Hillary’s Hot Sauce — Reflux
- A Tight Fit . . .
- Three Cheers for Refugee Reduction
- Set Money Free
- Impeachment Flops as Ambassador Sondland Says He ‘Presumed’ Ukrainian Military Assistance Was ‘likely’ Being Conditioned, But Nobody Told Him It Was
- Disproportionalities: Whose Fault?
- The Atlantic Suggests Using an Anti-Gun Narrative to Supplant the Second Amendment
- The Democrats’ Real Impeachment Target: Far More Than Trump
- Trump Sees Red in the Bluegrass
- Bloomberg’s Gun Control Apparatus Lies to Virginia’s Firearm Owners in Election Mailing
- Saudi Arabia’s Final Plan For Higher Oil Prices
- Trump Administration Moves to Protect Religious Freedom, Again
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The Washington System is Sick – Here’s How.
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 08:28 PM PST
by Newt Gingrich:
Lee Smith has written a book so important and so revealing that every
American who cares about the future of our Republic should read it. The Plot Against the President is a remarkable history of our times. It captures what historian Edward Luttwak called “the paper coup.” Luttwak is a famous historian who wrote an authoritative study of governments being overturned by coups. Entitled Coup d’etat a Practical Handbook, it established Luttwak’s credentials when he analyzed the post-election war against President Trump. As Smith reported: “The ‘anti-Trump operation,’ says Luttwak today, ‘was a very American coup, with TV denunciations by seemingly authoritative figures as a key instrument.’ The plot against Trump was a bureaucratic insurgency waged almost entirely through the printed word. It was the ‘Paper Coup.’” Smith’s book is built around the courageous hard work of Congressman Devin Nunes and his team of Republicans at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Living through the last four years, it has been easy to confuse what was going on and who to trust and distrust. Smith captures it all in one clear sentence: “Without the big titles and the national security bureaucracy’s legalistic self-defense mechanisms, the story was pretty straightforward: The Clintons hired a bunch of con men who got their dirty cop friends to frame Trump. The press and a corrupt prosecutor handled the cover-up.” Throughout all the confusion, Nunes and the courageous group he assembled kept pursuing the truth through what was an ocean of lies, obstruction, and resistance. In his book, Smith describes a pattern of senior US intelligence officials systematically undermining and targeting people seeking the truth – even one of Nunes’s own investigators, who was a former Department of Justice lawyer. At the same time, instead of upholding the law, Mueller perverted it. The clear signal Americans got from the spectacle around the Mueller investigation was that the elites in this country were determined to smear the President, even though he’d done nothing wrong. In fact, Smith writes that the Mueller investigation in fact just became an extension of the larger effort to oust the elected president, and Mueller was a “fixer” to coverup that the effort was happening. Nunes understood how Mueller had perverted his role. Smith explains: “Nunes had described …Mueller produced a perfect feedback loop: intelligence leakers spin a false story to the media, the media publishes the story, Mueller cites the story, and the media and the Democrats then fake outrage at Mueller’s findings. It was as if Nunes were guiding a tour of the underworld.” The news media was so dedicated to the anti-Trump coup attempt that it was impossible to deal with them. Smith describes how Jack Langer, Nunes’s communications director, slowly realized that talking to the mainstream media was actually hurting the truth-finding effort rather than helping inform the public. It didn’t matter what Langer would tell the press because reporters, editors, and producers had already made up their minds about the substance of the story. Talking to Republicans was just a ploy to retain a whiff of objectivity. At the same time that much of the media was skirting its traditional role, the very nature of the FBI-intelligence community war against Trump made it even harder for legitimate news media to be neutral. In order to get scoops, reporters had to agree to protect anonymous sources – and print what they were told. If they didn’t, they would lose access. Smith describes the cumulative effect of the bureaucratic corruption and news media collusion (the real collusion story), and it is devastating. Sadly, we had seen this kind of bureaucratic-news media corruption before, in 2003. It involved some of the same players – including former FBI Director Jim Comey. That time, they tried to destroy Vice President Dick Cheney by framing his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and forcing Libby to bargain for his freedom by selling out his boss. However, Libby refused to lie about the Vice President and accepted a totally framed punishment. President George W. Bush commuted his sentence. The Washington Bar Association reinstated him for having been the victim of prosecutorial malpractice. President Donald Trump pardoned him completely. As Smith writes: “the Libby case had been a baseless media-driven scandal, a press frenzy that had resulted in a miscarriage of justice. Mueller 2017 was a replay of Fitzgerald 2003. The latter went after Cheney, the former Trump.” The current sickness in the Justice Department is deeply rooted. In addition to Smith’s book, informed citizens should read Sidney Powell’s Licensed to Lie. Powell is currently defending General Mike Flynn and challenging the entire case against him as an illegal frame by willfully dishonest prosecutors. When you read The Plot Against the President, you will realize there is a lot more going on – and a lot of people may end up in jail for having attempted to destroy an elected president. Every citizen should read it to understand how sick the system has become. ———————- Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the “Contract with America” and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. This commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions. Tags: Newt Gingrich, The Washington System is Sick, Here’s How. To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
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The Trump Doctrine: Deterrence without Intervention?
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 08:17 PM PST
Victor Davis Hansonby Dr. Victor Davis Hanson: The
president bets that a booming economy, a beefed-up military, and U.S.
energy dominance will deter enemies without the need for preemptive
invasions. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign sought to overturn 75 years of bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxy, especially as it applied to the Middle East. From 1946 to 1989, the Cold War logic was to use both surrogates and U.S. expeditionary forces to stop the spread of Communist insurrections and coups — without confronting the nuclear-armed USSR directly unless it became a matter of perceived Western survival, as it did with the Berlin airlift and the Cuban missile crises. That logic led to major conflicts like Vietnam and Korea, limited wars in the Middle East and Balkans, interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean, and occasional nation-building in conquered lands. Tens of thousands of Americans died, trillions of dollars were spent, and the Soviet Union and most of its satellites vanished. “We won the Cold War” was more or less true. Such preemptory American interventions still continued over the next 30 years of the post–Cold War “new world order.” Now the threat was not Russian nukes but confronting new enemies such as radical Islam and a rogue’s gallery of petty but troublesome nuts, freaks, and dictators — Granada’s Hudson Austin, an unhinged Moammar Qaddafi of Libya, Hezbollah’s terrorists in Lebanon, Nicaraguan Communist Daniel Ortega, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, the gang leader Mohamed Aidid of Somalia, the former Serbian thug Slobodan Milosevic, Mullah Omar of the Taliban, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, arch terrorist Osama bin Laden, the macabre al-Qaeda and ISIS, and on and on. These put-downs, some successful and some not so much, were apparently viewed by the post–Cold War establishment as our versions of the late Roman Republic and Empire policies of mowing the lawn, with an occasional weeding out of regional nationalists and insurrectionists like Jugurtha, Mithridates, Vercingetorix, Ariovistus, Boudicca, and the like. The theory was that occasionally knocking flat a charismatic brute discouraged all others like him from trying to emulate his revolt and upend the international order. Having one or two legions always on the move often meant that most others could stay in their barracks. And it kept the peace, or so the U.S., like Rome, more or less believed. But the problem with American policy after the Cold War and the end of the Soviet nuclear threat was that the U.S. was not really comfortable as an imperial global watchdog, we no longer had a near monopoly on the world economy that subsidized these expensive interventions, and many of these thugs did not necessarily pose a direct threat to American interests — perhaps ISIS, an oil-rich Middle East dictator, and radical Islamists excepted. What started as a quick, successful take-out of a monster sometimes ended up as a long-drawn out “occupation” in which all U.S. assets of firepower, mobility, and air support were nullified in the dismal street fighting of a Fallujah or a Mogadishu. The bad guys were bothersome and even on occasion genocidal, and their removal sometimes improved the lot of those of the ground — but not always. When things got messy — such as in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, or Somalia — it was not clear whether the American use of force resulted in tactical success leading to strategic advantage. Often preemptive insertion of troops either did not further U.S. deterrence or actually undermined it — as in the case of the “Arab Spring” bombing in Libya. At home, in a consistent pattern, the most vociferous advocates of peremptory war usually claimed prescient brilliance, as when the American military rapidly dislodged the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. But then came the occupation and post-war anarchy. As American dead mounted, the mission mysteriously creeped into nation-building. Sometimes, in the post-invasion chaos, the once noble liberated victims became the opportunistic victimizers. Depressed, some of the original architects of preemption blamed those who had listened to them. The establishment’s calling card became, “My weeks-long brilliant theoretical preemption was ruined by your actual botched decade-long occupation.” In extremis, few kept their support; most abandoned it. Into this dilemma charged Donald Trump, who tried to square the old circle by boasting that he would “bomb the s*** out of ISIS” (and he mostly did that). Yet he also pledged to avoid optional wars in the Middle East — given that they did not pencil out to the Manhattan developer as a cost-benefit profit for America. We had become the world’s largest large oil producer anyway without worrying very much about how many barrels of oil a post-Qaddafi Libya or the Iranian theocrats pumped each day, and our rivals, like China and Russia, would soon find out that their involvement in the Middle East would likely not pencil out. Trump started well enough. He backed down the provocative North Koreans and Iranians with tougher sanctions, while refusing to use kinetic force to reply to their rather pathetic provocations. He bombed ISIS but yanked American “trip wire” troops out of the Kurdish-Turkish battle zones in Syria, and he green-lighted the military’s killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He ratcheted up sanctions against Russia and armed Putin’s enemies without committing to defend any of the old republics of the Soviet Union. He increased the defense budget and boomed the economy but did not use such newly acquired power other than against ISIS. Rarely has such an empowered military relied so much on economic sanctions. And rarely have leftist pacifist advocates of using sanctions and boycotts so damned Trump’s reluctance to launch missiles and drop bombs — the only common denominator being that whatever the orange man is for, they are against. Trump’s apparent theory is that time is on his side. The Palestinians are cut off from U.S. funds; their U.N. surrogates are orphaned from the U.S. The U.S. Embassy is in Jerusalem. The Golan Heights are not going back to Syria. It is up to the West Bank and Gaza to change the Middle East dynamic, since their Gulf paymasters could care less about them, given the Palestinians’ romance with an Iran that is slowly going broke. North Korea is squeezed by toughed-up sanctions. They can conduct missile tests, threaten, and cajole, but ultimately their people will be eating grass if they don’t wish to deal. And if they do launch a missile toward the U.S., they are convinced that Trump will launch a lot more against them. Iran wants a confrontation before the election to undermine the Trump Electoral College base of support. So Trump is apparently willing to overlook such petty slights as the downing of the American drone by Iranian forces. But the Iranians must know that if they start targeting U.S. ships, or attacking NATO allied vessels and planes, Trump will likely restore deterrence by one-off, disproportionate air and missile attacks