Good morning! Here is your news briefing for Thursday February 20, 2020
THE DAILY SIGNAL
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Feb 20, 2020
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Good morning from Washington, where some respected black leaders are launching a spirited counternarrative to the 1619 Project. Jarrett Stepman has details. On the podcast, Heritage Foundation legal whiz John Malcolm sorts the politically charged Roger Stone case. Plus: arrests keep falling at the border, fighting escalates in Ukraine, and China shows its true colors in the coronavirus crisis. On this date in 1942, Navy Lt. Edward O’Hare becomes America’s first flying ace of World War II when he shoots down five Japanese bombers over the Coral Sea. |
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DAYBREAK
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@DaybreakInsider
REDSTATE
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Winners and Losers of the Las Vegas Democratic Debate
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NOQ REPORT
NOQ Report Daily |
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- Presumptuous Mike Bloomberg sent memo asking three candidates to step aside
- Bernie Sanders forced into denouncing his own followers: ‘I disown those people’
- Pete Buttigieg’s debate zinger hits Sanders and Bloomberg in one fell swoop
- Dana Rohrabacher insinuates Julian Assange told him Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails
- Inconvenient facts debunk left’s conspiracy theory over Julian Assange’s quid pro quo narrative
- Mike Bloomberg: ‘I know Donald Trump. He’s a great guy. I’m a big fan of Donald Trump.’
- Post-debate analyses, predicted
- Maxine Waters calls for William Barr to be fired, disbarred, disgraced, investigated, and jailed
| Presumptuous Mike Bloomberg sent memo asking three candidates to step aside
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 10:22 PM PST The Democratic nomination belongs to Mike Bloomberg, at least in his own mind. Everyone else running is just in the way. He is so certain of this that he sent a memo to three of the candidates telling them to essentially get out of his way and let him take down frontrunner Bernie Sanders. Amy Klobuchar outed the billionaire for his presumptuous request. She was one of the three with the other two likely being Pete Buttigieg and either Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren. It’s unlikely Bloomberg would have asked frontrunner Bernie Sanders because there’s no way he would back down based on his solid lead in the national polls. As I speculated the other day, the DNC will likely ask some of the candidates to step aside before Super Tuesday. They need the field to be whittled down to reduce the chance of Sanders running away with the nomination. That may be the same argument Bloomberg made to the three candidates he considered to be too low in the polls to challenge Sanders. This isn’t the first time a candidate has asked others to end their campaigns for the sake of their party, but it’s definitely the first time it has happened in the middle of a primary season when the person asking has accumulated exactly zero delegates. He hasn’t even appeared on a ballot yet. In fact, the debate was the prelude to the Nevada caucus; Bloomberg didn’t bother to file to be one of Nevada’s caucus options. Klobuchar, who finished a surprising third in New Hampshire, should be offended, as should Buttigieg and whoever else the Bloomberg campaign sent the memo to before the debate. Bloomberg is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to buy the nomination. To do so, he’ll need to prevent Sanders from getting the majority of the delegates necessary to secure it. Considering how poorly Bloomberg did at the debate, perhaps his campaign should be sending the memo to him instead, asking that he end his presidential aspirations before he embarrasses himself further. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. We have two priorities until election day: Stopping Democrats and supporting strong conservative candidates. We currently have 7500+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Presumptuous Mike Bloomberg sent memo asking three candidates to step aside appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
| Bernie Sanders forced into denouncing his own followers: ‘I disown those people’
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 09:21 PM PST For the last week or so, Senator Bernie Sanders has been attacked over the actions of some of his supporters who used social media to attack the Nevada Culinary Union, arguably the most powerful Democrat-favored political organization in the state. “Two minority women, women of color, and they don’t say one word to the president who is a white man,” Culinary Union’s Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Argüello-Kline said. “And I feel happy they don’t touch him, they don’t say anything to him, but I see difference in how we’ve been treated, and that’s been Bernie Sanders supporters.” Mayor Pete Buttigieg hit Sanders on it during the Democratic Debate Wednesday night in an attempt to blame the culture surrounding Sanders’ “revolution” for the vile posts sent to those in the union. Though the union did not endorse any candidates, they were very harsh towards Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan which they claim would end union healthcare. Sanders has “disavowed” his less wholesome online supporters in the past, but this was the most public forum in which he was forced to directly call them out. Will they listen? Of course not. They read his words during the debate as something necessary as part of the public debate but they still see themselves as grassroots revolutionaries who must make threats and oftentimes get violent in order to prove their point. His supporters are the ones most likely to participate with Antifa and other radical domestic terrorist groups. Buttigieg actually took the biggest hit from his attack, not based on anything Sanders or anyone else said but because it seemed like a petty jab over something most believe wouldn’t be in the Senator’s control.
Bernie Sanders isn’t aided by those among his supporters who make the vicious attacks, but Pete Buttigieg didn’t score any points by going after the weakness. It was one of the few times when neither candidate came out on top at the debate. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. We have two priorities until election day: Stopping Democrats and supporting strong conservative candidates. We currently have 7500+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Bernie Sanders forced into denouncing his own followers: ‘I disown those people’ appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
| Pete Buttigieg’s debate zinger hits Sanders and Bloomberg in one fell swoop
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:37 PM PST Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the guy in the middle. He’s in the middle on many polls. He claims to be at the center of the nation ideologically even though his platform is more extreme than President Obama’s was. And he’s smack dab in the middle between the two frontrunners, Senator Bernie Sanders and billionaire Mike Bloomberg. To open the debate, he hit them both.
It was a clever line that was intended to get headlines. It remains to be seen if it will, but it was a good line. On one hand, you have Sanders who’s pushing to “level the playing field” by destroying the United States economy. On the other hand, you have Bloomberg who is trying to literally buy the election. Will Buttigieg continue to be a player as he was in the first caucus and primary? Probably not. He had a good debate but he still has too many questions surrounding his record and experience. Both are abysmal. But in this awful race, who knows? American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. We have two priorities until election day: Stopping Democrats and supporting strong conservative candidates. We currently have 7500+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Pete Buttigieg’s debate zinger hits Sanders and Bloomberg in one fell swoop appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
| Dana Rohrabacher insinuates Julian Assange told him Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 06:18 PM PST When former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher responded to accusations by Julian Assange’s attorneys and mainstream media that President Trump tried to cut a deal with the the jailed whistleblower, most in the media latched onto (and questioned) the timing aspect of his statement. Rohrabacher claimed he went to Assange, then went to the White House to discuss a deal. The left are asserting the White House sent Rohrabacher to try to make the deal. Their conspiracy theory was essentially debunked before it even made its rounds, but there was something more important in Rohrabacher’s statement. Here’s the final paragraph in Rohrabacher’s response:
There it is. There is absolutely no reason to invoke an “honest investigation into the murder of Seth Rich” unless there’s a connection between the information Assange gave Rohrabacher and the goal of having President Trump pardon him. And despite those who fear being called “conspiracy theorists,” it cannot be more clearly insinuated by for the former member of Capitol Hill: Assange told him Rich was the source of the DNC emails. This has been long-speculated following the mysterious murder of the former DNC staffer.
Last week, Judicial Watch sued the FBI for information about the investigation into Seth Rich’s murder. The FBI has previously claimed there was no information to be disclosed, but recent revelations demonstrate they were lying.
Mainstream media is arguing about whether or not President Trump gave the order. What they’re all missing (or willfully covering up) is that Dana Rohrabacher believes Julian Assange will point to Seth Rich as the real DNC email whistleblower. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. We have two priorities until election day: Stopping Democrats and supporting strong conservative candidates. We currently have 7500+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Dana Rohrabacher insinuates Julian Assange told him Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
| Inconvenient facts debunk left’s conspiracy theory over Julian Assange’s quid pro quo narrative
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 05:08 PM PST Attorneys for Julian Assange claimed today the whistleblower was offered a pardon in exchange for Assange publicly covering up Russia’s involvement in the 2016 hack of DNC emails. The insinuations surrounding the claim are clearly contradicted by every fact we know about the case, but that hasn’t stopped Democrats or mainstream media from pouncing on the story like it was the gospel truth. Like so many hoaxes and false scandals in the past, this one is another nothingburger. How do we know? We simply need to look at the facts that all seem to contradict the narrative. First, there’s former Representative Dana Rohrabacher’s own words in which he takes personal responsibility despite putting himself out there as potentially breaking the law in doing so.
Lest we forget, anyone negotiating on behalf of the United States government without permission to do so is subject to charges, prosecution, and serious jail time. Rohrabacher’s claim is essentially an admission of guilt, yet he is taking responsibility for the action instead of covering it up or lobbing blame at the administration. The second unfortunate reality for those pushing this conspiracy theory is the fact that it has already been fully acknowledged and addressed by the administration long before Assange’s lawyers tried to use it to protect their client. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2017, Rohrabacher went to the White House to try to negotiate a pardon for Assange AFTER he visited with the exiled whistleblower. Leftists and mainstream media have to do intellectual cartwheels, not to mention put Rohrabacher into a time machine, to continue to push their narrative that President Trump ordered Rohrabacher to try to cut a deal. But the clearest evidence that President Trump knew nothing of the Assange-Rohrabacher quid pro quo was reported in 2018 when The Intercept noted then-Chief of Staff John Kelly blocked Rohrabacher from even briefing the President on his meeting with Assange, let alone attempt to cut a deal with him. It seems likely based on this report and Rohrabacher’s explanation that Kelly didn’t even mention the meeting to the President. If Rohrabacher was lying back then, one would think Kelly, who is not a supporter of the President since being removed from the White House in 2018, would have said something. More importantly, we can bank on the fact that if Rohrabacher is lying now, Kelly would have spoken out immediately. Reporters have certainly been calling him an he has never demonstrated a shyness in telling them what they want to hear about President Trump. His silence on this matter is deafening. Literally every piece of evidence indicates Rohrabacher talked to Assange of his own accord, THEN tried and failed to cut a deal with President Trump on Assange’s behalf. But the left will spin it darkly, as they’re wont to do, because the truth is irrelevant to them. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. We have two priorities until election day: Stopping Democrats and supporting strong conservative candidates. We currently have 7500+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Inconvenient facts debunk left’s conspiracy theory over Julian Assange’s quid pro quo narrative appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
| Mike Bloomberg: ‘I know Donald Trump. He’s a great guy. I’m a big fan of Donald Trump.’
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 04:24 PM PST In an interview before Donald Trump announced is run for president, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg was very gracious towards his fellow New Yorker. It’s just the latest unearthed video of the fast-rising Bloomberg that he’s going to have to walk back. “I know Donald Trump. He’s a great guy,” Bloomberg said. He added a jab, saying, “He doesn’t do everything he says but he sure tries,” likely referring to Trump’s promises to support programs while Bloomberg was mayor.
