Democrats and Cream puff journalism: CBS's 60 Minutes 'interviews' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Memo to morons: Neither Sweden, nor Britain, nor Norway has a socialist command economy.  Some are led by right-wingers.  All of them pay for state projects such as health care through high taxes.  Shouldn't Cooper have brought up that the Other People's Money has run out on Britain's socialist health system, and there's been a problem with ambulances dumping patients at the hospital doors, in addition to long waiting lines, and horrors such as the killing of baby Charlie Gard?  All of that, courtesy of government control of health care.

Monica Showalter "In an example of journalism used to conceal, rather than expose, truth, CBS's 60 Minutes can stand up and take a bow for its mother of all puff pieces on New York's newly elected socialist congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

"Cream puff journalism at its finest.  Heck, it was a campaign ad.  Or call it a belated campaign contribution, because it was anything but hard-hitting.

"Here is the CBS transcript, along with the full televised report, and here are some CBS-released trailers:

"How was this report biased?  Well, start with the camera lighting and coloration, which we learned all about back when 60 Minutes manipulated it to make President Trump's former adviser, Steve Bannon, look like a bleary-eyed drunk.

"Ocasio-Cortez's lighting, seen in the whites of her eyes and her teeth, comes off as blindingly white.  Yes, she's young, and yes, she has access to WhiteStrips for that movie-star smile.  But not all of the frames show that blinding whiteness and utter smoothness of skin, which apparently has been applied to some extent to interviewer Anderson Cooper, too.  This clip shows Ocasio-Cortez with more natural coloring and facial lines.  This one shows what looks like an apparent re-touch to cartoon-like coloring and line-free skin.

"What a nice favor they did for her.

"It gets worse." . . .  Read on...

Dems are starting to endorse confiscatory taxation of the 'rich' "Fair share" and all that, of course. Does the sun rise in the east?

"The left wing of the Democrats is playing with fire, advocating revenge against those who have succeeded in making a lot of money by taking almost all of it away.  Yesterday, a probable candidate for president (and a former Obama Cabinet member) one-upped even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who broke the ice on public discussion of stratospheric income tax rates by suggesting a marginal 70% federal rate on incomes of ten million and up.  That would yield an effective rate over 80% for residents of New York and California, the states that produce the highest number of super-earners.

"Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and HUD secretary under President Obama, makes her look like Grover Norquist, appearing with George Stephanopoulos yesterday:" . . .

NYT Puff Piece On Democrat Ilhan Omar Again Whitewashes Her Apparent Anti-Semitism  . . . "The problem with this sort of propaganda is what was left unreported. According to the story, “Her support for the boycott, divest and sanctions movement to pressure Israel to improve treatment of Palestinians is making Jewish leaders nervous.' ” . . .

Video surfaces of WaPo op-ed contributor chanting ‘Death to America’

"Less than two months after he was given prominent op-ed space in the Washington Post, a video has surfaced of Houthi rebel leader Mohammad Ali al-Houthi launching a shoulder-fired missile and then reciting the Houthi slogan, which calls for “Death to America.' ” . . .

OUCH! Mitt Romney's niece Delivers Knock Out Punch To Her Anti-Trump Uncle

100%FedUp (January 2)

Trump loyalist, Romney-McDaniel slammed Uncle Mitt with this tweet: POTUS is attacked and obstructed by the MSM media and Democrats 24/7. For an incoming Republican freshman senator to attack [this President] as their first act feeds into what the Democrats and media want and is disappointing and unproductive.

"President Trump shot back at the failed presidential candidate, Mitt Romney following his scathing, anti-Trump, op-ed in the Washington Post.  President Trump won the presidential election in 2016, in spite of Mitt Romney’s best efforts to destroy his chances. To his credit, in 2018, President Trump rose above Mitt Romney’s petty sniping against him in 2016 and came out in full support of Romney’s US Senate campaign. The freshman Senator handily won a seat in the November election, in the Mormon stronghold state of Utah.
"In his op-ed, Romney wrote:

As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit.

. . . But only when he was reprimanding us.

"During his presidency, Barack Obama made no secret of his disdain for America and for the history of our nation. During his campaign, his wife, Michelle claimed it was the first time she was proud of our nation. During a commencement speech at the historically black Tuskegee University, the former first lady bemoaned being forced to live a the White House, a house that was “built by slaves.”

