Nikki Haley's Finest Hour

"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.  That's a fact.  It will remain a fact.  It has been US policy to recognize that fact since 1995, reaffirmed overwhelmingly by Congress this past summer."

Guy Benson  "Aside from the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to replace Justice Scalia on the US Supreme Court, I'm not sure I've ever been any prouder of the Trump administration than I was during Nikki Haley's scathing and righteous speech before the UN General Assembly on Thursday. Katie wrote up Haley's remarks and the subsequent vote, in which the large majority of the UN's "community of nations" purported to declare the United States' decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel (which it is) 'null and void.' Your empty, symbolic votes to single out America for our unwavering support for a country you loathe mean nothing, Haley warned delegates. We've made our decision as a sovereign nation, and there's nothing you can do about it -- but we will remember your actions the next time you come, hat in hand, begging us for more money. Here's the video, in case you missed Amb. Haley's tour de force:

Text of Ambassador Haley's Remarks Before a UN General Assembly Vote on Jerusalem

. . . "Contrast that moral clarity with the shameful and craven actions of the previous administration, and the gratuitous and disloyal votes of normal US allies.  Good for her.  Israel was one of just eight nations who joined the United States on this vote, with a few dozen more abstaining.  Haley is hosting a 'friendship reception' for the nations that chose not to vote against the US on this issue  Israel's Prime Minister tweeted a short video thanking America and Amb. Haley for their leadership:"   Here:

Thank you, Ambassador Haley. On Hanukkah, you spoke like a Maccabi. You lit a candle of truth. You dispel the darkness. One defeated the many. Truth defeated lies. Thank you, President Trump. Thank you, Nikki Haley.

Haley Hammers the UN: America Doesn't Pay for the Privilege of Being Disrespected

Jonathan S. Tobin writes, Nikki Haley’s Right: Time to Start ‘Taking Names’ at the U.N.  . . . "That is especially true when recipients not only lack gratitude for American largesse but actively resent their indebtedness to Washington. 
"Trump’s predecessor encouraged this attitude, since he often seemed more inclined to apologize for America’s sins, and to deprecate the presumption that it could teach the world a thing or two about freedom, than to make demands on international organizations. Career diplomats may loathe language they think makes the U.S. appear to be a bully. But one needn’t embrace Trump’s “America First” mantra — though the foreign-policy doctrine published under that name is more realist than isolationist — to understand that the U.S. has every right to call aid recipients and allies to account when they cross the line into unfair attacks on Washington."

Israel doesn't stand much of a chance with liberal cartoonists You will see here that the left and Arab cartoonists are of the same mind. With this exception:

Appeals court orders military to recruit from the mentally ill

So much for keeping firearms away from the mentally unstable.

Ed Straker  . . . "The Fifth Amendment basically talks about giving people due process when they are charged with a crime and protection against taking of private property.  What does that have to do with mentally ill people joining the military?

"The answer: absolutely nothing.

"But the judiciary is so riddled with hardcore leftists that they are creating imaginary rights as easily as they ignore actual ones they don't like, like the ones protected by the Second Amendment.

"Here are some interesting facts.

1) During most of the Obama administration, it wasn't legal for transvestites to join the military.  Right before President Obama stepped out the door, he issued an executive order saying the military should permit transvestites but should start admitting them only after he had left office.  Perhaps Obama was rightly worried about the disruption that would be caused by a whole platoon of Mary Poppinses or Corporal Klingers and didn't want to take the heat when his efforts at social engineering in the military went bad.

2) Before Obama issued this executive order, transvestites didn't have the right to join the military.  And yet until that time, not a single court found the "right" for cross-dressers to join the military.  This "right" was discovered only after Obama legalized it, and his ability to legalize it, without an act of Congress, was questionable at best.

3) This "right" is a lot more than just allowing cross-dressers to join the military.  It is a way for them to get free surgery and hormones so they can "Dr. Frankenstein" themselves at taxpayer expense.

Black, female ex-Charlie Rose staffer suggests racism because he didn't harass her

Thomas Lifson  "It's always something," as the late Gilda Radner's comedy character Roseanne Roseannadanna would conclude – usually about trivial or completely misguided complaints she voiced (a classic example here).  Those words echoed in my mind as I read the litany of complaints one of Charlie Rose's former staffers lodged in the pages of Esquire earlier this month.  Ms. Rebecca Carroll wrote:

His language around race felt consistently coded. Charlie demanded I book the black guests he wanted but previously had been unable to get – black guests of a perceived level of respectability and intelligence (Sidney Poitier) – while dismissing the black guests I pitched, (Vivica Fox, for example). He accused me of pushing my own agenda several times, memorably when I pitched a panel on hip-hop. (I did not hear my white colleagues receive criticism that they were pushing any sort of agenda when they pitched potential guests and segments.)

