New Cali Gov to Strip Border Defenses

Dimwit Politics  "The 2018 United States midterm election dust has barely settled, but California’s Governor-elect Gavin Newsom is already rolling out his proposed post-inauguration agenda. At the top of his list is recalling 1,800 National Guards from the state’s southern border with Mexico.

"Come January 2019, Newsom plans to announce the formal withdrawal of the military personnel whose presence is helping to keep out the illegal entry into the U.S. by thousands of Central Americans who continue to arrive in droves. The future Golden State governor said the Guards’ participation in this effort “seems pretty trivial.”

"In true politician style, Newsom allowed for the possibility that he might not keep his promise:

“ 'I have every desire to pull those Guardsmen back and assist in other capacities. It’s my intention today, but common conditions change, and so I want to caveat that with that understanding.”

"Newsom called the dispatch of almost two thousand National Guards merely “a stunt on the President’s part.” For months on the campaign trail, the prospective governor had opposed deploying the Guard to assist federal border patrol agents and troop members.

" 'According to Newsom, California is a “state of refuge.” This means that the new state administration plans to welcome each and every immigrant with open arms and open borders.

"The governor-elect plans to visit Mexico in the near future to meet with officials there to discuss the “humanitarian crisis” underway at the U.S.-Mexico border.


"Putting illegal aliens and caravan invasions above national security may prove to be a dangerous course. Newsom also proposed that financial assistance for illegal aliens and the caravan invaders in Tijuana should come from the state, local, and the federal governments." . . .

Polish government: wind turbines will be scrapped within 17 years

Watts Up With That?

"All wind farms operating today in Poland will be scrapped by 2035, with no new turbines built to replace them, stipulates draft “Energy Policy of Poland until 2040” presented by Ministry of Energy on Friday. This is a political decision, the Minister explained.

"On Wednesday the government contracted with investors the construction of several hundred new wind turbines (with a capacity of approximately 1 GW). The average prices offered by investors, at which they committed to sell electricity, barely reached 197 PLN/MWh. This is less than the current market price (250 PLN/MWh) and much less that the total production cost in new coal-fired power plants (350 PLN/MWh).

"However, on Friday Ministry of Energy presented the draft Energy Policy of Poland, which reads that all existing wind turbines will be scrapped by 2035, with the ones just contracted by the government a few years later. No new wind farms will be built to replace them.
. . . 

"Ministry missed technological progress?

“ 'The practice demonstrates that onshore wind turbines are available only 20 percent of the time, whereas offshore this is 40-45 percent,” Minster Krzysztof Tchórzewski explained on Friday." . . .  Full story here.

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It."

QuotesGram

The National Constitution Center  . . . "If there is a lesson in all of this it is that our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it." The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health."

Dr. Richard Beeman is professor of history and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. The University is NCC's academic partner, and for the year 1997 – 98. Dr. Beeman serves as vice chair of our Distinguished Scholars Advisory Panel.

Romney's last chance to make a first impression didn't go well

From Dec. 31: How Mitt Romney Is Plotting His Revenge On Trump "I know! I'll hit him with an anti-Trump editorial! That'll put me in fat city with the terrifying left and their media!"

Mitt Romney backtracks after Trump-hating op-ed attack bombs  "Arriving in Washington for his new gig as Utah's junior Senator, Mitt Romney jumped right in to revert to form, putting out a Washington Post attack op-ed decrying President Trump's lack of 'character,' and calling on Republicans to reach across the aisle." . . .

"It's also very unwelcome. Here Trump has given us the best economy in decades, and Mitt has almost nothing to say about it other than he agrees with it. Trump also never wavered on the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and fought like a lion to get more constitutionally-minded judges appointed. Trump chipped away at the nightmare of Obamacare, starting with an end to its vile poverty tax slapped onto the Americans who cannot afford its costly one-size-fits-all offerings." . . .

"It shows that his potshot against Trump bombed, particularly with Republicans, who were all out there and ready to be his friend, but can now see that he's got other priorities, such as filling the towering boots of ... Jeff Flake.

"And man, that is making him unpopular." . . .

