I thought I was getting the whole thing. I was certain the Ricky would love this.
The school is being renamed for Obama.
“A school named after Jefferson Davis is getting a new name that the Confederate leader would almost certainly not approve of. Davis IB Elementary School in Jackson, Miss.”
Why am I not surprised? The slime bags in charge of writing the slimy hit piece on Trump have taken the 5th. They seem to think testifying is beneath them.
“Two executives of a firm that helped produce an opposition-research dossier that makes salacious claims about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia refused to answer questions Wednesday in a private meeting with the House Intelligence Committee.
Fusion GPS partners Peter Fritsch and Thomas Catan invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, said their lawyer, Joshua Levy. He said they would cooperate with “serious” investigations and also claimed that a “Trump cabal has carried out a campaign to demonize our client for having been tied to the Trump dossier.”
“We endeavor to work with all serious investigators who are going to be striking the balance between Congress’s right to information and our client’s privileges and legal obligations,” Levy said. “We’ve done that with other committees, and will continue to do so.”
In August, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee for 10 hours, Levy said.
Jack Langer, a spokesman for Nunes, declined to comment.
The Wednesday appearance by Fritsch and Catan before committee staff and a single member, Republican Tom Rooney of Florida, was compelled, said Levy, even though he had informed the panel in writing they would be invoking their Fifth Amendment rights. He said they were required to appear anyway, which he called an “indignity” and an “abuse of power.””
——————-
Chas, I am trying to keep a good attitude about all these changes. I have decided that maybe it is best that statues of General Lee not be displayed in Sodom or schools be named for Jefferson Davis in an Idiocracy. If they start naming schools for Trump, I may have to move to Chile or The Cook Islands.
My 6:46 was a genuine cut and paste.
I went to Drudge to get the entire quote but couldn’t find it.
I went back to ATT where I saw it. It isn’t there anymore.
Maybe Fake News.’
I hope so.
“Quebec Lawmakers Pass Law Obliging Citizens to Uncover Faces”
Women must uncover their faces when conducting official business.
A good law. A person should have a right to cover his/her face.. However, when conducting business, e.g. drive’s license, credit transactions, a proper identification is required. There should be no observance of sharia in a democratic nation.
Ricky, I can’t get behind the NYT paywall on my computer for the rest of the month, so I had to read the Douthat article you linked yesterday in fits and spurts on my phone. I can’t quote passages, but it did spark a couple of thoughts.
First, I thought it was interesting that he brought up Randian influence on Republican thinking and policy, especially since we had been discussing it the day before. However, he is either uninformed or being less than candid in describing the rise of the ‘Ayn Randian vision’ as occurring after Obama’s election. Rand has been influential since at least Reagan .
I’m not implying that Reagan himself was a fan of Rand, but I am of the opinion that Reagan’s faculties were not quite up to par near the end of his term, and he had poor influences from the business sector. As a result, he appointed one of Rand’s fiercest devotees to chair the Federal Reserve. Alan Greenspan served in that position until 2006, and was absolutely revered by Wall Street, often changing the flow of the Dow ticker by a single word. Of course after the crash he recanted Rand with tears and trembling, but by then it was too late. Wall St has rebounded nicely due to bailouts, but the country has not recovered.
Second, I don’t know Douthat’s background, but I think his observation of blue collar workers demonstrates that he doesn’t really understand them as a group. The great unwashed masses are sometimes, well, unwashed by purely intellectual arguments. They are often less suave in behavior than their more educated countrymen. And they can be more plain-spoken, sometimes even to the point of being crass. And yet they are our fellow countrymen—with a God-given life and a Constitutional vote, which must sting terribly if one feels they are not entitled to self-represent in that way. It’s probably a good idea to keep the quality of public education high, keep churches healthy, and don’t undercut the stability of employment. If these things are in place, I think this group is unlikely to be bothersome to those who think little of them.
And third, (which is tied to my first point) values voters have been happy to support things and candidates that are not in their own self interest for decades. And that is because many have simplified their priorities to a couple of things, or to one: the Right to Life. Just last week I heard a minister on the radio tell listeners that he made no apologies for being a single issue voter, and no matter who is on the ballot, he’s voting for the anti-abortion candidate.
Republicans have been very happy to have people like this man motivate his listeners, friends, and congregants to enthusiasm about their candidate. And the people are happy to think they do not to have to become an economist or follow every news article to just cast a responsible vote. Who has time or interest for all of that research. So people follow their leaders even though those candidates often represent economic positions that undercut job security, education and public works—all of which, keep people in my point #2 productively occupied.
It’s time for Trump to fire Mueller. He is a total and complete fraud. While he’s been wasting time, taxpayer dollars, and his credibility, he’s had evidence of collusion all along. But it’s not Trump.
Keep in mind that he was in charge of the FBI for part of the time frame while all this went down, knew it was going down, knew the deal was a fraud, yet he did nothing. But now suddenly he’s the expert needed to nail Trump on non-existent crimes? Maybe so, because he did jack when it comes to real crimes.
“Yesterday, Kemberlee blogged about the recent reports that allege President Barack Obama’s administration covered for failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her family on a few occasions.
One instance included the Clinton Foundation’s dealings with Canadian Uranium One, a bribery scandal the FBI knew about and decided to sit on the evidence. Now The Hill has reported that an FBI informant in Russia alleges the Obama DOJ blocked him from speaking to Congress “about conversations and transactions he witnessed related to the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton and influence Obama administration decisions.”
His lawyer is Victoria Toensing, who served as a Reagan DOJ official and chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She is currently working with Congress to free her client so he can finally tell the lawmakers about what he witnessed and heard.
Pressure From Obama’s DOJ
The Hill continued:
Toensing said she also possesses memos that recount how the Justice Department last year threatened her client when he attempted to file a lawsuit that could have drawn attention to the Russian corruption during the 2016 presidential race as well as helped him recover some of the money Russians stole from him through kickbacks during the FBI probe.
