Protesters Wave American Flags, Sing U.S. National Anthem in Push for Help to ‘Liberate Hong Kong’

Laughing at Stupid Things Liberals Say

CNS News

"Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents, some waving American flags, marched to the U.S. Consulate Sunday, urging Congress to quickly pass legislation providing for U.S. responses to Beijing-instigated rights abuses or attempts to erode the territory’s autonomy.

“ 'President Trump, please liberate Hong Kong,” read a large blue banner and numerous posters held by demonstrators, some of whom also sang along to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” piped through loudspeakers.

“ 'Resist Beijing! Liberate Hong Kong! Democracy Now!” protesters chanted, alluding to concerns about an erosion of freedoms in the former British colony, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 with guarantees it would continue to enjoy a “high degree” of autonomy for at least 50 years." . . .

"Visible on some placards were words that drew parallels between Hong Kong residents’ appeals to the U.S. government and American colonists’ looking to France for support during the War of Independence. “We, Hongkongers and Americans, are united by our yearning for freedom and dignity,” they read."

 Meanwhile here in America:

 

The Taliban Shouldn’t Get within 5,000 Miles of Camp David

National Review

"The fear that the Afghan war will be “endless” shouldn’t push us into ending it badly."

Our distinguished negotiating partners

"The best thing to be said for the planned Camp David meeting with the Taliban is that it didn’t happen.
"President Trump has a weakness for the grand gesture. Hosting the leadership of a vicious, terrorist insurgency that aided and abetted September 11 and is trying to kill Americans as we speak certainly would have been . . . memorable.
"The invitation was part of the effort to bring to a conclusion negotiations that were close to a deal, although not one favorable to the interests of the United States.
"The deal envisioned the U.S. reducing its current troop presence of roughly 15,000 down to zero about 16 months from now, at which point any commitments the Taliban had made would be worthless. We understand the frustration with a war that has lasted 18 years, but it would be foolish to end the “endless war,” or our part of it, with the Taliban once again in position to threaten Kabul and harbor international terrorists who mean us harm. We’ve had recent experience with a president following through on campaign pledge to end a war no matter what — and, of course, Barack Obama had to order troops back to Iraq when ISIS took over a swathe of the country.

Pompeo: Taliban 'Overreached' in Attack That Killed American

"And then the Taliban failed to live up to a series of commitments that they had made, and when that happened President Trump said, 'I'm not going to take that deal. I'm not going to work with someone that can't deliver on their commitments.'"
He said Trump "broke it off," because he did not want to "reward that behavior," referring to Thursday's attack. The secretary of state said Trump "broke it off" because he did not want to "reward that behavior," referring to Thursday's attack.

Democrats would have signed hoping the Taliban would be nice.  Maybe a pallet of cash would have sweetened the deal.

Save California, Ban Environmentalists

If California legislators really wanted to reduce unnecessary paper consumption, they should consider printing fewer nonsense bills.

Daniel Greenfield  "The 6-foot-tall man dressed as a giant receipt stood on a stool next to the emblem of the State Capitol in Sacramento. He was there because Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Fran wanted to ban receipts.

"California had a great ban streak going. It had already banned plastic bags, straws and dog breeders. Assemblyman Ting, who had only been known for wearing bow ties, had declared war on receipts.

"And Ting had his aide wear a giant receipt to show how bad receipts were for the environment. And how better to crusade for the environment than by printing up a receipt 100,000 times normal size?

Photo added by TD

"According to Ting’s people, receipts not only wasted trees and water, but were actually toxic. The San Francisco Democrat explained that receipts were coated in chemicals that weren’t allowed in baby bottles. It’s probably a good thing then that receipts don’t go inside baby bottles. Or inside babies.

"There was even a hashtag, #SkiptheSlip.

"In an extraordinary setback for stupid bans, Ting’s receipt ban bill never made it to the floor. "But Ting tweeted that he was “glad to have raised awareness about the health & environmental harm receipts can cause. Change often takes time.” Next time around, the receipt bill ban will succeed." . .  .

California ban may force shoppers to give private email or text info to every store - If enacted, AB 161 would prohibit large businesses from issuing paper receipts to their customers

California’s Crusade Against Receipts Is Pointless  

"Can grandstanding empty the oceans of plastics and the landfills of trash?

For the last five years, California's been conducting an experiment to find out. In 2016, the state enacted a limited plastic-bag ban. This year, a new law forbids most restaurants from distributing plastic straws unless requested by a customer. Next up? A San Francisco lawmaker has introduced legislation to ban paper receipts unless a customer specifically asks for one. If adopted, proponents argue, the environmental and health benefits will be significant.
"In reality, the “Skip the Slip” measure would have almost no impact on either. Instead, like the plastic-straw ban that preceded it, and which it emulates, the receipt ban is simply another low-impact environmental campaign that asks little of Californians and will accomplish less. Worse, it diverts attention and effort from bigger and far more pressing waste and recycling issues that are negatively impacting the state right now." . . .

