53percenter's Blog

In one sense, the Commie Quad Squad (CQS) has done us all a favor by flushing out the extremism of the Democratic Party for conspicuous public display.

House Leader Nancy Pelosi is quaking in her boots, realizing that it is getting increasingly difficult to hide her party’s radicalism from American voters, many of whom still cling to the fantasy that the Democratic Party is predominantly pro-American.

Pelosi at least has the sense to know this extremism won’t play well in national elections — even today — and she is struggling to cover it up. Her feud with the CQS, to be sure, is about control of the party, but it’s also her effort to allay Americans’ fears that her party has lost its mind — and moral compass.

But the women of the CQS don’t care. They are so adamantly against the America that you and I grew up to love that they will not contain their animus. And they’re arrogant enough to believe that a majority of Americans shares their antipathy.

Pelosi is in a precarious position, desperately seeking to contain the crazy in her party while convincing her rabid base that deep down she shares its craziness — wink, wink. Pelosi knows that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is like a 4-year-old at a restaurant — you just won’t get her to shut up. But unlike many parents, Pelosi can’t just leave the restaurant, and she’d prefer not to make any further public spectacles disciplining her kid in front of the other patrons.

If you doubt that Pelosi is trying to play both sides, then explain, in a paragraph or less, why Pelosi sprinted quickly to the dark side the other day in calling President Trump a racist — and saying that he wants to “make America white again.” Playing the race card is a great way to ingratiate yourself with the race-baiting CQS and its minions.

With the election of Donald Trump, we could safely say that America’s silent majority had awoken from its slumber mad as Hell and not willing to take it anymore. They didn’t pick this fight but now understand that those attacking everything they believe in are relentless and implacable. Thanks to the CQS, the silent majority has further strengthened its resolve.

Many have assumed that despite President Trump’s remarkable record on policy, he has lost some of his good will with the voters because of his manners and tweets and the rest. That may have been true at the margins, but he has regained whatever ground he lost and more from this dust-up with the CQS. Its members are poster children for the malcontent left — and have placed in stark relief the contrast between the Democrats’ and Republicans’ respective visions for America. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

For those of you who believe the two parties still share common goals, I have a treasure chest of pyrite I would like to show you. Just consider the Democrats’ extreme position on abortion, open borders, sanctuary cities, guns, judicial activism, the administrative state, Israel, the America-hating United Nations, socialism, universal health care, entitlements for illegal immigrants, radical environmentalism, forced income equality versus equality of opportunity, identity politics, radical gender ideology, intersectionality, toxic masculinity, multiculturalism, white privilege, reparations, cultural appropriation and patriarchy. I could go on, but then you might not want to read my upcoming book. The point is Pelosi can try to distance herself from the CQS until she’s blue in the face, but she can’t credibly distance her party from its radical positions — there is not a scintilla of moderation remaining in it anymore.

Leftists don’t fight fair, and the Unfair Foursome — er, I mean the CQS — is demonstrating that in spades, as are so many Democratic Party leaders. They cannot debate any issues on the merits anymore; all they can do is smear their opponents — us — with false charges of bigotry. These radicals apparently believe their destructive ideas are so self-evidently superior that they can safely imply that if you oppose them, you are racist. That’s what they have reduced themselves to. It’s sickening, outrageous and sure to keep the American people mad as Hell and unwilling to take it anymore.

There is no downside in bringing this fight to a head now because if a majority of Americans really believe that America-loving Trump supporters, conservatives and Republicans are irredeemable racists, bigots, sexists and homophobes, we are in grave trouble anyway. I’m betting that’s not the case, and as long as the CQS keeps flapping its race-baiting jaws, we are going to have a referendum on this question in 2020.

So, let the CQS continue name calling and exposing itself to the American people.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is “Jesus Is Risen: Paul and the Early Church.” Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com

For the first time in my life, I did not root for an American team. Whatever the sport, I have always rooted American. But if those who called into my radio show were representative of my audience, many millions of Americans made the same sad choice.

It takes a lot for people like me not to root for an American team. But Megan Rapinoe, the foul-mouthed star of the team, and her fellow players made it possible.

