Video of the Day (for the caravan of migrants)
Self Unaware Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
“Why is it always our people?” “Why us? Bork, Thomas, Alito, and now Kavanaugh. Why us? Because it’s a noble cause in their eyes to destroy a conservative judicial candidate, and I hope it blows up in their face. I hope politically they pay a price for this … losing is not enough, they need to pay a price at the ballot box.”
Trump Hits Record High Approval Rating with Black Voters Amid BLEXIT Launch
“…The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll released October 29 shows 40 percent of the black voters that were surveyed say they approve of President Trump’s job performance, while 58 percent disapprove.
Trump’s record high approval among black voters comes just days after Candace Owens introduced BLEXIT, “the black exit from the Democrat Party.”…”
Headline of the Day
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED SO FAR
Scott Johnson:
“…Much (if not most) of what we have learned about the real scandals and true Russian collusion underlying the 2016 presidential election derives directly or indirectly from the dogged work of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and his Republican colleagues on the committee. In recognition of his efforts, Rep. Nunes has been punished by the dross of April Doss and others soldiering in the Democrat/Media complex. Rep. Nunes deserves some kind of award for service to the republic such as a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In his October 21 Washington Examiner column Byron York took a look back on what we have learned so far thanks to Nunes and colleagues including Trey Gowdy, John Ratcliffe, Bob Goodlatte, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows:
• The important role that the incendiary allegations in the still-unverified Trump dossier played in the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
• The fact that the dossier was commissioned and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.
• The unusual circumstances surrounding the formal beginning of the FBI’s counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
• The troubling deficiencies in the FBI’s application for the FISA warrant and renewals to wiretap onetime Trump campaign figure Carter Page.
• The anti-Trump bias of some of the top officials in the FBI investigation.
• The degree to which the dossier’s allegations spread throughout the Obama administration during the final days of the 2016 campaign and the transition.
• Obama officials’ unmasking of Trump-related figures in intelligence intercepts.
• The fact that FBI agents did not believe Michael Flynn lied to them in the interview that later led to Flynn’s guilty plea on a charge of lying to the FBI.
• The role of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the Trump-Russia probe.
• Nunes and his colleagues learned these things, and told the public about them, over the determined opposition of the FBI, the Justice Department, and Democrats, both on the Intelligence Committee and in the larger House.
• In fact…the FBI and Justice Department fiercely resisted the investigation. They withheld materials, dragged their feet, and flat-out refused to provide information to which congressional overseers were clearly entitled. Sometimes disputes were settled by the intervention of House Speaker Paul Ryan on Nunes’ behalf. Sometimes they weren’t.
• Nunes and the others performed a public service by investigating something no one else was investigating. The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted the big, bipartisan, flagship congressional probe into the Trump-Russia matter. Special counsel Robert Mueller, with full law enforcement powers, investigated Russian meddling, whether any Trump people were involved, and the question of whether the president attempted to obstruct the investigation.
• No one wanted to investigate the investigators, even though their conduct cried out for scrutiny.
• The work is not yet done. These days, a joint group from the House Judiciary and Oversight committees is conducting interviews with several figures in the Trump-Russia matter. In addition, Nunes and other Republicans are still urging President Trump to release additional parts of the Carter Page surveillance application that they say will be contain new revelations.
• None of this has been bipartisan. The work has been done by Republicans and opposed by Democrats. And if Democrats win control of the House, as a number of polls suggest they will do, it will stop immediately.
I add the following related bullet point courtesy of the rhetorical question posed by Holman Jenkins in his October 19 Wall Street column (accessible via Outline here):
• President Trump is accused of violating norms, but the Democratic Party is the one that concocted evidence tarring its opponent as a Russian agent and questions the legitimacy of basic institutions like the Electoral College and the Supreme Court. Its leading lights also encourage the mobbing of partisan opponents in restaurants and elsewhere.
If Democrats win, as Byron notes, Nunes’s work comes to a screeching halt. To adapt a thought from Warren Zevon, send lawyers, guns and money; the Schiff will hit the fan…”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/what-we-have-learned-so-far.php
Finally, a day of reckoning for Michael Avenatti?
Byron York:
“…Of course, it wasn’t true. Still, Avenatti’s allegation poured fuel on an already raging partisan fire over the Kavanaugh nomination. First there was the Christine Ford allegation. Then came the Ramirez accusation, which, coming after Ford, gave Kavanaugh’s opponents the occasion to claim a “pattern” of Kavanaugh’s alleged abuse of women. Then Avenatti’s allegation — gang rape — sent it into another dimension.
Avenatti’s client was identified as Julie Swetnick, who had lived in the Washington area during Kavanaugh’s high school years. Avenatti sent the committee an affidavit in which Swetnick made her claims. Beyond that, he provided no other evidence to support the allegation — beyond the promise of “multiple witnesses.” Nevertheless, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee took it very seriously.
