Since the earliest rise of the modern tea party, no political pastime has been more joyous than doling out savage ultra-violence against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
You know, in “A Clockwork Orange” kind of way.
No political bludgeoning of the longtime Republican Senate sage went unrewarded by voters. Insurgent political candidates — from Sen. Ben Sasse to Donald Trump — notched victories by running against Mr. McConnell as much as they ran against their actual opponents.
The ultimate swamp creature, Mr. McConnell is only interested in winning. Hopeless compromiser. Part of the GOP establishment and globalist elite. He tends the graveyard where every single good piece of conservative legislation that comes out of the House goes to die.
For voters sick of everything Washington, merciless attacks on Mr. McConnell were music and poetry.
“Oh, bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity-made-flesh!” Then unloose all manner of political war dogs against the veteran old parliamentary master!
Set, of course, to the tune of Beethoven’s 9th. And blood splattering against white linen.
This blind rage against Mr. McConnell has produced both surprising wins for Republicans, as well as some stupendously idiotic losses.
Such is the unpredictability of partisan anarchy.
But it might be time now to step back and re-evaluate Mr. McConnell and his leadership. I dare say, it might be time to put away the Skeletor-faced pinata — or, at the very least, take stock of some hugely significant achievements of the Senate majority leader.
The most obvious accomplishment was his bold and visionary willingness to simply refuse to budge on President Obama’s nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia after the constitutional lion died unexpectedly during Mr. Obama’s final year in office. Had Mr. Obama gotten his way, the high court would have been trashed for another generation.
Mr. McConnell’s steadfast opposition preserved the opening for President Trump to fill with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a true constitutionalist. In addition, by keeping that high court seat open, Mr. McConnell gave conservatives a big reason to vote in the 2016 election, undoubtedly helping Mr. Trump win.
Another, earlier, accomplishment that went largely unnoticed was his success at keeping every Senate Republican in line against Obamacare — leaving the disaster a partisan government overreach owned 100 percent by Democrats.
Then, for the past year we have been hearing from the salivating jackals in the media how Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda was doomed after Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare. His entire presidency was headed for the trash heap.
Even worse, Republicans in Congress started going wobbly.
But throughout, Mr. McConnell proved to be a savvy purveyor of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
In the end, he not only delivered on Mr. Trump’s tax cut package, but also managed to insert (on his own) a repeal of the Obamacare mandate, which effectively guts the whole health care Ponzi boondoggle.
To be sure, Mr. McConnell remains a swamp creature. But that swamp creature has been turning out concrete achievements that have been daring, ambitious, principled and supremely conservative.
He has become a swamp creature Mr. Trump can count on.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) admitted on the Senate floor Monday that the Republican establishment does, in fact, have a different set of immigration priorities that are far from President Trump’s popular, pro-American immigration agenda.
In a statement on the Senate floor, Flake said that Trump “won’t get everything” he wants in a deal between Trump, the Republican establishment, and Democrats with respect to DACA, whereby nearly 800,000 to 3.5 million illegal aliens shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are given amnesty and possibly a pathway to U.S. citizenship.
Flake said:
Deals like this, where you need 60 votes necessarily involve compromise. No party, no individual is going to get everything that they want; the White House won’t get everything they want, the Democrats in Congress won’t, and neither will the Republicans. This will be a compromise. I’m simply suggesting tonight – let’s get real about the time involved between now and when we have to fix this, and not think that we can simply kick the can down the road and put in some temporary fix, some kind of bridge later that will protect these kids…Let’s all get serious, Republicans and Democrats – not coming forward to the table with unrealistic expectations about what can be part of this legislation. Let’s have something that we can put on the Senate floor by the end of the month to have sufficient time to get this fixed by March 5th. [Emphasis added]
Flake’s hinting that Trump’s pro-American immigration demands are “unrealistic expectations”is straight out of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) talking points against Trump’s agenda.
Schumer calls the administration’s immigration wish list “unreasonable demands” that were “outside the scope” of the DACA talks
In a post on Twitter, Flake reiterated that the Republican establishment is not by any means on the side of Trump when it comes to negotiating with Democrats on the DACA issue. Flake, who has been a longtime advocate for a never-ending flow of cheap, foreign labor to the U.S., was brought into DACA discussions with Trump by Vice President Mike Pence, an ally of the pro-mass immigration and GOP mega-donors, the Koch brothers.
