Month: November 2018

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the open-borders group that organized the migrant caravan, has had an easy time of it, racking up propaganda victory after propaganda victory as its group snaked through Mexico.

They put the tiny number of women and children in the group up front for the news cameras with the media obliging them to create the perception that the entire group was just women and children fleeing gangs instead of largely military-aged unemployed young men.

They brazenly waved the Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican and Salvadoran flags in a bid to signal they aren’t looking for ‘mercy’ from the U.S., they consider entering the U.S. a matter of right as nationals of those countries.

They busted down the gates of Mexico’s southern border to signal to the world that Mexico’s efforts to enforce its own border are utterly useless.

They kept the group together when there were signs it was splitting apart, the better to retain their power of numbers in order to make demands.

They got the Mexican authorities to feed, house, bed, medicate, and escort them throughout their journey to the U.S. border, signalling their clout over that sovereign nation. And it helped that like revolutionaries swimming among fishes, as Mao used to say, they got the Mexican locals to offer aid as well in the hopes that the group would continue on their way away from them.

The list goes on. Arriving in Tijuana, they hopped the border fence and danced around in plain view of U.S. lawmen, daring them to stop them, presumably through opening fire, and then when they didn’t, they racked up another propaganda victory by exposing U.S. powerlessness to stop them. After that, they hopped back into Mexico with no consequences.

There’s just one thing they didn’t calculate for: The rage of Tijuana’s locals, whose anger is growing at the prospect of migrants camping out all over their city streets and neighborhoods, bringing crime, garbage, homeless encampments and disorder. Here’s a screengrab from KGTV and you can see the whole confrontation at this link here:

 

Tijuana is a pretty orderly and prosperous place in Mexico, much more so than Mexico’s impoverished south (where Mexico’s government cordially invited the migrants to settle), and the prospect of caravan migrants setting up camps for months in TJ as they await to be processed for their fake asylum claims into the U.S, is bringing about the same reaction you’d expect to see from the Rancho Bernardo or La Jolla areas of San Diego, were the thousands of migrants to set up camp there instead.

Based on two local television news reports, from ABC10 and CBS 8 of San Diego, the problem is worse than it’s being reported in the national press.

KGTV, the ABC affiliate, and KFMB, the CBS affiliate, both reported that violent fights have broken out with rocks, punches, hurled beer cans and other thuggery. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that at least a thousand of the Tijuana residents have banded together into a social media group to save their neighborhoods from the migrants. There are also reports that the Tijuana cops aren’t putting up with this, and already have arrested and jailed five of the caravan migrants, two for starting fights and three for doing drugs. How nice to think they traveled 2,000 miles to reach the inside of a Tijuana jailhouse. Here’s some of the local sentiment from KGTV:

Some Tijuana residents are frustrated with the growing number of Central American migrants that have gathered along the border in hopes of gaining asylum in the U.S.

Tijuana resident Cesar Baltazar, who legally crosses the border on a regular basis to work in the U.S., told 10News, “In Plaza Tijuana, they’re already fighting. I mean, all the residents there don’t want them there.”

On Wednesday night, a confrontation between Mexican nationals and some members of the immigrant caravan escalated into violence. The fight inflicted injury on both sides, including one man seen on cell phone video with a bloody eye.

“They’re unknown, that’s the thing,” Baltazer said. “They’re unknown. They’re strangers.”

and this:

“[Tijuana] has a lot of crime. They have a lot of murders. They have a lot of drug usage. So, they don’t want those problems from Central America to come over here,” he told 10News.

Tijuana resident Georgina Parra added, “Everyone is in disagreement. Aside from them trashing our city, they’re making caravans outside and talking badly about Tijuana.”

The Tijuana people don’t like those insults, and rightly so – Tijuana is so much nicer a place than the countries these migrants left, and to see new arrivals coming in by the busload to insult them is kind of rich, so the local disgust is understandable. Nor is it warranted. Few of the real Tijuana residents ever move to San Diego, given the ease they would have do that, and the fact that they actually don’t.

And it’s actually getting some coverage, something the migrant caravan planners didn’t calculate for. With the prospect of migrants having to camp out in TJ for six months before they can get released into the U.S. to work a few years before their asylum claims are rejected, there is going to be resistance. And it will only get worse as time grinds on and frustrations build. I can see some of the TJ people and their elected officials pressuring the U.S. to process the fake asylum claims more quickly, but the U.S. may be in a position to resist that. If it does, the caravan is going to be left to explain why it shouldn’t be run out of town as angry Tijuana residents get angrier.

Who would have thought it would come to this?

 

 

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the open-borders group that organized the migrant caravan, has had an easy time of it, racking up propaganda victory after propaganda victory as its group snaked through Mexico.

They put the tiny number of women and children in the group up front for the news cameras with the media obliging them to create the perception that the entire group was just women and children fleeing gangs instead of largely military-aged unemployed young men.

They brazenly waved the Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican and Salvadoran flags in a bid to signal they aren’t looking for ‘mercy’ from the U.S., they consider entering the U.S. a matter of right as nationals of those countries.

They busted down the gates of Mexico’s southern border to signal to the world that Mexico’s efforts to enforce its own border are utterly useless.

They kept the group together when there were signs it was splitting apart, the better to retain their power of numbers in order to make demands.

They got the Mexican authorities to feed, house, bed, medicate, and escort them throughout their journey to the U.S. border, signalling their clout over that sovereign nation. And it helped that like revolutionaries swimming among fishes, as Mao used to say, they got the Mexican locals to offer aid as well in the hopes that the group would continue on their way away from them.

The list goes on. Arriving in Tijuana, they hopped the border fence and danced around in plain view of U.S. lawmen, daring them to stop them, presumably through opening fire, and then when they didn’t, they racked up another propaganda victory by exposing U.S. powerlessness to stop them. After that, they hopped back into Mexico with no consequences.