against Iranian naval and air bases — without intervening on the ground and without worrying that Iranian oil will go off the market entirely. So there is a sort of Trump doctrine that grew in part out of Trump’s campaign promises and in part from the strategic assessment in 2016-17 by then national-security adviser H.R. McMaster, outlining a new “principled realism.” The net result is not to nation-build, preempt, or worry much about changing fetid countries to look like us, but to disproportionately respond when attacked or threatened, and in a manner that causes real damage, without the insertion of U.S. ground troops, in the fashion of the past 75 years. Balance in achieving deterrence is the key. If Trump’s protestations that he does not wish to take enemy lives or conduct endless wars for no profit encourage enemy adventurism, then he will have to respond forcefully when American forces are attacked — but in a way that is not open-ended. And that usually means not through the use of ground troops that involve wars that, in Trump’s mind, create bad optics and poor ratings back home. There are three ways of losing deterrence. One is to bluster, boast, and threaten and then do little — as with Barack Obama’s bombast about red lines in Syria. A second is to reach out and appease a thug who has no intention of seeing outreach as anything other than laxity to be exploited. The Obama administration’s Russian reset combined the worst elements of this strategy: alternately courting and lecturing Putin, while doing nothing as he invaded former republics and returned to the Middle East. With Recep Erdogan, Trump is in danger of following the disastrous Obama model. More than most dictators, Erdogan views magnanimity with contempt and as a sign of weakness, rather than a gesture to be reciprocated in kind. A third way of losing deterrence is to get bogged down in a quagmire that encourages other would-be terrorists, revolutionaries, and psychopaths to try instigating more of the same. Afghanistan and the Iraq, from 2003 to 2006, are good examples of gridlock. The Libya project of Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Hillary Clinton is a perfect case of hasty bombing followed by embarrassed indifference to the resulting chaos, and then withdrawal after the loss of four Americans. When Ronald Reagan inserted Marines into Lebanon, saw them blown up, and then yanked them, almost everyone concluded that Hezbollah and Iran had a free hand to do whatever they wanted. And they mostly did. There is one final paradox related to the dilemma of maintaining deterrence without invading hostile countries. Trump apparently believes that a booming economy, a well-funded muscular military, and plenty of U.S.-produced oil and gas give America enormous power and a range of choices that recent presidents lacked. The result would be that when forced to respond to an attack on an American asset or ally, the U.S. could do so disproportionately, destructively, and without any red line, promise, or virtue-signaling about what it might do next — given its unique ability to hit abroad without being hit at home, and with a well-oiled economy that has no need to beg the Saudis to be nice, or to urge the Iranians to pump more, or to get the Venezuelans back into the exporting business. Add up all these paradoxes, and I suppose we could call the Trump administration’s idea of deterrence without preemptive intervention as either “Live and let live” — or, more macabrely, “Live — and let die.” Either way, the paradox is to maintain critical deterrence against American enemies to prevent a war, but without Pavlovian interventions, and without being baited into optional military action that is antithetical to the national mood that got Trump elected. ——————- Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian at the and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T National Review Tags: Victor Davis Hanson, The Trump Doctrine, Deterrence without Intervention To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
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Since 2006, Over a Million Californians Have Left the State
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 07:55 PM PST
by Audrey Conklin:
More than half of California’s registered voters have considered
leaving the state, and 40% of that number represents Republicans or
conservatives, according to a study by the University of California,
Berkeley. Conservatives and Republicans surveyed mentioned the state’s expensive housing, high taxes, and liberal political culture as their primary reasons for wanting to leave California, according to the September study conducted for the Los Angeles Times. “We’re moving to redder pastures,” former California resident and conservative Judy Stark, 71, told the Times. “We’re getting with people who believe in the same political agenda that we do: America first, Americans first, law and order.” California liberals and Democrats are three times more likely than Republican and conservative residents to describe the state as “one of the best places” to live, the study found. More than 1 million California residents have moved out of the state since 2006, the Times reported citing a 2018 report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office. About 63,000 Californians moved to Texas in 2017, according to the Times, citing a 2019 relocation study by Texas Realtors. In the last 10 years, California welcomed 100,000 new residents with household incomes of $120,000 or higher—85% of which moved to the Bay Area, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office report. Most registered voters who said they are considering leaving the state (71%) cited California’s increasingly expensive housing as the main reason they are considering leaving the state, according to the study. California’s increasing home costs, which stem from its growing home shortage, could be the result of a combination of factors, including strict state regulations, high taxes, the California Environmental Quality Act, and permanent residents who do not want to give up land space for the homeless population, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Silicon Valley tech giants, who have brought hundreds of thousands of jobs—and with them, even more people—to the same area in California, have committed a total $4.5 billion to help combat the state’s crisis. High taxes and the state’s political culture were the second- and third-most cited responses, 58% and 46%, respectively, from registered voters as the main reason they are considering leaving. On top of high taxes and high housing costs, Californians are paying as much as $5 per gallon of gas in some areas. The average cost of fuel in the state soared to $4.18 in early October while drivers in other areas are paying as much as $5 per gallon, CNN Business reported on Oct. 8. Republican candidate for California’s 50th Congressional District Carl DeMaio previously told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Democratic leadership in the state “created the problem” with “taxes, mandates, and regulations.” “And now you come along saying, ‘It’s not our problem. It’s the private sector’s problem.’ This is how they escape responsibility for the problem,” DeMaio continued. California’s massively devastating wildfires, too, are driving people from the state, according to an Oct. 29 New York Times report, though wildfires are not mentioned in the Berkeley study. “We have lived here since 1966, but we have now decided to leave California because it has become unmanageable,” California resident Martha Ture told The New York Times in an email. “The fire danger and strong winds will not get any better in the coming five years and we are in our 70s.” Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom blamed the wildfires on climate change, but some experts disagree with his theory. “It’s about dog-eat-dog capitalism meeting climate change. It’s about corporate greed meeting climate change. It’s about decades of mismanagement,” the governor told reporters on Oct. 25. University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass previously told The Daily Caller News Foundation, however, that wildfires are the result of “poorly maintained electrical infrastructure” and strong, dry winds. The wildfires could also be the result of preoccupied regulators who were more focused on achieving energy regulation measures rather than fireproofing electric lines, Breakthrough Institute Executive Director Ted Nordhaus also previously told The Daily Caller News Foundation. While California voters cite various reasons behind their consideration or decision to leave the state, Republicans link high housing costs, high taxes, growing homeless population, strict regulations, and even wildfires to Democratic leadership, according to an Oct. 16 Los Angeles Times report. President Donald Trump, too, has blamed California Democrats like Newsom for the state’s troubles. “The Governor of California, [Gavin Newsom], has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Every year, as the fire’s rage |
[and]
California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor,” he continued.
“Also, open up the ridiculously closed
water lanes coming down from the North. Don’t pour it out into the
Pacific Ocean. … California desperately needs water, and you can have it
now!” Trump concluded in reference to the way the state disperses its water among the natural environment, farmland, and urban residences.
———————
Audrey Conklinis a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation. H/T The Daily Signal for sharing article.
Tags:Audrey Conklin, The Daily Caller, The Daily Signal, Since 2006, Over a Million Californians, Have Left the StateTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Why Chicago’s Police Superintendent Really Snubbed President Trump
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 07:20 PM PST
by Frank Miniter: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” –Sir Walter Scott, 1808
Media narratives are like a prosecutor’s version of events; part of the story being told is true, but facts have been purposely omitted and insinuations have been made to make us believe a half-truth.
Anyone who cherishes their freedom is well aware of the mainstream media’s anti-Second Amendment narratives. What is interesting right now, however, is their narratives are becoming such tangled webs they’re getting trapped in them.
What happened when President Donald J. Trump visited Chicago is a good example of how anti-gun narratives are entangling politicians and members of the media who don’t like your Second Amendment rights.
President Trump was in Chicago to speak at an International Association of Chiefs of Police conference, but Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson opted not to attend. Superintendent Johnson said he skipped President Trump’s speech to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Now, Chicago is a “sanctuary city” and President Trump has criticized Chicago’s policy of refusing to work with federal immigration authorities, but this was still an obvious dodge. The central problem with Chicago that President Trump has repeatedly highlighted, and a horrifying issue Chicago’s finest are tasked with solving, is the city’s gang-related bloodbath.
By refusing to attend the speech, Johnson showed he is not willing to even try to bridge the political divide on an issue that shouldn’t even be political. He is instead only interested in behaving as an activist, which should prompt any reasonable person to ask: When did police superintendent’s become activists?
The background to this is the fact that Chicago’s elected officials have long blamed American freedom—specifically, the many Americans who choose to legally own and perhaps carry firearms—for the illegal guns and the crimes committed in Chicago’s gang-infested neighborhoods. Chicago’s elected officials are so invested in this false narrative that honest solutions either evade them or are unpalatable to them.
Some of Chicago’s elected officials have also blamed law enforcement for the city’s violence and have burdened its officers with policies that make policing more difficult.
This is why, when Superintendent Johnson refused to attend President Trump’s speech, Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police (FOP Lodge 7), which represents rank-and-file Chicago police officers, actually cast a vote of “no confidence” in Johnson.
This is also why the Chicago’s police union president, Kevin Graham, greeted President Trump after he landed in the city.
Some might argue that Superintendent Johnson was simply avoiding being shown up in his own city; after all, during his speech, President Trump did say, “It’s embarrassing to us as a nation. All over the world they’re talking about Chicago. Afghanistan is a safe place by comparison.”
But wouldn’t it have been stronger, and the gentlemanly thing to do, for the police superintendent to show up?
By not showing, Chicago’s police superintendent showed he is so tangled in his party’s anti-gun narratives that he just couldn’t do the right thing.
Trump, meanwhile, signed an executive order creating a
presidential commission to look into how law-enforcement can better work
with communities on substance abuse, mental illness and more. Trump
also announced a new federal crackdown on violent crime. Too bad
Superintendent Johnson has made it clear he isn’t big enough to even try
work with the Trump administration to solve Chicago’s crime problems.
(Frank Miniter’s latest book is The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide to the Workplace.)
