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True to his word!

Pamela Geller writes in The American Thinker,

President Trump: True to his word
By Pamela Geller
It's been less than a week since President Donald J. Trump took office, and he has, in no short order, astonishingly delivered on myriad campaign promises. In spades. His hands-on style of governing is breathtaking.

The people spoke. The people won. And our man is delivering the goods. It's what freedom is supposed to look like. We have been living under the boot of leftist autocrats for so long, we forgot it could be this good. We have been set free. Every day is Christmas.

The whole of the enemedia are in a collective tailspin, hell-bent on ignoring Trump's monumental accomplishments, and instead are churning out fake news stories about crowd size – his and the sore losers' march (funny how they never did a story on Tea Party crowd size). Last night, ABC news anchor David Muir, in the first interview Trump gave as president, made something of an ass of himself trying to bait the president by focusing on "crowd size" and today's favorite enemedia meme: "who'll pay for the wall?" As if the Democrats ever gave a fig about costs. Who paid for the absurd "cash for clunkers"? Or Obama's endless bailouts? Or Obamacare? Or Obama's hundreds of billions to Iran? Or Obama's 20-trillion-dollar deficit? If Trump says Mexico will pay for that wall, rest assured, it will – one way or another.

Trump's accomplishments in five days are nothing short of miraculous. We are witnessing history. And it's wonderful. And no one is talking about it. It's Kafkaesque.

The old Republican guard, falling into the media's trap once again, decry Trump's handling of the media. They say he shouldn't be responding to the media's false accusations. Instead, he should be talking about the actions he is taking. As if the media would report (no less positively) about what Trump has set in motion And why are the RINOs still considered our spokespeople? They are not. Has Fox learned nothing from this election? They, too, are playing into the enemedia's false narratives of crowd size, wall costs, and black sites.

The left will not go quietly. They want a war, and by George, they may very well get one. Wednesday night, they demonstrated in Washington Square Park – led by Hamas-tied CAIR. It is amusing that the left has handed the reins of power to terror-tied groups such as CAIR, who seek to impose sharia across this great land. Black slavery (in many Muslim countries), gender apartheid, creed apartheid is now the rallying cry for the left? Perfect. The left has become a parody of itself.

This week, Trump abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama's signature trade deal. He signed an executive order to defund International Planned Parenthood. He signed executive orders restricting immigration. He signed an order for the Mexico border wall. He declared his intention in a phone call with Egyptian President El-Sisi to fight terrorism.

Obama buried Israel at the U.N. President Trump is resurrecting her: he announced intentions to defund U.N. groups who give full membership to the Palestinian Authority. To the very last minute, Obama was aiding, abetting, and arming Islamic enemies of freedom. He released $221 million to the Palestinians in his administration's last hours. Officials say the outgoing Obama administration defied GOP opposition and sent funds to the Palestinian Authority that had been blocked in Congress.

But President Trump halted Obama's $221,000,000 parting gift of U.S. taxpayer money to the Palestinians. That money would have gone to fund Jew-killing – Obama's parting gift to the Jews. The Muslim leaders of the "Palestinian Authority" exhort Muslims living in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria to kill Jews and attack the Jewish state. They glorify murder and reward terrorists and their families and indoctrinate their young to grow up to be homicide-suicide bombers. These funds would have been used to slaughter, maim, and destroy. That would have been Obama's crowning legacy.

President Donald Trump has begun in just days to undo the damage Barack Obama done. There is much more to do, but he has given free people tremendous grounds for hope.

Unfortunately, Palestinian Authority officials say they did receive the money.

Nikki Haley arrives at the UN: "For those who do not have our backs, we're taking names!"

The New York Times reports,

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, issued a stark warning on Friday to allies and rivals abroad, saying in her first remarks at the headquarters of the world body that the Trump administration would hold to account those who do not back the United States.

“You’re going to see a change in the way we do business,” Ms. Haley said. “Our goal with the administration is to show value at the U.N., and the way we’ll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our back as well.”

“For those who don’t have our back,” she added, “we’re taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”

Read more here.

Trump at the helm!

President Trump Is In The House!
2017-01-27
Guest post by Suzann Darnall

White House, that is. And, he is definitely large and in charge! I am not sure Washington, DC, politics as usual, has any idea what has hit them. Not to mention the poor little shell-shocked Lame-Steamed Media. Oh my, but it is wonderful!!!

Pretty sure it will not be politics as usual for so long as President Trump is in office. I am also pretty sure that the media had best learn how to play nice or Trump will not play at all. So far it seems that he is not going to allow them to twist his words, abuse his family, or lie about the facts. Good for him! I am tired of America being wrecked by the corrupt politicians and inept journalists who are not doing their jobs.

To be fair, the rather pitiful Progressives have been reeling since the election when they got soundly beat at all levels of government across this nation. It was the political version of “Flip This House” with governorships, State Legislations, and Federal elections going from blue to red even in some places traditionally Democratic. So, having been further gut-punched by President Trump hitting the ground at a dead run and already doing what he promised, I guess it is understandable that they are unable to adequately comprehend and respond to current events.

They are used to the Golfer-in-Chief being on vacation. Having an honest-to-God Commander-in Chief being at work is a novelty for them. Something tells me they are going to have to learn to work themselves, too. I suspect Congress is not gonna be spending quite so much time merely voting present or taking vacations as they have grown accustomed to doing. And, I don’t think journalists are gonna be able to get away with just phoning in their usual Progressives litany of talking points . . . at least not without taking a hit from President Trump and his White House press people.

Not only has President Trump done more for America since his inauguration, he was already making improvements before he was sworn in. This is a man with a work ethic, an honest vision, and a love for America. He is a patriotic businessman with international connections and a grasp of what needs to be done. In addition, he has surrounded himself with smart people who can help him turn his plans into a reality. While he has definite ideas about what he wants to do, he is wise enough to be guided into making changes when it is prudent. He is neither a demagogue nor a dictator. He is a leader!

I gotta say, I feel a whole lot safer and way more hopeful with President Trump at the helm of our ship of State. And, yes, I do love using that term: President Trump! God bless our President and God bless our nation!!!

Sayonara,
Suzann
http://www.suziezoo.com
http://www.woolymammoth.org

I can't wait to see what Trump does to the UN!

Alex Newman reports at The New American,

Establishment globalists were right to be concerned about the fate of their schemes. After a fast-paced first week of putting “America First” by targeting pseudo-“free trade” regimes and rogue regulatory agencies, President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to take on the United Nations. Its swarms of agencies, programs, bureaucracies, conventions, and associated schemes are also in the crosshairs. According to a January 25 report in the anti-Trump New York Times, which claimed to have seen a set of draft orders being prepared by the administration, Trump plans to drastically reduce the U.S. government's role at the UN and other international organizations. He is also planning a review of sovereignty-stealing UN treaties, with a view toward restoring self-government in various policy areas and saving U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars. Globalists everywhere are in a panic.

Read more here.

The incredible influence (for evil) of foundations

William F. Jasper writes at The New American,

...According to a September 2015 article on George Soros in the journal Inside Philanthropy, the hedge fund billionaire had, by that time, given away about $12 billion through his Open Society Foundations (OSF). Much, if not most, of that has gone to “progressive” causes, including hundreds of organizations in over 100 countries. As we detail elsewhere (see here and here), many of these OSF grantees are fronts for, or close allies of, socialist and communist organizations promoting subversive agendas, including rioting and revolution. As the street riots, looting, and chaos have escalated, there has been a rising call to hold the wealthy funders of the ongoing havoc accountable for the social demolition and economic carnage their minions are causing.

...In the aftermath of World War II, the American public became justifiably alarmed by the aggressive communist expansionism of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, our former “ally.” The fall of China to communism in 1949 was an especially catastrophic jolt, turning over a huge chunk of global real estate (not to mention an enormous portion of humanity) to the growing totalitarian threat. That catastrophe, it became clear, had been made all but inevitable by the policies of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations that consistently favored the communist forces of Mao Tse-tung and undermined the position of our anti-communist ally Chiang Kai-shek. The exposure of communist spy rings and Soviet agents of influence in the top levels of our federal government intensified public fears of the Red Menace. So too did the growing realization that our news media, schools, and popular culture were flooding America with propaganda and “entertainment” aimed at promoting communism, socialism, secular humanism, atheism, and moral degeneracy, while simultaneously attacking and undermining anti-communism, Christianity, Western Civilization, and America’s constitutional system of government. It was beginning to become more and more obvious that many of our governing elites — politicians, academics, journalists, philanthropists — were actively, consciously colluding with the enemies of society.

