American Politics

Tucker Carlson on Russia fever

Fresh from allowing the buffoonish Never Trumper Max Boot to humiliate himself the night before, Tucker Carlson mocked the mainstream media’s crazy obsession with Russia in his opening monologue last night.

So-called Conservative Legislators Cave to LGBT Agenda

WASHINGTON, D.C—The House of Representatives voted 209 to 214 yesterday to defeat the amendment would have put an end to the use of military funding for “sex change” surgeries. There are 24 Republicans who voted on the side of the LGBT lobby to defeat the amendment.

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler’s amendment to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act would have represented a unique opportunity, in a united Congress, to put an end to this abuse of our military and of American taxpayer dollars, by putting an end to the use of defense funding to pay for genital-mutilating “sex reassignment surgeries.” The new amendment would have made it so “funds available to the Department of Defense may not be used to provide medical treatment (other than mental health treatment) related to gender transition to a person entitled to medical care.”

I Would Rather 7–11 Privatize Healthcare than the Government Nationalize

Occasionally circumstances force me to eat lunch in the swamp. This time I was in Fairfax County, VA, formerly a reliably conservative county that has lately been invaded by swamp employees, swamp contractors, swamp lobbyists and other refugees from Washington, DC.

The county is now reliably Democrat and gave Hillary a 68 to 32 percent victory last November. Call it a pilot project for the entire country after illegals get amnesty.

During lunch I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between a man and a woman I assumed were business associates. Most of it was background noise, “Grumble, grumble, TRUMP, mumble, mumble, TRUMP, Hitler, Hitler, TRUMP” and so on.

Trump Jr.‘s Email: Want to Talk About Treason? Okay….

The obsession with Donald Trump Jr.‘s “Russian” email chain is just the latest example of what the Media/Democrat Party/Establishment Axis does best: engage in misdirection to confuse people about who America’s real enemies are.

Now, since the emails are currently Exhibit A in Trump treason allegations, let’s talk about treason. No, we don’t have to go back to when Democrat senator Ted Kennedy secretly approached the murderous Soviets and asked for help defeating Ronald Reagan in 1984. That’s too old and too obvious. But try this on for size

We’ve now learned that U.S. soldier Ikaika Erik Kang, just arrested for Islamic State ties, expressed allegiance to the group as early as 2011 (which is much like a serviceman having expressed support for the Nazis during WWII). Instead of being immediately put in the stockade, however, Barack Obama’s military and FBI, the Daily Mail reports, “investigated to determine whether he posed a threat, authorities said.”

The Storming of the Bastille did not Yield Freedom

The shocking takeover of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, is considered one of the most dramatic events in history, and is now viewed as a symbol of the spark which set off the French Revolution. Each year the anniversary is celebrated as a public holiday in France: ”Le quatorze juillet” (14 July), formally known as the “Fête de la Fédération”  (Federation Holiday). In English speaking countries it is usually referred to as Bastille Day.

The historic events surrounding the storming of the Bastille are looked upon with as much respect and reverence by the French and Europeans as Americans view the colonists taking on the British troops in the “shot heard ‘round the world.” The Bastille made a great target, but an even greater symbol of the people taking authority into their own hands. The Bastille was originally a medieval fortress-prison that had often been utilized by French kings to imprison their politically disagreeable or disloyal subjects.

Trump: Let’s make the border wall solar…and transparent. Wait, what?

Look, I’m not a guy who piles on President Trump for every weird little thing he says. Let’s be honest. If I was, I’d never get any sleep. But this?  This is…something.

I’m hoping this is just some kind of odd spitballing session that’s being reported in a way that makes it sound like more than it really is.  Because according to the New York Post - and you may want to be sitting down for this - President Trump would like the border wall with Mexico to be transparent so you don’t get ‘hit on the head’ with 60-pound drug bundles when smugglers throw them over.  ...And he’d like it to be solar powered.  ...And he reiterated the notion that it may not cover the entire border.

“As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One late Wednesday en route to France.

Kid Rock issues statement that inches him closer to a real Senate run, but…

Yesterday, I said I might have to eat my words on the “Kid Rock runs for Senate” story.  I was pretty sure it was a publicity stunt designed to put the spotlight on a forthcoming release. I’m still not entirely convinced that this thing is real, but the Michigan rapper did release a statment yesterday that inches the needle twoard the idea that this might be real.