In exchange for a DACA amnesty — against the will of his base of supporters — Trump has said since October 2017 that any deal would have to include three pro-American immigration reforms: An end to chain migration, an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery, and funding for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
By ending chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S., Trump would be cutting legal immigration levels in half to raise the wages of American workers and reduce the enormous competition in the blue-collar workforce to shore up more jobs for Americans. Chain migration, as Breitbart News reported, has imported more than nine million foreign nationals to the U.S. in the last decade, exceeding two years of American births.
Likewise, an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery, whereby the federal government gives out 50,000 visas randomly to foreign nationals around the world every year, would reduce the national security risk that immigration often poses. The Visa Lottery has imported nearly 30,000 foreign nationals from terrorist-funding countries since 2007, as Breitbart News reported.
Expert: Diversity Visa Lottery Used by NYC Terror Suspect ‘Ideally Suited For Terrorists’ https://t.co/q7k9fAMyHK
Both ending chain migration and the Visa Lottery program is incredibly popular among likely voters. New polls from Pulse Opinion Research found that 60 percent wanted to eliminate the Visa Lottery and nearly 60 percent wanted an end to chain migration included in any DACA amnesty deal in order to prevent a chain migration flow of potentially 9.9 to 19 million foreign nationals.
Flake’s statements, though, reveal that not only is the Republican establishment negotiating against Trump’s popular immigration agenda, but they are unwilling to even fully fund the southern border wall the president promised voters would be constructed.
Flake said:
Nobody’s suggesting that we don’t need additional infrastructure or barriers on the border. The question is how much do we provide for in this legislation? The president has made a request in the budget for about $1.6 billion for the coming year. I think that totals about 74 miles of fence between Texas and California. I think that that’s a good place to start. How much we authorize going forward will be very much in debate. I know that during the campaign, the president talked long and hard about building a wall. But every time he mentioned building a wall, he talked about Mexico paying for it. We all know, many of us knew at the time Mexico was not going to pay for that wall. They’re not. That’s why the president is asking for $18 billion of U.S. taxpayer money to fund that wall. So to suggest that the president hasn’t changed his position and that we’re dealing with a proposal that we’ve known is coming from the White House simply isn’t true. It has changed. The president initially said Mexico would pay for it. It’s not the case. It’s the U.S. taxpayer that’s going to pay for any infrastructure on the border.
Flake’s role in the DACA discussions with the White House was increased when Vice President Pence invited him and other pro-amnesty Senators to meet with Trump in order to lobby the administration to cave to the big business lobby, which wants an expansive amnesty in which DACA illegal aliens are given work permits so that wages can be kept stagnant, rather than rising for Americans.
Also, White House Legislative Director Marc Short has taken a prominent role in DACA discussions, another ally of Pence.
As Breitbart News reported, Short has a long history of opposing Trump’s “America First” immigration agenda, working alongside the Koch brothers and Pence before taking a job in the administration.
In May 2016, during the height of the Republican presidential primary, when Trump was taking the country by storm on his populist-nationalist immigration agenda, Short was heading an effort to derail the then-front-runner inside the Koch-funded Freedom Partners group.
At the time, National Review exclusively reported that Short was leading an effort inside the Koch brothers’ organizations to take down Trump and his agenda, partly by supporting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who infamously helped author the Gang of Eight amnesty bill that would have given the 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. a pathway to citizenship:
On a frigid Tuesday in February, a team of top political operatives from the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the umbrella group that controls political activities for the sprawling donor network led by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, arrived in Kansas for a meeting that they hoped would turn the tide of the presidential campaign.
They’d set aside $150 million to spend on paid media alone, to be spread across campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels. Yet they had not been authorized to spend a dime on the White House race.
Marc Short, then president of Freedom Partners, wanted to change that. He led a faction inside the Koch network that had become convinced of the need to neutralize Donald Trump before his momentum made him unstoppable. Fresh off Trump’s landslide victory in New Hampshire one week earlier, and staring down another likely Trump win in South Carolina that Saturday, Short and his lieutenants had come to Wichita to present Charles Koch with a detailed, eight-figure blueprint for derailing the Republican front-runner on Super Tuesday, when eleven states would vote. They hoped to get the green light to hammer Trump with ads in the states where he was most vulnerable.