LGBT Activists Seek to Destroy Christianity

CNN headlined that "Drew Brees says he doesn't support a conservative Christian organization after appearing in a video they made."  That's what constitutes news at the apple is an apple network.  They must have been really inspired to break into their endless and breathless coverage over a map of Alabama....or Mississippi...to push the anti-Christian agenda.

Toon added by TD since the shoe fits

 Fletch Daniels . . . "The LGBT movement will not be happy until Christianity is completely driven from the public square and criminalized.  This is why Christian bakers, photographers, florists, and business-owners are being sued under the most outrageous pretexts.  These cases are almost always deliberately set up by extreme activists seeking a pretext to destroy what they hate.  They often succeed.

"The goal is to either beat the Christian business-owner in court or bankrupt him through the legal process.  The burdensome and expensive process alone within the administrative state is often punishment enough to accomplish the goal.  The Equality Act intends to take these vile state and local anti-Christian efforts and to codify them into federal law.

"A common Christian mantra is to love the sinner but hate the sin.  Many leftists take the opposite approach and fiercely hate people who don't believe as they do or serve the same master.

"Incidentally, Islam also has strong teachings against all elements of the LGBT agenda, which is why homosexuality is criminalized in many Muslim-majority countries.  But Islam is mostly left alone due to the temporary alliance between liberals and Islam in America, built largely around foolish intersectionality grievance hierarchies and blatant anti-Semitism.

"The LGBT activists won't stop until Christian and Jewish religious leaders can no longer read certain scriptural passages in places of worship because to do so is considered criminal hate speech.  Imagine the state forcing parents to embrace their young children's chosen "gender preference" or risk losing them.

"These activists also will not stop until Christian-owned business, such as Chick-Fil-A, are driven into oblivion.  This week, Chick-Fil-A opened its first restaurant in Canada and was met by hateful protest.  The angry, hate-filled, and irony-challenged protesters declared that they would not allow hateful rhetoric into their community.  Chick-Fil-A doesn't bring rhetoric at all, other than perhaps asking if a customer would like a refill on his iced tea, offered with a smile.  That's quite the expression of hatred.  They don't refuse service to people based upon religious belief or sexual orientation.  But being owned and overseen by Christians is crime enough for liberals." . . .

But then:  Buttigieg Scolds ‘Sanctimonious’ ‘Virtue Signaling’ Chick-Fil-A Protesters

. . . "Buttigieg expanded on his earlier remarks during an interview with BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, offering a critique of liberal efforts to boycott Chick-fil-A over the political views of its leadership. While he sympathized with the views of Chick-fil-A opponents, Buttigieg expressed concern that such efforts could devolve into "sanctimonious" "virtue signaling" that betrays a lack of consistency." . . .

Silly virtue-signaling as practiced by this now-gone Democrat candidate:

Once upon a time, an NFL star would have been praised for telling kids to read their Bible. Today, the LGBT community has just declared war on Drew Brees for sharing a video telling youngsters to bring their Bibles to school.  

. . . "So poor Drew is now an intolerant, homophobic American?

"The intolerance here lies with the LGBT side, not with Drew Brees.

"The LBGT community wants to impose its view of the world on millions of Americans.  These people forget that respecting and tolerating each other's beliefs is what this country is all about." . . .

A French soldier's view of US soldiers in Afghanistan

Thomas Lifson

U.S. Soldiers depart Forward Operating Base Baylough, Afghanistan.

"A reader who, in this day of blacklists, must remain anonymous, sends this observation about our soldiers in Afghanistan:

It's not unusual for the French to comment on anything American and normally in the negative.  What is rare is a Frenchman saying something positive about Americans; in this case heaping praise on our soldiers in Afghanistan.

Blogger and veteran Wes O'Donnell has translated an editorial in a French newspaper from a French soldier serving with a prestigious U.S. infantry battalion.  I recommend reading the whole thing.  Here are some excerpts:

US soldiers are in top physical shape compared to the French, and it appears much better in infantry tactics.  The soldier notes:

Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins, and creatine — they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo.  Our frames are amusingly skinny to them — we are wimps, even the strongest of us — and because of that they often mistake us [the French] for Afghans. [snip] Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how.  Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seems to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest.

" In combat, US soldiers go on the offense in every encounter with the enemy in contrast to soldiers of other nations who have been taught to first defend and await orders:" . . .