———————
Frank Minter (@frankminter) writes for numerous publications and is editor of America’s 1st Freedom.
He is the author of The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide to the Workplace,
a New York Times Bestseller, and This Will Make a Man of You.
Tags:Frank Minter, America’s 1st Freedom, Why Chicago’s Police Superintendent, Really Snubbed ,President TrumpTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Media Malfeasance, The Blue Dominion, Leaker Outed, Kudos To Mike Pence, More Judges!
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 07:03 PM PST
| Gary Bauer |
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Media Malfeasance
The
left-wing media are gloating this morning about the results of
yesterday’s off-year elections. The liberal news narrative is that the
election was a rebuke of President Trump and that Republicans are in
full-blown panic mode.
Last night, NBC News ran this headline: “Stunning Upset In Kentucky Elects Democrat Governor.” The headline is grossly misleading.
To begin with, as of this writing, Gov. Matt Bevin has not conceded. That said, over the past 70 years, Kentucky has had only three Republican governors. None have won reelection. So last night’s results, if they hold, were more or less typical, and hardly “stunning.”
The evidence is fairly overwhelming that Bevin’s apparent loss was about Matt Bevin, not Donald Trump.
Bevin’s signature issue was reforming public teacher pensions. The move triggered protests that went on for over a year, driving his approval rating down and making him the most unpopular governor in America. Two weeks ago, polling showed Bevin trailing his Democrat opponent by double digits.
Again, it’s hardly “stunning” that Bevin might lose. If anything, it is “stunning” that Bevin barely lost — 49.2% to 48.8% in very heavy turnout — to the current attorney general, Andy Beshear, the son of a popular former governor.
Meanwhile, Republicans swept every other statewide race by margins ranging from 5% to 22%. Republican Daniel Cameron, who won his race by 16 points, will become Kentucky’s first black attorney general.
You can take this to the bank: Kentucky will vote for Donald Trump next year, and it won’t be close.
The Blue Dominion
Virginia,
known as the “Old Dominion,” is another story entirely. Last night,
Democrats flipped control of the State House and State Senate, giving
Democrats total control of the state government for the first time in a
generation. Once again, a Blue wave swept over northern Virginia, wiping
out Republicans at every level.
Over the last decade, the population of Virginia has changed massively. In Northern Virginia, there has been a huge wave of immigration, both legal and illegal.
When I moved to Fairfax County over 30 years ago, it leaned Democrat, but it was competitive. Today, nearly a third of the county’s residents were born in a foreign country.
The area is also dominated by government workers and the “highly educated,” those who have been through the left-wing indoctrination camps that we call “colleges.” Both groups vote heavily Democrat.
Just a few months ago, the state’s leading Democrats were all embroiled in scandals involving racism, allegations of sexual assault and pro-abortion extremism. (Here, here, here and here.) But scandals apparently don’t matter unless the charges are aimed at Republicans.
The Blue wave was so strong it even swept into office a woman who was fired from her job for proudly giving the president the finger. This would have been unheard of in the genteel “Old Dominion” of just a few years ago. But in today’s Virginia, dominated by the progressive left, disrespecting Trump is apparently a good way to launch a political career.
Other Results
- In Mississippi, Tate Reeves, the Republican candidate, prevailed in a relatively close race for governor. It was close mainly because the Democrats ran the only statewide officeholder they have left. Trump will easily carry the state in 2020.
- The voters of Tucson, Arizona, overwhelmingly rejected a sanctuary city ballot measure. This is an interesting result because Hillary Clinton crushed Donald Trump in Tucson three years ago. Illegal immigration and lawlessness are not popular issues.
- Voters in liberal Washington State rejected a ballot measure to reinstate affirmative action.
Leaker Outed?
The media are going nuts today because Donald Trump, Jr., tweeted
a link to a Breitbart story about alleged CIA “whistleblower” Eric
Ciaramella. The story is just more confirmation that Ciaramella is a
partisan hack with an anti-Trump agenda.
The left is outraged by growing demands that the Deep State leaker be identified. Progressives insist that the whistleblower law protects the anonymity of government workers and it is a crime to release their names. As usual, this is a twisted analysis of the facts.
First, the whistleblower statute is primarily used to uncover the misuse of taxpayer dollars so Congress can fight waste and fraud. In this case, the president would be justified in holding up aid as an attempt to safeguard taxpayer money by not giving it to a country with a reputation for widespread corruption.
Second, the Deep State operative had no first-hand knowledge of the president’s call. There are serious questions as to whether he’s even covered by the statute.
Third, leaking classified material is a very different matter. There is growing evidence that the alleged “whistleblower” has leaked classified material before. He had reportedly left his White House post under suspicion of leaking.
Lastly, the whistleblower law does not supersede the Constitution, which guarantees every citizen the right to confront their accusers. The president cannot be impeached on the basis of anonymous allegations.
But the same progressives screaming now about efforts to identify the whistleblower are fighting tooth and nail to get all of Robert Mueller’s secret grand jury deliberations. And they are also attempting to get their hands on eight years of the president’s tax returns — five years before he became president!
The ability of the left and their media allies to make completely contradictory arguments simultaneously is a tremendous advantage in the war for public opinion.
When it comes to Trump’s taxes and the Mueller grand jury testimony, the left accuses the president of trying to hide something. But when it comes to the whistleblower, they accuse the president of trying to expose what should be kept secret.
With respect to the whistleblower’s identity, the American people deserve to know what the left is hiding. But I think it is fairly obvious — this entire impeachment effort is a raw partisan power grab orchestrated by the Deep State and its Democrat allies.
Kudos To Mike Pence!
Speaking of
contradictory arguments, while the Trump Administration is being
attacked for moving troops out of Syria, potentially making some Syrians
more vulnerable, left-wing media outlets are attacking Vice President
Mike Pence for making sure that Christians in the homeland of the faith
are getting the aid they need.
ProPublica has a lengthy story headlined: “How Mike Pence’s Office Meddled in Foreign Aid to Reroute Money to Favored Christian Groups.”
Note how Pence is accused of “meddling” in “foreign aid,” as if he is somehow knee-deep in the Ukraine hoax. I’m sure Maxine Waters will be demanding Pence’s impeachment (again) before the day is over.
My reaction to the story: I hope it is true!
It would be a major policy change from the previous administration, which stuck its finger in the eye of Middle Eastern Christians while they suffered a genocide at the hands of ISIS. No religious group in the Middle East is more at risk than Christians!
It is laughable that this is a considered a major “investigative piece.” When it was revealed that religious minorities were not getting the aid they needed, the president directed Mike Pence to fix this problem well over a year ago. Evidently, to the great frustration of many progressives, he has succeeded. God bless him!
I don’t know what the mood in the vice president’s office is today, but my advice would be to take this story as a badge of honor.
More Judges!
Here’s
some good news, my friends! The White House announced today that the
president is sending ten more judicial nominations to the Senate for
confirmation.
In fact, I am on my way to the White House this
afternoon to celebrate President Trump’s record number of judicial
appointments and to plan our strategy for restoring balance to the
federal courts.
———————–
Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer) is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families
Tags:Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Media Malfeasance, The Blue Dominion, Leaker Outed, Kudos To Mike PenceTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Sen. Warren’s Proposal to Divide Jerusalem is Not Only Immoral, But Dangerous
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 06:40 PM PST. . . What a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem would really mean.
by Richard L. Cravatts: As Democratic candidates for the presidency continue to move further to the left in an effort to distance themselves from the policies and politics of President Trump, the two frontrunners, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have increased the rhetoric against what is normally an untouchable topic for Democrats and Republicans alike: the United States’ relationship with the sole democracy in the Middle East, Israel.
While no candidate could expect to survive the political cost of walking away from Israel completely— diplomatically and financially—Sanders and Warren have recently been spouting positions with regard to Israel that show they apparently feel they can make that support conditional and can change the way the U.S. has traditionally been a trustworthy diplomatic partner with shared strategic goals.
At the J Street conference this week in Washington, D.C., for example, Sanders suggested to the attendees of the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group that, while the $3.8 billion in aid the U.S. commits to Israel each year should remain intact, he wondered out loud if this aid could be conditional. “My solution is to say to Israel: you get $3.8 billion dollars every year, if you want military aid you’re going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza,” Sanders said. “In fact,” he added with breathtaking audacity, “I think it is fair to say that some of that should go right now into humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
Perhaps Sanders has forgotten that the humanitarian crisis he alludes to in Hamas-controlled Gaza is largely the result of the terrorist group’s diverting of funds meant for schools, hospitals, food, and infrastructure in Gaza and using them instead for the construction of terror tunnels, rifles, bombs, and some of the 15,000 or so of rockets and mortars that have been launched from Gaza since the 2005 disengagement and have rained down of southern Israeli towns with the sole purpose of murdering Jews.
Not to be outdone in dangerous rhetoric about Israel’s future relationship with the United States, Senator Warren delivered a videotaped speech to the J Street conferees, announcing that if she becomes president she will push for the oft-discussed two-state solution, “the best outcome for U.S. interests,” as she put it. It will be “the best outcome for Israel’s security and future, and the best outcome for ensuring the Palestinian’s right to freedom and self-determination,” at the same time “ensuring an end to Israeli occupation.” There is nothing new about that proposal; what was new, and shocking, about Warren’s speech was her strident addition to the two-state plan, namely, that Jerusalem—the spiritual and ancestral home of Judaism for some 3000 years—would be carved up into two capitals, one Israeli and one Palestinian. “I will make clear,” she announced in her professorial tone, “that in a two-state agreement, both parties should be able to have their capitals in Jerusalem.”
Along with their unwavering and various demands, including a “right of return” of all refugees and sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the Palestinians have insisted for some two decades now that Jerusalem must be divided to give them a capital in its eastern portion as the location of their new state. Not Ramallah, which has functioned as a capital-in-waiting for the Palestinians, not Nablus, but Jerusalem, the holiest place on earth for Jews. Palestinian officials, as well as their enablers in the West like Senator Warren, have decided that East Jerusalem—a patchwork community where some 200,000 Jews and 270,000 Arabs currently live―is already assumed to be the Palestinian capital, and that Jews should no longer build or live there. That view is troubling, and not just because of the settlement issue, Israeli security concerns, and the issue of access to holy places such as the Western Wall; it is troubling because it reveals a pattern in which Arabs endow Jerusalem with intense significance to serve purposes of political expediency.
