Tuesday, November 27, 2018

The NY Times: That was then, this is now


Ocasio-Cortez: A New Depth of Stupidity?

Rich Terrell
Power Line  "Newly-elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the gift to conservatives that keeps on giving. Her ignorance is so profound that it still surprises us, even when we thought we had fully plumbed the depths of her vacuity. This tweet, with Candace Owens’s response, is a classic:

Candace Owens
✔
@RealCandaceO

Imagine comparing the slaughter of 6 million Jews, plus the mandated murders of 1 million Rwandans— to immigrants who just want an upgrade and don’t want to follow any rules to get it.
This is an abhorrent, disrespectful tweet and your low-IQ is an unacceptable excuse for it.
. . . 

Dinesh D’Souza
✔
@DineshDSouza

Until now I thought Joe Biden was the stupidest person elected to public office. Not anymore!

The Daily Caller
✔
@DailyCaller

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Compares Migrant Caravan To Jews Fleeing Holocausthttps://trib.al/ixavwhg 
View image on Twitter
35.4K
6:34 AM – Nov 26, 2018
"It is remarkable that Ocasio-Cortez has made such a fool of herself without even taking office! I can’t recall anything like it. It would be hard for a single person to discredit the entire Democratic Party, but Alexandria is giving it the old college try." . . .

When Democrats lose the feminists and their leftist kindred, the game should be over

Why progressives have finally had it with Lena Dunham and Hillary Clinton



"This has been a rough week for women on the left."It began with Hillary Clinton, the zombie candidate who just won’t die, giving an interview to “CBS Sunday Morning” for a story about the post-#MeToo “pink wave” of younger women running for political office, many for the first time."Guess who became the star?"Yes — as usual, Hillary herself, who spent a good part of that interview defending her husband’s sexual predation while disavowing her key role in what Clinton aides, back in the ’90s, cheerfully called the “nuts-and-sluts” shaming of any and all of Bill’s female accusers. One of those women, Juanita Broaddrick, credibly accused Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978 and has never wavered."Yet during the CBS interview Hillary would hear none of it, deploying the old scoundrel’s defense: You-say-he-is-but-what-about-Trump?"The party that demanded a thorough accounting of Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual history, that insisted Kavanaugh’s accuser be heard and, by the way, forced Al Franken from the Senate for far less is finally reckoning with the Clintons. And the feminists, progressives and party loyalists who have spent decades making excuses for their hypocrisies and profiteering while sympathizing with Hillary’s self-created mythology as the Greatest Victim of Sexism in History have had it. They have come to realize that Hillary and her “slithery rhetoric,” as the late Christopher Hitchens so perfectly put it, are dead weight."So have the left-leaning institutions that long championed her." . . . Read the list: . . .
Will ‘The Clinton Affair’ finally end the family’s stranglehold on the Democratic Party?
If Bill Clinton — and, by extension, Hillary — get their true #MeToo reckoning, but the mainstream media largely ignores it, has it actually happened?
Last week, the A&E channel premiered a stunning six-part documentary produced by the estimable Alex Gibney and directed by Emmy winner Blair Foster. “The Clinton Affair” opens as Clinton’s own presidency did: hailed by women, the left and the media as the first ostensible feminist president, one who appointed Janet Reno as the nation’s first female attorney general, who made Ruth Bader Ginsburg the second woman in history to sit on the Supreme Court, and who made clear that his wife, for better or worse, would not be relegated to ceremonial duties but would lead the charge for health care reform.
Then came Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey.
Before going any further, let’s acknowledge the obvious: Our current president has been accused of sexual harassment by 22 women. He has cheated on his wives. He has been caught saying vile and indefensible things, and he too should be held to account. Yet the mainstream media’s excoriation of Donald Trump for these wrongdoings — some alleged, others acknowledged — exposes their hypocrisy when it comes to the Clintons: one standard for the guy whose politics are roundly despised, another for the liberal hero.
The Clintons have long been a drain on the Democrats, but somehow the party hasn’t the guts to deliver the message directly. Rather than hoping Bill and Hillary quietly go away — as if the couple hasn’t already telegraphed intentions to the contrary — the Dems need to have a true reckoning with the Clintons.
It begins with the women. . . .