There’s just one thing they didn’t calculate for: The rage of Tijuana’s locals, whose anger is growing at the prospect of migrants camping out all over their city streets and neighborhoods, bringing crime, garbage, homeless encampments and disorder. Here’s a screengrab from KGTV and you can see the whole confrontation at this link here:

 

Tijuana is a pretty orderly and prosperous place in Mexico, much more so than Mexico’s impoverished south (where Mexico’s government cordially invited the migrants to settle), and the prospect of caravan migrants setting up camps for months in TJ as they await to be processed for their fake asylum claims into the U.S, is bringing about the same reaction you’d expect to see from the Rancho Bernardo or La Jolla areas of San Diego, were the thousands of migrants to set up camp there instead.

Based on two local television news reports, from ABC10 and CBS 8 of San Diego, the problem is worse than it’s being reported in the national press.

KGTV, the ABC affiliate, and KFMB, the CBS affiliate, both reported that violent fights have broken out with rocks, punches, hurled beer cans and other thuggery. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that at least a thousand of the Tijuana residents have banded together into a social media group to save their neighborhoods from the migrants. There are also reports that the Tijuana cops aren’t putting up with this, and already have arrested and jailed five of the caravan migrants, two for starting fights and three for doing drugs. How nice to think they traveled 2,000 miles to reach the inside of a Tijuana jailhouse. Here’s some of the local sentiment from KGTV:

Some Tijuana residents are frustrated with the growing number of Central American migrants that have gathered along the border in hopes of gaining asylum in the U.S.

Tijuana resident Cesar Baltazar, who legally crosses the border on a regular basis to work in the U.S., told 10News, “In Plaza Tijuana, they’re already fighting. I mean, all the residents there don’t want them there.”

On Wednesday night, a confrontation between Mexican nationals and some members of the immigrant caravan escalated into violence. The fight inflicted injury on both sides, including one man seen on cell phone video with a bloody eye.

“They’re unknown, that’s the thing,” Baltazer said. “They’re unknown. They’re strangers.”

and this:

“[Tijuana] has a lot of crime. They have a lot of murders. They have a lot of drug usage. So, they don’t want those problems from Central America to come over here,” he told 10News.

Tijuana resident Georgina Parra added, “Everyone is in disagreement. Aside from them trashing our city, they’re making caravans outside and talking badly about Tijuana.”

The Tijuana people don’t like those insults, and rightly so – Tijuana is so much nicer a place than the countries these migrants left, and to see new arrivals coming in by the busload to insult them is kind of rich, so the local disgust is understandable. Nor is it warranted. Few of the real Tijuana residents ever move to San Diego, given the ease they would have do that, and the fact that they actually don’t.

And it’s actually getting some coverage, something the migrant caravan planners didn’t calculate for. With the prospect of migrants having to camp out in TJ for six months before they can get released into the U.S. to work a few years before their asylum claims are rejected, there is going to be resistance. And it will only get worse as time grinds on and frustrations build. I can see some of the TJ people and their elected officials pressuring the U.S. to process the fake asylum claims more quickly, but the U.S. may be in a position to resist that. If it does, the caravan is going to be left to explain why it shouldn’t be run out of town as angry Tijuana residents get angrier.

Who would have thought it would come to this?

 

 

So Jim Acosta is back in the White House press room. Finally. It’s about time other reporters stopped asking questions.

Acosta’s press pass was restored, at least for the time being, by federal Judge Timothy J. Kelly on Friday, who said that the White House hadn’t given Acosta “due process” to explain himself.

“The opportunity to be heard seems especially important in this case,” Kelly’s ruling said, according to the Washington Times. “The government must provide Mr. Acosta due process if it is to revoke his hard pass.”

The facts could be seen on C-SPAN, mind you, a channel Judge Kelly’s cable package doesn’t offer. It also doesn’t offer any of the other channels which showed exactly what happened — namely, that Acosta kept asking questions long after another reporter had been called on and that he touched a White House intern who tried to take away the microphone so that he could keep on talking. I’m guessing he has one of those cable packages which only gives him HGTV and the Smithsonian Channel.

At least for Trump, however, he swears this is no big thing. In an interview with Fox News, he said he’d just throw Acosta out if he tried to pull anything like that again.

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Fox host Chris Wallace asked about the ruling in a clip of the interview set to air this Sunday.

“A federal judge who you appointed has just ruled that you must give CNN reporter Jim Acosta his press pass back,” Wallace said. “Your reaction to the ruling, sir.”

“Yeah, it’s fine. I mean, it’s not a big deal,” Trump said.

“What they said though, is that we have to create rules and regulations for conduct, etc. etc.”

“We’re doing that, were going to write them up right now. It’s not a big deal and if he misbehaves we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference.”

President Trump on what will happen next time CNN’s Acosta misbehaves: “We’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference … if I think somebody is acting out of sorts I will leave I will say thank you very much, everybody, I appreciate you coming and I’ll leave.” pic.twitter.com/dDCIgeXnOJ

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 16, 2018

“What are your rules going to be?” Wallace said. “What is it that you’re saying?”

“We’re writing them now,” Trump said.

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“We’ll have rules of decorum — you know, you can’t keep asking questions.

“We had a lot of reporters in that room, many many reporters in that room and they were unable to ask questions because this guy gets up and starts, you know, doing what he’s supposed to be doing for him and for CNN and, you know, just shouting out questions and making statements too.”

“But I will say this — look, nobody believes in the First Amendment more than I do,” Trump added.

“And if I think somebody is acting out of sorts I will leave I will say thank you very much, everybody, I appreciate you coming and I’ll leave.

