Al Qaeda Is Recruiting

Le Monde's Serguei on the ISIS spider and its how it nets recruits in its (on the) web…

When Trump-Resister Nancy Pelosi Showered Stalinists with Praise

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has been the loudest voice against the administration of Donald Trump. The “deflector in chief,” as she calls the president, has “done nothing,” and in a March 5 CNN interview Pelosi doubled down on the Democrats’ default conspiracy theory.

“What do the Russians have on Donald Trump?” she said.  “That’s the truth we want to know.”

Thus does Lloyd Billingsley open his article at Front Page Mag (merci à Évelyne Joslain).

As Pelosi mounts this surge, the old-line establishment media have shown little if any interest in Pelosi’s own background, particularly as it relates to Russia, the USSR, and the American labor movement.

“Harry Bridges was arguably the most significant labor leader of the twentieth century,” Pelosi wrote in the Congressional Record in 2001, on the 100th anniversary of Bridges birth. Bridges was “beloved by the workers of this nation, and recognized as one of the most important labor leaders in the world” and his International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen's Union was “the most progressive union of the time.”

At the time Pelosi’s tribute drew little if any news coverage, but in 2007, when she was calling for unconditional withdrawal from Iraq, it came to the attention of Joshua Muravchik. Then with the American Enterprise Institute, he had been a speaker at the Second Thoughts Conference David Horowitz and Peter Collier staged in 1987. As a former chairman of the Young People’s Socialist League, Muravchik knew his onions on Harry Bridges.

“Pelosi’s Favorite Stalinist,” ran the headline on his June 25, 2007 piece in the Weekly Standard. True to form, Harry Bridges was “an Australian immigrant and devoted Communist” both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations tried to deport because he had lied about his Communist affiliation in his immigration papers.

“So loyal was Bridges to Moscow that during the period of the Stalin-Hitler pact, he opposed the (1940) reelection of labor hero FDR, because Roosevelt was aligning the United States with Britain against Germany, and the ILWU printed antiwar pamphlets proclaiming ‘The Yanks Are NOT Coming.’ As soon as Hitler’s forces invaded the Soviet Union, Bridges did a 180-degree about-face on the war.”
 
Bridges and his union “took transparently pro-Communist stances” while denying Communist affiliation. “Only after the fall of the USSR, and the opening of Soviet archives,” Muravchik wrote, “did the truth emerge that Bridges had been not merely in the party but a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA, a position for which the documents show he was directly approved by the Kremlin.”

A full nine years after this revelation, Pelosi delivered her worshipful tribute to the Stalinist labor boss. As Muravchik noted, she visited ILWU headquarters and praised “another prominent Bay Area Stalin fan, Vivian Hallinan, whose husband was Bridges’ lawyer and the 1952 candidate for president of the Communist-front Progressive party.” In Pelosi’s view, “Vivian was devoted intellectually and passionately to many causes, well before they became popularly embraced.”

 … Pelosi’s praise of Bridges, Muravchik wrote, was not to say that Pelosi was ever a Communist. It did show “Pelosi’s wretched record in judging who are history’s good guys and who are its bad.” And as she ran off to meet the likes of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, “we should be mindful that some of what she knows about political values was learned at the feet of people who believed fervently that the great enemy of mankind was none other than America itself.”
 
That’s what the leaders of Iran believe but Nancy Pelosi is a strong supporter of the Iran deal that many believe will speed Islamic regime’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. In similar style, when the 44th president caved to Russian complaints and canceled missile defense in Europe, Pelosi called it a “brilliant” move.
 
Likewise, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s famous re-set gave the Russians virtually everything they wanted, including the most highly intrusive inspection program the United States had ever accepted. “We want to ensure that every question that the Russian military or Russian government asks is answered,” Clinton said after meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

Read the whole thing™.

The Best British Political Insults, From Churchill to Corbyn

From Churchill to Corbyn: the best British political insults is a Daily Telegraph piece featuring such VIPs as Winston Churchill, Maggie Thatcher, Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, and Jeremy Corbyn.

