The Book That Blew Up Washington

Matthew Continetti  . . . "As if all this wasn’t enough, January 3 brought the first excerpts from Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, which hit the Beltway with the force of the thermonuclear explosion referenced in its title. The president’s former chief strategist suggested the president’s son and chief strategist had committed treason and money laundering. And that was just for starters. David Stockman, George Stephanopoulos, Scott McClellan, Bob Gates, eat your heart out. No insider tell-all beats this. 

"I don’t know what to make of the Wolff excerpts. It’s clear that Steve Bannon was a major source, and I wouldn’t trust a thing that man says. A lot of the material falls into the “too good to check” category of journalism. There are some basic errors involving ages, dates, and typos. And the content seems designed to fit the media’s preferred narrative that President Trump is senile or crazy or both. Purporting to confirm what everyone in the press already believes is a surefire way to maximize publicity and sales. Doesn’t mean what you’re selling is true.

"Sensational books are perennial in Washington. What’s different here is the president’s response. Reagan, Clinton, W., Obama kept their distance from the controversies engendered by disgruntled former aides. To engage would be beneath the office. Not for President Trump. "  Full Article.

How Bernie Sanders's minimum wage hike idea works in Venezuela

Monica Showalter  "Bernie Sanders has opined for years on the necessity of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, explaining that:

By phasing in a pay raise for tens of millions of workers, we can improve living standards, lift families out of poverty, and provide a much-needed boost to our economy. Our bill will raise the wages of 41 million workers — an extra $3,500 a year in pay for full-time workers.

"The socialist Senator this past year introduced legislation in the Senate for the wage hike and while that didn't succeed (so far) has made the $15 wage call a standard platform item for most Democrats on the campaign trail. After all, if a $10 minimum wage hike is great, why not a $15 raise?

"Sanders has even claimed such a move would cut federal spending, something that the lefty PolitiFact found 'mostly false.'

"Factual or not, Sanders remains popular, especially among the millennials who, born after the Wall's fall, have no experience of socialism whatsoever.

"Until now." . . .

The Evil that Must Not Be Named on Campus  "Academia turns a blind eye to the reality of actual socialism, the ideology practiced by Marxists while they sought the perfection of communism...someday.  Socialism is ruining Venezuela today, and the whitewash pervades elite culture, even when the evil strikes close to home for an elite American small college." . . .

. . . "The bottom line: the true, evil nature of socialism is not being taught at most of America's colleges and universities.  To the contrary, socialism is promulgated as a positive force for "social justice," "income equality," and "environmental preservation."  As such, when the true nature of socialism rears its ugly head (as in present-day Venezuela), the horrific reality must be suppressed." . . .

Understanding Keith Ellison

Power Line  "Keith Ellison is Minnesota’s Fifth District Congressman and the Democratic Party’s deputy chairman. We’ve followed his rise since he won the DFL nomination to run for the Fifth District seat in 2006 in “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman” (October 9, 2006), in the companion Power Line post “Keith Ellison for dummies,” and in “The Ellison elision”(February 3, 2014).

"Most recently, I revisited this history in the context of Ellison’s national ambitions in “The trouble with Keith Ellison” (November 21, 2016) and in the Power Line post “Keith Ellison’s back pages” (February 8,2017). The 2017 Power Line post includes a video of Ellison as a third-year University of Minnesota Law School student appearing in February 1990 under his Nation of Islam pseudonym Keith Hakim.

"Ellison welcomed Kwame Ture (the former Stokely Carmichael) to speak in the law school’s Room 25 on the topic “Zionism: Racism, Imperialism or both?” Ellison’s introduction of Ture is clipped, but we are able to see him recalling the time he welcomed “Minister Farrakhan” to the University of Minnesota. Ellison was already deep into his Nation of Islam phase.

"What a long, strange trip it’s been.

"Ellison is back in the news this week with his photographic endorsement of the fascist Antifa movement. John wrote about it here." . . .