...It was this fear that McCarthy might publicly connect the dots between communists and the globalists that sent the CFR brain trust into full panic mode and sealed the senator’s fate. Their unrelenting demonization of McCarthy has served as an effective deterrent; no congressional efforts to expose the funding of subversion (and perversion) by the tax-exempt foundations has taken place in the nearly three-quarters of a century since the Reece-McCarthy era. Since that time the number of foundations and the size of their subversive grant-making have seen a manifold increase. With remarkable consistency, many of the largest of these foundations have been using their vast resources to fund groups, institutions, and individuals that apply simultaneous pressure from above and below to undermine Christian society and our constitutional order, with the aim of replacing it with a totalitarian “New World Order.”

George Soros and his Open Society Foundations network provide the most conspicuous example of this revolutionary process in action. Any serious effort aimed at bringing him and his fellow billionaire subversives to heel must learn from history and be ready for the merciless onslaught that has been visited upon all those who have attempted this in the past. They are waging total war against God, family, country, and civilization, and we must meet them on the battlefield. Their funding spigots must be cut off, their tax-exempt status removed. And where possible, these malefactors of great wealth must be prosecuted, severely fined, and jailed.

Read more here.

This is a new day, a new dawn, for life!

The Right to life. Not a choice! It is the first right cited in the Declaration of Independence! It is God-given!

44th March for Life

Breitbart News reports,

The 2017 March for Life saw thousands of pro-life demonstrators rally at the National Mall in Washington, DC, spurred on by encouraging messages from newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump and appearances by his top surrogates. Vice President Mike Pence became the first VP ever to address the crowd, while Trump’s winning campaign manager Kellyanne Conway headlined the event.

Reporters from Breitbart News were also in attendance at the 44th annual March for Life, capturing scenes from the crowd.

Read more here.

Reversing Obama's policies at the borders

CNS News reports,

Moving swiftly to fulfill his campaign promise to get the nation’s illegal immigration problem under control, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Jan. 25 that constitute an almost complete reversal of the Obama administration’s nonenforcement and open borders policy.

From improving the physical barrier at our southern border to finally moving against sanctuary cities, these two executive orders put into effect a comprehensive program designed to secure our borders, implement interior enforcement, and reintegrate the assistance of state and local governments into federal efforts to enforce our immigration laws.

It has been a long time coming, but it seems to be finally happening: The federal government is actually enforcing our immigration laws.

Read more here.

The Obama administration's politicization of the bin Laden documents: "Obama and his advisers saw the enemy they wanted to see, not the one they were actually fighting."

Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn write in the Weekly Standard about The Final Obama Scandal. It is about the hundreds of thousands of documents found in Osama bin Laden's compound during the May 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The press statement that accompanied the release this month made an unexpected declaration: This batch of newly released documents would be the last one.

...Sources who have described the cache to THE WEEKLY STANDARD over the years have claimed that the number of captured documents, including even extraneous materials and duplicates, totals more than 1 million. ...this last batch of 49 documents brings the total number released to 571.

..."[Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper and the old administration may want this to be closed, but it's far from closed," says Representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). "Now the truth will begin to come out. It's just the beginning."

...Based on his conversations with analysts who have worked on the documents, Nunes believes that many of those not yet released will contradict Obama administration claims about al Qaeda, its relationships, and its operations.

Why do the documents still matter? Over the course of eight years, President Obama and his advisers repeatedly downplayed the jihadist threat. The story of how bin Laden's documents were mischaracterized and mishandled offers important insights into how the administration pushed a deceptive narrative about al Qaeda and its branches around the globe. The jihadist threat grew—not diminished—over the course of the Obama administration. To this day, America and its allies continue to fight al Qaeda everywhere from West Africa to South Asia.

Because of its barbarism, massive land grabs, and multiple attacks in the West, the Islamic State (ISIS) dominates headlines these days. The Islamic State makes itself easy to see. But al Qaeda, the organization that birthed ISIS, is still alive and thriving, often masking the extent of its operations and influence. Since 2011, al Qaeda has grown rapidly in jihadist hotspots such as Syria, where today the group has 10,000 or more fighters, its largest guerrilla army yet.

...The Obama White House wanted people to believe that al Qaeda's "core" leadership had little sway outside of South Asia. But in the final months of Obama's presidency, with the undeniable reality of al Qaeda's growth and strength, his officials began to tell a different story.

Testifying before the Senate on June 28, 2016, Brett H. McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, discussed al Qaeda's arm in Syria, al-Nusra Front. "With direct ties to Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's successor, Nusra is now al Qaeda's largest formal affiliate in history," McGurk said.

So the Obama policy failed, for reasons that were entirely predictable, and the administration continued to downplay al Qaeda's role in Afghanistan long after they had evidence that contradicted their own assessments. None of this kept President Obama from declaring in May 2013 that "the Afghan war is coming to an end."

If many Americans have forgotten about Afghanistan, following the lead of their president, al Qaeda has not. And now the Trump administration inherits an Afghanistan with an entrenched and emboldened al Qaeda, still working side by side with the Taliban.

Perhaps the most egregious example of the Obama administration's politicization of the bin Laden documents concerns the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda. In the statement accompanying ODNI's latest release, we are told that the documents therein demonstrate bin Laden's "hatred, suspicion of Iran." The statement further claims that this antipathy "mirrors themes in previous releases" from bin Laden's compound. Indeed, the Obama White House used the bin Laden documents to portray al Qaeda and Iran as mortal enemies.

...bin Laden chastised one of his subordinates for openly threatening attacks inside Iran. He explained:

You did not consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of all of us. We expected you would consult with us for these important matters, for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.

...bin Laden chastised one of his subordinates for openly threatening attacks inside Iran. He explained:

You did not consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of all of us. We expected you would consult with us for these important matters, for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.

...Obama and his advisers saw the enemy they wanted to see, not the one they were actually fighting. They routinely ignored the first rule of warfare: The enemy gets a vote. There's no telling how many current intelligence assessments have Obama's misunderstandings baked into them. The Trump administration will have to correct and replace any Obama-style analyses that outlive his presidency.

There is no better place to start than by releasing Osama bin Laden's files. Al Qaeda is a more complex and sophisticated adversary than Obama believed. The American public deserves to know how the man who launched the 9/11 wars really saw the world.

Read more here.

"In free competition, how can a faith based upon self-restraint and patience compete with one that pardons, unconditionally and in advance, all the self-indulgences you can think of, and some you cannot?"

Okay, let's get through the article at First Things entitled The Fantasy of Addiction by Peter Hitchens. He writes, ...

Actions once punished or scorned are sympathetically treated as if they arose from diseases rather than choices. Persons repeatedly caught in possession of illegal drugs (a crime that in theory attracts a prison sentence of several years) are not punished according to law, but supplied by the authorities with clean needles, put into the care of doctors, and, in some jurisdictions, given free substitute drugs at the expense of the taxpayer.

...Supposed “addicts” can and do give up their supposed addictions. It is not only smokers who do this. I also know several formerly very heavy drinkers who have done it, generally because of fears for their health or their professional standing. Even heroin abusers, and gamblers, can and do just stop. Reason has overcome desire. In which case the whole idea of “addiction,” as a power greater than will, is overthrown.

...Scan the drug abuser’s brain as you will, you will not be able to demonstrate that any part of it has forced him to take his drug of choice, or is stopping him from giving it up. Recently the psychologist and former “addict” Marc Lewis attacked this scientistic determinism in a book The Biology of Desire. Yes, the brain of the drug user changes physically and observably (so, it might be noted, does the brain of the London taxi-driver who must learn by heart the streets of London before being given his license). But this is the sign of an organ adapting to conditions, not a disease. The same brain can go on to adapt to a life without the drug involved, or a life without taxi-driving.

...The belief is implanted in the modern mind, taught to the young not by explanation, experiment, and example but by being repeatedly and universally assumed. First of all, it is conventional wisdom, built into thousands of sentences, newspaper articles, TV and radio programs, sermons, speeches, and private conversations. Secondly, it is what we desire. Which of us, indulging in some pleasure, is not secretly relieved to find that others are weaker than we are, have nastier and more selfish pleasures, and that these things are generally excused because of a vast, universal thing that we cannot control or influence? Indulgence, like misery, seeks company for reassurance. Unlike misery, it generally finds that company. Beliefs spread in this way cannot really be challenged. Jonathan Swift rightly observed that you cannot reason a man out of a position he was not reasoned into in the first place.

