Anti-Iranian Demonstrations and Turkey, Iran, Qatar, Muslim Brotherhood

DrRichSwier.com  "The Lebanese have been demonstrating for weeks against Hezbollah’s control of their government, which is just another way of saying that they are demonstrating against Iran’s control of their country by proxy.  They are demanding a new government of technocrats not connected with any political party be appointed to run the government.
"The protestors are made up primarily of Sunnis and Christians.  The Iranians have ordered their proxies in both Lebanon and Iraq to do what ever is necessary to put a stop to these demonstrations.  Though the violence here has not been as severe as in Iraq, there has been some shooting with live rounds, and last night Hizbollah thugs attacked a group of protestors with motorcycles.
"In spite of the Hizbollah violence, the non-terrorist Shi’a Amal party has long ago sold its soul to Hizbollah and has sided against the demonstrators.  Likewise the largely figurehead president, Gen. ‘Aoun, a Christian, has sold his soul to Hizbollah, thus he too has sided against the demonstrators (and against his own ethnic group).
"The Iraqis have also been demonstrating for weeks.  While these demonstrations ostensibly began to protest corruption in the government, lack of services, and a rotten economy that can not provide enough jobs, they quickly morphed also into anti-Iranian protests.  What is most interesting about these protests is that they are taking place mostly in the southern portions of the country which is predominantly Shi’a.  In other words, we have Shi’a Iraqis in huge numbers protesting Shi’a Iran’s hegemony over their country.
"In fact, these Shi’a protestors are burning pictures of Khomeini and Khamenei, burning Iranian flags, and chanting “death to Khamenei.' ” . . .

Media Applauds As Melania Trump Is Booed At Youth Opioid Summit

Hot Air

. . . "The First Lady was also booed and jeered as she left the stage upon the completion of her remarks. To be clear, neither of the outbursts of boos and jeers were greater than the cheers and applause she received. Normal polite behavior is not noteworthy, though, in press reports for anyone in the Trump administration universe. Apparently, the tide is turning for the First Lady.

"After thinking about the response to Melania Trump, I reached a conclusion that it is probably to be expected, given the behavior we so often see on college campuses today. If the adults in their lives behave in disruptive ways or encourage the behavior, then it is to be expected that young people mirror that behavior. Remember that nurses and hospital staff members (adults) first protested publicly, outside of the hospital. College professors and public school teachers are often liberal, anti-Trump members of the left. Occasionally there are news stories of a public school teacher putting an anti-Trump question on a test. None of this is helpful for an already divided nation.

"Melania has shown a love for children and young people from the beginning of her time in the White House. She visits schools and hospitals across the country and the world. One of her goals in her Be Best initiative is centered around helping youth deal with the opioid crisis." . . .

A Shameful Abuse of Congressional Power

The sleazy Schiffite proceedings at the House Intelligence Committee were so lopsided, arbitrary, and contemptuous of the rights of the Republican minority on the committee and of the president as the investigated party, no American court could possibly accept a requested prosecution that emerged from such a tainted proceeding.

Conrad Black  "The rise of the hot air balloon of impeaching President Trump has taken place without any attention to several material factors that assure it is not an airworthy concept and is doomed to a hard landing.
"First, and as I have been writing and saying until I am almost blue in the face, not one scintilla of evidence has been adduced that President Trump was seeking a false judgment on the conduct in Ukraine of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. He was asking for an investigation, not seeking to dictate the conclusion. Trump said to President Volodymyr Zelensky in his famous July 25 telephone call that it “looked horrible,” but was clear he was seeking a neutral judgment of whether there had been influence-peddling or other wrongdoing. There is absolutely no legal or ethical problem with that, so this entire controversy has been even more fatuous and unfounded than it appears.
"The foreign service witnesses made evident throughout the unspeakable proceedings of the House Intelligence Committee their personal and policy animosity to Trump. Some—such as Fiona Hill, English as she is—communicated their animus more graciously than others (namely, the stuffed-shirted Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman). Nevertheless, none of them suggested they believed Trump was agitating for a false accusation against the Bidens.
"The government of the United States, administration and Congress, and the entire American population have a right to know if the former two-term vice president was involved in influence-peddling in Ukraine (or elsewhere), and since it has been raised, they all have an equal right to be reassured that he was not. (What Hunter Biden may have done on his own is of no concern to anyone but himself and, if it was improper, prosecutors.)" . . .

