What’s Kamala Harris’s Real Weakness as a Presidential Candidate?

("comma-la")"Harris will undoubtedly unveil some more applause lines and big promises at the next debate. Any of her rivals ought to respond, “This all sounds great, but we’ll have to wait a few days to see if Senator Harris really means what she’s saying tonight or whether she’s changing her position again.' ”

National Review  . . . "But is Gabbard right that Harris’s weakness is that she has “no background or experience in foreign policy”? Whether or not you think that’s Harris’s biggest weakness, there’s not much sign that Democratic primary voters worry about that much. Barack Obama had limited background and experience in foreign policy, as did Bill Clinton. For that matter, so did Donald Trump and Mitt Romney.

"The only figures on the Democratic debate stage who have background and experience in foreign policy beyond the usual congressional committees are Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and maybe Seth Moulton and Joe Sestak. (Marianne Williamson’s experience is less with other nations than with other spiritual planes and realms of consciousness.)

"No, the soft underbelly of the Harris campaign is her flip-flops and the general sense that she’ll say whatever she needs to say to please the audience in front of her." . . .

Let's see how President Harris would do with her military:

Shame on Robert Mueller—Again

BEFORE & AFTER THE MUELLER REPORT

Both cartoons by Nitwit Graphics

Conrad Black  . . . "Mueller looked the part: tall, slender, slab-faced, jut-jawed, and unsmiling, all business, and no soft bonhomous weakness for anything but a thorough plumbing of the depths of Trump’s unutterable hucksterism, skullduggery, and larceny. The commentariat, though well gone in the saddle after their long incumbency as the country’s political sages, dressed for the part again and took to the airwaves with the smug confidence of veterans and the zest of those addicted to tearing down administrations they found distasteful.
. . . 

Schiff

"The pitiful attempt by Mueller to leave Trump a live grenade with the pin pulled was made even more absurd by his attempt to run away and hide. He spoke to the press inarticulately from a printed text for less than 10 minutes, took no questions, and said he would have nothing more to say. Finally, the two egregious Democratic committee chairman who still claim to have evidence of impeachable offenses by the president but can’t cite any, Representatives Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)*, both seriously ill-favored men, called Mueller as a witness, and designed a timetable for his appearance clearly intended to prevent the Republican members from really getting at Mueller.

"If his stumbling press statement was indicative of his forensic talents, Mueller will have a real sleigh-ride with a gang of Democrats angry because he couldn’t find anything on the president and Republicans who rightly consider his entire performance an unprofessional and morally corrupt operation." . . .

*Both from NewYork and California: the two states that will elect the first President after Democrats do away with the Electoral College. TD

Five “Woke” Takes on Moonwalk 50th Anniversary

https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/07/five-woke-takes-on-moonwalk-50th-anniversary/

"Why can’t these people ever simply enjoy an American success?"

. . .  4. CNN:  “She endured obscene phone calls, had to use men’s bathrooms, as one of NASA’s first female engineers”Excerpt:During the historic launch of Apollo 11 which put the first men on the moon, rows of men in shirts and ties lined the consoles inside Kennedy Space Center.But one woman stood out — 28-year-old JoAnn Morgan.Morgan, who worked as an instrumentation controller for the mission, was the only woman allowed inside the firing room where NASA employees were locked during Apollo 11’s historic lift off on July 16, 1969.Morgan needed to be in the room to alert the test team if anything went wrong. But she had to get special permission to be there. 

Chip Bok cartoon added by TD

3. The Guardian: “‘Whitey’s on the moon’: why Apollo 11 looked so different to black America”Excerpt:The Apollo programme, motivated by the space race against the Soviet Union, cost $25.4bn, the equivalent of $180bn today; only the Vietnam war hit taxpayers harder. While Nasa warned Congress “No bucks, no Buck Rogers”, polls showed a majority of Americans opposed the “moondoggle”.The black press questioned how the price tag could be justified when millions of African Americans were still mired in poverty. Testifying to the US Senate on race and urban poverty in 1966, King had observed “in a few years we can be assured that we will set a man on the moon and with an adequate telescope he will be able to see the slums on Earth with their intensified congestion, decay and turbulence”.