Well, now Romney's made himself unpopular. And now he's backtracking. President Trump has said that if Romney had fought President Obama as hard as he fights against Trump, he'd be president today. It's true enough, but the backtrack is obviously Romney's style, proof that he never would have made a good president. With this latest failed attack, we now we know why he didn't win. He doesn't 'get' winning.

Let's call Mitt Romney 'Mitt McCain Flake'  . . . "Romney showed no fight against Obama in 2012.  He selected Paul Ryan as his V.P. running mate, who had absolutely no fight as the V.P. candidate in 2012 and did his best to sabotage President Trump's efforts to secure funding for the southern border wall. 

"Romney did not fight back when Harry Reid falsely accused him of not paying his income taxes."

Lou Dobbs: “I can’t believe the people of Utah elected this creep.”  

“He’s a fool, and he is also absolutely a treacherous fool,” said Dobbs. “He’s an embarrassment to the state of Utah. That’s the way it’s going to be because he’s obviously committed to his role as the smallest man in the Senate. It’s disgusting.”

Mitt Romney’s Counterproductive Op-Ed Romney's niece pretty much agreed
Mitt Romney Says He Will Not Run against Trump in 2020
Rich Lowry on The Romney Op-ed

Lindsey Graham, Other Republicans Attack Mitt Romney For Anti-Trump Op-Ed
. . . "Graham concluded by issuing a dire warning to Romney about the fleeting praise of the media and urged him to learn from what happened to Brett Kavanaugh." . . .

"If he's going to be the critic from Utah, it's going to hurt him and Utah," Graham said in an interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio.  . . . " 'Here we go with Mitt Romney, but so fast! Question will be, is he a Flake? I hope not. " . . .

@RandPaul  Like other Big Government Republicans who never liked Reagan, Mitt Romney wants to signal how virtuous he is in comparison to the President. Well, I’m most concerned and pleased with the actual conservative reform agenda @realDonaldTrump has achieved.

"Virtue-signalling" is what media people do.  

Cavuto Reminds Rand He Said 'Worse Things' About Trump Than Romney. Rand Explains Why That's Different

. . . "But, as soon as Trump stepped foot in the Oval Office, Paul cooled it with the character assassinations. Sure he has disagreements with the president and votes against him from time to time, but personal attacks are out of bounds" . . .

Reflections on Romney  . . . "Romney’s pledge to speak out against “significant statements or actions that are divisive” is pathetic. Any statement or action of a conservative-leaning Republican president is going to be “divisive.' ” . . .

HOWDY DO FELLOW KIDS! Internet Tees Off On Elizabeth Warren’s Beer-Chugging Video

Legal Insurrection

Daily Wire  "Talk about a cringe.
"On New Year's Eve, Sen. Elizabeth Warren live streamed on Instagram shortly after announcing that she is forming an exploratory committee to ponder a run for president in 2020 (we're going to go out on a limb here and say she's 100% in).
"The session was just, uh, weird.
"The scene opened in a kitchen. "If you hear gnawing in the background, that's because Bailey is in the kitchen," Warren said and swung the camera toward a dog on the floor. "Say hello, yeah, yeah," she said, petting the dog. "He said something with his tail, that's who he is. Yes. Sweet boy. That's our Bailey. That's our Bailey. And Bailey wags his tail."
"Warren, 69, said, "Hold on a second, I'm going to get me, um —" Then she pointed off screen to the refrigerator "— a beer." The Massachusetts Democrat slapped her thigh then disappeared. Bottles clanked, then she returned with a brown bottle, twisting off the top. "My husband Bruce is now here. You want a beer?" she asks. He passes.
"Then she takes a quaff of brew and leans into the camera. "Who do we have here. Skyler? And 14 others? Hello? Denise? Hi."
"Ugh. The whole escapade seemed an obvious attempt to "get hip," to follow some younger stars of the Democratic Party, like 29-year-old former bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Texas Rep. Robert "Beto" O'Rourke, cast by the mainstream media as the second coming of JFK." . . .

Islamic State In Ukraine: A Christmas Present From The West

An axis of evil formed between them and the head-chopping, heart-eating, crucifying killers of Islamist extremism must mark a new low in Western policy. And the worst possible Christmas present for the Christians of eastern Ukraine.

