Pompeo to John Kerry: You're Not Secretary of State Anymore. If You Want to Revert to Weakness on Iran, Try Winning an Election.

Townhall

". . . [Guy] BENSON: I know that you can’t get into too much of the intelligence as you just said, but are there any additional details about the nature of the threat matrix that you’ve been seeing from Iran in the last few days? And can you comment at all on The New York Times report this morning that some of this may have been related to new images of sea-based missiles from Iran? 
POMPEO: OK, it’s important for everyone to understand that this is 40 years of aggression by the Islamic Republic of Iran, so to put it into just three days or five days or seven days takes out of context the threat and the desires of the Islamic Republic of Iran. BENSON: Right.
 POMPEO: So all of this – all of this is part and parcel of the challenge of a revolutionary regime that wants the 'Great Satan' and Israel to go away. So you have to take the data set along with – right – it’s always about capability and will, demonstrated will, ill will against the United States of America. So the things that you see, and I can’t comment on the New York Times story, other than to say that the things that you’ve seen us do to attempt to achieve deterrence against the Islamic Republic of Iran, from their malign activity, is a direct response to eight years of an administration that allow the terror regime to expand. Right? During the JCPOA, we had increased missile capabilities coming out of Iran. We had their capacity to deliver harm from Houthi rebels in Yemen -- all of these things Iran did happened because the previous administration appeased the Islamic Republic of Iran. So we are pushing back, and when you push back, tension does increase. Our mission set is very clear. We know what we’re asking the Iranian leadership to do, and we are very focused on achieving that, and we’re trying to do so in a way to make sure that we keep every American diplomat and every American soldier, sailor, airman and Marine safe as well. Later in our discussion, I asked Pompeo about one of his predecessors from the previous administration, John Kerry. President Trump has called for Kerry to potentially be prosecuted under the obscure and rarely-enforced Logan Act over his ongoing back-channels with the Iranian regime, reportedly urging Tehran to wait out the current administration. For this meddling. Senator Marco Rubio has also called for a formal investigation into Kerry's conduct. What does Pompeo make of this controversy? He made his sentiments quite clear: . . ."

Trump: John Kerry Is Sabotaging Talks With Iran, Should Be Prosecuted For Violating Logan Act  . . . "But John Kerry violated the Logan Act. He's talking to Iran and has been, has many meetings and many phone calls. And he's telling them what to do. That is a total violation of the Logan Act." . . .

Surely Democrats have somebody better than this

Ocasio-Cortez embraces paranoid conspiracy theory Her tweet:

Abortion bans aren’t just about controlling women’s bodies.They’re about controlling women’s sexuality. Owning women.From limiting birth control to banning comprehensive sex ed, US religious fundamentalists are working hard to outlaw sex that falls outside their theology.

. . . "Maybe there is such a side to Ocasio-Cortez, her heretofore invisible interest in understanding her opponents in a deep and human manner. But I actually see nothing in her words or her demeanor that suggests such a personality, instead of the arrogant know-nothing who thinks she understands everything because being "morally right" is more important th[a]n being factually correct."

Monica Showalter: Nikki Haley smacks down cowardly Comrade Ocasio-Cortez over Venezuela  "It's always so good to hear from Nikki Haley! 

"The former ace United Nations ambassador went after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a brickbat, calling out the socialist congresswoman for her cowardly failure to articulate any response to the ugly effects of socialism run by a vile dictator in Venezuela." . . .

Haley tweeted:

When a reporter asked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if the Maduro regime is legitimate, she offered this non-answer: “I defer to caucus leadership on how we navigate this.” A simple “no” would have sufficed.

. . . "The Daily Caller noted that it's not the first time Haley has exposed the socialist claptrappers in Congress for what they are. Here's a two-week-old smackdown tweet they found of Haley giving Ocasio-Cortez's fellow socialist Rep. Ilhan Omar the facts of life on how socialist Venezuela has become a hellhole:

Nikki Haley

✔@NikkiHaley

.@IlhanMN the avg Venezuelan adult has lost 24 lbs. Babies have no medicine. Families have to walk miles in the heat to get the only meal they may have that day. All bc of the corrupt Maduro regime. Your comments are so far from the truth. Cuba and Russia appreciate your support.

The old "Clumps of Cells" trick.