...It was the triumph of the Christian religion that for many centuries it managed to become the unreasoning assumption of almost all, built into every spoken and written word, every song, and every building. It was the disaster of the Christian religion that it assumed this triumph would last forever and outlast everything, and so it was ill equipped to resist the challenge of a rival when it came, in this, the century of the self. The Christian religion had no idea that a new power, which I call selfism, would arise. And, having arisen, selfism has easily shouldered its rival aside. In free competition, how can a faith based upon self-restraint and patience compete with one that pardons, unconditionally and in advance, all the self-indulgences you can think of, and some you cannot? That is what the “addiction” argument is most fundamentally about, and why it is especially distressing to hear Christian voices accepting and promoting it, as if it were merciful to call a man a slave, and treat him as if he had no power to resist. The mass abandonment of cigarettes by a generation of educated people demonstrates that, given responsibility for their actions and blamed for their outcomes, huge numbers of people will give up a bad habit even if it is difficult. Where we have adopted the opposite attitude, and assured abusers that they are not answerable for their actions, we have seen other bad habits grow or remain as common as before. Heroin abuse has not been defeated, the abuse of prescription drugs grows all the time, and heavy drinking is a sad and spreading problem in Britain.

Most of the people who read what I have written here, if they even get to the end, will be angry with me for expressing their own secret doubts, one of the cruelest things you can do to any fellow creature. For we all prefer the easy, comforting falsehood to the awkward truth. But at the same time, we all know exactly what we are doing, and seek with ever-greater zeal to conceal it from ourselves. Has it not been so since the beginning? And has not the greatest danger always been that those charged with the duty of preaching the steep and rugged pathway persuade themselves that weakness is compassion, and that sin can be cured at a clinic, or soothed with a pill? And so falsehood flourishes in great power, like the green bay tree.

Read more here.

More on the subject of addiction

More insight from Peter Hitchens on the "myth" of addiction:

Actions once punished or scorned are sympathetically treated as if they arose from diseases rather than choices. Persons repeatedly caught in possession of illegal drugs (a crime that in theory attracts a prison sentence of several years) are not punished according to law, but supplied by the authorities with clean needles, put into the care of doctors, and, in some jurisdictions, given free substitute drugs at the expense of the taxpayer.

It is no longer acceptable to disapprove of certain selfish and inconsiderate actions, some of them illegal. Of these alleged “addictions,” only the smoking of cigarettes is still disparaged by polite liberal-minded persons. This is probably because of its undoubted anti-social stink and foul mess, the huge shared cost of treating smokers for the diseases they voluntarily contract, and the alleged danger to nonsmokers exposed to its fumes.

As a result, huge numbers of supposed cigarette “addicts,” forced out of workplaces and bars and compelled to stand outside in pathetic gaggles, and frowned and coughed at when they light up in the privacy of their homes, have in recent years overcome their “addiction” and stopped smoking altogether. I personally know many such people. Several have been glad of the pressure to stop. It is interesting that the habit (as it used to be called) now tends to be commonest among the hopelessly poor, the ill-educated, and young women driven by fashion into seeking those tricky gifts which cigarettes still offer them—sexual allure and a pleasure that does not make them less thin.

Read more here.

Is addiction a myth?

Do you have free will? Then you do not have an addiction! JDZ at Never Yet Melted reports,

Peter Hitchens has published, in First Things, an excellent essay attacking the notion of addiction, the preternatural ability of certain morally disreputable substances to offer temptations so powerful as to overwhelm completely the free will of any normal human being. The late Thomas Szasz was attacking the same generally accepted delusion decades ago.

Hitchens writes,

The chief difficulty with the word “addiction” is the idea that it describes a power greater than the will. If it exists in the way we use it and in the way our legal and medical systems assume it exists, then free will has been abolished. I know there are people who think and argue this is so. But this is not one of those things that can be demonstrated by falsifiable experiment. In the end, the idea that humans do not really have free will is a contentious opinion, not an objective fact.

So to use the word “addiction” is to embrace one side in one of those ancient unresolved debates that cannot be settled this side of the grave. To decline to use it, by contrast, is to accept that all kinds of influences, inheritances, and misfortunes may well operate on us, and propel us towards mistaken, foolish, wrong, and dangerous actions or habits. It is to leave open the question whether we can resist these forces. I am convinced that declining the word “addiction” is both the only honest thing to do, and the only kind and wise thing to do, when we are faced with fellow creatures struggling with harmful habits and desires. It is all very well to relieve someone of the responsibility for such actions, by telling him his body is to blame. But what is that solace worth if he takes it as permission to carry on as before? Once or twice I have managed to explain to a few of my critics that this is what I am saying. But generally they are too furious, or astonished by my sheer nerve, to listen.

So let us approach it another way. The English language belongs to no state or government. It is not ruled by academies or even defined by dictionaries, however good. It operates on a sort of linguistic version of common law, by usage and precedent. And the expression “addiction” is very widely and variously used. There are people who claim, seriously, to be “addicted” to sex or to gambling.

It is now impolite to refer to habitual drunkards. They are “alcoholics,” supposedly suffering from a complaint that is not their fault. The curious variable ambiguity of Alcoholics Anonymous on this point has added to the confusion. AA, to begin with, asked its adherents to admit they had no control over themselves, as a preliminary to giving that power to God. Somehow I suspect that God plays less of a part in modern AA doctrine, but the idea of powerlessness remains. Members of the organization quietly moved from calling alcoholism an “illness” or a “malady” to describing it as a “disease,” round about the time that the medical profession began to do the same thing.

We are ceaselessly told that cigarettes are “addictive.” Most powerfully, most of us believe that the abusers of the illegal drug heroin are “addicted” to it. Once again, the public, the government, and the legal and medical systems are more or less ordered to believe that users of these things are involuntary sufferers. A British celebrity and alleged comedian, Russell Brand, wrote recently, “The mentality and behaviour of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless [my emphasis] over their addiction and, unless they have structured help, they have no hope.”

Brand is a former heroin abuser who has by now rather famously given up the drug. But how can that be, if what he says about addiction is true? The phrase “wholly irrational” simply cannot withstand the facts of Brand’s own life. It will have to be replaced by something much less emphatic—let us say, “partly irrational.” The same thing happens to the phrase “completely powerless.” Neither the adverb nor the adjective can survive. Nor can the word “addiction” itself, which is visibly evaporating. We have to say “they struggle over their compulsion.”

Read more here.
I apologize for first attributing these quotes to Szasz. They belong to Hitchens!

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hat tip Never Yet Melted

"So far, his bet is paying off."

Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today,

...The press’s “insider” status — which it cherishes — is going to fade, with Trump’s press people even talking about moving them out of the White House entirely, and ignoring their existing pecking order in press conferences. (This is producing waves of status anxiety, as are many other Trump-induced institutional changes). And, having abandoned, quite openly, any pretense of objectivity and neutrality in the election, the press is going to be treated as an enemy by the Trump administration until further notice.

In fact, Trump’s basically gaslighting them. Knowing how much they hate him, he’s constantly provoking them to go over the top. Sean Spicer’s crowd-size remarks on Saturday were all about making them seem petty and negative. (And, possibly, teeing up crowd size comparisons at this Friday’s March For Life, which the press normally ignores but which Trump will probably force them to cover).

Trump knows that the press isn’t trusted very much, and that the less it’s trusted, the less it can hurt him. So he’s prodding reporters to do things that will make them less trusted, and they’re constantly taking the bait.

They’re taking the bait because they think he’s dumb, and impulsive, and lacking self-control — but he’s the one causing them to act in ways that are dumb and impulsive, and demonstrate lack of self-control. As Richard Fernandez writes on Facebook, they think he’s dumb because they think he has lousy taste, but there are a lot of scarily competent guys out there in the world who like white and gold furniture. And, I should note, Trump has more media experience than probably 99% of the people covering him. (As Obama operative Ben Rhodes gloated with regard to selling a dishonest story on the Iran deal, the average reporter the Obama White House dealt with “is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.” In Rhodes’ words, “they literally know nothing.”)