“And those reporters will not be too friendly to whoever it is that’s acting up.”

If the rules of decorum involve not being able to filibuster your questions or not using question time to make statements, we might as well just give Jim Acosta his send-off now. For the moment, however, there will be a lot more Acosta-hair and a lot less oxygen in the White House press briefing room.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

A conservative entrepreneur whose pages were banned from Facebook is looking to launch a stone Goliath’s way — although whether it’ll hit remains to be seen.

According to a press release through MarketWatch, Addison Riddleberger said his “innovative new social networking platform geared toward conservatives, TrumpTown.com, has officially opened its virtual doors in an attempt to give users an alternative to Facebook.”

“TrumpTown has been shaped with conservatives in mind,” Riddleberger said in the press release.

“After years of Trump supporters’ right to free speech being silenced by Silicon Valley — and ultimately culminating with my network of conservative followers being purged — I decided the far-left tech industry needed a real competitor. And thus, TrumpTown was born.”

Riddleberger — in full disclosure, a former writer for Conservative Tribune — found himself deplatformed by Facebook just before the midterm elections when his network of pages, followed by 1.5 million people, was deleted with minimal warning by the social media giant.

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Riddleberger — whose pages included Standing for Americans, Freedom Catalog and Patriotic Folks — says he was sent a vague warning letter by the social media giant saying that he was in violation of one of its terms of service, although the letter didn’t make it clear what term he was violating.

He told The Western Journal that he originally thought it had to do with a new firm they had partnered with to handle their advertisements, so he suspended them — and all advertisements on his websites — going forward. That apparently wasn’t it, however, since the pages were deleted along with Riddleberger’s personal account.

“I mean, I’m so clueless as to what’s going on because — to spend 25 grand on (Facebook advertising) and to not have a Facebook rep reach out and jump on a call and say, ‘Hey, your investment is at risk of being completely removed, you need to really look at this’ … is absolutely sickening and completely unprofessional,” Riddleberger said at the time.

The press release doesn’t mention whether the TrumpTown venture was being pursued independently of the shutdown of his pages, although one might make assumptions based on the fact that a full-fledged social media platform usually isn’t assembled in several weeks — and, indeed, you’d be right.

“TrumpTown has actually been in development for several months — once my account and pages were shut down, we went into overdrive getting the site into a position where all the basics were in place,” Riddleberger told The Western Journal. “The timing was pretty incredible the way it all came together.”

The idea of a conservative alternative to traditional social media platforms isn’t a particularly new one, although few examples have met with any sustained success. The most notable has been Gab, a Twitter-like platform that promised a policy of unfettered free speech in response to a spate of high-profile social media bans.

The problem for Gab was that while few mainstream conservatives established a presence there — instead deciding to stay on established platforms — the conversation quickly became dominated by either fringe figures or individuals whose speech had gotten them exiled elsewhere. The network came under the microscope because of the recent Pittsburgh synagogue shooting after it was revealed the alleged killer was a member and often posted his paranoid, anti-Semitic theories there.

Beyond whether TrumpTown can avoid the relevancy trap — it is taking on some of the largest corporations in the world, after all, and even finding a niche audience in such a field can be difficult —  there’s also the Gab trap. Riddleberger said avoiding that problem is a matter of who you pitch the site to.

“Gab is a great site in theory — and setting up your platform solely on the basis of free speech is fantastic — but the marketing and execution is where we differ,” he told The Western Journal. “We wanted to angle our site as being a conservative social media alternative first, not just a free speech platform. Our platform offers both characteristics, but leads with the healthy passion that 65 million Americans have toward President Trump and his conservative agenda.”

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It’s also worth noting, too, that Gab’s genesis came at a different time — one where bans on social media platforms were rare occurrences, even if they could target high-profile names like Milo Yiannopoulos.

Facebook has become much more aggressive in recent months, not just barring controversial users but blocking ads from Republican congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng and the conservative women’s group Susan B. Anthony List. The network later admitted it had deliberately limited the reach of pro-Trump personalities Diamond & Silk and was lambasted before Congress over its practices toward conservatives — something that raised the level of awareness regarding putative liberal bias on the network. Then, last month, the network purged hundreds of pages and users, an action that disproportionately affected conservative accounts.

“Many were using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names and posted massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages to drive traffic to their websites,” Facebook said in a statement. “Many used the same techniques to make their content appear more popular on Facebook than it really was. Others were ad farms using Facebook to mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate.”

Riddleberger’s pages weren’t a part of that purge but were caught up in a separate action on the part of Facebook; he still hasn’t received any explanation from the platform as for why his pages were banned. He’ll have a platform of his own now, although a considerably smaller one. He doesn’t plan to keep it that way though; in his press release, he said his goal with TrumpTown was “to completely change the game.” Time will tell how that works.

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This isn’t the first place such an idea has been put forward, but it may be one of the more surprising locations to see it crop up. We’ve seen a number of places where rural areas have passed “sanctuary” resolutions to protect Second Amendment rights. There are currently more than 25 counties in western Illinois which have established such policies. But these tend to be rural areas, composed of counties or large townships. Cities tend to be more liberal and don’t generally dabble in such things.

That may be about to change in Washington state. While not a major metropolis, the city of Republic, Washington has a police chief who is refusing to enforce new state gun restrictions and a mayor who is backing him up. They may be heading toward an official “sanctuary city” status for gun rights. (Washington Times)

The city of Republic in Washington state is mulling legislation that would shield residents from state gun control laws that were approved by voters last week.

Republic Mayor Elbert Koontz said the Republic City Council will begin discussing the idea of becoming a “sanctuary city” to protect residents against Initiative 1639, which goes into effect Jan. 1, The Spokesman-Review reported.