With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable.

"Even the New York Times called out Barack Obama for creating a massive divide in our nation: "Sixty-nine percent of Americans say race relations are generally bad, one of the highest levels of discord since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles during the Rodney King case, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll." . . .

California admits it has no idea whether non-citizens voted in last primary

Monica Showalter "After a hard-fought battle to obtain records by the Sacramento Bee, we now learn that California's electoral officials are admitting that they have no idea how many illegals and other non-citizens voted in the last primary, based on the state's motor-voter registration, which has been shown to have registered thousands of non-citizen voters. The Bee reports:

California officials still can’t say whether non-citizens voted in the June 2018 primary because a confusing government questionnaire about eligibility was created in a way that prevents a direct answer on citizenship.

"Apparently, tens of thousands of foreign nationals and other ineligible voters, maybe 16 year olds, got registered to vote at the DMV when they applied for their drivers licenses whether they asked for it or not.

Investigators can see that people marked themselves as ineligible to vote or declined to answer eligibility questions, but they can’t tell why. 

“We can’t assume why they declined to answer eligibility questions or why they said they were not eligible,” the Secretary of State’s Office wrote in an internal memo on Oct. 8, 2018.

That email and other documents The Sacramento Bee obtained through the Public Records Act shed light on why the Secretary of State has been unable to say clearly whether non-citizens voted last year. The Bee filed a legal complaint for the records when the Secretary of State initially withheld most of them.

The email shows that, for months, California officials have been examining whether non-citizens voted last year. On Thursday, Secretary of State Alex Padilla confirmed for the first time that his office has an active internal investigation into the matter.

“The Secretary of State’s office does not comment on the details of ongoing investigations,” the office said in a statement. “Determining whether ineligible individuals who were erroneously registered to vote by the DMV cast ballots requires a complete review. The Secretary of State’s office is doing its due diligence by conducting a thorough investigation.”

Spokesmen for the office declined to say how the department could otherwise determine citizenship of those registered.

"This doesn't even include the undoubtedly significant numbers of voters who answered that they were eligible to vote when they were not. Could that have happened when the ballot-harvestors were out patrolling illegal immigrant neighborhoods in search of votes? At a minimum, it most certainly was possible, especially, since claims to voter-eligibility on drivers license forms are never checked in California (it's the honor system), according to voter-integrity activists. It also doesn't help that California sneakily had residents sign to certify on their yellow mail-in ballots that they were California residents(rather than voting-eligible citizens) so as to prevent for illegals any potential perjury charges in addition to vote-fraud charges." . . .

Ballot-harvesting gets just a little harder in California, thanks to Judicial Watch

. . . "L.A. county's approximately 1.5 million inactive voters on those rolls (112% of age-eligible citizens alone) had been perfect fodder for ballot-harvestors, not this last time at midterms (all of the Democratic ballots harvested in the last midterm have made their voters active voters), but for upcoming elections. That rich bank of potential Democratic votes from ballot-harvesting is now gone with this Judicial Watch agreement.

"Ballot-harvesting is a disturbing phenomenon so prone to abuse it's illegal in most states. In California, where it's not, Democratic operatives selectively pay visits to the homes of indifferent voters who don't want to go to the polls or mail in their ballots, engage those voters, and then "help" them fill out their ballots in the way Democrats want. That's why conservative areas such as Orange County were suddenly flipped blue and popular candidates such as Young Kim, who had been winning by large margins on election night - suddenly saw their results flipped. Democrats learned that by extending the election count for weeks, turning in harvested ballot after harvested ballot, they could win any election. " . . .

The 20 Most Annoying Liberals of 2018

PJ Media  These are just honorable mentions; imagine who the top choices are!
"Picking the most obnoxious liberals in a time when liberalism is defined by hypocrisy, pettiness, hatred of middle America, and scolds screaming, “That’s not funny” is like picking the hairiest monkey out of the zoo. With that in mind, here are the 20 most obnoxious liberals of 2018.

