Obama: Worse than Chamberlain?

Neville Chamberlain at least had an epiphany leading to his contempt for Hitler and a declaration of war on him. No sign of anything approaching that with Obama. TD

Israel Rising

“ 'Iran will become a nuclear power. The only mystery over how that will happen is whether Obama was inept or whether he deliberately sought to make the theocracy…strategic power.”- Victor Davis Hanson

"In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States…Meanwhile, Hezbollah — in league with Iran — continues to undermine U.S. interests in Iraq, Syria and throughout wide swaths of Latin America and Africa, including providing weapons and training to anti-American Shiite militias – Josh Meyer, The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook, Politico, Dec. 18, 2017.

"It is becoming clear that the liberal President Obama…in complete contradiction of his saintly statements, effectively gave a green light to an entire web of ongoing crimes, based on his perception – ridiculous in itself – that it was in America’s national interest to do so—Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi,  No moral backbone Dec. 19, 2019,

"The really chilling aspect of the Obama incumbency is that it is genuinely difficult to diagnose whether the abysmal results we see represent a crushing failure of his policies or a calculated success; whether they are the product of chronic ineptitude or purposeful foresight; whether they reflect myopic misunderstanding, moronic incompetence or malicious intent. – Into the Fray: Will the West Withstand The Obama Presidency?, Nov. 28, 2013.

"Earlier this week, a scorching piece of investigative journalism in the widely-read political publication, Politico, catapulted the ill-conceived 2015 Iran nuclear deal, mendaciously railroaded through by the Obama administration, back into the center of media attention.

"Well, sort of.

"No record in “The paper of record”?" . . .

All emphases in the original. TD

Why You Will Enjoy Watching This 1945 Christmas Comedy. "Despite the Comedy, This Is a Thoughtful Movie"

‘Christmas in Connecticut’ has not just fun and beauty to recommend it, but also a great range and serious insights into American society.

One caveat: you must pay to watch it now.

The Federalist  "It’s hard to tell a Christmas story that’s not a fairy tale. “Christmas in Connecticut,” a small gem from 1945 starring Barbara Stanwyck and the great fat man of noir movies, Sidney Greenstreet (“The Maltese Falcon,” “Casablanca,” etc.), manages just that by daring to turn Christmas into a screwball comedy.

"We don’t have screwball comedies anymore, because we’re more rational than they were in the 1930s and ‘40s. Audiences might be embarrassed rather than amused, so Hollywood doesn’t even try. But back then, directors and writers used expertly plotted crazy accidents, rather than sentimental dialogue and beautiful settings, to reveal the essence of love and happiness and bring attractive characters to that happy estate of marriage.

“ 'Christmas in Connecticut” has not just fun and beauty to recommend it, in case you want to stream it on Amazon Prime, but also a great range and serious insights into American society. Coming right at the end of World War II, the movie starts with Navy veterans recovering in a hospital on Staten Island. They may not know it, but they have to learn about the life of peace—they have to be part of America again. A comedy aimed at getting the noble, self-sacrificing Jefferson Jones hitched is just the thing.

"What We Think We Want Versus What We Really Do" . . .

Trump administration set to unveil $1 trillion infrastructure proposal in 2018

Washington Examiner

"The Trump administration is expected to unveil an infrastructure package in the new year, after putting the issue on the sidelines amid other GOP priorities in 2017.

"The White House is working to release a roughly 70-page infrastructure proposal sometime in January for members of Congress to use as a cornerstone for drafting the legislation in 2018.

"In December, President Trump met with senior administration officials and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., to discuss the proposal.

“ 'The meeting with the president was encouraging and very productive,” Shuster said in a statement. “He’s a builder — he gets the importance of infrastructure and why it matters for jobs and the economy. Addressing our nation’s infrastructure in a bipartisan manner is going to take strong presidential leadership, and I believe we have a president who can provide the necessary leadership and who wants to rebuild our infrastructure to strengthen our economy.”

"During the 2016 campaign, Trump first promised to deliver a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to improve the condition of U.S. roads, bridges, airports, and other public works.

"Although the administration is working to address the nation’s infrastructure, several major question marks hang over the plan, such as funding.

“ 'The cost is going to be an issue, that’s going to be a large topic of debate,” a senior committee aide told the Washington Examiner." . . .

'Darkest Hour' Warns Viewers About Dangers Of Churchill's Secondhand Cigar Smoke

Prepare to be lectured again...

Daily Wire

Historians and biographers have ridiculed the public health warning. Royal biographer Hugo Vickers quipped that the filmmakers should have also included a line in the credits stating, “Sir Winston Churchill lived to be 90.”