Just a week after Short’s efforts to lead a full-fledged Koch-funded operation against Trump, he signed onto the Rubio campaign.
After Short left the Koch’s Freedom Partners, he praised the open borders, billionaire donors, saying, “Charles and David have built an amazing network of donors and activists, and their investments in future generations will pay huge dividends.”
Like the big business lobby being represented by Flake and other members of the Republican establishment, Democrats have represented the open borders lobby in White House discussions regarding a DACA amnesty.
Under a DACA amnesty, American taxpayers would be left with a $26 billion bill. About one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid. Since DACA’s inception under Obama, more than 2,100 illegal aliens have been kicked off the program after it was revealed that they were either criminals or gang members.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
via Breitbart News
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The Center For American Progress (CAP) Action Fund circulated a memo on Monday calling illegal immigrants brought here at a young age — so-called “Dreamers” — a “critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”
The memo, co-authored by former Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri, was sent around to allies calling on Democrats to “refuse to offer any votes for Republican spending bills that do not offer a fix for Dreamers and instead appropriate funds to deport them.”
[…]
“The fight to protect Dreamers is not only a moral imperative, it is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success,” reads Palmieri’s memo, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“If Democrats don’t try to do everything in their power to defend Dreamers, that will jeopardize Democrats’ electoral chances in 2018 and beyond,” reads the memo. “In short, the next few weeks will tell us a lot about the Democratic Party and its long-term electoral prospects.”
The DACA showdown is here.
In early September, President Trump announced an end to the Obama-era program that grants work permits to illegal immigrants who arrived in this country illegally with their lawbreaking parents or guardians.
President of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton followed Trump’s announcement with a statement saying the Obama administration bypassed security background checks for DACA recipients which of course puts Americans in danger.
Not only do these illegal aliens cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars, they are incredibly dangerous as well. Just like the Syrian ‘refugees’, we don’t know who they really are.
The median age of a DACA recipient is 23 years old. They are not hopeless babies and toddlers like the media would like you to believe.
Many DREAMers are of voting age and WILL VOTE DEMOCRAT. The ones who have yet to be of voting age will most certainly vote Democrat and permanently entrench the Democrat party.
President Trump MUST keep his campaign promise and deport DACA recipients or we can say goodbye to our voices.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is so desperate to give DREAMERS amnesty that his entire Twitter account is dedicated to fighting for DACA recipients.
This is the Twitter account for a high ranking Democrat U.S. Senator. Let that sink in.
During the Christmas break last month we looked at the rather odd story of an air traveler who was bumped from her first class seat on a United Flight from Texas to Washington by Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. The passenger in question was Jean-Marie Simon, and United claimed that she had mistakenly canceled her own flight using the app on her phone and then reassigned the newly open, first-row seat to Jackson Lee. The congresswoman initially blamed it on racism (of course), which was an odd charge considering that Simon is a human rights activist.
After a non-apology from the airline and an offer of a voucher in exchange for her troubles, Simon was still not satisfied with the treatment she had received. And now, according to her Twitter feed, she’s asked the Congressional Ethics Committee to look into the matter.
Since United didn’t respond to my letters re treatment on flight #788, I’ve filed complaint with Office of Congressional Ethics. No case number, + according to OCE rules it cannot even disclose whether it will consider case, but I think it’s important to keep this going forward. http://pic.twitter.com/eiqu9S8YJx
As Simon indicates, it’s uncertain if the committee will even take up the question, but it might be worth a look. If Jackson Lee actually did ask to bump someone and cooperated with United to take Simon’s seat, that’s probably not a criminal offense, but it certainly sounds unethical. But even if the version of the story being told by United is true, there are still questions to be raised. Did the Congresswoman originally book a coach flight and then pay for an upgrade or was it a courtesy move on the part of the airline? If the latter, that constitutes a “gift” with significant cash value. And if it was paid for, then the taxpayers shelled out a considerable amount of dough for Jackson Lee to have the best seat on the plane. Was that recorded in her expense report?