The geniuses we elect

Power Line  "No doubt you’ve heard about it: President Trump proclaimed himself a “stable genius” on Twitter this morning. Here is the series of tweets, so you can see what he actually said. I should add that these weren’t his only tweets this morning; he was busy:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence....

. . .

"These comments are obviously tongue in cheek, but Trump’s points nevertheless are well taken, including his recollection of the Left’s attacks on Ronald Reagan, who they also claimed was unstable and stupid. Which is not to say that these tweets were a bright idea." . . .

"These tweets reminded me of a famous quote from the Obama era:

The White House takes pride in the fact that Obama’s PDB is “not briefed to him” – because, they say, he is “among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet.” That hubris brings to mind this revealing quote from a September 2008 New York Times profile of Obama:

Obama: I’m a better intelligence briefer than my intelligence briefers

"The White House takes pride in the fact that Obama’s PDB is “not briefed to him” – because, they say, he is “among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet.” That hubris brings to mind this revealing quote from a September 2008 New York Times profile of Obama:" . . .

Black Trump Voters Vindicated As Black Unemployment Falls To Lowest Level Ever

Hot Air  "Do you remember when candidate Trump was courting black votersand asked “What the hell do you have to lose?” during a campaign rally? The line caused some buzz and Trump went on to repeat it. Trump received 8% of the black vote in 2016, besting Mitt Romney’s total in 2012. That 8% must feel vindicated after the good economic news Friday – black unemployment is at a historical low."

During the aftermath of the financial crisis, black unemployment soared to 16.8 percent in 2010, meaning more than 1 out of every 6 African Americans was looking for a job but could not find one. The rate has steadily declined since, breaking the prior all-time low of 7 percent that was set in 2000 during the dot-com boom.” “The white unemployment rate is 3.7 percent. The black-white gap in hiring and pay has existed for decades, with the black unemployment rate typically more than double that of whites. But the gap has narrowed slightly to 1.85 times higher unemployment for blacks instead of 2 times as much.

"That bit of good news is a great way to begin 2018. While Democrats have tried mightily to paint Trump as a racist, the fact is that Democrats embraced Trump until he ran for president as a Republican. Then the inevitable happened. The Republican candidate had to be painted as a racist, true or not. Nonetheless, black workers benefit from the optimism felt in the business community – a rising tide lifts all boats." . . . .

Trump or Obama: Who’s Smart and Who’s Dumb?

RUSH: I have long held, ladies and gentlemen, we need to redefine "smart" in this country. Because there are a lot of stupid people who do a lot of dangerous and dumb things. And they are considered the smartest people in the world… Let me give you a side-by-side, A-B comparison to give you an idea what I mean.

Rush Limbaugh  "And now we start talking about, “Well, this president’s is insane. Uh, this president is unfit! Uh, uh, this president is dangerous. He shouldn’t be around buttons that lead to weapons and bombs. Uh, uh, this president, 25th Amendment.” They haven’t the slightest clue who he is. You know, I’ve always had a saying. The guy who thinks he’s smarter than his wife has no idea how truly smart she is.

"Now, the feminists hate that quote. They despise it because they interpret it as a wife subordinating her intelligence to her husband’s in order for the sake of the relationship, so forth. That’s somewhat what it means, but it’s not entirely what it means in this day and age." . . . .

"One president micromanages the economy into the ground and tells the American people that our better days are behind us. He says the great days of America’s past were not really legitimate. They were built on phony policies, trickle-down economics from the Reagans. We stole resources from other nations around the world. Our superpower status was not deserved. We now must manage the decline. And I, Barack Hussein Obama, am the smartest guy in the world to manage the decline of the United States and its economy.