The undercover client witnessed “a lot of bribery going on around the U.S.” but was asked by the FBI to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) that prevents him from revealing what he knows to Congress, Toensing explained.
When he tried to bring some of the allegations to light in the lawsuit last year, “the Obama Justice Department threatened him with loss of freedom. They said they would bring a criminal case against him for violating an NDA,” she added.
Emails obtained by The Hill show that a civil attorney working with the former undercover witness described the pressure the Justice Department exerted to keep the client from disclosing to a federal court what he knew last summer.
“The government was taking a very harsh position that threatened both your reputation and liberty,” the civil lawyer wrote in one email. In another, she added, “As you will recall the gov’t made serious threats sufficient to cause you to withdraw your civil complaint.””
————————-
I see on the ATT News that 27 states have voted to have a Constitutional Convention..
That is 7 fewer than the 2/3 (34) needed.
I hope it never happens. I fear a new Constitutional convention more than any outside threat.
We were blessed with intelligent men drafting the first one.
I don’t know of anyone I trust to draft a new Constitution.
The Death of America as we know it..
“That didn’t take long. News that the Department of Justice may have hidden information from Congress about a Russian bribery-extortion ring involving nuclear materials got a swift response from Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley. After first peppering Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the allegations raised in The Hill, Grassley sent a letter to the attorney representing the FBI informant inviting her client to testify about the operation in a committee hearing, Circa reports:
Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley asked the attorney of a former FBI informant Wednesday to allow her client to testify before his committee regarding the FBI’s investigation regarding kickbacks and bribery by the Russian state controlled nuclear company that was approved to purchase twenty percent of United States uranium supply in 2010, Circa has learned.
In a formal letter, Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked Victoria Toensing, the lawyer representing the former FBI informant, to allow her client, who says he worked as a voluntary informant for the FBI, to be allowed to testify about the “crucial” eyewitness testimony he provided to the FBI regarding members of the Russian subsidiary and other connected players from 2009 until the FBI’s prosecution of the defendants in 2014.
Toensing’s client was an American businessman who says he worked for four years undercover as an FBI confidential witness. Toensing said he was blocked by the Obama Justice Department, under then Attorney General Loretta Lynch, about testifying to Congress about his time as an informant for the FBI. He contends that he has pertinent information that the Russian’s were attempting to gain access to former President Bill Clinton and his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to influence the Obama administration’s decision on the purchase of Uranium One, Toensing said.
The informant had signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which Toensing and the informant claim the DoJ used to threaten him with prosecution if he talked about the case. Under normal circumstances it might take a subpoena to overcome an NDA. (This was a plot twist in the film The Insider, a docudrama starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe about tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, but it’s not clear whether that particular episode was a dramatization or factually accurate.) Thus far, Grassley has not been authorized to issue a subpoena, which would take a majority vote by Judiciary — probably a formality, considering the acute issues here.”
———————–
“Remember when unmasking was all the rage in the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation? Perhaps not, since much of the media didn’t seem quite so enthusiastic about covering a story which might have cast the Obama administration in a bad light. But the story still has legs and members of Congress are looking into it.
One of the biggest players in this particular game turned out to be Samantha Power. That was unusual in and of itself because, while authorized to be involved in such sensitive intelligence questions, the UN Ambassador was rather far down on the list of people you’d expect to be digging into such subjects. And yet Power was not only involved in the unmasking of Americans, she was setting land speed records at it, averaging one per business day for her last year in office.
But now she’s pushing back on the claims which have been made, saying some of them might have been made by other people using her name. Katy bar the door, because an answer like that is going to get very messy very quickly.(Daily Caller)
Someone within the Obama administration’s intelligence apparatus made requests to unmask the identity of Americans named in intelligence reports on behalf of Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
That’s what Power told the House Intelligence Committee last week during a closed-door interview.
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy revealed in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday that Power was “emphatic” on the point that someone else in the Obama administration made the unmasking requests that have been attributed to her.
Trey Gowdy, from the Intelligence Committee, is all over this question now. (There’s a video of him discussing it on Fox News at the Daily Caller article linked above.) But the number of questions this claim raises are staggering. We’re talking about information which is held to the highest levels. Unmasking the identity of an American citizen who shows up as part of a foreign intelligence sweep is something which is only done with the greatest caution and there aren’t a lot of people with the authority to do it.
Any time such a request is made, wouldn’t you assume that our government has a firm grip on who is doing the asking and why they want to know? So who are these “other people” who are allegedly putting in such requests? If they are authorized to gather such information, why didnt’ they make the request under their own name? And if they aren’t, how in Sam Hill was Samantha Power allowing them to use her clearance to do it?”
“Angela Merkel really is the most consequential politician of modern Europe, but lately not in the way she hopes. Her 2015 decision to welcome over 1 million migrants into her country, and then her attempts to impose refugee quotas across the European Union, have altered the politics of Europe for a generation.
The latest of the run on-effects of this decision is now in Austria. The 31-year-old leader of the People’s Party, Sebastian Kurz, will soon be chancellor of Austria, after the smashing success of his insurgent campaign, which renovated the party. Kurz won by promising “something new” in politics. That something new includes a position on immigration that is arguably harder than the one offered by the far-right Freedom Party, a group with some roots in fascist politics and the likely coalition partner of Kurz’s party. Kurz talks openly of working with or joining the Visgrád Group, the four countries of central Europe that have rejected Merkel’s migration quotas.
