D’oh!

Via The Blaze:

A Washington Post reporter attempted to pressure GoFundMe to shut down a donation page raising money to build President Donald Trump’s promised border wall, but was denied.

The donation page titled, “We the People Will Fund the Wall,” was created by triple-amputee Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage. It has reached $8 million in donations, but has set $5 billion as its goal.

Tony Romm posted his concerns about the border wall donation page to his Twitter account.

“So there’s an effort on GoFundMe to raise cash money for a border wall,” tweeted Romm. “Has more than $5M in donations (seeking $1B) and claims to have contacts in the Trump admin (have asked for more).”

“But it got me thinking: is that, like, allowed on the site?” asked Romm.

Keep reading…

Via Fox News:

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group of activists escorting the migrant caravan of thousands of Central Americans traveling to the U.S., is being blamed by many — including the migrants themselves — for encouraging such a risky trek.

The group, which is comprised of about 40 U.S. and Mexican activists, gave the caravan an option in October. The migrants were asked whether they wanted to continue to the U.S. southern border or stop in Mexico, where the government offered to let them stay.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, warned the migrants the offer might be too good to be true and called on a voice vote — to which the crowd yelled to keep moving toward the U.S.

Keep reading…

For decades, journalists and other Democrats have played the race card and sex card in elections because they can’t win based on their policies.  For the last few years, they have added the Russian card to their hand to play tricks on the public.  We knew that the Russian card has been played in the presidential election, but on Thursday, I saw that they also played it in the special election in Alabama in 2017.

It starts off with a story that shows up at the Washington Post after decades of Roy Moore running for office – that Moore pursued young girls.  Democrats had little chance to win this Senate seat, but all of a sudden, after Moore won the primary and after Republicans couldn’t replace him, this story shows up – not at an Alabama newspaper, but in the hands of a national Democrat-supporting newspaper.  With no actual evidence, this story was run throughout the U.S continuously to destroy Moore.  It worked.

As insurance, Democrat operatives flooded social networks pretending to be Russians.  With no actual evidence, media outlets said Russians wanted Moore in the Senate.

A group of tech experts working as Democratic operatives were paid $100,000 to orchestrate an elaborate “false flag” disinformation campaign during the hotly contested 2017 special election between Roy Moore and Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. 

The group, funded by liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman, created over 1,000 Russian-language Twitter accounts that followed Roy Moore overnight in order to link the embattled Republican candidate to Russian influence campaigns, according to a Wednesday report in the New York Times. …

Democrats involved in the scheme have likened it to fighting fire with fire. 

Robert Mueller indicts a total of thirteen Russians and Russian businesses, spreading the news widely that they had attempted to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.  Mueller fully expected that none of these people or businesses would show up, so the Justice Department wouldn’t have to actually show evidence to support the claim.

Heaven forbid, one of the defendants showed up and demanded a trial and wanted to see the evidence, and Mueller wouldn’t provide it.  When the government charges someone, shouldn’t it be prepared immediately to at least show the person they charge what it has?

The playbook is always the same but has different variations.

No matter how much Trump helps minorities and women move up the economic ladder and no matter how many immigrants are let in each year, journalists and other Democrats just repeat over and over again that Trump is a racist, xenophobe, and sexist and say how divisive he is.

The DNC won’t let anyone in government see their computers, but we are told over and over again that Russians hacked them with no evidence.

There never has been any actual evidence of Russian collusion with Trump, but that is repeated over and over again as if it were absolutely true.

Without evidence, we were told over and over again how Brett Kavanaugh abused women.

No matter how many times experts flip and flop between warming and cooling, and no matter how many times they adjust numbers when their predictions don’t match the actual climate, we are told over and over that humans, CO2, and fossil fuels are causing warming and the science is settled.

No matter how good the economic statistics, we are told over and over again that a recession is coming up to discourage Americans and to lower Trump’s approval.  Never mind that many of these same people said the economy could never grow this fast and that Trump’s policies would have crashed the economy by now.

It is a shame so many are influenced so much by Democrat propaganda, pushed by complicit journalists.