Like so many leftists, Bloomberg loved President Trump before he was in the White House. But political expediency comes first when some people have ambitions. Will Bloomberg declare he was a liar or wrong when he said these words? American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. We have two priorities until election day: Stopping Democrats and supporting strong conservative candidates. We currently have 7500+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Mike Bloomberg: ‘I know Donald Trump. He’s a great guy. I’m a big fan of Donald Trump.’ appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
| Post-debate analyses, predicted
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 03:49 PM PST Unless there’s a major snafu, faux pas, or other silly sounding phrase that happens at the debate tonight, the winners and losers have already been preordained. The Democratic National Committee who controls the debates as well as most of mainstream media have their storyline set in advance. They need it. This is arguably their last opportunity to stop Senator Bernie Sanders from taking control of the nomination ahead of Super Tuesday. Individual journalists will put their spin on it and declare some other winners and losers, but two things are guaranteed (unless there’s a curveball thrown by billionaire Mike Bloomberg and he bombs). The first is Sanders will be declared a loser. The second is Bloomberg will be declared a winner. What happens with everyone else is white noise in the post-debate analyses. Some other things that will be declared losers are socialism, Medicare-for-All, and diversity. The talking heads will call it “a bad night for Democratic Socialists” based not only on how Sanders is perceived to perform but also because it will be attacked by the other candidates. Medicare-for-All will have a bad night as the four “moderates” will universally denounce the plan while Senator Elizabeth Warren will have a measured approach to the subject. Sanders will trumpet it, but he’ll be drowned out. As for diversity, it’s important for Democrats to virtue signal their disappointment in the lack of diversity on the stage because doing so will reinforce the notion that left-leaning minorities will have to choose a Caucasian as their champion. Expect some of the analyses to include on their winners’ list certain intangibles like “common sense” or “inclusivity.” They must paint the Democratic Party as one that has not been radicalized despite the fact that most in the base have turned to extreme policy proposals as their antidote to President Trump’s populism. This will benefit Bloomberg, but more importantly this narrative will harm Sanders. Wednesday’s Democratic debate will be the first opportunity for the DNC’s new chosen avatar, Mike Bloomberg, to be seen live. Unless he completely muffs it, he’ll be heralded as a winner. And no matter what Bernie Sanders says, the media will call him a loser. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. We have two priorities until election day: Stopping Democrats and supporting strong conservative candidates. We currently have 7500+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Post-debate analyses, predicted appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
| Maxine Waters calls for William Barr to be fired, disbarred, disgraced, investigated, and jailed
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 02:39 PM PST The most impressive thing Maxine Waters has ever done in her career was fitting so many outrageous demands into a single Tweet:
Attorney General William Barr, who is arguably the most honorable Attorneys General since, well, William Barr, is under attack from the far left in the Democratic Party and their cheerleaders in mainstream media. This latest round of calls for him to be punished for doing his job followed his reversal on recommendations for Roger Stone’s sentencing. The original 7-9 year request by DoJ attorneys was not aligned with the DoJ’s understanding of the case, nor was it aligned with reality. To suggest that a flimsy charge of lying to Congress should yield a longer jail sentence than most rapists is ludicrous. But to the left, Barr is enemy #2, following President Trump as their biggest target. They love to toss all of their problems, including failures to find anything in the Robert Mueller investigation and their abysmal impeachment attempt, on Barr’s lap. Why? Because if they can get rid of him, they can keep the cabal within the Deep State elements of the DoJ and DoD intact. Barr is a threat to their “inside men” in the White House, so he must be eliminated. Waters is known for hyperbole, but this goes far beyond where she has gone in the recent past. To say she’s unhinged from reality would be to say it’s a Wednesday, but this one takes her perspectives to a whole new level. Twitter wasn’t kind. The days when Maxine Waters was taken seriously by anyone are decades past, but she still maintains a rabid audience on social media. Far-leftists love belligerence and she’s a master troll. She’s reason #729 the GOP must take back the House in November. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. We have two priorities until election day: Stopping Democrats and supporting strong conservative candidates. We currently have 7500+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Maxine Waters calls for William Barr to be fired, disbarred, disgraced, investigated, and jailed appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
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NBC
From NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Melissa Holzberg
FIRST READ: Last night’s debate turned into an all-out brawl, and Bloomberg took the most punches
LAS VEGAS – Last night’s debate here was no ordinary Vegas prize fight.
Instead, it looked more like a WWE wrestling match – with everyone body-slamming and pile-driving each other.
There was the candidate pile-on on Michael Bloomberg.
There was Amy Klobuchar versus Pete Buttigieg.
You had Buttigieg versus Bernie Sanders.
And you had Elizabeth Warren versus EVERYBODY, including even Sanders (which was a first in this Dem debate season).
Of course, the biggest individual news from last night’s debate was Michael Bloomberg struggling to defend his stop-and-frisk record as New York City mayor, as well as the non-disclosure agreements his company settled with women.
“None of them accuse me of doing anything, other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told,” Bloomberg said last night.
Getty Images/Mark Ralston
Maybe the top beneficiary from all the attention on Bloomberg’s rough night was Sanders, who went into Wednesday night as the Dem front-runner, and who – despite plenty of scrutiny and taking several punches – wasn’t the No. 1 story.
Last night also helped Warren; her campaign says it raised more than $1 million in the two hours of the debate.
And it helped Joe Biden, too; the weaker Bloomberg looks, the stronger Biden appears.
The question we have going into Saturday’s Nevada caucuses is whether Biden or Warren can have a surprising finish in the contest, getting one more look from Democratic voters after their disappointing performances in Iowa and New Hampshire.
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Tweet of the Day: Welcome to the party, pal
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Data Download: And the number of the day is … 16 minutes and 35 seconds.
Sixteen minutes and 35 seconds.
That was the amount of time for which Elizabeth Warren spoke at last night’s Democratic debate, per NBC News’ count – more than any other candidate last night.
Here’s everyone’s speaking time:
Warren: 16:35
Klobuchar: 16:03
Sanders: 15:15
Buttigieg: 14:49
Biden: 13:23
Bloomberg: 13:22
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2020 Vision: Get ready for convention chaos
Maybe the most fascinating news from the debate came at the very end, when one of us asked this question: Should the candidate with the most pledged delegates from the primaries – even if it’s short of a majority – be the nominee?
Five of the candidates appeared to say no; the convention process should play out, they argued.
Bloomberg on whether the convention should work its will: “Yes.”
Warren: “A convention working its will means that people have the delegates that are pledged to them and they keep those delegates until you come to the convention.”
Biden: “Let the process work its way out.”
Buttigieg: “Not until there’s a majority.”
Klobuchar: “Let the process work.”
The one exception was Bernie Sanders: “Well, the process includes 500 superdelegates on the second ballot. So I think that the will of the people should prevail, yes. The person who has the most votes should become the nominee.
But as we’ve written before, Sanders had a different view in 2016, when Hillary Clinton had a majority of pledged delegates and a majority of all delegates by June.
Bottom line: Everyone might want to brace themselves for convention chaos in Milwaukee.
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On the campaign trail today: The day after the debate, Pete Buttigieg stumps in Los Angeles… Mike Bloomberg hits Salt Lake City… Amy Klobuchar hits Denver… Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren participate in CNN town halls in Las Vegas… And Tom Steyer also campaigns in the city.
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Dispatches from NBC’s campaign embeds: Amy Klobuchar wasn’t overall pleased by the Democratic debate last night, she told NBC’s Amanda Golden and Gary Grumbach in the spin room afterward: “I think that we should have been talking more about Donald Trump. I tried, I valiantly tried, but I think that the future, I hope another debate, that we remember who is out there,” Klobuchar said. “Like I said, it is a bunch of people who haven’t been tuned in, there is a bunch of people who have stayed home in 2016 or moderate Republicans or independents, I think they deserve better than a slug fest. I think they deserve someone that is willing to make the point about Donald Trump.”
And Elizabeth Warren told NBC’s Priscilla Thompson and Deepa Shivaram that her statements about Bloomberg were necessary. “I thought it was important for everybody to see exactly who that man is. This is a man who evidently has harassed women discriminated against women and then covered it all up with non-disclosure agreements. This is a man who defended racist policies like red-lining and stop and frisk it’s time to say if Michael Bloomberg wants to help us win the nomination let’s do it. Michael Bloomberg, put your money in, but take your ego off the stage,” she said.
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ICYMI: News clips you shouldn’t miss
U.S. ambassador to Germany and Trump ally, Richard Grenell, is to become acting head of intelligence.
China expelled three journalists from The Wall Street Journal.
At least 11 people are dead from a shooting in Germany being described as a “far-right terror attack”
Some concerns about the Nevada caucus counting arise during early voting.
And Harry Reid says the Democratic presidential race is far from over.
THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
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PJ MEDIA
The Morning Briefing: Trump Train Keeps Steamrolling Dems
Thunder in the Desert
While the Democrats were having another white-on-white panderfest in Las Vegas, President Trump once again fired up his thunder-stealing machine in the form of a rally in Phoenix. My home state may be leaning purple these days, but Trump was still able to make the faithful turn out in droves in the Valley of the Sun.
As is his wont, POTUS took some digs at the Dems, who are desperately trying to find their way back from the ideological fringe:
President Trump, at a rally in Phoenix on Wednesday night, took shots at fellow billionaire Michael Bloomberg at the same time the former New York City mayor was in Las Vegas, taking fire from fellow Democrats during his first presidential debate.
“Now they have a new member of the crew, Mini Mike,” said Trump. “‘No Boxes,’ we call him ‘No Boxes.'” The reference was to jabs Trump has been taking at Bloomberg regarding his height, including the president’s previous claim that Bloomberg would need to stand on a box at the debate.
“I hear he’s getting pounded tonight. I hear they’re pounding him,” the president continued. “I think he spent all this money, he has maybe 15 points. Hey, fake news, how many points does he have? They won’t tell you the truth.”
What I love about these rallies is that they provide such a stark contrast to the vision of America that the Democratic candidates keep describing. The story they’re selling is that these are dark times in a country that’s being run by a lawless autocrat. The rallies are filled with thousands of happy people who are laughing and applauding a president for whom they have very deep affection. Trump comes off as a proud, gloating grandpa, giving off no autocrat vibe whatsoever.
There is almost a Reagan era “morning again in America” feeling at each of these. The Democrats can keep spinning their nightmare tales all that they want, but there isn’t anything out in the real world that resembles their fever-dream stories.
I’m quite grateful that I’m living in the real world, and not whatever hallucination is going on in Elizabeth Warren’s mind.
Here’s a nice moment from the Phoenix rally. The president gives a shout out to a 100-year-old World War II veteran.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Where’s Joe?
I perused a lot of the live coverage of the Democratic debate, as well as the post-debate wrap-ups and what stood out the most was that almost nobody was talking about Joe Biden. It was almost as if he wasn’t even there. He’s not only falling in the polls, he’s almost fallen from the electorate’s consciousness.
PJM Linktank
#WINNING: Victory: PJM’s Raymond Ibrahim to Speak at U.S. Army War College Despite CAIR’s Howling
The 2020 Dems’ Groans in Response to Bloomberg’s Defense of Capitalism Should Terrify All of Us
That Freelance Job-Killing Law Is So Bad That the California Legislature May Dump It Next Week
As I said yesterday…Satan: Here’s a List of All the Stuff ‘Nanny’ Bloomberg Has Tried to Ban
Farmer in Eastern Washington Invites Bloomberg to Teach Her How Simple Farming Is
[WATCH] Pigeons Wearing Tiny MAGA Hats Are Pooping All Over Dem Debate in Vegas
Former Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang Makes a Surprising Career Change
China’s Government Is Like Something out of ‘1984’
Real Estate Listing in Oakland Goes Viral—$800,000 for THIS DUMP??
Trump Should Invite Aubrey Huff to White House During Giants’ World Series Reunion
VIP
From the Mothership and Beyond
VA Sheriff Says Gun Owners Can’t Let Down Their Guard
VA Dem: 2A Activists “Helpful” In Defeating Northam Gun Ban
Schlichter: You Bernie Suckers Are Going to Get Fooled Again
Bloomberg Delivers His Best Attack Line Against Bernie Sanders…And It Was Pretty Brutal
Klobuchar Still Cannot Remember Mexican President’s Name
The Obama Factor in the 2020 Democratic Primaries Has Been Revealed
WATCH: Warren Goes for the Jugular and Slams Bloomberg on His Sexist Past
Kira: [WATCH] Bloomberg Once Admitted He Really Does Love Trump
President Trump Appoints Richard Grenell as Director of National Intelligence
Global Culture-Influencing Music Star Justin Bieber: Jesus ‘Found Me in My Dirt and Pulled Me Out’
Bloomberg To Other Not-Bernie Contenders: Drop Out Now And Endorse Me Or This Party Is Toast
Trump Matches Personal Best Job Approval In RCP Average, Highest In More Than Three Years
NFL’S DARREN MCFADDENGETS JAIL TIME… In Drunken Whataburger Case
Coronavirus Live Updates: Changes to Diagnosis Criteria Result in Confusion
Bee Me
The Babylon Bee@TheBabylonBeeTrump Wins Another Democratic Debate https://buff.ly/39MStNh
Trump Wins Another Democratic Debate
…
babylonbee.com
The Kruiser Kabana
Just…no.
Daily Star
✔@dailystar
Man says he ‘feels better than ever’ after chugging glass of his urine everydayhttps://www.dailystar.co.uk/real-life/man-says-feels-better-ever-21536877 …
Let’s make today weirder than most.
___
PJ Media Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.”