The migration flow created after the 2015 “welcome” were used by terrorists involved in the Bataclan massacre in Paris and in the Brussels airport bombing. The sudden security problem overwhelmed and essentially ended the Schengen arrangements that allowed free travel between many European countries. Thus began a race of border reinforcements. In mid 2015, Hungary closed its border to Serbia. The weeks afterward saw Bulgaria build a fence along its border with Turkey. Then Austria closed its border to Hungary, and Hungary closed its border to Austria. Germany temporarily closed to Austria. Weeks later, Slovenia began building a wall on its Croatian border. These are Merkel’s walls.
There has been a serious price at home. Merkel’s entire political calculus had always assumed that Germany’s ugly 20th-century history meant that there never could be a serious right-wing challenge to the center-right Christian Democratic parties. That turned out to be wrong. The right-populist Alternative for Germany helped bring Merkel’s CDU to its worst electoral performance in seven decades. Merkel’s constant attempts at triangulating to her left have also severely weakened the morale and performance of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to the CDU. To her credit, she has recognized the potential for disaster. And she quickly negotiated an ugly deal with Turkey to close the refugee flow coming over land from the Middle East.”
——————————–
“Leif-Erik Holm, one of the more moderate voices in Alternative for Germany, also placed the blame for Brexit on her doorstep. “Angela Merkel opened the borders and the British realized in that moment that ‘hang on, we are not in control of our country’ and decided for Brexit because of this,” he said in an interview earlier this year.
In fact, Holm is understating Merkel’s role. Because it was Merkel who played the hardliner with U.K. prime minister David Cameron ahead of Brexit. He went to Brussels to get some compromise deal on “freedom of movement” ahead of the talks, trying to assuage the No. 1 concern of the British public. Merkel gave him no concessions at all, just months after she had initiated this wave of migration not only from Syria but from Eritrea and sub-Saharan Africa.
And all of this leaves out the way Merkel’s invitation became a boon for human smuggling operations in Niger and Libya. Her great humanitarian gesture had the nasty underside that we see in the horrific details from migrant camps in North Africa.
Merkel has practiced what Business Insider’s Josh Barro calls “no-choice politics.” During the euro crisis, she relied on there being no choice to exit the currency union. During the run-up to Brexit, she relied on the fact that Cameron had no choice but to argue for Remain, no matter how little she offered. She relied on there being no choice to her right in Germany. It hasn’t worked.
Merkel took responsibility for Europe over the last decade. And Brexit, her party’s diminished majority, the border walls rising, and the advent of populist alternatives are her legacy.”
Debra, It is interesting that you mention the possibility that Reagan might have been losing his abilities in his last years in office. As you were posting that I was meeting with a lady whose husband has Alzheimer’s. She described how she and the family would distract her husband and confuse him when he was determined to do something self-destructive. It was the same technique which Priebus, Kelly and others have used over the last 9 months in the White House.
Here is the excerpt from the Douthat article to which Debra responded:
But if you prefer pessimism, you’ll dwell instead on the second takeaway from Thomas Frank’s Trump-era vindication — namely, that a depressing percentage of American conservatives seem perfectly happy with the bargain that Frank claimed defined their party, with a president who ignores their economic interests and public policy more generally and offers instead the perpetual distraction of Twitter feuds and pseudo-patriotic grandstanding.
This dispiriting contentment is the sentiment you see from some of Trump’s blue-collar supporters, who love his uncouth rhetorical war on his fellow coastal elites so much that they’re willing to forgive him his threadbare policy agenda or else trust that gridlock and inertia will protect them from Republican bills whose actual contents they might probably oppose.
It’s also what you see from a segment of religious conservatives, like those gathered at last week’s Values Voters Summit, who cheered rapturously for an empty, strutting nationalism and a president who makes a mockery of the remoralized culture that they claim to seek.
Note that I don’t mean the religious conservatives who supported Trump reluctantly and in a transactional spirit, and who welcome his conservative judicial nominees. I mean those who plainly prefer his brutish braggart’s style to the sort of public decency that Bush or, in a different way, Mitt Romney offered — and who either spin elaborate fantasies about Trump the Christian or laud him as a Conan-esque warlord they think will drive their enemies before them.
For these Trump-besotted believers, you get the sense that the Bush administration’s attempts to devise a substantial socially conservative agenda, from bioethics to marriage promotion to faith-based initiatives and more, are remembered not for being timorous, limited or flawed (all of which they were) but for being simply boring. Far better to have a president who really sticks it to those overpaid babies in the N.F.L. and makes the liberals howl with outrage — that’s what a real and fighting conservatism should be all about!
What’s the matter with the Republican Party? Many things, but right now above all this: Far too many Trump supporters, far too many conservatives, have seen the then-inaccurate caricature that Frank painted 13 years ago brought to blaring, Technicolor life by Trump — and they’ve decided to become part of the caricature themselves, become exactly what their enemies and critics said they were, become a movement of plutocrats and grievance-mongers with an ever-weaker understanding of the common good.
Washington (CNN) Former President George W. Bush condemned bigotry and white supremacy Thursday morning while endorsing policies that run counter to those supported by President Donald Trump.
“Our identity as a nation, unlike other nations, is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. … This means that people from every race, religion, ethnicity can be full and equally American,” he said during remarks at the George W. Bush Institute in New York City. “It means that bigotry and white supremacy, in any form, is blasphemy against the American creed.”
He added that “bigotry seems emboldened,” though he didn’t explain why.
“We’ve seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty,” Bush said, adding, “Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions, forgetting the image of God we should see in each other.”
Bush didn’t mention Trump during his remarks, but in his recommendations to strengthen American democracy, he said US institutions must “step up” and “we need to recall and recover our own identity.” …
_______________________________________________
The political parties and the nation as a whole desperately need some moral leadership, some voices to emerge out of this bitter and dark vacuum of chaos and division and hostility that is only careening toward the lowest common denominator with every issue or debate.