Ever since the Camp David meetings in 2000 when Ehud Barak opened the door to a divided Jerusalem in his negotiations with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians have been relentless in creating a false impression of how important Jerusalem is to them, while, at the same time, they have de-Judaized Jerusalem and tried to obscure the Jewish relationship with and continuing presence in the holy city, something Middle East scholar Martin Kramer has called their desire to effect “a reversal of history.”
Writing in al-Hayat al-Jadida, in March of 2009, for instance, Dr. Tayseer Al-Tamimi, PA Chief Justice of religious court and Chairman of Supreme Council of Islamic Law, absurdly claimed that “Jerusalem is the religious, political and spiritual capital of Palestine,” meaning a Palestinian Palestine, and that “the Jews have no rights to it.” But the true danger of the Palestinian thinking about Jerusalem—and, indeed, about all of the Palestine that they covet, including Israel itself—was crystallized in Yasser Arafat’s own view that he expressed in a July 2000 edition of al-Hayat al-Jadida. “I will not agree to any sovereign presence in Jerusalem,” he wrote, referring to the thorny issue of who, Israel or the Palestinians, would have sovereignty of the Holy Basin, “neither in the Armenian quarter, nor in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, neither in Via De La Rosa, nor in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They can occupy us by force, because we are weaker now, but in two years, ten years, or one hundred years, there will be someone who will liberate Jerusalem [from them].”
“Liberating” Jerusalem, of course, does not mean transforming it into a pluralistic, open city where members of three major faiths can live freely and practice their religions openly. Liberating Jerusalem for the Palestinians would be more in keeping with the type of liberation that Transjordan’s Arab League effected when they burned and looted the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem in 1948, expelled and killed its hapless Jewish population, destroyed some 58 synagogues, many hundreds of years old, unearthed gravestones from the history-laden Jewish cemetery on the Mount Olives and used them for latrine pavers, and barred any Jew from praying at the Western Wall or entering the Temple Mount. That same predilection to destroy religious property was on display again shortly after Camp David when a crazed Palestinian mob took sledgehammers to Joseph’s Tomb, a Jewish holy site, and completely obliterated it as Palestinian policemen stood idly by and watched.
But false irredentist claims, Islamic supremacism which compels Jews and Christians to live in dhimmitude under Muslim control, and an evident cultural and theological disregard for other faiths— while troubling in the battle over sovereignty in Jerusalem—are not, according to Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, the most dangerous aspects of a diplomatic capitulation which would allow the Palestinians to claim a shared Jerusalem.
Why? Because, as Gold explained, “In the world of apocalyptic speculation, Jerusalem has many other associations—it is the place where the messianic Mahdi [the redeemer of Islam] is to establish his capital. For that reason, some argue that it also should become the seat of the new caliphate that most Islamic groups—from the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda—seek to establish.”
In 2015, PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced in Ramallah that “We will not forsake our country and we will keep every inch of our land,” reaffirming his belief that all of Jerusalem would, and should, be retained by the Palestinians as the capital of their new state. “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid
[martyr]
will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God.” In fact, the establishment of the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem is the first important step in the long-term strategy to rid the Levant of Jews and reestablish the House of Islam in all of historic Palestine. “Jerusalem’s recapture is seen by some as one of the signs that ‘the Hour’ and the end of times are about to occur,” Gold suggested. “And most importantly, because of these associations, it is the launching pad for a new global jihad powered by the conviction that this time the war will unfold according to a pre-planned religious script, and hence must succeed.”
So far from creating a political situation in which both parties—Israelis and the Palestinians—feel they have sought and received equal benefits, such negotiations and final agreements would have precisely the opposite effect: destabilizing the region and creating, not the oft-hoped for Palestinian state “alongside Israel in peace and security,” as Senator Warren put it in her video statement, but an incendiary cauldron about to explode into an annihilatory, jihadist rage. Those in the West, like Warren, who are urging Israel “to redivide Jerusalem by relinquishing its holy sites,” Dore cautioned, “may well believe that they are lowering the flames of radical Islamic rage, but in fact they will only be turning up those flames to heights that have not been seen before.”
If Senator
Warren and other Western politicians are intent on mollifying the Arab
street by pressuring Israel to divide Jerusalem as a peace offering to
the Palestinians, it may well be setting into motion the exact opposite
result—a jihadist, apocalyptic movement invigorated by the misguided
diplomacy of the West that, once more, asks Israel to sacrifice its
security and nationhood so that Islamists can realize their own imperial
and theological ambitions at the Jewish state’s expense.
——————
Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews He contributed this article to FrontPage Mag.
Tags:Sen. Warren, Proposal to Divide Jerusalem, Not Only Immoral, But DangerousTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 06:12 PM PST
by Bill Donohue: Racism, true racism, is being devalued, and nothing contributes to its dumbing-down more than its promiscuous invocation. Being called a racist is by now so common that it has lost its sting. Indeed, the very concept of racism is increasingly irrelevant. For example, Julian Castro, who is running for president, boasts he is opposed to “environmental racism.” Does anyone know what that is, including him?
When someone says there is an “Hispanic invasion” going on, is that proof of racism, or is it an expression of concern about large numbers of people who are entering our country illegally from points south of our border?
When a reporter standing in front of an alley in Baltimore suggests that President Trump is a racist for saying the city is a “rodent-infested mess”—and a large rat is seen running in the alley behind the reporter—doesn’t that undercut the charge?
When actress Ellen Pompeo recently said that Kamala Harris was “overconfident,” was that evidence of Pompeo’s racism, as some said, or was it evidence of devaluing the meaning of racism?
Megyn Kelly was branded a racist for noting that when she was young it was okay for a white kid to put on blackface on Halloween. Her observation was undeniably true. Does that make her a racist for recalling it?
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently said on the radio that bigots used to called Sicilians (he is half Sicilian) “nigger wops.” Some black leaders condemned him for making a racist remark. Does that make Cuomo a racist or was he using the exact language used by racists to punctuate his point?
In 2016, comedian Larry Wilmore at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner turned to President Barack Obama (who went by Barry when he was younger) and said, “Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigger.” Is Wilmore a racist, or was he just joking around? Obama laughed at it. Does that make him a racist enabler, or someone who knows he’s being roasted?
When Republicans complained about IRS abuses against conservative organizations under President Obama, MSNBC host Martin Bashir called the GOP leaders racist, saying they are using the scandal “as their latest weapon in the war against the black man in the White House.” Was that what they were doing—dabbling in racism—or protesting corruption by IRS officials?
MSNBC host Chris Matthews said it was racist to talk about all the people on food stamps. Was he right about that, or was Newt Gingrich right when he said to him, “Why do you assume food stamps refers to blacks? What kind of racist thinking do you have?” [Note: the majority of people on food stamps are white.]
Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky once accused Mitt Romney of being a “spineless, disingenuous, supercilious, race-mongering pyromaniac” because he used a “heavily loaded word.” What was that racist word? Obamacare. If that makes Romney a racist, would that make the Obama White House racist for promoting what it called Obamacare?
About a decade ago, when Walmart sold white and black Barbie dolls, they were initially priced the same. But when the store had to prepare for inventory, it marked down certain items. Was it proof of racism, as some charged, that the black doll was reduced in price? Or was it simply a routine business practice?
The devaluing of racism began in the
academy. Here are seven examples of “racial microaggressions” taught in
our nation’s leading colleges and universities:
- Asking someone, “Where are you from?”
- Asking an Asian person to help with a math or science problem
- Observing that “America is a melting pot”
- Opining that “There is only one race, the human race”
- Saying, “I believe the most qualified person should get the job”
- Noting that “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough”
- Commenting, “We got gypped”
If the scales seem tipped against conservatives it is because they are. For example, Joe Biden recently said that “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” Does that make him a racist, or was it just a clumsy way of saying that low-income kids have the same potential to succeed as high-income kids?
When Biden once said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,” was he making a racist remark, or was it simply a sociological observation?
When he said that one of the best things about Obama was that he was “clean” and “articulate,” was he voicing his racism, or his penchant for making gaffes?
When President Bill Clinton was being impeached, Biden, and many other Democrats (white and black alike) called it a “lynching.” Now President Donald Trump is calling attempts to impeach him a “lynching.” If Trump is a racist for using this term, in this context, wouldn’t that make Biden a racist as well?
Let’s be fair: Biden is no racist, and neither is Trump. But according to standards that Biden has now adopted as proof of Trump’s racism, he most certainly is.
When Harvard University hosts a separate graduation ceremony for black students, is it being sensitive or racist? Would it be sensitive or racist if it did the same for white students? To put it differently, are there no principles left? Or is this just a political game, front loaded against conservatives?
Here’s something else to think about. On a scale of 1 to 10, what score should be given to someone who owns a restaurant, tells racist jokes, but does not discriminate against anyone? What score should be given to Harvard administrators who never tell racist jokes, but who discriminate against Asians—they put a cap on how many can get in?
The reason why accusations of racism are losing their
sting has everything to do with the duplicity of the accusers, and
their relentless invocations of it. When real racists are lumped in with
those who are either innocent, or at worst guilty of inartful
constructions, that’s a lose-lose, the biggest losers of which are those
who are truly victimized.
—————–
Bill Donohue (@CatholicLeague) is a sociologist and president of the Catholic League.
Tags:Bill Donohue, Catholic League, Defining Racism Down, To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 05:55 PM PST
by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: The one thing the Elizabeth Warren for president campaign cannot afford is ‘I’m With Her’ redux.
Hillary ‘the “her”’ Clinton came off as ultra-phony. She tried too hard to be something she is not — that is, likable and not an elitist. Mrs. Clinton’s attempts to seem normal were transparently clumsy. Even cringe-worthy, as when on The Breakfast Club with ‘Charlemagne the God,’ she said that she carried hot sauce in her purse.
You know, because, just like black Americans, she really loves her hot sauce.
The faux-Cherokee Senator from Harvard already has an honesty problem to deal with, just like Hillary. She doesn’t need a Witless/Senescent Boomer aura on top of that.
But that she suffers from just this sort of insincerity became clear in her first livestream, the most inauthentic aping of normalcy most of us have ever seen. And now there is ‘Warren’s Meme Team,’ a Twitter account designed to marshal young people to make ‘memes’ that will support Warren just the way Trump’s supporters Pepe-d Trump’s success in 2016.
Publicizing the notion of “saving the nation with selfies and memes” (in the words of the account) sinks Warren below Hillary down to Biden-level cluelessness. As Dave Cullen relates on Bitchute, the ham-fisted and “unintentionally hilarious” scheme “smacks of sterile, joyless corporate marketing jargon.”