The sweeping gun-control measure includes raising the age limit for buying semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 and requiring buyers of those weapons to pass an enhanced background check, show proof of firearms-training and complete a 10-day waiting period before obtaining the weapon.

Their police chief wasn’t waiting around for any new legislation to pass. He already announced, “The second amendment says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. As long as I am Chief of Police, no Republic Police Officer will infringe on a citizens right to keep and Bear Arms, PERIOD!”

In a way, it’s sort of a shame that it has to come to this. When a state passes laws, they’re supposed to apply to the entire state. (Unless the state has “charter cities” under the state constitution as California does.) But what do you do when the state begins passing laws which seem to clearly abridge the Second Amendment rights of the citizens or when the laws conflict with federal law? The entire concept of supremacy sort of goes out the window at that point.

Much of this comes back to the rather shameful way that the courts have historically treated the right to keep and bear arms as sort of a “second-class amendment.” The Second Amendment was never considered to be fully wrapped up in the incorporation doctrine until the 2010 decision in McDonald v. Chicago, and even now it frequently gets short shrift in the courts. But if cities and counties can somehow legally declare themselves immune to federal law when it comes to immigration, how are they to argue that other municipalities can’t make the same claim about gun laws?

Either Illinois or Washington will likely wind up in court sooner or later as these gun rights cities and counties are challenged. It should be interesting to see how those states craft their arguments against these local government entities while still reserving the right to have sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants.

Students are allowed to bundle up during the winter, but only if they do so cheaply, says a high school in northwestern England.

The school sent a letter to parents in early November warning them that expensive coats would no longer be allowed. The headteacher of Woodchurch High School in Birkenhead said the ban would take effect after Christmas and the school was “mindful that some young people put pressure on their parents to purchase expensive items of clothing,” according to CNN.

The coats being banned are from Canada Goose and Moncler, brands that sell jackets that can cost well over $1,000.

“These coats cause a lot of inequality between our pupils,” headteacher Rebekah Phillips told CNN. “They stigmatize students and parents who are less well-off and struggle financially.”

Phillips claimed that students have told her the cost of such coats is the same as their parents’ rent payments.

“There has been feedback from children, who say ‘Gosh, that is our rent for the month,'” Phillips said.

Phillips also said her plan to “poverty-proof” the school was well received by the students, saying one student wrote to her suggesting school shouldn’t be a place where a student’s “economic background is rubbed in their faces and distracts them from learning.”

Bullying prevention could have cut back on that instead of forcing rich kids to be colder.

One parent, Andy Treanor, told CNN the ban “did not matter” to him since “he would not spend that much on a coat” for his daughter.

CNN also reported that 46% of the students at Woodchurch are disadvantaged, and the school has implemented other measures to “prevent social inequality from affecting children’s performance.”

Two years ago, it introduced a compulsory school bag to reduce costs, after parents complained that their children were demanding branded rucksacks,” CNN reported. “The school has also cut down non-uniform days — days when students can wear their own choice of clothes to school — to once a year, after complaints of children ‘being put down’ for the clothes they wore, the headteacher added.”

The school also provides free sanitary products to female students.

Other schools in England are also trying to help low-income students by “banning expensive pencil cases and discouraging primary school teachers from asking students what they did on the weekend, so children whose families couldn’t afford to do anything wouldn’t feel embarrassed,” CNN reported.

Supporters of the poverty-proofing initiatives claim low-income students are showing better attendance and that there is less bullying related to inequality.

We’ve all seen the pictures from the migrant caravan currently working its way up through Mexico toward the United States border. While the phenomenon has gotten less coverage than it did before the midterm elections, there’s one item in particular that you can probably remember from the drone-and-helicopter wide shots showing the crowd: the waving flags.

President Donald Trump wonders why that is.

“Isn’t it ironic that large Caravans of people are marching to our border wanting U.S.A. asylum because they are fearful of being in their country — yet they are proudly waving their country’s flag,” Trump said in a series of Friday tweets.

“Can this be possible? Yes, because it is all a BIG CON, and the American taxpayer is paying for it!”

Isn’t it ironic that large Caravans of people are marching to our border wanting U.S.A. asylum because they are fearful of being in their country – yet they are proudly waving….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2018

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….their country’s flag. Can this be possible? Yes, because it is all a BIG CON, and the American taxpayer is paying for it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2018

What exactly the con was went unexplained in the presidential tweets, although it didn’t take much to deduce.

Caravans don’t start as an organic phenomenon. People don’t gather ’round the town square in, say, Honduras and say to themselves, “You know, this country is a mess. You know what we should do? Round up tens of thousands of people, march up to the U.S. border and demand asylum or cross over illegally! I bet we can get tons of media coverage along the way, too.”

If you therefore accept that caravans are inorganic phenomena, you also have to accept that there’s a political mover behind it. The most common conspiracy theory on the internet seems to involve George Soros, although no evidence has been produced in this direction.

A much more likely prime mover — indeed, one more than willing to take credit for it — is Bartolo Fuentes, a former Honduran politician who says he organized the march in order to shine a light on the failures of his country’s leaders.

“In Honduras, the government wants to minimize why people are leaving — they know they are going to leave and they want to say they are doing so because of lies and the opposition, not the conditions that they created,” he said, according to the New York Post.

“This is in line with what the United States is saying — that there are false promises being made. And this pro-government news program played into that messaging, trying to say that there is financing when really people just need to get out.”

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However, as Benjamin Arie pointed out in a Western Journal Op-Ed, Fuentes has quite the radical history. He’s a member of the LIBRE party, a communist-socialist group that proposed repealing the country’s constitution. Fuentes is also tied to far-left former Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya, who was removed from office back in 2009 after allying with former Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and trying to change the constitution to stay in power, along with other faux pas.

