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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
Friday, December 06, 2019
It Came upon an Indict Clear...
by Tony Perkins: It looks like the Democrats finally found some use for the Constitution -- as a convenient prop in their impeachment charade. Thursday, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced that she was "prayerfully" proceeding with the formal charges, she painted herself as a modern Thomas Jefferson, insisting that it was "with allegiance to our founders" that she was pressing this case. Her real motives were a lot less grandiose, summed up later in the reporters' questioning, but equally applicable to Trump: "Don't mess with me," she snarled.
If Nancy Pelosi was trying to wrap herself in the Declaration of Independence, she failed, the Boston Herald's Joe Battenfield declares. Her speech was so "silly" and "sanctimonious" that it suggests "Democrats are flailing and flailing in their bid to get the American people on board the impeachment train... President Trump is a lot of things," he writes, "but he's no King George III."
Congressman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) who, like every other Republican, watched this jaw-dropping spectacle unfold, couldn't help but notice the hypocrisy. "She accused the president basically of trying to be a king [while she] leveraged the entire U.S. House of Representatives for 35 days without even taking a vote. I mean, she initiated an impeachment of the president of the United States on her own, as if she was some kind of queen." Andrew McCarthy over at NRO agreed. "Democrats say Trump exploited his constitutional power for political purposes, but how is that different from what they are doing now?"
Then, of course, Pelosi invoked religion because she couldn't invoke proof. "Democrats, too, are prayerful, and we will proceed in a manner worthy of our oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic, so help us God." So help us God, indeed, Battenfield mused.
For House members like Green, it's a frustrating situation all around. After all, this is the same Nancy Pelosi who told the Washington Post in March, "I'm not for impeachment." It's too "divisive," she argued. Too dangerous. "And he's just not worth it." Well, something must have changed, Green points out."Speaker Pelosi at the beginning of the year said, 'It needs to be bipartisan. There needs to be proof -- real evidence. And we don't have any proof at all. It's ridiculous. It's a farce. It's a sham. It's almost as if these Democrats seem to think that the 63 million people who elected this president to determine the foreign policy, the United States -- they're irrelevant. 'We know better. We're smarter than everybody else. And we're going to proceed this way.' I just think it's unconscionable."What happens when there's a Democratic president? (Granted, if the Left keeps this up, it might be awhile, but the lingering question remains.) As Pelosi accidentally hinted in her press conference, her real beef with Donald Trump isn't about Ukraine, it's about his policies. "I think he's cruel," she argued, "when he doesn't deal with helping our 'Dreamers'... I think he's in denial about the climate crisis." Then realizing she was making an ideological case, not a criminal one, she got back on message. "However that's about the election... This is about the Constitution of the United States."
But the reality is, it isn't about the Constitution. Democrats are using impeachment as a political tool. Pelosi's comments make clear what most of us have suspected all along: the grounds of the Democrats' impeachment is nothing more than disagreement with the president's agenda. That's a shocking redefining of terms -- one that Nancy Pelosi's conveniently rediscovered new friends, the Founders, would have taken as a threat to our republic's very fabric. We can't lower the standards of "high crimes and misdemeanors" to differences of opinion on issues like immigration or the environment. As constitutional professor (and open Trump critic) Jonathan Turley warned, "That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided."
Or for the future of 2020 Democrats, Green pointed out. While they chase this obsession, they're actually solidifying Republicans' support "for the president and against this insane process." People on the fence, Independents especially, are souring on the Left's strategy -- and fast. How long until they sour on the party pursuing it?
-------------- Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council . This article was on Tony Perkin's Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers. Tags:Tony Perkins, Family Research Center, FRC, Family Research Council, Came upon an Indict Clear, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
The Founding Father Of The Black Conservative Movement
Jay A. Parker "had a steadfast belief in limited government,
but understood that a free society required a strong civil
society and personal responsibility," says old friend
Roger Ream, president of The Fund for American Studies.
by Lee Edwards: It was Christmas Eve morning 1979, and Jay Parker was in his downtown Washington office, sorting through the mail of the Lincoln Institute, when the telephone rang. “My name is Clarence Thomas,” boomed a deep voice, “and I like what you have to say!”
For the next forty minutes, Jay mostly listened as Thomas, a black legislative assistant to Senator John Danforth (R-MO), talked about politics, race relations, and how much he enjoyed reading the Lincoln Review’s conservative positions on free enterprise, limited government, and traditional American values.
“I thought I was the only one out there,” Thomas said several times.
It was the beginning of an enduring friendship between the young black lawyer and the founding father of the black conservative movement in America.
Following Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential victory, transition coordinator Edwin Meese III asked Jay Parker to head the team looking at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Jay invited his young protégé Clarence Thomas to join him. The hardworking Thomas wound up cowriting the EEOC report that triggered an invitation to work in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Thomas hesitated. Until then, he had avoided taking a public position on civil rights issues, knowing that his opposition to racial preferences and school busing would “raise the ire” of the civil rights establishment.
When Thomas sought guidance from Jay Parker, his mentor insisted that civil rights issues were of great importance and Thomas had a contrarian view that the civil rights establishment needed to hear. Thomas still hesitated, uncertain how to proceed, prompting Jay to offer this blunt advice: “Put up or shut up.” Thomas realized that his friend was right. “One might shut up when it doesn’t matter,” he later said, “but when it really counts, we are required to put up.”
Less than a year later, Thomas was named chairman of the EEOC, serving two consecutive terms until 1990, when President George H. W. Bush appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Just a year later, on July 1, 1991, President Bush nominated Thomas to replace the legendary Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, who was retiring from the court after twenty-four years.
After a lengthy confirmation process, including charges of sexual harassment by a former EEOC employee, Thomas joined Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist as conservatives on the court. Reflecting on his decades-long friendship with Jay Parker, Justice Thomas was unstinting in his praise: “Jay is the most principled person I have met in Washington. Jay has always been there for advice, encouragement, and direction. . . . I know that I wouldn’t be on the Court if I had not met Jay Parker.”
Who is this black conservative who mentored a Supreme Court justice, provided an editorial platform for celebrated black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, counseled the emerging black leaders of newly liberated African countries, and inspired young Americans white and black with his commitment to individual freedom and responsibility? Who is this unsung hero who founded the modern black conservative movement?
“THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE ALL ALONE”
James Andrew (Jay) Parker was born on November 11, 1936, in “South Philly,” one of the most economically deprived neighborhoods of Philadelphia. That didn’t matter to Jay, who from the age of nine was independent and self-reliant. There was no odd job that he and his older brother, Bobby, wouldn’t do, including carrying home grocery bags, scrubbing kitchen floors, putting out the ashes from coal furnaces for trash pickup, and taking discarded newspapers and magazines to the salvage shop to receive a penny a pound. “We were big-time capitalists,” recalled Jay wryly.
Jay’s mother came from Savannah, Georgia, along with her father, Moses Butler, who cofounded the Zion Hill Baptist Church in Philadelphia. Jay was inspired by the Sunday services and activities of his grandfather’s church and considered becoming a pastor. He studied the Bible and publications that outlined Christian discipleship and leadership. In religion as well as in politics, Jay Parker was a conservative, explaining, “My Christian faith shaped my life of individualism, liberty, private property, and eternal salvation.”