The U.S. women’s team disgraced itself. Either its members were cowed into submission by Rapinoe or they agreed (or, at least, never disagreed) with her attacks on the president, her reference to the White House as the “f—-ing White House,” her refusal since 2016 to participate in the national anthem and her repeatedly shouting during the team’s parade in New York City, “New York, you’re the motherf—-ing best!”

For example, Rapinoe said, “Every member of the team that I have talked to would not go” to the White House.

Rapinoe is a great soccer player. Other than that, she is unimpressive. She comes across as arrogant, a fool and a lowlife.

Why a fool? Because she thinks she has something important to say to the American people and that we need to hear it because she is a great soccer player. She is not alone in this conceit. Tom Steyer and other billionaires think the same thing about themselves: that because they are better at making money than almost everybody, they must be wiser than almost everybody.

People who excel in one thing are tempted to think they are smart about everything, but that is almost never the case. There is no reason at all to assume that people who excel in anything (other than wisdom) are wiser than anybody else. And here’s the kicker (no pun intended): People who think they are wise because they excel at something unrelated to wisdom are fools.

And why is Rapinoe a lowlife? What would you label any adult who constantly used the F-word in public (especially during events when children are expected to be present or watching)? Or does being a star — like the foul-mouthed Robert De Niro — make you less of a lowlife?

The American women’s soccer team is unified in protesting on behalf of “equal pay for equal work.” They regard their team as a perfect example because its members receive less money than members of the U.S. men’s soccer team — despite the fact that the women have a much better record.

But there is a reason the male players earn more. Among other things — such as the women’s team’s vote for financial security in the form of guaranteed salaries rather than revenue share — men’s soccer generates far more money than women’s soccer.

According to the Los Angeles Times: FIFA’s “2018 financial report said it earned revenue of $5.357 billion from the men’s tournament in Russia. … Forbes estimated the Women’s World Cup will generate about $131 million for the four-year cycle ending in 2022.”

So, unless people should be paid according to gender (which they now are in Norway) rather than according to revenue and profits, male soccer players will earn more money than female soccer players.

There are only two ways to equitably ensure male and female players earn the same amount of money. One is to pool all the money earned by both teams and then distribute an equal amount to all the players, men and women. The other is to end sex-based teams: Men and women compete to play on one team (composed of both men and women), and any woman who makes the team is guaranteed the same income as any man on the team.

Until then, the women’s soccer team and the left want to have their cake and eat it, too. (Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, for example, tweeted this non sequitur: “Here’s an idea: If you win 13-0 — the most goals for a single game in World Cup history — you should be paid at least equally to the men’s team.”) They want women to have their own soccer teams — because biology has made it impossible for almost any woman to successfully compete with men in sports — yet earn the same amount as men do. But the reality is more people will watch men play soccer, just as more people watch major league baseball than minor league baseball — which is why major league baseball players earn more money than minor league players. But if we applied the equal-pay-for-equal-work principle to baseball, minor league and major league players would be paid the same amount.

With their politicization of their victory, their expletive-filled speech and their publicly expressed contempt for half their fellow citizens, the women of the U.S. women’s soccer team succeeded in endearing themselves to America’s left. But they earned the rest of the country’s disdain, which is sad. We really wanted to love the team.

What we have here is yet another example of perhaps the most important fact in the contemporary world: Everything the left touches it ruins.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is “The Rational Bible,” a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Deaths of migrants who illegally crossed the border during the first two years of the Trump administration fell about 20 percent from the eight-year average under the Obama era. This is in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric of Democrat presidential candidates and certain media outlets decrying the treatment of migrants under President Donald Trump’s watch.

During the eight years of the Obama administration, 2,977 migrants died after illegally crossing the southwest border with Mexico — 372 per year on average, according to a report obtained from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

During the first two complete fiscal years of the Trump administration, 581 migrants died — an average of 291 per year. Despite massively higher border apprehensions in Fiscal Year 2019, the number of deaths appears to be on par with the two prior years, according to the International Organization for Migrants’ Missing Migrant Project. This represents about a 20 percent drop from the Obama administration’s reported migrant deaths.

The sheer scope of the systemic, all-encompassing sovereignty crisis at our southern border is staggering.

From both a constitutional and a philosophical perspective, the federal government has no more important responsibility to its citizenry than securing the border. Period.