It won’t be anytime soon. Few good men or women are willing to step into the cesspool that politics have become. Few would subject their families to what inevitably follows. Anyone considered “moral” nowadays is considered an outlier, subject to ridicule and constantly called a bigot, and worse. Good candidates wouldn’t be beholden to special interests and their money, identity politics, or politically correct, so neither party will back them. Good candidates rarely stand a chance today.
Which is why I voted for the guy mostly likely to throw bombs at the whole lot of ’em. 🙂
A democracy, or even the republic that Cheryl and I remember, is only as good as its citizens. People who watch the Kardashians and listen to modern music, watch movies made by Harvey Weinstein , listen to sermons of Joel Osteen and get their news from Hannity or Facebook wind up voting for Bill Clinton and/or Donald Trump.
I think Trumpkins picture Trump throwing bombs as “the Conan-esque warlord” Douthat described above. However, Trump has always reminded me of Inspector Clouseau, and there were bombs in the plots of several of those movies.
“A public school in Mississippi is to drop the name of the Civil War leader of the pro-slavery South and be named after the first black US president, Barack Obama, the local newspaper reported.
The move in Jackson, Mississippi, comes amid a national debate over a campaign to remove statues and other monuments to generals and leaders of the 1861-1865 Confederacy.
The Clarion-Ledger said Davis International Baccalaureate Elementary School, whose enrollment is 98 percent black, will be renamed Barack Obama Magnet International Baccalaureate Elementary School next year.
Janelle Jefferson, head of the parent-teacher association, informed the Jackson school board of the plan to rename the school at a meeting on Tuesday evening, the newspaper said.
“Jefferson Davis, although infamous in his own right, would probably not be too happy about a diverse school promoting the education of the very individuals he fought to keep enslaved being named after him,” Jefferson told the board.
She said the school community had voted to rename the school “to reflect a person who fully represents ideals and public stances consistent with what we want our children to believe about themselves.””
DJ @5:59 It’s interesting that you say that. I was talking yesterday to someone who keeps up with the far left. Very anti establishment and anti-Hillary. He said they are also trying to blow things up, and had actually encouraged people to vote for Trump in order to crash the country. That’s a dangerous game to play whether you’re on the right or left.
Sure Ricky, because Gold Star Mom’s always talk to the President and then contact a partisan Democrat Rep who then goes public with a partisan attack on a guy trying to do the right thing.
Just like Khan, she’ll be used as a political prop, who will be discarded when the next outrage du jour hits.
Let me be clear here. I don’t want to crash our govt. or our Constitution. Just the 2 political parties. They are what’s wrong with our govt. I want both to go the way of the Dodo.
Hostility against Christians among the general public has not increased over the last three decades. But who has hostility against Christians has changed. Today more anti-Christian bias is coming from the rich. Because wealthy people have more power, their hostility is amplified.
That is the conclusion of sociologist George Yancey, who studied 30 years of data. Today, he says, wealth is a statistically significant predictor of anti-Christian bias.
Here is the profile of those who tend to be hostile to Christianity: white, male, politically progressive, irreligious, and wealthy. …
… Twenty years ago, he says, those who admitted to disliking Christians—what he calls Christianophobia—were white, male, progressive, but had low incomes. Today, they tend to be wealthy.
So while the absolute level of hostility directed at conservative Christians has not increased, the power level of those with that hatred appears to have increased. This means that those conservative Christian leaders who have been complaining about increased hatred are not completely wrong.
He cites the businesses that punish states for enacting religious liberty measures. He also sees the increase in anti-religious messages in the media, television, film, and other cultural expressions as pointing to the “Christianophobia” of the wealthy elite. (Prof. Yancey has written a book on the subject.) …
… The question remains, why should wealth be a predictor of anti-Christian bias? Why do you think?
____________________________________
AJ, A few facts:
1. Your moron started the Gold Star flap by attacking Obama and Little Bush (and their method of contacting Gold Star families) for no reason when he was asked a question about Niger at a press conference.
2. Later that day he inadvertently offended a Gold Star widow and mom in a phone conversation trying to express his condolences.
3. The Gold Star mom didn’t contact the Democrat Congresswoman. It turns out the hare-brained Democrat was a mentor to the fallen hero and was in the car with the widow and mom and overheard the conversation.
4. The Democrat and the Mom were critical of what they considered to be Trump’s clumsy language.
5. Of course, that should have been where it stopped. Little Bush was once attacked by a Gold Star family. Bill Clinton was cursed out by a Gold Star family. They took it in silence because, whatever their flaws may be, they are men.
6. Trump is not a man. He may be a sexual predator like Bill Clinton, but he is also an infant. So like an infant, he has continued this fight with a grieving wife and mother for several days.
7. As Tillerson said, he is a moron.
AJ @6:02 That was a very impressive speech by John Kelly–first time I’ve heard him. He seems like a very high caliber individual. I hope he stays in the WH.
Sorry to say it, but I think in future, Trump would be well advised to call only those relatives of the slain who are known to support him. Like Kelly said, it is really sad that it has come to this. :–/
Wandering Views 
I thought I was getting the whole thing. I was certain the Ricky would love this.
The school is being renamed for Obama.
“A school named after Jefferson Davis is getting a new name that the Confederate leader would almost certainly not approve of. Davis IB Elementary School in Jackson, Miss.”
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Why am I not surprised? The slime bags in charge of writing the slimy hit piece on Trump have taken the 5th. They seem to think testifying is beneath them.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/executives-firm-tied-trump-dossier-174335030.html
“Two executives of a firm that helped produce an opposition-research dossier that makes salacious claims about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia refused to answer questions Wednesday in a private meeting with the House Intelligence Committee.
Fusion GPS partners Peter Fritsch and Thomas Catan invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, said their lawyer, Joshua Levy. He said they would cooperate with “serious” investigations and also claimed that a “Trump cabal has carried out a campaign to demonize our client for having been tied to the Trump dossier.”