If you read Don Surber’s election book, Trump the Press, it becomes pretty obvious that the press hasn’t been very good at understanding Trump’s strategies, or at responding to them. So far, there’s no sign of that changing as we move from the Trump campaign to the Trump administration.

The killer counter-move for the press isn’t to double down on anti-Trump messaging. The counter-move is to bolster its own trustworthiness by acting (and being) more neutral and sober, and by being more trustworthy. If the news media actually focused on reporting facts accurately and straightforwardly, on leaving opinion to the pundits, and on giving Trump a clearly fair shake, then Trump’s tactics wouldn’t work, and any actual dirt they found on him would do actual damage. He’s betting on the press being insufficiently mature and self-controlled to manage that. So far, his bet is paying off.

That’s too bad. If we had a better press, we’d be much better off as a nation, and Trump’s strategy of capitalizing on the press’s flaws is good for Trump, but will probably make that problem worse, if such a thing is possible. But the truth is, we don’t have a better press. And as long as the press is mindlessly partisan and bereft of self-discipline, capitalizing on that is just good politics.

Read more here.

“the goal of feminism is to remove all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality”

Chateau Heartiste writes,

American White women — and Western White women in general — have the easy life, all whims catered to, all conceptions thwarted, all egos stroked. Their abject sexual liberation and child-free lifestyles — and recall the Chateau maxim: “the goal of feminism is to remove all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality” — has made them yearn for submission to a greater dramatic power. Now that God is gone and the patriarchy is prostrate and supplicating boringly drama-free beta males orbit them like cosmic dust, to whom do these placated women submit?

Islam. Leftoid equalism. The cock carousel. And finally, they submit to incoherent rage fueled by the dying eggs of their childless wombs. Ashley Judd’s “Nasty Woman” recitation on stage at the Bitter Bitch March before a squealing crowd of whores and harpies is emblematic; her “poem” was a psychotic, obscene fusillade of nonsense and man-hatred. A more iconic representative of the inchoate mentality and emotional infantilism of modern feminism would be hard to find. A literal crazy bag lady screeched like a loony toon as half a million sympatico spinsters and sluts metaphorically scissored her cunty discharge.

Childlessness and cresting sexual worthlessness are the two unspoken, subconscious psychological drivers impelling the scattershot and scatterbrained “protests” of the women who went to the Bitter Bitch March. Not all of them; I’m sure there were one or two women who just wanted to get a coffee and got caught up in the crowd on the way.

Strip away the sound and nagging of the bitterbitches, signifying nothing, and you are left with the sad tragic realities of their lives. Childless Ashley Judd with the dead womb six feet under a mound of piling regret is Exhibit C(unt). Here is a photo of her ex-husband with his new wife, who just had his baby.

Read more here.

Kellyanne: "I consider myself a post feminist"

Jessica Chasmar writes in the Washington Times,

President Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway doesn’t consider herself a “feminist” in the traditional sense of the word.

In an interview published Thursday, the 50-year-old mother of four told The Washington Post that she doesn’t align with the “pro-abortion,” “anti-male” tenets of modern feminism and considers herself more of a “postfeminist.”
“I don’t consider myself a feminist. I think my generation isn’t a big fan of labels. My favorite label is mommy,” Mrs. Conway said.

“I feel like the feminist movement has been hijacked by the pro-abortion movement or the anti-male sentiments that you read in some of their propaganda and writings,” she continued. “I’m not anti-male. One does not need to be pro-female and call yourself a feminist, when with it comes that whole anti-male culture where we want young boys to sit down and shut up in the classroom.
“And we have all of these commercials that show what a feckless boob the man in the house is. That’s not the way I see the men in my life, most especially my 12-year-old son,” she added. “I consider myself a postfeminist. I consider myself one of those women who is a product of her choices, not a victim of her circumstances.”

Mrs. Conway, who served as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager and became the first woman to run a successful presidential campaign, said she is just now starting to realize how historic her involvement was.

Who can keep up with Trump?

Richar Fernandez writes at PJ Media,

In his first week of office president Trump rejected the TPP trade agreement, issued orders to build a border wall with Mexico and limit refugee intake from 'terror prone' countries. He revived the oil pipeline projects opposed by president Obama and drafted an executive order drastically reducing funding to the United Nations.
,
...With America's closure to mass uncontrolled immigration the pressure inevitably will be on Europe to accept the Middle Eastern millions. Can Europe stand by and watch as Trump strikes separate deals? Which country wants to be the last to maintain open borders AND welfare in a world where America is in frank pursuit of energy dominance, security and trade?

Read more here.

Our huge trade deficit with Mexico

Terence P. Jeffrey reports at CNS,

The United States now sends more money to Mexico each year through our bilateral merchandise trade deficit than we spend on our own homeland security through the federal Department of Homeland Security.

Read more here.

Pulling out

Lana Clements reports at the UK Express,

A MYSTERY firm has pulled out of a €100million deal with a German car supplier, after new President Donald Trump warned he would punish companies that outsourced jobs from America.

Shares in SHW Automotive plunged as it revealed the lost deal with an unnamed electric car maker - suspected to be US firm Tesla.

Read more here.

Part human, part pig!

Sarah Kaplan reports at the Washingon Post,

For the first time, scientists have grown an embryo that is part-pig, part-human. The experiment, described Thursday in the journal Cell, involves injecting human stem cells into the embryo of a pig, then implanting the embryo in the uterus of a sow and allowing it to grow. After four weeks, the stem cells had developed into the precursors of various tissue types, including heart, liver and neurons, and a small fraction of the developing pig was made up of human cells.

Read more here.

Harvard scientists create a medal from hydrogen!

From the UK Independent:

For nearly 100 years, scientists have dreamed of turning the lightest of all the elements, hydrogen, into a metal. Now, in a stunning act of modern-day alchemy, scientists at Harvard University have finally succeeded in creating a tiny amount of what is the rarest, and possibly most valuable, material on the planet, they reported in the journal Science. For metallic hydrogen could theoretically revolutionise technology, enabling the creation of super-fast computers, high-speed levitating trains and ultra-efficient vehicles and dramatically improving almost anything involving electricity.

Taking a closer look at Trump's favorites for the Supreme Court vacancy

At Fox News Bret Baier has an interesting interview about Trump's possible picks for the Supreme Court here.

A bad lip reading of the inaugural

No more playing defense

At Ace of Spades Warden has a new philosophy.

Further, I no longer have any investment in any particular political values, save one: The rules created by the left will be applied to the left as equally and punitively as they have applied them to the right. And when they beg for mercy, I'll begin to reconsider. Or maybe not. Because, fuck these people.

This new philosophy has freed me of more emotional angst that I can describe. Literally nothing the left says or does matters to me anymore. I don't care about their tantrums. I don't care about their accusations. I don't care if they say Trump is lying. I don't care if Trump is lying.

They created this Frankenstein. They own it. I am free of all obligation. I will never play defense again. I will attack, attack, attack, attack using their own tactics against them until they learn their lesson.

What I will not do is let them play my values against me ever again. I don't need to prove that I'm better than them. I already know it.

Read more here.

"...the left operates strongest in enclaves where voter fraud is prevalent."

Yesterday Donald Trump tweeted,

I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!

Daniel Greenfield writes today at Front Page,

Let's be honest.

The Democrats have been running on voter fraud for most of their history. The only reason that they have been fighting Voter ID tooth and nail is because they are protecting their voter fraud lifeline. And everyone knows it.

...President Trump should champion an investigation. And the outcome should be a national system of Voter ID in national elections. This is what the left is terrified of. Why the left specifically? Because the left operates strongest in enclaves where voter fraud is prevalent.

Aside from some lefty towns and suburbs, they depend heavily on highly dubious vote counts in urban areas. It's time to end the debate, launch the investigation and usher in an age of legitimate voting.

Read more here.

Don't confuse loudness with depth!

Oregon Muse takes on John Podoretz today at Ace of Spades.

Podoretz wrote a column calling the Vagina March "Everyone's March. Oregon Muse replies,

Wait. It was "everyone's" march? That's laughable. It certainly wasn't "everyone's" march. It was billed as a "women's" march as if it somehow represented all women, but that's clearly false advertising. Do you know what women were not welcome at the march? Pro-life women. Even pro-life feminists. Also, women who voted for Trump. After all, if this is a "women's" march, don't women who voted for Trump get to be counted as women, too?

