op ed review 12/30
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Christians at risk of extinction in land where Christmas
began
No Christmas Truce in the Culture War: Gun Controllers
Indoctrinate Kids with Toy Gun Turn-in….”each child received one politically
correct toy in exchange “for whatever water pistols, Nerf guns and other toy
guns they turn[ed] in.”
Trump Admin Moves Toward New Work Requirements for Food
Stamp Recipients, Democrats horrified.
Ag Secretary responds:
“More than 20 years ago, Democrats and Republicans came together to
reform our welfare programs to restore the system to what it was meant to be:
“a second chance, not a way of life,” in the words of then-President Bill
Clinton. Over time, without any changes in the underlying welfare reform
legislation of 1996, that ideal has been watered down by out-of-control
administrative flexibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP). Today, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, we are taking
steps to restore integrity to SNAP and move people toward self-sufficiency.”
Under pressure from Trump, China cuts tariffs on 700 more
items.
Coordinated attacks on President Trump, prepping a case for impeachment:
New York Times editorial:
“Trump Imperils the Planet.”
MSNBC host: “Trump
presidency threatens a ‘pandemic ... across the world’”
Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice declares that
President Trump “does more to undermine American national security than any
foreign adversary.”
Twice-Deported Illegal Immigrant Commits Four Shootings, A
Robbery, Two Police Chases, Two Police Shootouts, Automobile Theft in 24 Hours
Young California Police Officer, a Legal Immigrant, Killed
by an Illegal Alien.
Another migrant caravan — with estimates of as many as
15,000 participants — is preparing to leave Honduras on January 15
Flashback: In 2006
Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, which mandated the construction of
multilayer pedestrian fencing along about 600 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.
It passed with big, bipartisan majorities: 283 votes in the House and 80 in the
Senate. Some top Democrats who are still in the Senate today supported the
fence: Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod
Brown.
Senator Rand Paul thinks he knows where we could find the
funding to build the wall. Instead of rebuilding Afghanistan, we could use that
money for the wall and our own national security.
Over Christmas, an eight-year-old migrant boy died while in
the custody of the Border Patrol. Media
meltdown followed, but where was the outrage when 18 migrants died in custody under
the Obama Administration?
The Knights of Columbus -- the 125+-year-old Catholic
fraternal and good-works organization – is, in the minds of some Democratic Senators, an
extremist and unworthy organization.
“Dem senators flirting with a religious test for judicial
nominees” No Catholics need apply?
Tiny Ecuador demonstrates world's stupidest idea: Dumping
America to become China's lapdog.
Students launch Satanic club at NC State
The Hungarian government has hit out at the Financial
Times naming George Soros their “Person of the Year”. “To the Financial Times,
he’s Person of the Year, but to many ordinary citizens, Soros is an enemy of
their democracy.”
EU moves to outlaw phrases such as 'man-made', 'manpower'
and 'mankind' in favor of gender-neutral terms under new PC guidelines for
translators.
Though Latino voters are a key part of the Democratic
coalition, there is a larger bloc of reliable Republican Latinos than many
think. And the GOP’s position among Latinos has not weakened during the Trump
administration, despite the president’s rhetoric against immigrants and the
party’s shift to the right on immigration.
In November’s elections, 32 percent of Latinos voted Republican.
The New York Times is pressuring credit card giants
to monitor customers’ buying habits and blacklist gun purchases.
Two men showed up to the Coastal Farm & Ranch store in
Marysville, WA, grabbed four nail guns, each worth over $400, walked out of the
store and got into a Honda Civic. They didn’t expect to be surrounded by about
six customers with guns raised.
The Jesuit order for decades used Gonzaga University’s
campus to house priests who had been removed from active service in the
priesthood due to accusations of sexual abuse
Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi is spending the
government shutdown at a luxury resort in Hawaii, where room accommodations
range from $899-a-night for a standard room to $4,899-a-night
for the presidential suite.
____________________________________________________________
COLUMN OF THE WEEK
Michael Walsh 12/21 “You Have Been in Afghanistan, I Perceive’”
President
Trump’s decisions to withdraw from Syria and to start drawing down the number
of our troops in Afghanistan should come as welcome news to all Americans. The
pointless wars in the Middle East and the Hindu Kush have been going on since
9/11—longer if you count the entirely unnecessary incursion into Iraq in
1991—and have brought only misery in their wake. If Trump does nothing else but
put an end to the endless wars bequeathed to us by the house of Bush, his will
have been a consequential presidency.