American Thinker reveals the left today

Hilarious: CNN's Brian Stelter worries that media aren't sufficiently anti-Trump

"With more than 90% of media coverage of President Trump negative, you might think Trump-haters would take satisfaction in their dominance of political messaging.  But so intense is the hatred, so cult-like the insistence that heterodox thought must be eliminated, that CNN's media critic Brian Stelter is worried that there just hasn't been enough negative reporting about the 45th president of the United States.

"Remember: Stelter is the guy calling Trump supporters cultists who need deprogramming."

Leftists show their class, allowing kids to 'boo' Melania Trump who was there to help them  "In a non-partisan speech to middle school and high school students seeking to protect them from drug use, first lady Melania Trump was booed by the kids, signaling just how bad the leftist school system is in instituting manners." . . .

. . . "There was no reason for it, Melania wasn't there on any political mission, she was just promoting help and protection from drug use, something all school kids tend to hear about. But the booers had the O.K. from their administrators to go ahead and put on a show, and put on a show they did. The event was piously covered by one of the New York Times reporters who covered for Hillary Clinton earlier, explaining it out as something linked to President Trump's statement earlier about the liveability of places like Baltimore under one party blue rule.

"Actually, it was disgusting, a perfect display of children being raised like livestock by far leftists conveying far-left values. Rep. Pete King had an appropriate response to the act, one that most Americans would agree with:

“If any issue should be free from abusive, rude behavior, it should be protecting kids from opioids. Has the left no sense of decency?!?,” King said on Twitter.

(Democrat) Rep. Brenda Lawrence ordered back onto the Democrats' impeachment plantation   . . . "And we heard her the first time.  What's obvious now is that the Democrat machine somehow got to her, telling her to knock it off or they'd punish her in that way they punish all dissenters.  Get back on the Democrat plantation, or else." . . .We heard her the first time.

"Sandy O": The girl is a job-killer "We remember how Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, or the Bronx Evita, as my friend Bill Katz calls her, led the campaign to kill an Amazon project in the New York City area.
"She killed a few thousand jobs, maybe even more. It was a disaster for workers, but Miss Sandy O got another invitation to MSNBC.
"Well, she is back, and she is killing jobs again." . . .

Last week, Bright Power decided to fire its staff and farm all the work out to subcontractors instead of maintaining their own workforce. The firing occurred just as the workers were following Ocasio-Cortez's advice to form a union. . . .

The obsessive, intolerant, despicable do-nothing-but-obstruct Democrats . . . "It is the Left that has undone the tenets of Martin Luther King.  It is leftists who have branded any words they don't like as hate speech and destroyed higher education in America with trigger warnings and safe spaces."
. . . "With his silly secret, Stalinesque and then public overly-gaveled hearings, Schiff has made a complete, unmitigated fool of himself and his party. Beria would be proud. The Democrats are officially the party of rigid identity politics, racism, hate speech, the abrogation of the Constitution and an obsession to impeach the President." . . . 

Democrats are Serving Word Salad as their Main Course  "Recently Bret Baier commented that some of Joe Biden's answers at the last Democrat debate were "word salad." Sleepy Joe's malapropisms have been well known for some time, and probably suggest on-going mental difficulty. None of us would readily suggest that his slips represent a more serious problem, such as schizophrenia, which is known for word salad." . . .

The Danger of Elizabeth Warren

Shame on sour grapes Hillary Clinton for opening the door to ending the Electoral College.

. . . Then there was Warren’s response to an endorsement by an obscure, fringe activist group calling itself “Black Womxn For.” “Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy…,” she tweeted November 7th. . .

