Thursday, December 20, 2018

Hall of shame: Advertisers sign up for boycott of Tucker Carlson for telling the truth on illegal immigration

Thomas Lifson  . . . "Update: Fox News has provided us a statement on the boycott:
Statement from FOX News 12-18-18
"We cannot and will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the likes of Moveon.org, Media Matters and Sleeping Giants.
Attempts were made last month to bully and terrorize Tucker and his family at their home. He is now once again being threatened via Twitter by far left activist groups with deeply political motives.
While we do not advocate boycotts, these same groups never target other broadcasters and operate under a grossly hypocritical double standard given their intolerance to all opposing points of view."
"HuffPost seems to approve of the boycott and repeats the common distortion of conflating illegal aliens with immigrants.  But it usefully provides a list of advertisers trying to silence Carlson for me – and maybe you –  to boycott.  Go and read the whole thing, but here are numbers one through three:

HuffPo gives us the list of sponsors boycotting Tucker's show:

What’s Happening to Tucker Carlson (and Others) Is Called ‘Blacklisting’ 
. . . "Back in the 1950s, a number of private corporations (most famously, movie and television studios), that had every legal right to choose who they did and did not want to do business with, enforced an appalling blacklist as a means to intimidate, silence, and punish those who held beliefs and opinions unpopular with the establishment.
"This never should have happened in America, and today we rightly look back on this era with shame.
"Moreover — and this is important — no one looks back at the infamous 1950’s Hollywood blacklist and says, “Hey, the studios were corporations, not the government, so they had the right to hire and fire whoever they wanted.”
. . . 
"We even have large media corporations, like the far-left CNN, openly demanding the blacklisting of certain opinions.
"What’s more, in a truly ironic example of history repeating itself, we have the powerful in Hollywood calling for the blacklisting of certain opinions.
"Yep, just as we saw happen to television personalities in the McCarthy era, Hollywood director Judd Apatow is openly calling for Fox News primetime star Tucker Carlson to be blacklisted, for his commercial sponsors to pull their support, for him to lose his platform and career." . . .

Syria: President Trump, let Obama's cut-and-run foreign policy die in shame!

Trump Courts Catastrophe in Syria
Islamic State is not defeated, and a U.S. withdrawal would be an abandonment of Kurdish allies.

Does the U.S. really want to abandon them?

"President Donald Trump is on the verge of making a spectacularly bad decision. The White House is soon expected to announce its plans to remove the 2,000 U.S. troops now serving in northeastern Syria. 
"This is not totally unexpected. Trump ran for president in part on the idea of smashing the Islamic State, but he also said there was no point in trying to stabilize the country after the terrorists were defeated. Since getting elected, he has regularly signaled that its time for U.S. forces to leave Syria. In March he promised the U.S. would be getting out of Syria “like, very soon.” In June, he floated a plan for an all-Arab army to replace the U.S. in a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
"Nonetheless, special-operations forces have remained in Syria, where they train and fight alongside largely Kurdish troops. Together they coordinate air strikes against the remaining pockets of Islamic State fighters and serve as a buffer between Turkey and Kurdish militias.
"This time it looks like Trump is serious. " . . .
The Syria Trickery  . . ."The move, the Times says, has “sowed new uncertainty about America’s commitment to the Middle East, its willingness to be a global leader and Mr. Trump’s role as commander in chief.” So, suddenly, the Times is on the side not only of Mr. Bolton but of Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham and our own famed leg at the United Nations, Benny Avni." . . .

U.S. Prepares to Fully Remove Troops From Northeastern Syria  "The Wall Street Journal has reported that the US military has started preparations to remove all of its forces from northeastern Syria:

U.S. officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin immediately pulling American forces out of the region where they have been trying to wrap up the campaign against Islamic State, the people said.
The move follows a call last week between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has threatened to launch an assault on America’s Kurdish partners in Syria. . . .
Trump’s troop pullout from Syria is a terrible idea  . . . "We knew Trump wasn’t a foreign policy wizard, but we hoped he’d surround himself with smart people.  It took him a while but he had a good team with Haley, Bolton and Pompeo.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Bolton bails after this completely boneheaded move by Trump.
"The bottom line is that everyone wise enough to understand how awful it was for Obama to pull out of Iraq is either a hypocrite for not calling this out or sick to their stomachs that this is happening.
"If President Trump does follow through with this, he should officially recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights just as he moved the embassy to Jerusalem. Senators Cruz and Cotton have introduced a resolution in the Senate to that effect. That’s the least he can do to help Israel survive attacks by Iran and its proxies that surround her. " . . .

Incoming Dem Rep Ilhan Omar Mocks VP Pence’s Christian Faith

Legal Insurrection  "Representative-elect Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has demonstrated that she has no more use for Christians than she does for Jews.
"In a remarkably snarky tweet devoid of any degree of self-awareness, she mocks Vice President Mike Pence’s Christian faith, but don’t expect her to get the same treatment that conservative commentator Laura Loomer received when she was banned from Twitter for pointing out proven facts about Omar.
"Omar, you may recall, is an avowed Islamist who has tweeted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.
Additionally, Omar is a proud supporter of the BDS movement that calls for a boycott, academic and otherwise, of Israel.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that someone so steeped in misguided and visceral hatred for Israel and the Jewish people would also disdain and mock Christians.

"Can you even begin to imagine the blow-back if a conservative Christian or Jewish representative-elect posted a tweet mocking Islam and Mohammed?"

The trials of General Flynn


Flynn sentencing hearing devolved into a fiasco   "It was a bad day all around yesterday in Judge Emmet Sullivan's courtroom.  Bad for General Flynn, bad for Judge Sullivan, and bad for the prosecutors from Robert Mueller's Special Counsel's Office (SCO).
"The Washington Post exults that "Trump backers just had their anti-Mueller hopes and dreams dashed" in the wake of yesterday's sentencing hearing for General Michael Flynn.  Judge Emmet Sullivan not only failed to throw out the case against Flynn for lying to the FBI, but he threatened incarceration for the general, despite the recommendation of the SCO for no prison time. " . . .

Flynn's Fate  "The sentencing hearing before Judge Sullivan in the case of Michael Flynn was weird beyond belief yesterday. Judge Sullivan came across as a loose cannon, sounding off like a barroom loudmouth vaguely aware of the relevant facts but not too careful about them. Byron York provides a good summary. In its editorial today (accessible here via Outline), the Wall Street Journal tactfully characterizes the hearing as a “fiasco.”
Flynn is a bit player the Russia hoax production. He is a casualty of the FBI investigation leading to the Mueller Switch Project. A former head of the Defense Intelligence, he has pleaded guilty to lying about the substance of his post-election conversation with the Russian ambassador. He may well be guilty of that and more. Reading the McCabe memo filed by the Special Counsel with the court last Friday, however, we see that Flynn believed that his conversations were probably intercepted and known to the FBI.
"What we would like to know is whether Flynn lied to the FBI about these conversations. If so, why? If not, the judge won’t take his plea. Flynn is sticking with his guilty plea despite the issues he raised with it in his sentencing memo perhaps because he may be guilty and certainly because he wants the deal offered by the Special Counsel." . . .