For decades, journalists and other Democrats have played the race card and sex card in elections because they can’t win based on their policies.  For the last few years, they have added the Russian card to their hand to play tricks on the public.  We knew that the Russian card has been played in the presidential election, but on Thursday, I saw that they also played it in the special election in Alabama in 2017.

It starts off with a story that shows up at the Washington Post after decades of Roy Moore running for office – that Moore pursued young girls.  Democrats had little chance to win this Senate seat, but all of a sudden, after Moore won the primary and after Republicans couldn’t replace him, this story shows up – not at an Alabama newspaper, but in the hands of a national Democrat-supporting newspaper.  With no actual evidence, this story was run throughout the U.S continuously to destroy Moore.  It worked.

As insurance, Democrat operatives flooded social networks pretending to be Russians.  With no actual evidence, media outlets said Russians wanted Moore in the Senate.

A group of tech experts working as Democratic operatives were paid $100,000 to orchestrate an elaborate “false flag” disinformation campaign during the hotly contested 2017 special election between Roy Moore and Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. 

The group, funded by liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman, created over 1,000 Russian-language Twitter accounts that followed Roy Moore overnight in order to link the embattled Republican candidate to Russian influence campaigns, according to a Wednesday report in the New York Times. …

Democrats involved in the scheme have likened it to fighting fire with fire. 

Robert Mueller indicts a total of thirteen Russians and Russian businesses, spreading the news widely that they had attempted to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.  Mueller fully expected that none of these people or businesses would show up, so the Justice Department wouldn’t have to actually show evidence to support the claim.

Heaven forbid, one of the defendants showed up and demanded a trial and wanted to see the evidence, and Mueller wouldn’t provide it.  When the government charges someone, shouldn’t it be prepared immediately to at least show the person they charge what it has?

The playbook is always the same but has different variations.

No matter how much Trump helps minorities and women move up the economic ladder and no matter how many immigrants are let in each year, journalists and other Democrats just repeat over and over again that Trump is a racist, xenophobe, and sexist and say how divisive he is.

The DNC won’t let anyone in government see their computers, but we are told over and over again that Russians hacked them with no evidence.

There never has been any actual evidence of Russian collusion with Trump, but that is repeated over and over again as if it were absolutely true.

Without evidence, we were told over and over again how Brett Kavanaugh abused women.

No matter how many times experts flip and flop between warming and cooling, and no matter how many times they adjust numbers when their predictions don’t match the actual climate, we are told over and over that humans, CO2, and fossil fuels are causing warming and the science is settled.

No matter how good the economic statistics, we are told over and over again that a recession is coming up to discourage Americans and to lower Trump’s approval.  Never mind that many of these same people said the economy could never grow this fast and that Trump’s policies would have crashed the economy by now.

It is a shame so many are influenced so much by Democrat propaganda, pushed by complicit journalists.

President Trump has been proven right after warning America’s rich that voting for Democrats in the 2018 midterms would crash U.S. stock markets.

The president took to Twitter on October 31 to warn: “The Stock Market is up massively since the Election, but is now taking a little pause – people want to see what happens with the Midterms.  If you want your Stocks to go down, I strongly suggest voting Democrat.  They like the Venezuela financial model, High Taxes & Open Borders!  Maybe it’s time to rebrand the Democrats as the party of the rich.”

Many progressive Democrats have been cheering for an American economic disaster, if it would politically undermine Donald Trump’s populist support.  The host of Politically Incorrect, Bill Maher, who has am over $100 million net worth, passionately stated in June:

I think one way to get rid of Trump is a crashing economy.  So please bring on a recession. Sorry if it hurts people, but its either root for a recession or lose your democracy.

Maher seems to be getting his wish since the November 6 elections.  The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index led by Silicon Valley tech giant shares is down 10.6 percent in the month for the worst December plunge since 1931 during the Great Depression.

Although Democrats claim to be the party of social justice for the poor, Williams College political science professor Darrel Paul’s 2018 analysis of wealthy Congressional districts found that the real story surrounding the Democrat’s 40-seat gain to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives was due to “the swing of the rich toward the Democrats.”