Selwyn Duke  "Senator Elizabeth Warren, one-time Indian and beer drinker, would make a very dangerous president. This isn’t just because of her policies, which include ending the Electoral College, banning fracking everywhere, regulating a naturally occurring gas (CO2), being radically pro-abortion, decriminalizing illegal border crossing, and free health care for illegal aliens. It’s not only her complete phoniness, which is in one way actually reassuring: it informs that the aforementioned policies are surely as pliable as her family history narrative. No, it’s also because she’s frightfully out of touch with reality in a largely unrecognized way, one common to leftists.

"Approximately 25 years ago, I attended a local feminist conference concerning how our “patriarchal” society supposedly hobbled girls’ academic performance. Because I’d articulately refuted the speakers’ thesis using facts and reason during the commenting period, some of the organizers approached me afterwards, suspicious, wondering what organization I represented (only myself). The group, perhaps four middle-aged women, remained civil, but the arrows shooting from their eyes betrayed their thinly veiled feelings. Anyway, uninterested in my thoughts, they quickly begged out of the conversation by offering to mail me literature on their positions. I said, jokingly, sure, “as long as you don’t send a hit squad to my house.” The response?

"Very seriously and sternly they replied, “We don’t do things like that.” They didn’t get that it was a joke (and, mercifully, I didn’t get the literature).

"But perhaps those feminists graduated from the Patsy Schroeder School of Comedy. To wit: Engaging in demagoguery during a 1990s budget battle, the Democrats claimed the elderly would have to eat dog food to afford medicine if the GOP prevailed. Radio host Rush Limbaugh then spoofed this in a GOPAC speech, claiming he’d bought his mother a new can opener so “she can get the dog food easier when she has to eat it.”

"Taking this seriously, liberal congresswoman Patsy Schroeder (D-Colo.) appeared on the House floor the next day and emotionally exclaimed that “this is what it’s come to! …Rush Limbaugh actually said he's going to buy his mother a can opener so she can have dog food. Wow!” The point?" . . .

The List Of 31 Democrats (With Phone Numbers) In Vulnerable Districts Who Support Bogus Trump Impeachment

100%FedUp  "Investigative journalist Paul Sperry created a list of Democrat House members who won elections in vulnerable districts, yet took the risk of supporting the radical Democrats in their efforts to undo the 2016 election results by agreeing to move forward with bogus impeachment proceedings.
"Every one of these 31 Democrats who supported the impeachment circus in districts that lean Republican, need to held accountable for their actions at the ballot box in 2020.
"Here is the list of vulnerable Democrat lawmakers who need to be sent home from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020. We’ve included the phone numbers of these vulnerable Democrats, so Americans can let them know how they feel about how them dragging our President through a bogus impeachments circus:" .  .  .

Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.) (202) 225-3361
Lucy McBath’s (D-Ga.). (202) 225-4501-
Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.)  (202) 225-2976
Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.). (202) 225-5905
Abby Finkenauer (D-Iowa)  (202) 225-2911
Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa)  (202) 225-6576
Cindy Axne’s (D-Iowa)  (202) 225-5476
Jared Golden (D-Maine)  (202) 225-6306
Former CIA analyst, Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)  (202) 225-4872
Haley Stevens (D-Mich.)  (202) 225-8171
Angie Craig (D-Minn.)  (202) 225-2271
Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)  (202) 225-2165
Susie Lee’s (D-Nev.)  (202) 225-3252
Chris Pappas’s (D-N.H.). (202) 225-5456
Jefferson Van Drew (D-N.J.) (202) 225-6572
Andy Kim (D-N.J.)  (202) 225-4765
Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.)  (202) 225-4465
Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) (202) 225-5034
Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.) (202) 225-2365
Max Rose (D-N.Y.) (202) 225-3371
Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.)  (202) 225-7944
Antonio Delgado (D-N.Y.)  (202) 225-5614
Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.)  (202) 225-3665
Kendra Horn(D-Okla.)  (202) 225-2132
Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.)  (202) 225-5546
Conor Lamb (D-Pa.)  (202) 225-2301
Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.)  (202) 225-3176
Ben McAdams (D-Utah)  (202) 225-3011
Elaine Luria’s (D-Va.)  (202) 225-4215
Former CIA agent, Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) (202) 225-2815
Ron Kind (D-Wis.) (202) 225-5506