Today's generation should be aware Churchill's gesture did not mean "peace and love" .

 It was "V for victory"

"He warned Britain and the United States about the rise of Adolf Hitler.

"He fought the Nazi war machine alone until Russia and the United States joined him.

"And he is a public health menace.

"Winston Churchill, it seems, is rarely pictured without a cigar in tow.

"And the new Churchill biographical film, "Darkest Hour," wants you to know that “there are serious health risks associated with smoking and with secondhand smoke.”

"That line is included in the film’s credits, which also say that “the depictions of tobacco smoking contained in this film are based solely on artistic consideration and are not intended to promote tobacco consumption.”

"Not surprisingly, the warning did not distinguish between cigarette smoke, which is inhaled, and cigar smoke, which is not.

"Gary Oldman, who delivered what many critics say is an Oscar-worthy performance of Winston Churchill, has a cigar between his lips in nearly every scene of the film. It’s often not even lit — true to history, as Churchill often simply chewed on a cigar before smoking it.

"At one point in the film, Churchill smokes a cigar while riding the London Underground and chatting with delighted passengers. He continues puffing away as he leans in to greet a mother and her five-month old baby.

"Historians and biographers have ridiculed the public health warning. Royal biographer Hugo Vickers quipped that the filmmakers should have also included a line in the credits stating, “Sir Winston Churchill lived to be 90.' ”

University Professors: Trump Uses Christmas To Promote White Nationalism

Daily Caller

US President Donald Trump (L) and First lady Melania Trump walk on the stage during the 95th annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony at the Ellipse in President's Park near the White House in Washington, DC on November 30, 2017.

"A Newsweek article posted on Christmas Eve featured three university professors alleging that President Donald Trump is using Christmas to advance white nationalism, much like the Nazis did in 1930s Germany.

"According to the “experts” interviewed by Newsweek’s Cristina Maza, Trump vowing to end the “war on Christmas” and promising his supporters they can say “Merry Christmas” again is just a “dog whistle” for white identity politics.

“ 'I see such invocations of Christmas as a kind of cypher, what some would call a dog whistle,” Richard King, a Washington State University professor told Newsweek. “It does not appear to be intolerant or extreme, but to attentive audiences it speaks volumes about identity and belonging—who and what are fully American.”

"One professor, Joe Perry, claims that Trump is employing tactics used by the Nazis to encourage anti-Semitism. The Nazis rewrote Christmas carols and politicized the holiday to promote exclusion and fascism." . . .

Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Hate Tracker’ Picks Up #Christmas as Trending Hashtag

Kristina Wong

"The Southern Poverty Law Center is tracking the hashtags #Christmas, #MerryChristmas, #Jesus, and #ChristmasEve, as part of “trends in a community of far-right Twitter users.”

"According to the SPLC, its “hate tracker” tracks accounts that represent a “range of extremists,” from “conspiratorial fringes of mainstream conservatism to outright white supremacists.”

"The hate tracker notes that #Christmas is the second highest trending hashtag it tracked on Christmas Eve, with @whitehouse and @potus being among the four top Twitter handles mentioned with the hashtag.

"For #MerryChristmas, the U.S. Marine Corps’ band at @marineband was one of the top mentioned, according to the hate tracker on Christmas Eve. One of the SPLC’s “top image” associated with #MerryChristmas is a photoshopped picture of marines hoisting a Christmas tree, instead of a flag, as depicted in the famous Iwo Jima picture.

"The SPLC includes disclaimers, however, such as that the accounts “are not necessarily part of the far-right population of accounts we monitor.” It also claims these “extremists” also participate in many “conversations and topics that are popular among more ‘mainstream’ communities.' ” . . .

One comment to this post read:

The other day our mailman left seemingly everyone else’s mail in our box. One neighbor received SPLCs Monthly newsletter. It was dedicated to ‘teaching tolerance’ by hating it seems any who disagreed with their world view.
Alas I simply delivered all my neighbors mail back to them. The question is... would the favor be returned if my NRA newsletter came to them??
I’d like to think so but the SPLC types are simply unapproachable in dialogue... I don’t know how that translates in other activities. Still, I’ll always be a civil neighbor, until I’m tread upon that is.