Always impeccable in a suit and vest and matching fedora, Parker modeled himself after his father and his father-in-law, George (Grandpop) Clark, a sleeping car porter. “My father’s pants always had a sharp crease and his shoes were always shined.” As for “Grandpop,” Parker never saw him without a crisp white shirt and tie. “If the doorbell rang,” he recalled, “he would put on his jacket before he answered the door.”
After graduating from public high school in 1954, Jay worked as a salesman for a Nashville insurance company and continued to read widely in conservative literature, including The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk, Up from Liberalism by William F. Buckley Jr., and The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater. He was strongly influenced by the anti-statist themes of the classic libertarian work Reclaiming the American Dream by Richard Cornuelle. His political heroes included Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH), who led the Republican resistance to New Deal government into the early 1950s, and the black journalist, editor, and author George Schuyler, whose satirical style led critics to call him “a black H. L. Mencken.”
In 1961, Jay joined the conservative youth group Young Americans for Freedom and quickly assumed a leadership role. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he spoke on nearly four hundred college campuses in the United States and Canada. His greatest victory as an activist occurred in 1965, when the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company announced that it planned to build a synthetic rubber plant in Communist Romania. Jay helped organize YAF picket lines and demonstrations outside Firestone stores, calling on the U.S. company to abandon its plan. Unimpressed by the threats of a bunch of “kids,” Firestone said it would proceed with construction.
YAF then declared that it would hand out 500,000 flyers at the Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day informing the tens of thousands at the race as well as the millions watching on television of Firestone’s plan to do business with a communist government. This got Firestone’s attention. The Indianapolis 500 was of enormous importance to Firestone, which used it to heavily promote its tires and other products. YAF added that it was considering hiring an airplane with a large banner reading “Firestone: Don’t Build in Communist Romania!” to fly back and forth all day over the racetrack.
Firestone abruptly canceled the Romanian project. Jay and YAF had “persuaded” Firestone to make the right decision.
Along with his campus talks, Jay became involved in radio, first as an announcer for a Christian program on a Philadelphia station and then as host of a political talk program, Left, Right, and Center, that was popular in Philadelphia political circles. Jay had his greatest impact on the conservative movement through the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, which he founded in 1978. The institute’s primary voice was the Lincoln Review, a quarterly journal.
To differentiate the publication, Jay condensed one or two lead articles to eight hundred words and highlighted them in copies sent to key politicians and journalists. His “digest” policy paid off royally when the prestigious Wall Street Journal published an editorial on the Lincoln Review. The piece read in part: “There’s a new magazine with something important to say about the future of the black community in the United States. . . . Its editor says it is meant as a platform for topics and points of view that may fall outside conventionally defined ‘black issues’ and black perspectives but that are nevertheless of significant concern to black Americans.”
Highlights of the first issues ranged from an in-depth profile of General Daniel “Chappie” James, the first black four-star general, to an analysis of the conflict between the black and Jewish communities in America. Roy Innis, national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), echoed Russell Kirk and other conservative educators by endorsing tax credits for tuition, arguing that “parents are the principal educators of their children.” “They should have the right,” Innis said, to send their children to schools that “support rather than subvert the goals and standards of their household.”
Walter Williams, then an associate professor of economics at Temple University, wrote that labor unions had deliberately discriminated against minorities and excluded blacks from many job markets. “Black people, like minorities of the past,” Williams wrote, “do not need federal handouts and gifts. Black people need a chance to compete.”
The Lincoln Review also featured the views of another then-unknown black economist, Thomas Sowell of UCLA. Sowell denied that the black experience in industrial America was any different from that of the Irish, the Italian, the Jewish, or the Japanese. To explain the income lag between white and black Americans, the California professor noted that most of the black urban population had been in the city for only two generations. It took time and training, Sowell wrote, for any people with a rural past to adjust to urban life. No other publication in America presented such unorthodox arguments.
“There are hundreds and thousands of black conservatives all across this country,” Jay Parker wrote in an early Lincoln Review article. “Heretofore, they thought they were all alone. Now with the Lincoln Institute they have a platform, a place to share their ideas and their dreams for a better tomorrow.”
PIONEER
To help build a better tomorrow for blacks, Jay resolved to break the racial ceiling in the world of volunteerism. He joined and wound up heading a wide variety of Washington-area charitable groups, including Kiwanis, the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind, Goodwill Industries, and the venerable Salvation Army. For his contribution to the National Guard, Jay received the secretary of defense’s medal for outstanding public service. He had given his time to the National Guard, he explained, “because I love my country and I respect the men and women who are in the forefront of our national defense.”
As a student of the Cold War, Jay Parker tracked political developments around the globe, especially in Africa. In the 1970s, many African nations found themselves embroiled in the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. South Africa was a prime target of the Soviets and their fellow travelers. Jay Parker and other members of the American African Affairs Association (AAAA), such as George Schuyler, felt that trading the totalitarian government of white rule for a black-led totalitarian regime led by the Marxist African National Congress was not the answer.
They proposed a peaceful transition to a pro-Western government but were unable to win broad public support. Jay and the AAAA also tried to prevent African nations like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Angola from going Marxist, but they could not prevail against the entrenched liberal establishment. “If the Congressional Black Caucus had worked to develop governments that were more pro-Western and more democratic,” Jay said, “millions of people would not have died in needless tribal conflicts like Darfur.”
In the 1980s, Jay frequently answered the call of the Reagan administration, working as a consultant to Attorney General Ed Meese on a special committee to tackle the problem of missing and exploited children, helping U.S. Information Agency head Charles Wick disseminate a more accurate image of America to the rest of the world, especially in Africa, and assisting Donald Devine, head of the Office of Personnel Management, to improve the quality of the federal workforce. A grateful President Reagan wrote Jay, “Through your efforts, thousands of black Americans have come to realize that limited government and the free enterprise system are the best hope for all Americans—black and white.” Jay responded, “It was an honor to serve one of our greatest presidents.”
MENTOR
Jay Parker never stopped mentoring young conservatives. His mentees included Ron Robinson, the founder and president of Young America’s Foundation; Frank Donatelli, political director in the Reagan White House; and Dr. Robert Moffit, a health expert and senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Parker understood how important the right influences were on young people: in 1973 he published a revealing biography of Angela Davis that described how “a bright young honor student” was transformed into a communist revolutionary by Marxist academic Herbert Marcuse, Black Panther George Jackson, and other anti-American radicals.
“A day without Jay was like a day without sunshine,” remarked a close friend. The friend called Jay a master of PMA (Positive Mental Attitude), saying that “nothing seemed to faze him.” Jay Parker was independent, optimistic, principled, courageous, Gibraltar solid in his faith. “He was one of a rare breed,” Ed Meese said, “a man who does the important work behind the scenes without seeking the limelight of the TV cameras.”
On September 14, 2015, at the age of eighty, Jay Parker went to meet his Maker. His work lives on in the burgeoning black conservative movement.