Death Always Follows Democrat Policies  . . . We're no longer up against simple tax-and-spend Democrats; we're up against Democrats whose ideology — an amalgam of the worst mass-murdering and mass-suffering ideologies in world history — has made killers of our kids." . . .

American Thinker

About the cartoonist, Mike Harris.
Here is a link to Mr. Harris's political cartoons.

And here he is in Wikipedia

. . . Harris enlisted in the New York National Guard in 1986 as a 19D Cavalry Scout. He was selected for Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as an armored cavalry officer in 1988, and is proficient with a variety of small arms, armor weapons and demolitions. He is also a martial arts student, having studied judo, aikido, Taekwondo, and T'ang Soo Do.^[2] He has served in a variety of positions with the Army Reserve and National Guard, and was assessed to the Active Guard Reserve program in 2004. Harris has served combat tours in Iraq and continued to produce artwork for the Army informally while working in operational assignments. He retired from the Army in 2016, at the rank of lieutenant colonel, with 30 years of active and reserve service.

Previous TW post: Alyssa Milano's epic fail on sex strike for abortion driving her nuts

Woman fired from think tank for disagreeing with transgender ideology

UK Daily Mail

The Bridgehead   "Over at The Spectator, James Kirkup published a long-form analysis of why transgender rights are eliminating women’s rights by destroying any objective definition of what it means to be a woman in the first place. (Can you think of anything more “patriarchal” than women’s records in sports being held by biological men?) He cites one example in particular that highlights just how Orwellian the transgender movement has become:

The reason those women are too frightened to speak out about sex and gender now has a name: Maya Forstater.Forstater used to work for the Centre for Global Development, a think tank with an office in London. She no longer does, and says that’s because she talked, openly and calmly, about sex and gender and her view that trans women are male. She says that view is rooted in biological fact, that a person who is born male cannot become female no matter how they identify, because sex is an objective fact not influenced by subjective belief.According to details of Forstater’s case reported in the Sunday Times, this position is connected with her departure from the CGD.  Her employers told her that by expressing her views about sex and gender, she had behaved in a manner inconsistent with the organisation’s rules and culture.In an email to Fortstater about her views, a CGD manager is reported to have said: ‘You stated that a man’s internal feeling that he is a woman has no basis in material reality. A lot of people would find that offensive and exclusionary.’Forstater is seeking to take her former employers to an employment tribunal over her departure from the CGD, arguing that her ‘gender-critical’ views of transgender issues should be recognised as protected beliefs in law.  She’s raising money to bring her case here.

. . .
 Even if you don’t give a fig about Maya Forstater and the trans issue, I hope you’ll bung her a few quid to ensure her case is properly heard and explored. Because this time, it’s women scared of losing jobs for saying things – respectfully and lawfully – that a few committed and organised men don’t like. But if someone like Maya Forstater can lose her living for saying that someone born male cannot become female, who knows who the targets will be next time?

"The answer to that question is a simple one: anyone who disagrees with the transgender lobby—and is willing to say so out loud."

The High Price of Cultural Change

The American Spectator  "That’s because people die and new ones get born, and along the way Things happen: events of one kind and another; wars, elections, recessions, new inventions. The so-called “culture” bounces off these various events in surprising ways.

Photos added by TD

"Which is another way of saying, I don’t think Doris Day —sad to say, the late Doris Day — would make it in today’s culture; the culture of Lady Gaga and the “Avengers” series and let us not forget (as if the media would allow it) “Game of Thrones,” to whose coming demise the front page of, yes, the Wall Street Journal pointed us on the day Ms. Day’s own demise made the news.

"There is always a breathless quality to cultural change and to sheer newness. Doris Day once was new — a big band singer in the year of grace 1945, when Bernie Sanders and I were tricycling around our respective communities. She went on to artistic heights on the basis of her goshdarn niceness and freshness. Not excluding her rich talent, obviously; but niceness was her calling card. You had to like, if not love, her; she compelled it. Any notion of Doris Day cavorting in the manner film directors now prescribe as normative — well, there wasn’t any such notion. She retired before such notions took hold.