Last night, on his facebook page, he posted the following message and picture:

Once again the press is wrong. First of all, I’ve got 15 days from my announcement to file paperwork with the FEC! Second, I’m not signed to Warner Bros!!! - which simple fact-checking would have revealed. I have recently worked out a unique deal with BMG, Broken Bow, CAA and Live Nation to release music ON MY TERMS. Like politicians write books during their campaigns, I’m planning on putting out music during mine and IT ALL STARTS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT. It’s not a hoax, it’s a strategy and marketing 101! No plans for an album or anything else that has been the usual norm in the music business OR politics…..and…..

Southern Policy Law Center Belongs On Southern Policy Law Center’s Hate List

Months from now, you’ll be reading a story about Jeff Sessions, and there will be a remark to the effect of “when he’s not off speaking to hate groups.”

And the phrase “speaking to hate groups” will have a hotlink on it. And that hotlink will take you to any number of stories that have appeared in the last day or so since Sessions gave a speech to a group known as the Alliance Defending Freedom.

The group was in the news recently because of its work in the case of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, in which the Court held the church did not lose its right to apply for a state grant to pay for an updated playground simply because it was a church.

How Left Run Out of Other People’s Money

Margaret Thatcher,  The Conservative Prime Minister of United Kingdom (1979-1990), famously considered that the problem with leftists is that they eventually run out of other people´s money. In her speech to a Conservative Party Conference (October 14th, 1983), the Iron Lady expressed the fundamental truth: “If the State wishes to spend more, it can do so only by bothering your savings or by taxing you more. And it´s no good thinking that someone else will pay, that someone else is you.”

Democracies, unlike dictatorships do not overtax citizens to death of purchasing power, and there can be no freedom without financial freedom. The money transferred from our pockets to the “common wallet” should guarantee a good level of security, access to justice and well -functioning administration- serving people, and not vice versa.

Who is raising the next generation?

In light of President Trump’s advocacy of Western values at the G-20, hard questions must be asked of our current would-be parents, those of childbearing age.

More and more young people in Western cultures are opting to avoid procreation and sidestep the responsibility of raising a family. The justifications for choosing to remain single or create a relationship consisting of a married (or ‘committed’) couple and pets is burgeoning among the millennial and following generation—for the life of me, I can’t keep straight the ‘X’, ‘Y’, ‘Z’ nomenclature.

Thus the query stands—who will raise the next generation of teachers and preachers, let alone skilled labor, professionals and elected officials? Looks like it’s not going to be American, Canadian, European or other ‘first world’ citizens adhering to their native culture. They’re too busy with other endeavors, of which grooming youngsters to continue the West’s legacy is not among their priorities.

America’s Real News is in the Numbers

Ignorance of basic economic principles in most American newsrooms contributes to the scarcity of real news today.

A wise and worldly friend recently asked, “Where is the news today?” A hard question.

It’s easier to answer where news isn’t. It’s seldom found on televisions, radio, or in print.

Real news is recoverable from the internet—that is, for the surfer who rides select sites. 

But most of us don’t have the time, or inclination, to ferret out and validate real news. So we search the most readily available sources which—like cheap, fast food—offer the advantage of quick accessibility.  It may not be good for us, but it’s filling.

How Some Optometrists Are Robbing Patients Blind

Last month, the largest optometric lobbying group in the nation flew thousands of its members to buddy up with members of Capitol Hill. This is just another example in the recurring history of the American Optometric Association (AOA) attempting to create security in the eye care market by eliminating competition, making friends in Congress, and spreading misinformation.

Before 2003, eyecare professionals—who are unique in that they sell what they also prescribe—had a virtual monopoly over the contact lens marketplace. Thanks to their brand-specific prescriptions, they could control exactly which brand of lenses consumers purchased—oftentimes name-brand at inflated prices. The draconian nature of their big-stick prescription powers stifled the free market by making it virtually impossible for alternative eye-care retailers to sell affordable goods to consumers.

Finally, in 2003, Congress acted to combat these anticompetitive laws. Passing the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA), the body hoped that by mandating that optometrists to hand over prescriptions to their customers, consumers would be more able to make economic decisions to buy contact lens in the broader market.

Rebecca Solnit achieves peak oppression

Writer Rebecca Solnit is the awful sort of virtue-signaling leftist woman whom one hopes never to meet, not on a sidewalk, not in an airplane terminal, not on a city park trail, not with a cat, not in a hat, though all of these scenarios are, as she informs us rather helpfully, possible if you live in the wrong kind of city, or even pass through it briefly.

