Tunnel Wall

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Toxic PC from CNN

CNN Legal Analyst Areva Martin Accuses David Webb Of ‘White Privilege’ Before Learning He’s Black "It was a rough day for author and CNN legal analyst Areva Martin on Tuesday.
" 'Martin accused Sirius XM radio and Fox Nation host David Webb of “white privilege” during a segment on a radio program before he broke the news.
“ 'Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should’ve been better prepped. I’m black,” Webb said.
"The embarrassing moment occurred during a discussion about experience being more important than race when determining whether or not someone is qualified for a particular job." . . .

Trump Makes A Joke About Melania And Salad — Cue The CNN Meltdown
. . . "The First Lady is generally in charge of such events, nothing sexist about it. And imagine someone so stupid as to think the ‘Second Lady” refers to Ivanka.
"Via Daily Caller:

A CNN panel accused President Donald Trump of being “sexist” Monday night because the president made a joke about first lady Melania Trump making salads.
The president cracked the joke to the national championship-winning Clemson football team during their Monday visit to the White House. Trump noted that because of the shutdown, he had to personally purchase a spread of fast food for the team’s visit, and joked that his food choices were better than having the first lady make them “some quick little salads.”
CNN anchor Erin Burnett and analyst Joan Walsh accused the president of being sexist for assuming that the first lady would prepare the salads.
Keep reading…

Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence: I Loved Trump's Fast Food; Can't Wait to Come Back!

"Donald Trump's fast food plan worked ... because Clemson's star QB Trevor Lawrence tells TMZ Sports he LOVED the President's McDonald's spread at the White House and can't wait to do it again!
"Lawrence and the rest of the Clemson Tigers arrived to 1600 Penn to celebrate their National Championship victory over Alabama ... where President Trump personally selected the food menu.
"I think we're going to serve McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King with some pizza," Trump said to the media earlier that day ... explaining, "I would think that's their favorite food."
"When the team arrived, the fast food -- Big Macs, Filet-O-Fish sandwiches and more -- was waiting for them on silver platters on a table decorated with gold candelabras ... real fancy stuff."

More on this at Breitbart

Can you believe the WaPo actually fact-checked Trump's "mile-high" remark?
"The paper's fact checker spent more than 1,200 words investigating Trump's fast food spread"

Trump claims he bought 'over 1000 hamberders' for football champs after White House said he only bought 300
. . . "Ahead of the junk food chow-down, which featured an assortment of unhealthy dishes from McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King, deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said the President had copped “more than 300” burgers.
"Gidley did not return a request for comment on the inconsistency.
"Some Twitter users questioned how it was even possible for the notoriously word-mangling commander-in-chief to misspell "hamburgers.” "

So schoolyard. Remember when a class had a goat that kids all made fun of things they did?

Supreme Court: Have Democrats salted the earth for a Ginsburg replacement?

Tony Branco

Elad Hakim

Nobody deserves to go through the humiliation Justice Kavanaugh was forced to endure. However, given the Court's potential and dramatic shift to the right, this appears to be inevitable. The president and congressional Republicans will need to stand strong together should another vacancy occur in the nation's highest court. If history is any indicator, filling that vacancy will likely be a long, arduous, and difficult process

. . . "The fact that congressional Democrats treated Gorsuch and Kavanaugh with such disdain and viciousness leads to a broader question: will future Supreme Court nominees willingly subject themselves to the type of treatment that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh had to endure?  More importantly, should they have to endure such treatment?  The way congressional Democrats' treated Gorsuch and Kavanaugh undoubtedly marred the confirmation process and will likely serve to deter some potentially well qualified prospects from seeking this highly coveted role.

"The president needs to start preparing now for Ginsburg's eventual retirement.  With this in mind, he should begin to thoroughly vet any potential nominee so that there are no surprises down the road.  As Senate Democrats proved during the Kavanaugh confirmation process, nothing is off limits.  The president and Republicans need to approach this hearing with the mindset that Democrats will go to any lengths to defeat his nomination and prepare any potential nominee accordingly.