Putting aside the question of why NBC waited to report the woman’s statement until after the Kavanaugh vote was over. The entire Avenatti episode left Grassley angry that the publicity-seeking lawyer had hijacked the committee’s time and energy at a critical time with claims that were obviously untrue. So on Oct. 25, Grassley formally referred Avenatti (and Swetnick) to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation into their conduct.
“It is illegal to knowingly and willfully make materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements to congressional investigators,” Grassley wrote in the referral. “When charlatans make false claims to the committee — claims that may earn them short-term media exposure and financial gain, but which hinder the committee’s ability to do its job — there should be consequences.”
With Avenatti, there have so far been no consequences, beyond the loss of whatever credibility some cable TV news organizations conferred on him in repeated appearances over the last several months. Now, with the Grassley referral, that could finally change…”
Tweet of the Day
Red Sox debate whether to visit White House after World Series win
This is why I no longer watch professional sports. I don’t give a fig what these overpaid nitwits think about anything. I won’t reward this behavior with my attention or dollars.
“…The manager of the Boston Red Sox said Sunday it’s unclear whether the team, fresh off a World Series win, will visit the White House as part of its victory celebration.
The Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-1 Sunday in the final championship game of the series. Manager Alex Cora told reporters in a post-game news conference if the team is invited to meet with President Donald Trump, there will be a conversation among team members “later on.”…”
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/red-sox-world-series-winners-debate-whether-to-visit-white-house
Press versus Trump
Liz Sheld:
“…After President Trump won the 2016 election, the media and the Democrats announced that they would do everything in their power to obstruct and ruin his presidency. They did not want Trump to succeed and they did not want America to prosper under Trump. This directive is the backdrop of every aspect of public discourse on Trump and Trump-related matters. And everything, EVERYTHING, is somehow related to Trump.
The news on the Pittsburgh synagogue slaughter falls into this category and the strongest narrative on the tragedy is that Trump inspired this/is responsible because he hates Jews/is antisemitic/didn’t condemn the white supremacists or whatever flimsy excuses the resistance needs to blame Trump. In reality Trump is probably the most pro-Israel president the U.S. has ever had. I’m Jewish, I think he’s done right by Israel.
Those of us who are not in the #resistance are getting lectured on toning down our rhetoric from left wing hysterics shouting all kinds of slanderous and intemperate accusations. GQ columnist Julia Ioffe, in reference to synagogue shooting, claimed that Trump has radicalized more people than ISIS. “I think this president, one of the things that he really launched his presidential run on is talking about Islamic radicalization. And this president has radicalized so many more people than ISIS ever did. I mean, the way he talks, the way he — the way he –” Ioffe said.
So I am supposed to believe that calling Trump supporters Nazis, white supremacists, sexists, homophobes is just the right thing to do but Trump’s rhetoric is pouring gasoline on a burning fire of crazy activists? Or perhaps violence in the name of the leftist agenda is just fine? I think that’s it…”
And
“…Greg Gutfeld makes this point:
- CNN’s Don Lemon: “The president of the United States is racist.”
- MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “Even Albert Einstein may have ended up in a Nazi concentration camp with Donald Trump’s viewpoint on immigration.”
- MSNBC’s Donnie Deutsch: “If you vote for Trump, then you the voter, you – not Donald Trump – are standing at the border like Nazis going ‘you here, you here.’”
You want hate? You spend two years calling a guy Hitler, a racist, a traitor, and insane – then you blame him for violence cuz …of nicknames?
Also, big lefty donor Tom Steyer is running Facebook ads comparing Trump to Sadam Hussein.
Sane people know what’s going on here…”
https://pjmedia.com/blog/liveblogevent/live-blog-109/entry-243856/
What I learned as an American Jew after the Pittsburgh synagogue attack
Jon Podhoretz:
“…On this day of all days it needs to be said: America has been a blessing for the Jewish people unlike any other blessing given any other people in the history of the world.
One crime — or 29 separate crimes, committed at the same time by a monster in human form — cannot be allowed to overshadow this extraordinary fact.
My own gratitude to America is actually greater today than it was yesterday because of the outpouring of grief and rage and common humanity we have witnessed in the response to the horror in Pittsburgh.
The philo-Semitic response to this unspeakable act of anti-Semitism reveals how American Jews are anchored in America in a way that Jews who live anywhere else outside of Israel are not anchored to the lands in which they reside or have ever resided.
We are Americans. And we are Jews. And there is no contradiction between the two. When people talk freely and foolishly and noxiously about America as having been built on racism, there is one simple answer to their libel: George Washington’s letter to a synagogue in Newport, written in August 1790.
“The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship,” Washington wrote. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
That final phrase, taken from the prophet Micah, was violated in the most obscene way on Saturday. But the story of America is a story of a country that has indeed served as vine and fig tree for the world’s most beleaguered peoples…”
A New College Plans to Open — No Federal Money, No Accreditation
“…Entrepreneurship isn’t just for new products; it can also deliver new kinds of education. It’s a darned good thing that we allow that (unlike some “progressive” countries) because American education is notoriously high in cost and low in quality.