Hat tip to Weasel Zippers

Embattled FBI admits it can’t verify dossier claims of Russia, Trump campaign collusion

Driven by Chairman Devin Nunes, California Republican, the committee is examining the following:
• Who funded the dossier and how its information was spread by paymaster Fusion GPS and then used by the FBI.
• The Obama administration’s “unmasking” of the identities of private citizens caught up in surveillance of foreigners.
• Recent misconduct inside the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Rich Terrell

Washington Times  "The FBI is declining to repudiate the Russia dossier on which it partially relied to start an investigation into the Trump campaign, but it concedes the document’s major core charges of election collusion remain unsubstantiated.

"Sources familiar with House and Senate investigations say this is the FBI’s dossier talking point 17 months after agents were first briefed in July 2016 as Donald Trump battled Hillary Clinton for the White House.

"The most recent FBI witness was Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who spent nearly eight hours last week in a closed session before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

"Republicans believe they have unearthed a scandal inside the bureau’s top echelons over its determination to target Trump associates based on flimsy evidence and improper Justice Department contacts.

"Republican committee members pressed Mr. McCabe about a dossier that was financed by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign based on gossip-tinged information from paid, unidentified Kremlin operatives.

"Mr. McCabe declined to criticize the dossier’s 35 pages of salacious and criminal charges against Donald Trump and his aides, but he said it remains largely unverified, according to a source familiar with ongoing congressional inquiries." . . .
Popcorn Worthy – President Trump Has Rejected McCabe’s Terms…

. . . "Put another way, Andrew McCabe, is going to be in FULL SUNLIGHT on or around January 15th, 2018, for any misconduct.

"That explains the transparent reason for McCabe offering terms.  However, the content of that year-long investigation is also the transparent reason for President Trump refusing McCabe’s terms.

"In addition to McCabe, and depending on how well they have covered their political tracks, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, and all of the top officials -lawyers mostly- within the FBI and DOJ will be part of that investigative release." . . .

Kwanzaa Was Concocted By A Deranged Felon Who Tortured Naked Women, Yet Is Pandered To By The Choice Of The Liberal Feminists

Daily Caller

"It’s Christmastime, America, and you know what that means: It’s the season when public schools across the fruited plain have pointedly avoided Christmas but have teemed with lessons about Kwanzaa and a handful of other holidays which aren’t Christmas.

"As a public service, then, The Daily Caller is once again here to tell you the true — and truly bizarre — history of the violent, deranged and radical black nationalist who concocted the completely artificial holiday of Kwanzaa in 1966.

"The creator of Kwanzaa is Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga, a 76-year-old professor of Africana studies at California State University, Long Beach. His real name is Ronald Everett. He was born in rural Maryland, the fourteenth child of a sharecropping Baptist minister. "Karenga was convicted in 1971 for brutally torturing two naked women. The women were members of Karenga’s ultra-radical, paramilitary, black nationalist cult called the US Organization, which went by the acronym US, according to a May 1971 Los Angeles Times story." . . .
(Emphases in the original)

Dec, 2011: Each year, with the onset of Christmas, we are treated to another gauzy, fluff piece about how great Kwanzaa is by yet another PC spewing columnist.  . . . Hardly anyone remembers the shootings, the beatings, the tortures and the prison terms that were once the center of his life. It's just not PC to bring that sort of stuff up now that Kwanzaa is commercialized and making big bucks." . . .

Best of all is this Kwanzaa card from Bill and Hillary Clinton: Referred to in the following article from Vox: 

The Clintons’ long history of pandering to young black voters like me

. . . "But I turn to this story now not to mourn a moment missed. Rather, I remember it because it feels like history is repeating itself. Two and a half decades later, another Clinton is reaching out to me. This time it's Hillary, who, through her shameless pandering to black people in her current presidential campaign, demonstrates little interest in me beyond my capacity to get her into the Oval Office.

"On the first day of Kwanzaa this past year, Hillary tweeted well wishes from herself and Bill, accompanied by a logo change of her H into a Kwanzaa kinar"

. . . 
2015; Hillary Clinton is discovering new ways to annoy different groups with her pandering  "Hillary Clinton is discovering new ways to annoy different groups with her pandering. After the abuela fiasco, it was time for Hillary to show her love for Kwanzaa. It went over as badly on black Twitter as you would expect."

In pandering to Latinos as well, Hillary's Abuela schtick bubble burst:

Pix11 photo

“Not my abuela”: Twitter explodes in outrage over Hillary Clinton’s “Hispandering” Hillary Clinton's campaign published an article yesterday titled "7 Ways Hillary Clinton Is Just Like Your Abuela," using the Spanish word for "grandmother.""Twitter exploded in outrage, criticizing what users called Clinton's "Hispandering" and what they see as her hypocrisy vis-à-vis political policies. . . .