Unexpected! The Economist Flabbergasted by "The World Economy's Surprising Rise"

"On the up" writes The Economist of the world economy, the weekly's front page devoted to its "surprising rise."

“IF WINTER comes,” the poet Shelley asked, “can Spring be far behind?” For the best part of a decade the answer as far as the world economy has been concerned has been an increasingly weary “Yes it can”. Now, though, after testing the faith of the most patient souls with glimmers that came to nothing, things seem to be warming up. It looks likely that this year, for the first time since 2010, rich-world and developing economies will put on synchronised growth spurts.

 … American employers, excluding farms, added 235,000 workers to their payrolls in February, well above the recent average.

Needless to say, all articles must address various caveats, but who do you think appears front and center in the negatives of an MSM outlet such as The Economist?

There are still plenty of reasons to fret: China’s debt mountain; the flaws in the foundations of the euro; Donald Trump’s protectionist tendencies; and so on. 

Plenty o' caveats, as we said. But of these, The Donald's name appears more and more often as we read through this issue's main article, notably towards the end, when the London weekly newspaper surmises about the "things that might yet derail the recovery."

Mr Trump might make good on the repeated threats he made in his campaign to raise import tariffs on countries he considers guilty of unfair trade, thus taking a decisive step away from globalisation just as the world’s main economic blocs are at last starting to get into sync.

In a separate editorial, the London weekly newspaper warns that

The tussle over who created the recovery is about more than bragging rights. An endorsement for populist economics … would also favour the wrong policies. Mr Trump’s proposed tax cuts would pump up the economy that now least needs support—and complicate the Fed’s task. Fortified by misplaced belief in their own world view, the administration’s protectionists might urge Mr Trump to rip up the infrastructure of globalisation (bypassing the World Trade Organisation in pursuing grievances against China, say), risking a trade war.

Indeed, The Economist, another bastion of the Western world (i.e., the free market) that shows signs of having been taken over by leftists, can not seem to figure out the puzzling question of why "In America imports of both consumer goods and capital goods are up" while the rest of the world is happily following along.

Why such good luck?

Why such unexpected good luck?

One thing that the London luminaries are 100% sure about, as the editorial states unequivocally, is that "Most important,"

the upswing has nothing to do with Mr Trump’s “America First” economic nationalism.

That is good to know, since The Economist is forced to admit that there is some amount of "speculation" — promptly mocked through the use of a Keynesian term (showing who is now lionized at a magazine once dedicated to economic liberalism) — running about:

There has been speculation that the “animal spirits” of business folk have been lifted by Mr Trump’s election in November, and that cuts in tax and regulations, and a subsequent return of the estimated $1trn of untaxed cash held abroad by companies based in America, will fuel a big boom in business investment.

Who'd thunk?

Is "Russkies, Russkies everywhere!" the beginning of a leftist McCarthyism with justification for domestic espionage and for pressure on domestic reporting?

According to [Stephen F.] Cohen, "Russkies, russkies everywhere!" is the beginning of a leftist McCarthyism where they justify domeatic espionage and pressuring domestic reporting.  

Thus writes N-Jo about the "New Cold War Eve of the New HUAC" on the (highly-recommended) John Batchelor show (Stitcher audio).

Schiff and Nunes had already agreed to the scope of their investigation when, on March 4th, Trump wrote, in an early-morning series of tweets,

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” He added, “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

Talking to reporters a few days later, Nunes mounted a defense of Trump’s reckless allegation.

“The President is a neophyte to politics,” Nunes said. “He’s been doing this a little over a year. And I think a lot of the things that he says you guys sometimes take literally. Sometimes he doesn’t have twenty-seven lawyers and staff looking at what he does, which is, I think, at times refreshing.” 

He added, “I don’t think we should attack the President for tweeting.” The White House, struggling to defend Trump’s allegation, deflected requests for proof by calling on Congress to investigate. Schiff gladly accepted the challenge—on Monday, most of the attention will be on Trump and his claim that Obama ordered surveillance against him….”