If Warren loses to Trump next year, it won’t be cause of sub-par memes, of course. It will be because of mimesis — that is, mimicry — of Hillary Clinton.
Or because Warren, the self-professed capitalist, is viewed as a socialist.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
——————
Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ ) is author of Common Sense
which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and
about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also
President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in
Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.
Tags:Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Hillary’s Hot Sauce, RefluxTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 05:37 PM PST.
. . The biggest problem Washington D.C. has with President Trump is
that he isn’t playing by the deep state’s rules, so they want to remove
him by any means possible.
| Editorial Cartoon by AF “Tony” Branco |
Tags:AF Branco, editorial cartoon, a tight firTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Three Cheers for Refugee Reduction
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 05:31 PM PST
by Michelle Malkin: Over the weekend, President Donald Trump approved a new annual refugee cap of 18,000, the lowest since the U.S. program began in 1980.
The reduction follows news that America took a pause last month and refused to admit any new refugees. On economic, public safety and national security grounds, this is a very good thing for the 325 million people already in our country. But you wouldn’t know it from the grim headlines and hysterical condemnations by globalist zealots and media sympathizers.
CNN International led the open borders funeral procession last week, with a report decrying, “No refugees will be resettled in the US in October, leaving hundreds in limbo around the world.” U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., hyperventilated that “Donald Trump is trying to destroy the very heart of this nation. I won’t let him.” Social justice group CARE bemoaned this “dark moment in our nation’s history.” Human Rights First complained that Trump’s proposal is “crippling the United States’ status as a global leader in refugee resettlement.”
Heaven forbid citizens in a sovereign nation have an effective say in who comes here, from where and how many. Is one refugee-less month in America such a catastrophe? Calm down, Chicken Littles. Get some perspective.
It is most certainly true that America has a legacy of embracing people from around the world fleeing persecution and war. After World War II, the U.S. helped lead efforts to assist 650,000 displaced Europeans who had fled in fear, were expelled and were victims of Nazi crimes and terror. Congress passed the 1948 Displaced Persons Act to accommodate them. Five years later, the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 aided refugees from Italy and East Germany escaping Communist regimes, adding another 250,000 refugees over four years. In the 1950s and 1960s, we welcomed Hungarians, Cubans and Czechoslovakians also escaping Communist oppression. In the 1970s, we opened our doors to an estimated 300,000 political refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The Refugee Act of 1980 created the Office of Refugee Resettlement and office of U.S. Coordinator for Refugee Affairs and raised the annual ceiling of admissions to 50,000.
Under Obama, that number soared to nearly 100,000 annually. The idea that we’ve abandoned our humanitarian leadership role because of this refugee resettlement reduction is ludicrous. Overall, since 1975, the U.S. has resettled more than 3 million refugees. Under Trump, the U.S. still accepted more refugees than any other country in both 2017 and 2018. On top of that, America forked over nearly $1.6 billion to support the U.N.’s refugee resettlement campaign. Moreover, America remains the largest single country provider of humanitarian assistance worldwide. Total U.S. humanitarian assistance was more than $8 billion in fiscal year 2017, covering food, shelter, health care and access to clean water for millions.
That’s enough.
Past refugee admissions don’t lock America into those same levels now or in the future. America’s constitutional duty is to Americans first (“ourselves and our posterity”). The truth is that we’ve been generous to a ruinous, open borders fault. Last year, the Federation for American Immigration Reform tallied refugee resettlement costs to taxpayers at nearly $9 billion over five years.
In my adopted home state of Colorado, a new University of Colorado Boulder study acknowledged that refugees are often “trapped in chronic poverty” after resettlement subsidies dry up and are unable to lift themselves out of dependency on government aid such as public housing, Medicaid and food stamps. Federal statistics show that nearly half of all refugee households receive cash welfare. Chain migration perpetuates the cycle of poverty.
A tiny cabal of government contractors, mostly religious groups cloaking their profit-seeking in compassion and Scripture, perpetuates the refugee resettlement racket. Openly hostile to American sovereignty, these people spread their tax-subsidized syndicate’s wealth to a vast network of subcontractors, often tied to billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, which promote global governance and unfettered migration espoused by the United Nations, European Union and Vatican.
These special interests have systematically blurred the lines between legitimate refugees seeking asylum from oppression and economic migrants from Central America clamoring for higher wages or better welfare benefits. They’re indifferent to the national security risks of absorbing large numbers of Muslims whose adherence to repressive sharia and religious jihad is utterly incompatible with our constitutional principles.
Mass migration champions have stretched the definition of refugee so thin that “climate change refugees” seeking relief from uninhabitable environments are now a phenomenon. Nuts. Doesn’t America have enough residents in need of shelter and support? If we let in millions of “climate change refugees,” where do Americans seek refuge when they render our climate uninhabitable?
Only a
complete moratorium on immigration would give America the break it needs
to regain control of our system. Trump’s refugee reduction is not an
apocalypse. It’s a long overdue respite from the world’s wretched refuse
that deserves cheers, not jeers.
——————
Michelle Malkin is mother, wife, blogger, conservative syndicated columnist, and author. She shares many of her articles and thoughts at MichelleMalkin.com. H/T Jewish World Review.
Tags:Michelle Malkin, Three Cheers. Refugee ReductionTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 05:01 PM PST
| John Stossel |
by John Stossel: House members summoned Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to Washington, D.C., and grilled him — harshly — about his plan to create a new currency, Libra.
“Why should we trust you?!” asked Congressman Mike Doyle.
I liked it when Zuckerberg said, “I actually don’t know if Libra’s going to work, but I believe that it’s important to try new things.”
He was right. That’s very important.
The Libra would make it easier to transfer money anywhere in the world. It also promises stability. Its value would be based on a basket of currencies from different countries, which would protect Libra owners from inflation in any one country.
It’s an idea that deserves a try.
But it may never be tried because the clueless politicians’ threats of punitive regulation scared off many of its supporters.
Politicians want to crack down on Libra “because they’re threatened by it,” says tech reporter Naomi Brockwell in my new video. “This is going to be competition for the U.S. dollar. Government doesn’t like competition.”
Governments also like to control any money that we might use.
“Want to send money to Russia to a family member; it’s going to be censored. You want to send money to a relief effort in Venezuela; it’s going to be censored,” says Brockwell. But if you use a cryptocurrency like Libra or Bitcoin, “your money will get through. That’s an incredibly powerful tool that gives people the freedom to spend their money where they want to spend it.”
Bitcoin is harder to stop than a currency like Libra would be because Bitcoin doesn’t emanate from one company or government mint. There’s no one owner of Bitcoin or most other cryptocurrencies.
“It is the first currency that is decentralized,” Brockwell points out. “That’s why it’s still around, because they haven’t been able to have these hearings, haven’t been able to call the CEO of Bitcoin and say, ‘cease and desist!’ There is no server to unplug, no company to shut down, no CEO to throw in jail, so it persists! That’s really exciting.”
Digital currencies “live” on thousands of individuals’ computers, so no government can stop them by pressuring any one company.
That’s a reason they’re valuable.
When Bitcoin started, it was worth virtually nothing. But two years ago, the price of one bitcoin reached $19,891. Then it crashed to $3,192. As I write, the price is $9,390.
That volatility deters many people from using Bitcoin as money, but to those of us who don’t trust governments, Brockwell points out: “It is the only suitable money for free people.”
Of course, many disagree.
“I think it’s a gigantic classic pump and dump scheme,” says investor Peter Schiff. “There’s nothing to give Bitcoin value.”
It’s “a bubble,” vulnerable to attacks from governments. “They can get banks and financial institutions to make it very difficult for Americans to use it.”
Schiff doesn’t claim we should count on dollar bills because he doesn’t trust politicians either. He suggests people buy gold to hedge against politicians’ irresponsibility.
“Gold has worked for thousands of years,” says Schiff. Unlike Bitcoin, “gold has actual value. A huge industry needs gold: jewelry … consumer electronics, aerospace and medicine.”
I’ve hedged against the dollar by buying both gold and Bitcoin. My Bitcoin investment did better. But Schiff says I’m a fool if I don’t sell it now.
I don’t know which way prices will move. But I know that it’s good to have alternatives to government-created currencies. The dollar’s value is only backed by politicians’ promises. I sure won’t trust those.
Even when currency is stable, government can use its power over currency to censor people.
“The government decided that they didn’t want WikiLeaks to receive donations, so they froze transactions,” observes Brockwell. But they couldn’t stop Bitcoin.
She says government has had “a monopoly on the money supply for a very long time, and now consumers finally have a choice. You can send bitcoin peer-to-peer to someone on the other side of the world almost instantly at very low cost, and it can’t be censored. That’s incredibly powerful.”
It is.
Alternatives to government monopolies are very good things.
————————
John Stossel is author of “No They Can’t! Why Government Fails — But Individuals Succeed.” Article shared by Rassmussen Reports.
Tags:John Stossel, Set Money Free, commentary, Rassmussen ReportsTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 03:09 PM PST
| European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland |
by Robert Romano: U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland issued a new statement on Nov. 4 to the House Intelligence Committee that he “presumed” military assistance to Ukraine was “likely” being conditioned by the administration when he spoke to a Ukrainian presidential aide on Sept. 1, but that he “did not know… when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended…”
In any sane world, this would be the end of the impeachment farce by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Per Sondland, there was no communication from the White House, President Donald Trump or his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to leverage Ukraine using military assistance — the heart of the allegation against the President.
From the testimony, “I now do recall a conversation on September 1, 2019, in Warsaw with [Zelensky presidential aide Andriy] Yermak. This brief pull-aside conversation followed the larger meeting involving Vice President [Mike] Pence and President [Volodymyr] Zelensky, in which President Zelensky had raised the issue of the suspension of U.S. aid to Ukraine directly with Vice President Pence. After that large meeting, I now recall speaking individually with Mr. Yermak, where I said that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement we had been discussing for many weeks.”
But, he didn’t know. Here, Yermak says he was speculating: “I always believed that suspending aid to Ukraine was ill-advised, although I did not know (and still do not know) when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended. However, by the beginning of September 2019, and in the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement.”
On Aug. 28, Politico broke the story that the U.S. had decided to pause U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, days before the planned meeting, which is how Ukrainian officials had learned about it.