Obama Used Tear Gas At Least 80 Times at Border

Breitbart Border
Despite media reports to the contrary, CBP officers and agents operating under the Trump Administration responded the same way they did during the Obama Administration when, in 2013, migrants rushed the same stretch of border, Breitbart News’ Neil Munro reported.

"Under the Obama Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) law enforcement officials, including Border Patrol agents, utilized tear gas against migrants at or near the border at least 80 times between FY2012 and early FY2017.

"CBP officials reported the use of tear gas and pepper spray to push back “assaultive” caravan migrants attempting to enter the U.S. illegally on Sunday. The agency began using these particular sprays during the Obama administration in 2010.
"Breitbart News confirmed the CBP began using tear gas (2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile – CS) in 2010, though the available usage data initiates in FY2012.
CBP Use of Tear Gas Report - FY2012 through FY2018
CBP Use of Tear Gas Report – FY2012 through FY2018 (Source – U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
"The agency also reportedly began using pepper spray (Pava Capasaicin) at about the same time.
CBP Use of Pepper Spray Report - FY2012 through FY2018 (Source - U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
CBP Use of Pepper Spray Report – FY2012 through FY2018 (Source – U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
“CBP takes Sunday’s employment of use-of-force very seriously. CBP reviews and evaluates all uses of force incidents to ensure compliance with policy,” a CBP spokesman told Breitbart News in response to an inquiry. “Over 1,000 individuals who were part of the so-called caravan attempted to cross illegally into the U.S. by breaching sections of the fence and using vehicle lanes in and near the San Ysidro Port of Entry. This group ignored law enforcement agencies in Mexico and assaulted U.S. Federal Officers and Agents assigned to respond to the situation in San Diego.”

If We Want Unity, Barack Obama Has to Go Away

The Resurgent

If you loathe President Trump's childish petulance but pretend it isn't Obama's defining characteristic, you're a fraud.

"These days I find myself less inclined to bicker over politics than ever before. I truly and honestly want to find as many points of agreement, points of unity, and common ground as possible with my fellow countrymen. It may seem counterintuitive then that I don’t feel overly inclined to defend President Trump when he’s maligned by the left. Some of it is unfair, to be sure. But finding common ground means I also have to be intellectually honest enough to realize that President Trump thrives on controversy, so he intentionally provokes it. No one can look at his conduct, his word choice, his Twitter feed, and come to any other conclusion than Trump stokes the fire because he loves the fight. Some on the right may be convinced that is the best way forward for our extraordinarily divided country. I am not.

"But the only way I can be right is if there are folks whose politics runs counter to mine, that is, those on the political left, who are willing to renounce the voices of division on their own side as well. This can’t be a one-way admission of needless division. That’s largely how we got Trump in the first place. The reason so many on the right are thrilled with Trump is because they feel as though they have been subjected to left wing Trumps for years, and now the real Trump is giving the left a taste of their own medicine.

"I’m of the belief that Presidents who seek to pit one group of Americans against another based on ideological or philosophical differences are a danger to the thinning moral fabric of our republic. Certainly not everyone will agree on everything, and anyone in leadership will have to take positions on issues that will be opposed by a significant portion of the population. But taking such positions doesn’t require sticking one’s finger in the eye of those who disagree or portraying them as buffoons, immature, or evil.

"So it’s long past time for honest brokers on the left to disavow such conduct, and cut ties with those who indulge in it regularly. Like Barack Obama. If it’s unhelpful when Trump does it, it is unhelpful when Obama does it. And he does it. All. The. Time.

"Most recently:" . . .
Pictures added by TD

Oh, Good Grief! Lord of the Rings Slammed for Perpetuating Racism through Depiction of Orcs

National Review

Apparently, J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved fantasy series could have ‘dire consequences . . . for society.’



"On a recent episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, sci-fi author Andrew Duncan argued that the depiction of the orcs in Lord of the Rings is racist and will have “dire consequences . . . for society.”

“ 'It’s hard to miss the repeated notion in Tolkien that some races are just worse than others,, or that some peoples are just worse than others,” Duncan said. “And this seems to me — in the long term, if you embrace this too much — it has dire consequences for yourself and for society.”