That
these orders have seemingly resulted in the resignation of Defense Secretary
James Mattis is not necessarily a bad thing. Trump is a churning force, as his
track record already shows, and if his appointees disagree with his policies,
then they go, not the policies. Just ask Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson. Like
John Kelly, currently on his way out the door as White House chief of staff,
Mattis is a distinguished officer in the United States Marine Corps—but no
conservative. As anyone who understands the USMC knows, Marine officers are not
ideologues; indeed, by training they are apolitical, owing their allegiance to
the Constitution and the commander-in-chief. I’m not sure whether this is still
true today, but when I was a kid growing up on various Marine duty stations,
they didn’t even vote.
A
great many on the Right disagree with Trump. They fear “chaos” and
“instability.” But we have been living for decades with presidents (George
H.W. Bush, take a bow) who
made a fetish of stability and in so doing condemned the world to the very
definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for
a different result. Thus we have had the eternal “peace process” between the
Israelis and the Palestinians for the simple reason that no one seriously
desires a definitive solution.
Nonetheless,
a solution is only a solution when it is dispositive. This is something our
current generation of politicians and warfighters do not wish to acknowledge:
hence, the endless war that Bush I began against Saddam Hussein for no
particular reason (did or does anyone really care about Kuwait?); was left
unfinished; was restarted in the wake of 9/11 by Bush II—again, for no
particular reason, since Saddam had little or nothing to do with the attacks on
New York City and Washington, D.C. Here we are, 18 years later, with only dead
and maimed American soldiers to show for it. Neither Iraq, if it survives, nor
Afghanistan will ever be Jacksonian democracies, nor do their inhabitants wish
them to be.
This
is not to denigrate the heroism of our troops, nor their skills. They may well
be, as many say, the best warriors we’ve ever put in the field. But, just as in
Vietnam, they’ve been allowed to fight, but not to win. Essentially,
they’ve been told to play to an eternal draw, just enough to keep the lid on
things over there, but not to materially affect the political structures in
place. Thus, by mouthing the liberal pieties in Bush II’s second inaugural
address about how the desire for freedom is the natural human condition (it
plainly is not) and that America’s duty is to spread the gospel of liberty
throughout the world (ditto), our rulers have obscured the lethal realities of
our presence overseas.
These
are not easy, or happy, conclusions to reach. But we must ask: what have we
gotten from our misadventures?
Saddam
may have been a tyrant, but he was just one of many, especially in that part of
the world. Whether he abused his own people (what tyrant doesn’t?) may have
been cause for editorial-page fretting, but not for bellicosity. In effect,
both Bushes made the same mistake JFK and LBJ made in Vietnam: thinking that
inside every foreigner was an American yearning to get out, when even a cursory
glance at the history of Southeast Asia or the Islamic ummah should instantly
have disabused them of that notion.
Meanwhile,
in Afghanistan, nothing has changed and nothing ever will change. The last
outsider to have any effect on the region was Alexander the Great, and he did
so at the point of his sword. Since then, Islam has come and gone and come
again, the British fought two wars there, and the Soviets first signaled their
systemic vulnerability by not being ruthless enough in their attempt to conquer
the “country.” Had they applied the same tactics they used on Hitler’s Germany
to Afghanistan we might be living in a very different world today, but they did
not. And so now the Soviets have vanished while the Afghans live on in their
remote and savage land.
As
for Syria, the last foreign occupiers to have a positive effect on that parlous
place were the Crusaders, who established the Principality of Antioch, which included Aleppo, in the late
12th century; it collapsed about a century later. Since then, Syria has been
the plaything of various warring Muslim factions but offers no menace to
American national security, and is far too weak seriously to threaten Israel.
As in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, we have no strategic or economic
interests in those areas, especially as the United States has emerged once
again as the world’s leading energy producer.
The
way to deal with these places, therefore, is to withdraw and leave them to
their own devices. Sure, the Russians will fiddle around the edges if only to
keep their hands in the game and to create an object lesson for their own
restive Muslim minorities. So what? The “kingdom” of Saudi Arabia in all
likelihood won’t last much longer than Bohemond’s did. As for the religious clash between Sunni and Shi’a
Islam, represented on the chessboard by the Saudis and the Iranians, we can
only hope that they both lose, and lose badly.