------------------ Lee Edwards is the distinguished fellow in conservative thought at The Heritage Foundation's B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics and chairman of The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. A leading historian of American conservatism, Edwards has published 25 books, including "Just Right: A Life in Pursuit of Liberty."
Dr. Bill Smith, editor of the ARRA News Service, was a former professor and campus advisor for Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) students. After retiring, he remained in contact with ISI who contributes articles many of which are published by the ARRA News Service. Tags:Lee Edwards, Heritage Foundation, Founding Father, Black Conservative Movement, James Andrew Parker, Jay ParkerTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: BREAKING NEWS
This morning's shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida is being investigated by the FBI as an act of terrorism. The shooter was reportedly a Saudi national who was on the base for flight training. Three people were killed and seven others were wounded. The terrorist was shot and killed by responding officers.
Today's events are reminiscent of many concerns about 9/11. Several of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals who attended Florida flight schools.
Please join me in praying for the victims and their families.
Meet The New G.O.P.
We've all heard stories or seen movies with the stereotypical old man yelling, "Get off my lawn!" I usually don't embrace stereotypes, but Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, two Grumpy Old Politicians, really setback the reputation of the elderly this week.
While campaigning in Iowa, Biden got a totally predictable question about his son's work for a Ukrainian natural gas company. Merle Gorman, who posed the question, is a Marine veteran, a retired farmer, an Elizabeth Warren supporter, and a little overweight.
But Biden lost it. He called Gorman "a damn liar," appeared to call him "fat," challenged him to a pushup contest and implied that Gorman was too sedentary.
And then there was Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As she was leaving yesterday morning's press conference, a reporter shouted a legitimate question about whether she was pursuing impeachment simply because the left hates Donald Trump.
Pelosi stopped, turned around and rushed back to the podium. She denounced the reporter for asking such an offensive question, and claimed that as a Catholic she doesn't hate anyone.
Well, the Catholic Church does not believe in abortion either. But Nancy Pelosi promotes abortion. The Catholic Church does not believe in the redefinition of marriage and gender. But Nancy Pelosi is all in on that too.
And I don't recall Pelosi denouncing progressives who routinely accuse men and women of faith (here, here and here) of being hate-filled bigots for believing in the sanctity of life and traditional marriage.
The Left's Hate
I can't look into Pelosi's soul, but this impeachment effort is only happening because of progressive hatred for Trump. (Need a reminder?) They have been trying to force him out of office literally since the day he was inaugurated!
Sadly, the left is going "nuclear" with a purely partisan impeachment effort at the very time in which two-thirds of the public already fears we're headed toward a civil war. Meanwhile, Pelosi is stalling major legislation and using rhetoric guaranteed to further divisions.
We all know how this ends -- with Trump's acquittal in the Senate. But the only people applauding this process are radical progressives and our enemies overseas, who are thrilled by the discord in Washington and the chaos across our country.
Speaking of hate, Professor Jonathan Turley, a liberal who had the courage to "resist" the left's insane demands, has been deluged with hateful phone calls and messages since Wednesday's hearing.
This is the kind of snarling vitriol I deal with every day at American Values, fighting for faith, family and freedom. That's why I hope you will include American Values in your end of year giving.
Four More Years!
Speaker Pelosi suggested several times yesterday that America can't survive another four years of this administration. Well, based on this morning's incredible jobs report, I suspect many Americans feel differently.
Job creation in November -- 266,000 new jobs -- shattered the experts' predictions of 187,000. In addition, the figures for September and October were adjusted up by 41,000 jobs. Wages are up, and the unemployment rate is at a 50-year low.
No wonder Democrats are so desperate to impeach this president. They know they can't beat him on the issues.
The Totalitarian Left
Rep. Adam Schiff's phone records scandal is beginning to get some desperately needed attention. (Here, here and here.) Schiff won't say how he got them, but he should be forced to. Every American should be alarmed by this invasion of privacy.
Somehow, Schiff got his hands on John Solomon's phone records. Solomon is an investigative journalist who has looked extensively into Hunter Biden's dealings in Ukraine. Every reporter should be outraged by this government intrusion.
On what basis did Schiff get Rudy Giuliani's phone records? He is the president's personal attorney. Attorney-client privilege, the principle that a lawyer's communications with his client are kept private, is fundamental to the American legal system. Where is the ACLU's outrage?
Schiff also got Rep. Devin Nunes's records. For a Democrat committee chairman to spy on the committee's ranking Republican is a tremendous abuse of power. Just imagine what Congress will be like if this becomes standard practice!
The huge irony here is that Pelosi, Schiff and their progressive allies are screaming that President Trump is violating our rights and abusing his power when they are doing exactly what they are accusing him of doing. Perhaps we should impeach Pelosi and Schiff too!
By the way, today's Wall Street Journal argues that Adam Schiff did a better of job of impeaching Joe Biden than Donald Trump.
American Values regularly works with pro-family legal organizations to fight back against the use of government power to suppress the rights of Christians and conservatives.
Remembering Pearl Harbor
Tomorrow the nation will commemorate Pearl Harbor Day, and keeping with the pattern of recent years, very little has been said about it.
People from my generation can tell you where they were and what they were doing when news broke that John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King were assassinated. For younger people, it's the same for 9/11. But for the Greatest Generation, December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy," was just such a day.
It was a sunny Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii. At 7:48 AM local time, hundreds of Imperial Japanese planes descended from the sky and attacked. Eight U.S. battleships and 188 planes were destroyed in the surprise attack. Some 2,403 Americans were killed.
The next day, tens of thousands of men responded by enlisting in the military. Every day, fewer men and women from that generation remain with us.
Thankfully, Lou Conter, who was on board the USS Arizona 78 years ago, is still with us and will be attending tomorrow's events.
No Safe Spaces
A disturbing poll this week found that 27% of Americans want to limit the First Amendment in order to ban speech they find offensive. Even worse, nearly half of them (48%) believe that people who say offensive things should be put in jail.
This poll show why "No Safe Spaces" is a must see movie! The film features Dennis Prager, Adam Corolla, Tim Allen, Jordan Peterson, Alan Dershowitz, Ben Shapiro, Van Jones and Cornell West.
Please encourage your friends and family members to see "No Safe Spaces," which is playing in more than 150 theaters across the country this weekend. If the movie is not playing in your area, contact your local theaters and urge them to get it.
------------------- Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer) is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families Tags:Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Meet The New GOP, The Left's Hate, No Safe SpacesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Impeachment Inquisition: Phony Pelosi 'Doesn't Hate Trump'
. . . House speaker dubiously claims her drive to impeach Trump is not motivated by partisanship.
by Thomas Gallatin: “The damage that this administration has done to America — America is a great country; we can sustain — two terms, I don’t know,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lamented Thursday, following her earlier announcement that Democrats would move forward with drafting articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. She then hysterically asserted, “Civilization as we know it today is at stake in this election.”