“We endeavor to work with all serious investigators who are going to be striking the balance between Congress’s right to information and our client’s privileges and legal obligations,” Levy said. “We’ve done that with other committees, and will continue to do so.”
In August, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee for 10 hours, Levy said.
Jack Langer, a spokesman for Nunes, declined to comment.
The Wednesday appearance by Fritsch and Catan before committee staff and a single member, Republican Tom Rooney of Florida, was compelled, said Levy, even though he had informed the panel in writing they would be invoking their Fifth Amendment rights. He said they were required to appear anyway, which he called an “indignity” and an “abuse of power.””
——————-
Sure, and your slimy, lying hit piece wasn’t?
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Chas, I am trying to keep a good attitude about all these changes. I have decided that maybe it is best that statues of General Lee not be displayed in Sodom or schools be named for Jefferson Davis in an Idiocracy. If they start naming schools for Trump, I may have to move to Chile or The Cook Islands.
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My 6:46 was a genuine cut and paste.
I went to Drudge to get the entire quote but couldn’t find it.
I went back to ATT where I saw it. It isn’t there anymore.
Maybe Fake News.’
I hope so.
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This one is real. From NewsMaxs
“Quebec Lawmakers Pass Law Obliging Citizens to Uncover Faces”
Women must uncover their faces when conducting official business.
A good law. A person should have a right to cover his/her face.. However, when conducting business, e.g. drive’s license, credit transactions, a proper identification is required. There should be no observance of sharia in a democratic nation.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Ricky, I can’t get behind the NYT paywall on my computer for the rest of the month, so I had to read the Douthat article you linked yesterday in fits and spurts on my phone. I can’t quote passages, but it did spark a couple of thoughts.
First, I thought it was interesting that he brought up Randian influence on Republican thinking and policy, especially since we had been discussing it the day before. However, he is either uninformed or being less than candid in describing the rise of the ‘Ayn Randian vision’ as occurring after Obama’s election. Rand has been influential since at least Reagan .
I’m not implying that Reagan himself was a fan of Rand, but I am of the opinion that Reagan’s faculties were not quite up to par near the end of his term, and he had poor influences from the business sector. As a result, he appointed one of Rand’s fiercest devotees to chair the Federal Reserve. Alan Greenspan served in that position until 2006, and was absolutely revered by Wall Street, often changing the flow of the Dow ticker by a single word. Of course after the crash he recanted Rand with tears and trembling, but by then it was too late. Wall St has rebounded nicely due to bailouts, but the country has not recovered.
Second, I don’t know Douthat’s background, but I think his observation of blue collar workers demonstrates that he doesn’t really understand them as a group. The great unwashed masses are sometimes, well, unwashed by purely intellectual arguments. They are often less suave in behavior than their more educated countrymen. And they can be more plain-spoken, sometimes even to the point of being crass. And yet they are our fellow countrymen—with a God-given life and a Constitutional vote, which must sting terribly if one feels they are not entitled to self-represent in that way. It’s probably a good idea to keep the quality of public education high, keep churches healthy, and don’t undercut the stability of employment. If these things are in place, I think this group is unlikely to be bothersome to those who think little of them.
And third, (which is tied to my first point) values voters have been happy to support things and candidates that are not in their own self interest for decades. And that is because many have simplified their priorities to a couple of things, or to one: the Right to Life. Just last week I heard a minister on the radio tell listeners that he made no apologies for being a single issue voter, and no matter who is on the ballot, he’s voting for the anti-abortion candidate.
Republicans have been very happy to have people like this man motivate his listeners, friends, and congregants to enthusiasm about their candidate. And the people are happy to think they do not to have to become an economist or follow every news article to just cast a responsible vote. Who has time or interest for all of that research. So people follow their leaders even though those candidates often represent economic positions that undercut job security, education and public works—all of which, keep people in my point #2 productively occupied.
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It’s time for Trump to fire Mueller. He is a total and complete fraud. While he’s been wasting time, taxpayer dollars, and his credibility, he’s had evidence of collusion all along. But it’s not Trump.
Keep in mind that he was in charge of the FBI for part of the time frame while all this went down, knew it was going down, knew the deal was a fraud, yet he did nothing. But now suddenly he’s the expert needed to nail Trump on non-existent crimes? Maybe so, because he did jack when it comes to real crimes.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/10/fbi-informant-in-russia-bribery-case-alleges-obama-doj-blocked-him-from-congress/
“Yesterday, Kemberlee blogged about the recent reports that allege President Barack Obama’s administration covered for failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her family on a few occasions.
One instance included the Clinton Foundation’s dealings with Canadian Uranium One, a bribery scandal the FBI knew about and decided to sit on the evidence. Now The Hill has reported that an FBI informant in Russia alleges the Obama DOJ blocked him from speaking to Congress “about conversations and transactions he witnessed related to the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton and influence Obama administration decisions.”
His lawyer is Victoria Toensing, who served as a Reagan DOJ official and chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She is currently working with Congress to free her client so he can finally tell the lawmakers about what he witnessed and heard.
Pressure From Obama’s DOJ
The Hill continued:
Toensing said she also possesses memos that recount how the Justice Department last year threatened her client when he attempted to file a lawsuit that could have drawn attention to the Russian corruption during the 2016 presidential race as well as helped him recover some of the money Russians stole from him through kickbacks during the FBI probe.
The undercover client witnessed “a lot of bribery going on around the U.S.” but was asked by the FBI to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) that prevents him from revealing what he knows to Congress, Toensing explained.
When he tried to bring some of the allegations to light in the lawsuit last year, “the Obama Justice Department threatened him with loss of freedom. They said they would bring a criminal case against him for violating an NDA,” she added.
Emails obtained by The Hill show that a civil attorney working with the former undercover witness described the pressure the Justice Department exerted to keep the client from disclosing to a federal court what he knew last summer.