 "It is unclear if being asked to book black guests he wanted was in itself offensive to her.  One could argue that this was racist – segregating the booking process.  But one could also argue that not asking her to book black guests was racist, as in "keeping it within the community" or "cultural appropriation" claims of turf.

"But she was just warming up.  A similar ambivalence attends her words about sexual harassment:    (Wait for it, here it comes:)

[W]hile many of us on staff were subject to Charlie's unsolicited shoulder massages and physical intimidation, as he towered above us at a height over six feet tall, the women Charlie preferred and preyed upon – at least that I witnessed – were white. It was an environment that all but erased me, while simultaneously exploiting me as a black woman. . . . 

Good Riddance, Evangelicalism Incorporated

American Thinker  "Trump's base in 2016 was defined not by race or class, but by belief in God.  Evangelical Christians and Catholics came together and pushed Trump to the win, in defiance of the media, academia, Hollywood, the professional class, elite Republicans, the Democrat masses, libertarians, and self-professed moralists.

"Both the pope and many prominent Protestant leaders expressed antagonism toward Trump, so this mass of religious voters defied their church elders as well.

"This was nothing less than stunning.  It was perhaps one of the great revolutions in America's religious history.  Rather than a serious study of this event, we have had a spasmic flood of pedantry from the very people whose authority these Christian voters rejected in the first place.

"I count myself among evangelical Trump voters.  As I am sure this issue is for almost everyone in America, the historical questions feel very personal.

"I resent being mocked and reviled by secular liberals who I know hate all religion.

"My patience has worn thin with people claiming to embrace a new liberal Christianity that I recognize as a warmed over version of the liberation theology my radical leftist family held in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Conservative Christians who position themselves as valiant defenders of the Bible and Trump opponents have been exposed in brutal ways as the "Evangelical Deep State.' " . . .

UN Votes to Condemn the United States for Jerusalem Move

Katie Pavlich

#UNGA adopts resolution on status of Jerusalem. Votes: 128 in favour; 9 against; 35 abstentions.

"Before the final tally, Ambassador Nikki Haley warned the U.S. would be taking names and remembering which countries voted against the move. She also reminded the international body that the move reflects U.S. law passed in 1995, which President Trump is simply choosing to enforce. 

Ulysses S. Grant: What makes a consequential president?

Lee surrenders at Appomattox

Bookworm Room

*Fifty years of school histories have lied about Ulysses S. Grant, who was a gifted man and consequential president. Not being a career politician helped.

"Three percent of a book about a man who was a towering figure in the mid-19th century America isn’t much, but it’s been enough to tell me that everything I’ve ever learned in American history classes about Ulysses S. Grant is wrong.

According to those classes, he was an intellectually weak, drunken, ineffectual, plodding man, who rose as a general by being a blood-thirsty butcher on the field of war, and he was an ignoramus once in politics.

"Chernow has already informed me that Grant did have a binge-drinking problem, but he fought valiantly; that he was brilliant at math and military strategy; that he was an intelligent man; that he was highly principled and utterly reliable; that he was a middling (not failing) student at West Point; that he had a horror of blood and violence that led him to fighting war rigorously to end it swiftly; and that he was a consequential and effective president. Some of this Chernow has already proven in writing about Grant’s youth and young adulthood; other parts Chernow promises in his introduction that he will prove in the book and I believe him.

"The mismatch between my education about Grant and the reality has led me to two thoughts. Thought Number One is to wonder whether Grant has been so maligned in history because he was a Republican. I’ve learned in the past few years that, barring Lincoln, whose Republicanism is glossed over when possible, Republican presidents do not fair well in the history books. Even when Democrats / Progressives / Leftists don’t win the political wars, they still write the histories.

"Thought Number Two is to note that . . . "

*Looking at things in this way, with a president’s worth measured by his years outside of, not inside of, politics, the fact that Hillary was greeted as the “most qualified candidate ever” due to her lifelong career in and near in politics is just one more reason to be grateful that Trump won. Trump has had to deal with politics all his working life, so he knows precisely how the sausage is made, but he’s not a politician.