Liberal pundit admits that the aim of liberal social policy since FDR has not been to lift people up but to buy their votes

Might liberals be warming up to federalism?

asks Benny Huang.

If a recent article from The New Republic is any indicator, the answer is yes.

In his piece “Bluexit: A Modern Proposal for Separating Blue States From Red,” self-described “Blue State Patriot” Kevin Baker lays out his case for states doing their own thing within the structure of a pared-down Union. “We’ll turn Blue America into a world-class incubator for progressive programs and policies, a laboratory for a guaranteed income and a high-speed public rail system and free public universities,” writes Baker. “We’ll focus on getting our own house in order, while [the red states’ house] falls into disrepair and ruin.”

Though his piece drips with coastal elitism, it does offer a glimmer of hope that liberals might someday be persuaded to return to the system that our Founders intended—federalism. They’ll do it for their own selfish reasons, of course, but I won’t look this gift horse in the mouth.

I suspect that Baker’s change of heart might have something to do with last November’s election or with the elections of 1994, 2010, and 2014 which he mentions explicitly as “staggering defeats.” Clearly, his embrace of federalism is self-serving. The leviathan federal government suited him just fine until he lost control of it. Now it’s a menace.

Yet my heart sings with joy to hear an elitist New Republic writer say,

“So: What are we in Blue America going to do about it?…For starters, we now endorse cutting the federal income tax to the bone—maybe even…abolishing it altogether. We will raise our state and local taxes accordingly to pay for anything we might need or want. We ask nothing more from you and your federal government. Nothing for infrastructure, or housing, or the care of the poor and sick—not that you gave us much, anyway. All we want is our money, and you can keep yours, dollar for dollar.”

That sounds fantastic! It’s how America was supposed to work and how it largely did work until the Progressive Era.

Kevin Baker argues that the federal compact has been a raw deal for most blue states because they’re wealthier and pay more into the system than they get out. He prattles on with invective, bashing Mississippians for example, and their “sucking at the federal teet.” The picture he paints of red state America is one of despair, a place that needs the coasts a lot more than the coasts need them.

The argument is not entirely unconvincing. The South has more than its fair share of social problems and a small class of big earners, focused mostly in New York and LA, shoulder an enormous portion of the tax burden. Still, there are both charming places and hellholes in red states and blue states alike.

I don’t want to put words in Baker’s mouth but he seems to be saying that liberals have been “voting against their own economic interests” for a very long time. That phrase has been en vogue among liberals since Thomas Frank’s book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” was published in 2004, though liberals more often apply it to their opponents than to themselves. Baker uses that exact phrase in a remark directed at conservative America:

“Go ahead, keep on voting against your own economic interests to satisfy your need to control other people’s bodies, sex lives, and recreational habits. We’ll be creating cities and states that will defend gay marriage, a woman’s right to choose, and sensible gun control against your intrusive federal judiciary.”

In a previous column I argued that voting for one’s quote-unquote “economic interests” has become Democrat code for voting for handouts. Voting for one’s real economic interests means voting for jobs, which the Democrats seem intent on destroying.

A telling example can be found in rural Owsley County, Kentucky, which happens to be very Republican and very white. Precisely because of its demographics liberals love to point out (correctly) that Owsley is America’s most welfare-addicted county. The jobs are gone and its dwindling population is hanging on by their fingernails. But what happened to those jobs? According to one article, “The decline in the profits from coal, tobacco and lumber industries led to a harsh toll being taken on the community.”

It’s hard to think of three industries that liberals have tried harder to strangle. Hillary Clinton even promised on the campaign trail that she would “put a lot of…coal miners out of business.” President Obama didn’t just talk about it, he did it. With Owsley County’s three most vital industries effectively banished, welfare became the people’s consolation prize. Now liberal politicians wonder why the victims of their policies don’t vote for their “economic interests.” Answer: they do. They’re still smarting over the purposeful annihilation of their livelihoods and I don’t blame them.