"His replacement liberates the economy, unleashes the United States economy to the point in under a year it is growing at twice the rate it ever grew under Barack Obama. And yet we’re told Obama’s brilliant, he’s so smart, we can’t even stay in the same room with him. He’s so brilliant, we can’t keep up with the guy. He’s so brilliant, all we can do is bow at his feet and try not to be blinded by the light reflecting off him. Donald Trump is silly. He’s insane. He’s obsessed. His unfit. We need psychiatrists examining him. We need the 25th Amendment.

"Who’s the nutcase, who’s the dangerous one, and who is, in under a year, unraveling all of the mistakes borne of the either poor ideology or just blatant stupidity of the previous administration? We need to redefine smart, ’cause I’m gonna tell you, it isn’t Barack Obama, and it certainly isn’t Hillary Clinton, and it isn’t Bill Clinton. But the Washington establishment thinks it is. The Washington establishment thinks intelligence is defined by where you come from, what university, what professors you knew, what degrees you have in common." . . .

Read the full article

Minor birds dare to condemn without even an interview. The incompetence of our news media

Earl of Taint

Marion DS Dreyfus  "When gassy brainiacs opine on the dinosaur media, essaying to "diagnose" our amazingly dynamic 45th president without the elementary detail of a face-to-face, one must debunk their pathetic efforts, even were they in the galactic ballpark of accurate, because their posturing in a wholly political, partisan way is ipso facto unprofessional.

"Fitness is determined not by one's lowest-shelf unregistered opponents.  Stability, ditto.

"It is in the same realm as quacks who look at a cartoon and "diagnose" a malady from an acetate or paper image.

"In case you haven't been to med school in the past decade or five, any such blithe "diagnosis" isn't kosher, isn't definitive, is not even one thousandth reliable.  It isn't worth the swamped out fetid air it rode in on.

"A graphologist for many years, I compared President Trump's actual handwriting from before he was elected to his writing now.  TV-viewers see that each time the president signs a document or deregulates another of the damaging, bizarre, and largely unvetted exec actions of the former resident of the White House, he holds up the two facing pages document.  His handwriting is readily available.

"Handwriting isn't rocket science.  It is, however, a fairly accepted gauge of the writer's energy, health, and overall emotionality, along with many other indicia of a person.  Abnormal people, mass murderers, and serial molesters all show in their handwriting, for those paying attention.

"From pre-election 2016 until today, Donald J. Trump – in his clear and available signature – shows zero diminution of prowess.  Easily seen, in fact, are signs of amazing robustness: his forceful, heavily ascending letters demand considerable effort and strength.  His thick letters and the non-petering terminus of his signature show that this is a determined man, a man not given to letting events run his stopwatch, a man with no end of massive perseverance." . . .

Andrew Klavan: The Wolff Book Proves It: Our Journalists Stink

. . . "We are watching our mainstream news media implode. They don't just jump on any fake news that might make Trump look bad for the few moments before they're forced to retract it. They're now actually reporting their fantasies — fantasies in which Trump doesn't keep making them look like the idiots they are." . . .

Fire and Fury Claim: Donald Trump Says ‘Getting Your Friends' Wives Into Bed’ Makes ‘Life Worth Living’ . . . "The report does sound second-hand however, and may be untrustworthy for that reason. Wolff did not claim Trump himself told him about these occasions, and Wolff also did not name a source behind this story. It remains possible Wolff crafted it himself." . . .

Michael Wolff tells a juicy tale in his new Trump book. But should we believe it?

WaPo  "Among the many things he’s been called — “blunt,” “pathetic,” “calculating” — the one thing Michael Wolff has never been described as is boring.

"A provocateur and media polemicist, Wolff has a penchant for stirring up an argument and pushing the facts as far as they’ll go, and sometimes further than they can tolerate, according to his critics. He has been accused of not just re-creating scenes in his books and columns, but of creating them wholesale.

"That’s some context for Wolff’s most explosive bit of reporting to date: A scathing new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” describing dysfunction and infighting in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the first year of his presidency, replete with damning criticism of Trump from within his inner circle.