Then the meeting in Warsaw happened, and the issue was raised there by both Zelensky and afterward by Yermak. But if Sondland was “presuming” the aid was being leveraged, and told Ukrainian presidential aide Yermak that the military assistance would “likely” not resume until the statement had been issued, then he was guessing.
Meaning, there was no quid pro quo. Nowhere does Sondland say the White House had told him to tie military aid to any statement by Ukraine.
Of course that’s not stopping major media outlets from reporting what they want the testimony to mean. They think Sondland is their star witness.
“Sondland reverses himself on Ukraine, confirming quid pro quo,” reported Politico.
“The guy Trump cited as proof there wasn’t a quid pro quo just said there was a quid pro quo,” blared Rolling Stone.
“With revised statement, Sondland adds to testimony linking aid to Ukraine investigations that Trump sought,” the Washington Post added.
“It was a corrupt quid pro quo,” the Atlantic found.
The anti-corruption statement by Ukraine that had been sought was that they were looking at origins of the Russiagate investigation and potential corruption at Burisma Holdings, but not in exchange for military assistance but a sought-after meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainan President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Per Sondland’s updated testimony, in May 2019, “scheduling a White House visit for President Zelensky was conditioned upon President Zelensky’s agreement to make a public anti-corruption statement. This condition had been communicated by Rudy Giuliani, with whom President Trump directed Ambassador Volker, Secretary Perry and me, on May 23, 2019, to discuss issues related to the President’s concerns about Ukraine.”
But those conditions were dropped. Because the Sept. 1 Warsaw meeting was originally supposed to be Trump and Zelensky but an imminent hurricane had Pence traveling there instead, facilitating such a statement had already abandoned by State Department officials.
According to former United States Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker’s Oct. 3 testimony, “To my knowledge, the news about a hold on security assistance did not get into Ukrainian Government circles, as indicated to me by the current foreign minister, then diplomatic adviser, until the end of August. And by the time that we had that, we had dropped the idea of even looking at a statement” in exchange for a meeting.
Further, Volker was asked about the conditioning the meeting, “Did the President ever withhold a meeting with President Zelensky… until the Ukrainians committed to investigate the allegations… concerning the 2016 election?”
To which, Volker replied, “The answer to the question is no… there was no linkage.” And we now know that because the Sept. 1 meeting in Warsaw — which again, was supposed to be Trump and Zelensky not Pence — had already been scheduled.
Now, perhaps the reason for that is Trump became satisfied by what Zelensky had told him in the July 25 phone call, where Zelensky pledged to look into both potential Ukrainian origins of the Russiagate investigation by intelligence agencies and the Justice Department falselyaccusing the President and his campaign of being Russian agents, which had been debunked by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and looking at potential corruption in Burisma Holdings.
On the Russiagate investigation, without any preconditions communicated by Trump — the President just asked nicely — Zelensky said, “Yes, it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier… I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.”
And on Burisma, again without any pressure from Trump, Zelensky said, “I understand and I’m knowledgeable about the situation… Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100 percent my person, my candidate, who will be approved by the parliament and will start as new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and work on the investigation of the case.”
As for military assistance, both Trump and Zelensky blasted Europe for not doing more, and Zelensky thanked the U.S. for everything it was doing. Trump said, “I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you… A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at…”
To which Zelensky replied, “Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100 percent, but actually 1000 percent and I can tell you the following: I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her. I also met and talked with Macron and I told them they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner…”
A month later, Trump was set to meet Zelensky on Sept. 1. And then a hurricane hit and so did the Politico story about military aid being paused. That’s when Trump canceled his trip and Pence went in his stead, and then Sondland says he surmised that the military assistance was tied to the statement.
But when he circled back to the White House, he found out he was wrong. In Sondland’s original testimony on Oct. 17, he said he asked Trump directly what he wanted out of Ukraine, and Trump said nothing: “On September 9, 2019, Acting Charge de Affairs/Ambassador William Taylor raised concerns about the possibility that Ukrainians could perceive a linkage between U.S. security assistance and the President’s 2020 reelection campaign. Taking the issue seriously, and given the many versions of speculation that had been circulating about the security aid, I called President Trump directly. I asked the President: ‘What do you want from Ukraine?’ The President responded, ‘Nothing. There is no quid pro quo.’ The President repeated: ‘no quid pro quo’ multiple times. This was a very short call. And I recall the President was in a bad mood.”
Two days later, on Sept. 11, the military assistance was released. On Sept. 25, Zelensky spoke with reporters at his meeting with Trump in New York saying, that “nobody pushed me.”
If there’s no victim, where’s the crime?
Sondland now says he made he “presumed” that military assistance was “likely” being conditioned directly following the Sept. 1 meeting between Vice President Pence and Zelensky where the issue of the lapse in military funding was raised. But he was wrong. Barring any other disclosures, it appears Sondland was the source of the confusion.
That will
probably not be enough for Pelosi and Schiff — they are too committed at
this point. But if Zelensky says there was no pressure, neither Trump
nor Pence conveyed any conditions on the aid, and the only person who
communicated that the military assistance was being conditioned by the
administration now says he was assuming that it was, then that’s it.
This is a dead end.
——————-
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Tags:Robert Romano, Americans for Limited government, Impeachment Flops, Ambassador Sondland, Says He ‘Presumed,’ Ukrainian Military Assistance, Was ‘likely’ Being Conditioned, But Nobody Told Him, It WasTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Disproportionalities: Whose Fault?
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 02:45 PM PST
| Proportionality and diversity injustice in the NBA, with blacks making up over 80% of the players. |
by Dr. Walter E. Williams: Jews have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes in economics, 30% of those in medicine, 25% in physics, 20% in chemistry, 15% in literature and 10% of the Nobel Peace Prizes.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been just over 900 Nobel Prizes awarded. Since Jews are only 2% of the world’s population, instead having 22% of Nobel Prizes, 206, they should have won only two, according to the proportionality vision of justice.
There’s an even greater domestic violation of the proportionality vision. Jews are less than 3% of the U.S. population but 35% of American Nobel Prize winners.
Several questions come to mind. Does the disproportionately high number of Jewish winners explain why there are so few black or Hispanic Nobel Prize winners? Who’s to blame for ethnic disproportionality among Nobel Prize winners, and what can be done to promote social justice?
Proportionality injustice doesn’t end with the Nobel Prize. Blacks are about 13% of the U.S. population but close to 70% of the players in the National Football League. Blacks are greatly overrepresented among star players and highly paid players.
While the disproportionality injustice runs in favor of black players in general, they are all but nonexistent among the league’s field goal kickers and punters. Perhaps the only reason why football team owners are not charged with hiring discrimination is that the same people who hire quarterbacks and running backs also hire field goal kickers and punters.
Proportionality and diversity injustice is worse in the National Basketball Association, with blacks being over 80% of the players. Plus, it’s not uncommon to watch college basketball games and see that 90 to 100% of the starting five players are black.
Most readers know that I teach economics at George Mason University and have done so for nearly 40 years. However, that doesn’t mean the field of economics doesn’t have its problems.
Many see economics as neither a welcoming nor a supportive profession for women or blacks. Former Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen, in addressing a Brookings Institution audience said:“Within the economics profession, women and minorities are significantly underrepresented. And data compiled by the American Economic Association’s Committees on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession and the Status of Minority Groups in the profession show that there has been little or no progress in recent decades. Women today make up only about 30 percent of Ph.D. students. Within academia, their representation drops the higher up one goes in the career ladder. The share of Ph.D.s awarded to African Americans is low; and it has declined slightly in recent decades.”Yellen says that diversity in economics is a matter of “basic justice.”
Had I been in the audience, I would have asked Yellen whether there’s basic justice in the nursing field, where less than 10% of nurses are men.
What about the gross lack of proportionality in incarceration? According to 2015 figures released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the overall U.S. prison and jail population is 90.6% male and 9.4% female. The only way that I see to remedy such a gross disproportionality injustice is to either incarcerate more female prisoners or release male prisoners.
Back to Janet Yellen: It is pathetic and professionally incompetent that she can ignore decades of research — some of it by female researchers — that shoots down the idea that disparities prove discrimination. Moreover, if one carries the notion that disparities prove discrimination far enough, they’d look like true fools.
According to a study conducted by Bond University in Australia, sharks are nine times likelier to attack and kill men than they are women. Despite the fact that men are 50% of the population, and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. Of those killed by lightning, 82% are men.
One can only wonder what social justice warriors would do about these and many other disproportionalities.
——————–
Dr. Walter Williams (@WE_Williams)
is an American economist, social commentator, and author of over 150
publications. He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the UCLA and
B.A. in economics from California State University. He also holds a
Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City
College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College. He has
served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia,
as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980. Visit
his website: WalterEWilliams.com and view a list of other articles and works.
Tags:Walter Williams, commentary, Disproportionalities, Whose FaultTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
The Atlantic Suggests Using an Anti-Gun Narrative to Supplant the Second Amendment
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 02:21 PM PST
| U.S. Supreme Court |
by Frank Miniter: An opinion piece in The Atlantic, titled “A Constitutional Case for Gun Control,” showed how tangled the mainstream media’s narrative on guns is nationally.
The opinion article was written by two Yale Law School students. Like many on the anti-gun left, they are clearly worried that a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices will honestly interpret the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights when they rule on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York sometime next year.
These two Yale Law School students write:
“Gun-control advocates need their own constitutional narrative, one that incorporates a broader conception of self-defense into its vision. Since Heller, the Court has drawn a straight line connecting the broader, constitutionally grounded right to self-defense to the more specific right to individual gun ownership. But defense of oneself and one’s family can be pursued in a variety of ways. An individual right to gun ownership offers one path, deputizing all people to defend themselves with a firearm at their side. Gun regulation offers another such path to self-defense, one vastly more efficacious and preferred by the American public. It represents a mode of preemptive self-defense, whereby the state is tasked by its citizens with limiting access to deadly force.”
These two students are so entangled in the left’s narratives about guns that they’re asking us to suspend all we know about the nature of our rights, including why the Founders put the Second Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights, so that some fabricated narrative pushing a collective-rights myth can legally supplant protections of our individual freedom.
They also want us to forget—and the mainstream media is helping them by not fairly reporting these facts—all of the evidence proving that more guns does equal less crime.
They go on to argue that “[g]un-control advocates must reclaim the Constitution from the pro-gun lobby.”
The thing is, their method isn’t an attempt to “reclaim the Constitution.” It is an attempt to rewrite the Constitution without going through the constitutional amendment process the document mandates. They want a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices to usurp the liberty of the people in order to make way for centralized government power they crave.