THE DISPATCH
The Morning Dispatch: Bloomberg Stopped, Frisked
Plus, why are our political parties being taken over by people who don’t belong to them?
| The Dispatch Staff | 2 hr | 13 | 3 |
Happy Thursday! Normally we like to come up with a quick joke here, but we are filing this newsletter very late after watching the Democratic debate last night, and we sunk what’s left of our remaining brainpower into that excellent subject line.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- President Trump named Richard Grenell, currently ambassador to Germany, as acting director of national intelligence.
- Members of several other 2020 campaigns are criticizing frontrunner Bernie Sanders for not releasing more medical records after he suffered a heart attack on the campaign trail last year. The Sanders campaign protests that they have already released as many health records as any other candidate.
- After a thorough internal review, The Hill found that John Solomon “failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources” in his columns that were used by Rudy Giuliani and others as evidence of Joe Biden’s alleged impropriety in Ukraine.
- John Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy, announced he will leave his post at the end of February after President Trump asked for his resignation. Rood told Congress last year that Ukraine had made the reforms necessary to justify sending security aid, undermining part of President Trump’s impeachment defense.
- The Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, filed for bankruptcy following dozens of claims of sexual abuse.
- Ryan Newman, the NASCAR driver who suffered a horrific crash at the Daytona 500 earlier this week, has been released from the hospital.
The Gloves Come Off
The Nevada Democratic debate has come and gone, and it looks like everyone’s decided it’s about time to start getting mean. Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar sniped back and forth over whether forgetting the name of a world leader is a presidential dealbreaker, or whether the real dealbreaker is being too smug onstage. Mike Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders squabbled over whether a democratic socialist should own three homes.
But most of the real venom came from Elizabeth Warren against Bloomberg, and Warren landed every hit. In short order, she savaged his record on New York’s stop-and-frisk policy, his presumptuousness in trying to buy the presidency, and—most damningly—the women who have brought charges of sexual harassment and gender discrimination against his companies.
“The mayor has to stand on his record, and what we need to know is exactly what is lurking out there,” Warren said. “He has gotten some number of women—dozens? Who knows?—to sign non-disclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace. So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all these women from their non-disclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story?”
“We have a very few non-disclosure agreements,” a stone-faced Bloomberg replied. “None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told… They signed those agreements and will live with it.” The crowd booed.
The performance was bad enough that some onlookers predicted it was the beginning of the end for the Bloomberg campaign. But Andrew has a piece up on the site today arguing that it’s too early to count Bloomberg out on the back of one debate clunker, given that his campaign is specifically structured to try to make events like debates superfluous:
From the beginning of the primary, Democrats were determined not to repeat the same mistakes they made in 2016 by appearing to prejudge the race in favor of or to exclude any particular candidate. As such, they bent over backward to keep things inclusive throughout 2019. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the debates, where month after month the DNC fielded crowded stages of candidates, slowly tightening the qualification thresholds and doing little to eliminate candidates with only the barest whisper of support.
This strategy ensured that Democratic voters wouldn’t have choices taken away from them by the party brass. But it also helped to create the circumstances Democrats found them in late last fall: Still heavily divided, with no commanding frontrunner, and with voters feeling less spoiled by their choices than paralyzed by them. Despite the sound and fury of a year of campaigning and dozens of hours of debates, a remarkable number of voters remained undecided about who they would support. And they were increasingly tuning out from the events designed to help them pick: the 18 million who tuned into the first Democratic debate last June had dwindled to a third of that by November.
Enter the Bloomberg rope-a-dope: Skip all that mess, then swoop in and scoop up voters who were tuning out by giving them a vision of an entirely different, much simpler primary. Positively saturate them with ads making a simple case: Donald Trump is a wretched president, and Mike Bloomberg can beat him. Ignore the fact that other candidates are making the same argument. Ignore the other candidates altogether. Trust only in the fact that you can buy more ads more often and in far more places than anybody else, and hope that voters will default to you rather than face the daunting task of trying to pick a candidate on the merits.
So far, it’s an unproven strategy. But it’s hard to see how one bad debate performance sets it back much. After all, the voters Bloomberg is targeting are the ones least likely to have seen that performance at all.
The Incredible Shrinking Political Party
Pete Buttigieg said something in the debate last night that deserves some additional attention. “Let’s put forward somebody who’s actually a Democrat,” the former South Bend mayor argued in a not-so-subtle shot at two of the frontrunners for his party’s presidential nomination. “We shouldn’t have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out.”
For the site, Declan took a look at the declining influence of political parties, and why both Democrats and Republicans have been susceptible to hostile takeovers in recent years. Read the whole thing, but you can check out this snippet below.
For most of the 20th and early-21st century, Democratic and Republican presidential nominees devoted decades of their lives to the parties, toiling away at other levels of government and biding their time. Richard Nixon was first elected as a Republican to the House of Representatives in 1946; he later spent eight years as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president before twice receiving the Republican nomination. John McCain spent nearly 30 years in the House and Senate—not to mention his several decades in the military—before being anointed the GOP standard bearer in 2008. Even Jimmy Carter, who at the time was considered the ultimate outsider, served in Georgia state politics for years—first as a state senator, then as governor—before winning the Democratic nomination in 1976.
No longer is that kind loyalty required. Jonathan Rauch—a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has researched the parties extensively and written a book on the subject—helped explain why.
Rauch finds the Democratic party’s succumbing to Sanders—like the Republican party’s to Trump in 2016—a bit strange. “It’s proved difficult for the party establishment to coalesce behind a candidate, or to clear the lanes for a candidate, or to vet candidates,” he told The Dispatch. “And the result of that is this very peculiar fragmented campaign, which includes one person who’s not even a Democrat being the apparent frontrunner, that’s just bizarre.”
“The parties have lost a lot of their influence as organizations, even as partisanship and party brands have increased,” he said. “And the result of that is that you can be Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, someone with weak or non-existent organizational ties to the party, but if you’re able to usurp the party brand—that is, use the party as a vehicle for yourself—you get all those voters because you’re running as the Republican or you’re running as the Democrat.”
Worth Your Time
- Sonia Nazario’s family has escaped persecution in Poland, Syria, and Argentina. “By giving us a home, the United States saved our lives,” she writes in The New York Times. Read the full piece to get a sense of the real-world consequences of the Trump administration cutting the maximum allowable number of refugees per year from 110,000 to 18,000.
- The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere published a remarkable piece of reporting claiming that Bernie Sanders came within a hair’s breadth of running against Barack Obama in 2012, and that it required the personal intervention of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to talk him out of it. A spokesman for Sanders has since denied some of the details, but Obama and Reid officials have not. The piece offers a fascinating look at the fraught relations between the renegade left wing and the liberals of the Democratic Party, which burst into the open in the 2016 election but were simmering out of sight well before. Read it here.
- Each of us can only hope for a career peak so high that we can glide off of it for decades to come. For The Ringer, Winston Cook-Wilson details the legacy of Harrison Ford. “Sure, he’s Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Rick Deckard, but in the 21st century, he’s also unmatched in his ability to care as little as humanly possible.”
Presented Without Comment
Also Presented Without Comment
Okay, a quick comment: Boneless “wings” aren’t “wings,” even in the broad definition that includes mini-drummies. Boneless wings are chicken tenders.
Really Presented Without Comment
See also: “How Bill O’Reilly Silenced His Accusers”
Something Fun
There’s a chance we’ll find out in a few days that this was planned ahead of time, but until then, enjoy the incredible spontaneity of this moment.
Toeing the Company Line
- Wednesday’s Dispatch Podcast featured Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David diving into President Trump’s recent clemency spree and previewing the upcoming Nevada caucuses. Be sure to download, rate, and subscribe here!
- In Thomas Joscelyn’s latest Vital Interests newsletter, he covers recent developments in the “original 9/11 conflict,” asking, “are we headed toward an ignoble end in Afghanistan?” Read the whole thing here.
- What’s that? A Wednesday G-File? You don’t say! In this midweek edition, Jonah takes a look at Oren Cass’ new political organization, American Compass, that is hoping to combat “libertarian fundamentalism” within the GOP. “Their task will be more difficult if they actually believe what they say and act as if they are battling a capitalism that sits on a throne rather than one that stands quite fettered,” Jonah argues. Give it a read here.
Let Us Know
Which rivalry within the Democratic presidential primary is most likely to break out into a shoving match in the next debate?
- Elizabeth Warren vs. Mike Bloomberg
- Bernie Sanders vs. anyone in the audience with more than $40 in their wallet
- Amy Klobuchar vs. Pete Buttigieg
- Mike Bloomberg vs. everything he’s said and/or done in the past
- Tulsi Gabbard vs. Hillary Clinton
- Tom Steyer vs. fashion
Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).
Photograph by Mario Tama/Getty Images.
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AXIOS
🌸 Happy Thursday!
Donald Trump changed how to run for president. Next, he changed the Republican Party. Now, he’s changing the presidency and the boundaries of executive power.
- What’s new: In the past week, Trump has purged internal dissenters, imported loyalists, pardoned political and financial criminals and continued a running commentary on live Justice Department criminal cases — despite an unprecedented public brushback from his attorney general.
- And in what could prove to be the week’s most consequential move, Trump yesterday named Rick Grenell, ambassador to Germany and one of the most dependable Trump family allies, as acting director of national intelligence — a sensitive job overseeing 17 U.S. spy agencies. The DNI has access to all the nation’s secrets, and helps shape what a president sees and knows.
Why it matters: Trump does everything bigger and bolder than any predecessor dared — and all nakedly in the open, fearing no consequences from a Republican Party he fully commands.
- Other presidents lamented disloyal servants, but rarely purged them en masse and in public. Trump told staff after his impeachment acquittal that he felt surrounded by “snakes” and “bad people” he wanted ousted.
- Other presidents plugged loyalists into key jobs — but rarely made that the prerequisite. To run the powerful presidential personnel office, Trump last week tapped John McEntee, 29, who has no experience in staffing governments, and was fired by his former chief of staff John Kelly — but is a favorite of the family.
- Other presidents pardoned criminals — but never in a big batch in the middle of a re-election race, after getting lobbied on TV. Trump’s 11 pardons and commutations this week included Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat and former Illinois governor whose wife, Patti, had appealed to Trump on Fox News. Blagojevich told cameras that he’s now a “Trumpocrat.”
- Other presidents pressured their Justice Department, but never so nakedly and publicly. Trump, asked this week if he agreed with Attorney General Bill Barr that White House tweets made it impossible to do the job, said: “I do agree with that. I think that’s true. … I’m allowed to be totally involved. I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country.”
Between the lines: Rush Limbaugh said Trump called this week with a bit of advice after the radio host mocked the idea of Pete Buttigieg at fall debates — “gay guy kissing his husband on stage, next to Mr. Man, Donald Trump”:
- “Rush, I just got to tell you something. Never apologize.”
The bottom line … One sign of how extraordinary this is: Trump has pushed Barr — who has a maximalist view of presidential power, and is sympathetic to Trump’s view that career prosecutors have overreached — to publicly plead with him to stop, and even make it known he’s considering resigning.
Mike Bloomberg was booed during his debut debate as a Democratic presidential candidate — indicative of a rusty outing where the former New York mayor looked unprepared to respond to obvious lines of attack.
- Why it matters … The debate underscored the Bloomberg’s campaign biggest fear: It’s hard to hide to his prickly demeanor. Bloomberg had all the time, practice and forewarning money could buy — and still struggled mightily on the public stage.
- But it’d be foolish to assume blanket ads can’t undo the damage. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on MSNBC: “I have no doubt that he is about to drop, tonight, another hundred million dollars on his campaign … in order to try to erase America’s memory of what happened on that debate stage.”
Warren drew cheers when she challenged Bloomberg to release women from “nondisclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace.”
- Bloomberg: “We have a very few nondisclosure agreements.”
- Warren: “How many is that?”
- Bloomberg: “Let me finish.”
- Warren: “How many is that?”
- Bloomberg: “None of them accuse me of doing anything, other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told. … They signed the agreements and that’s what we’re going to live with.”
The audience booed when Bloomberg later said: “I’ve said we’re not going … to end these agreements because they were made consensually, and they have every right to expect that they will stay private.”
- Warren provoked the moment of the debate when she said: “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against — a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians.’ And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”
Bloomberg replied: “I have no tolerance for the kind of behavior that the #MeToo movement has exposed. And anybody that does anything wrong in our company, we investigate it, and if it’s appropriate, they’re gone that day.”