"First of all, I think that it is important to point out that orcs are A) not people and B) not real, so starting some sort of social-justice movement over their treatment is probably the biggest, most idiotic waste of time that I’ve ever seen — and this is coming from an adult woman who spends time playing a game called “Pet Shop” on her phone.

"Second of all, the idea that The Lord of the Rings’ daring to have an army of villains is going to have “dire consequences . . . for society” is absolutely bananas. I’m not much of a betting gal, but I’d bet everything I own that not even a single person has ever seen or read The Lord of the Rings and become racist as a result. Nobody is honestly sitting there thinking, “Man, all those orcs were bad. I guess that must mean that X race is bad! I’m a racist now!” I honestly refuse to believe that this would describe even a single person, let alone so many people that our whole society is going to suffer because of it." . . .


Rich Terrell cartoon added by TD

Several States Have Found Ways To Mitigate Obamacare’s Damage To Their Health Insurance Markets

Galen Institute


"A few states have found a key to undoing some of Obamacare’s damage to their individual health insurance markets by redirecting some federal funding to help sick people. These states are providing separate assistance to those with the highest health costs, thereby reducing premiums and increasing enrollment for healthy people driven out of the market by soaring costs.
"In a new paper published by The Heritage Foundation, scholars Doug Badger and Ed Haislmaier detail how several states have successfully used Obamacare’s Section 1332 waiver authority to begin to revive their non-group health insurance markets with better risk-mitigation strategies.
"They explain in State Innovation: The Key to Affordable Health Insurance Choices that Obamacare’s rigid and centralized federal regulation of the nongroup market has driven premiums up, choices down, and forced millions of people out of the individual health insurance market.
"Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act permits states to seek waivers from certain federal health insurance requirements if they believe they can do a better job as long as their program doesn’t cost the federal government more money. But the rules the Obama administration subsequently issued were so strict that they make it very difficult for states to get approval for the broader innovative reform proposals envisioned by the provision’s authors.
"Alaska, Minnesota, and Oregon have received waivers from the Trump administration for targeted reform initiatives that have been successful in lowering premiums for individual health insurance by separately subsidizing those with the highest health costs. And the lower premiums also mean increased enrollment.
"According to the paper:
“Alaska was the first state to obtain a section 1332 waiver to implement this type of approach. The state sought a waiver of Obamacare’s “single-risk-pool” requirement, under which people who are likely to file large medical claims must be pooled with those who might never see a doctor. This Obamacare mandate had touched off a vicious cycle, in which insurers charge ever higher premiums, repelling the healthiest customers but not the sickest, resulting in premiums that are increasingly affordable only to those who receive federal subsidies.
. . . 

A senior leader for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in a tweet Sunday called for Israel to be “terminated.”



WND  "A senior leader for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in a tweet Sunday called for Israel to be “terminated.”
“ 'Iran’s regime calling Israel a ‘cancerous tumor’ is like the pot calling the kettle black. All the people of that region will be better off once both murderous regimes are terminated,” wrote Hussam Ayloush, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, or IPT, reported.
"IPT said the tweet might lead one to assume Ayloush, the head of the Los Angeles chapter of CAIR, has an equal disdain for the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel.
But while Ayloush would like to see regime change in Iran, he has “a history of describing Israel in ways that echo Iranian rhetoric calling for its destruction,” IPT said Monday.
"A delegate in California’s Democratic Party*, he has referred to Israelis as “zionazis” and repeatedly equated the Israel Defense Force with ISIS terrorists.
“ 'You know how many hundreds of Jewish American kids are recruited to join the Israeli occupation army? Hundreds. Every year,” Ayloush said in May.
“ 'They leave their country, leave America, to go join with an army that is engaged, with no debate, in major violations of human rights, and maybe some would argue, and I’m one of them, war crimes.”
"The CAIR leader, continuing the equation of jihadists with IDF soldiers, added that the U.S. government has never established a Department of Homeland Security counter-terrorism program to track Americans who go fight for the IDF.
"No one, he said, has ever sought to find out “why would normal Jewish American kids leave their home and join to be part of an army committing war crimes.' ” . . . Read more