Marie Harf Defends Obama's Aid to Hezb'allah

Daniel John Sobieski "Only someone who worked in Hillary Clinton’s State Department and thought giving ISIS summer jobs would stop their beheadings and terrorist attacks could dispute Josh Meyer’s lengthy, well-researched article in Politico detailing “how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook” by undermining his own government’s efforts to take down the terrorist group’s drug trafficking operations:" . . .

"This rivals anything the Clintons did at the Clinton Foundation or in the Uranium One deal with Russia. And it is not out of character for an 

Obama administration that precipitously withdrew from Iraq, creating a vacuum ISIS gladly filled while Obama silently watched. It is not out of character for an administration that traded six top Taliban leaders for deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Obama has a soft spot for terrorists and Marie Harf has a soft spot for Obama. Why Fox News hired such a shameless and clueless shill for the loony left remains a mystery."

"Fox News, presumably in the interests of being fair and balanced, hired an Obama administration -- which includes the State Department of Hillary Clinton -- sock puppet who spread the false narrative that ISIS was not a virulent and existential threat, but rather just another community that needed organizing. She pushed the administration line that terrorism was just a reaction to climate change and the lack of jobs. 

"Not long ago, Harf opined on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS could be prevented by a good jobs program."

"Fair and balanced" must have been the goal the night Sally Kohn was part of the all-star panel on Fox News Special Report, finishing her comments on an unrelated subject with the phrase "war on women" for no discernable reason. TD

Texas Imam Calls on Muslims to Kill Jews

Clarion Project  Video

"Al-Rousan was objecting to President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move America’s embassy there.

“ 'Judgment day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews,” Sheikh Raed Saleh Al-Rousan thundered, quoting a famous hadith (saying of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.) “The Muslims will kill the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him, except for the Gharqad tree, which is one of their trees.”

“ 'The hour [i.e. Judgment Day] will not start until Muslims fight the Jews there, in Palestine. And they know that fact. And the Muslims will have the victory.”

"Earlier in the speech he said Jews “killed the prophets and the messengers of Allah” and altered the Torah. He also accused Jews of having no connection to the land of Israel.

"Al-Rousan is a Jordanian national who arrived in the United States in 2007. He founded the Tajweed Institute “to spread the skills of Tajweed [proper recitation of the Qur’an] to all Muslims, young and old.”

"Al-Rousan declined to clarify his position and whether or not it reflects the position of the Tajweed Institute when asked to do so by Algemeiner.

"Al Rousan is just the latest in a string of preachers to be caught on camera inciting hatred against Jews. Imam Aymen Elkasaby of the Islamic Center of Jersey City was suspended without pay for a month after a sermon he gave calling on Allah to count and kill Jews “down to the very last one.' ” . . .

Via Weasel Zippers, which posted this as well: Islamist CAIR Official To Run For Congress….  As a Democrat, of course.

Students file complaint, tear down ‘racist’ pictures of Kate Steinle

The left for all of us to see.

Washington Times

"Students at the University of California San Diego filed a complaint and triggered an administrative probe after pictures of Kate Steinle were hung on campus.

"Gregory Lu said he hung up 150 posters picturing Steinle with the caption, “She had dreams too,” on Dec. 7. Four days later, he said he received an email from the Office for the Prevention of Harassment & Discrimination asking to meet with him.

“ 'Our office received an online incident report and I would like to schedule a time to speak with you about it,” an investigator wrote in the email, reported The College Fix. “Are you free this week by phone or in person.”

"Mr. Lu said the meeting has not taken place and he has contacted an attorney. He said the probe is an attempt to intimidate conservative students on campus, arguing that the same scrutiny would not be applied to a poster advocating a liberal stance on immigration.

“ 'We have had a bunch of left-wing posters go up all the time,” he said. “So the argument they might make is, ‘This is a political poster, we don’t want you to put it up,’ is a nonsensical argument because leftists put up posters all the time.' ” . . .

Chappaquiddick Review: “the movie is fundamentally the portrait of a weasel”

Legal Insurrection

"New film examines Ted Kennedy and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne."

. . . "Ted Kennedy’s life was derailed that night? Really?

"Here’s how People describes the film (emphasis is mine):

Nearly five decades ago, on July 18, 1969, a car went off the Dike Bridge on the island of Chappaquiddick. The driver, Ted Kennedy escaped. His 28-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, did not.