Of course, we still don’t seem to have gotten Washington to ban the practice of flying First Class on the taxpayer dime while most of the rest of us sweat it out in economy class. Our own Katie Pavlich tackled that question back in 2014 when there was a brief, bipartisan push to change the rules so that members of Congress would fly in coach like the rest of us unless they paid for the upgrade themselves. What a novel concept!
“As with all federal spending, Member’s Representational Allowance funds are taxpayer dollars. As such, the use of these funds must be exercised with the utmost efficiency and transparency. A loophole currently exists that allows members of Congress to fly first-class at the expense of the taxpayer. Members of Congress are servants of the people and should not be considered a privileged class. Luxury airfare accommodations utilizing taxpayer monies would seem inappropriate in any fiscal climate but at a time of soaring deficits and with a federal debt in excess of $17 trillion such expenditures are especially wasteful,” the request states. “If federal restrictions prohibit members of our military from traveling first-class, this same standard should also apply to Members of Congress.”
So how did that work out? The Hill revisited the issue in 2015 and found that not much had changed. In fact, according to another report, the following year U.S. taxpayers paid for 557 first class overseas tickets which cost a minimum of $10,000 each for members and even their staff. All such overseas business travel is approved by the State Department and comes out of their budget, so there’s little incentive for the members to curb those costs.
If Ms. Simon is able to get the Ethics Committee to look into Jackson Lee over this matter, perhaps they could check out those other flights as well. After all, we’re paying for them.
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President Donald Trump took the field Monday night in Atlanta, GA, for the College Football National Championship game between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama, mostly to cheers.
Trump, escorted by members of the ROTC, waved to the crowd before the Zac Brown Band sang the National Anthem.
The president appeared to sing part of the anthem with his hand held over his heart.
Flashback: British Actress Says Weinstein Used Oprah to Lure Her to His Room #MeToo
January 8, 2018 by Jim Hoft
On Sunday night Oprah Winfrey lectured the nation and white males for the monstrous sexual abuse culture in Hollywood during her Golden Globes speech.
Most all of the men accused of abusive behavior against women in the past several months are liberal elites.
But it wasn’t that long ago that a British actress accused Weinstein and Oprah of persuading her to his hotel bedroom.
Although Weinstein faded from public view, Hollywood continued to implode.
Almost daily, new accusations against Hollywood celebrities surfaced and garnered headlines. It seems that no one is safe in the industry; with Matt Lauer being outed and exposed as a sick, deviant creep, it makes you contemplate what well-known and respected name will break next.
Noble claims that when she first met Weinstein at an event in London, she was overtly impressed because he was partying with model Naomi Campbell and had Oprah “swinging off his arm”. Noble recalled:
I thought, obviously, this man has something amazing in store for me…
Noble is the most recent in a long list of actresses and models who claim Harvey Weinstein either forced himself on them or coerced them into sex. After meeting Weinstein for the first time in London, Noble brought along her “show reel” to his hotel room when she met up with him again in Cannes in February 2014. During their second meeting, Noble alleges Weinstein used promises of career advancement to lure Noble to his hotel room, where he forced himself on her.
Instead of watching Noble’s reel, Weinstein allegedly began to touch her whilst discussing getting her connected with a modeling agency in London. The indecency ended in the bathroom where Weinstein allegedly made Noble perform sex acts in front of the mirror. Noble blames Weinstein for destroying her acting dreams and notes that he failed to help with her career as he had promised.
Bigger and bigger names keep dripping out, now with Oprah accused in the fray of Weinstein’s indecent behavior…
Oprah and Weinstein – not pictured: Kadian Noble.
Who’s next?
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Al Gore took to his Twitter account last week to blame the recent record cold-snap on climate change. But he was sharply rebuked with facts by a famed meteorologist.
What did Gore say?
Gore tweeted the link to an article stating that bitter cold is exactly what should be expected from man-made climate change.
The article was written by Dr. Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University. Mann argues that heavy lake effect snows this year near the Great Lakes are a sign of global warming because the warming temperatures cause the lakes to stay warmer longer therefore producing more snow. He also argued that despite the recent cold snap, the U.S. has seen many more days of very above normal temperatures than very below normal temperatures over the past several years.