The nonpartisan OpenSecrets website that tracks Federal Election Commission (FEC) campaign filings for political spending found that midterm spending hit a record $5.2 billion in 2018, up over a third from the $3.8 billion in 2014 and triple the $1.6 billion in 1998.

Republicans in the five prior congressional midterms spent slightly more than Democrats each cycle.  But 2018 Democrat candidates spent $2.53 billion versus about $2.20 billion for Republican candidates, a $330-million “blue wave” cash advantage.

OpenSecrets found that Democrats concentrated their funding advantage on the 435 U.S. House seats, where Democratic candidates raised $951 million versus just $637 million for Republican contenders. That gave Democrats a massive 49-percent funding advantage.

The Center for Responsive Politics found that with the rise of Democrat Barack Obama since 2008, Silicon Valley’s annual lobbying expenditures skyrocketed by 800 percent, from $17.8 million to $139.5 million.  CRP wrote, “Just as water flows downhill, money in politics flows to where the power is.”  

The TechCrunch named Silicon Valley the “Valley of the Democrats” after PayPal cofounder and top venture capitalist Peter Thiel commented in a 2015 interview that 83 percent of political contributions by the area’s tech executives went solely to Democrats.

When Thiel announced he was leaving America’s tech capital in February, he commented that although Silicon Valley claims to have been incredibly successful for America over the last decade, “I think the truth has been more one of specific success, but more general failure.”

President Trump has been proven right after warning America’s rich that voting for Democrats in the 2018 midterms would crash U.S. stock markets.

The president took to Twitter on October 31 to warn: “The Stock Market is up massively since the Election, but is now taking a little pause – people want to see what happens with the Midterms.  If you want your Stocks to go down, I strongly suggest voting Democrat.  They like the Venezuela financial model, High Taxes & Open Borders!  Maybe it’s time to rebrand the Democrats as the party of the rich.”

Many progressive Democrats have been cheering for an American economic disaster, if it would politically undermine Donald Trump’s populist support.  The host of Politically Incorrect, Bill Maher, who has am over $100 million net worth, passionately stated in June:

I think one way to get rid of Trump is a crashing economy.  So please bring on a recession. Sorry if it hurts people, but its either root for a recession or lose your democracy.

Maher seems to be getting his wish since the November 6 elections.  The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index led by Silicon Valley tech giant shares is down 10.6 percent in the month for the worst December plunge since 1931 during the Great Depression.

Although Democrats claim to be the party of social justice for the poor, Williams College political science professor Darrel Paul’s 2018 analysis of wealthy Congressional districts found that the real story surrounding the Democrat’s 40-seat gain to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives was due to “the swing of the rich toward the Democrats.”

The nonpartisan OpenSecrets website that tracks Federal Election Commission (FEC) campaign filings for political spending found that midterm spending hit a record $5.2 billion in 2018, up over a third from the $3.8 billion in 2014 and triple the $1.6 billion in 1998.

Republicans in the five prior congressional midterms spent slightly more than Democrats each cycle.  But 2018 Democrat candidates spent $2.53 billion versus about $2.20 billion for Republican candidates, a $330-million “blue wave” cash advantage.

OpenSecrets found that Democrats concentrated their funding advantage on the 435 U.S. House seats, where Democratic candidates raised $951 million versus just $637 million for Republican contenders. That gave Democrats a massive 49-percent funding advantage.

The Center for Responsive Politics found that with the rise of Democrat Barack Obama since 2008, Silicon Valley’s annual lobbying expenditures skyrocketed by 800 percent, from $17.8 million to $139.5 million.  CRP wrote, “Just as water flows downhill, money in politics flows to where the power is.”  

The TechCrunch named Silicon Valley the “Valley of the Democrats” after PayPal cofounder and top venture capitalist Peter Thiel commented in a 2015 interview that 83 percent of political contributions by the area’s tech executives went solely to Democrats.

When Thiel announced he was leaving America’s tech capital in February, he commented that although Silicon Valley claims to have been incredibly successful for America over the last decade, “I think the truth has been more one of specific success, but more general failure.”