(Updated, 11-27) Video of 6-Foot-2, 220-Pound Transgender Crushing Female Athletes Shows How Unfair Trans Movement Is to Women

Update: Transgenderism and the Olympics  "Next year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics may spell the swift death of the transgender movement as a dominant politically-correct touchstone. Biological men, self-identifying as women, are poised to make a clean sweep of the Women’s Olympics, triggering a very public debate on this third-rail subject. That firestorm, pitting pro-women feminists against extreme pro-transgender progressives, will begin July 24th, just as the Presidential sweepstakes moves into its sprint to the finish line." . . . Full article here

It doesn’t take an expert in anatomy and physiology to recognize that no matter how much estrogen you pump into a post-pubic male — no matter how much a man “feels like” a woman — there are simple biological realities that we cannot ignore.

Western Journal  "More than familiar with controversy, the animated adult comedy “South Park” is catching heavy flak once again this season — this time for the airing of an episode poking fun at the transgender movement.

"Playing on the absurdity of a recent cultural push to include transgender women — better known as men — into women’s athletics, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone pulled out all the stops with their comically outlandish depiction of a hulking, Randy Savage-esque transgender woman’s attempt to “kick some f—ing a–” in a women’s strength competition.
"The proverbial salting of open wounds did not stop there, however, with the episode also happening to coincide with the first day of “Transgender Awareness Week,” according to LGBT athletics blog Outsports.
"Yet, despite the expectedly ridiculous nature of the episode, and the incessant whining of the LGBT community in response, “South Park” seems to have accomplished the goal of any good satire: to make people reflect on the culture.
This episode has done just that, effectively bringing an overwhelming amount of social media attention to an undeniable trend that has seen hulking transgender women dominating women’s sporting events in recent years.
"And this trend finds no better example than that of Hannah Mouncey — whose story made waves for the second time in just over a year in light of “South Park’s” supposedly “transphobic” romp." . . .

The hand of Obama in American culture and politics

Obama’s Deadly School Discipline Policy  . . . "Why does this matter? Remember in 2011, when Barack Obama and his Department of Education were on a socially engineered crusade to artificially manufacture public school safety through race politics? Recall they launched their Supportive School Discipline Initiative that was championed as a national model for discipline reform. Yet, this misguided intervention into local school policy is why the Department of Education should be shut down. Through forced compliance to receive federal funding, this junk science kept many miscreants in the school instead of finding an alternative placement somewhere else and an effective tracking system. States also followed by revising their laws to reduce suspensions and expulsions." . . .

Obama Chides Biden over Failure to Connect to Iowa Voters: ‘You Know Who Really Doesn’t Have It? Joe Biden’  "President Barack Obama reportedly took a swipe at his former vice president Joe Biden during a recent meeting with a Democratic presidential candidate, saying that Biden “really doesn’t have it” in establishing a bond with the electorate, especially in Iowa." . . .

Here Are The Obama-Era Operatives And Former Journos Behind A Covert Propaganda Outfit   "A small cadre of former journalists and Obama-era operatives is creating a Russian-style propaganda outfit designed to mimic real local news and activate left-leaning voters ahead of the 2020 election.
"Tara McGowan, a digital producer for Obama for America in 2011, is raising $25 million from wealthy liberals to create a media company called Courier Newsroom that is designed to deliver information favorable to Democrats. Courier is rolling out newspapers in swing states to counter what McGowan believes is right-wing spin on Facebook and across the digital domain.
Courier Newsroom does not [alert] readers that the publication is actually a liberal project." . . . 

Obama Warned He Would Intervene To Stop Bernie Sanders: Report

One adviser said that while they personally had no knowledge of this, the threat of a Sanders nomination would likely be cause for action.“I can’t really confirm that,” the adviser said, regarding the possibility of Obama trying to stop Sanders. “He hasn’t said that directly to me. The only reason I’m hesitating at all is because, yeah, if Bernie were running away with it, I think maybe we would all have to say something. But I don’t think that’s likely. It’s not happening.”This aversion to Sanders would be in line with Obama’s recent comments. At an Obama Foundation Summit event in October, Obama took aim at political “wokeness” and cancel culture.“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke, and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly,” Obama said.