. . . 

No Raising Hands: CNN Makes It Easier For Democrats To Fool The Public In Next Debate

I&I  "For all of Donald Trump’s moral flaws – the women, the profanities, the routine personal insults, the continual unpresidential conduct – he has raised the moral bar in one all-important area: This president has kept a great many of his promises (even if that wall is nowhere near to being built). And this outsized fact will be a huge advantage next year against whichever conventional politician wins the Democratic nomination.

"CNN’s decision not to allow any “raise your hand” questions in the Democrat candidates’ next round of debates, which the cable news channel will telecast on July 30 and 31 from Detroit, is first and foremost an example of pure media bias. Thanks to those no-escape-hatch questions in NBC’s first round of debates last month, we learned that virtually all of the candidates would extend taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens; most would downgrade illegal entry into the United States to a mere civil offense; plus a number of them, when asked in such direct terms, could not hide from the fact that they would scrap all availability of private health coverage. Trump wasted no time gloating the next day that it meant he had already won his 2020 re-election." . . .

These 2020 Democrats Have Their Preferred Gender Pronouns In Their Twitter Bios

Good grief! If there are enough voters in America who want these people to govern us, I fear for this nation. TD

Daily Caller  "Three prominent Democratic presidential candidates have their preferred gender pronouns in their Twitter bios as of Monday.

"Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro’s bio declares “He/Him/Él,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s bio says “He/him” and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bio says “She/her.”

. . . "Preferred gender pronouns include, but are not limited to, gender-binary terms like “he” and “she.” Groups like Amnesty International recommend introducing yourself with your preferred gender pronouns and asking new people what pronouns they use, remembering not to “assume how they identify or what their pronouns are.” 

"De Blasio’s city adopted a law in 2015 that protects individuals from discrimination based on gender expression or identity." . . .

Bowdoin Orient

Mitt Romney: John McCain reprised

Richard Jack Rail  "In a tweet, President Trump famously said that if Ilhan Omar doesn't like America, she can go back where she came from.  Followers immediately started chanting, "Send her back!" in the way they once chanted, "Lock her up!" about another vicious, ugly female lefty officeholder.

"The Left came unglued, and so did Mitt Romney.  Mitt finds the new chant offensive, you see, and immediately blamed Donald Trump.  Perhaps, curiously, Mitt found nothing offensive in anything Ilhan Omar had said, but then he probably also finds nothing objectionable in her character as he does in the Trump character.

"Making ordinary sense of Mitt Romney is a fool's errand.  Nobody can make sense of Mitt Romney.  He interviewed to be Donald Trump's secretary of state, then promptly went to Europe and spoke ill of the president.  He published a scathing editorial about Trump in the Wall Street Journal.  He claims to be Republican but has done his best to obstruct the Trump agenda.

"Most of all, he just keeps running his hate-Trump mouth.  For one who talks and writes about character, Mitt hasn't shown much of it.  For sure, he's shown no spirit of generosity, no manly sense of put-it-behind-us or graciousness toward a president who gave him a chance after all the mutual slashes and cuts during the 2016 primaries.  Mitt seems unaware that his own actions have repeatedly revealed him to be petty and spiteful.

"America once thought Mitt somewhat godly, with his ties to the Mormon church and all.  He isn't; he's just another backstabbing Republican.  We really didn't need another John McCain."

Back in 2012: A jubilant Rick Santorum is leveraging victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri to increase pressure on Mitt Romney, labeling him "a well-oiled weather vane" who often shifts his positions.

Tlaib isn't 'of color'

American Thinker  "Racist.  As the definition goes, that's what they call somebody who wins an argument with a liberal.  Sounds like a lot of liberals are losing the argument to President Trump this last week, as the media and the Democrats have rocked the heavens with cries of "racist," for Trump suggesting that certain far-left congresswomen might be happier in another country.