"Nobody deserves to go through the humiliation Justice Kavanaugh was forced to endure. However, given the Court's potential and dramatic shift to the right, this appears to be inevitable.  The president and congressional Republicans will need to stand strong together should another vacancy occur in the nation's highest court.  If history is any indicator, filling that vacancy will likely be a long, arduous, and difficult process" . . .

Mr. Hakim is a political writer and commentator and an attorney.  His articles have been published in The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, The Western Journal, American Thinker, and other online publications.

Sweden as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's socialist role model

Charles Battig

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has defined (unwittingly?) her own socialist yearnings by offering a modern Swedish political model – one in which "love and confidence in [our] country" are grounds for ostracism and political isolation.

". . .  They consider themselves social conservatives with a nationalistic foundation.  Their party appealed to those Swedes appalled by the liberal immigration policies and subsequent social turmoil instituted by the Social Democrats.
"These immigration policies had opened the gates to 163,000 asylum-seekers in 2015.  Liberal financial support to these immigrants (primarily from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan)  at the expense of Swedish retirees' own monthly pensions and access to health care, concerns over pressure on the welfare and housing system, a shortage of doctors and teachers,  and a rise in crime have led to social unrest and have become election issues.  Failure of the majority of the immigrants to find jobs and assimilate into Swedish society was evident by 2016, and Sweden began to offer cash incentives for immigrants to leave Sweden for their countries of origin.
"Even so, the liberal ruling factions (Social Democrats-Green, Center Party, Liberals) appeared unwilling to the admit the failure and unpopularity of their immigration policies.  To talk openly about it in public, or privately, was to risk being labeled a racist or Nazi.
"The Swedish public finally got a chance to vote on these issues in September 2018, and the Sweden Democrats ran on a platform calling for a referendum on European Union membership, a freeze on migration, and a crackdown on crime.  In its official platform, the party says its anti-migrant policies are driven by "love and confidence in our country."
"What did winning third place in the general election get the Sweden Democrats party?  They were frozen out of the next step in forming a functioning government.  All the other political parties refused to acknowledge their win and refused to work with them.  Democratic Sweden, extolled by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, effectively disenfranchised 17.6% of the Swedish electorate; their votes did not count with the other parties.  The ruling classes determined that such views had no place in Sweden.  On the U.S. political landscape, our similar voters have been labeled the "deplorables" by the Democratic Party leadership.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Define "Temper Tantrum"

Is it OK for Congress to target Catholic groups?

Jewish World Review By Jonathan Tobin J

"There may be no membership organization with a more politically incorrect name than the Knights of Columbus. "Calling its members "knights" is bad because it reminds us of Medieval Europe and all the awful things that were committed them in the name of the church. But it's also named for the man who discovered the Americas for Europe — the natives already knew it was there before Christopher Columbus steered the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria to what is now the Dominican Republic on Oct. 12, 1492 — and therefore conjures up all the horrors of colonialism and imperialism that has caused the annual celebration in his name to be renamed "Indigenous Peoples Day" in many jurisdictions. But whatever we might think about the horrors of the Crusades or whether Columbus did far more harm than good, the Knights of Columbus (KofC) are not the advance guard of a new Spanish Inquisition. They are a Catholic service organization with 2 million members that has raised more than $1.5 billion for charities in the last decade. In the United States, it dates back to the 19th century and spoke out in favor of religious freedom at a time when discrimination against Catholics was widespread. Its stands were staunchly pro-immigration, but also — reflecting the views of its members — strongly anti-Communist, as well as socially conservative. " . . . Read more

For Tender, Heroic Men — the Knights of Columbus . . . "The Knights are far from an “extremist” organization that a judge ought to take leave of. To the contrary, we need more of the Knights. A judge needs the fraternity all the more. But every man, whatever his calling, can benefit. And we should be thankful that they’re a part of the life of our country. May they grow, and may we learn to treasure opportunities for virtuous fellowship and civic service, opportunities for encouraging one another to be our fullest and best." . . .

Kamala Harris’s Outrageous Assault on the Knights of Columbus

National Review

"No longer is the debate over Christianity in the public square. It is over Christians in the public square."