ZeroHedge  "Islamist Chechen fighters who honed their combat skills at Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) training camps are at war against Ukrainian rebels, confirms the Times."

"The report in British newspaper the Times, that Chechen Islamists, many reeling from defeat in Syria and Iraq amongst the alphabet soup of fanaticism, had indeed arrived at the war front in eastern Ukraine, woke me up from any Christmas torpor.

"An earlier report in the New York Times had revealed that the Islamist Chechens were under the command of the fascist “Right Sector” and were there to “fight Russians” because “we like fighting Russians” and “will never stop fighting Russians.”

"For the Times at Christmas it was enough to quote one of their commanders:

“Putin is our common enemy.”

"A quote which of course could have come from the editor of the Times!

"While the report was a wake-up call for me, not so the rest of the British media still less the British political class. Tumbleweed rolled over the media spaces where fear and loathing should have been. There was more interest in Strictly Come Dancing than the long bearded Islamist extremists, who were now, once again, our dancing partners in crime.

"But it was always thus.

"When I returned to the House of Commons in 2012 after a brief absence, I asked the then Prime Minister David Cameron if he had read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And if so, if he had read it all the way to the end. The end in which the monster, the good doctor had so carelessly created, broke free from his control and began acting like, well, a monster.

"On another occasion I was trapped in a lift briefly with the then Foreign Secretary William (now Lord) Hague. I told him:

“William, you’ve been wrong before, in fact you’ve been wrong all your life. But you’ve never been insane before. This policy of putting knives in the hands of Islamist fanatics and allowing them to go to Syria is not just wrong, it’s insane.”  

"And one day, I added portentously: “Such men with such knives will be in this building and looking for you, looking for me.” Which came true just three years later."  . . .

Well, we can always sic Mad-Dog Mattis on them if necessary. Oh, wait! No....

All emphases in the original. TD

Actually, 2018 Was a Pretty Good Year

Victor Davis Hanson

Aside from the Washington hysterias, 2018 was a most successful year for Americans.

[Christmas] shoppers at the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania

"The year 2018 will be deplored by pundits as a bad year of more unpredictable Donald Trump, headlined by wild stock-market gyrations, the melodramas of the Robert Mueller investigation, and the musical-chair tenures of officials in the Trump administration.

"A quarter of the government is still shut down. Talk of impeachment by the newly Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is in the air. Seemingly every day there are sensational breakthroughs, scandals, and bombshells that race through social media and the Internet — only to be forgotten by the next day.

"In truth, aside from the Washington hysterias, 2018 was a most successful year for Americans.

"In December, the United States reached a staggering level of oil production, pumping some 11.6 million barrels per day. For the first time since 1973, America is now the world’s largest oil producer

"Since Trump took office, the U.S. has increased its oil production by nearly 3 million barrels per day, largely as the result of fewer regulations, more federal leasing, and the continuing brilliance of American frackers and horizontal drillers. It appears that there is still far more oil beneath U.S. soil than has ever been taken out. American production could even soar higher in the months ahead." . . .

Mr. Hanson sums up with this:

Europe’s three most powerful leaders — Angela Merkel of Germany, Emmanuel Macron of France, and Theresa May of the United Kingdom — have worse approval ratings than the embattled Donald Trump. In sum, the more media pundits claimed that America was on the brink of disaster in 2018, the more Americans became prosperous and secure.

The Truth About Democratic Morality

Tom DeLay exposed a Democrat secret memo in which Obama's DoJ's plans to legalize 12 perversions which includes bestiality, polygamy and make having sex with little boys legal. The secret memo mapped out how Democrats would attack churches who refuse to submit to having their constitutional religious liberty taken away.

Marcus is renowned for proclaiming, “I am NOT an African-American! I am Lloyd Marcus AMERICAN!!!”

Lloyd Marcus  "Democrat Nancy Pelosi said Trump's border wall is immoral and too expensive. Hearing Pelosi lecture Trump and the American people about morality is beyond repulsive.