- Warren jabbed back: “I hope you heard what his defense was: I’ve been nice to some women. That just doesn’t cut it.”
Between the lines: The debate left Sen. Bernie Sanders firmly in control of the race headed into Super Tuesday on March 3.
- Bloomberg’s campaign has warned — and other top Democrats agree — that with no disruption in the race, Sanders could quickly accumulate an insurmountable delegate lead.
- Robert Gibbs, who was White House press secretary under President Obama, said on MSNBC’s postgame show: “A lot of the candidates were focused on Bloomberg. And if they do that too much, the polls will close in California in a little less than two weeks, and they’ll see Bernie with a lead that’s ultimately insurmountable — something they can’t catch.”
The bottom line … Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg’s top strategist, said in a post-debate statement: “He was just warming up tonight.”
Despite massive ad spending, Michael Bloomberg is still getting lapped by Bernie Sanders in non-paid online conversation, Neal Rothschild writes from NewsWhip data provided exclusively to Axios.
- Why it matters: Bloomberg has spent his way into the national conversation, while lagging behind in organic interest.
Bloomberg has begun converting his commercials into significant organic interest in his campaign, but his state-of-the-art operation is still struggling against the Sanders grassroots army.
- Sanders’ 18.5 million interactions (likes, shares, comments) last week were higher than any Democratic candidate has generated throughout the entire election cycle. That compared to 9.4 million for Bloomberg.
- Over the last four weeks, Sanders’ 50 million interactions are 20 million more than Joe Biden, who has the second most.
Where Bloomberg is winning: Bloomberg passed Biden in social media interactions last week.
- And Bloomberg eclipsed Biden for the second-most cable news and nightly network news mentions last week, according to the Internet Archive Television News Archive.
See past editions of the 2020 Attention Tracker.
Well-wishers at Pope Francis’ weekly audience have thrust soccer T-shirts, flowers and many a wailing baby into his arms.
- At the end of his audience yesterday, the pope seemed to thoroughly enjoy a long, tender kiss planted on his forehead by a man in one of the front-row seats reserved for ailing or disabled people. (AP)
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The Fed looks to be laying the groundwork to lower U.S. interest rates this year, following a pattern set in April 2019, before rate cuts in July, September and October, Axios Markets editor Dion Rabouin writes.
- Why it matters: A Fed rate cut makes taking on debt more attractive for U.S. consumers and businesses, helping to juice the economy, but puts the central bank in a weaker position to fight off a potential recession.
- A rate cut or cuts would likely improve President Trump’s chances of re-election, and he’ll likely be pushing for them.
What’s happening: In the minutes of its latest policy meeting, the Fed’s Open Market Committee highlighted its desire for higher inflation, Bob Miller, BlackRock’s head of Americas fundamental fixed income, says in a note.
- San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly asserted in a speech last week that “the new economic environment requires that monetary policymakers push inflation up to target.”
- Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari, now a voter on the Fed’s rate setting committee, has been banging the table over too-low inflation for years.
What it means: The Fed is refocusing attention from solid U.S. economic data to fears about coronavirus and underwhelming inflation, much like with the U.S.-China trade war and global growth concerns last year.
- Sign up here for Dion Rabouin’s daily Axios Markets newsletter.
Pop Smoke performs at a listening party in New York on Feb. 6. Photo: Johnny Nunez/WireImage via Getty Images
“A group of people, including one wearing a mask and armed with a handgun, burst into a posh Hollywood Hills home early [yesterday] and fatally shot up-and-coming rapper Pop Smoke,” age 20, the L.A. Times reports.
Pop Smoke (born Bashar Barakah Jackson), was helping remake the sound of hip-hop, with a distinctly Brooklyn variant of drill music, per the L.A. Times:
- “Unlike the melodic, hazy styles that often dominate streaming today, drill music indeed sounds like a power tool: fast clips of kicks and hi-hats and gothic synthesizers, trap music played with the ferocity and precision of metal.”
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February 20, 2020 Trending now
Listen live to Blaze Radio Tune in to the next generation of talk radio, featuring original content from hosts like Glenn Beck, Pat Gray, Stu Burguiere, Steve Deace and more!
One last thing …  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) appeared on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The View,” where she discussed her respect for her elder Democratic lawmakers. One person who didn’t seem to be too impressed was co-host Whoopi Goldberg, who chastised the freshman lawmaker for her perceived ageism against more senior lawmakers in Washington, D.C., such a … Read more
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ARRA NEWS SERVICE
ARRA News Service (in this message: 18 new items) |
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- When Everyone You Love Disappears
- South Bend Residents Have a Message for America: Don’t Elect Pete Buttigieg
- Hymn to Him?
- Revolutionary Bernie Sanders
- The Olympics Returns To America!
- Buttigieg Is Judging You, Confronting Communist China, The Sanders Surge, God Made A Farmer
- Hating Trump Can’t Unite the Democrats . . .
- Trump & Barr Were Outraged By DOJ Recommending Roger Stone Get 9 Years In Prison . . .
- Big Tech and the Election
- Farmers’ Lives Matter . . .
- The Farming Wit and Wisdom of Mike Bloomberg
- Too Often, Trump Critics Rely on False, Dangerous Ideas About National Security
- Is Mayor Pete A Dangerous Security Risk?
- Bloomberg Said What About Guns and Crime?
- This Is What A Morally Bankrupt Party Looks Like
- Bernie Sanders Is The True Face Of Today’s Democrats
- Ilhan Omar’s $250,000 Hush Money to Ex?
- Young Democrats Lose Interest In Freedom
| When Everyone You Love Disappears
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 09:03 PM PST  by Tony Perkins: hey are the vanishing. Brothers, husbands, grandparents, who never come home. For Rozinisa Memet Tohti, the day came when her family just suddenly stopped returning her calls. Miles away from China in Istanbul, she’d heard the rumors of round-ups, the nightmarish stories hidden deep in Xinjiang’s camps. Three years went by without a single word. Until one day, recently, when she got her hands on a set of leaked documents, listing the targeted Uyghurs. There, on the spreadsheet’s row 358, she saw her sister’s name. “Re-education camp #4, March 7, 2018.” Tears streaming down her face, she told reporters, this was the news she’d dreaded most. But Rozinisa was wrong. The worst part, she was about to learn, is that her move to Turkey may be what put her there. The Chinese, it turns out, have been surgical and calculating in their crackdown. With a chilling level of detail, they describe the shockingly routine “crimes” that put people behind bars: growing a beard, applying for a passport, clicking on a foreign website, celebrating a holiday, plans to travel, going to a funeral, relatives abroad — any number of minor things most people around the world do without thinking. The Uyghurs on this spreadsheet had been so closely monitored that government officials even knew when they prayed. There was information on the victims’ neighbors, their extended family, disturbing notes about children and whether they showed signs of “wayward thinking.” Anyone who wasn’t in a camp was catalogued, down to their daily movements. “This document,” Adrian Zenz says, “is by far the most detailed that we have.” Zenz, who was one of the first analysts to confirm the existence of these camps a few years ago, thinks it’s an important clue in understanding the “witch-hunt mindset of the government” and how China “criminalizes everything.” The personal entries are frighteningly specific. “Entry No. 114, describing a 37-year-old man, reads: ‘Five family members applied for a passport; had expectations to travel.’ It also says the man ‘bears a grudge over his older brother’s paralysis and wants to take revenge on society. Strong religious atmosphere in the family.’ …Recommend further training.'” Another entry noted that a man “wore a beard from March 2011 to July 2014.” People were marked as “trustworthy or “not trustworthy,” their attitudes “ordinary” or “good.” Although this spreadsheet — all 137 pages of it — was focused on a small region called Karakax County, there’s plenty of reason to believe that a sinister government like China’s is this exhaustive with everyone. With at least a million minorities in exile, and more disappearing by the minute, Elise Anderson of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, says this information is crucial. “What China says is, ‘Oh, we are rooting out religious extremism, and we’re stopping people from being terrorists — and whatever else they want to say [that draws on] Islamophobic sentiment. But what this document actually tells us is that very few of the reasons that people have been sent away to internment have anything to do with religion whatsoever. The thing really that everyone shares in common is that [on this list] is that they’re Uyghur.” Tuesday, on “Washington Watch,” she explained how intently people are being watched. And the blast zone, Elise explains, for a single Uyghur is mammoth. “They record details about three generations of family, and then they talk about people’s friends and neighbors. Who are they? What is their ID number? Where do they live? Is that person in good standing? Is that person [okay] behaviorally?” At one point, it was so disturbing that guest host Sarah Perry said the hair was standing up on her arms. “It is really an unbelievable form of totalitarianism that is striking to someone who has always lived in the United States, who has no experience with this kind of ethnic cleansing.” And it’s not just the Uyghurs who are being abducted, tortured, and locked away. It’s other minority Muslims and Christians. They’ve been persecuted and sent to camps too. It’s a massive crisis for the entire world. But what can we do about it? Elise says one thing that would have a huge impact is to contact your senators and ask them to support the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (S. 178). “The House version of that bill passed 406 votes [to] one. It has now gone to the Senate for reconsideration. We feel very confident that it’s going to pass. This is one of the truly bipartisan issues in Washington right now — but we need it actually to go back up for consideration in the Senate. So get in touch with your senators. That’s one great way to effect change… Use our report at UHRP.org called ‘What You Can Do.’ Learn what you can. And then, maybe you can turn around and host an event of some sort or simply share those reports with other people.” There are companies you can contact, places you can donate, testimonies you can send to people in your church. Above all, pray. Pray for the oppression to end, for the hurting people in these camps to find God, for leaders in the United States and other places of influence to act. “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” — Hebrews 13:3 Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers. Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council . This article was on Tony Perkins’ Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers. Tags: Tony Perkins, Family Research Center, FRC, Family Research Council, When Everyone, You Love, Disappears 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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| South Bend Residents Have a Message for America: Don’t Elect Pete Buttigieg
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 08:38 PM PST  by Rick Moran: South Bend, Ind., is a grimy industrial city of 100,000 people located on the St. Joseph River. It’s known for being the “home” of Notre Dame University — which isn’t really true since Notre Dame is technically located in Notre Dame, Indiana. But South Bend, whose second claim to fame is the Studebaker National Museum downtown, is the home of Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. The highly ambitious Buttigieg is seeking the presidency despite serving two terms as mayor of a small city. A job that most would see as entry-level employment in politics as a stepping stone to the presidency? That’s sort of like a burger flipper applying for the CEO position at McDonald’s. There are many South Bend residents who wonder about that too. A spike in violent crime, development that largely ignored the African American community and how their only well-lit street is the one that leads to Notre Dame University. “If he’s the next president, I fear for our country. He couldn’t run our city. How can he run the United States?,” said Michelle Burger, 42, a stay-at-home mom who lives in South Bend’s impoverished and predominantly black West Side.Much has been made of Mayor Pete’s trouble with “people of color.” There appears to be something to that criticism as economic development during Buttigieg’s tenure in office seems to have been lagging in the black community. “The West Side is the most neglected part of town. The street I live on is the only street around here that has lights. That’s because we’re a gateway to Notre Dame.”Young, articulate, attractive — and gay. Is that why Democrats are taking this guy seriously? To go from being a mayor of a city with at $350 million budget to running a country with a $5 trillion budget would seem to be a leap too far. But he’s a Democrat and he’s gay so he’s got that going for him. Taking credit for the work of others is part of politics but Buttigieg appears to have taken the concept a bit too far. “But it was $3.5 million from then-Gov. Mike Pence’s Regional Cities Initiative that made that project go.” Hupfer said increased employment in the area covering South Bend — where the unemployment rate dropped from 9.3 percent in 2012 to 3.6 percent in 2018 — was largely a function of “statewide economic strength under Republican leadership.”Rush Limbaugh had the temerity to point out that Buttigieg’s election to the presidency would be extremely difficult due to his homosexuality. We can bemoan the unfairness of it, criticize those who wouldn’t vote for him because he’s gay, and make fun of those with religious objections to his lifestyle. But you cannot deny the reality that Pete Buttigieg will lose a presidential contest against Donald Trump because he’s gay. And South Bend residents say we should breathe a sigh of relief because of it. Tags: Rick Moran, PJ Media, South Bend Residents, Have a Message for America, Don’t Elect, Pete Buttigieg 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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| Hymn to Him?
