From Johnny Carson to Stephen Colbert

The reason he didn’t let on where he stood politically is that he believed that he had a much greater responsibility — to offer Americans of all political persuasions an island of good-natured fun, a place where everyone could laugh together, every night.

This Reagan sketch is in a class far above what TV comics today are capable of.

Dennis Prager  "Whatever the Left dominates, it ruins. 
"In a monologue considered witty by teenagers, by teenagers in adult bodies, and by those who hate President Trump, CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert said about the president: 
“The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c***holster.”
"And: “You’re turning into a real pr**-tator.” 
Witty? Not to many of us. 
"And not just not witty, obscene — which is particularly disturbing because it was broadcast on network, not cable, television.
"But more than anything, it exemplified a trend in American life that one could identify without any exaggeration as the unraveling of civil society. To anyone, liberal or conservative, who grew up watching Johnny Carson on late night TV, the descent from Carson to Colbert is as breathtaking as it is heartbreaking.
. . .
"The universities, the news media, the entertainment media, the fine arts, the courts, the high schools and elementary schools (and, coming soon, the preschools, as soon as they’re government-funded and universal) — all ruined wherever leftism has achieved dominance."

The Murdoch Boys and the Future of Fox News

Journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Fox News, wrote about James Murdoch on April 20, 2017:
It would be hard to imagine how James could have been regarded with more contempt by many of the people at Fox News. James was rather exhibit No. 1 of the liberal elite entitlement that Fox had so profitably programmed against.

Peter Barry Chowka

. . . "James and Lachlan Murdoch are married to high profile professional women – both of whom are widely reported to be on the far left side of the political spectrum. James’s wife Kathryn was a marketing executive and is now a dedicated environmental activist. At the Web site of the foundation that she co-founded with her husband, Kathryn Murdoch’s profile notes: “Between 2007-2011, Ms. Murdoch served as Director of Strategy & Communications for the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) where she also managed CCI’s partnership with Microsoft in the development of a global greenhouse gas emissions tracking software.” She is also a trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund. Confirming Kathryn Murdoch’s left wing credentials, her personal Twitter account features frequent tweets like the one she posted on June 4, 2017: “I don't believe in Donald Trump. Will that make him go away?”

. . . 

"Michael Wolff weighed in again on April 20, 2017: The ouster of Roger Ailes in 2016 and Bill O’Reilly on April 19, 2017, he wrote, “means most of all that James [Murdoch] is in charge. And, most immediately, this means that Fox News, that constant irritant in James’ view of himself as a progressive and visionary television executive, will begin to change. Virtually overnight.' ”

. . . 

"In terms of what might emerge if Fox News continues to falter, there are indications in a number of recent articles that people with large amounts of money to invest are eyeing the possibility of creating a new conservative news channel to challenge Fox News. Meanwhile, alternatives like One America News Network, available on some satellite TV systems and via Roku, are gaining subscribers. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns or operates 170 local television stations, most of them outside of the major media markets, recently completed a deal to buy Tribune Media, which would add Tribune’s 42 broadcast TV stations in 33 major markets to Sinclair’s portfolio. Sinclair currently provides Full Measure, a weekly news program to its affiliates, anchored by former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson who is one of the best investigative journalists in the country. NPR reported that in the expansion of Sinclair “There are what could be the stirrings of plans for a national platform – such as a cable television station. . . Speculation has centered on possible conversion of Tribune's WGN America as a possible conservative news and opinion channel.' ”

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about national politics, media, popular culture, and health care. His bio with links to many of his writings can be accessed here.

Democrats' long knives for Hillary starting to be unsheathed

Thomas Lifson

. . . "Media friends already warn Democrats of the dangers of a "destructive blame game" – because Republicans are the only ones who are supposed to be riven by internal factional conflict.  But Van Jones leaves no doubt that big money is at stake, and the left-race coalition is tired of the Clintons and their hogging.

"This is only going to get more entertaining.  Face it: an existential threat faces the Clinton Machine.  If Hillary is out of the game, future prospects for the hangers-on depend on Chelsea.  Turning her into a successful politician (or anything else) will be a herculean labor.  She has a lot of items on her C.V., but like Barack Obama, they seem to be titles without notable accomplishments attached to them.  Her sole visible work on NBC was an outright embarrassment and sparked resentment among the ranks of working journalists, none of whom could imagine getting such an opportunity with so few qualifications.

"The death throes of the Clinton Machine will not end quickly or mercifully."