Biden or Bust? "Best of a Bad Lot", "Gaffes Are Better Than Suicidal Socialism" . . ."Democrats seem to prefer random senselessness to pre-mediated lunacy."

Victor Davis Hanson

"For better or worse, the Democratic establishment apparently has decided it has no choice but to embrace the former vice president. Can he be propped up and pampered for the next 14 months?"

Tony Branco toon added

"Pundits and politicos play the current parlor game of counting Joe Biden’s daily bloopers, signs of debility, or embarrassments.

"Unlike former “Apprentice” host Donald Trump’s exaggerations and narcissisms, Biden’s fantasies are not baked into an outsider candidacy that by intent offers as a radical change of policy, a tough presidential tone, and unconventional political tactics. Trump is a renegade. "Biden remains what he always was—a deep state fixture. And his brand is mainstream Democrat left-liberal orthodoxy, which supposedly does not include weird and wild La La Land pronouncements.

"Also, Trump is hated by a media that is 90 percent negative in its coverage of his every word, deed, and sneeze. In contrast, the media is in the Biden tank.

"So the reaction to the respective boilerplate gaffes and untruths of each is quite different: when Trump is caught mythologizing, his supporters blame the “fake news” media for taking things out of context—confusing his jest with seriousness, or conflating normal exaggeration and bombast with mortal-sin lying.

"Their dismissal of Trump’s imperfections is perhaps justified when contrasted to the media reaction when one of their own, like Biden, proves a walking, talking prevaricator. The subsequent shock arises despite, not because of the media. Trump when caught can always blame a biased media. Biden can only shrug his gaffe was so egregious that even his media conspirators could not contain its toxicity.

"Trump’s gaffes are usually ones of exaggeration—inflating crowd size or pumping up good economic news. Or they are the overload use of terms like “tremendous,” “fantastic,” “incredible,” and “awesome.” Or they consist of perceived crudity: the supposedly unpresidential promiscuous use of invectives like “liar,” “crook,” and “cheat. Yet in terms of his 2016 campaign promises, he has either met them or tried to meet them.

. . . 

"After all, we remember a much younger Biden’s lies about his college résumé, his plagiarism in law school, his decades of creepy hugs and breathing into the ears and curls of prepubescent girls, his intellectual theft of British Labourite Neil Kinnock’s stump speech and padding it with family distortions, his trademark appropriation of the ideas and buzzwords of others, his racialist commentary (e.g., Barack Obama is our first “clean” and “articulate” major black presidential candidate, Delaware donut shops are all stuffed with Indian immigrants, Mitt Romney would put blacks “back in chains”) and on and on." . . .  Then VDH sizes up each of the other candidates in his own insightful way.

Ben Garrison

Trump and Pompeo do what Democrats like Kerry, Obama, and...well, about any Democrat would fear to do with the Taliban

Several days before Trump canceled the Taliban meeting:  

 Why Is Trump Surrendering To The Taliban?  . . . "The administration has enlisted the diplomatic prowess of an admittedly impressive personage in Afghan-American former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (and, before that, to Afghanistan and to Iraq) Zalmay Khalizad, who held numerous foreign policy posts under Reagan and both Bushes.

"But has there ever been a more impressive diplomat than Henry Kissinger? Yet the deal he negotiated with North Vietnam in 1973, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize, was followed two years later by the Communist North’s conquest of South Vietnam. As the disaster materialized, South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu justifiably declared: “The United States did not keep its word … The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom.”

"The Vietnam Syndrome must stop. There is simply no way to negotiate successfully with an anti-democratic aggressor without military force hanging close over that aggressor’s head. And yet Trump has already announced that U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has been making territorial gains for years, will soon be reduced by more than a third, from 14,000 to 8,600. A deal would reportedly mean the withdrawal of most U.S. forces by November 2020." . . .

A deal at any price is good for Obama-Kerry but not for Trump.


Trump Cancels Secret Meeting at Camp David With Taliban After Attack

. . . "The attack on Thursday, so close to the U.S. embassy, was a clear message from the Taliban: after nearly two decades of fighting, the Americans are impotent and can't defeat us.

"Pompeo said that the talks will resume -- eventually." . . .

For the US to withdraw while the Taliban attacks tells their world that we are being driven out by them.

Trump drops Saturday bombshell: calling-off planned secret Camp David negotiations with Taliban and Afghan president  . . . "In my opinion, it was always fruitless to negotiate with the Taliban. They would violate any agreement whenever they saw advantage in doing so. Their goal is to drive out the Americans the same way they drove out the Soviets, and before them, the British and the Persians. Their time horizon is unlimited, while ours is tied to the four-year presidential election cycle. Any agreement with the Taliban would be worthless.