"Obama also had some disparaging things to say about his old partner, Joe Biden.

"The former president has been meeting with hopefuls in his Washington, D.C., offices for months, “Ostensibly the meetings are for the aspiring candidates to gain some wisdom from the last Democrat to win an open presidential primary and the presidency, but they also allow Obama to collect his own intelligence about what he and his closest advisers have made clear is all that matters to him: who can beat Donald Trump,” Politico writes." . .  .

Liberal Media Scream: CNN frets media not anti-Trump enough

. . . “It’s astounding — that in a media environment where 90% of evaluative comments about President Trump on broadcast news top 90% negative, two cable channels devote 24 hours a day to deriding Trump, and Stelter dedicates his show every week to besmirching any media figures favorable toward Trump — that he could still see a world of journalists lacking adequate disdain toward Trump.”  Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker 

Washington Examiner  "This week’s Liberal Media Scream features CNN’s promotion of host Jake Tapper’s special, “All the President’s Lies.”

"On Sunday, CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter wondered to Tapper: “Do you think journalists are going to look back years from now and regret not doing even more to speak out about this lying and deceit?' ”

"Stelter added: “Clearly, this prime time special is a way to address how ridiculous it’s gotten.”

"Tapper said, “I think some journalists will.' " . . .

Impeachment Democrats Really Don’t Understand What They Are Doing

Rich Terrell; good things do come from California

Impeachment Democrats Really Don’t Understand What They Are Doing  . . . "Do you get the feeling that our “woke” friends, the kind that have been saying #ByeByeElise, have absolutely no clue about this?
"Of course not, because nobody on the Democratic side has been telling the “woke” kiddies that the way to get rid of Trump is to appeal to the American people and beat him fair and square at the ballot box.
"Instead they prefer the shortcut: impeachment. There was the Nixon effort; the Reagan Iran-Contra effort; the Trump collusion-Ukraine effort. Then there were the elections that the Democratic candidate failed to concede: Gore in 2000, and Clinton in 2016.
"It’s tempting to think they do this because they are evil, but I rather think it is because they are stupid: fin de siècle idiots that don’t know any better.
"If the Democrats impeach and remove Donald Trump and then elect Elizabeth Warren in 2020, do they not see that the people that voted for Donald Trump will think they have nothing left to lose?
"No. They really don’t. Because they were so busy building a social justice portfolio for their college applications that they never took any classes in civics."

Nancy Pelosi's worst nightmare slowly comes to life

"I think what we're starting to see, you know, is when the impeachment inquiry was first announced and [Democrats] started to do these depositions, a lot of people were asking, 'Can Nancy Pelosi peel off any Republicans?'" Bade asked "But I increasingly think the question is becoming does [Nancy Pelosi] lose more Democrats? Because Republicans have really unified behind the president, and although two Democrats voted against the impeachment inquiry rules that they voted on a couple of weeks ago, we are hearing behind-the-scenes there are moderates getting cold feet. And it comes back to these ads and people being afraid for being punished for voting to impeach the president."

Kellyanne Conway: Trump Impeachment Efforts Are Adam Schiff’s ‘Ego Trip’

“And you know what’s important to them? The president meeting — receiving a foreign leader yesterday [meaning Monday], applauding Conan the dog that was there when al-Baghdadi, the world’s most-wanted terrorist, was taken out and detonating his suicide vest to kill his own children — this animal. And yet the media was criticizing the way the president received Conan the dog, much the way they criticized the way he took out al-Baghdadi, what he had to say afterward.”

 Adam Schiff: The Sacrificial Lamb  . . ."There is no longer a question as to whether the Democrats will lose in their quest to upend 2016, the only remaining unknowns are where, when, and how badly. And, of course, who is to take the blame? If the buzz around Washington is to be believed, it’s Adam Schiff." . . .

Nunes: CNN, The Daily Beast ‘Are Going to Run for Cover’

Breitbart

CNN's Zucker by Nitwit

"Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, vowed to challenge CNN and The Daily Beast in federal court for reportage that tied him to a meeting with the Ukrainians.