In one blog post defending the former president, Fuentes said the “American empire” needed to face defeat.

“It is necessary to defeat the opposing forces, which are fundamentally the oligarchy … and the American empire that for now is embodied in the gringo ultra-right that sponsored the coup d’état against President Zelaya,” Fuentes said.

Of course, that kind of ideology could explain all of the flags from other countries dotting the caravan route. Or perhaps it’s something deeper. Either way, it certainly is an irony — embracing the symbol of a country they seem so desperate to leave.

One has the utmost sympathy for those who are simply trying to leave poverty, of course. It’s their responsibility, however, to follow the legal route to leave poverty — and that isn’t requesting asylum, which isn’t designed for economic migrants. However, when the point of a caravan is simply a political one, that sympathy is rightly diminished.

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President Trump famously proclaims his ability to win, and already has figured out how to turn the loss dealt him by a federal judge that he appointed into a win.

In a preliminary ruling, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., sided with CNN on Friday in its lawsuit against President Trump, ordering the White House to immediately reinstate correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credentials.

U.S. District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, said the White House failed to provide Acosta due process in revoking his access, and he granted a temporary restraining order restoring it. Kelly noted that it was a “very limited” ruling, based on due-process considerations.

President Trump told White House reporters yesterday and repeated in an interview with Fox News that the judge’s demand of due process is easily satisfied by drawing up clear rules of decorum for press conferences:

Now President Trump is vowing to create “rules and regulations” for how White House reporters act. He says “you have to practice decorum” at the White House.

“It’s not a big deal,” Trump told Fox News in an interview on Friday. “What they said, though, is that we have to create rules and regulations for conduct, etcetera. We’re going to write them up. It’s not a big deal. If he misbehaves, we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference.”

Acosta, of course, held an impromptu press conference of his own to gloat:

 

.@CNN‘s Jim @Acosta returns to the White House after his press pass was temporarily reinstated after a federal judge ordered it’s return by the White House. pic.twitter.com/zk8ICIw98w

— CSPAN (@cspan) November 16, 2018

 

But his bosses at CNN seem to understand that the gloating may be short-lived, citing the presidential promise of rules in the second sentence of its story on the judge’s ruling.  

The New York Times gets it that Trump now has the upper hand in his battle with a media that wants to drive him from office:

“This could backfire,” said William L. Youmans, a professor of media law at George Washington University. Mr. Acosta “gets his credential now, but it empowers the Trump administration to come up with conduct-based criteria.”

“A ‘rudeness’ or ‘aggressive behavior’ policy would have a huge chilling effect, and would be much more damaging to the whole system,” Dr. Youmans added. “If it lowers the bar for pulling credentials, it’s a recipe for a more tepid press.”

And now, the hard truth about Acosta – Trump’s most prominent enemy in the media he describes as “fake news” – will start to come out: his colleagues in the White House press corps mostly hate him. Ryan Saavedra of The Daily Wire has collected the private thoughts of a number of them:

Multiple reporters have privately complained about CNN’s Jim Acosta in recent days as the reporter continues to wait on a federal judge’s ruling as to whether he can at least temporarily restore the White House correspondent’s press credentials.

“A few CNN reporters told me that they’re embarrassed by Acosta & CNN,” Republican strategist Arthur Schwartz said. “A WH correspondent from a major network (not Fox) told me ‘This isn’t the Jim F*ing Acosta Show. We all hate him. He’s an a**hole and he actually is disrespectful to the president.'”

There’s a lot more, so read the whole thing.

Major Garrett of CBS News did not hide his feelings with off-the-record comments, in an appearance with talk show host Larry O’Connor:

O’CONNOR: “I’d love to take this conversation out of the lawsuit question and I certainly don’t want you to critique one of your colleagues there in the press room. I guess I ask a broader question then, taking Jim Acosta out of it. would you would you agree, Major Garrett, that there is a standard of conduct, there is an expected behavior from a White House correspondent that I think that each — all of you would agree upon?”



GARRETT: “There is. No question about it. It’s the most majestic political place in America, the White House. The only place second to that, in my experience, where I spent almost 15 years, is the United States Congress. It can be rough and tumble at times in the White House, but it is a place of institutional heft and commands institutional respect. And I will say on my behalf, the previous press conference we had with President Trump in the Rose Garden, the President looked at me, I thought he called on me. I stood up, the White House aide handed me the microphone, I began to speak to the President of the United States, President Trump looked at me and said ‘No. Behind you, Kaitlan.’ Kaitlan with CNN, Kaitlan Collins.”



O’CONNOR: “CNN, by the way, yes.”



GARRETT: “So I said, oh, and what did I do? I handed back the microphone. Now, some of my colleagues might say, what did you do that for? You had the microphone, you have a voice, you can speak. The President of the United States said ‘not you.’ To my way of thinking, that’s enough. The President said ‘I didn’t call on you, I called on somebody else.’ Alright, then. And I didn’t get a question at the press conference. Some might say, well, you laid down, are you were too differential. I don’t feel that way. I stood up, the President of the United States said ‘No, I don’t mean you, I mean somebody else. Another one of your colleagues.’ So, I deferred, hoping he might call me again he didn’t that’s how I ordered myself to the institution and the person who occupies our institution is chosen by the country. He didn’t. That’s how I orient myself to the institution, and the person who occupies that institution is chosen by the country. And I respect the institution and the country’s choice. And I’m there to, on behalf of everyone, ask questions, and most importantly, Larry, get answers.”



O’CONNOR: “Yea. And Major Garrett — “



GARRETT: “That’s the whole part of this transaction. If you’re not getting answers, then I think there’s part of the job that’s not reaching its fullest capability on striving to accomplish the main goal, which is to get answers.”