Meanwhile in the real world, the November jobs numbers are out and the news is good. The booming economy continues to chug along with 266,000 jobs added (more than the 185,000 expected) and near-record-low unemployment of 3.5%. The jobs included 54,000 manufacturing jobs in the midst of panic over Trump’s trade moves. And the number of Americans working is a record-high 158,593,000.
So how exactly is Trump threatening civilization? The only thing he’s actually threatening is the Democrats’ goal of an ever-expanding centralized authoritarian government. Under Trump, American Liberty has been protected from the onslaught of the leftist elites.
What is at stake in the 2020 election? Which party is running on a platform of promising to limit and take away Americans’ constitutionally protected rights of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to bear arms? Which party is advocating for open borders, harboring illegal aliens, using taxpayer money to cover illegal aliens’ healthcare, ending private health insurance, and raising taxes? Which party blames capitalism for causing climate change and advocates replacing the U.S. free-market economy with socialism? It’s certainly not Trump and the Republicans. But we digress.
Back to Pelosi, her statement let the cat out of the bag regarding the Democrats’ true motivation for impeaching Trump. It’s all about the 2020 election. It’s all a political strategy they have been committed to implementing ever since Trump won the election, irrespective of Pelosi’s phony denial.
Speaking of phony, back in March, Pelosi opined, “I’m not for impeachment. Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And [Trump is] just not worth it.” Clearly, Pelosi had no intention of meeting that standard for impeachment. Not one Republican has sided with this obviously partisan charade.
Finally, we note Pelosi’s laughable claim to not hate Trump because “as a Catholic … I don’t hate anyone.” She sanctimoniously continued, “I was raised in a way that is full of a heart of love and always pray for the president. … I pray for the president all the time. So, don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.” We’re not sure what’s more phony — her claim of being a Catholic while rejecting Bible and Church teaching on life in the womb, or her statement that she doesn’t “hate” Trump while leading the party of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Does anyone actual believe her? Judging by her record, no one should.
-------------------- Thomas Gallatin is a Features Editor at The Patriot Post. Tags:Thomas Gallatin, The Patriot Post, Impeachment Inquisition, Phony Pelosi, 'Doesn't Hate Trump' To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
In an interview on the “Howard Stern Show” on Dec. 4 to promote her book, co-authored by daughter Chelsea Clinton, titled “The Book of Gutsy Women”, the former first lady said she has “never even been tempted” to engage in a lesbian affair.
“Well, contrary to what you might hear, I actually like men,” Clinton told Stern.
Hillary and Bill Clinton have been married since 1975, but there have been multiple rumors in the past that Hillary was a closet lesbian.
Sally Miller, former Miss Arkansas and alleged mistress to Bill Clinton, said in 2016 that the former first lady didn’t like to have sex with her husband. Miller also alleged that Hillary was a lesbian.
Former Trump adviser Roger Stone, in his 2015 book “The Clintons' War on Women”, refers to Hillary as an “evil lesbian.”
Bryan Fischer, formerly of the American Family Association, claimed that Hillary would be the “first lesbian president” if elected to the White House.
In the radio interview with Stern, Hillary said her relationship with former President Bill Clinton began in college and that she had to break up with another man to begin dating Bill.
She described the former boyfriend as “a good guy” who “looked like a Greek god.” The former secretary of state added that she was always “pretty popular” and never struggled to get dates.
“I dated a lot of different people, and I liked a lot of them,” she said. “I was pretty popular. I was, OK, popular … boys were not my problem.”
Was she ever romantically interested in women? “Never, never, never!” Hillary told Stern, adding: “Never even been tempted, thank you very much.”
------------------- Free Press International News Service, aka: Free Pressers (@FreePressers). Tags:Free Press International, News Service, Free Pressers, Hillary Comes Out, 'I Was Popular,' I 'Like Men'To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Supreme Court Should Keep NYC Gun Case in Its Sights
Image by ARRA News Service
by Elizabeth Slattery: It’s not often that the Supreme Court agrees to hear a Second Amendment case. It’s been nearly 10 years since the last one, despite numerous petitions asking the justices to review state and local government attempts to regulate away the right to keep and bear arms.
Last January, however, the justices agreed to review New York City’s draconian and restrictive regulations prohibiting residents from transporting licensed, locked, and unloaded handguns anywhere but one of seven gun ranges within city limits.
If you were fortunate enough to have a second home upstate, too bad. If you preferred a gun range across the bridge in New Jersey, tough luck.
Members of a local shooting club who challenged the regulations agreed to a lengthy briefing schedule after the Supreme Court granted review. This moved the case to the 2019-2020 term, giving the city time to revise its regulations in an effort to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on its previous regime.
The city reasoned that it gave the shooting club members everything they wanted so the case is now “moot.”
The Constitution bars courts from issuing “advisory opinions” on hypothetical cases. One of the things that moves a case from the hypothetical realm to the real world is a court’s ability to grant some relief to the complaining party.
In New York’s view, the Supreme Court can’t grant any relief here, but the shooting club members disagree. They want a declaration that the old transportation ban is and was unconstitutional in order to prevent the city from reversing course in the future.
And under the Supreme Court’s doctrine of voluntary cessation, as Chief Justice John Roberts explained in a 2007 ruling, a defendant does not “moot” a case by willingly stopping the action that gave rise to the lawsuit unless it is “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.”
Shooting club members also object to the revised regulations, which now allow residents to transport licensed, locked, and unloaded handguns to gun ranges outside the city or second homes, but stipulate that any trip must be “continuous and uninterrupted.”
At the oral argument Dec. 2, the justices probed New York’s lawyer about this point. They wanted to know if stopping for coffee would violate the regulations. How about a short detour to a relative’s house? The city’s pinkie-swear promise that it wouldn’t go after those types of offenders wasn’t satisfying.
It takes a long time for most cases to work their way from initial filing up to the Supreme Court, and the justices take roughly 70 cases out of 7,000 petitions filed annually. This case took six years to reach the high court.
After six years of insisting that its regulations were both constitutional and necessary for public safety, it’s pretty clear what motivated the city’s 11th-hour change. Concerned about how the newly constituted Supreme Court might rule, the city chose to abandon its law in an effort to stop the justices from ruling on whether the Second Amendment protects a right that extends beyond the home.
The Supreme Court should not reward such skulduggery. To do so would send the message to localities, states, and even the federal government that they can thwart judicial review and avoid accountability under the Constitution.
Let’s hope the justices see through this ploy and keep this case in its sights. ---------------- Elizabeth Slattery (@EHSlattery) writes about the rule of law, the proper role of the courts, civil rights and equal protection, and the scope of constitutional provisions such as the Supreme Court, the Commerce Clause and the Recess Appointments Clause as a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Tags:Elizabeth Slattery, The Daily Signal, Supreme Court, NYC Gun CaseTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Rats Flee Pelosi’s Sinking Ship – 3 Democrats Signal No Vote on Sham Impeachment – Only 14 To Go to Shut It Down
by Jim Hoft: Two House Democrats who represent Trump districts voted against formalizing the House impeachment probe back in October.
Jeff Van Drew, 66, a freshman who represents New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District, and Collin Peterson of Minnesota, 75, a conservative Democrat who represents Minnesota’s 7th District, were the only two lawmakers from either party to cross the aisle.