"My guess is that President Trump knows this. And as his critics now point out, he criticized President Obama in 2012 for negotiating with the Taliban … after “slashing the military." . . .

Liberal Author: ‘Normal’ People Must Stop Wearing Any Kind of Red Hat Because Red Hats Are Scary

Katherine Timpf

Rebecca Makkai, a former finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, apparently believes red hats make ‘disenfranchised people feel unsafe.’

"A prominent liberal author has compared the red “Make America Great Again” hats to Nazi swastikas, and told “normal people” — that is, people who don’t support Trump — to stop wearing any kind of red hat, lest they start “making people scared.”

"Rebecca Makkai, who has been a finalist for both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, made the controversial comments on Twitter, according to Fox News.

"To be clear, Makkai really was talking about all red hats. In fact, she even specifically asked fans of sports teams that wear red hats — such as the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Nationals — to not wear those hats out in public to avoid making other people afraid.

“Not worth making disenfranchised people feel unsafe,” she wrote.

Makkai also had a problem with MAGA parody hats:

“Also, for the love of God: The clever folks wearing “Make America Read Again” or whatever caps — NO,” she said. “You’re making everyone scared. Don’t do it.”

"Honestly, there are so many things wrong with this that I hardly even know where to start." . . .

Tony Branco

'Modern day Pharisee': Pete Buttigieg gets some comeuppance

". . . And pity for him, he's now getting chased in the press by a small-town preacher in Michigan who knows all too much about his game, while the pope position's already filled."

imgflip

Monica Showalter  "Pious Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has a brother-in-law who seems to have had it up to here with his wearing his religion on his sleeve and scolding others. 

"According to an exclusive interview in the Washington Examiner, which found the man out in the wilds of a small town in probably rural Michigan:

"What we see is a modern-day Pharisee," said [Pastro Rhyan] Glezman, referencing the 1st-century Jewish sect that was notorious for demanding its followers adhere to an exhaustive list of trivial laws to earn God's favor. "Buttigieg is a person who's making up their own rules and regulations and, basically, if we don't celebrate and endorse their interpretation of Scripture, our religion is fallible. And that's just not true."

"He expressed considerable frustration with Buttigieg's holier-than-thou stance on abortion, claiming that Christians should only consider a baby human after it draws its first breath, justified by what he claimed to be Bible references. Mighty convenient, of course, as a means of contradicting most Christian teachings since abortion became legal." . . .

Progressive 'Christian' Pete Buttigieg Doesn't Seem to Understand His Own 'Faith'

"During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, after Joe Scarborough talked about how President Obama claims to have accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, the host turned it into a question and asked Buttigieg if he identified with that. Buttigieg responded with an answer that has "dodge" written all over it, saying:

Yes, but maybe that means different things to different people. Because a lot of people feel like they had a Road to Damascus personal encounter with God. For me, just personally, I actually came to the faith more through an appreciation of mystery and a personal humility about the limits to which this part of me [his brain] could get, than believing I had found the answer. I struggle with a lot of doubt and a lot of ambiguity, but that is there in scripture just as that is there in life.

"Anyone who has read the Bible, especially the four Gospels, knows that nothing in Buttigieg's answer is, in fact, an answer to the question. Yes, there is some ambiguity in the Bible, but not about salvation." . . .

The Democrats take a pause from persecuting Christians to try to co-opt them.  . . . "Buttigieg worries about factory pollution and feeding the poor, but he apparently is unable to do the elementary mental work of connecting the two: Rather than starving to death or dying of exposure, the poor in the developed world enjoy a relatively comfortable and secure standard of material life because of those factories and the pollution they produce. " . . .

Beto Undermines Democracy: Falsely Claims Stacey Abrams Was Robbed in GA Governor’s Race

Legal Insurrection

While Beto is not the only Democratic candidate who has kissed the Abrams ring, he has perhaps embraced the stolen election myth more than the rest.

"When failed Senate candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke first jumped into the Democratic presidential race back in mid-March, the sky was the limit.

"His fundraising haul in the first 24 hours was massive, major Obama fundraisers and former aides were lining up behind him, and he was receiving glowing press coverage.

"But a funny thing happened not long after he announced. Interest from the press and liberal political analysts shifted to shiny new candidate and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, and the four female candidates. Speculation about whether or not Joe Biden would enter the presidential race was at a fever pitch.

"As all of this was happening, enthusiasm from Democratic voters for O’Rourke was also waning. After polling at 12% just a few days after he declared his candidacy, his numbers dropped to the single digits, and they haven’t recovered.

