The scapegoat in this case is President Donald Trump as portrayed by the Democrats.
Ever since Trump pulled off the greatest electoral upset of the century, he has become the scapegoat for the failure of the Democrat Party to “crown” Hillary Clinton as president of the United States. For 3 years, everything President Trump has said or done (and in his whole life) has been put under a microscope in hopes of finding something—anything— to bring Articles of Impeachment against him to remove him from office. So far, the partisan attacks have failed, even though the Democrats have put forth two phony Articles of Impeachment.
Just in one week, Pentagon officials announced they see no security threat in bringing Middle Eastern personnel to train on our military bases, while they believe there is a threat if we don’t continue the Kabul urban renewal project, aka the Afghan war. At the same time, another decorated soldier died over there, just after Congress passed a defense bill dealing with everything except for defense of our soldiers. “Invade the world, invite the world” is still the guiding vision of our broken Pentagon leaders.
Sgt. 1st Class Michael Goble, a Green Beret and Bronze Star recipient, was completing his final tour in Afghanistan when he was killed Monday in the northern Kunduz province, in a roadside bombing. His remains were flown home to his family on Christmas day. Whereas in years past, a soldier solemnly removing his hat when informing the family members of the death was able to look the loved ones in the eyes and tell them how the soldier died while we were taking vital ground in a clear mission, today there are no words to describe the vanity of the mission.
This year, 24 soldiers have died in Afghanistan, the most since 2014. Every single special ops group has lost a soldier this year. This is two and a half years since Trump promised a new strategy there. But as I noted at the time, there is no strategy. The Afghans are just as compromised as ever. Our soldiers are engaged in the most dangerous combat — counterinsurgency patrolling in villages where they are ambushed, often by the very forces they are “mentoring.”
We can have the strongest military in the world, but there is no way we can send isolated units into these types of cities on foot patrol and leave them there indefinitely without any defensive lines or strategic offensive vision, while any suicide bomber dressed as a civilian can attack them directly or with a roadside bomb. This isn’t a war; this is a social work operation in a war zone – the worst combination of all.
It is truly shocking how even after the Washington Post published an exhaustive expose showing that the Pentagon brass knew Afghanistan was an incorrigible and counterintuitive mission, this administration is still pressing on. The expose, which was based on thousands of interviews compiled by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, found decades of deceit and obfuscation about “progress” in the theater. Nothing was done in the defense bill to rectify the situation except that more money was thrown at the Afghan military and we are bringing in thousands more to become immigrants in America! To top it off, the defense bill Trump signed last Friday even pays for Taliban expenses during negotiations.
Shockingly, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week he doesn’t believe the soldiers died for nothing.
“I do not. I absolutely do not,” he said at a news conference on Friday responding to the Washington Post expose. “I could not look at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t answer myself at 2 or 3 in the morning when my eyes pop open and I see the dead roll in front of my eyes. So no, I don’t think anybody has died in vain, per se.”
OK, so what did they die for? The mythical “Afghan military?”
These are the same generals Trump once referred to as being “reduced to rubble,” yet instead of draining the swamp, he has promoted them. On September 4, 2013, Milley, then a three-star general, said about the Afghan military, “This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day. And I think that’s an important story to be told across the board.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, another swamp monster promoted by Trump, said, “We have a mission in Afghanistan, and that is to ensure that it never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists.” Standing next to General Milley at Friday’s press conference, he promised to remain in the godforsaken country “until we are confident that that mission is complete, we will retain a presence to do that.”
The problem with that, as the 9/11 commission staff report said, is that 9/11 was all about visas and immigration because “terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country.” Yet, thanks to these policies, we are sending our soldiers there to build up an Islamic military, and then we are bringing some here to train. This very defense bill that Trump bragged about signing added another 4,000 special immigrant visas for Afghanistan. We’ve been bringing in about 10,000 a year! Prior to 9/11, we barely had immigrants from there. Now, aside from 2,500 dead and tens of thousands of wounded soldiers, we have nothing to show for the war other than 100,000 largely unvetted new Afghani migrants. This is something George Orwell couldn’t have choreographed.
