The President’s Enemies and Their Confected Drama

Conrad Black

"It is astonishing to see the ferocity, and breathless, stertorous rage of the Trump-hating media over Michael Cohen’s flip. Because the whole issue is such nonsense, it is also reassuring to see Trump’s enemies place their heads on the block with such determination, beseeching by their outrageous falsehoods the executioner’s stroke to expose their lies and hate. There they are since there is no case against the president sufficiently serious to threaten his completion of his term.

"I am one of the last people who would claim any standing to opine on the motives and tactics for the Trump-haters to push in all their chips on this charge about payments to an amiable porn star and a Playboy bunny emerita. The president’s most strident enemies in the media have cranked themselves up to a fever of simulated moral superiority many times: it is a mnemonic feat to recall their innumerable charges to the barricades these last two years. Almost no one now remembers Michael Wolff’s inane book, or even Bob Woodward’s pastiche of fabrications and malicious gossip. But this is a home run.

"Apart from its extreme vehemence, what is most striking about this latest oceanic heaving of obloquy on the president is that the Democrats have called in their heaviest serviceable units. The Clintons, and former intelligence chiefs John Brennan and James Clapper are too vulnerable and have a great deal more exposure to legal problems than the president does, and their comparative discretion is tactically wise.

"But now Doris Kearns Goodwin, a respected, if very partisan, historian has thrown her hat in on the side of impeachment. In doing so, she told the faithful devotees of CNN that the atmosphere at the White House was worse than at any time since the 1850s, and reminded the viewers that that decade culminated in the Civil War. . . ."

Iraqi Christians Celebrate Hopeful Christmas After Defeat Of ISIS

Weasel Zippers

Via JPost:

Christians filled churches in the city of Qaraqosh, southeast of Mosul, on Christmas eve to celebrate the holiday for the second year after their community was liberated from ISIS. At the Grand Immaculate Church, the hall was packed with worshipers and priests conducted prayers. It was one of many Christian communities in Iraq and throughout the Middle East celebrating the holiday with hope that the wave of extremist anti-Christian violence had subsided.

Iraq’s Christian community has faced difficulties in recent years, with waves of Islamist extremist terror and kidnappings, especially after 2003. Many emigrated. When ISIS attacked in 2014, the Christian towns of Nineveh were destroyed and their residents forced to flee to the Kurdish autonomous region, where many then decided to search for a life elsewhere. However, a glimmer of hope appeared in October 2016 when ISIS was driven out of Nineveh plains and Christian cities like Qaraqosh, once home to some 50,000 people, and smaller towns nearby, were retaken. Last year, some Christians returned to Qaraqosh to conduct holiday services. Qaraqosh is an important symbol because it was the largest Christian majority urban area in Iraq. In other cities, such as Baghdad, Christians are a small minority, but Qaraqosh is a bellwether for the possibility that Christian communities in Iraq can rebuild and thrive.

This year, the Fraternite en Irak, an association that helps religious minorities who suffered violence in Iraq, and which has helped rebuild Christian sites, celebrated in Qaraqosh. Santa Claus drove down the streets at night. “Thanks to your donations, we have been able to restore 300 apartments, hundreds of people have returned,” the organization said.

At Mar Yohanna Church, the bells rang out for the holiday. Qaraqosh suffered terribly under ISIS control. Homes were looted and burned. ISIS tore down the crosses and steeples of the churches. It sprayed graffiti and even transformed one of the church compounds into a bomb-making factory, evidence of which I saw in March 2017 during a visit. ISIS beheaded images of the Virgin Mary and even beheaded statues of horses commemorating St. George.

In Ainkawa, three mostly Christian suburb of Erbil in the Kurdish region, Syriac Catholics filled a more modern church and sang and celebrated. In Mosul, few Christians have returned after ISIS. One priest said that challenges, such as reconstructing churches, is just one part of the problem. Christians don’t feel secure and are concerned about instability. The blog Mosul Eye, which documented Mosul under ISIS occupation and after liberation, posted hope for peace and freedom on Christians. Ali Y. Al-Baroodi, a local photographer and academic, posted a message of “merry Christmas from Mosul.”

Keep reading…

Day 4 of no government

Don Surber
"The effects of the government shutdown have gone from bad to worse. Last night was eerily silent. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

"Facing starvation, people are getting desperate. Some people dreamed of snow falling today so they could have something to melt and drink." . . .