He also argued that despite the central and eastern U.S. being locked into an arctic cold pattern for more than a week, the western U.S. and much of the rest of the world has been warm. Mann also blamed last week’s major east coast snowstorm on warmer-than-normal ocean water.
These allegations, however, are more narrative and opinion rather than fact, according to meteorologist Joe Bastardi.
What did Bastardi say?
Bastardi challenged whether the recent cold has anything to do with climate change, saying cold in the 1980’s was colder than this year’s recent cold snap and it was never connected to climate change or global warming. Bastardi also questioned whether or not the upcoming thaw is connected to climate change.
After four tweets, Bastardi concluded by chiding Gore and other climate change alarmists about pursuing narrative over truth.
So let me get this straight, This cold is from climate change, Previous cold shots werent, Previous cold shots like 83-84 this period colder. So what these guys want us to believe is the cold is from climate change, but climate change made it come up short of previous cold shots https://t.co/JHRqdh6vIR
Heh @algore Big thaw coming like numerous years with as cold or colder starts, is that climate change? Is a Jan thaw,which happens enough to be in US weather lore,also a crisis, Why were previous shots colder? So climate change causes cold but prevents it from being as cold?
Only thing I can do is try to reach people that want to know the WHY BEFORE THE WHAT ,Said hurricane season would see end of major hit drought in spring along with big wildfire season, Had roaring start to winter from October, None of that had anything to do with climate change
Sometimes if you want to see forward, you have to look back. No one is anti science, anti model, anti "climate" But one must question authority of models and causes of variances if one truly wishes to pursue the answer
Amazon is clamping down on internet trolls in the customer review section for a controversial new book about President Donald Trump.
The e-commerce giant is deleting reviews for Michael Wolff’s bombshell book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House that do not comply with company guidelines.
The company did not reveal how many reviews it deleted, according to Quartz.
But the fact that the number of reviews for such a popular book – nearly 800 as of Saturday evening – is relatively low shows that the site is careful about allowing anyone to post comments on the politically charged topic that is the Trump presidency.
The site appears to have learned its lesson from last September, when it removed hundreds of one-star views for Hillary Clinton’s memoir.
New York Times best-selling author and populist conservative columnist Ann Coulter says the number one priority for President Trump’s administration should be deporting the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens who have been shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
In a talk radio interview with Larry O’Connor, Coulter reiterated her call for DACA illegal aliens to be deported first, this time saying they should be prioritized for deportation above illegal aliens who are members of the violent El Salvadorian MS-13 gang.
Coulter said:
The one thing Trump should remember, especially now that he’s under attack I mean more than I think ever before, is he has the power to overcome all of this. I mean, he could sell Ivanka merchandise from the White House, he could refuse to be in the White House, he could govern from Mar-a-Lago, if he would just build the wall and deport illegals, starting with the DREAMers.
I’m 100 percent for deporting DREAMers first. The order should be DREAMers, then felons, and then you know just random illegals as they come to our attention. We can be discretionary on that. But DREAMers, number one. [Emphasis added]
At least the felons, they’re not indignant. They’re not going on TV saying ‘How dare you delay in giving me amnesty, we demand you forgive our law-breaking.’ Oh, the DREAMers are the worst of all. So I put them in line for deportation before the felons. Then we’ll get to the MS-13 members. You’re regular illegal alien, the ones not going on TV every night and demanding amnesty, they’re actually really sweet and hard workers. I’ve always said that about … illegal aliens. They’re so friendly and they really do work hard. So nobody really minds them, it’s the DREAMers who have to go first. [Emphasis added]
Coulter made the remarks as the White House is attempting to cut a deal with the Republican establishment to cut legal immigration levels in half, end the Diversity Visa Lottery, and receive full funding for the proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall in exchange for granting an amnesty for DACA illegal aliens that could eventually lead to an amnesty for all 12 to 30 million illegal aliens residing in the U.S.
While cutting legal immigration levels would raise wages for American workers and reduce burdens on America’s working and middle class, a DACA amnesty is likely to cause a surge along the southern border, as well as being a drain on U.S. taxpayers.
For example, as Breitbart News reported, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that at least 1 in 7 DACA illegal aliens would end up on Medicaid if given legal status and about 1 in 5 would end up on food stamps.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
via Breitbart News
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