Worse, at the same time, the Pentagon is now saying it sees no threat of terrorism in the military training of foreign military personnel on our bases in light of the Pensacola attack. Last Thursday, the Pentagon announced that following background checks on all Saudi military trainees in the country, it found no “immediate threat scenario.” Remember, these are the same people who, in 2017, found no threat from Mohammad Alshamrani after he tweeted jihadist material. I guess the immediacy of a threat is all relative.
Meanwhile, these same swamp generals refuse to pay attention to our own border, even as they fund endless security programs and even border wall construction in the Middle East. At some point, conservatives must ask which swamp we are draining.
Most conservatives and liberals enjoy Christmas enough to just have a good time, though every once in awhile you get a Scrooge who refuses to fathom the reason of the season and badmouths the holiday and those who celebrate it. Salon’s politics writer Amanda Marcotte doubled down on her hatred for Christmas by calling those who celebrate it hypocrites who mean “fuck you” when they say “Merry Christmas.” […]
Marcotte claimed that these conservatives’ celebration of Christmas is just a part of race. It’s a political/identity used against people they don’t see as part of their tribe. “Stirred by years of Fox News lying to viewers… conservatives have increasingly embraced the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ to mean, basically, ‘F**k you’ to anyone that they’ve deemed less than legitimate Americans.”
First they came for the straws. Then they came for the disposable water bottles. Now San Franciscans, in the same city inundated by public feces and urine, are banning paper to-go cups in order to save the city from the environmental apocalypse.
Fox Business reports, “A growing number of coffee houses in San Francisco are banishing paper to-go cups and replacing them with everything from glass jars to rental mugs and BYO cup policies. What started as a small trend among neighborhood cafes to reduce waste is gaining support from some big names in the city’s food and coffee world.”
Some examples: the restaurant Atelier Crenn will eschew using to-go bags or disposable coffee cups next year; the Blue Bottle coffeehouse chain, which uses 15,000 to-go cups a month at its 70 U.S. locations, has stated it will “show our guests and the world that we can eliminate disposable cups,” and Starbucks has plans to test recyclable cups next year in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Vancouver and London.
In July 2018 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors revealed they were considering banning plastic straws. Newsmax reported, “The legislation prohibits eateries from using plastic anti-splashers, stirrers and other plastic items that environmentalists say are too small to be recycled properly. Retailers would no longer be able to sell the items starting July 2019. In addition, food and drink vendors would be allowed to dispense cutlery, napkins, condiments and lids only on request or through self-serve stations.”
Peter Gallotta, spokesman for the city’s Department of Environment, stated, “It’s a movement not just happening in San Francisco but nationally and internationally. The larger elephant in the room is the single-use disposable culture we find ourselves in, and straws are the epitome of this unnecessary daily waste.”
Kerry Jackson, a research fellow at the Pacific Research Institute’s Center for California Reform, noted, “One percent of the plastic found in the ocean comes from California, meaning California can do whatever it wants to do, but it’s not going to change anything. Plastic straws are not dangerous to anybody, and they can be disposed of properly, which most people do,” as The Heartland Institute reported.
The ban went into effect July 1, 2019.
In August 2019, a ban on selling many single-use plastic water bottles at San Francisco International Airport went into effect. The ban was implemented based on a 2014 ordinance that banned selling disposable plastic bottles on city-owned property; the airport is owned by the city.
As NBC News reported, 58 million passengers go through SF International each year; 10,000 single use bottles are sold there every day, amounting to four million every year.
“Travelers lugged empty canisters through security. They refilled them at the airport’s more than 100 ‘hydration stations,’ the water dispensers mounted outside most bathrooms. The fountains had no lines early Tuesday morning,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
SFO spokesman Doug Yakel boasted to the Chronicle, “We’re the first airport that we’re aware of to implement this change, we’re on the leading edge for the industry, and we want to push the boundaries of sustainability initiatives.”
Actor Kevin Spacey issued a creepy message to the world on Christmas Eve, a day before a man who once accused Spacey of groping him committed suicide.
Geir Håkonsund, a spokesman for the family of Norwegian author Ari Behn, announced that Behn, 47, who had once been married to Norwegian Princess Martha Louise, had killed himself.