Duke Process of Law

Mike Adams

"Duke is the most fundamentally racist and sexist university in America. If you don’t believe me just ask Paul Griffiths – an Oxford educated now­ former Professor at Duke Divinity School (DDS). Just last semester, Griffiths, who is white, expressed opposition to a Racial Equity Institute “diversity” program that was being pushed by one of his so­-called colleagues. Expressing his opposition to the program resulted in a charge of racial and sexual harassment by a white colleague named Thea Portier­ Young. Rather than face a kangaroo court that refused to provide him documentation of relevant evidence in advance of his hearing, Griffiths resigned his tenured position.

"To be sure, the decision of Griffiths to resign rather than fight has been met with sharp criticism. But critics of Griffiths seem to have forgotten what happens to people at Duke when unsupported charges are leveled against them. Lest we forget what history has taught us, let us review the actions of the campus community at Duke University beginning over a decade ago in the wake of the Duke lacrosse scandal.

"After a lying criminal named [Crystal Mangum] accused two, then three, then four, then five, then six, then twenty white lacrosse players of raping her she finally settled on a version of events in which she was raped by three white lacrosse players. Later, she was unable to identify any of them from a comprehensive set of photos of players then on the team. By this point, it was clear she was lying. The campus should have come to the defense of the falsely accused students. But what happened next? Here are some highlights: " . . .
Continue reading...

California’s descent to socialism

OC Register  "California is widely celebrated as the fount of technical, cultural and political innovation. Now we seem primed to outdo even ourselves, creating a new kind of socialism that, in the end, more resembles feudalism than social democracy.

"The new consensus is being pushed by, among others, hedge-fund-billionaire-turned-green-patriarch Tom Steyer. The financier now insists that, to reverse our worsening inequality, we must double down on environmental and land-use regulation, and make up for it by boosting subsidies for the struggling poor and middle class. This new progressive synthesis promises not upward mobility and independence, but rather the prospect of turning most Californians into either tax slaves or dependent serfs.

"California’s progressive regime of severe land-use controls has helped to make the state among the most unaffordable in the nation, driving homeownership rates to the lowest levels since the 1940s. It has also spurred a steady hegira of middle-aged, middle-class families — the kind of tax-burdened people Gov. Jerry Brown now denounces as “freeloaders” — from the state. They may have access to smartphones and virtual reality, but the increasingly propertyless masses seem destined to live in the kind of cramped conditions that their parents and grandparents had escaped decades earlier.

. . . 

"There is some irony in a new kind of socialism blessed by some of the world’s richest people. The new policy framework is driven, in large part, by a desire to assume world leadership on climate-related issues. The biggest losers will be manufacturing, energy and homebuilding workers, who will see their jobs headed to other states and countries.

"Under the new socialism, expect more controls over the agribusiness sector, notably the cattle industry, California’s original boom industry, which will be punished for its cows’ flatulence. " . . .

See also: THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CALIFORNIA   "This site is dedicated to exposing the continuing Marxist Revolution in California and the all around massive stupidity of Socialists, Luddites, Communists, Fellow Travelers and of Liberalism in all of its ugly forms.

" 'It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, "Well, that is California all over."
- - - - Mark Twain (Roughing It)

California becomes Venezuela

Russian Collusion: the Democrat Holy Grail (Updated)

http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/06/branco-cartoon-what-goes-up/

“Zeal for the deal” caused Obama to dismantle units targeting Iran terror financing

Asher described extensive collaboration in terror-financing among the Iranians, Syrians, and Venezuelans. He testified that the U.S. government was in a position to take these networks down. Instead, the Obama administration took down the units that were combating the terror-financing, according to Asher.

Power Line   "Susan Crabtree of the Washington Free Beacon reports on explosive testimony from David Asher, who served as an adviser to Gen. John Allen at the Defense and State Departments. Asher told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that, in the lead-up to and during nuclear negotiations with Iran, top officials across several key law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the Obama administration “systematically disbanded” law enforcement activities targeting the terrorism financing operations of Iran, Hezbollah, and Venezuela.

Asher stated:

Senior leadership, presiding, directing, and overseeing various sections [of these agencies] and portions of the U.S. intelligence community systematically disbanded any internal or external stakeholder action that threatened to derail the administration’s policy agenda focused on Iran.

"I wonder whether James Comey, the FBI director at the time, was part of this disbanding.

"Asher went on to testify that the Obama administration squandered the chance “at a very low financial cost” to take apart Hezbollah’s finances, its global organization, and the Iran proxy’s ability to “readily terrorize us [and] victimize us. . . .” He added:

We lost much of the altitude we had gained in our global effort, and many aspects including key personnel, who were reassigned, budgets that were slashed—many key elements of the investigations that were underway were undermined.