While Bernie Sanders and other Democrats go around the country scaring seniors and others about Republicans talking about controlling entitlement costs in the future, why aren’t they confronted with the fact that President Obama and the Democrats cut Medicare funding twice during Obama’s eight years?

When Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010, they cut Medicare funding by over $700 billion to pretend to pay for Obamacare and say it would reduce the deficit.  Cutting Medicare at that time had to reduce the long-term viability of the program.

Then, in 2013, they cut Medicare spending again, and as a result, at least 30 long-term care facilities have closed.  I wonder why this story isn’t reported widely on networks and in print.

Democrats also act as if Medicare has no limits (as they forced private health insurance to have no annual or lifetime limits), but as the article says below, Medicare cuts rates 60% to 70% in long-term care facilities if patients don’t spend three days in a hospital before they go to the nursing homes.

I had a personal experience with these Medicare restrictions last summer.  I took my 91-year-old mother to the hospital in severe pain, as she had fallen.  They shot her up with morphine and other drugs to reduce the pain.  They took an X-ray, and it turned out she had a broken back.  They told me they probably couldn’t admit her because a broken back wasn’t a good enough reason to stay, but the main reason was that Medicare didn’t want to pay for part of the rehab.

After nine days in the hospital, they sent her to a rehab facility.  After around one month in rehab, Medicare said she was good enough to go home.  Mom couldn’t eat, couldn’t bathe, was aspirating her food, couldn’t walk, couldn’t dress herself, couldn’t medicate herself, couldn’t go to the bathroom, and Medicare said she could go home.  They were nuts.  Ten days later, she died.

No one should believe that government-run health care is the solution.  I would always have a better chance dealing with private health insurance instead of the powerful, greedy government.

Democrats are pushing for Medicare for all, saying how wonderful it is for all Americans.  If death rates went up after Obamacare passed, and if Medicare punishes people for using too much care, is that really a good alternative?

The goal of Democrats on almost all things is government control.  Results don’t matter.  It is truly a shame that most journalists just repeat Democrat talking points pushing their agenda while sometimes reporting the truth.

While Bernie Sanders and other Democrats go around the country scaring seniors and others about Republicans talking about controlling entitlement costs in the future, why aren’t they confronted with the fact that President Obama and the Democrats cut Medicare funding twice during Obama’s eight years?

When Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010, they cut Medicare funding by over $700 billion to pretend to pay for Obamacare and say it would reduce the deficit.  Cutting Medicare at that time had to reduce the long-term viability of the program.

Then, in 2013, they cut Medicare spending again, and as a result, at least 30 long-term care facilities have closed.  I wonder why this story isn’t reported widely on networks and in print.

Democrats also act as if Medicare has no limits (as they forced private health insurance to have no annual or lifetime limits), but as the article says below, Medicare cuts rates 60% to 70% in long-term care facilities if patients don’t spend three days in a hospital before they go to the nursing homes.

I had a personal experience with these Medicare restrictions last summer.  I took my 91-year-old mother to the hospital in severe pain, as she had fallen.  They shot her up with morphine and other drugs to reduce the pain.  They took an X-ray, and it turned out she had a broken back.  They told me they probably couldn’t admit her because a broken back wasn’t a good enough reason to stay, but the main reason was that Medicare didn’t want to pay for part of the rehab.

After nine days in the hospital, they sent her to a rehab facility.  After around one month in rehab, Medicare said she was good enough to go home.  Mom couldn’t eat, couldn’t bathe, was aspirating her food, couldn’t walk, couldn’t dress herself, couldn’t medicate herself, couldn’t go to the bathroom, and Medicare said she could go home.  They were nuts.  Ten days later, she died.

No one should believe that government-run health care is the solution.  I would always have a better chance dealing with private health insurance instead of the powerful, greedy government.

Democrats are pushing for Medicare for all, saying how wonderful it is for all Americans.  If death rates went up after Obamacare passed, and if Medicare punishes people for using too much care, is that really a good alternative?