From a national security perspective, it is stupefying to ponder the reality that we are releasing tens of thousands of barely vetted aliens into the interior each month due to a brutal combination of catch-and-release tomfoolery, limited bed space due to the under-funding of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the erroneously decreed Flores settlement. Indeed, we know from the intrepid reporting of journalist extraordinaire Todd Bensman that the predominantly Central America-fleeing economic migrants have no shortage of dangerous Middle Easterners mixed in among them. Furthermore, we are letting in no shortage of migrants afflicted with deadly diseases.

From an assimilation perspective, the huge number of Central Americans absconding into the nation’s interior due to the de facto amnesty of catch-and-release only exacerbates our increasingly stark crisis of national unity — including but hardly limited to our ability to (literally) all speak a common language.

From a crime perspective, we know that non-citizen aliens commit a disproportionate share of federal crime — 44.2% of it over the course of 2011 – 2016, according to statistics from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. And from a pure common sense perspective, it ought to make sense that vulnerable unaccompanied alien youths showing up at our border would be more susceptible to recruitment by MS-13 and other Central America-originating transnational gangs. In fact, both MS-13 and the cartels operate so fluidly throughout the U.S. due in no small part to the ongoing surfeit of prospective gangsters and drug mules who reach our border and are released into the interior. Consider this harrowing story out of Los Angeles:

But perhaps the singular least discussed aspect of the ongoing crisis at our southern border is that the illegal alien influx there has dramatically metastasized America’s already-dire drug epidemic. An eye-opening report in the Washington Examiner this morning shines a spotlight on the extent to which the border crisis has frozen our Department of Homeland Security (DHS) human assets — redirecting those officials who would normally be in the business of interdicting contraband 50-100 miles inland to deal with apprehension and toddler daycare duty at the border itself. Per the Examiner:

Border Patrol highway checkpoints in the southern New Mexico region that normally seize seven figures worth of drugs annually have not seized a dollar in nearly four months after being shuttered in late March, allowing drugs to flood into the country. Meantime, with the added supply, prices for illicit drugs are dropping precipitously.

Those seven checkpoints have sat unattended after Border Patrol closed them to move all personnel to the border to assist with apprehending, processing, and caring for the high number of migrant families arriving. …

Officials have also noted upticks in methamphetamine and fentanyl seizures since March. Black said the cost of a pound of meth has been slashed in half since then, from $4,700 when the checkpoints first closed to $2,500 by late June. The price dropped because the market is saturated.

To summarize, then, Border Patrol assets who are normally tasked with interdicting contraband have been, due in no small part to the current under-funding of DHS, redeployed to the border to deal with the sundry maladies transpiring there. As a consequence, drugs trafficked in by the cartels and their terrorist allies (like Hezbollah) are not being seized. There is now a huge, unprecedented glut of deadly narcotics pouring into the nation. Recall that a sugar packet-sized dose of fentanyl can kill a whole room full of people. And now, so much meth is being trafficked into the interior that prices in Las Cruces, New Mexico have been cut by nearly half in just four months! That is simply astonishing.

America’s drug overdose epidemic, while misdiagnosed as an “opioid” epidemic, is really a more general narcotics epidemic that has fentanyl, cocaine, meth, and heroin as its leading contributors. Our under-funded DHS and political unwillingness to stanch the illegal alien influx bleeding at our border is not just resulting in machete-style MS-13 murders in Los Angeles. It is also leading to an unprecedented crisis of drugs so potent that — in the case of fentanyl — they might be reasonably compared to cartel-driven chemical warfare against our inner cities and collective progeny.

This is a huge, huge problem. Drugs are literally destroying countless small towns across the nation. And now our political elites, by ignoring the border crisis as they have, are somehow making the drug epidemic crisis even worse than it already is. It is nothing short of a blemish upon our entire political ruling class.

Pro-life film Unplanned made it to 56 movie theaters across Canada despite opposition from pro-abortion activists who refer to the film as a “piece of hate propaganda.”

The U.S. film brings to the screen the memoir of Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood manager-turned pro-life activist.

Unplanned opened to $353,510 on its opening weekend at the Canadian box office, noted the Hollywood Reporter, despite controversy and even death threats to independent theater owners.