"Pelosi, her fellow Democrats and fake news media seek to prevent our side from using the word “morality” in the political arena. Any Republican and conservative who dares bring up the morality of an issue is immediately branded a religious nut, trying to force their wacko outdated values onto the public.

"Pelosi and her minions are flooding the airwaves with their absurd perverted narrative that building a wall (to protect Americans) is immoral. Meanwhile, these wicked Democrats who refuse to secure our borders live in highly secured and gated communities. Using their logic, shouldn't stopping people from invading their personal properties make Democrats immoral?

"As I said, Democrats having the gall to throw morality into the face of Trump and everyday Americans who desire a secure border is pretty obnoxious. Here are examples of Democrats' twisted view of morality.

"Democrats have forced LGBTQ lessons into schools. Funded by LGBTQ special interest groups like Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood's Sex Ed program are infecting curriculum in public schools across America. Brace yourself. Kids are actually being instructed in dangerous and violent sexual practices such as asphyxiation and BDSM.

"Planned Parenthood was caught on video advising a 15-year-old girl to allow her boyfriend to beat, whip and gag her. 

"To deceive parents, Planned Parenthood claims their sex ed includes abstinence. However, PP's definition of abstinence includes anal sex, oral sex, masturbation and mutual masturbation. " . . . Video linked to by Mr. Marcus posted by TD

Mitt Romney’s Naïve Incoherence

After listing Trump’s successful policies (“to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges”), Romney mysteriously concludes that “These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years.”  I think about at least 40 percent of the electorate might beg to differ

Victor Davis Hanson  "Mitt Romney is a fine and decent person, whom I voted for without regret, then or now, and who strangely just published a scathing op-ed in the Washington Post about President Trump days before assuming office as Utah’s newly elected junior senator. But why in the world would he reserve his invective for January, rather than in October, when it surely would have had greater force?

"As far as Romney’s calls for Trump to be less ad hominem in his retaliatory remarks, he may be right, both in terms of presidential behavior and political wisdom (given that Trump needs to capture 5-8 percent additional support from suburbanites and minorities). And he is correct to draw attention to reckless federal spending and this apparent bipartisan custom of borrowing a near trillion dollars a year. Let us hope that Romney’s proven financial sobriety will help galvanize the congress to prune reckless deficits.

"But that said, I fear that much of Romney’s invective is utterly incoherent. The departures of many top-cabinet officials in some cases were regrettable, in some understandable, but most were likely because Trump ran on an agenda neither traditionally Republican nor Democratic. Trump was the first president without either political or military experience. So there always was also going to be difficulty (and paradoxes) in matching his outsider policies with experienced insider administrators. We should, however, remember that the tenures of Department of Defense secretaries (four in the respective Obama and Truman administrations) and White House chiefs of staff (four respectively for Reagan and Clinton, five for Obama) are historically not always particularly long.

"Romney is, euphemistically, accurate in stating that he opposed Trump (“Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination”). And he explains, admirably so, that he hoped that “his [Trump’s] campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not.” And Romney was further disappointed that “on balance, his [Trump’s] conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions this last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.” . . .

Cop’s Shooting Death May Upend Shutdown Debate

Legal immigrant who played by the rules killed by drunken sanctuary-protected illegal.

American Spectator, December 30, 2018

"President Donald Trump found a strong political issue in a brutal and needless crime on Thursday when he tweeted about the murder of a central California police officer at the hands of a man believed to be an illegal immigrant.
"This awful crime is likely to upend the debate surrounding a government shutdown that began because Trump rejected a compromise budget — which the White House had signaled he would sign — that did not include some $5 billion for border wall funding.
"For their part, Democrats don’t want to give him that victory.
"That could change.
"On Friday, Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson announced that authorities had arrested a suspect, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, in connection with the shooting death of Newman police Cpl. Ronil Singh. Singh had pulled over Arriaga for suspected drunk driving Thursday at 1 a.m.
"The suspect, he said, had two prior convictions for drunk driving, a “known gang affiliation,” and was trying to flee to Mexico. “We can’t ignore the fact that this could have been preventable,” the sheriff said.
"Christianson faulted California’s sanctuary state law that prohibits local enforcement from communicating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless authorities are holding an undocumented immigrant convicted of certain felonies within 15 years.
“ 'Ladies and gentlemen” he warned, “this is not how you protect the community.” . . .