President Trump carried Rep. Collin Peterson’s district by nearly 31 points in 2016.
On Thursday Michigan Democrat Dan Kildee signaled he may abandon Pelosi’s sinking ship. Kildee said his constituents would prefer Congress to focus on “kitchen-table” issues rather than impeaching President Donald Trump.
There are 31 Democrats who will lose their election in November if they support Pelosi’s sham impeachment.
Here is the list again of likely Democrat losers.
Independents and swing state voters are opposed to the impeachment scam and President Trump is rising in the polls.
The entire Schiff-Show ended up being a huge flop.
** Support for impeachment fell with independents, swing and suburban voters.
** President Trump’s approval rating went up.
** And now ONE-THIRD of DEMOCRATS think Joe Biden should be investigated on his pay-for-play schemes with his son Hunter.
And the entire process has resulted in increasing support for this historic president.
Democrats HAVE NO IDEA the boomerang that is about to hit them upside their heads!
There are 31 Democrats who representing districts President Trump won in 2016.
After three years of constant attacks and vicious assault be Democrats Trump voters have only grown in their support of this president.
These 31 Democrats WILL LOSE THEIR SEAT if they DARE to vote for this sham impeachment!
Via Paul Sperry:
Here is list of the 31 vulnerable House Dems in 2020--all from districts won by Trump--who may now break ranks on the increasingly unpopular impeachment(especially if there were a GOP equivalent of Indivisible to stalk them in their home districts over the Thanksgiving recess):
Here again is the list of the Endangered 31 Dems: Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.)
Lucy McBath’s (D-Ga.)
Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.)
Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.)
Abby Finkenauer (D-Iowa)
Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa)
Cindy Axne’s (D-Iowa)
Jared Golden (D-Maine)
Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)
Haley Stevens (D-Mich.)
Angie Craig (D-Minn.)
Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)
Susie Lee’s (D-Nev.)
Chris Pappas’s (D-N.H.)
Jefferson Van Drew (D-N.J.)
Andy Kim (D-N.J.)
Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.)
Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.)
Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.)
Max Rose (D-N.Y.)
Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.)
Antonio Delgado (D-N.Y.)
Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.)
Kendra Horn(D-Okla.)
Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.)
Conor Lamb (D-Pa.)
Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.)
Ben McAdams (D-Utah)
Elaine Luria’s (D-Va.)
Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.)
Ron Kind (D-Wis.)A vote for impeachment is a vote to the unemployment line.
-------------------- Jim Hoft founded The Gateway Pundit an American far-right news and opinion website. Tags:Jim Hoft, The Gateway Pundit, Rats Flee Pelosi’s Sinking ShipTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Caroline Glick: By all accounts, peace with Jordan, and the survival of the Hashemite monarchy are among Israel’s key strategic interests. But as Netanyahu rightly noted, that peace is not a function of Israel’s popularity among the Jordanians. It is predicated on Israel’s deterrent power.
Tuesday Israel’s Channel 13 reported that President Donald Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates held a meeting at the White House last week with the ambassadors of Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. She reportedly asked the emissaries to check whether their governments are willing to consider signing non-aggression pacts with Israel.
The story, which the White House did not deny indicates the Trump administration has embraced an Israeli initiative, raised publicly last month by Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz. The idea is that through the non-aggression pacts, which are less than peace treaties, Israel and its Arab neighbors will be able to sidestep the issue of formal relations, replete with embassy opening ceremonies, and simply engage in open relations, for the benefit of all sides.
This has been the central goal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic strategy. For decades, foreign policy practitioners and activists in the U.S., Europe and the Israeli left have insisted that peace between Israel and the larger Arab world is impossible so long as Israel has not concluded a peace treaty with the PLO. This view gives the PLO the power to dictate if, when and under what conditions Arab nations will be “allowed” to have normal relations with the Jewish state.
Netanyahu’s goal has long been to rescind the PLO’s veto. By working behind the scenes to build constructive, stable ties with the states of the region predicated on mutual interests, Netanyahu has made great strides in achieving this goal. The very fact that Coates reportedly held the meeting with the Arab ambassadors in the White House is testament to the success of his efforts.
The dimensions of Netanyahu’s achievement are clear when you compare Israel’s constructive, mutually beneficial ties with states with which it lacks formal peace treaties to Israel’s ties with Jordan.
In recent remarks before a Knesset meeting marking the 25th anniversary of the signing of Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan, Netanyahu explained that the basis of Israel’s peaceful relations with Egypt and Jordan is not emotional. The Egyptians and Jordanians haven’t embraced Israel as a neighbor and friend. Rather, Israel’s peace treaties are the products of its deterrent power.
In his words, “As long as we are stronger – they are with us. If we become weaker, then the peace agreements will hang by a thread.”
That means that practically speaking there is little substantive difference between Israel’s ties with say, the UAE, and Israel’s ties with Egypt. So long as both perceive Israel as strong and helpful, and impossible to destroy, they will have good relations with it. If Israel becomes a strategic basket case on the other hand, then those relations will rapidly deteriorate.
In Egypt’s case, the combination of Israeli strength and shared interests in combating Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood improved relations to an unprecedented degree. Acting on these shared interests and his recognition of Israeli power, Egyptian President Abdel el-Fattah a-Sisi played a significant role in cultivating ties between the Sunni Gulf states and Israel.
Jordan is a different story. While Israel’s relations with Egypt have never been better, its relations with Jordan have never been worse. Indeed, Israel’s informal ties with Saudi Arabia today are arguably better than its formal ties with Jordan. So what is going on? Is Israel doing something wrong? What does it get out of its ties with Jordan to begin with?
The most important advantage Israel gains from its ties with Jordan is a long peaceful eastern frontier. But that peaceful border, which is a function of Israel’s control of the Jordan Valley on the one hand and to Jordan’s actions to secure its border with Israel on the other, predates the peace treaty by more than 20 years. Moreover, given the downward trajectory of bilateral ties, it’s hard to know how long Jordan will remain committed to securing the border. From week to week, Jordan’s growing hostility towards Israel become more difficult to countenance or explain away.
Consider events of the past three weeks.
A week ago, the Jordanian armed forces conducted a military exercise led by the elite Royal Guard 1st Mechanized Battalion. It was codenamed “Swords of Karama” after a 1968 battle by the Jordanian town of Karama between Israel and Fatah terrorists. Jordanian military forces fought alongside Fatah.
Jordanian King Abdullah II oversaw the two-day exercise which included infantry and armor forces along with fighter jets and helicopters. Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Razzaz, government ministers, senior military commanders as well as foreign military attaches also attended the exercise. The “Swords of Karameh” reportedly simulated a battle between Jordanian forces and an invasion force “from the west” which involved defeating the foreign invaders and destroying the bridges across which they entered Jordan.
In other words, it simulated a battle against Israel.
It bears noting that on the face of it, the “Swords of Karameh,” constituted a material breach of the terms of the peace treaty. The treaty bars the parties from carrying out belligerent acts against one another. Simulating war with Israel, and rushing to publicize the simulation certainly feels like a belligerent act.