“The government was taking a very harsh position that threatened both your reputation and liberty,” the civil lawyer wrote in one email. In another, she added, “As you will recall the gov’t made serious threats sufficient to cause you to withdraw your civil complaint.””
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Read the link, there’s plenty more evidence.
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I see on the ATT News that 27 states have voted to have a Constitutional Convention..
That is 7 fewer than the 2/3 (34) needed.
I hope it never happens. I fear a new Constitutional convention more than any outside threat.
We were blessed with intelligent men drafting the first one.
I don’t know of anyone I trust to draft a new Constitution.
The Death of America as we know it..
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Looks like Obama’s NDA threats are going down in flames.
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/19/grassley-offers-judiciary-hearing-fbi-informant-russian-bribery-extortion-operation/
“That didn’t take long. News that the Department of Justice may have hidden information from Congress about a Russian bribery-extortion ring involving nuclear materials got a swift response from Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley. After first peppering Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the allegations raised in The Hill, Grassley sent a letter to the attorney representing the FBI informant inviting her client to testify about the operation in a committee hearing, Circa reports:
Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley asked the attorney of a former FBI informant Wednesday to allow her client to testify before his committee regarding the FBI’s investigation regarding kickbacks and bribery by the Russian state controlled nuclear company that was approved to purchase twenty percent of United States uranium supply in 2010, Circa has learned.
In a formal letter, Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked Victoria Toensing, the lawyer representing the former FBI informant, to allow her client, who says he worked as a voluntary informant for the FBI, to be allowed to testify about the “crucial” eyewitness testimony he provided to the FBI regarding members of the Russian subsidiary and other connected players from 2009 until the FBI’s prosecution of the defendants in 2014.
Toensing’s client was an American businessman who says he worked for four years undercover as an FBI confidential witness. Toensing said he was blocked by the Obama Justice Department, under then Attorney General Loretta Lynch, about testifying to Congress about his time as an informant for the FBI. He contends that he has pertinent information that the Russian’s were attempting to gain access to former President Bill Clinton and his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to influence the Obama administration’s decision on the purchase of Uranium One, Toensing said.
The informant had signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which Toensing and the informant claim the DoJ used to threaten him with prosecution if he talked about the case. Under normal circumstances it might take a subpoena to overcome an NDA. (This was a plot twist in the film The Insider, a docudrama starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe about tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, but it’s not clear whether that particular episode was a dramatization or factually accurate.) Thus far, Grassley has not been authorized to issue a subpoena, which would take a majority vote by Judiciary — probably a formality, considering the acute issues here.”
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Keep digging.
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Hmmmmmmm…..
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/18/samantha-power-somebody-else-must-made-unmasking-requests-name/
“Remember when unmasking was all the rage in the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation? Perhaps not, since much of the media didn’t seem quite so enthusiastic about covering a story which might have cast the Obama administration in a bad light. But the story still has legs and members of Congress are looking into it.
One of the biggest players in this particular game turned out to be Samantha Power. That was unusual in and of itself because, while authorized to be involved in such sensitive intelligence questions, the UN Ambassador was rather far down on the list of people you’d expect to be digging into such subjects. And yet Power was not only involved in the unmasking of Americans, she was setting land speed records at it, averaging one per business day for her last year in office.
But now she’s pushing back on the claims which have been made, saying some of them might have been made by other people using her name. Katy bar the door, because an answer like that is going to get very messy very quickly.(Daily Caller)
Someone within the Obama administration’s intelligence apparatus made requests to unmask the identity of Americans named in intelligence reports on behalf of Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
That’s what Power told the House Intelligence Committee last week during a closed-door interview.
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy revealed in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday that Power was “emphatic” on the point that someone else in the Obama administration made the unmasking requests that have been attributed to her.
Trey Gowdy, from the Intelligence Committee, is all over this question now. (There’s a video of him discussing it on Fox News at the Daily Caller article linked above.) But the number of questions this claim raises are staggering. We’re talking about information which is held to the highest levels. Unmasking the identity of an American citizen who shows up as part of a foreign intelligence sweep is something which is only done with the greatest caution and there aren’t a lot of people with the authority to do it.
Any time such a request is made, wouldn’t you assume that our government has a firm grip on who is doing the asking and why they want to know? So who are these “other people” who are allegedly putting in such requests? If they are authorized to gather such information, why didnt’ they make the request under their own name? And if they aren’t, how in Sam Hill was Samantha Power allowing them to use her clearance to do it?”
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New leader of the free world?
No. Just the cause of many of Europe’s problems.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/452791/angela-merkel-europe-legacy-immigration-border-walls-brexit-far-right-germany-austria
“Angela Merkel really is the most consequential politician of modern Europe, but lately not in the way she hopes. Her 2015 decision to welcome over 1 million migrants into her country, and then her attempts to impose refugee quotas across the European Union, have altered the politics of Europe for a generation.
The latest of the run on-effects of this decision is now in Austria. The 31-year-old leader of the People’s Party, Sebastian Kurz, will soon be chancellor of Austria, after the smashing success of his insurgent campaign, which renovated the party. Kurz won by promising “something new” in politics. That something new includes a position on immigration that is arguably harder than the one offered by the far-right Freedom Party, a group with some roots in fascist politics and the likely coalition partner of Kurz’s party. Kurz talks openly of working with or joining the Visgrád Group, the four countries of central Europe that have rejected Merkel’s migration quotas.
The migration flow created after the 2015 “welcome” were used by terrorists involved in the Bataclan massacre in Paris and in the Brussels airport bombing. The sudden security problem overwhelmed and essentially ended the Schengen arrangements that allowed free travel between many European countries. Thus began a race of border reinforcements. In mid 2015, Hungary closed its border to Serbia. The weeks afterward saw Bulgaria build a fence along its border with Turkey. Then Austria closed its border to Hungary, and Hungary closed its border to Austria. Germany temporarily closed to Austria. Weeks later, Slovenia began building a wall on its Croatian border. These are Merkel’s walls.