"According to an unauthorized report in the Guardian newspaper and a lengthy excerpt in New York magazine, Wolff portrays Trump and his closest aides as astonished by his electoral victory in 2016, and wholly unprepared for office. Trump, he reports, had no idea who former House speaker John A. Boehner was when Roger Ailes, a campaign adviser, recommended him as chief of staff. Top advisers and allies doubted the president’s intelligence and openly mocked him.

"But Wolff’s sharpest revelations concern comments attributed to Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s campaign chairman and former White House chief strategist. In on-the-record interviews with Wolff, Bannon called a meeting between the Trump campaign’s top advisers and Russian representatives in mid-2016 “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” — furthering the narrative of Trump’s harshest critics." . . .

Shred the Veil

In Iran, heroic women, "by risking their lives, have unmasked the faces of those trying to promote burqas and hijabs as supposed 'symbols of liberation.'"  Yet these shackles  are the very ones the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and the likes of Linda Sarsour continue to promote.  Western women would do well to speak out against any individual or organization who wishes to impose sharia's anti-woman regulations, no matter how enticing the speaker sounds.

Eileen F. Toplansky  . . . "Female abuse is rampant.  Child marriages among migrants from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa are escalating in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany with girls as young as eleven being married off.  Polygamy, while illegal in Europe, is proliferating as many immigrants bring multiple wives and children with them.  Britain's first female Islamic judge said, "[T]he [British] government cannot ... ask Muslims not to have more than one wife." 

" 'Disobedient" wives undergo beatings as well as being burned alive all in the name of sharia.  In 2017, an Iranian child bride was beaten by her husband and forced to give up her children.  She fled to Australia.  She revealed that "a person who [decides to convert] in Iran will be deemed an apostate and the punishment is death."  She explains that she "hated Islam and its regressive laws in Iran ... a religion with no value or respect for women.  It recogni[z]es women as only a means of sexual pleasure for men."

"Instead of speaking out against such repression and violence, the fashion world is now turning the Islamic veil into a "global garment."  Mattel "unveiled" the world's first hijab-wearing Barbie doll.  Dolce & Gabbana is producing a collection of hijabs and abayas to Muslim customers in the Middle East.  Playboy had a Muslim woman wearing a hijab.  Nike released a performance hijab outfit for athletes.

"Why should Western society in any way, shape or form promote any symbol of Islamic tyranny?  Would a Nazi doll have been promoted in the 1940s?  Greed, ignorance, and indifference aptly describe these corporate decisions."

DNC Deputy Chair Keith Ellison Poses with Antifa Book

Antifa is a far-left anarchist group that is known for smashing storefronts, punching "Nazis" (aka people who aren't left wing), and setting things on fire.  The group uses violence to intimidate political opponents throughout the United States but especially in liberal strongholds like Berkeley, Portland, Boston and Philly.

PJ Media   "The deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee seemed to endorse Anarchist violence on Wednesday, when he tweeted a picture of himself grinning approvingly with a pro-Antifa book.

"Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) posted a picture of himself holding “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” writing that the book would “strike fear in the heart” of President Donald Trump." . . .

"Antifa is a far-left anarchist group that is known for smashing storefronts, punching "Nazis" (aka people who aren't left wing), and setting things on fire.

The group uses violence to intimidate political opponents throughout the United States but especially in liberal strongholds like Berkeley, Portland, Boston and Philly.

The author of the book, Dartmouth professor Mark Bray, was also a spokesman for the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. He has come under fire from a New York City police union for expressing support for the virulently anti-cop group.

In his book, Bray makes clear that violence is in some circumstances justified, arguing that “militant anti-fascism is a reasonable, historically informed response to the fascist threat that persisted after 1945 and that has become especially menacing in recent years.”

In an appearance on C-SPAN last year, Bray defended Antifa's violence against fellow Americans by calling it "preemptive self-defense."

California, there we go.

Trump trumps global warming!

Snowflake's Safe Space & Buttercup Ranch