A better, more honest way to advertise this march would have been to call it the "Progressive Women's Anti-Trump March."

Second, what does he mean, "it worked"? What, exactly, worked? Are Repubicans running around trying to placate women because of this march? Not that I can see. Trump is moving forward with the business at hand, and there's no indication that the new administration has given it one iota of attention other than the most bland, say-nothing answers when asked about it by the press. And has Mr. Podhoretz seen how much these hysterical women are being laughed at on social media? Did he see the photos of the vagina costumes, p*ssy hats, and nonsensical signage? This is not a serious movement. If it were a serious movement, if these women had serious, legitimate grievances, the whole tenor of the protests would be very different. And they would've cleaned up after themselves afterwards.

The protests certainly made a lot of noise, I'll give them that. Of course, being amplified through the megaphone of the MSM helped a lot. But even so, Mr. Podhoretz should not confuse loudness with depth.

Third, "We hate Trump" is not a "simple message" that "worked". It' a temper tantrum thrown by progressive women who didn't succeed in electing their preferred candidate. You can't build a mass movement on a temper tantrum.

Read more here.

Trump blasts Manning as an "ungrateful TRAITOR"

Fox News reports that Donald Trump tweeted this morning,

“Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible!”

President Trump ripped leaker Chelsea Manning as an “ungrateful TRAITOR” on Thursday after the ex-Army intelligence analyst penned a newspaper op-ed critical of former President Obama – the man who cut 28 years off Manning’s prison sentence.

Obama on Jan. 17 commuted Manning’s 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified documents, the most-high profile in a slew of clemency decisions that came near the end of his White House tenure. Manning, convicted of leaking classified documents, is now set to be released on May 17.

But that didn’t stop Manning from writing a Guardian column on Thursday pining for “a strong and unapologetic progressive to lead us.”

“Unfortunately, despite [Obama’s] faith in our system and his positive track record on many issues over the last eight years, there have been very few permanent accomplishments,” wrote Manning, who added that Obama’s detractors have criticized the former president for being “too weak, or too soft or too sympathetic.”

Manning wrote: "The one simple lesson to draw from President Obama’s legacy: do not start off with a compromise."

Read more here.

Opposites

Bookworm is trying to make it easy to understand.

Trump’s promises and actions are the opposite of Mussolini’s promise of a world that would see “all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” That world, of course, was Obama’s (and Hillary’s) vision. I’m sure that both Obama and Hillary imagined that they would inaugurate a a sweet and loving statism, unlike the violent repression that characterized fascism in the 1930s. However, as the insanity the Left has unleashed since the inauguration reveals, statists really don’t do sweet and loving. They may throw sweetness and love about as rhetorical concepts when they leech freedom and money away from citizens, but at bottom they’re always about brute force.

And here’s the deal: If a small, weak government engages in brute force, especially against a constitutionally armed citizenry, that small, weak government is history. However, if a huge, overarching, comprehensive, far-reaching government engages in brute force against an unarmed citizenry that has had its freedoms drained away . . . there’s your fascism. And that’s not Trump.

Is Trump a populist? Definitely, insofar as he is responsive to ordinary people’s needs rather than trying to create a utopia predicated upon the visions of a global elite. But a fascist? Most definitely not.

Read more here.

Satire about Hollywood

Manhattan Infidel reports that on the day Trump was inaugurated, Hollywood announced two movies are being made about the new president.

The first movie will be called “Trump Armegeddon.”

In Trump Armegeddon, scientists discover that the existence of Trump will wipe out all life on Earth and plan on detonating a thermonuclear device deep within Trump that will split him in two, saving all life on Earth.

The second movie will be a documentary called “An Inconvenient Trump.”

Narrated by former Vice President and global warming activist Al Gore, the documentary will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the existence of Donald Trump causes glaciers to melt, polar bears to drown and ocean levels to rise.

...Both films will be released this summer and have already been nominated for several Academy awards.

Read more here.

"full-throated, high T, unapologetically masculine actions"

Well, Chateau Heartiste is one writer who is happy with Trump's first week:

The most nourishing ingredient in Trump’s battle stew may be that by his actions — full-throated, high T, unapologetically masculine actions — Trump is throwing into stark relief the GOPe cucks’ utterly degrading futility over decades as the leftoid message machine’s stepinfetchit house eunuchs. Trump is showing how much can be done with seemingly INCREDIBLE EASE by just SACKING UP and grabbing the pussies of the world to let them know a new shitlord is in town, and he’s not gonna wait for the crybullies to get in his grill before his guns are out firing round after round.

That’s Trump’s true gift to America: He has exposed the cucks’ ineffectual and treasonous cowardice for everyone to see. There is no coming back from this.

Read more here.

The Trump administration has frozen Obama’s quiet, last minute cash gift to the Palestinian Authority.

World Israel News reports,

When asked about the transfer by a reporter during Tuesday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that “[Trump] is very concerned about how taxpayer money is spent, whether it’s sent overseas and what we get for it in terms of the relationship or our support for a democracy or aid to another country for their defenses. But he’s going to be examining all aspects of the budget… He’s going to make sure that every deal, every dollar that is spent by the government is done in a way that respects the American taxpayer.”

Read more here.

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Secretary of Defense James Mattis will visit Japan and South Korea in early February

John Hayward reports at Breitbart,

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that Secretary of Defense James Mattis will visit Japan and South Korea in early February, on his first overseas trip since confirmation.

“The trip will underscore the commitment of the United States to our enduring alliances with Japan and the Republic of Korea, and further strengthen U.S.-Japan-Republic of Korea security cooperation,” said Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis.

...CNN reports the trip is scheduled to last four days, and will include meetings with Mattis’ opposite numbers in Japan and South Korea. There are currently about 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in the former nation and 28,000 in the latter.

Read more here.

Will Lena Dunham, Madonna, and Michael Moore "recede into the woodwork?"

Victor Davis Hanson writes about the political importance of a healthy economy.

One reason that a personally popular, landmark Barack Obama failed as president — aside from doubling the debt, institutionalizing zero interest rates, leaving a mess in the Middle East, and using his un-Midas touch to undermine nearly everything he tapped, from health care to immigration law to race relations — was that he was the first modern president under whose tenure the economy never reached a modest 3 percent economic-growth rate. Had Obama just achieved 4 percent economic growth, Hillary Clinton would be president.

In other words, economic growth and perceived prosperity cut a lot of political ties. Reagan lacked the legislative apparatus to become a true revolutionary; Trump’s windfall Republican majorities almost force him into that insurrectionary role. The election of Donald Trump has turned everything in the political world, from the trivial to the existential, upside down. He is the first non-politician without military experience to become president. The polls and press caricatured him for nearly two years as a classic loser. He won despite being outspent and out-organized, and without real support from his own party or the mainstream conservative press. The Left is rightly convinced that he is a danger to the postmodern redistributive state. The Never Trump Right is still invested in his eventual implosion, issuing “I warned you about him” messages in a nonstop effort of self-justification.

On policy, Trump promises to outdo the reset of Ronald Reagan, who lacked Trump’s Republican-controlled Congress, vast majorities in the state legislatures and governorships, and the blank-check authority bequeathed by Harry Reid and Barack Obama, whose ends-justify-any-means-necessary changes in legislative and executive protocols have fortified the presidency with enormous new avenues of power. Reagan lacked the legislative apparatus to become a true revolutionary; Trump’s windfall Republican majorities almost force him into that insurrectionary role.

So Trump is intent on overturning Obama’s therapeutic foreign policy, slashing federal spending, rebuilding the military, exporting fossil fuels, waging a cultural war against political correctness and the liberal media, and enforcing immigration law. In other words, from his person to his policies, Donald Trump is a revolutionary, with a huge target on his back that the foundations, universities, networks, major newspapers, Hollywood, and the coastal-strip elite will always have in their scope.

...But it’s far more likely that Trump’s fate will hinge on his economic reforms. Achieve 4 percent–plus GDP growth rate and then Black Lives Matter, the residuals of Occupy Wall Street, the hysterical House Democrats, and the assorted unhinged fringe of Michael Moore, Lena Dunham, and Madonna will recede into the woodwork.

Economic growth cuts through political orthodoxy; economic stagnation intensifies it. Regrettably or not, prosperity, not character per se, determines a president’s political fate.

Read more here.