"Trump's rhetoric may be ham-fisted, but his timing, as always, is spot on.  The walls are closing in on Ilhan Omar, the most enthusiastically hateful member of Congress.  Evidence of her immigration fraud is overwhelming and will only intensify as more media outlets have to cover the story.  She will be an enormous lingering embarrassment to her party.  The only question is, how will the U.S. attorney in the Twin Cities, Erica McDonald, proceed?  She is definitely plugged into the GOP establishment of that state and is well aware of the need for a grand jury to look into this.  But will she have the guts to follow the law, or just wimp out, in another case of Minnesota nice?  I am not hopeful.

"Perhaps we can be more optimistic about another guy screaming the loudest about racist Trump: Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose wife's charity received millions in a pay-to-play scheme.  Baltimore Democrats are not only corrupt, but so sloppy that they often leave the feds no choice but to prosecute." . . .

. . . "For Palestinian Arabs, though, fantasy politics is a way of life, and they are good at it.  Palestinian wingnut Linda Sarsour admits that everyone considered her white growing up in New York City, so she started wearing a hijab and insisting she was "of color" as a basic element of her political shtick.  This play-pretend has some really determined hucksters pushing it." . . .

Trump only cares about "straits"

Rich Terrell

Marianne Williamson Has White People Apologize to Black People

Dr. Etiquette 


Twitter

South Bend cops warn of ‘mass exodus,’ as morale tanks over Buttigieg handling of shooting

“To me, it’s like he kind of convicted Sgt. O’Neill before anything was even out, making comments like that,” one officer said. “It wasn’t based on the facts of what happened, because we don’t even have all the facts of what happened.”

Fox News  "As South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg commands national attention with his media-savvy presidential bid, the firestorm back home over an officer-involved shooting shows no sign of settling soon -- with the mayor facing criticism not only from protesters but police who say his handling has crushed morale and risks a “mass exodus” from the force.
“Morale around here has been terrible. We do nothing,” one police officer, a 20-year veteran of the force, told Fox News. “We call ourselves firemen, we sit around in parking lots until we’re called and then we go to the call, because if you say or do something wrong, then you get hung.”
“ 'At an all-time low,” another officer said of morale. “It’s been really demoralizing and hard to come to work lately.”
"Officers requested not to be identified for this story in fear of retaliation by the mayor's administration. But they told Fox News that they know of multiple officers who are considering handing in their badges or taking retirement if eligible, in response to the mayor’s handling of the shooting." . . .
. . . "Buttigieg has claimed he has not taken sides, but amid angry protests back home, he has not challenged the narrative that the shooting is connected to police racism. At an NBC News-hosted presidential primary debate last month, Buttigieg described the shooting as “a black man ...killed by a white officer” and said he “could walk through all of the steps we took, from bias training to de-escalation, but it didn’t save the life of Eric Logan. And when I look into his mother’s eyes, I have to face that fact and nothing that I say will bring him back.' ” . . .

Mayor Pete's virtue-signaling on race riles South Bend's police  . . . "Mayor Pete is caught between his police officers and the mobs that assume that a white policeman is racist if the victim is black.

"Mayor Pete should have supported the police chief and ordered him to conduct an internal investigation to determine what had happened.  Instead, Mayor Pete stabbed his police officers by jumping on the bandwagon that this is a civil rights issue.

"Yes, a white police officer killed a black man.  That does not mean that racism was part of the result.

"Unfortunately, so many Democrats are hostage to the narrative of race and let the mobs set the conversation."

I am not sure if this incident will hurt his presidential campaign.  What it does is prove that he is another Democrat who has to see everything in terms of race.

The Squad Becomes the Untouchables

For eight years, criticism of Barack Obama was automatic grounds to get you smeared a racist. Over the next Lord-knows-how-many years, criticism of these three will get you smeared as that and more — on race, on Islam, on women, on socialism. For the Left, AOC, Tlaib, and Omar will be a handy weapon for knifing opponents.