For a detailed analysis of this upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case, read the NRA’s friend-of-the-court brief on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York.
Also, check back here, as we’ll keep you up to date on this important
case and on other important issues related to your rights.
——————
Frank Miniter is Editor in Chief of America’s 1st Freedom.
Tags:Frank Miniter, America’s 1st Freedom, The Atlantic, Suggests Using an Anti-Gun Narrative, to Supplant, the Second AmendmentTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
The Democrats’ Real Impeachment Target: Far More Than Trump
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 02:03 PM PST
by Thomas McArdle, I&I Editorial: The statement President Donald Trump made that rendered his impeachment inevitable was not on July 25, 2019, when he said to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it.”
It was on Feb. 6, 2019, when he said to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the assembled members of Congress during his State of the Union, “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”
Ronald Reagan was as much an enemy of socialism as any president, but even he never looked the domestic opposition in the eye and explicitly declared war against the Democratic Party’s militant left for all the world to hear. But then, by the end of Reagan’s presidency in the late 1980s, even the oldest member of The Squad was still in high school; the few hard leftists among House Democrats were no threat to the power of their party’s leadership, as The Squad and its following are today.
In response to Trump throwing down the gauntlet, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s strategy has been to conduct private depositions to determine the specifics of their preferred narrative, then burn it into the brains of Americans in the impeachment of this president, with an eye toward winning big in 2020 – regaining the White House, and possibly even the Senate, and retaining the House.
As they shift to public testimony, the impeachment resolution House Democrats passed last week deprives the chamber’s minority party of important powers, and the president of self-defense rights – a stark contrast to the precedents of both the Nixon and Clinton proceedings.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted it as “no due process now, maybe some later,” adding that “‘only if we feel like it’ is not a standard that should ever be applied to any American and it should not be applied here to the president of the United States.”
Using Alinsky’s Weaponry To Combat Socialism
But
this is a president who used his appearance at a Joint Session of
Congress to give the left a taste of its own medicine and execute Saul
Alinsky’s rule 13: freeze and polarize your target. As Alinsky’s “Rules
For Radicals” points out, in a complex society “the problem that
threatens to loom more and more is that of identifying the enemy.” You
must “pin that target down securely.”
Alinsky added: “One of the criteria in picking your target is the target’s vulnerability”; some segments of America may be smitten with socialism, but it remains greatly vulnerable if it is clearly identified. Most of the country continues to recognize the destructiveness of giving government massive new control over property and economic activity.
The father of leftist community organizing also advised that the target “must be a personification, not something general,” but in the minds of many, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s name, and those of her congressional allies, are synonymous with socialism. What’s more, Trump’s numerous Twitter attacks against AOC, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and other far-left Democrats have indeed personified his attack on socialism.
In polarizing the target, Trump has also appropriated the Alinsky way, following Alinsky’s recommended model, Christ, in declaring “He that is not with me, is against me.” The president made it clear he was not interested in having the country meet socialism half or part way; instead, it is an enemy that must be defeated, not appeased or contained. No compromise with the champions of “government coercion, domination, and control.”
Alinsky also taught that the one thing to do to an enemy “that is certain to get him to react” is “to laugh at him. This causes an irrational anger.” Trump has been applying this Alinskyite technique with his outrageous characterizations of figures on the left, including comparing AOC to Eva Peron, calling House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California “Shifty Schiff” and “pencil neck,” referring to presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg as “Alfred E. Neuman,” and nicknaming Pelosi “High Tax, High Crime Nancy” and “Crazy Nancy.”
In reaction, Democrats have indeed displayed symptoms of “irrational anger”; they’re making miscalculations, such as Schiff’s public reading of a fake version of the transcript of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky, the concerted faith congressional Democrats placed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings – and perhaps the House impeachment itself, should it backfire and produce soundbites Trump can use in campaign advertising as evidence of Democrats’ unfair treatment of him.
Lenin made it very clear toward the close of 1917 that if socialism is your objective, you are in a war.
“No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals,” he wrote. These enemies of socialism “must be ruthlessly punished for the slightest violation of the laws and regulations of socialist society. Any display of weakness, hesitation or sentimentality in this respect would be an immense crime against socialism.”
Absent the call for physical violence, it’s not all that removed from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s rhetoric of demonizing the successful. “The rich are not like you and me,” she said, lifting from a famous purported exchange between Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. “The really, really billionaires are making their money off their accumulated wealth, and it just keeps growing.”
Far beyond “the slightest violation of the laws and regulations of socialist society,” Trump has sounded an existential war cry against socialism. It is above all for this that this president is being targeted with impeachment. And if Democrats succeed in blemishing him and winning big at the polls a year from now, their hope is that they will also mortally wound the movement to preserve, strengthen and spread economic freedom, and the values of Western civilization that have guided the U.S. since its founding.
That would make it a victory over not only Donald
Trump, but his Republican Party successors committed to those same
American values of liberty in the post-Trump America.
———————-
I&I Editorial written for the Issues & Insights. I & I Editorial Board‘s new site is formed by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page.
Tags:J. Frank Bullitt, I&I Editorial, Democrats’ Real Impeachment Target, Far More Than TrumpTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Trump Sees Red in the Bluegrass
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 01:38 PM PST
by Tony Perkins: Walking the concourse of the Rupp Arena, home of Kentucky basketball and Monday’s Trump rally, reporters took turns asking people why they still supported the president. “Because I have common sense,” fired back one woman. He’s done everything he said he would, insisted another. But what about the impeachment inquiry, Lawrence Jones pressed? “The American people aren’t stupid,” one man said bluntly. And based on the turnout at yesterday’s event, he’s right.
Days after the House’s absurd vote to formalize Donald Trump’s impeachment, the man at the center of the controversy was met by roaring applause. Thousands of supporters packed into a jammed auditorium to show Washington that Kentucky isn’t buying what the Democrats are selling. “It’s an absolute joke,” one 20-something voter told Jones — an opinion that a growing number of battleground states share. Even a New York Times-Siena College poll couldn’t hide the fact that majorities in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are flatly against removing the president from office.
“We’ve known for a long time that everybody in California and New York want Trump to be impeached,” one Trump campaign official told the Hill newspaper. “They’ve wanted that since the day he came into office. But in these states where the election is really going to be fought, we’re seeing that voters oppose impeachment, and there’s an intensity to that opposition.” This entire Democratic circus, Paul Bedard explains, isn’t hurting Trump’s base — it’s expanding it. “Pollster Jonathan Zogby told us that Trump is making solid inroads with new voters who feel good about the economy, including those in urban areas and the poor, traditionally part of the Democratic base.” Others, like journalist Mark Halperin, looked at the numbers and agreed. “I think Trump can run up the score in rural areas even bigger than he did.”
Monday’s rally certainly seemed to confirm it. President Trump spent more than an hour hitting back at the Left’s radicalism, refusing to shy away from the tough issues. “We are sending a signal to the rest of the country — to the rest of the world — what the Republican party stands for. While we are creating jobs and killing terrorists, the radical Democrats are going totally insane,” he said. “These people are on the run,” the president warned. This is “a deranged hyper-partisan impeachment witch-hunt… They’ve been plotting to overthrow the election since the first hour that we won. And actually, before we won, they were plotting to overthrow this election… [But] with last week’s vote, the far Left has declared war on American democracy itself.”
This is a party, Trump went on, that wants to “impose their authoritarian ideology on the nation, telling you what to think, what to believe and how you should live. They want to erase our traditions, our culture, our history, and our heroes… They want to obliterate the rule of law, drive out faith from the public square… silence you online, [and] confiscate your guns.” This election, President Trump insisted, is “a chance to send the radical Democrats a message. You will vote to reject Democrats’ extremism, socialism, and corruption, and you will vote to reelect Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.”
Then, he laid out a powerful case for why, ticking off some of the administration’s most impressive accomplishments — from the “hottest economy in the world” and job growth to a 60-percent drop in illegal immigration. The president talked about confirming a record-number of judges, “157 to follow the Constitution as written,” securing the border, ending lopsided trade deals, and rebuilding the military. A week removed from one of the biggest success stories of his first term, the president reminded everyone that America is also “defeating radical Islamic terrorists like never before.” To loud cheers, he exclaimed, “The monster animal known as Al-Baghdadi is dead…”
As if those contrasts weren’t enough, he drew an even bigger one. “Virtually every top Democrat also now supports late-term abortion, ripping babies straight from their mother’s womb right up until the moment of birth. And that’s why I’ve asked Congress to prohibit extreme late-term abortion because Republicans believe that every child is a sacred gift from God.”
“We
believe in the dignity of work and the sanctity of life. We believe that
faith and family — not government and bureaucracy — are the true
American way. We believe that children should be taught to love our
country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag.
Loyal citizens like you helped build this country, and together we are
taking back our country. We are returning power to you, the American
people. Our loyalty is to our citizens. And our devotion is to our
Creator.”—————————-
Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council . This article was on Tony Perkin’s Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
Tags:President Trump, Sees Red, the Bluegrass, KentuckyTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Bloomberg’s Gun Control Apparatus Lies to Virginia’s Firearm Owners in Election Mailing
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 01:20 PM PST
by NRA-ILA: Here’s a hint for Virginia gun owners and sportsmen: When you get a firearm-related election mailing with a New York City return address and proudly proclaiming that it’s printed on soy ink, you can safely assume it doesn’t reflect reality, much less Virginians’ values on the right to keep and bear arms. In fact, it’s probably the only time that blaze orange is being used as camouflage.
Gun control financier, former Big Apple mayor, and would-be nanny to the nation Michael Bloomberg is resorting to desperate measures and outright lies to smear the NRA ahead of Virginia’s hotly-contested election on Nov. 5.
The NRA, of course, is not on the ballot, but Bloomberg knows it is his most formidable opponent as he pours millions upon millions of dollars into the Commonwealth via his Everytown Gun Control apparatus and other AstroTurf subsidiaries. His goal is to buy the election and the subservience of his hired guns in the legislature.
Everytown’s mailing recognizes that the NRA has more grassroots clout than Everytown itself does in Virginia by stealing classic themes from the NRA’s election-related materials, including the same orange used on NRA postcards and the same type of letter-grading NRA applies to political candidates. Everytown may be hoping some recipients will even be fooled into thinking the mailing did come from a real pro-gun sportsmen’s group.