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 08:18 PM PST  by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: If I’m ever Back on the Chain Gang, I want to be shackled right next to Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of The Pretenders, who sang that 1980s song. Actually, I’m generally a little Middle of the Road on their music. But I enjoy hearing The Pretenders’ hit My City Was Gone used as intro music on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. Some time back, Hynde gave the okay because her late father was a big Rush fan. Wait — there’s more! “Liberal rock star Chrissie Hynde,” the UK’s Daily Mail reports, “has shocked her fans by praising Donald Trump for honoring conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh, saying her father ‘would have been so delighted.’” In an open letter to President Trump via a series of tweets, Hynde noted the awarding of the Medal of Freedom to Mr. Limbaugh as one reason that her dad, had he lived to see it, “would have enjoyed your Presidency.” Hynde explained that she and her father “didn’t always see eye-to-eye. We argued a lot.” “But isn’t that the American way?” she asked. “The right to disagree without having your head chopped off?”* Of course, when Rush Limbaugh announced his cancer diagnosis, it did not stop some “progressive” political opponents from mocking him and celebrating his misfortune. Hynde faced plenty of nasty backlash, too. Still, her obvious caring for humans with whom she happens to politically disagree sparked more support . . . and cogent observations. “Ohh. Careful ma’am,” Otto replied to @ChrissieHynde and @realDonaldTrump. “If we stop hating each other we might start noticing how corrupt and self serving the political class is.” It is eminently observable. This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. * The rock star also lobbied the president, calling Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange “a man who sought to defend Freedom” and arguing that he “should now be set free. Please consider my plea.” I hope Mr. Trump will. Tags: Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Hymn to Him?, Chrissie Hynde 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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| Revolutionary Bernie Sanders
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:57 PM PST
by John Stossel: Bernie Sanders leads the race for the Democratic nomination. He may become America’s first self-described “democratic socialist” president. What does that mean? Today, when Sanders talks about socialism, he says: “I’m not looking at Cuba. I’m looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden.” But Denmark and Sweden are not socialist. Denmark’s prime minister even came to America to refute Sanders’ claims, pointing out that “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy.” Both Denmark and Sweden do give citizens government-run health care and have bigger welfare programs than America has. However, recently, they’ve moved away from socialism. Because their socialist policies killed economic growth, they cut regulations and ended government control of many industries. Sanders probably doesn’t know that. He, like many young people, just loves the idea of socialism. For my new video this week, Stossel TV producer Maxim Lott went through hours of Sanders’ old speeches. What he found reveals a lot about what Sanders believes. When Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he went out of his way to defend Fidel Castro. “He educated the kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society!” Fortunately, Sanders added, “Not to say Fidel Castro or Cuba are perfect.” No, they are not perfect. Castro’s government tortured and murdered thousands. By confiscating private property, they destroyed the island’s economy. Life got bad enough that thousands died trying to escape. Even now in Cuba, most people try to live on less than $2 a day. Sanders focuses on other things, like: “They did a lot to eliminate illiteracy!” Sanders has long had a soft spot for socialist countries. He chose to honeymoon in Communist Russia, where he said people “seem reasonably happy and content.” He was “extremely impressed by their public transportation system… cleanest, most effective mass transit system I’ve ever seen in my life!” He praised Soviet youth programs: “Cultural programs go far beyond what we do in this country.” He did at least qualify his support, calling the Soviet government “authoritarian.” But Sanders made no such criticism after Nicaragua’s socialist revolution. He praised the Sandinistas’ land “reform” because they were “giving, for the first time in their lives, real land to farmers so that they can have something that they grow. Nobody denies that they are making significant progress.” Former landowners sure denied it. They’d had their land stolen. Sanders suggested that was OK because landowners are rich. “Rich people, who used to have a good life there, are not terribly happy,” he said. “As a socialist, the word socialism does not frighten me… (P)oor people respect that.” What about the hunger and poverty that socialism creates? Bernie had an odd take on that. “American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food; the rich get the food and the poor starve.” After he said he was “impressed” by Sandinista leaders, Sanders added, “Obviously I will be attacked by every editorial writer in the free press for being a dumb dupe.” I join them. Bernie Sanders is indeed a “dumb dupe” about economics. Or as the Soviet Communists used to put it, “a useful idiot.” Under Ortega’s rule, Nicaragua quickly fell further into poverty, and the socialists were voted out in 1990. Ortega later returned as a violent dictator. For most people in Nicaragua, Cuba and other centrally planned economies, life is hell. Once Sanders was elected to Congress, he mostly stopped praising violent socialist revolutions. At that time, Communist governments in Europe were collapsing. It was convenient for embarrassed former supporters of those governments to rebrand themselves. In Congress, Sanders would call himself an independent and, in the estimation of his fellow Vermonter, former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, he “votes with the Democrats 98% of the time.” But Sanders has never taken back the enthusiastic praise he gave to socialist regimes. Tags: John Stossel, Rasmussen Reports, Revolutionary, Bernie Sanders, Democratic nomination 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 Olympics Returns To America!
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:36 PM PST  The White House: President Trump kicked off his West Coast trip yesterday by meeting with leaders from the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Committee. President Trump noted: “From the day I took office, I’ve done everything in my power to make sure that LA achieved the winning bid,” President Trump told local organizers. “Now, for the third time in history, the city of Los Angeles — the ‘City of Angels’ — will once again raise up the Olympic Torch and welcome the world’s greatest competitors to the Summer Games.”
The 2028 Olympic Games will boost much more than America’s gold medal tally: It’s expected to be a major economic lift across Southern California. The Summer Games will add an extra 112,000 jobs and $18 billion in growth to an already thriving economy. Our workers are predicted to see $7 billion in new and bigger wages as a result. Watch: 2028 Olympics will pay off BIG for American workers!
Tags: President Trump. Olympics, return to America 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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| Buttigieg Is Judging You, Confronting Communist China, The Sanders Surge, God Made A Farmer
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:13 PM PST
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Buttigieg Is Judging You When pro-life Americans say that killing a baby in the eighth month of pregnancy violates God’s law, Buttigieg and the left say, “How dare you use your religion to judge a woman!” When Rush Limbaugh asked if America was ready for a homosexual president, the left said, “How dare you judge him, you bigot!” But it’s the Bible that says marriage is between one man and one woman. Buttigieg would be the first person to say, “You can’t force your religion on anyone else.” But he is perfectly willing to force his bizarre reading of Scripture on everybody else, and he’s willing to use the brute force of government to require people of faith to do things contrary to the teachings of Christianity. One of the ways early Christians stood apart from the culture of their time was their refusal to sacrifice babies. They also walked the roads of Rome looking for babies who had been abandoned as less than perfect or because they were girls. They were the Christians closest to the Gospel and they knew what the sanctity of life meant. If Donald Trump was right on only this point – that it is evil to kill nearly one million innocent unborn children every year – Christians would be more than justified in voting for him over a party that thinks it is wrong to kill a murderer like Qassem Soleimani while embracing infanticide, as Pete Buttigieg does. Whose Foreign Policy? His life was destroyed by overzealous, hyper-partisan prosecutors. Three years later, he’s still waiting for a resolution of his legal case. So I assume that FBI agents will be stopping by the office of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) any day now, especially since he was one of the most vocal critics of Flynn’s conversations with Ambassador Kislyak. Murphy just returned from the Munich Security Conference and announced that he and other Democrat senators met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif. Murphy said, “If Trump isn’t going to talk to Iran, then someone should. . . A lack of dialogue leaves nations guessing about their enemy’s intentions.” I think we need to know more about this meeting. Does Connecticut have a foreign policy now? Was Murphy sent by Chuck Schumer? Was he representing Senate Democrats? That would be an interesting question to ask. And what did Murphy tell the Iranians? He says he urged Zarif to release American hostages and to stop supporting terrorism. Well, that’s what the president is saying. In other words, Murphy went all the way to Europe to repeat what Trump is saying loud and clear. Really? There’s no reason in the world to meet with the Iranians. But let’s not ignore the 800-pound mullah in the room. Every leading Democrat is committed to rejoining Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran. Just like John Kerry urging Iran to “wait out” Trump, we should know whether Murphy urged the regime against making any concessions now in the hope that “President Sanders” will appease the tyrants of Tehran next year. Confronting Communist China According to administration officials, all five entities are “substantially owned and effectively controlled” by the Chinese Communist Party. In other words, these are not journalists who are part of a free press, but government agents advocating on behalf of communist China. The new designation requires that their employees register with the State Department, and that any real estate holding be identified as well. In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, I was pleased to see that Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted our NATO allies for considering using Huawei for their 5G infrastructure. Pelosi said that using Huawei was “like having the state police, the Chinese state police, right in your pocket.” Presumably, the mainstream media will now accuse Pelosi of threatening the NATO alliance and of isolating the United States, just like it does to President Trump whenever he speaks out against Europe’s weakness. But I’m not holding my breath. The Sanders Surge As a result, Sanders now leads Biden by 16 points – 32% to 16%. Michael Bloomberg is third at 14%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 12%. No other candidate received double-digit support. The Post poll is not an outlier. In 14 national surveys conducted this month, Sanders has led Biden in 12, and five polls have given him double-digit leads. But the primary is not decided by a national election. It’s decided state by state. So it’s important to keep an eye on state polling as well. South Carolina was supposed to be Joe Biden’s firewall, but it’s looking more like it could be his Waterloo. The latest poll from the Palmetto State has Sanders tied with Biden. Two weeks ago, Biden enjoyed an 18-point lead. And it’s starting to look like Super Tuesday could be a super day for Sanders. He’s currently leading in California and Texas, and tied in North Carolina and Virginia. “God Made A Farmer”
——————- Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Buttigieg Is Judging You, Confronting Communist China, The Sanders Surge 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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| Hating Trump Can’t Unite the Democrats . . .