Totalitarian conformity

The New Criterion seeks to explain why the Left hates tolerance.

...the academy is increasingly inimical to free speech, free inquiry, free action, and free minds. The dissemination of political correctness, subordinating the pursuit of truth to the imposition of political dogma, sacrifices freedom on the altar of virtue, or supposed virtue.

...At least the ignorance of yore was content to subsist in its lack of knowledge. The new variety is infatuated with a sense of self-importance and wants to proselytize.

...The modern social justice warrior abominates disagreement as a form of heresy. Accordingly, he rejects tolerance in favor of enforced, indeed totalitarian, conformity. It is the antithesis of what a liberal-arts education was all about, which is why its installation at the center of our erstwhile liberal-arts institutions makes for such a sad irony.

Trump offers to help Chicago stem violence

Trump tweet:

If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!

Read more here.

If there is a heartbeat, the baby is protected.

At Breitbart Neil W. McCabe reports,

Pro-life congressmen stood in front of the Capitol — along with Janet Porter, the Ohio woman who led the fight for passage of that state’s “heartbeat bill” — all in support of Rep. Steve A. King (R.-Iowa) and his Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017, H.R. 490, which restores legal protection to unborn children once their pulse is detected.

Read more here.

Blowing past Dow 20,000

reports at CNN Money,

Dow 20,000 is finally here.

After weeks of close calls, the Dow made history on Wednesday by blowing past that key level for the first time ever. The Dow climbed 156 points to 20,069 and was joined in record territory by the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.

The historic milestone leaves the Dow up more than 1,700 points since President Donald Trump's victory in November. The achievement is evidence of how optimistic investors have become about the prospects for the U.S. economy.

Read more here.

Exciting times!

The Mind Unleashed blog informs us of three important bills that have been introduced in Congress.
1. A bill by Mike Rogers of Alabama: The American Sovereignty Act of 2017

The bill requires: (1) the President to terminate U.S. membership in the United Nations (U.N.), including any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body; and (2) closure of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

The bill prohibits: (1) the authorization of funds for the U.S. assessed or voluntary contribution to the U.N., (2) the authorization of funds for any U.S. contribution to any U.N. military or peacekeeping operation, (3) the expenditure of funds to support the participation of U.S. Armed Forces as part of any U.N. military or peacekeeping operation, (4) U.S. Armed Forces from serving under U.N. command, and (5) diplomatic immunity for U.N. officers or employees.

2. A bill by Tulsi Gabbard proposed in December of 2016;

the Stop Arming Terrorists Act. The bill would cut off U.S. government (and tax-payer) funding to terrorist groups like ISIL and al-Qaeda. Gabbard says of the bill:

“Under U.S. law it is illegal for any American to provide money or assistance to al-Qaeda, ISIS or other terrorist groups. If you or I gave money, weapons or support to al-Qaeda or ISIS, we would be thrown in jail. Yet the U.S. government has been violating this law for years, quietly supporting allies and partners of al-Qaeda, ISIL, Jabhat Fateh al Sham and other terrorist groups with money, weapons, and intelligence support, in their fight to overthrow the Syrian government.”

Like the American Sovereignty Act of 2017, the Stop Arming Terrorists Act would expose much corruption and deception that the elite have been engaging in. Both bills would be a major blow to the elite’s agenda and would pave the way for mass arrests of many well known elites on a scale that has never been seen before.

3. Rand Paul's “Audit the Federal Reserve Bill of 2017"

As many reading this already know, the level of theft and corruption that the Federal Reserve has been involved in will bring the global elite to their knees when exposed. If audited correctly and fairly, exposure of the Federal Reserve (also another private registered corporation) would likely also lead to many well known names and public figures being arrested.

Read more here.

At Inaugural interfaith prayer service, Muslim reads Koran passage condemning Jews and Christians

Andrew G. Bostom writes in PJ Media,

Honoring a tradition that dates back to America’s first president, George Washington, in New York (described here, The Daily Advertiser, April 23, 1789, p. 2), within 24 hours of his swearing-in, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence attended a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral.

The Saturday prayer service was a modern “interfaith event” which included (as described here, p.11, and seen in this video clip) a recitation by Sajid Tarar, an advisor at Medina Masjid of Baltimore.

He recited the Koran’s very brief first sura, or chapter: the so-called “Fatiha,” or “Opening,” consisting of seven short verses (verses 1-6; verse 7).

As I noted in a tweet shortly after viewing Saturday’s event, regarding verse 7:

“At Natl Cathedral Today ,1/21/17, Koran 1:7, A Curse on Jews, & Rebuke of Christians Recited in Front of Pres Trump.”
This high-profile ecumenical event illustrates starkly the conundrum of mainstream Islamic practice within our free, multi-confessional, but overwhelmingly non-Muslim society. Pious Muslims repeat the Fatiha, including verse 7, up to 17 times per day during their five requisite prayer sessions, and the accompanying “subunits” of prayer (see pp.49-50). While verses 1-6 are confined to Muslims re-affirming their personal devotion to the Islamic creed, and its deity, Allah, verse 7 launches into open condemnation of other faiths -- specifically Judaism and Christianity.

Read more here.

"Keep families together?" "They would have kept the Manson family together!"

Little Mikey Guzman lived in a Queens house of horrors where child welfare workers had found cuts, welts and bruises on some of his siblings, as well as signs of sexual abuse, before the 5-year-old was discovered dead, law enforcement sources told The Post on Tuesday.



The city Administration for Children’s Services had investigated the family 13 times, and substantiated abuse or neglect in eight instances, yet never took any of the six children away, the sources said.

Read more here.

Shall we let Californians secede?

Supposedly one-third of Californians favor secession from the United States! Ace believes we should consider it.

Nation-states could use some right-sizing. We should not all be competing for the power to make millions of other people's lives miserable. We should just be adults about it and say "Good luck" to each other, and let us each pursue our own right-sized happiness.

Read more here, and be sure to read the comments!

"Hey, Hey, Hey, This is library!"

David Burge tweeted,"The most inspiring anti-totalitarian Chinese dissident since the Tinanenmen Square tank guy."

Taking another look at Alinsky

Richard Porter is a Trump supporter from Illinois who attended the DeploraBall last weekend. He writes at Real Clear Politics about the experience of "protesters"

thuggishly blocking traffic, shouting epithets at strangers, and making thousands walk in the cold.

Perhaps it's time to refresh Saul Alinsky's middle-aged "Rules for Radicals" (now in its 46th year), which has instructed this and prior generations of radicals who want to "burn the system down!"

But upon pulling a dog-eared copy up on my smartphone, I discovered that Alinsky's cookbook for how to upend the establishment (setting aside the awful, outdated Marxism) is more timeless than I realized—and that today’s protesters might want to read it themselves.

“This failure of many of our younger activists to understand the art of communication has been disastrous,” Alinsky wrote in explaining why some tactics invariably turn off many more Americans than they inspire. “Even the most elementary grasp of the fundamental idea that one communicates within the experience of his audience—and give full respect to the other’s values —would have ruled out attacks on the American flag….”

"These rules make the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one who uses the tired old words and slogans, calls the police ‘pig’ or ‘white fascist racist,’” he continued, “and has so stereotyped himself that others react by saying, ‘Oh, he's one of those,’ and then promptly turn off."

So there you have it: The anti-Trump crowd is so out-of-touch with the people and even their own principles for effective protesting that their efforts backfire and give aid and succor to their enemies. And, interestingly, the folks that seem to have best learned from Alinsky's instructions for how the powerless can seize power are Steve Bannon and others on the Trump team. Take the third of Alinsky’s rules: "Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear and retreat." Doesn’t that evoke Trump and Twitter?

Fourth rule: "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." Think Trump and Bill Clinton.

Fifth rule: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage." Think Trump and everyone from Jeb Bush to CNN.

Sixth rule: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." We Deplorables get this -- the Trump campaign was fun. We embraced this absurd characterization of Americans who deplore a system in which a politicized and corrupt Justice Department gave Hillary Clinton a pass no other American would get and that protected the IRS as it abused groups that opposed the Obama administration. The chant "Lock her up! Lock her up!" was not the angry call of a mob, it was a gleeful catnip to a Clinton-loving media, which couldn't resist breathlessly reporting the chant, which then inadvertently served to highlight Obama's refusal to neutrally enforce the law, as well as Clinton's own profound corruption.