Here in North Carolina, a business entrepreneur, Robert Luddy, is using some of his wealth to start new schools. He has a thriving chain of K-12 schools and is now looking to open an extension into higher education, which will be called Thales College.
In today’s Martin Center article, Shannon Watkins writes about this intriguing development.
Thales will be a blend of the old and the new. The curriculum will be old — a true liberal arts education — but the pedagogical approach will be new — the “flipped classroom” where students listen to lectures on their own time and classroom time is reserved for discussion of the material.
Faculty members will need to have strong teaching and mentoring abilities in addition to their doctorates.
How much will it cost? Only $4,000 per term and students will be able to earn their degrees in three years. Obviously, to keep costs down to that level, there won’t be any sports or excess administrators.
Thales won’t take any federal student aid money (to preserve the school’s independence) and doesn’t plan to seek accreditation (which is no guarantee of quality anyway).
Unlike many college students, Watkins writes, Thales students “will not be the kind of students who sit at the back of the class, completely unengaged. Between the coursework’s level of rigor and the one-on-one attention received from professors, a Thales education will require discipline, focus, and dedication. The admissions requirements are themselves demanding: in order to be admitted: students must have a minimum 1100 SAT (or 22 ACT) and 3.25 GPA.”
The college plans to open next year.
Hooray for competition!…”
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-new-college-plans-to-open-no-federal-money-no-accreditation/
Kanye West designed T-shirts urging black people to leave Democratic Party in a ‘Blexit’
“…Kanye West has reportedly designed T-shirts urging black people to leave the Democratic Party in a “Blexit.”
The shirts first appeared at Turning Point USA’s Young Black Leadership Summit Saturday in Washington, according to the New York Post’s Page Six. They advocate for a black exit or “Blexit” from the party.
“Blexit is a renaissance and I am blessed to say that this logo, these colors, were created by my dear friend and fellow superhero Kanye West,” Turning Point USA’s communications director, Candace Owens, told Page Six…”
The Left’s Response To The Mass Shooting Of Jews Is An Act Of Bad Faith
How are Americans ever going to ‘come together’ if the first thing a political party sees when it sees dead Americans is a partisan cudgel?
David Harsanyi:
“…The same Voxers who had long rationalized, romanticized, and excused the Jew-killing terror organization of the Middle East were now blaming the existence of the evil, anti-Semitic Pittsburgh shooter on Republicans. The same Pod bros whose echo chamber deployed anti-Semitic dual-loyalty tropes to smear critics of the Iran deal were now incredibly concerned about the Jewish community.
There were many others, and that was bad enough. But others decided to dip into a little victim blaming, as well. Hadn’t American Jews been little too Jew-centric and pro-Israel for their own good?
Franklin Foer of The Atlantic demanded that Jews finally dispense with their faith, adopt his, and start expelling co-religionists for their political opinions. (If you want to read about the left’s co-opting of American Judaism, I recommend Jonathan Neumann’s excellent book, “To Heal The World?”) Wire creator David Simon went bold, embracing a transparent anti-Jewish conspiracy theory, accusing the Israeli government of intervening in the American democracy.
For those who confuse progressivism with Judaism — which is to say many — it might be difficult to understand that undermining the Democratic Party isn’t an act of anti-Semitism…”
‘Nothing to Gain,’ Kavanaugh Accuser Raises Nearly $1 Million
There’s always something to gain if you do the Left’s bidding at a key moment. She’s also fielding book offers. Plus: Her lawyers said they were representing her on a pro-bono basis. Why does she need all of this money?
If You Ignore the News, America Actually Seems Pretty Nice
This article is mostly good. I believe the 24/7 media drives much of the rancor in society as a result of the need for ratings combined with institutional bias. Move away from the news and people are normal.
Justin Fox:
Drive from coast to coast and everybody seems to be getting along fine — as long as you don’t listen to talk radio in the car or turn on cable TV news at the hotel.
“…Now that I’m back in New York and my media diet is back to more or less normal, the sense of calm, remove and, yes, optimism that pervaded my long days of driving has begun to dissipate. Maybe this just means I’m returning to the real world after an escapist journey. But I also wonder if it’s an indication that my normal media diet — even though it’s mostly free of such known toxins as Facebook and cable TV news, and heavy on old books — is driving me a little nuts.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a column puzzling over the rise in political polarization in the U.S. despite the absence of “a single great ideological divide” like slavery in the 19th century, and asked readers what they thought was driving it. The majority of the responses fingered the media in some form or another. That seems about right…”
Headline of the Day
From the nitwit capital of the world
SF spends $300,000 to register noncitizen voters; 49 sign up…
The young black Americans backing Trump
This is the democrats worst nightmare
“…Young black conservatives wore Make America Great Again caps and chanted the president’s name at the White House.
Mr Trump won just 8% of the African American vote in the 2016 presidential election and critics accuse him of stoking racial tensions.
But he told the activists that the black community was more interested in the economy than race…”
Merced Reflection