Two weeks ago, in remarks to a fawning audience of American Jews in New York, Abdullah said that Jordan’s bilateral relations with Israel had reached “an all-time low.” He laid the blame for the state of affairs squarely on Israel’s shoulders.
Three weeks ago, Abdullah and his son prayed at the Tzofar and Naharayim enclaves to celebrate their transfer to Jordan from Israel. Israel was compelled to transfer the enclaves to Jordan after Abdullah breached the spirit of the peace agreement and refused to renew the lease of the lands to the Israeli farmers who own them for an additional 25 years, as the peace treaty presumed he would.
This week, the Jordanian State Security Court opened its trial of Israeli national Konstantin Kotov. Kotov is being tried for illegally crossing the border to Jordan on October 29, and for drug possession. Israel expected Jordan to return Kotov to Israel last month parallel to Israel’s transfer of two Jordanian nationals it was holding on terrorism charges. That didn’t happen.
As Jordan has undertaken these hostile actions against Israel, Israel reportedly concluded a new water deal with Jordan. In the 1994 peace treaty, Israel agreed to supply Jordan 50 million metric cubes of water each year. The amount was doubled to 100 million metric cubes a year in 2016. Details of the latest agreement are being kept secret. But it is widely assumed that Israel agreed to increase the amount of water it is supplying to Jordan annually both from its desalination plants and from the Sea of Galilee, yet again.
It’s easy to understand Israel’s seemingly masochistic behavior. Israel wants to preserve the peace with Jordan. Peace goes through the Hashemite monarchy, which itself is under constant threat from the Jordanian public. Last year hundreds of thousands of Jordanians participated in anti-regime protests precipitated by the Kingdom’s poor economic conditions. The protesters compelled King Abdullah to fire his prime minister.
Last year’s protests terrified the monarchy because they marked the first time that the Beduin tribes — the backbone of the regime — joined the traditionally anti-regime forces in the Muslim Brotherhood and trade unions to participate in anti-regime demonstrations.
Out of genuine concern for the welfare of the regime, Israel is turning the other cheek in the face of repeated abuse and humiliation to help Abdullah and the Hashemite Kingdom survive.
While the rationale for Israel’s obsequious behavior is clear, the time has come to consider whether it is makes sense to continue on this road, or if there are better ways to maintain our ties and perhaps better advance our interests with Jordan.
The fact is that Jordan doesn’t have much leverage against Israel. It has no economic leverage against it. And with President Trump in the White House and Ambassador Kelly Craft at the UN, Jordan has little diplomatic leverage against Israel. The only card it can really play is the perennial “nuclear option” – the threat to abrogate the peace treaty.
Unlike Jordan, Israel has significant leverage against Jordan and using it doesn’t require threatening the peace treaty.
On Tuesday, we saw an Israeli politician make rare and effective use of that leverage.
Tuesday morning a delegation of deputy mayors attending a conference in Eilat tried to cross the border to Jordan for a day trip to Petra. They were stopped at the border by Jordanian authorities. After humiliating them, the Jordanian border guards prohibited the Israeli officials from entering the Kingdom because several deputy mayors were wearing tzitzit, a religious garment with ritual fringes that Jewish law requires Jewish males to wear. Recently Jordan instituted a regulation barring Jews wearing or carrying religious attire or articles from entering the Kingdom. The men had already hidden their kippot under hats. So the Jordanians stopped them for their tzitzit.
After the incident was reported, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri had the Foreign Ministry inform the Jordanian government that in retaliation for the anti-Semitic policy, he intended to bar Jordanian workers from receiving permits to work in Israel.
The Jordanians cancelled their anti-Jewish regulation.
The fact is that Israel is the guarantor of Jordan’s economic survival. The government needs to recognize the power that comes with that distinction.
Consider the following. Long standing water shortages have compelled Israel to use desalinated water as its primary source of both potable and irrigation water. Given the continued water crisis, and its impact on the viability of Israeli agriculture, Israel should reevaluate the quantities of water it is capable of supplying Jordan beyond the 50 million metric cubes it is required to provide under the peace treaty.
Under the gas deal Israel concluded with Jordan, Israel agreed to supply Jordan with natural gas nearly at cost. Israel may need to reassess the price given Turkish and Hezbollah threats to its offshore gas fields. Security is expensive.
Whereas the Jordanians automatically support every Palestinian provocation, in recent years the Saudis have soured on the Palestinians and have supported Israel against them repeatedly. Given this new state of affairs, it makes sense for Israel to revisit the privileged position Jordanian officials enjoy on the Temple Mount.
In light of the region’s strategic instability, the Ministry of Defense should have carried out a serious study of the IDF’s force size with an eye towards enlarging it years ago. And in light of Jordan’s simulation of war with Israel last week, it would be irresponsible to put off conducting such a study any longer.
See how leverage works?
By all accounts, the peace with Jordan, and the survival of the Hashemite monarchy are among Israel’s key strategic interests. But as Netanyahu rightly noted in his remarks at the Knesset, that peace is not a function of Israel’s popularity among the Jordanians. It is predicated on Israel’s deterrent power.
Jordan’s actions over the past several weeks reinforce what has been clear for some time. In its rush to protect Abdullah and the peace, Israel has forgotten to deter Abdullah to preserve the peace. The time has come for Israel to correct its behavior.
--------------------- Caroline Glick writes for numerous publications including Israel Hayom. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com. Tags:Caroline Glick, Preserving, Peace with Jordan, Israel HayomTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
. . . It is obvious that Pelosi and the Democrats hate President Trump but they hate his voters even more and are willing to abuse their power to get rid of him.
Tags:editorial cartoon, AF Branco, Abuse of Power, It is obvious, Pelosi, Democrats, hate President Trump, but they hate, his voters even more, willing to abuse their power, to get rid of himTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Michael Barone: Sometimes the latest new thing is something antique. That's especially true in American politics, which has had seriously contested presidential elections every four years (with one exception) since 1800 and competitions between the same two durable parties since 1856. We're even on our (lucky?) 13th presidential race since the nominating rules were changed, back in the 1970s, to favor primaries rather than caucuses.
It's even true that new technology can bring back old politics. Case in point: President Donald Trump's use of Twitter, which is often lamented and sometimes effective, and occasionally backfires. In 140 -- and then 280 -- characters, the unconventional candidate and president has communicated directly, over the heads of an almost uniformly hostile media, with the American people.
Where might he have gotten the idea and developed the knack? In the unique tabloid politics of New York City, which was raging hot and heavy when the young, outer-borough real estate heir made headlines in his quest to use political clout to enter the Manhattan real estate market at rock bottom.
From the 1920s to the 1980s, New York's tabloids' front-page headlines vied to attract subway riders' nickels and dimes each day, and their circulation peaked with subway ridership in 1947, at 2,400,000 copies a day.
The tabs, as they were called, published multiple editions each day, geared to different rush hours, and the game politicians played was to get a favorable headline in the latest edition. I remember watching David Garth, the legendary New York media maker (who helped elect former Mayors John Lindsay, Edward Koch, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg), on the phone around 3 o'clock with some tabloid editor, pitching a front-page story and headline for the 4 o'clock edition.
Tabloid headlines, not coincidentally, contain a limited number of letters, or about as many characters as a pungent tweet, and could be just as memorable (the classic was "Headless Body in Topless Bar"). Getting on the front page, Trump said in a 1988 interview with Brazilian businessman Joao Doria, was the secret of political success. Doria took the point: He was later host of Brazil's "O Aprendiz" and is now governor of the state of Sao Paulo, which has twice the population of New York state, and could be elected president in 2022.
Tabloid politics flourished in New York up through 1998, when then-Republican Sen. Alfonse d'Amato overreached in calling Democratic challenger then-Rep.Charles Schumer a "putzhead." Since then, paid media (TV ads), free media (speeches, debates) and heredity (Cuomos have won five of the last nine governor races) have determined election winners in New York, as in the other 49 states.
What's odd is that tabloid politics, with its multiple news cycles every day, assumed a volatile electorate, ready to switch candidates because of a single headline, while Trump's tabloid-like tweet politics have produced surprisingly steady support for candidates.
Within weeks of descending that Trump Tower escalator, Trump led in every primary poll but one. His presidential job ratings and pairings against leading Democrats have remained remarkably similar to his poll and election numbers against Hillary Clinton. Those of us who find his tweets repugnant have difficulty arguing they're politically poisonous.
The Twitter-era race for the Democratic presidential nomination has been almost as stable. Former Vice President Joe Biden has remained the front-runner in most polls, improbably for a 77-year-old. Spurts of support -- like the tabloid-headlined spurts of David Garth's clients' opponents -- have quickly appeared and faded for Sen. Kamala Harris in July (this week, she left the race) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in early October; and have appeared without fading (yet, anyway), for Mayor Pete Buttigieg this Thanksgiving weekend.
Donald Trump's tweets, like tabloid politics in its heyday, partake of New York's culture of insult, sarcasm and even cruelty. Whining about unfair attacks is for losers. That may be one reason why, in the Democratic primaries, Twitter politics has been better at knocking down candidates -- Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Warren and Buttigieg, if he continues to fail to get perceptible support from black voters -- than at boosting them up into the first tier. Otherwise, voters seem to stick with their original choices, even as insults fly in the Twitterverse.
A test case will come with the candidacy of Michael Bloomberg, who's depending not on tweets or debates or personal campaigning but on the unlimited supply of TV ads a man who has made $50 billion can buy. As a longtime New Yorker and three-time mayor, he's not unfamiliar with tabloid-wars politics. But can he play Twitter politics as well?
-------------------------- Michael Barone is a Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics Shared by Rasmussen Reports. Tags:Michael Barone, editorial, Rasmussen Reports, Twitter Politics, Roots in Tabloid-War, PoliticsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Democrats’ Diversity — Only in the Back of the Bus
by Patrick Buchanan: The promise of victory offered by Biden and the ideological agenda offered by Sanders and Warren trumped the ethnic appeal of Booker, Castro and Kamala Harris.
The “Our diversity is our strength!” Party is starting to look rather monochromatic in its upper echelons these days.
The four leading candidates for its presidential nomination — Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg — are all white.
The six candidates who have qualified for the Dec. 19 debate — the front four, plus Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer — are all white.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are both white, as are Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Whip Dick Durbin.
The chairs of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees managing impeachment, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, are both white. And as Congressman Al Green railed Wednesday, all three experts Nadler invited to make the Democrats’ case for impeachment were white law professors. How come?
Absent affirmative action by the DNC, neither Cory Booker, the leading black candidate for the nomination, nor Julian Castro, the leading Hispanic, will be on the stage Dec. 19.
But though there is zero racial diversity among the top six Democrats in the presidential field, there is gender, ethnic and ideological diversity.
Warren would be the first woman president; Sanders, the first Jewish nominee; and Buttigieg would be the first gay nominee.
Yet the lack of racial diversity across the party hierarchy is going to put immense pressure on Joe Biden, should he win the nomination. If he hopes to reunite the Obama coalition, a woman and/or person of color as his running mate would seem an absolute imperative.
And before Biden gets there, he has other problems.
His “No Malarkey” bus tour across Iowa is all about his fear that, if he loses Iowa on Feb. 3 and New Hampshire on Feb. 11, he may not survive to reach his South Carolina firewall on Feb. 25.
Though he leads in the national polls, Iowa and New Hampshire polls have Biden running as low as fourth. Never has a candidate contested and lost both those states and then gone on to win the nomination.
Nor are these Joe’s only problems.
Call them what you will — gaffes, mental lapses — his repeated verbal miscues, some of which have caused debate rivals to laugh out loud at Joe, are a cause of alarm among Democrats who fear a Biden-Trump TV debate could produce a debacle for their man.
Nor are the other front-runners without racial-ethnic problems.
African Americans are a bedrock constituency of the Democratic Party. In recent presidential elections, they have voted 90% for the party’s nominee, and even higher for Barack Obama.
How is Mayor Pete doing with this constituency?
While running first in some polls in Iowa, his share of the African American vote in South Carolina, in a recent poll, was zero. Buttigieg had no black support in a state where African Americans constitute more than 60% of the Democratic vote.
Bernie Sanders, an unapologetic socialist who went to the Soviet Union, Reagan’s “Evil Empire,” for his honeymoon, is holding on to half of the loyal base from his impressive 2016 race against Hillary Clinton.
The other half of Bernie’s base, however, has been captured by Warren. In October, she took the lead in national polls, only to lose that lead when she could not explain how, without major new taxes on the middle class, she could abolish private health insurance and put the entire country on the Medicare rolls.
And, like Bernie, she is weak with black Democrats, who will decide South Carolina one week before Super Tuesday, when 40% of all the Democratic delegates will be chosen.
How did Democrats arrive at this pass?
As the 2019-2020 campaign began, the party divided into two camps.
There is first the moderate-centrist-pragmatic wing, whose goal is the removal of Trump, and who will go with the Democrat who is the most certain to deliver that. Biden, who spent four decades in the Senate and as vice president, was liked by many and offended few, and was first in the polls, was their natural choice.
Then there is the ideological left of the party that wants not only to win but also to remake America. It was to this huge slice of the party that Warren and Bernie have made their radical appeals.
The promise of victory offered by Biden and the ideological agenda offered by Sanders and Warren trumped the ethnic appeal of Booker, Castro and Kamala Harris.
Now, with the arrival of moneybags Mike Bloomberg and his tens of millions of dollars in ads, almost certain to reach hundreds of millions before Super Tuesday, there is the possibility that four or five candidates will survive to the convention, with no one having a majority of delegates. And the horse-trading will begin.
My view: Super Tuesday will cut the field to two or three. And the nominee will be one of the six palefaces on the stage Dec. 19.
-------------------- Patrick Buchanan (@PatrickBuchanan) is currently a blogger, conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior adviser to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. Tags:Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, Democrats’ Diversity, Only in the Back of the BusTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Trump Economic Miracle Continues - Unemployment At 50-Year Low Of 3.5 Percent
by Rick Manning: The unemployment rate is at a 50 year low at 3.5 percent. In the past year, 1.6 million people entered the workforce and an incredible 1.8 million people got jobs – this is an unprecedented run of job growth exceeding people entering the workforce at what many economists consider to be beyond full employment.
Even more significant, people who wanted work but had given up on applying was down 26 percent and people not looking because they believe no jobs are available for them was down 28 percent from a year earlier.
Finally, and most importantly, fewer people are unemployed since the year 2000, when there were 19 million fewer Americans in the workforce. The Trump economic miracle continues to astound as more and more Americans are achieving the American dream, and it is clear that the factless impeachment is a desperate partisan attempt to distract the nation from the greatest economy in any of our lifetimes.”
Massachusetts Politician Wants Docs To Screen For Gun Ownership
by Cam Edwards: This is a weird one. A new bill introduced in Massachusetts would require health care professionals to “systematically screen all patients for the presence of firearms in the home”, and offer “safety counseling” for those who test positive for gun ownership.
As bizarre as it sounds, you can read the bill for yourself. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
SECTION 1. Chapter 111 of the General Laws is hereby amended by inserting after section 236 the following section:-
Section 237. The director shall establish a program for firearm screening and counseling. Such program shall systematically screen all patients for the presence of firearms in the home. The director shall, after consultation with recognized professional medical groups and such other sources as the director deems appropriate, promulgate regulations establishing (1) the means by which and the intervals at which patients shall be screened for the presence of firearms in the home and (2) guidelines for safety counseling for individuals that screen positive for the presence of firearms in the home.
SECTION 2. This section shall take effect 6 months after its passage.Jim Wallace of the Gun Owners Action League in Massachusetts joins me on Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co. to delve into this ridiculous piece of legislation, which is actually up for a legislative hearing next week. I keep thinking there must be something more to this bill than it appears, that it targets some specific sub-group of individuals under the care of the Department of Public Health or something like that, but honestly, I’m not seeing anything that would indicate that this is some narrowly crafted piece of legislation.
It looks instead like a demand for doctors and health care professionals to establish whether their patient owns any firearms, and if they do, provide some sort of “safety counseling”, which sounds like code for “tell them why they shouldn’t own a gun.”
The sad thing is, as nutty as this bill is, there’s a good chance that it will at least be passed by the legislature, and Governor Charlie Baker’s status as a Republican is no guarantee he would veto the bill if it got to his desk.
Jim Wallace will be back on the show next week after the legislative hearing takes place, but be sure to check out the entire interview above.
Tomorrow, it’s an all email edition of the show, so if you have any questions or comments drop me a line at cam.edwards@bearingarms.com and we’ll get to as many emails as we can.
-------------------- Cam Edwards writes for Bearing Arms. H/T Gun Dynamics Tags:Cam Edwards, Bearing Arms, Massachusetts Politician, Wants Doctors, To Screen For Gun OwnershipTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by David Limbaugh: aw professor Pamela Karlan did more than cross the line in taking a cheap shot at President Donald Trump’s son, Barron Trump, in her pro-impeachment testimony. In openly demonstrating her strong personal animus against Trump, she disqualified herself as an expert witness.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not intimating that these proceedings have anything to do with evidence. They are merely a ruse to formalize the Democrats’ pre-ordained conclusion.
In responding to a softball question about the difference between a president and a king, Karlan said, “Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article 2 does not give him the power to do anything he wants, and I’ll just give you one example that shows you the difference between him and a king, which is the Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.”
These leftist academics are so used to being intellectually incarcerated in their ideological bubbles that they have no fear of blowback from expressing such insults publicly. Their cellmates understand that no decent human being could support this subhuman President Trump and his tainted offspring.
As we deplorables know, leftist academics are our moral superiors. To them, Republicans are reprobates, and their ideas are so dangerous that they must be ridiculed and suppressed, especially in their sacred classrooms.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, asked Karlan: “(D)o you remember saying the following?: ‘Liberals tend to cluster more; conservatives, especially very conservative people, tend to spread out more, perhaps because they don’t even want to be around themselves.’ … Do you understand how that reflects contempt on people who are conservative?”
Karlan defiantly denied that her statement revealed disdain for conservatives. Then again, Hillary Clinton meant no disrespect for Trump supporters when she called them “deplorables,” and former FBI agent Peter Strzok denied he derided Trump supporters when referring to them as “hillbillies” and saying in a text to former FBI attorney Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair: “Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support.”
Likewise, I’m sure former President Barack Obama meant no offense when he suggested that small-town Americans “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” Classic leftist projection was on full display there. I’m also confident that Politico reporter Marc Caputo wasn’t dissing Trump supporters when he depicted them as toothless “garbage people.”
Karlan’s scornful caricature of conservatives is reminiscent of a theory propounded by evolutionary psychologist Dr. Nigel Barber in his piece “Why Liberal Hearts Bleed and Conservatives Don’t.” I discuss this bizarre notion in my recent book, “Guilty by Reason of Insanity.”
Barber posits that scientific studies justify his belief that “Conservatives see the world as a more threatening place because their brains predispose them to being fearful.” Their “brain biology” makes them hate “complexity and compromise.” “That would help to explain why politics can be so polarized, particularly in a rather conservative era like the present,” he wrote.
Their biological predisposition to fear “illuminates the conservative take on specific political issues in fairly obvious ways,” he argues. For example, they are more religious “because religious rituals foster feelings of safety in a dangerous world.” Liberals, of course, are less religious because they see the world as less threatening and they rely more on science and education to solve problems. Conservatives “tend to be more hostile to immigrants, foreigners, and racial or ethnic minorities and to view them as more of a threat.”
But Barber arguably differs from Karlan in one respect. Whereas Karlan says that liberals tend to cluster and conservatives don’t like to be around one another, Barber says conservatives “are pro-family because being surrounded by close relatives is the best-defense against threats that surround them,” while “liberals are less interested in family ties as a protective bubble.” Here we go again with leftist projection. Bubbles are your domain, Mr. Leftist. Not ours.
Oh well. Don’t be put off by a possible inconsistency among leftist intellectuals. Focus on the common thread: Conservatives are Neanderthal, Trump-worshipping cult members not entitled to ordinary civility — and their presidents aren’t entitled to due process.
This elitist attitude underlies the left’s raging animosity toward Trump and his supporters, and drives their pre-ordained decision to impeach President Trump — a passion that preceded his term of office.
The only thing more ludicrous than these leftists pretending to be unbiased in their ongoing witch hunt of Trump is their professed concern for our constitutional system and the integrity of elections. They reverently quote the framers while elsewhere openly vilifying them as racists, sexists, bigots and homophobes. Their very ideology is contemptuous of America as founded, and they are, hands down, guilty of the very thing of which they accuse Trump: trying to steal an election. So when you hear these pointy-headed pseudo-saints zealously advocating for Trump’s ouster while pretending to safeguard our constitutional liberties, keep in mind that they have little more respect for our liberties than they do for Trump.
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