The seventh rule is a sage warning to Republicans: "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Republicans must move swiftly while we have momentum, for all too soon, as the ardor of the movement cools, Republicans will be judged on accomplishments and not tactics.

Read more here.

"...we are fighting for the survival of America no less than the Union troops were in the First Civil War."

Dennis Prager believes

America is currently fighting its second Civil War.

There are those on both the left and right who call for American unity. But these calls are either naive or disingenuous. Unity was possible between the right and liberals, but not between the right and the left.

Liberalism -- which was anti-left, pro-American and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America; and which regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic human achievement and viewed the celebration of racial identity as racism -- is now affirmed almost exclusively on the right and among a handful of people who don't call themselves conservative.

The left, however, is opposed to every one of those core principles of liberalism.

...Like the left in every other country, the left in America essentially sees America as a racist, xenophobic, colonialist, imperialist, warmongering, money-worshipping, moronically religious nation.

There will be unity only when the left vanquishes the right or the right vanquishes the left. Using the First Civil War analogy, American unity was achieved only after the South was vanquished and slavery was abolished.

How are those of us who oppose left-wing nihilism -- there is no other word for an ideology that holds Western civilization and America's core values in contempt -- supposed to unite with "educators" who instruct elementary school teachers to cease calling their students "boys" and "girls" because that implies gender identity? With English departments that don't require reading Shakespeare in order to receive a degree in English? With those who regard virtually every war America has fought as imperialist and immoral? With those who regard the free market as a form of oppression? With those who want the state to control as much of American life as possible? With those who repeatedly tell America and its black minority that the greatest problems afflicting black Americans are caused by white racism, "white privilege" and "systemic racism"? With those who think that the nuclear family ideal is inherently misogynistic and homophobic? With those who hold that Israel is the villain in the Middle East? With those who claim that the term "Islamic terrorist" is an expression of religious bigotry?

The third significant difference between the First and Second Civil Wars is that in the Second Civil war, one side has been doing nearly all the fighting. That is how it has been able to take over schools -- from elementary schools, to high schools, to universities -- and indoctrinate America's young people; how it has taken over nearly all the news media; and how it has taken over entertainment media.

The conservative side has lost on every one of these fronts because it has rarely fought back with anything near the ferocity with which the left fights. Name a Republican politician who has run against the left as opposed to running solely against his or her Democratic opponent. And nearly all American conservatives, people who are proud of America and affirm its basic tenets, readily send their children to schools that indoctrinate their children against everything the parents hold precious. A mere handful protest when their child's teacher ceases calling their son a boy or their daughter a girl, or makes "slave owner" the defining characteristic of the Founding Fathers.

With the defeat of the left in the last presidential election, the defeat of the left in two-thirds of the gubernatorial elections and the defeat of the left in a majority of House and Senate elections, this is likely the last chance liberals, conservatives and the right have to defeat the American left. But it will not happen until these groups understand that we are fighting for the survival of America no less than the Union troops were in the First Civil War.

Read more here.

What's the answer?

hat tip Bookworm

The power of photos

hat tip Bookworm

A seat is available.

hat tip Bookworm

Lies we've been told

Making sense

hat tip Bookworm

Offending women of the world

Practicing what they preach?

hat tip Bookworm

Men's march against fascism

h/t Bookworm

"Do you really want to give the Democrats a tool to unite their fractured clans?"

At Conservative Treehouse, Sundance writes that now is not the time for Trump to move on DACA.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), also known as “The Dreamers” executive order which has been implemented and carried out deferring immigration enforcement for the children of illegal aliens.

Trump supporters want to see the DACA executive order overturned, and it is not my intention to dispute the argument it should be because I too agree it should be overturned. However, now is not the time….

Former President Obama was asked, repeatedly, what would draw him back into the political equation to become an activist against the Trump policy and agenda implementation. At each response he continually cited DACA as the key issue which would bring him back to DC in opposition. Not Obamacare being repealed, but DACA.

Nothing would unite the various far-left activist groups more quickly than for President Trump to immediately reverse the DACA executive order. This is where prudent thought needs to be applied, and as annoying as it is – politics need to be considered.

If Trump were to take action now to remove DACA, not only would it provide the fuel to energize the opposition to his administration, he would also find few defenders within the Republican congress for immediacy in action.

Nothing would please Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi more than to have the issues around the immigration gang-of-eight bill hijack the current approach of the Trump agenda. Schumer, Pelosi and crew would enjoy nothing more than pulling out the racist, nativist, bigot cards and the media would like nothing more than to showcase them.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a nominee would be bombarded by questions about DACA and beaten up with any political nuance or misstep created by a blood-lusting anti-Trump media, while immigration activist groups were simultaneously engaged by all the coverage therein. Marches would begin immediately. Every talking point by Senator Corey Booker would be front and center.

The Democrat machine would be canonizing anyone who rose in opposition to the Trump administration based on DACA concerns. Halos handed out to Booker, Keith Ellison, Tom Perez et al. Do you really want to give the Democrats a tool to unite their fractured clans?

Additionally, all of Trump’s GOPe detractors would be empowered to act against him through various constructs of non support. Microphones and cameras would immediately be shoved into the face of Marco Rubio, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan.

Have we forgotten that amnesty, the gang-of-eight bill, was only 48 hours from passage IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES when Eric Cantor was primaried in 2014? Even the current OMB Director nominee Rep Mick “cantalopes” Mulvaney was in support of the Go8 bill.

The scope of the political use of DACA as a weaponized narrative to undermine President Trump would be as immediate as CNN, MSNBC, FOX and the alphabets fully engaged, and Wall Street financed, gaslighting. All of it fueled by a useful narrative to destroy the Trump agenda.

DHS Secretary nominee Kelly would need patriot missile batteries outside his office and house to stave off the incoming MSM scud missile launches. The 24/7 coverage of President Obama dropping his vacation plans to rush to Washington DC would play out over screens like the white Bronco carrying OJ Simpson. David Brock would be hiring up staffs of hundreds as Hollywood poured millions into Democrat coffers to fuel a narrative and organize the takeover of urban city halls.

Mexico would be empowered with “hateful Trump” leverage in any NAFTA discussion. The southern border and protective wall?… would be more fuel in a created narrative of Trump dragging babies out of their crying mothers arms to throw them over the Rio Grande.

No, this is not winning. This is the opposite of winning. This is giving your enemy exactly what they need to create a hateful optic and a spin a usefully false narrative to diminish President Trump.

This predictable outcome is exactly why the MSM is trying to provoke President Trump and his spokespeople and representatives into the DACA conversation/debate right now.

The GOPe wing of the UniParty would also benefit from this. Heck, every oppositional entity within the swamp, who view Trump as a threat to their preferred status-quo, would work on this effort.

Think prudently. Remember, cold anger does not act to spite itself. Be politically wise and understand the larger goals.

Yes, DACA will be removed – in a logical, methodical, prudent and sequential time frame. Know and understand the enemy.

Now is not the time to act on this issue.

Think carefully.

Trust our elected leadership.

Read more here.

Have you figured out what the women's marches were about?

James Delingpose at Breitbart is trying to figure out what the women's marches were all about.

According to Madonna it had something to do with blowing up the White House.

According to Michael Moore (not a woman) it was about stopping Betty De Vos (a woman: how does this work, exactly?) from becoming Secretary of Education.

According to Hamas-supporting, hijab-wearing co-organiser Linda Sarsour, it had something to do with that famous supporter of women’s rights, Islam.

According to Hermione Granger it was a lovely excuse to fly over from England with her Mum, to feel humble and try on some new bright red lipstick.

According to at least one of the girls in this photo I found on Twitter, it’s about “good scince”. Yay! Go, good scince!


And according to former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Q. Nomani (a woman, though not the right kind as far as the marchers are concerned, presumably), it’s basically just another tentacle of George Soros – the sinister, cat-stroking destroyer-of-worlds who Asra has found to have funded no fewer than 56 of the partners involved in the march.

So: nothing to do with real women with any real, actual, valid concerns they may have about the world, like, say, the enslavement of Yazidi girls in Iraq and Syria or arranged marriages for child brides from Pakistan or genital mutilation of girls in North Africa or Moroccan TV stations teaching battered wives how to cover up their bruises.