"Honorable Mentions: Antifa, Joy Behar, John Brennan, Chris Cuomo, Lena Dunham, Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Griffin, Chelsea Handler, Kamala Harris, LeBron James, Jimmy Kimmel, Shaun King, Ezra Klein, Sally Kohn, Sheila Jackson Lee, Rachel Maddow, Alyssa Milano, Michael Moore, Tariq Nasheed, Rosie O’Donnell, Nancy Pelosi, Kirsten Powers, Jorge Ramos, Chuck Schumer, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Eric Swalwell, George Takei, Shannon Watts, Juan Williams, Montel Williams, Vox" . . .

 And the finalists are......

Steve Scalise Abruptly Ends Twitter Debate With AOC After Her Supporters Attack About Former Shooting

Steve Scalise before being shot by Bernie supporter

Chicks On The Right  (Photos added by TD) "There have been a few times I’ve shut down absolutely gross comments that wish harm upon political opponents.
"I will NOT stand for it. I don’t care HOW much you hate a political opponent. As long as you wish or call for their death, you’re just as bad as they are. I want absolutely nothing to do with that kind of behavior, and will always be the first to condemn it when I see it.
"We are AMERICA. Not some undeveloped third-world country. We’re supposed to be above this. There is NO PLACE for freaking DEATH THREATS in political discourse.
"Unfortunately, more and more we’ve seen our society descend into this. It’s sick.

"According to Fox News:

Democrats celebrate this below...

"US. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., abruptly halted a Twitter debate with newcomer Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York early Sunday after at least three commenters made references to the June 2017 shooting in which Scalise and three other people were shot by a left-wing activist.
“ 'Snipe his a–,” one Twitter user wrote, in support of Ocasio-Cortez. (The user later denied that the post was a call for political violence, writing, “not seeing any violence there sorry” and telling Fox News it referred only to a verbal “sniping.”)
“ 'she’s got better aim than James Hodgkinson, that’s for sure,” another wrote, comparing Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter responses to the marksmanship of the suspect in the Virginia shooting, a Bernie Sanders supporter who later died in a shootout with police.
“ 'Kick his cane,” a third wrote." . . .

Steve Scalise after Democrat shooting

Ocasio-Cortez Fans Joke About Assassinating Steve Scalise
More here on this:

Local Man Who Describes Himself As 'Woke' Sleeps Until Noon Every Day

Babylon Bee

"DENVER, CO—Local man Brayden Allen, whose Twitter profile declares he is a “woke soul in a flock of sheeple,” sleeps until at least noon every day, multiple sources close to him reported Tuesday.

According to Allen’s mother, the 28-year-old man arises around 12:30 p.m. daily, smokes a bowl of “dank kush,” eats several bowls of Fruit Loops, and then gets on the family computer in the den, where he alternates between running a maxed-out, level-100 Death Knight in popular PC game World of Warcraft and visiting several websites like Mother Jones, The Huffington Post, and Slate, while discussing a plethora of social issues on several online message boards.

Allen, who hasn’t woken up early enough to see a sunrise in over a decade, owns several T-shirts, hoodies, and hats that feature sayings like, “woke,” “still woke,” and “get woke.”

“I guess if I had a guiding principle,” Allen said, “it’d be that we all need to stay woke. So many people go through life with their eyes closed, rather than really opening up to the universe and all the injustice going on around us. If you’re not woke to the system that’s against us, you’re sleeping.”

“Wake up, sheeple,” added the man who sleeps over fourteen hours each day after partaking in his nightly marijuana binge and crashing on his mother’s sofa in the basement.

So how was your week, Mr. Romney?

David Limbaugh: President Trump Isn’t the Enemy, Mr. Romney  . . . "Why Now?

"Why did Romney believe he needed to write this now — as his first volley — instead of first expressing his intention of trying to work with Trump to move his agenda forward in what promises to be a very tumultuous time, with militant, partisan Democrats about to assume control of the House? 

"Why the Washington Post? "Why would Romney choose to publish his piece in the overtly liberal Washington Post? Are political liberals and the mainstream media his constituency now? It would be one thing for a newly minted GOP senator to take on Democrats in that publication, but it’s quite another for him to harshly criticize his party’s president in a paper that exclusively speaks for the opposition party — a party that will doubtlessly leverage this op-ed against the president and in favor of the Democrats’ policy agenda, which Romney has been telling us for years he abhors.