“It is with great sadness in our hearts that we, the very closest relatives of Ari Behn, must announce that he took his own life today. We ask for respect for our privacy in the time to come,” Håkonsund said in a statement, according to CNN.
Behn had alleged that in 2017, Spacey — who has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple men — groped him under a table.
Although there is no indication that there was any connection between the suicide and the video, the timing of the two events and the creepy nature of the Spacey video led some media outlets, such as the Washington Examiner, to report them together.
Three Kevin Spacey accusers have died in the same year, the most recent in an apparent suicide the day after Spacey released a video in which he said if people do things you don’t like, “kill them with kindness.” pic.twitter.com/MS7m3HnU4P
In the video, Spacey appeared to be reprising his character of Frank Underwood from the Netflix TV series “House of Cards” while delivering a cryptic message.
The video opens with Spacey sitting by a fire in a Christmas sweater.
“It’s been a pretty good year, and I’m grateful to have my health back. And in light of that, I’ve made some changes in my life and I’d like to invite you to join me,” he says.
“As we walk into 2020, I want to cast my vote for more good in this world,” Spacey goes on, with a dramatic mid-sentence pause.
“Ah yes, I know what you’re thinking. Can he be serious? I’m dead serious. And it’s not that hard, trust me,” he says.
Spacey then stares into the camera as though the following lines had an extra meaning.
“The next time someone does something you don’t like, you can go on the attack. But you can also hold your fire and do the unexpected,” he says, using an even more dramatic pause in the video’s final sentence. “You can kill them with kindness.”
The video closes with eerie music as Spacey stares into the fire.
The clip is Spacey’s second Christmas video and the more enigmatic of the two. Last year, that actor appeared to be defending himself from the sexual misconduct allegations that led to his ouster from “House of Cards.”
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Disney has removed a lesbian kiss from their latest installment of the Star Wars series, The Rise of Skywalker, in Singapore, bending to the country’s strict rules surrounding LGBT content.
Singapore’s media regulatory body confirmed earlier this week that Disney had removed the clip to keep their film a PG-13, meaning children under the age of 13 can attend but only in the company of an adult.
“The applicant has omitted a brief scene which under the film classification guidelines would require a higher rating,” a spokesperson from Infocomm Media Development Authority said.
Under Singaporean censorship guidelines, films containing LGBT themes or content as a subplot can only be watched by those 18 aged and above, while films focusing solely on homosexuality may only be viewed by those over the age of 21.
Despite being one of Asia’s most important financial and cosmopolitan hubs, Singapore has restrictive laws on LGBT rights, with same-sex marriage illegal and sex between two men carrying a sentence of up to two years. However, there is no stated law about sexual activity between two women.
The scene has sparked debate among viewers with some applauding the move, while others have described it as unnecessary and a form of tokenism.
Director J.J. Abrams said in an interview with MovieZine last month that he wanted to include an LGBT scene “without it being heavy-handed or making too loud of a deal.”
“Part of the whole experience was to see a same-sex couple have a moment together that was explicitly saying in this galaxy, everyone is there and is welcome,” the film director said.
It is not the first time that Disney has used Star Wars to push progressive sexual content. In last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, producers cast Rebel Alliance member Lando Calrissian as a pansexual character in a romantic relationship with a droid.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is currently showing at most theaters nationwide.
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
Self-awareness? Apparently not Joe Scarborough’s strong suit. On Thursday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough claimed to embrace a recent column by frequent panelist David Ignatius of The Washington Post that called for a "love thy neighbor" politics in which people "put aside" their grievances. "Truer words were never written," enthused Scarborough. That’s all well and good, but not exactly the best messengers and considering the show that these principles were extolled on.
Kanye West has delivered a Yuletide present for all mankind in the form of a new album, Jesus Is Born, which the hip-hop megastar and fashion brand mogul dropped on Christmas Day.
The new gospel album is the latest installment in what has turned out to be a prolific stretch of religious works for the born-again West. Performed by his Sunday Service choir, the new release features 19 tracks and serves as a follow-up to his October album Jesus is King.