The result is a haunting look back into the mystery that surrounds that night when a group of six women who had worked for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential bid, and six men, including Ted Kennedy, gathered for a party at a rented cottage on the island for a reunion party and ended in Kopechne’s death by drowning.

"It’s really not a mystery. Kennedy walked away from the scene of a crime and let Kopechne drown because he was scared of what it would do to his political aspirations." . . .

Trump and Haley's magnificant moment at the UN

Haley warns against Jerusalem resolution ahead of UN vote
. . . " 'The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly,” Haley told the U.N. General Assembly. "We will remember it when we are called upon to, once again, make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations.”
“ 'America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do,” she continued. “No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that. But this vote will make a difference in how Americans view the U.N.' ” . . .

An Insult the US Won't Forget  

"Abbas revealed himself as an Arafat in a suit by following his predecessor beliefs in denying any Jewish history in Jerusalem at all and presenting Jerusalem as a Christian/Muslim city whose only connection to Jews is that they are lying about it and defiling it, and “are excellent in faking and counterfeiting history and religion.'”

"On Monday, the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution criticizing the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.  The vote was 14 to 1 and stated that the U.S. decision is null and void and must be rescinded, with only the U.S. voting against it.  Under pressure by the Palestinians and Arab and Muslim nations, the president of the UN General Assembly has called an emergency session of the General Assembly for Thursday to consider a resolution similar to the one presented to the Security Council for the sole purpose of condemning the U.S. again." . . . 
. . . "This is a critical moment for the Trump Administration and an important turning point in American foreign policy. The only explanation to those one-sided anti-American vote and criticism is a lack of fear of those nations and entities from any retaliation from the United States. It seems those nations seem to be more afraid of insulting or humiliating the Muslim, Arab, and the Palestinian crime family than the United States. If these allies are not afraid of the Trump administration why would the dangerous actors in the Middle East such as Iran, its proxies, and other Jihadists be afraid? If tiny, weak nations such as Bolivia, Uruguay, and Ukraine are not deterred by the U.S., why would North Korea be? " . . . (emphasis added by TD)

Side note: Rabbi Yaakov Menken wrote, Not Just Jerusalem: Why America's Rabbis Voted Trump and Don't Regret It

Which candidate and which party will better protect innocent lives – our lives – here and around the world, and keep America closer to our core values?

UN Jerusalem vote - live updates: Nikki Haley tells General Assembly 'We are asked to pay for privilege of being disrespected' in row over Israel capital decision  . . . "Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the UN should teach Donald Trump a “very good lesson” as it votes on a resolution calling for the US to withdraw its decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital." . . .

Haley's Moment  ". . . she has at all points sought to distinguish our course under President Trump from the blasted days of Barack Obama when the United States prostrated itself before the murderous regimes that throw their weight around in that desiccated body. Earlier this week she let it be known that the United States would not have abstained from the last-minute resolution by which President Obama stabbed Israel in the front on the matter of Jerusalem. There the contrast was explicit; in her statement today (tweet below) the contrast is implicit.

"This week Ambassador Haley brings Moynihan’s moment to mind. It was November 10, 1975, when the General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism a form of racism. After the vote, then Ambassador to the UN Moynihan rose to speak, his voice shaking with anger. “The United States rises to declare,” proclaimed Moynihan, “before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.' " . . .

DOJ prosecutors asking FBI agents to explain Uranium One evidence: report

The Hill

"Department of Justice officials are asking FBI investigators at Attorney General Jeff Session's request to describe evidence uncovered in an investigation into the sale of a uranium mining company, NBC Newsreported early Thursday.

"A senior Justice Department official told the news outlet that the questions stem from an assistant attorney general's pledge to analyze whether a special counsel is warranted.

"The inquiry relates to the 2010 sale of Uranium One, a Canada-based firm with holdings in the U.S., to Rosatom, a Russian state-owned nuclear energy agency.

"President Trump and some Republicans have used the deal in an attempt to discredit Hillary Clinton, because the sale occurred when the former Democratic presidential nominee was head of the State Department. Clinton has denied that she was part of the deal’s negotiations.

"The sale was subject to approval by a nine-agency panel, which included the State Department. The State Department official who was part of the agency’s approval said Clinton did not interfere in the dealings, NBC News noted.

"Trump has used the renewed scrutiny surrounding the deal to push back against the investigation into Russia’s election meddling, including any potential ties between Trump campaign staff members and Moscow."