"Divisive Statements or Actions Does Romney mean to undermine and demonize GOP border enforcement hawks and other Republicans at this critical time when he piously proclaims that he “will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions”?" . . .

It is not President Trump who threatens the nation’s interest, Mr. Romney, but the Democratic Party, which you have just gone out of your way to assist — whether you realize it or not.

Mitt Romney Is A Bitter Loser Hoping The Socialist Media Can Make Him Relevant Again  . . . "President Trump has slashed job-killing regulations, lowered unemployment to historic levels, returned prosperity to the U.S. economy—particularly to long-depressed minority communities, greatly strengthened the military, all but wiped out ISIS, is on the brink of a historic trade agreement with China while already reaching similar deals with Mexico and Canada, and has brought the North Korean dictatorship into the world community more than any other president before him.

"But, according to Mitt Romney and so much of Washington D.C. who thinks like him,  those things are not “presidential” because how a president talks is far more important than the things he does on behalf of the American people and the world."   Source.

Wile E. Romney retreats  . . . "The president laughed in his face. Romney now heads the Republicans Against Trump caucus, population 1.

"Romney just reminded Republicans that in the past they have tried civility and lost. Then they nominated a candidate who punched back twice as hard and won, and once in office he did not stop fighting back and he has accomplished many things.
"Oh Warren is still running for president. She has a large staff to feed and donors are begging to be misled. But she has a 1/1,024th chance of winning.
"Which is better than Romney's chances." . . .

When Do Legal Immigrants Get to ‘Speak Out’?

DC Whispers  AT: I went to El Salvador last year.  This commentary explains how the experience finally reconciled me with the conservative position on immigration.  I emphasize the pain caused to a beautiful people, the Salvadorans, by their living in a state not like Jesus in Egypt, but more like the Babylonian captivity of the Old Testament.  Sometimes history presents lose-lose scenarios where a trend has no winners. Illegal immigration belongs in such a category.

"Since the Washington Post and the New York Times will never cover what I learned, I will “speak out” here.  I hope it does some good.

"In the Los Angeles Civic Center, my wife took an oath to become a citizen.  After sixteen years together, fourteen years of marriage, and over a decade with a green card, she had finally cleared all the hurdles, made her decision, and decided to become American.

"Few experiences can rival such a scene.  Masses of people from every corner of the globe, dressed in their finest, carry bouquets and snap photographs.  This happened before the homelessness crisis caused tents and human waste to cover the sidewalks downtown.

"I recall waiting with Iranians, Mexicans, Filipinos, Germans, British, Nigerians, Indians, Israelis, Russians, Poles, Cubans, Venezuelans, and Guatemalans, wiping the sweat from our multicolored brows, as we waited for our people to emerge with envelopes full of all-important papers.

"Papers, papers, papers.  I grew up knowing that documents really mattered.  Because before my wife became a citizen, my mother and father were immigrants.  more here ". . . 

Homosexuality is to BLAME For Sexual ABUSE, Not Church, Claims German Cardinal

Socio-Political-Journal  "A German cardinal on Friday provoked anger and controversy when he claimed the Catholic church was not responsible for sexual abuse by its clerics, and instead sought to pin the blame on homosexuality.

“What has happened in the church is no different from what is happening in society as a whole,” Cardinal Walter Brandmüller said. “The real scandal is that the Catholic church hasn’t distinguished itself from the rest of society.”

A study commissioned by the German Bishops Conference and published last year found that more than 3,600 children were sexually abused by Catholic clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014.

But Cardinal Brandmüller claimed that only a “vanishingly small number” of clergy had committed abuses. He said the real problem was homosexuality and claimed it is “statistically proven” that there is a link between homosexuality and abuse.

Society “forgets or covers up the fact that 80 per cent of cases of sexual assault in the church involved male youths not children,” he told Germany’s DPA news agency in an interview a few days ahead of his 90th birthday.

Cardinal Brandmüller’s outburst comes days after the Pope urged Catholic bishops in the US to confront the “sins and crimes” of sexual abuse by the clergy and “the efforts made to deny or conceal them”.