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 06:41 PM PST . . . That’s Why the Dem’s Party is Fighting its Own Civil War.  by Daniel Greenfield: The Democrat presidential primaries have been a long politically correct apology tour. Joe Biden was forced to apologize for opposing crime and busing. Bernie Sanders had to offer up mea culpas for ever being on good terms with the NRA and for questioning open borders, Kamala Harris had to apologize for enforcing whatever passes for the law in California, as did Amy Klobuchar, who also had to apologize for having once supported border fencing and English as the country’s national language. After jumping into the race, Michael Bloomberg launched his own apology tour for trying to stop gang violence with ‘stop and frisk’, for criticizing Obamacare, and the easy loans that wrecked the economy. No candidate, no matter how lefty, is ever truly pure enough for the party of the perpetually woke. Any politician old enough to run for the White House also has a history of believing in things like borders, language, biology, math, law and order, free speech, and any other realities that offend the Wokeratti. Only a candidate who has done nothing except chastely spout radical nonsense can pass the purity test. That’s why Bernie Sanders, a hack from a minor state who, until being excavated by some Obama campaign people who hadn’t gotten a gig with the Clinton campaign, was an obscure nobody who had done nothing except rename post offices, is leading the Democrat death march to political oblivion. There may be 48 years worth of difference between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, but they both have the same amount of experience getting anything done in Washington D.C. The only thing they’ve ever done in his long and her short career is lay out imaginary visions of socialist utopias without having the life skills to change a flat tire, catch a bus, or make their own breakfast. The Democrats have become a party divided between the moderates, obsessed with destroying Trump, and the socialists, obsessed with destroying the Democrats. The emerging representative of the former is Bloomberg: a billionaire willing to blow through 1.5% of his net worth to stop President Trump. And Bernie represents the vanguard of the oppressed proletariat of Burlington, San Francisco, and Aspen, who are slightly to the right of Castro, but, like their leader, have no clue how to get anything done. Bloomberg represents the core Dems who don’t care about anything except beating Trump, while Bernie represents the radicals who care less about beating Trump than about beating the Bloombergs. The average Democrat outside the DNC doesn’t understand this distinction. That’s why Bernie is leading. In the party’s current electability obsession, any candidate who does well is electable and can beat Trump. That includes Bernie Sanders, a talking horse, and Amy Klobuchar. Biden maintained the lead for so long because he seemed electable. Details like what he actually believed and whether he was playing with a full deck were deemed irrelevant. Those same details also don’t matter when it comes to Bernie. But that just meant that the Democrats outsourced policy to the radical fringe that cares about issues. That’s why the 2020 primaries have seen Democrats endorse gun confiscation (Beto O’Rourke), letting the Boston Marathon bomber vote from prison (Bernie Sanders), eliminating private health insurance (Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren), eliminating free speech on the internet (Warren), and taking away the tax exempt status of churches and synagogues that don’t back gay marriage (O’Rourke). These are not winning issues. Most Democrats claim they want electable candidates, but they’re going into 2020 with unelectable policy proposals hanging around their necks that will alienate the average voters they need to win. House Democrats could have changed that, instead they were sucked into the impeachment black hole. And no matter how much Speaker Pelosi resisted, the one part of elected government that the Democrats control is best known for an obsession with Trump and a disinterest in everything else. Hating Trump isn’t a winning strategy. The post-impeachment polls showed that all too clearly. But it’s either that or nationalizing health care, confiscating guns, banning churches and letting terrorists vote from prison. And those are even worse platforms to run on than Trump Derangement Syndrome. The Democrats are now on track to have a nominee who once said, “I don’t mind people coming up and calling me a communist” because they didn’t care about anything else except destroying Trump. And, instead, they’re destroying themselves. The Democrats have locked their party into only one possible strategy and that’s turning out as much of their base as possible. But turnout signals from the primaries have been mixed and large-scale national events like the Impeachment Eve rallies and the Women’s March fizzled badly with few attendees. The white suburbanites whose cultural hostility fueled the “resistance” appear to be fading. Despite their hatred of Trump, they’re wary of socialism. And a Sanders win would depress their turnout. But a win by anyone except Sanders will depress turnout by his base of Marxist profs and unemployed vloggers. None of the leading candidates summon much enthusiasm from black voters. Massive turnout requires a united party. And that was a lot easier when they were uniting against something. 2018 saw great turnout because the Democrats rallied around their common front of hating Trump. But uniting against Trump is very different than uniting behind Bernie, Bloomberg, or any other candidate. Hatred is a powerful force. But it’s no substitute for leadership. Republican primaries have seen massive turnout because of support for President Trump. A united party is set to face off against a divided party. And that is very bad news for the subdivided Democrats. Hatred doesn’t unite political movements. It divides them. Any political movement that depends on division is inherently fractured. The deeper the divisions become; the harder Democrats hate their common enemy. But underneath that common hatred are a thousand festering hatreds, rivalries and resentments, waiting to break out into internecine warfare. The Democrats are now at risk of winding up with a brokered conviction because hate divided them. In the Trump Derangement Syndrome era, the Democrats no longer really stand for anything and are willing to fall for anything, from radical ideologies to billionaires and socialists buying the nomination. Hatred has hollowed out the Democrats leaving behind nothing but a great empty void. The primaries are the dark night of the Democrat soul. The party’s soul has fed on poisonous hatred. Morning has come to America. But morning may never come to the Democrats divided in darkness. Tags: Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Mag, Sultan Knish, Hating Trump, Can’t Unite the Democrats, That’s Why, Dem’s Party, Fighting, Own Civil War 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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| Trump & Barr Were Outraged By DOJ Recommending Roger Stone Get 9 Years In Prison . . .
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 06:22 PM PST . . . And So Should You  by Robert Romano: The ink has barely dried on the acquittal of President Donald Trump in Congressional Democrats’ failed impeachment attempt to remove him from office and now it is right on to the next thing, this time the faux outrage that the Justice Department reduced its sentencing recommendation for Trump friend Roger Stone from 9 years to leaving it up to the judge to decide. Stone was convicted of making false statements and engaging in witness tampering in the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the Trump campaign as it pursued what turned out to be false allegations the campaign had conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election by hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta emails and putting them on Wikileaks. The only reason for the investigation into the campaign was the Hillary Clinton and DNC-funded dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS that falsely tied the Trump campaign to Russia. This led to an FBI investigation, top secret surveillance on the campaign, the opposition party in an election year, and then a criminal investigation whose initial object was found to be based on a falsehood. Former FBI Director James Comey lied to President Trump about the extent of the investigation, saying he wasn’t the subject of the investigation when he always was, which became grounds for Comey’s removal. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, but no one was ever convicted of conspiring with Russia. Instead, a series of process crimes were found, including Stone but also George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn, who were all found or pled guilty to lying to investigators. Paul Manafort was convicted of unrelated banking and tax crimes that predated the election. The original basis for the case against Trump, Stone and other members of the Trump campaign — that Trump and his campaign were allegedly Russian agents responsible for hacking the DNC and John Podesta emails and putting them on Wikileaks — was debunked by none other than Special Counsel Mueller, who found there was no conspiracy by Trump or any member of his campaign and Russia. From the Mueller report: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.” And yet if not for the false allegations, there never would have been an investigation into the campaign and at least Stone, Flynn and Papadopoulos would have never been questioned. None of this would have ever happened. That is why when news of the Justice Department’s 9-year sentence recommendation of Stone broke, on Feb. 11 President Trump blasted the decision on Twitter, writing, “This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” Trump noted that Stone was getting harsh treatment in comparison to similar cases, adding, “a swamp creature with ‘pull’ was just sentenced to two months in jail for a similar thing that they want Stone to serve 9 years for.” The same day, the Justice Department agreed and amended its filing in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, calling the sentence recommendation “excessive and unwarranted,” stating, “While it remains the position of the United States that a sentence of incarceration is warranted here, the government respectfully submits that the range of 87 to 108 months presented as the applicable advisory Guidelines range would not be appropriate or serve the interests of justice in this case… [T]he government respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration far less than 87 to 108 months’ imprisonment would be reasonable under the circumstances. The government ultimately defers to the Court as to the specific sentence to be imposed.” The filing noted that the initial recommendation of 9 years in prison was akin to sentences received by violent offenders: “the Sentencing Guidelines enhancements in this case—while perhaps technically applicable— more than double the defendant’s total offense level and, as a result, disproportionately escalate the defendant’s sentencing exposure to an offense level of 29, which typically applies in cases involving violent offenses, such as armed robbery, not obstruction cases.” And just like that, the left and the Washington, D.C. establishment were in another tizzy, this time with more than 2,000 former Justice Department officials signing a petition calling for Barr to resign. The petition claims that “It is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors” to give what the petitioners say is “preferential” treatment for Stone. And yet, under 28 U.S. Code § 519 it is the Attorney General’s job to supervise all prosecutions and prosecutors: “the Attorney General shall supervise all litigation to which the United States, an agency, or officer thereof is a party, and shall direct all United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys, and special attorneys appointed under section 543 of this title in the discharge of their respective duties.” Meaning, if the Attorney General determines that a prosecution is malicious or in this case, that a sentence recommendation was excessive, he has a responsibility under law to intervene in the case and can direct U.S. attorneys to change course. There is a question about the President’s involvement in this decision, but under Article II of the Constitution’s sole vesting of executive power in the President and charging the President with faithfully executing the law, we elect presidents to enforce the laws and to ensure rights are not being violated. Trump clearly has the power to direct subordinates like the Attorney General if he felt there was a miscarriage of justice taking place. In this case, that was unnecessary since the Department ultimately came to the same conclusion as the President that Stone was being excessively punished. Heck, under Article II, the President could pardon Stone and it would be well within the scope of his constitutional powers, something Trump just reminded everyone of by granting clemency and commuting sentences of 11 individuals on Feb. 18. Moreover, the historical record shows that presidents have always been involved in the administration of justice and prosecutorial decisions, as noted by Sai Prakash in 2005 in a University of San Diego legal article, “The Chief Prosecutor”: “Presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson repeatedly directed official prosecutors, instructing them to prosecute some individuals and to cease prosecuting others. Early presidential direction of prosecutors was based on an understanding of the executive’s constitutional authority, for no statute ever authorized presidential control. In presidential proclamations, in addresses to Congress, and in correspondence, presidents often noted that they had given instructions to official prosecutors, sometimes articulating the constitutional bases of their actions. Attorneys general likewise acknowledged that they were executive officers under presidential control and regularly conveyed presidential instructions to the district attorneys.” Meaning the complaint against Trump and Barr is not based on any law being violated, but that in the execution of their legal authorities, they agreed that 9 years for Roger Stone was excessive, and so did the U.S. Attorney named in the filing, Timothy Shea. And apparently agreeing with the President about the horrible conduct of the Justice Department in 2016 with the phony Russia collusion witch hunt is a crime against the Washington, D.C. establishment. The argument appears to be that even if the sentence recommendation was excessive and Trump was right, because Stone is a friend of the President’s he must be punished far in excess of what the law prescribes because justice is “equal,” and neither the President nor the Attorney General have any role in supervising that process. Apparently, due process does not apply to supporters of the President because, like in Animal Farm, some are more equal than others. Tags: Robert Romano, Trump & Barr, Outraged by DOJ, Recommending Roger Stone, Get 9 Years In Prison, So Should You 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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| Big Tech and the Election
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 05:54 PM PST  by Kerby Anderson: The impact of the big tech companies on this election may be more than we have ever seen before because so many Americans are on social media. Two-thirds (68%) of adults use Facebook and nearly three-fourths (73%) use YouTube. The percentages for those under the age of 50 are even much higher. The tech companies have enormous power to select the information we read and share with others. Peter Hasson is the editor at the Daily Caller and also author of the book, The Manipulators. He provides an in-depth look at how big tech influences our political perspectives and decisions. One way the tech companies have increased influence is through moderators. In the case of YouTube, there are more than 10,000 of them looking for inappropriate content. A memo at Google had the title, The Good Censor, and made the case that the Internet may have been “founded upon utopian principles of free speech” but then argues that free speech is no longer in vogue. Two forms of censorship actually occur. The first is what can be described as “hard censorship” in which content is deleted and users are suspended. But the more insidious form is what could be called “soft censorship.” That is where these tech companies make content harder to find by pushing a link off the first page or first few pages. Hasson says that hard censorship is similar to tearing down a roadside billboard. Soft censorship would make the billboard difficult to see by erecting other billboards in front of it. Also, these tech companies do feel significant pressure to censor from both external forces (like left-wing activists) and internal forces (from left-leaning employees). In the last presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton received 99 percent of all the political donations made by tech workers in Silicon Valley. That is why you need to get your news and information from more than just social media. Tags: Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, Big Tech, the Election 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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| Farmers’ Lives Matter . . .
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 05:43 PM PST . . . Michael Bloomberg disparaged farmers, stating that anyone can be a farmer and that it doesn’t take much gray matter.