"Kamala Harris is set to announce her candidacy for president sometime around Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What sort of chief executive would she be? Well, here’s your first clue: On December 5, Harris posed a series of written questions to Brian Buescher, President Trump’s nominee for district court in Nebraska. The third question reads as follows:

Added by TD

Since 1993, you have been a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men. In 2016, Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, described abortion as “a legal regime that has resulted in more than 40 million deaths.” Mr. Anderson went on to say that “abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.” Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?

"Harris wasn’t finished. Follow-ups included “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?” and “Have you ever, in any way, assisted with or contributed to advocacy against women’s reproductive rights?”
"Buescher, a Nebraska native and graduate of the Georgetown Law Center, replied that he joined the Knights when he was 18 years old; that his involvement includes charitable work; and that his job as a judge is to apply the law regardless of his personal convictions. Strong answers. That he had to offer them is a disgrace." . . .

Todd Starnes: Yes, Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono are religious bigots . . . “This isn’t just about the Knights of Columbus or Catholics, this is an ongoing attack from the extremist left of the Democratic Party to silence people of faith and run them out of engaging in public service based on their religious beliefs,” Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, wrote in a statement.
"But I was especially encouraged to see Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, a newly announced presidential candidate, call out members of her own party for “weaponizing religion.”
“We must call this out for what it is – religious bigotry,” she wrote in a scathing op-ed in The Hill. “I stand strongly against those who are fomenting religious bigotry, citing as disqualifies Buescher’s Catholicism and his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus. If Buescher is ‘unqualified’ because of his Catholicism and affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, then President John F. Kennedy, and the ‘liberal lion of the Senate’ Ted Kennedy would have been ‘unqualified’ for the same reasons.' ” . . .

11-Year-Old Docked Points for Not Bashing Trump

PJ Media

"To say that some people dislike Donald Trump may well be the understatement of the year. It's hard to imagine any duly elected president seeing so many protests, yet here we are.

"It's so bad that now an 11-year-old in Annadale, New York, was docked 15 points on a homework assignment because she failed to answer a question demanding students bash Trump:

Vincent Ungro, a dad from Annadale, New York, has an 11-year-old daughter who attends I.S. (Intermediate School) 75. She asked him for help with her vocabulary homework last Friday night because she was trying to fill in the blanks from a word bank to complete her assignment -- and was really puzzled.

“President Trump speaks in a very superior and _________ manner insulting many people. He needs to be more __________ so that the American people respect and admire him,” read one homework sentence.

The next question was: “Barack Obama set a _________ when he became the first African-American president.”

And what were the choices for the two questions, you ask? These three words: “haughty,” “humble,” and “precedent.” You can guess which ones were meant to be the “correct” answers in this teacher’s mind.

Ungro, 46, told his daughter not to fill in those blanks -- and wrote a note to the teacher, Adria Zawatsky, on the homework sheet, as The Post noted. “Please keep your political views to yourself and do not try to influence my children on them. Thank you,” he wrote.

"The teacher docked the points -- which Ungro called "vindictive." . . .

Get this: the teacher said she was evaluating Trump's personality and not his ability to govern.

Related: When a Classroom Door Closes, a Liberal Assault Begins; How to safeguard your child's rights and education.
"As conservative parents, we have an uphill fight — whether against the biased media, our current progressive government, or our increasingly liberal educational system. The deck is stacked against us by liberals and leftists, something we successfully voted to change come Jan. 20.
Sometimes, pure incompetence rules the day, as schools do away with traditional measure of academic success." . . .

If President Trump is really a racist or a Nazi, then please explain these facts

Alicia Colon "I recently watched that insane viral video of a Millennial snowflake losing his mind when a Trump-supporter walks into a store where he works. He shouts, "F‑‑‑ your f‑‑‑‑‑‑ president! He's a racist, stupid piece of s‑‑‑!" Always we hear that accusation hurled at Trump by anchors in the mainstream media and congressional Democrats. But has that ever been true?
. . . My husband worked for Trump when he took over the Old Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street and transformed it into the Grand Hyatt.

What politician could do this?