"Beto’s response to losing the spotlight to minority candidates like Buttigieg and the ladies is to do what comes naturally to Democratic hopefuls in the primary season: Shamelessly pander to Democratic minority voters.

"There are three main ways he’s tried to do this. One is to accuse President Trump of being a borderline Nazi who is “responsible” for the deaths of illegal immigrants at the border and the horrific mass shooting that took place in O’Rourke’s hometown of El Paso, TX.

"The second is to embrace an anti-America platform by way of asserting that our country was “founded on white supremacy.”

"The third way is one he invokes often: the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from Democrat Stacey Abrams." . . .

O’Rourke: El Paso Shooting Came ‘At the Invitation of Our President’

BREAKING: What Is The Point of CNN?

Free Beacon

"CNN is a mid-tier cable news network that provides non-stop breaking news to bored airport travelers and internet journalists. The network has breathlessly covered President Donald Trump's every fart and utterance since 2015 and has contributed to the "national dialogue" through countless interviews with serious public intellectuals. Michael Avenatti, for example.

"One of CNN's most recent hires, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, was found to have lied to federal investigators under oath prior to his firing in March 2018. In addition to his role as CNN contributor, McCabe has a new side hustle: Keynote speaker at Democratic Party fundraisers.

"And speaking of the network's keen eye for talent, CNN invited celebrity white nationalist Richard Spencer on in June to discuss Donald Trump's "racist tweets." Brian Stelter, who hosts a show called Reliable Sources, recently nodded along as his guest, former Duke University chair of psychiatry Allen Francis, argued that Trump "may be responsible for many more million deaths" than genocidal dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

"It wasn't the first time Trump has been compared to Hitler on the network. CNN host Don Lemon did it in July, which could explain why the New York Times has reportedly banned reporters from appearing on Lemon's show. In addition to interviewing Michael Avenatti dozens of times on his show, Lemon hosted the disgraced lawyer at a party in the Hamptons." . . .

The troubled face of the host MUST be in view constantly

How mainstream reporters disgraced themselves during Hurricane Dorian

. . . I was wrong that Dorian did little damage to the U.S.  The media somehow managed to lower its already debased reputation during the storm, much like Wilde's titular character.  Too bad there's no insurance company or federal agency to clean up the press's self-destructive behavior.  . . . TL

Taylor Lewis  . . . "Every time someone posts a video of a natural disaster wreaking havoc around him, reporters hound his replies, requesting permission to use the footage.

The common exchange goes something like this:

" 'Wow, take a look at this tornado tearing the roofs off of trailer homes in Kansas City. This happened 30 seconds ago in front of me."

"Reply: "Hi, I'm from the Washington Post.  May I use this footage in my report?  Thank you!"

"Second reply: "Oh, and please stay safe!  Did you see my original comment?  I'd like to file the report ASAP.  You own the video, right?"

"So it goes, with numerous reporters from a sundry of publications all asking for the same video to take advantage of the algorithm-driven news cycle.  We're to expect real human feeling out of these sensationalism-chasers?

"One more instance of media malpractice to emphasize my point.  Vox reporter Aaron Rupar thought he had sniffed out not so subtle racism displayed by President Trump regarding the then approaching storm.  As Dorian approached, Trump pointed out that Puerto Rico received $92 billion in aid after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island two years ago.  He then issued a warning to Floridians, urging them to heed "State and Federal instructions."  All-around innocuous, no?

"Not so, apparently.  "[W]hen the hurricane is headed toward brown people vs. when it's headed toward white people," Rupar snarked, thinking he had made a clever and incisive point about the two tweets.  The implication is that Trump warned white people of the hurricane and dickered about the cost of cleaning up the last one in a territory inhabited by non-whites.  In Rupar's reductive formulation, Florida might as well look like Denmark demographically, while Puerto Rico is the Inca Empire." . . .

Thomas Lifson: Media bias called out -- and not by a conservative  "We welcome to the club of media skeptics a former MSNBC host and Dem congressional nominee.  Conservatives can take a small degree of satisfaction that not all Democrats are oblivious to the toxic level of media bias. An article in The Hill by a progressive commentator named Krystal Ball, who ran for Congress unsuccessfully as the Democrat-endorsed candidate in 2010, and who has been a media figure for many years, including as an MSNBC host, calls out some striking examples of misreporting… the sort of thing that President Trump would call “fake news,” though Ball scrupulously avoids using that term." . . .

Ball correctly diagnoses the reason that the media obey the Democrats’ power elite. It is not a conspiracy, per se, but rather a system of incentives that operate on prominent journalists: