op ed review 11/19
President Trump returned from one of the longest and most
successful overseas trips by a president since President Reagan returned from
Reykjavik without giving Gorbachev a treaty in 1986. So what dominated the
Sunday morning talk shows on "national news" outlets? Judge Roy
Moore.
The mainstream media freaked out over a fake story about
President Trump overfeeding fish in Japan and criticized him for not taking
questions during a press conference in China, but several of Trump’s
achievements from his Asia trip were underreported. In other words, the
anti-Trump media are, as usual, picking and choosing what to focus on based on
their usual narrative.
Trump approval jumps to 46%.
All leading economic forecasters said it would be impossible
for President Trump’s MAGAnomic plans to generate 3% GDP growth in the first
year. President Obama said it was impossible and Trump would need a “magic
wand, or something“. Well, three months after taking office (April-June), it
was Quarter 2, and the U.S. GDP began growing over three percent. Again in
Quarter 3 (July-Sept), the same benchmark was exceeded. And now Q4 (Oct-Dec)
the New York Fed says, yes, GDP growth is 3.2%.
A new poll shows Democrat Doug Jones leading by 8 points in
the Alabama Senate race in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against
his opponent, GOP candidate Roy Moore.
Washington Post Offered $1000 cash to Roy Moore accusers
while getting “Tips” From Mitch McConnell
It is hard not to look upon the Roy Moore imbroglio as
another well-timed hit-job from a familiar and well-practiced source — the same
people who thought they had destroyed the Trump campaign by releasing the Billy
Bush tape from eleven years before, and, when that didn’t finish Mr. Trump off,
tried the nuclear option late in the campaign by shopping to the press the
Steele dossier, which the Clinton campaign had commissioned, with its salacious
and seditious elements.
The stepson of one accuser claims that his stepmother’s
accusations are “one hundred percent a lie.”
Washington Post failed to mention: One of Moore’s accusers worked as a sign
language interpreter for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
??Roy Moore Signature Inside Accuser’s Yearbook Is
Written in Two Different Color Inks
6 scenarios for GOP disaster in Roy Moore Senate race
Senator Al Franken’s past jokes about rape and other forms
of inappropriate sexual conduct resurfaced Thursday after a radio anchor
accused him of forcefully kissing her during a rehearsal and of groping her
breasts while she slept on a flight from Afghanistan following a USO tour in
December 2006. This is a sitting
Democrat Senator.
Do Democrat Senators get one free grope, or will Senate move
to expel Franken as is talked about with Roy Moore?
A Democratic state senator who accused President Donald
Trump of sexual harassment is now facing calls to resign after facing multiple
sexual harassment allegations of his own.
Broadway Stars Honor Hillary Clinton At Planned Parenthood
Fundraiser
Colin Kaepernick Is GQ´s
2017 Citizen of the Year
More
than 100,000 convicted felons or other “prohibited persons” tried to buy guns
each year during President Barack Obama’s administration by lying on their
applications, but the Justice Department only considered prosecuting about 30 to
40 people each year.
Good news: The Army´s
top officer said Wednesday that the service had "rescinded" a
controversial memo permitting people with a history of severe mental illness to
seek waivers allowing them to join up.
Bad news: The
Pentagon has paid for an infantry soldier to undergo gender transition surgery
after a federal judge blocked President Trump´s ban on transgender service
members last month.
CNN continued its pattern of reporting ridiculous factoids
about President Donald Trump on Thursday when the liberal news network gave
over two minutes of airtime to a segment about the inside of a dog’s ear that
looks like Trump’s face.
Thanks to Republican dysfunction in Congress, Cook Political
Report predicts Democratic ´wave´ in 2018
Most California sheriffs fiercely opposed the ´sanctuary
state´ law. Soon they´ll have to implement it
Former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom unloaded on
James Comey, Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama Thursday,
charging that major crimes "20 times bigger than Watergate" are being
swept under the rug while Attorney General Jeff Sessions "is in a
coma."
Alibaba has set another single day record after the
e-commerce giant sold over $25 billion of products on the Chinese biggest
online shopping site.
___________________________________________________________________
COLUMN OF THE WEEK
IBD 11/15
As
Zimbabwe locked down following a military coup this week, Venezuela defaulted
on its debt. On the surface, these events in these two countries — one
African, the other South American — seem to have little in common. But, in
fact, they share two very big things: Both are socialist, and both are failed
states.