Kanye West recently produced his operas Mary at Lincoln Center in New York and Nebuchadnezzar at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. At Coachella in April, the artist known as Ye brought his Sunday Service choir for an outdoor performance that featured distinct echoes of the New Testament’s Sermon on the Mount.
Initial reaction to Jesus Is Born has been positive. A review for Forbes concluded that the album is an improvement over the underbaked elements of Jesus Is King, describing it as “a moving proclamation of faith and a reminder of what its creator can do when he gives his ideas time to incubate.”
West is reportedly already planning his next Christian project. The star is expected to appear alongside Pastor Joel Osteen at Yankee Stadium in May for an event that will likely feature a sermon by Osteen and a performance by the Sunday Service choir.
The hip-hop artist previously appeared alongside Osteen at the pastor’s Lakewood Church in November, performing gospel renditions of his latest songs with his choir.
That is the position Western military and political leaders have been communicating for nearly a year now. And by traditional metrics, the claim could hardly be more accurate.
The radical Islamic terrorist group’s territorial caliphate has almost entirely disintegrated. Thousands of the group’s fighters across both Syria and Iraq have been killed, with most of the remainder captured or forced into hiding.
And on Oct. 26, Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. Special Forces in a raid on his underground compound in the Northwestern Syrian governate of Idlib.
Reporters on the ground in Syria, however, suggest that, despite major losses, the motto among those fighters and family members captured by American and Kurish forces in the region remains clear.
It’s still, “Long live the Islamic State” — or however one might say so in Arabic.
“We’re going to kill you by slaughtering you. We will slaughter you.”@Stone_SkyNews reports from Syrian Al Hol camp which is home to 70,000 IS women and children. 10,000 of them are foreigners.
In fact, in the Syrian Al Hol camp — where Kurdish rebels now hold the approximately 70,000 Islamic State wives and children who emerged from the rubble when the caliphate fell — the group’s ideology may now be stronger than ever, according to a November report from Sky News.
Is the U.S. doing enough to combat the threat of radical Islam??
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With the international community entirely undecided on what to do with these prisoners following months of deliberation, journalist Mark Stone suggests the are in the “perfect incubator for the reformation of [the Islamic State group]” as children are reportedly fed fundamentalist Islamic doctrine and anti-Western rhetoric night and day by the so-called “ISIS wives.”
“Radicalised mothers are with children who’ve seen no other life,” Stone wrote. “Clad head-to-toe in their black niqabs, the IS wives claim to represent the purest form of Islam.”
Many reportedly told the outlet they felt no remorse for the things they had done and seen while living in the terrorist pseudo-state.
And from these conditions comes the more “unsettling” discovery: a child so deeply indoctrinated he unfeelingly told the journalist, “We will slaughter you.”
“In Arabic, he first quoted a verse from the Koran: ‘God says, “Turn to Allah with sincere repentance in the hope that your Lord will remove you from your ills,”‘” Stone wrote.
“We’re going to kill you by slaughtering you,” the boy said in video later provided by Sky News “We will slaughter you.”
Today I went to Al Hol camp where kids don’t smile and generally look scared or miserable. The women complain about their situation but again, don’t acknowledge the massacre and kidnapping of the yazidis. Not much has changed since my last visit. pic.twitter.com/k2OgjUr7i3
And unfortunately, according to the outlet, there is no shortage of such children within the camps walls, brainwashed and stripped of their innocence by the sick, twisted ideology of their parents and local elders.
More unfortunate still is the fact that this is the not-so-shocking reality of radical Islam. The not-so-shocking reality of war in the Middle East.
The disregard for innocence and human life are almost unbelievable in the 21st century.
Terrorist prisoners are humiliated, enslaved or murdered.
If children must be indoctrinated, sent into combat or strapped with explosives to forward the cause, it is of little consequence to our terrorist enemies.
Nothing is beyond the pale. Nothing is out of bounds. Nothing is unthinkable.
And unwilling to establish effective rules of engagement or defined end goals — unable even to secure meaningful support from America’s left-wing, multi-culturalist European allies — we have locked ourselves in a quagmire with an ideological enemy who will stop at nothing in its efforts to undermine and destroy the West.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
President Donald Trump issued a pair of scathing Christmas tweets on Thursday attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the “scam impeachment” conducted by the House of Representatives.