 

As so often, Clarice Feldman has a good suggestion to handle the problem with as little fuss (and government intervention) as possible:

Quit televising the pressers or give him the microphone and don’t give it to any other reporter and he’ll end up beaten in a ditch on the outskirts of town.

 

President Trump famously proclaims his ability to win, and already has figured out how to turn the loss dealt him by a federal judge that he appointed into a win.

In a preliminary ruling, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., sided with CNN on Friday in its lawsuit against President Trump, ordering the White House to immediately reinstate correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credentials.

U.S. District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, said the White House failed to provide Acosta due process in revoking his access, and he granted a temporary restraining order restoring it. Kelly noted that it was a “very limited” ruling, based on due-process considerations.

The judge said that Trump does not have to call on Acosta ever again but that the CNN chief White House correspondent is owed due process before the administration can revoke his “hard,” or permanent, press pass.

President Trump told White House reporters yesterday and repeated in an interview with Fox News that the judge’s demand of due process is easily satisfied by drawing up clear rules of decorum for press conferences:

Now President Trump is vowing to create “rules and regulations” for how White House reporters act. He says “you have to practice decorum” at the White House.

“It’s not a big deal,” Trump told Fox News in an interview on Friday. “What they said, though, is that we have to create rules and regulations for conduct, etcetera. We’re going to write them up. It’s not a big deal. If he misbehaves, we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference.”

Acosta, of course, held an impromptu press conference of his own to gloat:

 

.@CNN‘s Jim @Acosta returns to the White House after his press pass was temporarily reinstated after a federal judge ordered it’s return by the White House. pic.twitter.com/zk8ICIw98w

— CSPAN (@cspan) November 16, 2018

 

But his bosses at CNN seem to understand that the gloating may be short-lived, citing the presidential promise of rules in the second sentence of its story on the judge’s ruling.  

The New York Times gets it that Trump now has the upper hand in his battle with a media that wants to drive him from office:

“This could backfire,” said William L. Youmans, a professor of media law at George Washington University. Mr. Acosta “gets his credential now, but it empowers the Trump administration to come up with conduct-based criteria.”

“A ‘rudeness’ or ‘aggressive behavior’ policy would have a huge chilling effect, and would be much more damaging to the whole system,” Dr. Youmans added. “If it lowers the bar for pulling credentials, it’s a recipe for a more tepid press.”

And now, the hard truth about Acosta – Trump’s most prominent enemy in the media he describes as “fake news” – will start to come out: his colleagues in the White House press corps mostly hate him. Ryan Saavedra of The Daily Wire has collected the private thoughts of a number of them:

Multiple reporters have privately complained about CNN’s Jim Acosta in recent days as the reporter continues to wait on a federal judge’s ruling as to whether he can at least temporarily restore the White House correspondent’s press credentials.

“A few CNN reporters told me that they’re embarrassed by Acosta & CNN,” Republican strategist Arthur Schwartz said. “A WH correspondent from a major network (not Fox) told me ‘This isn’t the Jim F*ing Acosta Show. We all hate him. He’s an a**hole and he actually is disrespectful to the president.'”

There’s a lot more, so read the whole thing.

Major Garrett of CBS News did not hide his feelings with off-the-record comments, in an appearance with talk show host Larry O’Connor:

O’CONNOR: “I’d love to take this conversation out of the lawsuit question and I certainly don’t want you to critique one of your colleagues there in the press room. I guess I ask a broader question then, taking Jim Acosta out of it. would you would you agree, Major Garrett, that there is a standard of conduct, there is an expected behavior from a White House correspondent that I think that each — all of you would agree upon?”



GARRETT: “There is. No question about it. It’s the most majestic political place in America, the White House. The only place second to that, in my experience, where I spent almost 15 years, is the United States Congress. It can be rough and tumble at times in the White House, but it is a place of institutional heft and commands institutional respect. And I will say on my behalf, the previous press conference we had with President Trump in the Rose Garden, the President looked at me, I thought he called on me. I stood up, the White House aide handed me the microphone, I began to speak to the President of the United States, President Trump looked at me and said ‘No. Behind you, Kaitlan.’ Kaitlan with CNN, Kaitlan Collins.”



O’CONNOR: “CNN, by the way, yes.”



GARRETT: “So I said, oh, and what did I do? I handed back the microphone. Now, some of my colleagues might say, what did you do that for? You had the microphone, you have a voice, you can speak. The President of the United States said ‘not you.’ To my way of thinking, that’s enough. The President said ‘I didn’t call on you, I called on somebody else.’ Alright, then. And I didn’t get a question at the press conference. Some might say, well, you laid down, are you were too differential. I don’t feel that way. I stood up, the President of the United States said ‘No, I don’t mean you, I mean somebody else. Another one of your colleagues.’ So, I deferred, hoping he might call me again he didn’t that’s how I ordered myself to the institution and the person who occupies our institution is chosen by the country. He didn’t. That’s how I orient myself to the institution, and the person who occupies that institution is chosen by the country. And I respect the institution and the country’s choice. And I’m there to, on behalf of everyone, ask questions, and most importantly, Larry, get answers.”



O’CONNOR: “Yea. And Major Garrett — “



GARRETT: “That’s the whole part of this transaction. If you’re not getting answers, then I think there’s part of the job that’s not reaching its fullest capability on striving to accomplish the main goal, which is to get answers.”

 

As so often, Clarice Feldman has a good suggestion to handle the problem with as little fuss (and government intervention) as possible:

Quit televising the pressers or give him the microphone and don’t give it to any other reporter and he’ll end up beaten in a ditch on the outskirts of town.