But its message is all Bloomberg, a man who is so arrogant and out-of-touch that he thinks he can sit in a Manhattan skyscraper and tell Virginia’s gun owners what to think.
In bolded capital letters, the front of the mailing states: “THE NRA GETS AN F FOR ABANDONING VIRGINIA’S SPORTSMEN.”
Needless to say, the idea of Bloomberg advocating for any gun owners is absurd. He didn’t distinguish between sportsmen and other gun owners when he said: “[I]f you want to have a gun in your house, I think you’re pretty stupid….”
And, dating back to his time as mayor of New York City, Bloomberg-backed legal filings have repeatedly denied that the Second Amendment protects the fundamental right of Americans to possess a firearm for personal protection.
Yet Old Dominion gun owners know the NRA is the leading advocate for all firearm owners in the Commonwealth.
We maintain entire divisions devoted to hunting, access to public lands for hunting and target practice, and competitive shooting.
The NRA was a pioneer in modern hunting education and remains one of the leading providers and trainers for this vital component of preserving America’s hunting heritage.
The NRA has led efforts in state after state to enshrine a constitutional right to hunt and fish.
The NRA produces America’s leading national monthly hunting publication.
And, of course, the NRA has been the leading advocate for Sunday hunting in Virginia and elsewhere.
At the federal level, the NRA has made sure that the Pittman-Robertson Act remains true to its original purpose to promote America’s outdoor sporting heritage, including by supporting the recent passage of the Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act.
REAL sportsmen and sportswomen know that without the NRA, the wide access that Americans enjoy to hunting and the outdoor shooting sports would be gravely imperiled. We’d at best look something like Great Britain, were hunting is the domain of landed gentry.
They also know that if Bloomberg were ever to succeed in depriving Americans of handguns and semi-automatic long guns, he’d eventually get around to the hunter’s bolt-action rifle and break-barrel shotgun.
The back of the Everytown mailing also contains quotes and unproven accusations maligning the NRA that are ripped out of context to make it seem like they’re coming from pro-gun sources. Needless to say, phony charges from the Far Left are all the rage these days, no matter how many times they eventually fall flat.
But no one should be surprised. Bloomberg and Everytown have a well-established history of bending or ignoring the truth, one even the legacy media cannot always ignore.
Rest
assured, the NRA has and will continue to advocate for ALL gun owners,
in Virginia and elsewhere. And if those who favor freedom manage to
resist Bloomberg’s financial onslaught to hold or gain seats in the
Virginia election, it will be due to the incredible efforts of the
Commonwealth’s many thousands of hard-working NRA members.
——————-
NRA-ILA article.
Tags:Virginia, Everytown For Gun Safety, Michael BloombergTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Saudi Arabia’s Final Plan For Higher Oil Prices
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:56 PM PST
by Tsvetana Paraskova: Rather than advocating for a deeper overall cut, OPEC’s largest producer and de facto leader Saudi Arabia will be pressuring non-compliant cartel members to fall in line with their quotas, but will nevertheless seek higher oil prices ahead of the listing of Aramco expected for December.
This would remind potential investors in the Kingdom’s oil giant that Saudi Arabia retains its influence over OPEC and has the final word on the cartels policy, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing sources with knowledge of the Saudi plan ahead of the OPEC meeting in early December.
Saudi Arabia is on a mission to get all overproducing countries in OPEC, and in the larger OPEC+ group such as Kazakhstan, to respect their production quotas under the deal.
If all overproducers in the OPEC+ pact were to stick to their respective targets, the group will deliver an effective 500,000 bpd cut in oil production, Saudi oil advisors told the WSJ.
Saudi Arabia, which has repeatedly said that it will do ‘whatever it takes’ to rebalance the market, needs high oil prices to ensure that Aramco’s IPO—the world’s largest listing ever—will be a success after years of delays.
Saudi officials have been telling fellow OPEC members that a deeper cut could be discussed at the December meeting, according to The Journal’s sources. The largest OPEC producer, however, would rather not insist aggressively on an official deeper-cut target so that it will not be left to make the most of the new cuts again.
“It would be an admission of weakness,” the Saudi oil adviser told The Journal.
The biggest non-compliant OPEC producers, Nigeria and Iraq, vowed in September to fall in line with their quotas. They saw their production drop in October, according to the Reuters monthly survey, but they were still producing above their quotas, even after Nigeria received a higher cap from OPEC.
Saudi
Arabia, for its part, continues to overcomply with its share of the
cuts, to the tune of around 400,000 bpd. The Saudi cap under the OPEC+
deal is 10.311 million bpd, while the Kingdom pumped 9.9 million bpd in
October, the Reuters survey found.
—————————–
Tsvetana Paraskova is a writer for OilPrice.com, a leading online energy news site.
Tags:Saudi Arabia, Final Plan, For Higher Oil Prices, Tsvetana Paraskova, OilPrice.comTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
Trump Administration Moves to Protect Religious Freedom, Again
Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:38 PM PST
by Autumn Leva: On Friday, President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a new proposed rule to allow faith-based adoption and foster care agencies to receive federal grants without compromising their religious beliefs.
The new rule will roll back harmful regulations from the Obama Administration that forced faith-based providers to choose between helping vulnerable children and birthmoms, or following their faith.
In 2016, just days before President Obama left office, HHS added “sexual orientation” as a protected class to a rule governing adoption agencies. Therefore, adoption and foster care providers could not continue to place children in need with married mothers and fathers only based on their biblical beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Their choice was to give up their beliefs in order to serve or else stop serving children and birthmothers altogether. And many did close their doors because they couldn’t violate their faith.
While the Obama rule sought to punish faith-based agencies into compliance with a radical political agenda, the real victims were children waiting for their forever home and birthmoms whose choices were limited.
With more than 440,000 children in foster care in the U.S., and at least 100,000 waiting for adoption, this misguided rule demanded attention.
The Trump Administration responded.
The new rule will allow adoption and foster care agencies to once again provide much-needed child placement services while maintaining their religious beliefs. Rather than force them to comply with politically motivated “sexual orientation” rules, providers will only be required to comply with nondiscrimination laws passed by Congress and signed into law, as well as applicable Supreme Court decisions.
According to a White House press release, “The proposed rule represents the Trump Administration’s strong commitment to the rule of law—the Constitution, federal statutes, and Supreme Court decisions. These require that the federal government not infringe on religious freedom in its operation of HHS grant programs and address the impact of regulatory actions on small entities.”
This announcement represents one of several steps taken by the Trump Administration to protect religious freedom in America and restore common-sense in federal agencies. The Administration has also taken action to protect medical workers who have conscious objection to abortion and assisted suicide, and it has ensured that faith-based businesses can opt out of insurance plans that include contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.
We are delighted
that the Department of Health and Human Services has issued this new
rule to protect religious freedom and advance the work of faith-based
adoption and foster care agencies. President Trump and his
administration deserve our thanks.
——————–
Autumn Leva, Esq. is Vice President for Strategy for Family Policy Alliance.
Tags:Autumn Leva, Family Policy Alliance, Trump Administration, Moves to Protect, Religious Freedom, AgainTo share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!
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Thursday, November 7, 2019 |
Conventional Wisdom In DC Ignores Mexico As A Problem If you were to only get your news from CNN or MSNBC, you might think the greatest threat to United States foreign policy is either Russia or our 18-year war in the Middle East. You would hear less about the growing violence and failing state just below us, sharing 2000 miles of our southern border. But it’s not just the media, our foreign policy establishment is more concerned with foreign wars than they are Mexico, where 100 people are murdered each day, cartel leaders bribe presidents, and floods of migrants are trafficked across the country. Democrats and the media ignore it because it disproves their narrative about wanting open borders. The Washington establishment ignores it because they would rather put boots on the ground hunting ISIS than they would the cartels. Ellis Domenech in The Federalist: “Mexico cannot be classified as a failed state by current definitions, but the government has ceased to exist as a functional governing entity in almost 80 percent of the country. Our leaders have consistently decided to ignore these issues and look across the oceans at faraway lands. Afghanistan cannot be seen as anything but a failure. Yet we remain there while we also spend billions around the world in other strategically irrelevant areas.” And regarding Monday’s slaughter just miles from the Arizona border, family relatives said they know the attack was planned. They believe one cartel used the caravan of women and children as “bait” to lure another one into their territory. Read more here (The Federalist). More on how CNN and MSNBC give more air time to the Middle East than Mexico here (The Federalist). Joe Biden Falls To Fourth Place In Iowa Joe Biden’s Ukraine scandal and swiss cheese brain may finally be showing in the polls. Yesterday, a new poll in Iowa showed that his support with voters under 45 dropped to 2 percent. Biden fell to fourth place behind Warren (22 percent), Sanders (19 percent), and Buttigieg (18 percent). From Salon: “Though Biden has run on a campaign claiming that he has the best chance to defeat President Donald Trump, the poll shows that Iowa voters are equally confident in the ability of both Warren and Sanders to win the general election.” Back Stage On Andy Cohen’s ‘Watch What Happens Live’ The Federalist’s culture editor Emily Jashinsky got to go on set of Bravo’s live interview show with Real Housewives. Her conclusion? As far as reality TV goes, what you see on TV is pretty much reality. Read the full dispatch here (The Federalist). “Kelly [Dodd], I learned, is very real indeed. She brought friends that night. A crew of middle-age bottle-blondes caught eagerly in her orbit, basking in the warmth of her fame like it was the Arizona sun on a champagne-splattered pool deck. Status is kind of like a tan for your personality. They seemed drunk and happy. Thankfully, that energy did not remain backstage.” Thursday Link Round Up Jeff Sessions running for Senate again? (Twitter) The Whistleblower’s lawyer was tweeting about impeaching Trump in 2017, a year before the Ukraine call (Daily Caller) Is “the bump” or “the poof” of the ‘90s as a hairstyle making a comeback? Please tell me no. (The Cut) Emma Watson says she’s not single, she’s “self-partnered.” (BBC) Someone in DC got stabbed over a Popeye’s chicken sandwich. (Fox5DC) The chicken sandwich wars are out of hand, but this is hilarious: Popeye’s employee gives honest answer when asked about their chicken sandwich (Barstool) BRIGHT is brought to you by The Federalist. |
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Today’s BRIGHT Guest Editor
Madeline Osburn is a writer and podcast producer at The Federalist. You can follow her on Twitter @madelineorr and subscribe to The Federalist Radio hour here. She lives in Texas with her very tall husband and very tiny dog. |
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