Social media explained
For the Trump deranged
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Tulsi gets some things right and Democrats hate her
In 2020, we will have a new president in the White House. How many of you do NOT want that to be Donald Trump? I certainly don't. Unfortunately, the House impeachment of the president has greatly increased the likelihood Trump will remain the president for the next 5 years … pic.twitter.com/FRRlbWHyo7
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) December 31, 2019
On the impeachment farce
Victor Davis Hanson:
“…The Democrats believed that all of these efforts would be like small cuts, each one perhaps minor but all combining to bleed Trump out. But now we know, given polling data and the strong Trump economy, that the long odyssey to impeachment has had almost no effect on Trump’s popularity, other than losing him 3–4 points for a few weeks as periodic media “bombshells” went off.
The reality may be the very opposite of what Democrats planned. The more the Left tries to abort the Trump presidency before the election, the more it bleeds from each of its own inflicted nicks. As an example, Rachel Maddow’s reputation has not been enhanced by her neurotic assertions that Trump’s tax returns would soon appear, or that the Steele dossier was steadily gaining credibility, or that yet another tell-tale Russian colluder had emerged from under another American bed…
…Again, millions of Americans actually leave Trump per se out of their voting equations. They do not give him full credit for a remarkable economy and an unorthodox foreign policy that is addressing China, Iran, and the Middle East in a way many once advocated but few seriously believed would ever be enacted.
Instead, voters are exhausted by his haters and their crazy agendas. They grow enraged over how the Mueller and Horowitz investigatory reports have disproved all the daily media, celebrity, and political assertions. And they are upset about the larger culture of the anti-Trump Left, from the fundamentals of open borders and identity politics to the trivia of transgendered athletes, Colin Kaepernickism, and the open-border, Green New Deal socialism. An auto worker who votes as a true-blue union Democrat but likes Trump’s trade policies, a no-nonsense farmer who worries about farm exports but likes deregulation, and a teacher who votes a liberal slate but has no way to control his classroom may not seem like Trump voters, but some such voters are terrified by the cultural trajectory of what the Trump-hating Left has in store for them all.
For a majority, refined and arrogant progressive mendaciousness voiced in condescending nasal tones has become far more repugnant than all-American hype in a Queens accent…”
California
Facing the facts about anti-Semitic attacks in New York
Post Editorial Board:
“…The surge in attacks — at least eight in the city last week, before the Monsey assault — has Jewish communities scared, livid and demanding swift action.
De Blasio made a grand show of decrying the stabbings as a “tragedy” and rolled out new measures: more cops in Jewish areas, “neighborhood safety coalitions,” a greater focus on anti-Semitism in schools.
Yet even Monday, he was blurring the blame: “What we’re seeing,” he claimed, “is a horrible national crisis of anti-Semitism. We have to put this in perspective.” The city’s problems, in other words, are part of a national trend — driven by “an atmosphere of hate” created by . . . President Trump.
“The permission that’s being given for hate speech” — given by Trump, that is — “is underlying a lot of this.”
That’s absurd. Trump’s not OK’ing anti-Semitic hate; he has a Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandkids and has been terrific for Israel. He could be stronger at times in condemning white supremacy, but that’s clearly not what’s driving the New York attacks.
Meanwhile, the mayor skirts over the true culprits, such as:
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- The city’s (and state’s) failure to address serious mental illness. A lawyer for alleged Monsey stabber Grafton Thomas says he has “a long history” of hospitalizations.
- New York’s growing softness on crime. As The Post reported Saturday, the state’s new no-bail law will mean a quick get-out-of-jail-free card for all but one of the accused attackers in the eight anti-Jewish crimes in the city last week. Tiffany Harris is the rule, not the exception.
“You have to beat the hell out of somebody — or murder them — for there to be any consequences,” laments Dov Hikind of Americans Against Anti-Semitism.
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- Jew-hatred among some blacks, which de Blasio, Gov. Cuomo and other Democrats refuse to call out by name.
Some black leaders even promote anti-Semitism: Recall when City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo blamed a spate of violent anti-Jewish attacks on black fear of being “pushed out” by Jewish landlords? She later apologized, but Jersey City school-board member Joan Terrell-Paige stands by her remarks, after the killings in her city this month, calling Jews “brutes” who “waved bags of money.”
The national Democratic Party itself has been increasingly open to anti-Semites: Bernie Sanders has embraced extremists like Linda Sarsour and Rep. Ilhan Omar. After Omar smeared Jews with her “It’s all about the Benjamins” quip, House Democrats shied from censuring her; Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed Omar didn’t mean to be anti-Semitic…”
The best of times?
Michael Barone:
“…The best of times, the worst of times. Your instinct of which one we’re living through is affected by your basic temperament, but it also depends on how well you’re observing, and quantifying, things in the world around you.