There has been a serious price at home. Merkel’s entire political calculus had always assumed that Germany’s ugly 20th-century history meant that there never could be a serious right-wing challenge to the center-right Christian Democratic parties. That turned out to be wrong. The right-populist Alternative for Germany helped bring Merkel’s CDU to its worst electoral performance in seven decades. Merkel’s constant attempts at triangulating to her left have also severely weakened the morale and performance of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to the CDU. To her credit, she has recognized the potential for disaster. And she quickly negotiated an ugly deal with Turkey to close the refugee flow coming over land from the Middle East.”
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“Leif-Erik Holm, one of the more moderate voices in Alternative for Germany, also placed the blame for Brexit on her doorstep. “Angela Merkel opened the borders and the British realized in that moment that ‘hang on, we are not in control of our country’ and decided for Brexit because of this,” he said in an interview earlier this year.
In fact, Holm is understating Merkel’s role. Because it was Merkel who played the hardliner with U.K. prime minister David Cameron ahead of Brexit. He went to Brussels to get some compromise deal on “freedom of movement” ahead of the talks, trying to assuage the No. 1 concern of the British public. Merkel gave him no concessions at all, just months after she had initiated this wave of migration not only from Syria but from Eritrea and sub-Saharan Africa.
And all of this leaves out the way Merkel’s invitation became a boon for human smuggling operations in Niger and Libya. Her great humanitarian gesture had the nasty underside that we see in the horrific details from migrant camps in North Africa.
Merkel has practiced what Business Insider’s Josh Barro calls “no-choice politics.” During the euro crisis, she relied on there being no choice to exit the currency union. During the run-up to Brexit, she relied on the fact that Cameron had no choice but to argue for Remain, no matter how little she offered. She relied on there being no choice to her right in Germany. It hasn’t worked.
Merkel took responsibility for Europe over the last decade. And Brexit, her party’s diminished majority, the border walls rising, and the advent of populist alternatives are her legacy.”
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Debra, It is interesting that you mention the possibility that Reagan might have been losing his abilities in his last years in office. As you were posting that I was meeting with a lady whose husband has Alzheimer’s. She described how she and the family would distract her husband and confuse him when he was determined to do something self-destructive. It was the same technique which Priebus, Kelly and others have used over the last 9 months in the White House.
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Rod Dreher summarizing the last embarrassing episode:
https://mobile.twitter.com/roddreher/status/920994175180595200?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
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Here is the excerpt from the Douthat article to which Debra responded:
But if you prefer pessimism, you’ll dwell instead on the second takeaway from Thomas Frank’s Trump-era vindication — namely, that a depressing percentage of American conservatives seem perfectly happy with the bargain that Frank claimed defined their party, with a president who ignores their economic interests and public policy more generally and offers instead the perpetual distraction of Twitter feuds and pseudo-patriotic grandstanding.
This dispiriting contentment is the sentiment you see from some of Trump’s blue-collar supporters, who love his uncouth rhetorical war on his fellow coastal elites so much that they’re willing to forgive him his threadbare policy agenda or else trust that gridlock and inertia will protect them from Republican bills whose actual contents they might probably oppose.
It’s also what you see from a segment of religious conservatives, like those gathered at last week’s Values Voters Summit, who cheered rapturously for an empty, strutting nationalism and a president who makes a mockery of the remoralized culture that they claim to seek.
Note that I don’t mean the religious conservatives who supported Trump reluctantly and in a transactional spirit, and who welcome his conservative judicial nominees. I mean those who plainly prefer his brutish braggart’s style to the sort of public decency that Bush or, in a different way, Mitt Romney offered — and who either spin elaborate fantasies about Trump the Christian or laud him as a Conan-esque warlord they think will drive their enemies before them.
For these Trump-besotted believers, you get the sense that the Bush administration’s attempts to devise a substantial socially conservative agenda, from bioethics to marriage promotion to faith-based initiatives and more, are remembered not for being timorous, limited or flawed (all of which they were) but for being simply boring. Far better to have a president who really sticks it to those overpaid babies in the N.F.L. and makes the liberals howl with outrage — that’s what a real and fighting conservatism should be all about!
What’s the matter with the Republican Party? Many things, but right now above all this: Far too many Trump supporters, far too many conservatives, have seen the then-inaccurate caricature that Frank painted 13 years ago brought to blaring, Technicolor life by Trump — and they’ve decided to become part of the caricature themselves, become exactly what their enemies and critics said they were, become a movement of plutocrats and grievance-mongers with an ever-weaker understanding of the common good.
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/19/politics/bush-freedom-event/index.html
_______________________________________
Washington (CNN) Former President George W. Bush condemned bigotry and white supremacy Thursday morning while endorsing policies that run counter to those supported by President Donald Trump.
“Our identity as a nation, unlike other nations, is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. … This means that people from every race, religion, ethnicity can be full and equally American,” he said during remarks at the George W. Bush Institute in New York City. “It means that bigotry and white supremacy, in any form, is blasphemy against the American creed.”
He added that “bigotry seems emboldened,” though he didn’t explain why.
“We’ve seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty,” Bush said, adding, “Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions, forgetting the image of God we should see in each other.”
Bush didn’t mention Trump during his remarks, but in his recommendations to strengthen American democracy, he said US institutions must “step up” and “we need to recall and recover our own identity.” …
_______________________________________________
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The political parties and the nation as a whole desperately need some moral leadership, some voices to emerge out of this bitter and dark vacuum of chaos and division and hostility that is only careening toward the lowest common denominator with every issue or debate.
Who will it be?