Please, No More 'Border Security'

AAEC

Ann Coulter  "The media are trying to convince Trump that if he abandons the wall, he'll be a statesman, so that as soon as he folds, they can start making fun of him as an untrustworthy liar.

"Everyone knows that we can never have a secure border without an impermeable barrier -- something like a wall -- across all of it. The Democrats know it, the voters know it, and the millions of illegals hurtling toward our border like cannonballs know it.

"The Democrats' latest idea is to call a wall "immoral, ineffective and expensive."

"If they think a wall is "immoral," then they're admitting it's effective. An ineffective wall would merely be a place for illegals to stop and get a little shade before continuing their march into the United States.

"Democrats' backup argument is to cite -- every four minutes on MSNBC -- Trump's claim that Mexico would pay for the wall. We're all baffled by Trump not having already taxed remittances to Mexico to pay for the wall (100 percent within the president's authority under various banking regulations), but if we're going to start listing the promises Trump hasn't kept, this is going to be a long column.

"In point of fact, however, he never said Mexico would pre-pay. We can tax remittances anytime.

"To keep the Third World masses flowing across our un-walled border, the media are demanding that Trump agree to nonspecific "border security." It's like ordering a Starbucks and instead of getting a coffee, you're told to have more "pep." Now move along. Here's your change. 

"Would liberals accept such airy statements of intent in lieu of clear legal commands for any of the things they care about? (Not to be confused with "our country," which they do not care about.)

"Instead of EPA emissions standards, with specific parts per million of pollutants allowed into lakes and rivers, how about a law promoting "enhanced appreciation of God's bounty"? Emissions standards are immoral and ineffective!

"Nearly every Republican presidential candidate tried to con voters with these meaningless catchphrases about "border security."

"Here are The Des Moines Register's summaries of some of the candidates' positions on immigration a few weeks before the 2016 Iowa caucus:

• Jeb Bush: "has called for enhanced border security." 
• Marco Rubio: "proposes ... improved security on the border." 
• John Kasich: "believes border security should be strengthened." 
• Chris Christie: "urges ... using technology to improve border surveillance ..." 
• Rand Paul: "would secure the border immediately." 
• Carly Fiorina: "would secure the border, which she says requires only money and manpower." 

"They all lost. 

"The guy who won: "Trump has said many illegal immigrants are rapists and are bringing drugs and crime to the United States." . . .

Wealth, Poverty, and Flight: The Same Old State of California

Victor Davis Hanson

Insulated coastal elites, impoverished immigrants, and a fleeing middle class

. . . "So why is California a blue state? In part, because its conservative base fled, a future blue-state constituency arrived, and both the very wealthy and the very poor, albeit for quite different reasons, preferred a high-tax, big-government redistributionist state government.

"It is easy to envision California largely in a tripartite fashion. One population has wealth and privilege enough to create a garden of Eden, with the proviso that it need not experience firsthand any downsides of its envisioned utopia.

"The second population is largely that of first- and second-generation immigrants, millions of them without legality, and many of them poor and dependent on generous state entitlements and the non-enforcement of myriads of rules, and regulations.

"Then there is the third zombie population: those who want to, or in fact are preparing to, follow the millions who left. They’re convinced that they lack the connections and clout of the wealthy that would let them navigate around the new regulatory morass, and they pay more in taxes than they receive in state services. In the end, the diminishing middle lacks the romance of the distant poor and the panache of the coastal affluent.

"But California is explained not only by sociology but also by psychology. There is a new mentality in which the virtue-signaling elite enjoy the cheap labor of the poor and do not much care about the poor’s inability to access reasonably priced gasoline and electrical power, safe neighborhoods, and quality schools and infrastructure. From their secure keeps, they square that circle by offering generous entitlements, open borders, and progressive empathy — and lots of self-righteous bumper-sticker rhetoric.

"At least for now." . . .  Full article

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON — NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. @vdhanson