. . . He was then married to Ivana Trump, and for twelve years, my husband watched him completely salvage the dying Midtown area of Manhattan.  Not only did he never see a hint of racism in the man, but he was convinced he was completely colorblind.  He staffed the hotel with a majority of minority workers in all positions, from executive managers to housekeeping.
. . . My husband was raised in the Deep South and knows what a racist looks and acts like, and it ain't our president.  In 1998 and 1999, Jesse Jackson was praising Trump for a lifetime of help to the black community.  Trump had been involved with Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and was instrumental in opening Wall Street to it.  Of course, Jesse Jackson has never been one to adhere to deep convictions.  He was against abortion and redefining marriage before succumbing to the Democrat left wing.
. . . If, as critics allege, Trump is truly a Nazi, then why has he been heralded as Israel's biggest supporter?  Why was he the only president to move our embassy to Jerusalem?  Why didn't he object to his daughter's conversion to Judaism?  It's so easy to hurl accusations of racism and Nazism because frankly, the brain-dead mobs are interested only in vandalism and mayhem and totally disinterested in truth.  They also have no idea what racism and Nazism historically mean.
. . . What on Earth did Donald Trump do to deserve these unfair labels?  Apparently, he told the truth about what was happening to the country he loves so much.  The fact is that Trump has never been against immigrants or immigration – just the abuse of our laws.
. . . It's amazing how the Dem politicians and media anchors keep a straight face every time they use the phrase "this country was built by immigrants" to condemn President Trump's war against illegals invading our borders.  These anti-Trump demagogues absolutely refuse to use the word "illegal" instead use the euphemistic term "undocumented."  Sorry, but this great country of ours was built by settlers and (legal) immigrants from all over the world who wanted to become citizens.  Those massing at the border today are nothing but invaders seeking to take advantage of whatever benefits they can con out of misguided communities that have forgotten the obligation they have to Americans already here. " . . .
Even more here...

Public Disdain For Russia Probe Intensifies, Trump Approval Climbs — IBD/TIPP Poll

Tony Branco

Investor's Business Daily . . . "Politicized Investigation
The IBD/TIPP Poll found that 51% agree that "the president's opponents are using the ongoing special counsel investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion as a way to delegitimize the 2016 election."
That includes most independents (52%), as well as the vast majority of Republicans (70%). The poll found that almost a third of Democrats (31%) agree with that statement.
Overall, 44% disagreed with that statement.
"Americans can see through this charade and recognize the 'open secret' — that the real goal of the opposition and the media is to delegitimize the outcome of the 2016 election and remove Trump from office one way or the other," said Raghavan Mayur, president of TechoMetrica who directed the poll.

"Trying To Rein In Trump
"In addition, a plurality believe that the special counsel investigation has less to do with finding Trump campaign connections with Russia, and more to do with reining Trump in as president.
"When asked if "the Department of Justice launched the special counsel investigation to rein in President Trump," 48% agreed, and 45% disagreed." . . .

Women Don’t Belong in Combat Units

Never entrust our national safety to Democrats. They tend toward being surrender monkeys.