Indeed, said Asher, “several top cops” retired and the U.S. government lost their years of expertise." . . .

. . . "In each instance, the motive was fear of disrupting the nuclear deal or, as House Foreign Relations Committee chairman Ed Royce put it, “zeal for the deal” — a deal that, even if adhered to, will not deny Iran nuclear weapons." 

Truthfeed

TV film on migrant Muslims’ hate of Europe’s Jews axed

Pamela Geller

"Imagine if any group — any group — harbored this hate for Muslims: there would be whole networks and newspapers dedicated to it. Films, TV programs, miniseries, New York Times special sections. The vicious poisonous Jew-hatred in Islam is scrubbed, censored or excused under the guise of Palestinianism. While the enemedia toils ceaselessly to spin takes of “anti-Muslim hate crime.” Liars.

"But Jews are fleeing Europe in droves because of Islamic Jew-hatred. We cannot even get so much as a TV film greenlighted as Jews are slaughtered in synagogues, Jewish day schools, kosher markets etc in Europe. That is how much power the new Nazis yield.

"Europe exterminated its Jews, and in their place, imported millions of Jew-haters who hate them, too." . . .

Andrew Klavan Lays Down the Real Real on Washington Scandals

Doug Ross Journal "It now seems clear that Barack Obama was a corrupt machine politician in the worst Chicago mold. He used the IRS to silence his enemies, and the Justice Department to protect his friends. His two major "achievements" — a health care law that doesn't work and a deal that increased the power and prestige of the terrorist state of Iran — were built on lies to the public and manipulation of the press. And that's according to his own allies! Only the leftist bias and racial pathology of the media kept his administration from being destroyed by scandal, as it surely would have been had he been a white Republican.

"I don't mention this to bring up old grudges, but for what it says about the current moment and the week just passed. Here's some of what we recently learned:

"Former FBI Director James Comey's Senate testimony concerning former Attorney General Loretta Lynch's corruption confirmed our worst suspicions about the Obama DOJ. In an apparent attempt to help Hillary Clinton's campaign, Lynch told Comey to refer to the investigation into Hillary Clinton's abuse of classified material as "a matter" rather than an investigation. And, as we already knew but Comey confirmed, Lynch's secret tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton so underscored Comey's sense of her crookedness that the self-serving drama queen Comey actually went around her to publicly declare Hillary guilty-but-not-guilty...

"...But all that was nothing compared to the brutal, nearly 300-page report released last week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a report absolutely blasting the previous Obama AG, Eric Holder. The report details how Holder and the Obama administration labored to cover up the details of the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal — a scandal which, unlike the non-collusion-with-Russia non-scandal, was implicated in the murder of an American law officer. Even the mom of the slain officer couldn't get the truth out of Holder and his cronies. The report says Holder considered the officer's family a "nuisance" because they were trying to get him to tell them how exactly the lawman died at the hands of gangsters who were wielding guns Obama's DOJ had allowed them to buy.

"...[Remember,] Holder was also the first attorney general ever to be held in contempt of Congress for not turning over documents relating to Fast and Furious. And, speaking of obstruction of justice — we were speaking of obstruction of justice, weren't we? — President Obama asserted executive privilege to make it easier for Holder to keep those docs in the dark ... !

"...So let's remember. Obama is the nefarious machine pol who appointed James Comey to head the FBI in the first place. This is the Comey who took no notes when he spoke with Obama, no notes when he questioned Hillary about her emails, no notes, apparently, during the cover-up conversation with Lynch that left him with "a queasy feeling," but who suddenly began documenting his exchanges with Trump — exchanges that Trump says never happened. This is the Comey who let Hillary off the hook because he somehow knew she didn't intend to share classified information (a matter that doesn't exist in the relevant law), but who cannot comment on whether Donald Trump intended to obstruct justice when Trump expressed his hopes about an investigation.

"And the Obama administration — this crooked gang of liars and colluders — this is the gang that was deemed "scandal free" by virtually every "mainstream" news outlet. Indeed, investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson had to leave CBS News in large part because CBS would not run her work on Fast and Furious." . . .

Let’s Play, ‘Spot The BS’, In This PRO-TERRORISM Meme

The largest Christian Cathedral ever built is the Hagia Sophia.
In 1453, it was turned into a Mosque. How’s THAT for ‘cultural appropriation’?
Shall we go on?
Under Mohammed himself, the Arabian Peninsula was conquered between 622 and 632.
You know how Christian Scripture calls Jesus the ‘Prince of Peace’?
Islam has a different nickname for THEIR prophet.
The ‘Prophet of the Sword’.