Indeed,
both nations are near collapse, suffering from hyperinflation, economic
contraction and widespread hunger. What's most alarming about this is that both
countries have been, in the recent past, highly successful as capitalist
economies. Today they are basket cases, Marxist-inspired dictatorships that
were systematically run into the ground by their socialist leaders.
In
Zimbabwe's case, just 40 years ago it was the richest and most productive
country in Africa. Today, it is an utter disaster. This week, after 93-year-old
Marxist dictator Robert Mugabe who has led the country since its independence
in 1980 tried to position his wife to be his eventual successor, the military
stepped in, removing Mugabe from power and putting him under house arrest.
Mugabe's wife has fled the country. "What is clear is that Zimbabwe's
economy has collapsed under Robert Mugabe," noted the Sky News website.
Yes,
the case against Mugabe's special brand of African socialism is convincing. Food
output fell by half during the 1990s as Mugabe drove European farmers from
their lands and gave the farms to his supporters who largely lacked any farming
experience. Alarmed by the collapse of the economy and soaring inflation,
Mugabe simply declared inflation illegal. And he cracked down on anyone who
spoke up in opposition to his insane Marxist policies.
Meanwhile,
a needless war in the Congo led to massive indebtedness and soaring interest
rates and hyperinflation. Inflation rose from roughly 59% in 2000 to a peak of
80 billion percent at the end of 2008. No that's not a misprint:
80,000,000,000%. In addition to freezing prices, the government froze wages. To
enforce its edict, it arrested business owners who were caught charging more
than the law allowed. The result: GDP fell from $6.78 billion in 2001 to $4.4
billion in 2008, World Bank data show. Following the global financial crisis,
Mugabe was forced to back off some of his worst policies, leading to a rebound
in the economy in recent years. But Zimbabwe remains one of the poorest and worst
run nations on the planet.
Venezuela's
socialist path has been slightly different, but the results have been the same.
Just like Zimbabwe, Venezuela once thrived with a large middle class and a
strong, oil-based economy. But starting in 1999 under socialist military
dictator Hugo Chavez, major swathes of the economy were seized and put under
government control and ownership. Venezuela's massive oil reserves were
likewise taken over by the government. Today, its state-run oil monopoly barely
pumps any crude at all. The economy is in a free fall.
"It's
defaulted on its sovereign debt, run out of money ... has widespread hunger,
mass poverty, and the wreck of its medical system," wrote Monica
Showalter, a former IBD writer,
in the American Thinker. "The electrical company is bankrupt, the water
isn't running, the bridges are falling apart, and now even the Caracas subway
seems to be shutting down."
Under
first Chavez and, since 2013, his hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro,
the economy's once hardy private sector has been strangled into submission. By
piling up massive amounts of debt, the government hid its incompetence and the
inevitable economic decline. But now, faced with nearly $200 billion in
outstanding loans that it can't pay, Venezuela will soon be cut off from
private-sector lending — and its economy will get even worse, if that's
possible. "The government, meanwhile, has failed for years to ship in
enough food and medicine for its citizens," noted a CNN report. "As a result, Venezuelans
are waiting hours in line to buy food and dying in hospitals that lack basic
resources."
What's
both surprising and disappointing is that there are many prominent
Americans, some of them elected
officials, who have lauded these governments and the socialism they represent.
Even after the recent 100 year anniversary of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, which began the
world's failed experiment in Marxist-socialism, there are those who maintain
socialism could work, given the right conditions.
But
the record is very clear: Each year, the Heritage Foundation issues its Index
of Economic Freedom — essentially, a sliding-scale that measures the
degree of economic freedom vs. socialism across all major countries. Heritage's
index correlates very nicely with economic success, wealth and citizens'
well-being. So you probably won't be surprised to know that out of 180 ranked
nations, Zimbabwe is No. 175 and Venezuela is No. 179. And, like those two, all
the other bottom-performing countries are socialist, one-party states.
Based
on this, here's a little thought experiment: Suppose there was a company that
made airplanes, and every one of the airplanes it ever made, all of them,
crashed and burned. Would you fly in one of that company's planes?
Of
course not. And that's precisely the case with socialism. Everywhere it's been
tried — everywhere— it has brought economic failure, human misery,
want, hunger, strife, even mass death. There are no socialist "success
stories." None.
So
Zimbabwe and Venezuela aren't so different after all. Just two more socialist
success stories. And those that have for years lauded Mugabe, Chavez, Maduro
and others of their ilk, should hang their heads in shame.