“Everything we do risks being tainted by self-referentiality, self-preservation and defensiveness, and thus doomed from the start,” Pope Francis wrote in a letter to American bishops ahead of a spiritual retreat to reflect on the issue.

Democrats have big ideas for scrapping republican democracy

"Now they want the electoral college to go, and tyranny of the majority to take precedence"

I have little confidence that today's voters are aware of the import of this. After all, they did vote for Bernie Sanders and Alexandria O-C, didn't they?

Monica Showalter  "Not content with just raising taxes and calling it 'good for us,' Democrats are arriving in this new Congress with big ideas. Big, big, very big, ideas.

"No more of that Clintonian reform around the edges, the small-fry midnight basketball thing, Democrat plans today are bigger. They'd like to start by remodeling the Constitution, for one.

"Because, after all, it always seemed to get in the way of their big plans to create a New Soviet, err, American Man, err, Myn, or whatever they call it, so now they're effectively admitting they've never liked it and now they want to get rid of it.

"One of them, incoming Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, has put out a bill to eradicate the entire electoral college.

"According to CNN:

Washington (CNN)Rep. Steve Cohen has proposed two constitutional amendments, one that would abolish the Electoral College and another that would prohibit presidents from pardoning themselves, their families, members of their administration or their campaign staffs.

"The idea of course, is to institute "direct democracy" over the current republican form of government, and ultimately, tyranny of the majority. They'd very much like to rub out the votes of all those people who live in red states who voted for Trump, those bothersome places as Wisconsin, which take so much time and effort to travel to. That way, they can focus solely on coastal blue states and enable their lording it over the red states with no say-so from the latter. Writer Nick Nolte at Breitbart exposes the issue very well:" . . .

Remember these are Democrat voters they're trying um, their "best" to stop

Rich Terrell

Didn't we see something like this in "Blazing Saddles"?

Trump: Heck, maybe I'll just call a national emergency to fund the wall
. . . "Republicans could have pulled similar results out of Obama's shutdown in 2013, wherein the Light-Bringer blocked World War II veterans from their own open-air memorial in order to preserve massive forced taxpayer subsidies for the dismemberment of human children.  But they didn't have the stones, and the media ran roughshod over them.

"Trump's departure from the spineless, bland, pinkies-out Republican status quo is a delight to watch.  It's also a national emergency for once-complacent Democrats." . . .

One possibility for President Trump:  Mr. President: Sit down with the 31!
. . . "Today, I would advise the White House to remember that "it's the number 31 that counts."  The path to many goals is through these 31 members of the U.S. House." . . .

. . . "This is an opportunity, as an old boss used to say whenever I brought a problem to his attention.

"Every one of these 31 is likely facing a tough re-election in 2020.  They all will have to go back to those districts and face questions about border security and raising taxes to pay for health care" . . .

None of these new faces was elected to impeach President Trump or focus on mindless investigations.
The path to border wall funding is through these districts.  The Democrats will lose their thin majority if they lose these seats!

Enough with the Joke Killing, Already!

American Greatness

"An online publication that few people read recently published an article headlined “These 13 Jokes From ‘Seinfeld’ Are Super Offensive Now.” It predictably follows the latest fashion of taking something from the past and finding reasons to be outraged at it—evidently, these voracious outrage whores have run out of targets for their rage in the present.

"One of the striking qualities of the article is how lazy it is. Discussing a joke in which Jerry asks how he can be racist to Chinese women if he “likes their race,” the aggrieved author says, “hopefully the issues with that exchange don’t require further explanation for anyone in 2018.” Responding to another joke in which Kramer mistakes a “fat little mental patient” as a “pig man,” the author simply writes “yikes.”"These types of responses are all too typical in such “think pieces.” Authors of such pieces often entirely gloss over what exactly they find offensive. They simply assume that all good people will agree with them. They do not even attempt to engage with readers who may differ or who may be bewildered at their moral outrage. Instead, they assume that these people are beneath reason and beyond the pale. Be that as it may, it is by no means clear whether they themselves have a good explanation for why the joke they’ve attacked is offensive.

"The intellectual laziness demonstrated by these think pieces frees the professionally outraged from having actually to examine the joke or understand the nuances of what makes it funny." . . .