You see a lot of her type these days. They are the ones complaining about mansplaining (a term Solnit is credited with inventing) while wearing slutty miniskirts and not much else in the commercials you can’t skip on Hulu. They are your freshman (fresh-zee?) orientation instructors informing you that your first semester will be spent examining your white privilege. If you’re especially unlucky, your brother (or sister) is dating one, and she’s going to tell you and the rest of the family exactly what she thinks about Christopher Columbus at Thanksgiving dinner.

GOP rallies behind idiotic bill

Republicans are about to do something very stupid. Using bribery, threats and cajolery, they intend to pass a catastrophically unpopular bill on a party-line vote.

GOP: Obamacare is unpopular, so let’s pass a new health care bill that’s even MORE unpopular.

Normal Person: Why would you do that?

GOP: No, you don’t understand. Obamacare is totally imploding, so if we pass this bill now, all its problems will be blamed on us!

The perils, and benefits, of whataboutism

NPR, other left-wing sources, and even some conservative columnists, have discovered a grave new danger coming from the always dangerous President Trump.

Trump, they claim, “has developed a consistent tactic when he’s criticized: say that someone else is worse.” This dreaded tactic is labeled the doctrine of “whataboutism,” which is described as:

Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A’s faults—“Yeah? Well what about that bad thing you did?” (Hence the name.)

In an NPR article, writer Danielle Kurtzleben points out that Trump is following in the footsteps of…the Russians (GASP!), and President Vladimir Putin, and before them, their predecessors the Soviet communists. According to NPR, the risk is that:

Legislators Seek to Stop Funding Palestinian Terrorism

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senate Foreign Relations Committee began hearings yesterday on S.474, known as the Taylor Force Act, which will defund the Palestinian Authority (PA) until they cease and denounce their “Pay to Slay” policy, which rewards terrorists and their families for acts against Israel and the United States. Liberty Counsel and Christians in Defense of Israel have been instrumental in encouraging legislators to hold this hearing.

The bill’s sponsor, Senator Lindsey Graham, opened the hearing by introducing this legislation that would stop the incentive payments to terrorists to kill innocent civilians. In attendance was Stuart Force, the father of U.S. army veteran and Vanderbilt student, Taylor Force, for whom the bill is named.  Taylor served the United States in combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, only to be senselessly killed as a civilian by a Palestinian terrorist in Israel.

Terrific: Senate moderates preempt McConnell’s release of new health bill by announcing their own

Apparently there is no consensus behind the plan Mitch McConnell is going to release any minute now in the Senate, because if there was, then Senate moderates would be getting behind it instead of releasing their own plan.

No such luck. And as you’d typically expect, when the Senate has a real opportunity to achieve a conservative policy achievement, Lindsey Graham is going to be one of the people sabotaging it:

The move by Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) to debut their health-care proposal on CNN moments before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was set to brief members demonstrated how divided the majority remains in its quest to overhaul former president Barack Obama’s signature health-care law.

Pelosi wants you to know that she and Chuck Schumer are the ‘voices’ of the Democrats’ 2018 victory

Earlier this week, we heard from Tom Perez.  He’s the Chairman of the DNC and a man who apparently thinks violent rioters are the “face and “Voice” of the Democrat party.  Sure, he likes to call them “protesters,” but po-tat-o / Po-tah-to.

The fact is, the left is “leadership challenged.”

The people currently sitting atop their party are the very same people who presided over its decades-long collapse. The Dems are currently at their lowest level of legislative power since before the great depression, their message has been largely rejected, and their bench is painfully shallow. In fact, the only “fresh face” they’ve produced in the last 10 years is a 75-year-old socialist from Vermont who got his first real job at the ripe old age of 40 and is currently at the center of an FBI investigation.

Media pretty excited that Trump’s FBI nominee won’t call Russia probe a witch hunt

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael McGough is right about one thing: These are not normal times. In normal times the news media wouldn’t be misrepresenting - whether intentionally or out of lazy acceptance of popular narratives - just about everything the president of the United States says or does. It would be normal for them to do this to a degree under other Republican presidents, but never to the extent they’ve done it since Donald Trump took office.

But that’s not what McGough means, of course. He thinks it’s extraordinary that the man Trump nominated to head the FBI declined to call an ongoing investigation a “witch hunt” and said he would not take a “loyalty oath.” What’s more, McGough seems to think this all represents quite a burn on Trump:

Now listen to Wray testifying Wednesday before the Judiciary Committee: “No one asked me for any kind of loyalty oath at any point during this process, and I sure as heck didn’t offer one.”

Dankheart