"Nunes told host Sean Hannity that he predicted those two outlets would “run for cover.” However, he pledged to continue his quest until those outlets were held to account." . . .

 I’m going to track them down and I’m going to hold them accountable because this has gone on for too long, and this is the only way we’re going to be able to get retribution and be able to seek fairness and transparency in the media is by holding them accountable.”

. . .

He can't get a break: The POTUS is attacked for welcoming the hero dog Conan to the White House. The Zuckerlings let no minor thing pass, even when our hero dog is honored by the White House.

“And if the answer is, ‘I’m busy impeaching the president,’ they’ll recognize that [move] as [Democrat] Adam Schiff’s ego trip — and not a serious exercise.”

. . . “And you know what’s important to them? The president meeting — receiving a foreign leader yesterday [meaning Monday], applauding Conan the dog that was there when al-Baghdadi, the world’s most-wanted terrorist, was taken out and detonating his suicide vest to kill his own children — this animal. And yet the media was criticizing the way the president received Conan the dog, much the way they criticized the way he took out al-Baghdadi, what he had to say afterward.' ” . . .

"Frozen II": "Wokeness" sucks the joy out of childhood

The Radical Politics of Frozen II; "Disney typically contents itself with selling a sort of mushy be-nice liberalism, but Frozen II may presage a turn to storylines that celebrate extremism." ("Woke Disney" , following the path of the "woke" ‘Charlie’s Angels’ ") 

. . . "Worse, it draws attention to a major gap in the script, which is that Kristoff is singing this song to kill time because the writers have forgotten to give him something to do. When the sisters go off to dig into the family’s hidden past, they not only abandon Kristoff, they do so without even thinking about it. (The witty move would have been for the girls to break out Taylor Swift’s “I Forgot That You Existed.”) I can hear a dozen Jezebel writers high-fiving each other: “Yes! At last, a male character is reduced to window dressing!” That’s two-wrongs-make-a-right reasoning. The first movie painstakingly forged a bond between Anna and Kristoff; the second wastes all that effort and makes Kristoff irrelevant.
"I’ll avoid spoiling the third act, which involves a rip-off of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude for Elsa, a bit of borrowing from the old Frosty the Snowman TV special, and an extremely questionable decision by Anna. But it appears the writing staff are a gang of eager progressives who are so blinded by guilt about America’s past that they didn’t see the huge problem they created for themselves. Sometimes the Left’s enthusiasm for making amends for ancient iniquity looks like random punishment directed at innocent living people. Disney typically contents itself with selling a sort of mushy be-nice liberalism, but Frozen II may presage a turn to storylines that celebrate extremism. Are you ready for Woke Disney?"

The Radical Politics of Frozen II 
Every so often someone tells me, “Cool it, man, you’re reading waaaay too much into this kiddie cartoon.” Or superhero movie. Or whatever. Frozen II pretty obviously is breathtakingly radical. (And also a bad movie; the two don’t necessarily go together.) I didn’t include any spoilers in my review, but I see Slate has published a spoiler-laden essay in contemplation of the cartoon’s (utterly bizarre) storyline and how it brings in themes of colonialism and reparations. I largely agree with Slate‘s writer, who seems somewhat taken aback by how breathtakingly far-left the movie is. A Disney movie that’s to the left of a Slate essayist is . . . something.  

I mention the Slate piece in case anyone thought my piece was unsupported by the content of the film.

Frozen 2’s Bizarre Storyline About Reparations, Explained

"This post contains spoilers for Frozen 2, including the ending."
"When Frozen debuted in 2013, it threw audiences for a loop by having a damsel-saving “act of true love” take place between two sisters. Given the franchise’s history—and Disney’s recent trend of subverting its own princess tradition—savvy viewers would be right to go into Frozen 2 expecting another curveball. But the wildest of guesses couldn’t have predicted that directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, the creative duo behind the first film, would make their sequel about … reparations?! As my postcolonial studies professors loved to say, let’s unpack this." . . .