...Still, when all is said and done I think we owe those women who took to the streets across the world in their various pod groups a massive favour. They have reminded us what a Hillary presidency would have looked like every single day for at least four years. And they have swept away any reservations we may have had about the absolute necessity of having voted for Donald Trump.

Read more here.

A stunning contrast!

Thomas Lifson reports at American Thinker,

Yesterday saw a stunning contrast as it was revealed that the outgoing Barack Obama funded Palestinians as almost his last act in office, while Donald Trump’s first full workday saw him call Egypt’s President El-Sisi to offer support in his battle against the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan, which seeks his overthrow.

It’s all about the Muslim Brotherhood, that octopus of Islamic supremacist jihad that seeks to use all methods – legal, violent, or deceptive – to advance the goal of a world ruled by Islam.

AP reported yesterday,

n addition to the $221 million for the Palestinians, the Obama administration also told Congress on Friday it was going ahead with the release of another $6 million in foreign affairs spending, including $4 million for climate change programs and $1.25 million for U.N. organizations

Lifson writes,

President Trump has come under fire for allegedly being anti-Muslim, when in fact his opposition is to violent jihad and those who promote world domination for Islam and the imposition of sharia law on every human being on the planet. Oddly enough, the women marching on Saturday were led by a fan of sharia, Linda Sarsour.

Actually, President Trump sees good relations with Muslims who oppose violent jihad and the Ikhwan and acted dramatically on that yesterday, as Reuters reports:

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed ways to boost the fight against terrorism and extremism on Monday and the new American leader underscored his commitment to bilateral ties, the two countries said.

Trump told Sisi in a telephone call he appreciated the difficulties faced by Egypt in its "war on terror" and affirmed his administration's commitment to supporting the country, Sisi's spokesman Alaa Youssef said in a statement.

Read more here.

Trump meets with automakers, says he'll reduce some regulations, if they build more cars in America

David Shepardson and Roberta Rampton report at Reuters,
U.S. President Donald Trump urged the chief executives of the Big Three U.S. automakers on Tuesday to build more cars in the country, pressing his pledge to bring jobs to America and discourage the car industry from investing in Mexico.

Trump, who has threatened to impose 35 percent tariffs on imported vehicles, opened a White House meeting with General Motors Co CEO Mary Barra, Ford Motor Co CEO Mark Fields and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV CEO Sergio Marchionne saying he wants to see more auto plants in the United States.

In return, the new Republican president has vowed to cut regulations and taxes to make it more attractive for businesses to operate in the United States. He promised frequently during his election campaign to be a job-creating president and stressed that message in his inaugural speech last Friday.
Read more here.

Liars at Planned Parenthood exposed nationwide

Claire Chretien reports at Life Site,

A new Live Action investigation debunks Planned Parenthood's oft-repeated claim that it provides prenatal care to pregnant women. Undercover videos and phone calls show that Planned Parenthood regularly turns away pregnant women seeking options other than abortion, which is the focus of their business.

The pro-life group called and visited 97 Planned Parenthood facilities that are part of all 41 regional Planned Parenthood affiliates across the United States. Ninety-two out of 97 turned away women seeking prenatal care. Planned Parenthood workers admitted to investigators that the name "Planned Parenthood" is "deceptive" and "deceiving."

"Don't talk to me about where I was 8 years ago!"

hat tip Gateway Pundit

Trump signs orders reviving Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipeline

At Gateway Pundit Ryan Saavedra reports,

The Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline have been stalled for a long time under the Obama administration for along time. Check off another accomplishment for the Trump administration: Trump has signed executive orders reviving those projects which will create more jobs.

Read more here.

The ownership gambit

Scott Adams writes,

When Donald Trump ran for president he put his clear, simple message on the front of bright red hats. The message was perfect. The choice of a hat instead of a t-shirt or other garment was perfect. The color red was perfect for his message – bold, sexy, and important. The hats were a master class in branding and influence. Political historians will be referring to Trump’s hats for ages.

Compare that to the Million Woman March. They chose pink because – I assume – it is a bit of an ironic color for women who are fighting for their rights. Women are “owning” pink to rob it of its power to brand them as the so-called weaker sex. At least that’s why I assume they picked pink.

We’ve seen that kind of ownership-gambit work before. African-Americans successfully took over the N-word and robbed it of its historical power. Gays successfully turned the chant “We’re here, we’re queer. Get over it” into ownership of the Q-word.

We also saw Trump use a version of this ownership-gambit during the campaign. The media accused him of being a whiner and he responded by saying he was the loudest voice for change. Trump owned the accusation and weaponized it.

So we know this idea of embracing the insult and flipping it into a positive – or at least a neutral – is good persuasion. It works quite often. But let me tell about you one of the rare cases where you should NOT use that persuasion technique.

...The choice of pink hats predicts that the movement will fizzle out in time (probably months). The color alone is powerful enough to drain the movement of energy over time.

Color matters when it comes to branding. You already knew that. What you probably didn’t know is how much it mattered. I’d put color toward the top of the persuasion stack because we are visual creatures and color is the main thing we see.

When Trump came up with his red hat idea he was operating in the persuasion and branding dimension. And he nailed it.

When the pink hat organizers decided on their branding, they appear to have been operating on what I call the word-thinking level. As I mentioned earlier, the hats are literally a pun about cats and vaginas. That’s too conceptual to persuade. Just because the words fit together in a clever way, that doesn’t make it persuasive. And if you plan to take ownership of an insult, make sure the insult is strong. The N-word was a strong insult. The Q-word was weapons-grade too. Trump turned “whiner” into the strongest voice for change, which is also strong. If your enemy has a strong weapon, it makes sense to grab that weapon and use it for defense.

But if someone associates you with a weak color, such as pink, and the science says the color influences people toward weakness, don’t take that as your brand. Run away from pink unless you are trying to persuade people to drink some herbal tea and take a nap.

If you are the new President of the United States, and you see hundreds-of-thousands of protesters marching in the streets, what do you do? Well, in most cases you would treat that as the nation’s top priority. You don’t want it to escalate to social collapse. I can think of only one scenario in which such a large and vocal movement should be ignored until they run out of steam. That rare situation is when the protesters all wear pink hats. You can pretty much ignore that movement. It will fizzle out on its own. Unless they get better hats.

Read more here.

"President Trump is methodically fracturing the UniParty."

Sundance writes at Conservative Treehouse,

The America-First winning is exponential. Union leadership met today with a pro-jobs, pro-growth, pro-USA president. Leadership from construction/manufacturing, pipe fitters, steel workers and industrial machinist unions met today with President Trump and exit the meeting with incredible praise for the respect he showed them.


...Trump is exponentially smart, and knows how to present a very specific and truthful outline of principle for the American electorate. Within those bold truths, decades of manipulative political efforts deployed by his political opposition is simply destroyed like a feather in a hurricane.

This is jaw-droppingly brilliant stuff which needs to be emphasized. Not only is our President focused like a laser on American interests by walking in the land of bold and dynamic truth, he’s also deconstructing all political opposition at the same time.

How are Washington DC liberal democrats going to stand against Trump, when the political constituents of traditional democrat “blue-dog” moderate groups align with him? Short answer, they can’t.

How are Washington DC big government (Wall street) Republicans going to stand up against Trump when the base of their support aligns with Trump policy. Again, short answer, they can’t.

The base of President Trump’s support is widening and deepening as rapidly as the base of his initial support was created. The difference between the two groups is the initial base trusted him because of his history on these issues; the second group, the enlarging base, are those who did not believe but are now seeing reality – He’s the real deal.

As he reshapes the political constructs, President Trump is leaving the Democrat party with only the raving moonbats as their constituency – the very far left. Additionally, those within the Republican party who oppose him are similarly revealed as big government, crony capitalistic GOPe types. In essence, President Trump is methodically fracturing the UniParty.

….Trump follows up meeting with the CEO’s and then labor unions, by IMMEDIATELY meeting with key Democrat and Republican leadership.

The party leadership is also watching Trump meet with business titans and union leadership, and he doesn’t give the UniParty any time to ‘huddle up’ and construct their political oppositional talking points.

President Trump’s schedule of urgency means the UniParty leaders have to relate to the events ‘in real time’ without the traditional poll-testing, asking the various lobbying special interests for constructs, or the ability to advance a constructed oppositional narrative.

In essence, Trump’s high energy approach, based on American values and principles, creates consistently building momentum and opposition is always reacting.

President Trump creates winning!

Read more here.