 

California congressional nominee Young Kim was hailed as the winner with about a three-point margin of victory over her Democratic opponent, Gil Cisneros on election night, with the Associated Press and others reporting 100% of the precincts counted. The Asian and immigrant presses celebrated, and Kim was pictured and seated with the congressional class of 2018 official portrait.

But then something funny happened: She apparently lost last night, as somehow, more votes were counted, and somehow, nearly all of them went for the Democrat, leaving him with a 3,020 surplus.

To her credit, she issued an angry warning a few days earlier:

 

The Young Kim Campaign is standing up for the democratic process, the will of the majority of voters, and is emphatically committed to every legal vote being counted. pic.twitter.com/ZSqhTBr6eF

— Young Kim (@YoungKimCD39) November 12, 2018

 

She hasn’t said anything since.

She makes three good points: That the Cisneros campaign had been rebuked by a judge for ballot tampering and poll worker intimidation, which ought to trigger far more investigative attention than it’s gotten, because that’s the real thing as far as fraud goes.

Second, she points out that the additonal votes counted, which must be mail-in or provisional ballots that somehow didn’t get counted in the midterm aftermath, ought to be statistically similar to the votes that already were counted. She could be right on that, given that she had obvious majority support from the Asian-American community and among the homeowners and successful legal immigrants who made up her political base in Riverside and Orange counties. It was, after all, the congressional seat held by beloved GOP congressman Rep. Ed Royce, where she had been his top aide and had his hearty endorsement. And she had a very large lead on election night.

Third, she emphasizes that she wants ever legal ballot counted – which is an issue in this part of the world, given the numbers of illegal immigrants who are pressured into voting, given the 2% or 3% voter turnout seen in nearby areas, and the Sacramento machine is doing all it can to get more of them to vote, legally or not.

Cisneros probably had the edge in the illegal immigrant zones of Los Angeles, traditionally an area of low voter turnout, and among the Trump haters. The part of Los Angeles County that made up his base seemed to be a smaller part, at least geographically and likely population-wise of the overall district.

Do I think he could have won? Possibly. All of Orange County flipped to blue with this midterm, and factors such as illegal immigration (and its champions), urbanization, media bias, and the fact that homeowners lost key tax deductions in the big congressional tax cut of last year may have had something to do with it.

And do I think political organization might have had something to do with it? Yes, that, too. Cisneros comes from a dirty political machine in California (Here is how they operate) and he has been known to employ muscle and money to make problems go away, given that he won a $266 million lottery, and bought a house in his district just a year ago just to run for the congressional seat. As I wrote earlier, wondering why the press was ignoring Young Kim’s obvious victory, here is Cisneros in action:

Uses money to buy influence? Check. Uses money to make problems go away? Check. Enough money to get the Democrats to take his side and use their muscle to defend him while lesser lights go crashing down for the same sort of sex-harrassment bahavior? Check. But unlike Harvey Weinstein, who used his money to buy influence and make sex-harrassment problems go away, Cisneros seems to have had even more political influence with his money, because he able to get a credible sex harassment claim dismissed as a “misunderstanding.” And what a coincidence, he has a lot of money for Democrats.

Is the press trying to minimize Kim’s victory based on that kind of influence? Call me paranoid, but look how Cisneros does business: Is he going to accept a defeat from an Asian-American woman? By that narrow margin after all the money he spent? Are some “found” ballots going to be found, and all of them go in Cisneros’ direction? Somehow that doesn’t look right and that could explain why the Democrat-aligned press (but not the ethnic or overseas press) just seems to want to make her go away.

Was the fix already in? Is that why the press ignored her?

 

As for Young Kim, she has national experience and she presents herself wonderfully, and comes off as a solid conservative in ideals, but it’s mostly insider experience, not filthy-politics rough-and-tumble. Could she have underestimated how dirty Cisneros’s political allies were? Quite possibly, but since the race hasn’t been called yet, it may mean she has time to get illegal votes thrown out via the courts. At this point, she’s going to have to fight somehow and fight harder, and it’s going to take a miracle. What it highlights is that Republicans, particularly Asian American Republicans, must build a fighting machine as tough and bare-knuckled as the Democratic political machine that got Cisneros in.

 

Because there’s ample reason for suspicion on this one.

California congressional nominee Young Kim was hailed as the winner with about a three-point margin of victory over her Democratic opponent, Gil Cisneros on election night, with the Associated Press and others reporting 100% of the precincts counted. The Asian and immigrant presses celebrated, and Kim was pictured and seated with the congressional class of 2018 official portrait.

But then something funny happened: She apparently lost last night, as somehow, more votes were counted, and somehow, nearly all of them went for the Democrat, leaving him with a 3,020 surplus.

To her credit, she issued an angry warning a few days earlier:

 

The Young Kim Campaign is standing up for the democratic process, the will of the majority of voters, and is emphatically committed to every legal vote being counted. pic.twitter.com/ZSqhTBr6eF

— Young Kim (@YoungKimCD39) November 12, 2018

 

She hasn’t said anything since.

She makes three good points: That the Cisneros campaign had been rebuked by a judge for ballot tampering and poll worker intimidation, which ought to trigger far more investigative attention than it’s gotten, because that’s the real thing as far as fraud goes.

Second, she points out that the additonal votes counted, which must be mail-in or provisional ballots that somehow didn’t get counted in the midterm aftermath, ought to be statistically similar to the votes that already were counted. She could be right on that, given that she had obvious majority support from the Asian-American community and among the homeowners and successful legal immigrants who made up her political base in Riverside and Orange counties. It was, after all, the congressional seat held by beloved GOP congressman Rep. Ed Royce, where she had been his top aide and had his hearty endorsement. And she had a very large lead on election night.