Tags: Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Farmers’ Lives Matter, Michael Bloomberg, disparaged farmers, anyone can be a farmer, doesn’t take much gray matter 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 Farming Wit and Wisdom of Mike Bloomberg
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 05:31 PM PST
by Dr. Victor Davis Hanson: Here is what Democratic candidate for president Michael Bloomberg said in 2016 at Oxford, in what he apparently offered up as an ad hoc history of labor, agriculture, and industry, leading up to his own sophisticated era, as reported in the New York Post: “You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98 percent of the world worked in agriculture, today it’s 2 percent in the United States,” Bloomberg said. He then pointed out the difference between the economy then and today’s information economy. As is his wont, what Bloomberg now says he once wished to say, what came out of his mouth, and what he postfacto claims he meant are, as we have seen with his commentaries on race, women, and redlining, often three quite different things. Yes, Bloomberg was talking in part about the last 3,000 years of transition from a primarily agricultural society to one that was industrial to one now dominated by the so-called informational skills. But he did not leave it there. First, he switched back into the present tense. (“I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer.”) Did he mean the Manhattan whizz kid could teach sophisticated Oxonians to be modern farming simpletons, or that he, the student of history, could teach them to be preindustrial simpletons? And then he added that the present information age emphasized skill sets of thinking and analyzing, as apparently does not occur in contemporary farming or manufacturing work. In truth, Bloomberg could not teach anyone in that Oxford hall or any other room how to farm, in either ancient times or modern. If he really thinks that farming is, or was, a mere “process” of digging holes, dropping in seeds, covering them with dirt, adding water, and, presto!, up comes the corn, then he is as dense as is he is arrogant. The preindustrial history of farming was a nonstop life-and-death struggle to survive one more day, in constant war against nature (weather, insects, disease, soil chemistry, species variations) and man (labor, markets, government, war, security, etc.) to produce food. And it took a great deal of science, skill, patience, and physical courage to pull it off. Read the classical empirical and scientific treatises on farming and agronomy by Theophrastus, Columella, or Varro, and you’ll find that the degree of their contemporaries’ ancient farming expertise and science is extraordinary. No one would conclude from these that ancient agriculture was anything like Bloomberg’s caricatures. As we are witnessing currently in Africa with its locust storms, no one ever just drops seeds in the ground and allows the process to continue on autopilot. Bloomberg confirmed that he neither knew what he was talking about nor was hesitant about blanket judgments on the relative intelligence of various professions, when, again in the present tense, he pontificated: “You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.” I don’t think that family farmers of the 1940s pre-informational age were any more or less deficient in “gray matter” than are today’s techies and coders. And today’s farmers are some of the few people in society who still marry sophisticated high-tech skills, from GPS planting and harvesting to computer analyses of market futures, and precise calibrations of complex machines to plant, spray, and fertilize, while still dealing with the world of raw muscle and those often tough customers who inhabit it—which is to say, apparently a world away from Mike Bloomberg’s Manhattan habitat. Bloomberg’s staff claims that his opponents selectively edited the transcript of the four-year-old quote. And his Democratic and Republican rivals did indeed truncate it, but the full quote that his staff also themselves conveniently edited out in their press release is even more damning. They omitted the arrogant riff of “I could teach anybody…” and his nonsense about “gray matter”—and for good reason, because the full quote confirms at best that Bloomberg is insidiously arrogant, and at worse that he harbors some creepy fixations about calibrating innate intelligence. Moreover, I seriously doubt whether farmers are going to vote against Trump should Bloomberg or anyone else be the Democratic nominee. The latest poll shows a record 83 percent of them approve of Trump’s tenure. Most farmers so far have stuck with the president in his trade stand-off with China in the belief that past asymmetries with Europe and Japan, but especially with China, on matters of food importation and export had to be addressed. And they seem willing to endure short-term hardship for long-term parity, and with it, greater profitability. Bloomberg’s candidacy is supposed to appeal to suburbanites, and perhaps moderate Republican women and independents in particular, while drawing minorities to a supposedly seasoned, big-city mayor whose past constituencies were heavily non-white. Most concede that Bloomberg would not steal anyone from Trump’s base, and likely not from the working classes of either party. And we can see why. But as the prior wit and wisdom of Bloomberg keep emerging, and as his campaign, fueled by a billion dollars, blankets the airwaves, it is hard to see what advantages he brings, either over his own rivals or over incumbent Trump. Bloomberg has only been a candidate for a few days, and already he seems in the past to have insulted, as a group, professional women, minority youth, poor would-be homeowners, and unthinking farmers and factory workers. All that is in addition to the general paradox of a party that rails about racism, toxic masculinity, and white privilege, with anti-rich overtones, looking now at a rich, white, male multi-billionaire to buy an election and thus save the party from itself. Tags: Victor Davis Hanson, The Farming Wit and Wisdom, Mike Bloomberg, McIntosh Enterprises 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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| Too Often, Trump Critics Rely on False, Dangerous Ideas About National Security
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 05:03 PM PST  by James Jay Carafano: No question, President Donald Trump is an unconventional statesman. On the global stage he looks like a fullback at a field hockey match. Different doesn’t always mean wrong—except to the critics who have gone to absurd lengths to weaponize policy differences to undermine the legitimacy of the president’s decisions. One of the most extreme and wrongheaded complaints is that this administration has violated how policy must be made. Critics complain the president seems to have a mind of his own and the audacity to not reflexively implement the recommendations the bureaucracy cranks out. Nonsense. Not only is it wrong to suggest the White House must follow only the policy proposals its “experts” devise, it can at times be the worse step a president can take. It is risky business for the Oval Office to make policy in a vacuum. But there are a lot of ways for the White House to get good advice, and Trump actually may be better than most presidents when it comes to gathering information for decision-making. Past as Prologue The establishment of the National Security Council facilitated a more systematic process for developing and making recommendations to the president. Department representatives and National Security Council staff members would get together to hash out proposals and pass them to a deputies committee that included high-ranking department officials. These committees would, in turn, pass along their thinking to “principles committees” made up of Cabinet-level officials, who would, in turn, make recommendations to the president. This bottoms-up approach solidified under President Dwight Eisenhower. As former military man, Eisenhower appreciated the rigor of staff work and frequently chaired National Security Council meetings. Every president has had his own version of a national security policy-making process. The process isn’t codified in law and rarely looks like the flow chart in textbooks—just as the way Congress crafts legislation often doesn’t match what students are told in their civics lessons. These advisers and this process are meant to help the president make decisions; not to put him in a straitjacket that allows the bureaucracy to hold the president’s policies hostage. There are crucial, important moments in history when president’s ignored the “best” advice and did the right thing. Harry Truman recognized Israel against the recommendations of his Cabinet. JFK made all the tough calls in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ronald Reagan turned down Mikhail Gorbachev’s deal at Reykjavik. And all three emerged with better outcomes. There also are instances where presidents went it alone and came to regret their decisions. President Jimmy Carter announced he was going to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea—only to find almost no one in Washington, not even his own secretary of defense, was willing to go along. Reagan turned over Iran-Contra to a few staffers in the National Security Council—and that didn’t end well. Judge Policy by Outcomes, Not Process Smart presidents will shake things up and seek outside advice. FDR famously ranged far and wide for recommendations during World War II, consulting everyone from columnists to heads of state. Trump is more in the FDR mode; he likes to hear lots of opinions. Also like FDR, he is very much the decider-in-chief. This is how Trump has chosen to run his presidency. Those who don’t like it can vote him out. But it’s wrong to suggest the president is not legitimate or responsible because he doesn’t govern the way critics prefer. Tags: James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation, Too Often, Trump Critics, Rely on False, Dangerous Ideas, About National Security 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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| Is Mayor Pete A Dangerous Security Risk?
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 03:19 PM PST
by Cliff Kincaid: Facing a serious health problem but with millions of Americans praying for him, Rush Limbaugh has demonstrated that he is still in the game, as he declared the other day on his radio show that “America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president.” He was referring to Pete Buttigieg, the clean-cut Harvard grad who smoked pot in college, turned gay, married another man in church, and leads the fourth-largest city in Indiana. Out of nowhere, he has emerged on the national scene as a potential president – the first openly gay president. Buttigieg won in Iowa and came in second in New Hampshire. He has many of Barack Hussein Obama’s donors. Injecting a note of common sense into this picture, Limbaugh summarized the attitude of many Americans by saying “they’re looking at Mayor Pete – a 37-year-old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage – and they’re saying, ‘Okay. How’s this gonna look, a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband on stage next to Mr. Man, Donald Trump? What’s gonna happen there?'” Limbaugh has a knack for saying things that tens of millions of Americans think. This has nothing to do with one’s “sexual orientation.” Most people are tired of the homosexual agenda being forced on America. They don’t want to see two men kissing, on a presidential debate stage and especially not in the Oval Office. But there is something else that figures into the equation. Buttigieg says the HIV/AIDS epidemic “disproportionately” affects gay men, ignoring the scientific evidence that their dangerous sexual practices dramatically increase the odds of getting sick and dying from AIDS and other diseases. With this possible health care problem lurking in the background of Buttigieg’s candidacy, President Trump said he would have no problem voting for a gay president. Trump can’t “figure out what to do with me,” Buttigieg says. Limbaugh is not speechless, however. He understands that Americans are a tolerant people who don’t want their children exposed to lifestyles that are dangerous. This fact is reflected in Trump’s own 2021 budget, calling for $716 million for the second year of a multiyear initiative to eliminate HIV in America, a $450 million increase compared to the 2020 enacted level. Male homosexuals are at the greatest risk of getting HIV/AIDS because of the way they have sexual relations. In addition to HIV/AIDS, new data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) demonstrates that gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) are at increased risk for extragenital sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia or gonorrhea in the throat or rectum. By any objective measure, syphilis, HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) make the coronavirus look relatively minor. The CDC estimates that more than 20 million new STDs occur annually in the United States, contributing to 110 million cases. Our media are careful not to recommend any lifestyle choices that would make getting these diseases less likely. They won’t warn against the dangerous sexual practices outlined in the book The Health Hazards of Homosexuality. In an article about the dangers of STDs, an epidemiologist for the U.S. Army Public Health Command noted in an article that “Social ‘hook up’ networks and mobile applications allow for easy ways to meet new people, but it’s not always safe and can lead to high-risk activities.” In the case of Buttigieg, who met his “husband” on one of those “mobile applications,” the danger takes on national security concerns. One such dating app, Grindr, is owned by a Communist Chinese firm. The Reuters news agency reported that the Chinese owners “gave some Beijing-based engineers access to personal information of millions of Americans such as private messages and HIV status, according to eight former employees, prompting U.S. officials to ask it to sell the dating app for the gay community.” Buttigieg says he didn’t meet his “husband” on Grindr but on another app. Asked by a gay magazine, “If it was Grindr, would you tell me?” He replied, “Probably not. But it was Hinge.” This is described as the dating app designed to be deleted. In any case, it looks like secrets were shared. But who had access to them? It looks like much damage has already been done through acquisition of sensitive files on self-proclaimed gay, bi, trans, and queer people through Grindr – and perhaps other apps. It was Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan who conceived a “CIA Diversity and Inclusion Strategy” to hire “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Individuals.” Buttigieg says he was a Naval Intelligence Officer who served in Afghanistan. But some of his military service documents are said to be “redacted.” Questions about Mayor Pete’s personal lifestyle – and demands for the complete release of his military and medical records – are in order. Limbaugh has only touched the surface of a blockbuster issue for Mayor Pete. He is a presumed security risk who must prove that his sensitive personal data has not already fallen into the hands of the Chinese communists or Russian intelligence services. Tags: Cliff Kincaid, Is Mayor Pete, A Dangerous, Security Risk 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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| Bloomberg Said What About Guns and Crime?