American Spectator

Rashida, Ilhan, and AOC are more immune to criticism than even Obama was.

"When I first heard that Donald Trump went after Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (I had not heard of Ayanna Pressley), I immediately expressed gratitude that someone had the guts to push back. These three congresswomen are unhinged, a fact further revealed a week earlier in the “testimony” of a brazen AOC and a half-sobbing, ready-to-burst Tlaib. The depth of the radicalism of the AOC-Tlaib-Omar troika, in full display after only a few months in Congress, is difficult to express.
"Perhaps worse, given the context of their current battle against President Trump over divisive language, is that few congressional freshmen in memory have been as out-of-the-gate acrimonious as AOC, Tlaib, and Omar.
"AOC, remember, had just compared our border detention centers to Nazi concentration camps, and then doubled down on it.
“ 'The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are,” said an outrageous Ocasio-Cortez. “They are concentration camps.”"Evoking the language of the Holocaust, she continued: “I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity that ‘Never Again’ means something,” employing the warning of Holocaust survivors. “The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing.”
"I have Polish friends who were really upset at AOC suggesting our border camps are comparable to Auschwitz. They had family who were turned into lampshades in such camps. Did Bernie Sanders, who had relatives killed in concentration camps, denounce AOC? Did CNN devote a smidgen of criticism? If CNN and MSNBC criticized her, it wasn’t at the level of their current meltdown over Trump.
"And how did Democrats respond? They gave AOC a platform to testify on immigration policy. They didn’t denounce her offensive stupidity; they rewarded her and accorded her the seat of an expert." . . .

Liz Cheney smacks down biased interviewer; much commentary on this

Thomas Lifson  "Yesterday’s Face the Nation episode on CBS exemplified media bias.  It’s no secret that the Sunday morning broadcast network political interview shows are losing viewers, but it’s less well-known that among them Face the Nation isbleeding viewers the fastest. Yesterday’s episode of the program, hosted by Margaret Brennan, was a case study in bias.

"A lot of attention has been paid this morning on Fox News to a confrontation between Representative Liz Cheney and Brennan in which an exasperated Cheney confronted Brennan and told her she was making Cheney’s case on bias. House Republicans posted to YouTube the highlight of the segment, lasting a minute-and-a-half. (the full 6 minutes of the segment may be viewed here):

"Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller counted up the times Brennan interrupted Cheney at 10. What makes this so outrageous is that in another segment of the show, Brennan “sat idly by when California Rep. Adam Schiff falsely claimed later in the show that President Donald Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in the investigation of Michael Cohen."

CBS Host Repeatedly Interrupts Liz Cheney. The Interview With Adam Schiff Was Completely Different  . . . "Democrats have said Trump’s remarks were racist, while Trump’s defenders said his comments had nothing to do with race and were instead a critique of their policy positions.

"Cheney made the same argument, leading to a contentious exchange with Brennan." Watch here.

Under Fire on CBS, Liz Cheney Brings the Heat on the Socialist Squad  . . . "While Brennan asked Booker and Schiff if the Republicans have a point about the Democrats, but it comes with skepticism already attached. To Booker: "Do you think there is any merit to the argument that Democrats need to-- to police their own ranks, that some of these progressive Democrats in the House have been reckless with some of their language?"
. . . Brennan began the Booker interview with a question he clearly felt was easy: 

BRENNAN: Senator, you compared President Trump to George Wallace, the segregationist Democrat from Alabama. You said the President's own words were a disgusting display of racism and bigotry, are you accusing the President of being a racist?

SEN. CORY BOOKER: I'm accusing him of being worse than that.

"CBS doesn't seem to find any recklessness on the liberal side of politics."

Liz Cheney Tells CBS's Margaret Brennan She's Part of the Problem With 'Squad' Feud  "This is about policy," Cheney added after Brennan's interruption.

"The host continued to cut in, insisting Trump's diatribe was racist.
" 'Margaret, you are making my point," Cheney observed, again trying to explain the real problem here." . . .