The goal of Democrats on almost all things is government control.  Results don’t matter.  It is truly a shame that most journalists just repeat Democrat talking points pushing their agenda while sometimes reporting the truth.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with Coptic Pope Tawadros II / Getty Images

BY: Jeffrey Cimmino Follow
@jeffcimmino

December 22, 2018 5:00 am

Egypt’s Christians continue to struggle to get government approval for church building and repair projects despite the reforms implemented by a church construction law approved in 2016. A new report by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) concluded that “the positive impact” of the law “has been minimal.”

Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population—most belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church. The country’s Christian community faces numerous legal and nonlegal obstacles to church construction.

“Local sensitivities” sometimes manifest in the form of Muslim community members opposing, even by violent means, the building of a church, according to the report. Security agencies also influence the process governing church construction and have been known to stop or limit construction and repairs in the interest of addressing genuine or apparent security threats.

Prior to 2016, the legal framework for church construction was rooted in decrees extending back to the mid-19th century. In the 1990s and early 2000s, President Hosni Mubarak made several changes to church construction laws but retained for himself the power to approve requests for new church construction.

In 2013, a military coup overthrew the ruling Muslim Brotherhood. The Coptic Orthodox Church supported the military due to concerns that the Brotherhood posed an existential threat to Egypt’s Christians. The current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, developed a strong relationship with Coptic Pope Tawadros II, making the time ripe for new reforms to church construction laws.

Kurt Werthmuller, a policy analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, acknowledged the commission still has many concerns about the status of Egypt’s Coptic community, but said Sisi, “at least ostensibly … has said things and made, sort of, grand gestures to the Coptic community that other Egyptian presidents either haven’t wanted to or haven’t bothered to do,” which has strengthened the relationship between the Coptic Church and the government.

Werthmuller pointed to Sisi attending Coptic Christmas liturgy as an example. “Those sorts of visible, public gestures are important for the Coptic Orthodox leadership,” he told the Washington Free Beacon.

In 2016, the Church Construction and Renovation Law (Law 80/2016) went into effect. Among its various provisions, the law “regulates the process of obtaining permits for constructing, expanding, modifying, renovating, reconstructing, and making external repairs to a church, a church annex, a service building, or an abbey,” and “mandates that the Cabinet of Ministers create a committee to oversee applications to legalize unlicensed churches and adjacent buildings such as abbeys, church annexes, and event halls.” That committee was created in 2017.

The POMED report outlines positive features of the law: It puts governors in charge of approving church construction, likely making the approval process easier since governors are easier to reach than the president; it requires a response to permit requests within four months instead of an indefinite period of time; and it allows religious rituals to be performed in unlicensed churches while their applications are being processed.

Claire Evans, regional manager for the Middle East at the nonprofit International Christian Concern, told the Free Beacon that control of application approvals by governors could be an issue “if the governor doesn’t like Christians.”

The law contains other problems, including its ambiguous requirement that a church should be “proportional to the size and needs of the community it serves.” The law does not define “‘proportional’ or ‘needs’ or who makes such a determination.”

Another issue is that security agencies are given “a legal role with regard to church issues for the first time in Egypt’s history” through their presence on the committee overseeing applications of unlicensed churches.

As for its practical effects, the law does not appear to have expedited the approval of church construction projects. As of last month, the government had issued only eight permits for new church construction, an approval rate that appears to be lower than during the administration of Mubarak. It should be noted, however, that no state entity has revealed how many permits have been requested or rejected.

Applications from unlicensed churches seem to be moving more quickly—508 have been recognized as houses of worship. But even this constitutes “only 14 percent of the total number of applications.”

There are multiple possible explanations for why the law’s positive impact has been limited. Bureaucratic inefficiency is likely one culprit: Information provided by unlicensed churches has to be examined by officials on the legalization committee, leaving the door open “for officials at various levels to hold up approvals for any number of reasons, including bias against church building that continues to exist within parts of the state apparatus.”

Similarly, administrative confusion may have delayed the law’s implementation. For almost a year after the law was approved, some officials thought implementation “was awaiting the issuance of executive regulations (explanatory by-laws),” until it was eventually clarified that the law was, in fact, in effect.