*Get that? California. That's C.A.L.I.F.O.R.N.I.A

Caravan migrants fake photos for gullible, biased U.S. press

Monica Showalter  "In the propaganda war, the organizers of the migrant caravan are intensely aware of what works for the U.S. press, and how to play its denizens to get the "narrative" going. They've got their number. And nowhere was it better played than with the recent series of photos seen during the migrant caravan surge that charged the Tijuana-San Ysidro border Sunday.
"Start with the "iconic" photo of the migrant mom in the Disney t-shirt moving her two toddlers out of the path of tear gas sent in response to rocks. NBC actually called this utterly staged photo 'iconic,' and rest assured, you can bet they are going to try to get themselves some news award for all that iconicity. Here's the New York Times promoting the pic on Twitter:"

 . . . 
"To start, why the heck was that woman even in that scene when so many other migrants told the press they stayed away precisely because of the dangerousness of the attempted border bust? Look at the bottom of this San Diego Union-Tribune piece here by Sandra Dibble, who's a genuinely honest journalist, beause she got the real story:
Armando Colindre, 21, said he stayed away from Sunday’s march, because he has two small children and a wife to take care of. “They were going in peace, nobody wanted to offend anybody,” he said.
"The Associated Press had independently similar reporting:
Mina and his wife and their toddler daughter avoided the march and were glad they did after hearing others recount what unfolded, he said as he sat in the doorway of his family's tent at Tijuana sports complex using a toothbrush to clean the fine dust that coats everything off his sneakers.
"It gets worse. Turns out the photo was staged, as these Twitterers have pointed out - lots of apparent photo posing in this picture here.
" To start, why the heck was that woman even in that scene when so many other migrants told the press they stayed away precisely because of the dangerousness of the attempted border bust? Look at the bottom of this San Diego Union-Tribune piece here by Sandra Dibble, who's a genuinely honest journalist, beause she got the real story:
Armando Colindre, 21, said he stayed away from Sunday’s march, because he has two small children and a wife to take care of. “They were going in peace, nobody wanted to offend anybody,” he said.
"The Associated Press had independently similar reporting:
Mina and his wife and their toddler daughter avoided the march and were glad they did after hearing others recount what unfolded, he said as he sat in the doorway of his family's tent at Tijuana sports complex using a toothbrush to clean the fine dust that coats everything off his sneakers.
"It gets worse. Turns out the photo was staged, as these Twitterers have pointed out - lots of apparent photo posing in this picture here.


Jim Acosta’s lecturing of President Trump about harmlessness of caravan requires an apology

Thomas Lifson
Watch as this intelligent, impartial reporter seeks the truth about the border-crossers

"After the scornful laughter subsides, Jim Acosta of CNN really owes an apology to President Trump for his inaccurate contentions about the harmlessness of the caravan and his prediction that they wouldn’t storm the border. He should have heeded Yogi Berra, who warned, “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
"Twitter is full of humor at Acosta’s expense:"
Hold on. CNN's @Acosta told us the migrants in the caravan would NOT be jumping fences, walls, and borders. They clearly are. Will there be an on air apology to @realDonaldTrump?

Border Agent Pushes Back Against CNN Fake News During Live Interview

At least this CNN reporter shows some honest curiosity

DC Whispers  "After weeks of CNN attempting to describe the migrant caravan as “women and children seeking asylum” a U.S. border agent corrects that falsehood, letting both CNN and the American people know that the caravan is made up primarily young and violent men who are not true asylum seekers but rather criminals willing to break U.S. laws to get what they want and using women and children to do so. Watch the video, share the video, and help to educate others as to what is really going on at our southern border. The men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol are working hard to stop an attempted invasion and the below interview is yet more proof of that."   Read more



What will it take for the American press to be respected?

Caravan migrants fake photos for gullible, biased US press



Robert Glenn posted:
"Staged photo ... same women and child in other caravan photos... "Shameful the left, democrats, mainstream media led by use humans (women & children) to push their far left agenda..."

Weasel Zippers
Jim Acosta lectured President Trump about the migrant caravan saying: - Not an invasion - Hundreds of miles away - Would not jump border wall I overlaid actual footage from today of the migrant caravan storming the border to invade the US over Jim's question. I hope you enjoy: VideoAs usual, Mr. Acosta wants to debate the president
Media Equalizer