____________________________________________________________________
OTHER COLUMNS
"If a senator drove a car into a river and left a woman
there to drown and didn’t notify the police, would that be considered
resignation-worthy now? Or are we still not to that point?”
-Frank Fleming
___________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
The Trump administration marked this week’s 100th anniversary
of the Bolshevik Revolution by declaring a National Day for the Victims of
Communism. The New York Times marked the same anniversary in a different way:
by running a series of articles extolling the virtues of communism.
Do Trump's liberal critics seem increasingly unhinged? New
York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, in a column last week headlined “Anniversary
of the Apocalypse,” lamented the “terror-struck and vertiginous days” after
Trump’s win and the ongoing “metaphysical whiplash” and “hideous interregnum,”
which leaves her “poleaxed by grief at the destruction of our civic
inheritance.” Professor Henry Giroux of
McMaster University frothed that Trump’s
“ascendancy in American politics has made visible a culture of cruelty, a
contempt for civic literacy, a corrupt mode of governance and a disdain for
informed judgment that has been decades in the making.”
Is the Star Spangled Banner Racist?
More social engineering:
GLAAD is pleased that the number of lesbian, gay and transgender characters
on U.S. television shows have reached record highs: 329 regular and recurring
LGBTQ characters across all broadcast, cable and streaming TV platforms,
including the first asexual and non-binary characters.”
Yes, there have been stories about young people turning to
socialism. One of the latest polls shows that a majority of millenials would
prefer to live under a socialist, fascist or communist system rather than a
capitalist one. But things are getting a bit more disturbing now that elections
have been happening. Turns out one of the Virginia Democrats elected in last
week´s special election. Lee Carter, is a young unreconstructed socialist, and
a member of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America. That organization
has seen a fivefold increase in its membership, from about 6,000 to now 30,000.
_______________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
Good news is hard to find at this year’s United Nations
climate conference in Bonn, Germany. Diplomats from nearly 200 countries have
gathered to review progress made on the “historic” Paris climate accords,
signed two years ago. But as the champagne-fueled self-congratulation of Paris
recedes into memory, the agreement’s underlying fraud is becoming obvious
This week, thousands of scientists issued a bleak and
terrifying "second notice" to mankind about how we will destroy the
planet unless we take "urgent" action. If this warning is as reliable
as the first notice these scientists issued in 1992, we have nothing to worry
about.
___________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Ann Coulter: “Hey,
Republicans! Did you enjoy Election Night last week? Get ready for a lot more
nights like that as immigration turns every last corner of the country blue. What
happened was: Democrats brought in new voters. In 1970, only one out of every
100 Virginians was foreign-born. By 2012, one in nine Virginians was
foreign-born…..The foreign-born vote overwhelmingly, by about 80 percent, for
Democrats. They always have and they always will -- especially now that our
immigration policies aggressively discriminate in favor of the poorest,
least-educated, most unskilled people on Earth. They arrive in need of a LOT of
government services…..”
No shortage of opinions on Judge Roy Moore. West
Point graduate, Vietnam vet, here’s his family: Moore is the married father of
four. He is also a grandfather. His wife, Kayla, has been outspoken on public
issues.
“In Defense of Judge Roy Moore”
“The GOP Prepares to Die, as the Alabama Republicans Stick
by Judge Roy Moore”
?? “The Roy Moore Mess…….the GOP will be better off if Mr.
Moore loses, despite the blow to its Senate majority. Democrats and the media
will make Mr. Moore the running mate of every Republican in 2018.”
So far, there has not been much holding of Bill Clinton to
account by progressives, despite the change in zeitgeist for sexual predation
by the powerful. But the inevitable is happening.
“Jeff Sessions
continues to prove he’s Trump’s biggest mistake…….Jeff Sessions is a man in
search of a banana peel. When he can’t find one to step on, he supplies his
own. Sessions is not a bad man, but he is a bad attorney general, as he
demonstrated again Tuesday….”
______________________________________________________________________
VIDEOS
Video: Vietnam War Veteran Cries on President Trump’s
Shoulder During Vietnam Speech. Moment wasn’t
deemed newsworthy by media.
_____________________________________________________________________
WISE
WORDS
“What
is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If
men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern
men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great
difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the
governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on
the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience
has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
-James Madison
“Every major horror
of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.”
-Ayn
Rand
posted by gary at
10:04 AM
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