Clash Daily  "What happens when Leftist try to teach history? THIS happens. It’s sad, really.
"Read the following quote and see if you can find the mistake in it.
"How’d you do?
"Islam is 1400 years old.
"Terrorism is 50 years old.
"Terrorism started 50 years ago after the West started invading Middle Eastern countries.
"These are the same sort of people who would lecture a rape victim about her short skirt.
"Shall we begin?
"Terrorism did NOT begin 50 years ago. But a Leftist could be forgiven for thinking that, because they’re taught in public school, and they tend not to go looking for outside sources.
"Let’s fill in some gaps, shall we?
"Fifty years ago is a handy figure. We just passed the 50 year anniversary of the 6-day war when ALL of Israel’s neighbors attacked Israel with the intent of destroying the fledgling nation. But that’s the West’s fault.
"100 years ago was the event that gave us the word ‘genocide’. (Please note who is killing whom.)

The Armenian genocide refers to the physical annihilation of ethnic Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from spring 1915 through autumn 1916. There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the Empire. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide. Armenians call these events Medz Yeghern (the great crime) or Aghet (catastrophe).The origin of the term genocide and its codification in international law have their roots in the mass murder of Armenians. Lawyer Raphael Lemkin, the coiner of the word and its later champion at the United Nations, repeatedly stated that early exposure to newspaper stories about Ottoman crimes against Armenians was key to his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups.

"The Ottomans, if you’re historically illiterate, is a reference to the Ottoman Empire… located in modern-day Turkey, an Islamic empire.

"The Ottoman Empire — again, we are talking about Islam — was at the peak of its territorial expansion in 1718. (We’d use the word ‘colonialism’ today, but because we are blinded by race, we USUALLY reserve that word for white European nations.)

"You have actually heard about them before. Do the words ‘from the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli’ mean anything to you? They should. The Barbary Coast. Slavery. North African Muslims. Thomas Jefferson. Look it up." . . .

Fans boo U.S. national anthem at Estadio Azteca

Many American fans at Estadio Azteca are watching the game from 'the cage'   "Mexico City's Estadio Azteca is known as an intimidating place for visiting teams. In past games, American players have been pelted with bags of urine lobbed at the field. 

"But it can be an intimidating place for visiting fans as well. Fights are common. 

"To cut down on violence between spectators, fans of visiting teams are kept in what is known as "the cage." This is a section of bleachers up in the nosebleeds that is fenced in with razor wire and guarded by about 200 police officers dressed in riot gear. 

" 'The cage" is where most of the American fans sat Sunday night —  a small speck of red, white and blue in a sea of green and red. 

"Even before kickoff, they traded insults with the Mexican fans on the other side of the fence.

"The Mexicans booed loudly when the American national anthem played, and the Americans gloated when their team scored a quick goal just a few minutes into the game. 

"But the Mexicans had their turn. Their team scored soon after, and the whole stadium rose up with an ecstatic roar, many people throwing full cups of beer into the air to celebrate. Many in the crowd turned toward "the cage," hurling slurs and raising middle fingers at the Americans. " . . .

USA Today

"Mexican soccer fans loudly booed the United States national anthem when it was played moments before the start of Sunday night's World Cup qualifier between the two countries.

"Thousands of supporters at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City whistled and jeered as the Star-Spangled Banner played over the stadium sound system, with most of the crowd refusing to stand.

"The match was a critical one for the USA, which had endured a shaky start to the final round of World Cup qualifying in the CONCACAF region.

"Contrary to before the last time the teams met, in Columbus, Ohio, in November, the squads lined up separately for ceremonial photos. In Columbus, they bucked tradition by posing for a pregame "unity" photo.

This One Tweet May Lead to Donald Trump’s Impeachment

Live by the tweet; die by the tweet.

National Review

 "Hell hath no fury like an FBI director scorned. "

"Twitter helped make Donald Trump president. It may also lead to his impeachment. 

"The president values Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as ways to bypass a hostile media and express his thoughts directly and authentically. But there is a difference between tweeting as a candidate for president and tweeting as the president. And there have been plenty of times since January when his Twitter habit has diverted President Trump from his message and agenda. 

"It now looks like the most consequential Tweet of his presidency to date came a few days after he fired James Comey as FBI director. At 8:26 a.m. on Friday, May 12, Trump wrote: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” 

"That tweet, Comey told the Senate, prompted the now-private citizen to instruct a friend, Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman, to share with the New York Times the contents of contemporaneous memos he had written describing his interactions with the president. The article, published a week to the day after Comey was fired, revealed that the president had asked the FBI director to end the criminal investigation into former national-security adviser Michael Flynn." . . .
More.