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Donna,
Good luck with that. 😦
It won’t be anytime soon. Few good men or women are willing to step into the cesspool that politics have become. Few would subject their families to what inevitably follows. Anyone considered “moral” nowadays is considered an outlier, subject to ridicule and constantly called a bigot, and worse. Good candidates wouldn’t be beholden to special interests and their money, identity politics, or politically correct, so neither party will back them. Good candidates rarely stand a chance today.
Which is why I voted for the guy mostly likely to throw bombs at the whole lot of ’em. 🙂
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And at his Cabinet, his aides and himself.
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A democracy, or even the republic that Cheryl and I remember, is only as good as its citizens. People who watch the Kardashians and listen to modern music, watch movies made by Harvey Weinstein , listen to sermons of Joel Osteen and get their news from Hannity or Facebook wind up voting for Bill Clinton and/or Donald Trump.
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I’m not sure the bomb throwing is helping the climate. Instead, it seems to be making it worse.
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I think Trumpkins picture Trump throwing bombs as “the Conan-esque warlord” Douthat described above. However, Trump has always reminded me of Inspector Clouseau, and there were bombs in the plots of several of those movies.
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Donna,
Yep. That’s the point. 🙂
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I think this is what Chas is referring to.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-school-named-obama-drop-name-confederate-leader-144204693.html
“A public school in Mississippi is to drop the name of the Civil War leader of the pro-slavery South and be named after the first black US president, Barack Obama, the local newspaper reported.
The move in Jackson, Mississippi, comes amid a national debate over a campaign to remove statues and other monuments to generals and leaders of the 1861-1865 Confederacy.
The Clarion-Ledger said Davis International Baccalaureate Elementary School, whose enrollment is 98 percent black, will be renamed Barack Obama Magnet International Baccalaureate Elementary School next year.
Janelle Jefferson, head of the parent-teacher association, informed the Jackson school board of the plan to rename the school at a meeting on Tuesday evening, the newspaper said.
“Jefferson Davis, although infamous in his own right, would probably not be too happy about a diverse school promoting the education of the very individuals he fought to keep enslaved being named after him,” Jefferson told the board.
She said the school community had voted to rename the school “to reflect a person who fully represents ideals and public stances consistent with what we want our children to believe about themselves.””
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Bomb throwing leaves its own damage, some of which may never be repairable of course.
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Ricky,
Dreher is wrong again. This wasn’t of Trump’s making. It was a political hit job.
https://youtu.be/Ps5ttDzWBaY
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Right. All presidents get in fights with two different Gold Star families and defame their predecessors.
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DJ @5:59 It’s interesting that you say that. I was talking yesterday to someone who keeps up with the far left. Very anti establishment and anti-Hillary. He said they are also trying to blow things up, and had actually encouraged people to vote for Trump in order to crash the country. That’s a dangerous game to play whether you’re on the right or left.
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I agree.
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Sure Ricky, because Gold Star Mom’s always talk to the President and then contact a partisan Democrat Rep who then goes public with a partisan attack on a guy trying to do the right thing.
Just like Khan, she’ll be used as a political prop, who will be discarded when the next outrage du jour hits.
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Let me be clear here. I don’t want to crash our govt. or our Constitution. Just the 2 political parties. They are what’s wrong with our govt. I want both to go the way of the Dodo.
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Interesting take from Veith on a new study:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2017/10/anti-christian-bias-is-coming-from-the-rich-draft/#sBBW7gHie4C5o7e7.99
The Christianophobia of the Rich
___________________________________
Hostility against Christians among the general public has not increased over the last three decades. But who has hostility against Christians has changed. Today more anti-Christian bias is coming from the rich. Because wealthy people have more power, their hostility is amplified.
That is the conclusion of sociologist George Yancey, who studied 30 years of data. Today, he says, wealth is a statistically significant predictor of anti-Christian bias.
Here is the profile of those who tend to be hostile to Christianity: white, male, politically progressive, irreligious, and wealthy. …
… Twenty years ago, he says, those who admitted to disliking Christians—what he calls Christianophobia—were white, male, progressive, but had low incomes. Today, they tend to be wealthy.
So while the absolute level of hostility directed at conservative Christians has not increased, the power level of those with that hatred appears to have increased. This means that those conservative Christian leaders who have been complaining about increased hatred are not completely wrong.
He cites the businesses that punish states for enacting religious liberty measures. He also sees the increase in anti-religious messages in the media, television, film, and other cultural expressions as pointing to the “Christianophobia” of the wealthy elite. (Prof. Yancey has written a book on the subject.) …
… The question remains, why should wealth be a predictor of anti-Christian bias? Why do you think?
____________________________________
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AJ, A few facts:
1. Your moron started the Gold Star flap by attacking Obama and Little Bush (and their method of contacting Gold Star families) for no reason when he was asked a question about Niger at a press conference.
2. Later that day he inadvertently offended a Gold Star widow and mom in a phone conversation trying to express his condolences.
3. The Gold Star mom didn’t contact the Democrat Congresswoman. It turns out the hare-brained Democrat was a mentor to the fallen hero and was in the car with the widow and mom and overheard the conversation.
4. The Democrat and the Mom were critical of what they considered to be Trump’s clumsy language.
5. Of course, that should have been where it stopped. Little Bush was once attacked by a Gold Star family. Bill Clinton was cursed out by a Gold Star family. They took it in silence because, whatever their flaws may be, they are men.
6. Trump is not a man. He may be a sexual predator like Bill Clinton, but he is also an infant. So like an infant, he has continued this fight with a grieving wife and mother for several days.
7. As Tillerson said, he is a moron.
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AJ @6:02 That was a very impressive speech by John Kelly–first time I’ve heard him. He seems like a very high caliber individual. I hope he stays in the WH.
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Sorry to say it, but I think in future, Trump would be well advised to call only those relatives of the slain who are known to support him. Like Kelly said, it is really sad that it has come to this. :–/
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