“Why should Crazy Nancy Pelosi, just because she has a slight majority in the House, be allowed to Impeach the President of the United States? Got ZERO Republican votes, there was no crime, the call with Ukraine was perfect, with ‘no pressure.’ She said it must be ‘bipartisan & overwhelming,’ but this Scam Impeachment was neither. Also, very unfair with no Due Process, proper representation, or witnesses. Now Pelosi is demanding everything the Republicans weren’t allowed to have in the House. Dems want to run majority Republican Senate. Hypocrites!” Trump tweeted.
…& overwhelming,” but this Scam Impeachment was neither. Also, very unfair with no Due Process, proper representation, or witnesses. Now Pelosi is demanding everything the Republicans weren’t allowed to have in the House. Dems want to run majority Republican Senate. Hypocrites!
On Christmas Eve, Trump participated in a video teleconference with members of the military. When the conference ended, he took some questions from the media and was asked about Pelosi’s comments that she would hold up the articles of impeachment from getting to the Senate.
Pelosi had said she wanted to know more about how the Senate would conduct its trial on the charges the House passed last week before she would formally move the two articles out of House control and over to the Republican-controlled Senate.
“Well, all I know is my poll numbers are the highest they’ve ever been. Our fundraising in the Republican Party is the highest it’s ever been,” Trump said.
Do you think Trump’s impeachment was a political hatchet job?
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“She hates the Republican Party. She hates all of the people that voted for me and the Republican Party. And she’s desperate to do — look, she got thrown out of Speaker once before. She lost like 63 seats — 61 or 63 — a tremendous, a record-setting number of seats. I think it’s going to happen again,” the president continued.
Trump said Pelosi is harming the nation.
“She’s doing a tremendous disservice to the country. She’s not doing a good job. And some people think that she’s — she doesn’t know what she’s doing. A lot of people think that. A lot of people have said it,” he said.
Trump went on to say the impeachment process had been rigged against him from the start.
“People remember: They treated us very unfairly. They didn’t give us due process. They didn’t give us a lawyer. They didn’t give us anything. Now they come to the Senate and they want everything,” he said. “If you look back just two weeks — just look back at what they did. But over a long period of time, look at what they did. We weren’t entitled to witnesses. We weren’t entitled to lawyers. We sat in a basement. They would leak everything. They would leak it. We weren’t entitled to do anything. They would leak selectively, with a sick, corrupt politician named Schiff. He’s a corrupt politician.
“No, they treated us worse than anybody has been treated, from a legal standpoint, in the history of the United States. That’s never happened before, where you can’t have a lawyer, you can’t have a witness, you can’t have time.
“You didn’t have — even recently, when they had the constitutional lawyers, they got three lawyers; we got one. Fortunately, our one lawyer was better than their three. And we also had a much better case. We had — we have a perfect case. I say it again: We have a perfect case. They had no case.
The president expressed his optimism that the Senate trial would contrast starkly with the partisan process in the House.
“So now they get to the Senate. And now we have the majority, and it’s up to Mitch McConnell. And we have the majority, and now they want McConnell to do wonderful things for them. I mean, he’s going to do what he wants to do. Very smart guy, very good guy, and a very fair guy. But they treated us very unfairly and now they want fair — fairness in the Senate. They ought to look back at the last year to see how they’ve hurt this country,” he said.
Trump also addressed the beginnings of the FBI’s investigation of his campaign in 2016.
“Tremendous amounts of information are being written about, even by the fake news, concerning FISA, concerning dirty cops — the people that started this whole thing. What they’ve done to this country is incredible. And hopefully, it’s going to be taken care of. The Attorney General is working and everybody is working. But if you just go — because I like to stay out of it, and I do stay out of it — if you just go by what you see in the papers, it’s incredible what’s going on. We had dirty cops. We had people spying on my campaign,” Trump said.
“They did terrible things, the likes of which have never been done in the history of our country. It’s very sad.”
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The scapegoat in this case is President Donald Trump as portrayed by the Democrats.