Heather MacDonald (Entire article posted here): "The Obama-era policy of integrating women into ground combat units is a misguided social experiment that threatens military readiness and wastes resources in the service of a political agenda. The next defense secretary should end it.
"In September 2015 the Marine Corps released a study comparing the performance of gender-integrated and male-only infantry units in simulated combat. The all-male teams greatly outperformed the integrated teams, whether on shooting, surmounting obstacles or evacuating casualties. Female Marines were injured at more than six times the rate of men during preliminary training—unsurprising, since men’s higher testosterone levels produce stronger bones and muscles. Even the fittest women (which the study participants were) must work at maximal physical capacity when carrying a 100-pound pack or repeatedly loading heavy shells into a cannon.
Ignoring the Marine study, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all combat roles to women in December 2015. Rather than requiring new female combat recruits to meet the same physical standards as men, the military began crafting “gender neutral” standards in the hope that more women would qualify. Previously, women had been admitted to noncombat specialties under lower strength and endurance requirements.
Only two women have passed the Marine Corps’s(sp) fabled infantry-officer training course out of the three dozen who have tried. Most wash out in the combat endurance test, administered on day one. Participants hike miles while carrying combat loads of 80 pounds or more, climb 20-foot ropes multiple times, and scale an 8-foot barrier. The purpose of the test is to ensure that officers can hump their own equipment and still arrive at a battleground mentally and physically capable of leading troops. Most female aspirants couldn’t pass the test, so the Marines changed it from a pass/fail requirement to an unscored exercise with no bearing on the candidate’s ultimate evaluation. The weapons-company hike during the IOC is now “gender neutral,” meaning that officers can hand their pack to a buddy if they get tired, rather than carrying it for the course’s full 10 miles.
Lowering these physical requirements risks reducing the American military’s lethality. A more serious effect of sex integration has become taboo to mention: the inevitable introduction of eros into combat units. Putting young, hormonally charged men and women into stressful close quarters for extended periods guarantees sexual liaisons, rivalries and breakups, all of which undermine the bonding essential to a unified fighting force.
A Marine commander who served in Afghanistan described to me how the arrival of an all-female team tasked with reaching out to local women affected discipline on his forward operating base. Until that point, rigorous discipline had been the norm. But when four women—three service members and a translator—arrived, the post’s atmosphere changed overnight from a “stern, businesslike place to that of an eighth-grade dance.” The officer walked into a common room one day to find the women clustered in the center. They were surrounded by eager male Marines, one of whom was doing a handstand.
Another Marine officer, who was stationed on a Navy ship after 9/11, told me that a female officer had regular trysts with an enlisted sailor in the engine room. Marine Cpl. Remedios Cruz, one of the first women to join the infantry, was discharged late last year after admitting to a sexual relationship with a male subordinate. Army Sgt. First Class Chase Usher was relieved of his leadership position for a consensual relationship with a female soldier that began almost immediately after she arrived at his newly gender-integrated unit in Fort Bragg, N.C.
Long before infantry integration became a feminist imperative, evidence was clear that a coed military was a sexually active one. In 1988 then-Navy Secretary Jim Webb reported that of the unmarried enlisted Navy and Air Force women stationed in Iceland, half were pregnant.
President Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, had seemed a good candidate for reversing the integration of women in combat units. A former Marine commandant, Mr. Mattis had previously addressed the incompatibility of eros and military discipline. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand challenged him about these politically incorrect views during his confirmation hearings, but he left enough wiggle room to preserve his options.
Unfortunately, Mr. Trump chose to ban transgender people from serving in the military rather than tackling gender integration. Mr. Trump cited the cost to taxpayers of sex-reassignment surgery for soldiers, but those costs are minute compared with the future medical bills for women’s combat-battered bodies. And women pose a far greater challenge to combat-unit cohesion than do transgender troops, because of their numbers and the nature of sexual attraction.
The argument for putting women into combat roles has always been nonmilitary: Combat experience qualifies soldiers for high-ranking Pentagon jobs. But war isn’t about promoting equality. Its objective is to break the enemy’s will through precise lethal engagement, with the lowest possible loss of American life. The claim that female combat soldiers will perform as lethally as men over an extended deployment entails a denial of biological reality as great as the one underlying the transgender crusade.
Female engineers and others did return fire when attacked in Iraq and Afghanistan. But performing well in incident-related combat is a far cry from serving in a dedicated ground-combat unit, with its months of punishing physical demands.
The incoming Pentagon chief can expect an aggressive grilling on gender integration from the Senate Armed Services Committee. He should promise to resolve the claim that, when it comes to combat, there are no significant physical differences between men and women. He could do it by pitting an all-female infantry unit against an all-male unit and seeing how they measure up.
Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.”

Prominent lawyer sought donor cash for two Trump accusers

The Hill "A well-known women’s rights lawyer sought to arrange compensation from donors and tabloid media outlets for women who made or considered making sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential race, according to documents and interviews.

"California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets in return for a commission for herself, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.

"The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort.

"Bloom, who has assisted dozens of women in prominent harassment cases and also defended film executive Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, represented four women considering making accusations against Trump last year. Two went public, and two declined" . . .