The
first words uttered by Sherlock Holmes to Dr. John H. Watson, M.D. are: “You
have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” This startling deduction was made on the
detective’s assessment of his future amanuensis’s physical condition: a wounded
war veteran recently returned from the battle of Maiwand during the Second
Afghan War. This Holmes can see at a glance, including the good doctor’s enervation
from enteric fever.
But
it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see that the endless war has been bad for
America, and the sooner it’s ended, the better for all of us. Only then can the
tremendous damage to American foreign policy brought on by the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama
succession of insufficient presidents be remedied, and the nation start to
heal.
______________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“The reason a secure border wall has not been — and may not
be — built is not apprehension that it would not work, but rather real fear
that it would work only too well.”
-Victor
Davis Hanson
“To our liberal media, every illegal immigrant is assumed to
be a virtuous person and more virtuous than the Border Patrol.”
-L.
Brent Bozell
________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Democrats are lining up to support Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal.” The proposal could be the largest expansion
of government since the Great Society or New Deal…..could cost tens of
trillions of dollars.
Ocasio-Cortez sends Christmas greeting to 'refugee babies in
mangers'
California organizers cancel Women's March due to “too many
white participants.”
The Left’s proposal for a “universal basic income” had a
rough year.
Inside Bernie-world's war on Beto O'Rourke….As the Texas congressman's
star rises, Sanders supporters turn up the heat: "Reading Karl Marx is
cool. Doing a livestream while you’re doing your laundry is a gimmick."
University of Missouri official: Asking a smaller woman on a
date violates Title IX…. “suggest that male students should avoid asking out
female students at all, particularly when the male
is physically larger than the female.”
Pope Francis criticizes nationalism and suggests people
should embrace diversity.
Venezuelan Women Forced to Sell Hair, Sex, and Breast Milk
to Escape Socialism
_____________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
Climatologist counters climate-disaster predictions with
sea-level report
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/27/judith-curry-sea-level-study-disputes-climate-disa/
_________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Five Dumb Arguments Against ‘the Wall’
In one of the most remarkable Abbott and Costello routines
in modern times, the economic wizards at the Fed again raised interest rates on
Tuesday. Their crackerjack logic for doing so is to steer America on a course
toward recession so they have the tools in hand to end the recession that they
themselves created. Can anyone tell us who's on first?
The Trumpenfreude List consists of people who foolishly
feuded with The Donald and wound up crashing into the sea like Icarus. But that is nothing compared to the
self-immolation of journalism. An entire trade took on President Trump, and has
now watched in horror as its credibility melts away like the wax that held
together the wings of Icarus…..Far from being an independent press, the
Washington press corps serves as the public relations department for the Deep
State.
Trump’s Syria decision was essentially correct. Here’s how he
can make the most of it.
McCarthy: The Syria Fairy Tale Lives!
Defense secretaries come and go. Obama had four of them in
eight years, who had some unkind things to say about his leadership or lack of
it. There was no talk of chaos or of the only adult in the room leaving. But suddenly, the
media are in a meltdown after "Mad Dog" Mattis announces his
departure from the Cabinet after President Trump announces departure from
Syria:
Mattis Is Wrong—This Scholar-General Was Righ
Victor Davis Hanson was in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart one
day when he saw a young woman struggling to move a big screen television into
her Honda. When he went over to help her, he noticed that she was holding an
EBT card, a government-issued debit card for cash and food stamps. Hanson
told her, “You shouldn’t be using the food card to buy the big screen TV.” She
told him to mind his own business……“The more you give people, the more entitlements
they want,” Hanson says. “They never say, ‘Thank you, that’s so generous.’ They
just think, ‘Gosh, don’t ever take that away. We need more.’” This culture of
dependency, a byproduct of the entitlement state and what Hanson calls our
“therapeutic culture,” is simply a display of human nature at its worst.
PRAGER: Explaining The Left, Part V: Left Vs. Right Is Brain
Vs. Mind
https://www.dailywire.com/news/39615/prager-explaining-left-part-v-left-vs-right-brain-dennis-prager
___________________________________________________________________
INTERESTING
FNC’s Sebastian Gorka To Launch Salem Network Show In 2019.
Here Are The Most Egregious Fake News Stories Of 2018
The Top 12 MAGA Moments for Donald Trump in 2018
Ten best movies of the year
_________________________________________________________________________
WISE
WORDS
“May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not
darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here,
and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.”
-George
Washington
posted by gary at
12:16 PM
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