"Cultural lookbacks are inherently dangerous, in that they can lead to accusations of embarrassing fixation on the often mythological beauty of the past. Certainly any lookback at the 1950s, for refreshment of memories concerning Doris Day’s hold on the general public, involves contrasting those times with our own. I think we would agree “niceness” is not the conspicuous feature of today’s culture. Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters would not call him nice. Nor would the president’s most fervent adversaries call Speaker Pelosi especially sweet; still less so House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler.

"Never an especially kind and generous calling, politics seems in the 2000s to paddle about in human bile. We can accept the necessities of political warfare, and the reality of cultural fragmentation, while yearning for some higher, more generous forms of behavior. Maybe the kind we entertained when Doris Day was a big hit: someone (leave out the sexual innuendoes) you’d enjoy just being around the house with." . . .

Does America deserve such leaders as we are asked to choose?

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

Beto O'Rourke's dumber-than-dumb cult of personality branding  "Pollster Frank Luntz went on Fox News and said that basically, looking at the numbers, Beto O’Rourke was running the dumbest presidential campaign, well, ever.
"There’s an understatement, if there ever was one.
“ 'All of Beto was about him,” Luntz said on Fox. “It wasn’t about policy, it wasn’t about politics. It was cult of personality.” . . .

Beto Has Some Regrets  . . . "You get the idea. As well-intentioned as this diatribe was, it felt like O’Rourke was trying to cram every single talking point he could into a place where he was really just being asked about his own behavior and choices. (Like his quote about being “born to be in it,” which some understood to be a kind of arrogance about the presidency but O’Rourke said was really just about public service.)" . . .

Intimidatable: Beto Complains About His ‘Privilege,’ Agrees Vanity Fair Cover was ‘Elitist’  "White. Male. Privilege. Is anyone else sick of white males having to apologize for their race and sex?

"Give me a break. He expects this to relaunch his campaign? Because we all want a sad little man as the leader of this country.

"Hate President Donald Trump all you want, but he does not take crap from anyone nor does he apologize, especially for his race and sex.

"Leftist co-host Joy Behar asked O’Rourke if his Vanity Fair cover came off as “elitist,” even though I’m pretty sure President Barack Obama had his face plastered all over magazines in 2008 and 2012.

"For some reason, O’Rourke agreed as he cowered before the women. From The New York Times:" . . .

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski advised former Texas Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke not to apologize for being white Wednesday morning.
. . . 

I have campaign advice for Beto if he is re-launching his campaign. It is this: Beto, stop apologizing. Do not apologize for being on “Vanity Fair.” Own it. Do not apologize for having a very rich father-in-law. Own it. Do not apologize for taking Republican positions in the past. That’s what you did, OK? That’s what Donald Trump did. He took democratic positions his whole life. Own it. Explain why you did it. Do not apologize for being white.

"After listing a few other things O’Rourke shouldn’t apologize for, Scarborough said, “Let your opponents whine. Ignore the blue check marks. If you’re on Twitter, get off of it. Just start talking to voters. They don’t live on Twitter. They do not live on Twitter. Stop apologizing.” The advice came after O’Rourke said that his appearance on the cover of “Vanity Fair” was a mistake and that he never should have said that he was born to run for president during an interview with “The View” Tuesday.

“ 'Yeah, I think it reinforces that perception of privilege and that headline that said I was born to be in this — in the article, I was attempting to say that I felt that my calling was in public service. No one is born to be President of the United States of America, least of all me,” he responded Tuesday." . . .

How did these ladies feel about Obama on Vanity Fair's cover? If O'Rourke is intimidated by these people how will he stand up for America's interests? How? How? How?

Impeachment traps Democrats

Don Surber  . . . "Democrats now have to sell a Vichy government to women who wear in pink knit hats in the middle of summer. Oh my.
"On October 3, 2018, the Washington Examiner reported, "Adam Schiff opens door to impeaching Trump over family tax fraud."
"On Sunday, Schiff told ABC, "We are already a bitterly divided country, and an impeachment process will divide us further."
"How does that play to his Lock Him Up constituents?
"For seemingly eternity, politicians have made promises only to discard them once they got to Washington. Voters tolerated it.
"Then came Donald John Trump. He is keeping his promises. His wall is going up. Democrat voters are looking at it and wondering why no one is stopping the Orange Man from building the wall.
"Democrat voters also want to know why the Republican electorate gets what it wanted, but they don't.
"Now then, tell me what their motivation is to vote in 2020 if they will not get what they want even if they win?
"Hey, if Pelosi can live with Hitler, they can too." . . .

https://earloftaint.com/

If Trump Is Impeached, Nadler Says He Might Cry ... 'Out of Happiness'

. . . Not only do Democrats want to impeach Trump even in the absence of a clear "high crime and misdemeanor," but they would take immense pleasure in destroying Trump, regardless of the damage that will do to the country." . . .