Third, she emphasizes that she wants ever legal ballot counted – which is an issue in this part of the world, given the numbers of illegal immigrants who are pressured into voting, given the 2% or 3% voter turnout seen in nearby areas, and the Sacramento machine is doing all it can to get more of them to vote, legally or not.

Cisneros probably had the edge in the illegal immigrant zones of Los Angeles, traditionally an area of low voter turnout, and among the Trump haters. The part of Los Angeles County that made up his base seemed to be a smaller part, at least geographically and likely population-wise of the overall district.

Do I think he could have won? Possibly. All of Orange County flipped to blue with this midterm, and factors such as illegal immigration (and its champions), urbanization, media bias, and the fact that homeowners lost key tax deductions in the big congressional tax cut of last year may have had something to do with it.

And do I think political organization might have had something to do with it? Yes, that, too. Cisneros comes from a dirty political machine in California (Here is how they operate) and he has been known to employ muscle and money to make problems go away, given that he won a $266 million lottery, and bought a house in his district just a year ago just to run for the congressional seat. As I wrote earlier, wondering why the press was ignoring Young Kim’s obvious victory, here is Cisneros in action:

Uses money to buy influence? Check. Uses money to make problems go away? Check. Enough money to get the Democrats to take his side and use their muscle to defend him while lesser lights go crashing down for the same sort of sex-harrassment bahavior? Check. But unlike Harvey Weinstein, who used his money to buy influence and make sex-harrassment problems go away, Cisneros seems to have had even more political influence with his money, because he able to get a credible sex harassment claim dismissed as a “misunderstanding.” And what a coincidence, he has a lot of money for Democrats.

Is the press trying to minimize Kim’s victory based on that kind of influence? Call me paranoid, but look how Cisneros does business: Is he going to accept a defeat from an Asian-American woman? By that narrow margin after all the money he spent? Are some “found” ballots going to be found, and all of them go in Cisneros’ direction? Somehow that doesn’t look right and that could explain why the Democrat-aligned press (but not the ethnic or overseas press) just seems to want to make her go away.

Was the fix already in? Is that why the press ignored her?

 

As for Young Kim, she has national experience and she presents herself wonderfully, and comes off as a solid conservative in ideals, but it’s mostly insider experience, not filthy-politics rough-and-tumble. Could she have underestimated how dirty Cisneros’s political allies were? Quite possibly, but since the race hasn’t been called yet, it may mean she has time to get illegal votes thrown out via the courts. At this point, she’s going to have to fight somehow and fight harder, and it’s going to take a miracle. What it highlights is that Republicans, particularly Asian American Republicans, must build a fighting machine as tough and bare-knuckled as the Democratic political machine that got Cisneros in.

 

Because there’s ample reason for suspicion on this one.

For 181 years, you haven’t been able to wear head coverings on the floor of the House of Representatives. Now, however, after the election of the first hijab-wearing Muslim representative, that’s about to be changed.

According to the New York Post, the election of Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar will put an end to a rule that was originally meant to differentiate Congress from British Parliament.

Parlimentarians had a tradition of wearing hats on the floor of Westminster. Given that we took up coffee as our national beverage (and even threw that dastardly tea over the sides of some ships in Boston Harbor) to let the British know how we felt about their institutions, banning hats only seemed to come naturally.

However, in the age of Ilhan Omar, that’s changing.

“There are those kinds of policies that oftentimes get created because people who have blind spots are in positions of influence and positions of power,” Omar said Thursday.

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“I think it will be really exciting to see the stuff that we notice within the rules that don’t work for a modern-day America.”

The new rules will allow head coverings for religious reasons or medical treatment. Democrat Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, who has lost her hair due to chemotherapy, also applauded the decision.

“I just have a bald head and I’m somewhat getting used to it hoping that it’s a very temporary thing,” Coleman said. “I don’t think I would start wearing a (hat) now, but I recognize that if someone else has the same issue and wants to, they should be able to.”

There have been numerous changes to dress code in Congress over the years; women were forbidden to wear pants on the floor until 1993, and bare arms were first allowed under Paul Ryan’s speakership.

So, the times they do a-change when it comes to congressional styles. However, the aforementioned rules were based around gender biases and the norms of the era; there wasn’t any real or symbolic reasoning behind them. In this case, it isn’t quite that simple.

As the House’s website notes, proposals to ban head coverings dated back to 1822. In 1833, future president James K. Polk proposed that the House “provide that the members should sit in the House uncovered, unless under special leave of the Speaker.”

Others pointed out “the symbolic value of the tradition, noting that members of the British House of Commons wore hats during debate to symbolize that body’s independence from the King of England.”

In the end, head coverings were eliminated in 1837, and it’s been that way ever since.

Of course, the case could be made that a religious argument against it could have existed since 1845, when Lewis Charles Levin became the first Jewish man elected to Congress.

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Granted, Levin is probably best remembered as a vicious anti-Catholic, anti-foreigner zealot, but the point still holds that for 173 of the 181 years that the head-covering ban has existed, there’s likely been a compelling reason to abandon it for Jewish men who wish to wear the kippah. Yet, we’ve seen no movement on the matter until now.

Should the tradition be amended? It’s interesting that the only representative who plans to take advantage of this new rule is Representative-elect Omar; even Watson Coleman says she’s not going to be taking advantage of it.

While we appreciate the fact that the hijab is part of Omar’s religious dress, we also appreciate that head coverings have likely been the part of other representatives’ religious dress, and they also haven’t been able to wear them on the floor, either. This wasn’t just some “blind spot” but part of congressional heritage.

Positioning the rule as being part of the ignorance of those “positions of influence and positions of power” isn’t necessarily a good look — even if one agrees Omar should be able to wear her hijab anywhere in the Capitol that she sees fit.

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