"Children hung stockings out in hopes that a strange benefactor would magically appear, and fill them with food.

"Others put some of their milk and pastry rations out on the table in the hope of attracting the food-bearing stranger. It was a gamble taken because of hunger.

"We went to bed early, but soon out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. I tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

"When what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

"I shouted from the window, "Get. Off. My. Lawn."

"But in a world without a federal government, people lose respect for private property rights. I think some of the reindeer left calling cards.

"This morning, I drove out. The streets were barren. All the shops and the restaurants were closed, even Tudor's.

"I was literally shaking.

"Everyone senses the anarchy that lurches like a troll on Twitter. The shutting down of the government has imperiled the nation like nothing before. This is worse than 9/11 or Pearl Harbor Day or Game 7 of the 1997 World Series.

"Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported that shutting down government means the government is not collecting money.

"The news service quoted Gordon Gray, director of fiscal policy at American Action Forum, who said, "Museums are closed, so the government doesn’t sell freeze-dried ice cream."

"No museums! No freeze-dried ice cream!

"We are doomed."

https://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2018/12/20/162162

Dem senators flirting with a religious test for judicial nominees By Thomas Lifson

Brian Buescher 

Thomas Lifson  "The ugly specter of religious bigotry reared its disgusting head during Senate confirmation of the nomination of Brian Buescher for a federal judgeship. The Constitution’s Article VI, Clause 3 clearly specifies that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” but that must be news to Senators Mazie Hirono and Kamala Harris.

"Ed Condon of the Catholic News Agency reports:

 A judicial nominee faced questions from Senators this month about whether membership in the Knights of Columbus might impede his ability to judge federal cases fairly. The Knights of Columbus say that no candidate for public office should have to defend his membership in a Catholic service organization.Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) raised concerns about membership in the Knights of Columbus while the Senate Judiciary Committee reviewed the candidacy of Brian C. Buescher, an Omaha-based lawyer nominated by President Trump to sit on the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska.Senators also asked whether belonging to the Catholic charitable organization could prevent judges from hearing cases “fairly and impartially.”In written questions sent to Buescher by committee members Dec. 5, Sen. Hirono stated that “the Knights of Columbus has taken a number of extreme positions. For example, it was reportedly one of the top contributors to California’s Proposition 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage.”Hirono then asked Buescher if he would quit the group if he was confirmed “to avoid any appearance of bias.”“The Knights of Columbus does not have the authority to take personal political positions on behalf of all of its approximately two million members,” Buescher responded.“If confirmed, I will apply all provisions of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges regarding recusal and disqualification,” he said.

"This is another indication of the severe leftward realignment of the Democratic Party, jettisoning a century-long alliance with Catholics. When I was raised in a Democrat family, I was taught that only Democrats were tolerant enough to nominate a Catholic for president. First Al Smith of New York, who was defeated, and then, when I was a teen, the election of John F. Kennedy solidified the notion that Democrats were the tolerant party.

"That was then, this is now. This is not your father’s or mother’s Democratic Party. And is certainly not mine."

Some visual comparisons

Jason Samuel Burleson‎The Libnorants

Grubergate Part 2: Gruber Admits ObamaCare Is One Giant Deception From Beginning To End

But first: Grubergate Part 1: 'The Stupidity Of The American Voter' 

This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay? So it’s written to do that.  In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if…you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. 

Naturally, this revelation did not affect the love relationship between Barack Obama and all media.

Forbes, 2014  "When health economist and Obama advisor Jonathan Gruber said the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed only because of a “lack of transparency” and “the stupidity of the American voter,” he did more than insult millions of people. He admitted (1) if voters had understood what the PPACA does, the opposition would be so great that it would not have passed because even Democrats would have abandoned it, (2) the law’s authors knew this, and (3) because of this, they consciously sought to deceive voters about the enormous taxes the law imposes on millions of Americans, both at the law’s inception and at every turn during the public debate. In short, Gruber admitted ObamaCare is and has always been one giant deception from beginning to end, and its architects achieved by deception what they could not have achieved honestly.
. . . 

"Jonathan Chait writes:

Gruber was surely referring to the non-transparent mechanism of regulating insurance companies, causing them to charge less to the sick and more to the healthy, without Congress having to carry out those transfers through direct taxes…

Suppose Congress had decided not to regulate insurers but instead charged higher taxes to healthy people, and wrote checks directly to sick people. People would have hated it…

. . .