Rep. Jordan Wants Cummings, Waters To RELEASE Their SECRET Memo That Calls For Trump Attacks!

The Political Insider  "Rep. Jim Jordan, House Oversight and Reform ranking member called out Rep. Elijah Cummings, Chairman, by sending him a letter demanding the release of a non-public memo that he and Rep. Maxine Waters wrote up in regards to their strategy to go after President Trump." . . .
. . . 

"This is crazy! It looks as if Cummings and Waters are conspiring or can we use the Democrat’s word, colluding to subvert the president in coordinated attacks. I should think this can be seen as illegal and better yet; they could face charges from the Justice Department. Wouldn’t that be sweet?

You have sought to avoid public scrutiny of your quest to obtain the President’s financial information. First, you wrote to Mazars in secret to request the President’s financial information; second, you executed a nonpublic MOU to coordinate with Chairwoman Waters; and finally, you broke your promise to hold a public business meeting to debate a subpoena to Mazars. Your nonpublic MOU has now become a matter of significant public interest due to your unprecedented actions.

In the interest of promoting the utmost transparency about the Committee’s business, I encourage you to release publicly your MOU with Chairwoman Waters and any other signed or unsigned MOUs that you have entered into so that the American people can understand the extent to which you and other Democrat chairpersons are engaged in an orchestrated effort to attack the President for political gain.

Here is the letter from Jordan: . . .

Alyssa Milano's epic fail on sex strike for abortion driving her nuts

Add caption

Thomas Lifson  "You knew this was coming, didn't you?  When feminist and left-wing activist actor Alyssa Milano (remember her attending the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings?) announced that she was going on a sex strike "until we get bodily autonomy back" (meaning, apparently the right to kill a baby in utero, and possibly even after birth, as the governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, suggested), a lot of people laughed."
. . . "It's unclear if she was even vaguely aware of the literary roots of such blackmail in Aristophanes's Lysistrata, first performed in 411 B.C., but she quickly clarified that her poor husband (or other possible lovers) was not the target — so it was not really serious, but rather a publicity stunt:

In the CNN essay, published Monday and co-written with fellow activist Waleisah Wilson, Milano said her sex-strike post accomplished its goal: to spark powerful responses.

"It got the country talking about the GOP's undeniable war on women. And let's face it, with so much going on every day in the news, sometimes we need an extreme response to get national attention," the op-ed reads. "So now that we have your attention: Our reproductive rights are blatantly and systematically being stripped away before our very eyes."

"Yet the Georgia bill was signed into law, despite her stunt.

"Alyssa was not pleased — and reacted exactly the way you would expect a pampered Hollywood type to: a destructive tantrum:" . . .

Liberal stupidity on sex flares up again in abortion arguments

Milano and Cancela are poster children for liberals' moral obtuseness and relentless navel-gazing.  They make reductio ad absurdum arguments, intended as a "gotcha" against conservatives, that work only when one accepts liberal premises.  But conservatives reject liberal premises, resulting in these arguments comically boomeranging: the absurdum turns out not to be all that absurd, after all, and the same liberals who want unrestricted sex and cheap marriage end up defending chastity and marriage's comprehensive sacredness.  Aquinas, eat your heart out.

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Elijah Cummings’s changing views on holding the AG in contempt of Congress

Liberty Unyielding

Another scowling Democrat

. . . "But contrast that with what Cummings said in 2012 when a Republican-led House chose to hold then-AG Eric Holder in contempt for refusing to turn over requested documents in connection with the Fast and Furious scandal:

"You've been holding the Attorney General to an impossible standard. [He has been] protecting documents he was prohibited by law from producing.

"Which is precisely the case with Barr and the Mueller report.