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 02:57 PM PST  by Frank Miniter: Clips from a 2015 speech Michael Bloomberg gave at the Aspen Institute should be playing on mainstream news channels just as often as Bloomberg’s campaign ads. “95 percent of your murders—murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” Bloomberg said. “They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city…. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them.” Bloomberg also said, “And then they start … ‘Oh, I don’t want to get caught,’ so they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.” Such is the tough New York talk Bloomberg uses in safe spaces like Aspen. “If you can stop them from getting murdered, I would argue everything else you do is less important,” Bloomberg said. And that’s a good point, but it comes with a deceptive premise he expects us to buy into. Bloomberg, you see, often argued that the “stop-and-frisk” policy New York City used while he was mayor was necessary, and there is little doubt it saved lives in New York City’s toughest neighborhoods. But the thing is, when you take away one constitutional right—in this case, our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms—you end up in a position in which you need to diminish another constitutional right—in this case, the Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…”—in order to keep people safe. Bloomberg’s associates knew what he said at the Aspen Institute wasn’t politically correct; as a result, after he gave the speech, representatives for Bloomberg’s team actually asked the Aspen Institute not to let people hear or see the video footage, according to the Aspen Times. Bloomberg might be the $61 billion man, but buying an election in a free society still means controlling your image. In this case, however, the audio leaked out. As this just isn’t a position today’s Democrats favor, just before Bloomberg entered the race for president last November he tried to sidestep his record. “I can’t change history. Today, I want you to know that I realize back then I was wrong, and I am sorry,” said Bloomberg, referring to the stop-and-frisk policy he’d bragged about just a few years before. To put this in context, Bloomberg, when he was mayor of New York City, tried to be one of the common folk by riding the subway to work (in this case, City Hall), but, regardless, it’s a safe bet that he was never stopped and frisked—mayors, especially those with security details, just don’t get that treatment. It is also a safe bet that he never needed a self-defense gun, as security details are paid to handle all that. Now Bloomberg is running for president. If he somehow wins the presidency, the first thing he’d like to do is disarm every average American citizen. He mistrusts the individual American so much that he doesn’t even think the everyday hero named Jack Wilson, a concealed-carry permit holder and member of the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, who stopped a murderer, should have the right to carry a self-defense gun. “It’s the job of law enforcement to have guns and to decide when to shoot. You just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place,” said Bloomberg just after Wilson had saved lives in that church. Presidential races are filled with hyperbole and pageantry, but it’s revealing things like these statements from Bloomberg that build or destroy candidacies. Tags: Frank Minter, America’s 1st Freedom, Michael Bloomberg, Said What, Guns and Crime 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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| This Is What A Morally Bankrupt Party Looks Like
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 02:46 PM PST  by Mario Murillo Ministries: We get it. You hate Donald Trump. But what happened to all your ideals? What about diversity? What about your hatred of Wall Street and capitalism? You started with a gay man, women, and minority candidates. This is your final answer? Let’s replace one white New York City billionaire with another? You dumped the candidate who really did put illegal pressure on the Ukraine for a quid pro quo, and then you turned around and picked Hillary for Mike’s VP—the one who really did collude with the Russians to rig an election! This must be your rationale: ‘Okay, so Bloomberg has racist tweets. He said that blacks and Latino men don’t know how to behave. So what? He may have made extremely vile and sexist remarks verbally and in print (he did), but at least he’s our candidate. He may have put farmers in a new “basket of deplorables” by calling them dumb, but hey, at least he is our guy.’ We believe you now. You hate Trump more than you value diversity, equality and truth. If it means winning against Trump, you will violate every conviction you ever cherished just to get back into power. You have truly sold your soul to the highest bidder.  This is what a morally and ideologically bankrupt political party looks like. This is what a cynical crime family, who has abandoned their high sounding platitudes, looks like. This is what liars and despots act like when they have zero ideas and zero concern for the American people. Every Bernie follower must be seething right now. Even if he gets the most votes, they are going to derail him because the establishment knows he is too extreme to beat Trump. ‘Berners’ know that the greedy and cold blooded Democrat establishment can’t resist Mike Bloomberg’s money. Look at them—the aged overseers of the swamp. They remind me of an aging actress still trying to get free dinners on her looks. How you have cheapened yourself. How degraded, salacious, and contaminated you have become. Your entire party and its legacy is forever slimed by the utter depravity of your attempts to strike a blow against Trump. My kindly, hard-working, law abiding fellow Americans: behold the monster. No ideals, no morals, no plans, nothing noble or compelling to hold to. They are a blob of hate and ambition that demands utter repudiation. They have become the epitome of what Proverbs 4:16 describes, “…evil people can’t sleep until they’ve done their evil deed for the day. They can’t rest until they have caused someone to fall.” What are they going to say against Trump, now that they are everything they accuse him of being? Every time they slander him, it will be nothing but a self-portrait. They became the party of atheism and death when it suits them. In Proverbs 8:36, God defines them: “All those who hate Me, love death.” We as Americans have the power to drain the swamp. Don’t wait for Donald Trump to do it for you. It is up to us to stand for righteousness and vote these cold-blooded scoundrels out of office! Maybe now millennials will see how they have been played. Maybe now, at last, you will face the fact that they are corrupt to the core. Leo Tolstoy said of Napoleon, “He lost the power to think a decent thought.” So has the soulless Democrat Party Establishment. Tags: Mario Murillo, Ministries, what a morally bankrupt party, looks like, woke diverse democrats 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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| Bernie Sanders Is The True Face Of Today’s Democrats
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 02:30 PM PST  by I&I Editorial Board: Bernie Sanders’ surge in the polls, and his increasing odds of getting the nomination, are supposedly alarming the party’s leaders. What are they worried about? That the public at large will finally learn how radical Democrats have become?According to Real Clear Politics, polls show Sanders leading Joe Biden by an eight-point margin nationally – a complete reversal from a month ago. Assuming that Elizabeth Warren’s supporters will go to Sanders, he’s polling at close to 40%, compared with Biden’s 17%. The RCP’s average of betting odds has Sanders favored over Biden by a 31-point margin. Barack Obama chief strategist David Axelrod told USA Today that “I know that there’s a panic among some quarters of the Democratic Party about Bernie Sanders.” James Carville recently likened Sanders’ campaign to a cult. They fear that Sanders would not only lose badly to Trump but could cost the party their control of the House. That’s not an unfounded concern. But the same USA Today article contends that “most Democrats are not ‘liberal.’” This is a blatant falsehood, one peddled by the party’s elite, who apparently are equally clueless about where the party now stands. This year, Gallup found that a majority of Democrats (51%) now consider themselves either liberal or very liberal, up from 38% in 2008. Even that understates the party’s left-wing swing, because when asked about specific policies, the vast majority of Democrats support Bernie Sanders’ socialist agenda down the line. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that three-quarters of Democrats support Sanders’ radical $34 trillion takeover of the nation’s health care system – which would be more expansive than government-run health care systems anywhere else in the world, with the possible exception of Cuba. Meanwhile, 86% of Democrats back Sanders’ equally radical Green New Deal, which would dump $16 trillion over 10 years to “decarbonize” the country, and would grant the federal government control of virtually every nook and cranny of the economy. On immigration, 77% of Democrats have a negative view of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to Gallup, well above the national average. Sanders wants to “break ICE up.” A Harvard poll found that 70% of Democrats oppose a “combination of physical and electronic barriers across the U.S.-Mexico border,” just like Sanders. And two-thirds of Democrats say they favor providing health care benefits to illegal immigrants, according to a CNN poll. On guns, 85% of Democrats back a national gun registry, and seven in ten Democrats support mandatory buybacks of “assault rifles,” a policy that even Sanders opposes.  Go down the list of other items on Sanders’ agenda – free college, massive new regulations on businesses, a $15 minimum wage, etc. – and you’ll find equally strong support among rank-and-file Democrats. As if that weren’t enough, consider this: Sanders’ favorability rating among Democrats is at a sky-high 71%, according to a Monmouth poll, higher than any of his rivals (and way above the favorability rating for supposedly moderate Mike Bloomberg). This shift toward extremism among Democrats isn’t a sudden development. A Pew Research study found that the ideological center of those who identify as Democrats had shifted far to the left since 1994, while the ideological center of Republicans had barely budged. (See the chart nearby.) Investor’s Business Daily’s IBD/TIPP poll had picked up on the increasingly outside-the-mainstream views of Democrats many years ago. The only thing that has changed lately is that the party’s elites are finding it increasingly difficult to pretend that the Democratic Party is mainstream. If they don’t like that, they should devote their time and energy to educating the rank and file about the error of their views, rather than complain about who they nominate to run in November. Tags: Issues and Insights, Editorial Board 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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| Ilhan Omar’s $250,000 Hush Money to Ex?
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 02:06 PM PST . . . More accusations of impropriety stack up against a member of the hard-left “Squad.”  by Thomas Gallatin: The Daily Mail recently reported an update on the growing scandal surrounding hard-leftist squad member Ilhan Omar (D-MN). As we noted last August, Omar reportedly had an affair with her campaign consultant, Tim Mynett. At the time, she was already under scrutiny for tax fraud over allegations of a sham “marriage” to a man who was likely her brother. The FBI is looking into those allegations. In this latest round of revelations is the claim that Omar’s current husband, Ahmed Hirsi, learned of her affair with Mynett after he traveled to Washington, DC, and discovered the two lovers lounging around her apartment in pajamas. Following the discovery of the affair, the Mail reports that Omar engaged in a secret settlement to the tune of up to $250,000 with Hirsi, “but only if he did not speak publicly about the marriage breakdown.” The Mail’s source claims that Omar’s Somali community in Minnesota has become “embarrassed” by her affair as well as her support of “LGBT” rights and has lost faith in her. “It’s almost as if she is deliberately trying to turn her Somali supporters against her,” said the source. “She is as a figurehead for us, the most famous Somali in America, and she had embarrassed us. She is the face of the Somali community.” One thing’s for certain, with all the allegations of fraud and impropriety flying around Omar, it wouldn’t come as a major surprise if she lost her reelection bid or even wound up standing in a courtroom. Tags: Thomas Gallatin, The Patriot Post, Ilhan Omar, $250,000 Hush Money, to Ex 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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| Young Democrats Lose Interest In Freedom
Posted: 19 Feb 2020 01:55 PM PST  by Star Parker: I happened to listen the other day to then-Sen. John F. Kennedy’s opening remarks in his debate with then-Vice President Richard Nixon during the 1960 presidential election cycle. Kennedy, the Democratic Party candidate, recalled that Abraham Lincoln, in the 1860 presidential election cycle, said the great question facing the nation was whether it could exist “half-slave and half-free.” In the 1960 election, said Kennedy, the issue was “whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free.” “Whether it will move in the direction of freedom, in the direction of the road that we are taking … will depend in great measure upon what we do here in the United States,” he said. How things change. The Democrats’ candidate in 1960 headlined freedom as the issue defining his campaign. Now, 60 years later, Democrats are moving down the road to nominating a socialist, pushing freedom as an American ideal out of the picture. It is astounding that many Democrats are ready to cast aside the core value that has defined our nation, for which so many have fought and died. One major part of the story is our youth. Support for the two parties is divided by age. In 2016, a majority of those under age 44 voted for Hillary Clinton. Fifty-five percent of those ages 18-29 voted for her, compared with 37% for Donald Trump. Trump received the majority of those 45 years and above. It is our youth that is enamored with socialism and the socialist candidate. In a recent Pew Research Center poll, 40% of Democrats ages 18-29 expressed preference for Sen. Bernie Sanders to be their party’s candidate, compared with 25% of those 30-49, 13% of those 50-64 and 10% of those 65 and over. In a Gallup poll, 51% of those ages 18-f39 expressed a positive view of capitalism and 49% a positive view of socialism. Among those 40-54, 61% were positive about capitalism compared with 39% for socialism. And those 55 and over, 68% were positive about capitalism compared with 32% for socialism. What’s driving these young Democrats to the far left? Niall Ferguson of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and consultant Eyck Freymann suggest, in an article in The Atlantic, “The Coming Generation War,” that the capitalist America that worked for earlier generations is not working for these youth. “They face stagnant real wages” and carry a large burden of student debt, they say. It’s a generation “to whom little has been given, and of whom much is expected,” they continue. I think it is just the opposite. It is a generation to whom much has been given and from whom little is expected. When Kennedy ran for president in 1960, America’s youth still faced a military draft. In 1960, 72% of Americans over 18 were married, compared with 50% today. According to Pew, 78% of those ages 18-29 say it is acceptable for an unmarried couple to live together, even if they don’t intend to get married. Over the decade 2009-2019, there was a drop of 16% among those ages 23-39 who identify as Christian and an increase of 13% of those self-identifying as religiously unaffiliated. And that age group doesn’t vote. Since 1980, the percentage of eligible voters in their 20s who voted in presidential elections has averaged between 40% and 50%, compared with 65% to 75% of those over 45, Ferguson and Freymann report. We have a generation of American youth today who have grown up in a culture of legal abortion and same-sex marriage, with little sense of responsibility to God and country. Freedom is about personal responsibility, and these youth do not seem to be interested. They appear, rather, to be very open to the idea of turning their lives over to be run by a 78-year-old socialist. Such values among our youth do not bode well for our future. Meanwhile, the best near-term solution is keeping the nation under Republican control. Tags: Star Parker, Center for Urban Renewal and Education, CURE, 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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February 20 2020
On the menu today: the Democratic debate in Las Vegas turns into Ragnarok; the Democratic Party’s foundation starts to develop deep cracks and worsening fissures; and contemplating the exceedingly grim finale of the Norwegian geopolitical thriller, Occupied. |
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“Makes an original and compelling case for nationalism . . . A fascinating, erudite—and much-needed—defense of a hallowed idea unfairly under current attack.” — Victor Davis Hanson
Episode 107: Pardon 
Buttigieg Leads Sanders… 
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I vote Amy vs the field . . . I think, by the next debate, that Amy gets so frustrated at her lack of headway against this weak field that she starts throwing chairs indiscriminately . . . She gets arrested but also vaults to the top of the polls . . .
It’s so tempting to say Tom Steyer vs fashion but I’ll go with Amy vs Pete. I don’t see Pete winning that contest.