Temperamentally, in the United States, or at least in that loud if not large part of it dominated by political tweets, the overwhelming weight of opinion, crossing party lines that are unusually rigid in this period of American history, is that we live in the worst of times.
President Trump, enjoying all-but-unanimous support from Republicans in polls, tells us that we are living at the brink of disaster, at risk of being sucked under the sludge by vicious creatures of the swamp.
Trump opponents, including almost the whole of the Democratic Party and a tattered but still loudly chirping fragment of the Republican Party, assure us that we are entering the dark night of Nazism, racism, and violent suppression of all dissenting opinion.
To which I say: nonsense. And so does, in more elegant terms, the science writer and British House of Lords voting member Matt Ridley in the British Spectator. “We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history,” he writes of the decade just ending.
Olden times may look better in warm memories — think of multiepisode dramas about Edwardian noblemen or carefully curated statistics showing narrower pay gaps between 1950s CEOs and assembly-line workers. But the cold, hard numbers tell another story.
“Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 percent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 percent when I was born,” Ridley writes, referring to the year 1958, a time that some of us can actually remember.
Of course, you may say, the economic progress made since China and India discovered the magic of free markets has helped people over there; but over here, in advanced countries, we’re not growing. We are just gobbling up and wolfing down more of the world’s limited resources, aren’t we?
Not so, replies Ridley. Consumers in advanced countries are actually consuming less stuff (biomass, metals, minerals, or fossil fuels) per capita, even while getting more nutrition and production out of it. Thank technological advancement and, yes, in some cases, government regulations…”
Looking back on the Trump presidency
Victor Davis Hanson:
“…We won’t know to what degree Trump won his battles against a now hard-leftist Democratic Party, the NeverTrump Right, the media, the academic and cultural elite, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the Washington deep state until he finishes his first term. In 2020 the people will decide whether such risks were worth taking. But the idea that Trump has “failed,” when the economy is booming, the United States is energy independent, the border is becoming a border again, China is on notice that the past 30 years of appeasement are over, the military is far stronger, and U.S. foreign policy is being radically recalibrated is absolutely absurd.
Impeachment was never about Trump’s failures, but about fears of his perceived successes.
The Left, far better than the NeverTrump Right, grasped that Trump is succeeding, and that it has little traction in demanding economic, energy, immigration, trade, and regulatory alternatives. Its lunatic multi-trillion-dollar proposals ensure that it cannot attack Trump on the deficit where he is weakest.
As a result, the Left rightly concluded that its only hope to save the progressive agenda is to destroy Trump before the people can vote on his agenda, which they rightly fear is succeeding…”
Tweet of the day (journalistic malpractice edition)
On anti-Semitic violence and the left
Erielle Davidson:
“…When it came to discussing the recent shooting at the Jersey City kosher supermarket by two Black Hebrew Israelites, reporting was startlingly sparse on the particulars surrounding the murders. As Bethany Mandel of Ricochet noted, many key details appeared purposely omitted, including but not limited to, the fact that video footage suggested the perpetrators’ initial target was a school full of Jewish children; that the perpetrators had a significant amount of ammunition; and that videos taken after the attack revealed many in the neighborhood blamed the Jews for the attack. Even following the killings, I am not sure if even one media outlet reported on the fact that a school board member in Jersey City, referring to Jews as “brutes,” essentially defended the murders as a natural response to too many Jews moving into the area.
The “social justice” arena in the United States, where most issues related to racial discrimination get siloed, is occupied primarily by those on the left. Thus, the growing problem is now groups traditionally in the business of confronting hate are less interested in doing so if they are unable to attribute the Jew-hatred to Trump or Republicans. If that anti-semitism is emanating from corners traditionally occupied by the left, the advocacy figures and media talking heads show an alarming and frankly disturbing indifference…”
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Steve Hilton
On the impeachment farce
Kurt Schlichter:
“…you should never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake. But this doesn’t apply to the Democrats because they are not only too dumb to listen to your warnings but their weird dogma actually makes it impossible for them to imagine that they are heading for disaster in 2020. So, I’m going to mock these losers mercilessly, safe in the knowledge that even though I am telling that anime lollipop-looking twerp Adam Schiff and Jerry the Oompa Loompa Nadler exactly what is going to happen, they are powerless to stop it…”
Boris Johnson: Britain Will Combat Israel Boycotts
Adam Kredo:
“…British prime minister Boris Johnson told Parliament that his government will not stand by while countries boycott Israeli-made goods.
In remarks to the country’s leadership, Johnson said he will work to combat those who support the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which wages economic warfare on Israel and its Jewish population.
“When it comes to standing by our friends,” Johnson said, “we will stop public bodies from taking it upon themselves to boycott goods from other countries to develop their own pseudo foreign policy against a country that, with nauseating frequency, turns out to be Israel.”…”