"Since the quote leaked out, Cummings issued a statement claiming that the “situation then was fundamentally different than the situation today.” He goes on to note that Holder released 7,000 pages of documents to Barr’s none, which is blatantly false. But the larger point that Cummings is overlooking is that neither Holder nor his boss, then-Pres. Barack Obama, was subjected to a two-year-long investigation by a special counsel whose word was deemed so sacrosanct that Democrats swore to uphold his findings — until they were released and failed to conform to the Dems’ expectations."

For your convenience, you may leav

Top Democrats’ defense of Rashida Tlaib’s Holocaust inversion and revisionism is unforgivable

Legal Insurrection

"Tlaib falsely portrayed Palestinians as the true victims of the Holocaust who suffered by providing Jews ‘safe haven’ during and after the Holocaust. Yet Nancy Pelosi and Stenny Hoyer demand an apology not from Tlaib, but from her critics."

"Unfortunately, much of it has focused on her use of the term “calming feeling,” which has enabled defenders to claim the term was taken out of context. But those defenders ignore the rest of the context, which was far worse than the term “calming feeling.”

"Here’s what Tlaib said (emphasis added):

“There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports. And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.”

"Putting aside the “calming feeling” wording, the Tlaib statement contains two themes: First, the Palestinians are the true victims of the Holocaust because it forced the Jewish survivors on them causing loss of land, property and lives; and Two, Palestinians helped create a safe haven for the Jews at much personal and national sacrifice.

"The first point, portraying Palestinians as the true victims of the Holocaust, is a historically perverse and malicious claim. Six millions Jews died, Jewish communities throughout Europe were wiped out, yet it is the Palestinians — who backed the Nazi effort — who are portrayed as the victims. It is fair to consider this an offshoot of Holocaust Inversion, the attempt to portray the Jewish victims of the Nazis as the Nazis. It’s also a historical theft, an attempt to deprive Jews of their history and to repurpose that history to attack Jews.

"The second point, that Palestinians supposedly helped provide safe haven to Jews during and after the Holocaust, is a historical falsehood of immense magnitude. We explored this falsehood in our prior post, pointing out that the Arabs of the British Mandate (who did not refer to themselves at that time as Palestinians, a more recent term), boycotted, slaughtered, and discriminated against Jews throughout the time period, and did everything they could to prevent Jews from finding a safe haven. The Grand Mufti was a strong supporter of Hitler and the extermination of the Jews." . . .

We got your comforting feeling right here:

These Are Real 'High Crimes'

 Ann Coulter

"Contrary to the image of potheads as peaceful stoners, "cannabis-dependent psychotic patients were four times as likely to be violent," Alex Berenson writes in his magnificent new book, Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence. "No other factor was nearly as important. Alcohol use, which was common among the patients, made no difference." So where are all the marijuana-induced murders? 

"As Berenson says, they're hiding in plain sight. But until you're told about the cannabis-psychosis link, you don't even notice. Crime reporters don't want to look uncool by asking about the perp's marijuana use, and, inasmuch as being high isn't a legal defense, neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers have an incentive to request that suspects be tested for pot. 

"At the end of his book, Berenson runs through a slew of depraved murders, inexplicably gruesome -- until you find out the perpetrators were high on marijuana. None of these were reported as cannabis-induced homicides.

"In 2016, 35-year-old comic book artist and screenwriter Blake Leibel scalped his girlfriend, stripping her skull to the bone, drained her body of blood, then hid out in their West Hollywood condo with her desiccated corpse for more than a week. Only after the girlfriend's mother tricked the police into knocking down the door did they discover the grisly scene. 

"The girlfriend had complained to her mother that Blake smoked "huge" amounts of marijuana.

"In 2017, Dean Lowe, a 32-year-old cannabis dealer in Cornwall, England, beat his girlfriend to death, chopped her body into tiny pieces and made a necklace of her teeth. Like Leibel, Lowe lived with her remains in their apartment for eight days, disposing of her body parts, bit by bit, by flushing them down the toilet and leaving the rest for the garbage collector. 

"The murder was discovered months later, after Lowe texted a cousin, saying, "Either I'm getting set up or I've murdered (my girlfriend). I had a blackout, hazy memory and woke up with a body on the floor. I am scared so I just got rid." 

"Lowe had long boasted that he was "the biggest stoner in the world." . . .

My Reality