Christmas greetings from Sheila Jackson Lee

The Libnorants

The Death Rattle of Obama’s Reputation

"Even as early as March of 2017, it was clear that the Obama administration’s foreign-policy professionals were quite insecure about how posterity would remember their stewardship of American interests abroad. They had every reason to be."

Commentary Magazine

. . . "It’s no coincidence that these overheated condemnations accompany abundant evidence that the Trump administration is finding its legs. As the last administration’s undeserved reputation as sober-minded foreign policy rationalists is dismantled one retrospective report at a time, its jilted members are lashing out.

"[Susan] Rice’s attacks on the Republican administration deserve the most attention, if only because they are the most apoplectic. Donald Trump’s recently released national-security review paints a “dark,” “almost dystopian” vision of the world, Rice contended. His world is full of “hostile states and lurking threats.” Rice claimed that there is “no common good” in Trump’s worldview. What’s more, there is no “international community” and no “universal values.” There are just “American values.”

"Rice takes a theatrically dim view of what is essentially a restatement of the bedrock principle of almost all international-relations theory: The international environment is anarchic. " . . .

Charles Krauthammer, 2016: The Stillborn Legacy of Barack Obama

A Christmas Present to Cable TV Viewers – Sara Carter Joins Fox News

Peter Barry Chowka

"Sara Carter, who in recent months has emerged as one of the country’s finest investigative journalists, is joining Fox News. The official announcement came on Christmas Eve at 9 A.M. E.T. when Carter was introduced as a brand new Fox News Contributor in two live segments on the channel’s signature morning program Fox and Friends Weekend. High profile Fox News contributors are usually paid six figures a year to appear with regularity on the channel to discuss news developments in the context of their areas of expertise. A video of Carter’s appearance on the Dec. 24 Fox News morning program is currently online here at YouTube.

"Carter has an extensive journalistic background, including covering the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in hot war zones while she was embedded with U.S. troops. She was a Senior Correspondent with Circa News from May 2016 until last November. Previously, she worked for TheBlaze, The Washington Examiner, and The Washington Times. She has had extensive experience hosting programs on TheBlaze TV and appearing as a guest hundreds of times on the cable television news channels. She has a degree in journalism and communications from California Polytechnic University in Pomona.

"Most recently, Carter’s probing investigative journalism for Circa News has exposed the deep politics behind the Obama Administration’s actions to checkmate the Trump candidacy and presidency, the investigation of Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the controversies surrounding the Clintons." . . .

Defying Trump again, Jerry Brown pardons immigrants about to be deported

Sacramento Bee

"Escalating the state’s showdown with the Trump administration over illegal immigration, California Gov. Jerry Brown used a Christmas holiday tradition to grant pardons Saturday to two men who were on the verge of being deported for committing crimes while in the U.S.

"Brown, pairing his state’s combative approach to federal immigration authorities with his belief in the power of redemption, characterized the pardons as acts of mercy.

"The Democratic governor moved as federal officials in recent months have detained and deported immigrants with felony convictions that resulted in the loss of their legal residency status, including many with nonviolent offenses that occurred years ago.

With the pardons, the reason for applicants’ deportations may be eliminated, said attorney Kevin Lo of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, which represented some of the men in a recent class-action lawsuit.

. . . Two of Brown’s pardons are Northern California Cambodian men picked up in October in those immigration sweeps, Mony Neth of Modesto and Rottanak Kong of Davis.

Kong was convicted on felony joyriding in 2003 in Stanislaus County at age 25 and sentenced to a year in jail. Neth was convicted on a felony weapons charge with a gang enhancement and a misdemeanor charge of receiving stolen property with a value of $400 or less in 1995 in Stanislaus County.

Both men came to the United States as children after their families fled the Khmer Rouge regime, and neither has engaged in criminal activity since being released from prison.

Kong and Neth were scheduled to be deported Monday, but a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last week in the lawsuit filed by Lo’s team, delaying their departure.

Neth, 42, was unexpectedly released from Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center on Friday, said his wife, Cat Khamvongsa, and is back home with his family – albeit with an ankle monitor.

. . . Neth said he plans on becoming a U.S. citizen if he is able, and encouraged other immigrants in his situation to remain optimistic.

“When I was in (detention), I think I was taught a few lessons, that I am not alone. God is always with me,” Neth said. “I’m not pretty outspoken, sometimes can’t find the right words to say, but just have hope.”. . . 

. . . Multiple investigations – including one requested by Brown’s office – determined that Coley was wrongfully convicted of murder after spending nearly 40 years in prison. Concluded Brown: “I grant this pardon because Mr. Coley did not commit these crimes.” . . .