The authors of the report argue “a unified houses of worship law, with the same rules for churches, mosques, and other places of worship, will be essential to remove the discrimination inherent in the current system.”

Prior to such a law being approved, the report suggests other solutions, such as setting a deadline for legalizing unlicensed churches, removing security agencies from the approval process, and enforcing the law’s provision which prohibits closing unlicensed churches with pending applications.

The United States should push for long-term changes such as a unified law for all houses of worship, said Mahmoud Farouk, one of the authors of the report, in an email to the Washington Free Beacon. It should also press for “promoting tolerance through the media and educational system.”

“The United States should raise these issues privately with Egyptian officials and address them publicly, including through congressional hearings,” wrote Farouk.

When you wake up this morning, unless the Democrats get some sort of Christmas miracle that would make Clarence the Angel look like a pair of socks under the tree, parts of the federal government are going to be shut down. More’s the pity.

The sad thing is that a government shutdown isn’t really a government shutdown; the mail will still arrive, your entitlement checks will still get there and almost everything will end up being paid for. The only real good news is that 52,000 IRS employees are getting furloughed. Furloughs, of course, are temporary, so even that’s tempered with the knowledge that the good times aren’t going to roll.

The genesis of the shutdown involves funding for the border wall. A funding proposal with the money in it passed the House but neither the president nor the Democrats in the Senate seemed to like it, which means a shutdown — and potentially a long one — is all but a given.

However, if you’re a Trump supporter and despair of whether a shutdown is worth it, the president is working to sure your eyes stay on the prize.

On Friday, as the deadline for the shutdown loomed, the president tweeted a picture showing an artist’s rendition of his “big, beautiful wall.”

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“A design of our Steel Slat Barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful!” Trump said in his tweet.

A design of our Steel Slat Barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful! pic.twitter.com/sGltXh0cu9

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2018

The internet, with a level of predictability usually reserved for the likelihood of a credits cookie at the end of a Marvel film, lost its mind.

Here’s a really nice designed steel barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful. #ComboverCriminal pic.twitter.com/ARoNlF8EgK

— Cuddlefudge (@Cuddlefudge) December 22, 2018

What is beautiful about a bunch of giant nails?

— Star Stuff (@Statistar30) December 22, 2018

It’s VERY beautiful! If you rotate it, it looks like one of Mueller’s redacted documents #TrumpResign#TrumpCrimeFamily pic.twitter.com/ZpmNoutmkS

— Rich Grant (@RichCareer) December 22, 2018

RELATED: Luis Gutierrez Thanks God Trump Wasn’t Around To Help Herod Kill Jesus, Walks Out When Challenged

Even Yashar Ali — a liberal, but one who usually maintains some level of restraint, fairness and decorum — seemed to have one of the more preposterous complaints regarding the fence design — and one which was echoed in other corners of Twitter.

I love the emphasis on the pointy part….don’t worry folks, these aren’t nice slats…you could easily impale yourself! https://t.co/vt0ykU1fZT

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 21, 2018

The point of a wall (and of a “pointy part”), last I checked, was deterrence. Is Mr. Ali’s grievance that it’s too hard to scale? I’m somewhat surprised there was no complaint regarding the lack of a ladder. OSHA should really do something about that.

Hilariously, one respondent said that this spiky design should be applied to the White House as a form of turnabout, only to discover it was already there.

That’s already tjere pic.twitter.com/xG4ndLysQ4

— Nick (@NcHawk17) December 22, 2018

Well, that was awkward.

How much funding will be allocated for the wall — if any — remains to be seen. After all, the shutdown is just hours old at this point. Trump has already rejected a continuing resolution to keep the government open from the Senate, given that it didn’t have any money for the wall. The House’s bill, which contains funding for the wall, is essentially dead in the Senate.

So, brace yourselves, small percentage of government employees affected by the shutdown — winter break is coming.

If Trump does manage to come out on top, though, his supporters will have quite the wall to look forward to. Pointy part and all.

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