… What strikes me about Baker’s “Bluexit” proposal is its unguardedness. The author comes perilously close to admitting that the aim of liberal social policy since FDR has not been to lift people up but to buy their votes. Rarely do liberals speak with such candor. More often they try to disguise their agenda as altruism. Under no circumstances should we allow them to get away with this. Liberals don’t have big hearts; they have an insidious agenda and they never stop pushing it.

The reason the federal government has its fingers in everything from home mortgages to school lunches has nothing to do with compassion. The liberals who dreamed up these schemes couldn’t care less if you have a home or if your kids get to eat; what they want is to be able to control the states and the people by threatening to withhold funds.

And they want these people to show some gratitude as well, preferably in the form of ballots cast for the Democratic Party, each one a little thank you note. Kevin Baker basically admits this …

Baker is merely venting the hurt feelings of a coastal elitist who thought he had a deal with the red states until they failed to uphold up their end of it. The deal was simple: the South, the Midwest, and the Rocky Mountain states would accept money from the federal government and in turn its people would become reliable liberal Democrats. These people would be expected to prostitute their sacred votes, and to abandon their values, their way of life, and their integrity in exchange for infrastructure investment and direct handouts. This is essentially the approach the Democrats took with poor urban blacks and they’re upset that it hasn’t worked as well with poor rural whites.

It’s easy to see why the coastal elitists would be upset that they have nothing to show for all the wealth they plowed into places they diligently avoid visiting. It wasn’t charity, after all. It was a political investment and apparently not a wise one. The deal obviously should have been articulated more explicitly because those on the receiving end of all that money didn’t realize it was tit-for-tat. It’s not that they didn’t understand the terms of the bargain—it’s that they didn’t realize they’d entered into a bargain at all. They thought it was free money!

Which leaves people like Kevin Baker fuming. He’s been paying taxes for a long time to support people he doesn’t particularly like in hopes that someday they’ll become good liberals. It hasn’t worked and Baker is sick of trying. He writes: “In short, we’ll take our arrogant, cosmopolitan, liberal-elite football—wait, make that soccer ball—and go home.”

Great! Where do I sign?

Federal aid has always been a vote-buying scheme, which would be immoral even if it worked. Thank goodness it hasn’t worked—or at least not consistently—because it’s given the vote buyers reason to question the wisdom of the practice.

The New York Times can’t possibly rededicate itself to the truth because they never cared about it in the first place

Rather than broadening its appeal, the Times seems to be pursuing more of the same old crowd that already buys The Old Gray Lady—snobby liberals

writes Benny Huang.

It isn’t difficult to guess which target audience the New York Times was aiming for with its new advertising campaign launched during the ultra-politicized (and ultra-liberal) Academy Awards. Rather than broadening its appeal, the Times seems to be pursuing more of the same old crowd that already buys The Old Gray Lady—snobby liberals.

The ad features black letters across a white screen blaring “The truth is our nation is more divided than ever” followed by a series of claims all beginning with “The truth is…” Some of these assertions might originate in the mouth of a liberal (“The truth is women’s rights are human rights”), while others might be uttered by a conservative (“The truth is we have to protect our borders.”) The ad’s message, if I understand it correctly, is that the New York Times stands ready to help its readers navigate a churning sea of competing truth claims. The ad concludes: “The truth is more important now than ever.”

Lurking within the Times’s slick new sales pitch is the insidious implication that the value of truth fluctuates over time in the same manner as cattle futures or precious metals. Right now that value is at an all-time high. I can only conclude that the New York Times didn’t value truth as much in days gone by.

Naturally I would expect the Times to defend its sacred honor. They might say that they cared about the truth in the past—but they care even more now. In true Spinal Tap fashion, the Times has cranked up the truthiness from ten…to eleven! And I’m sure that’s how their new slogan was intended to be understood.

But that’s not how comparatives work. If truth is “more important now than ever,” it must have been somewhat less important in the past. When might that have been? Perhaps it was when the New York Times’s very own Walter Duranty was concealing the horrors of Stalin’s Soviet Union from its readership—and won the Pultizer Prize for it? No, I don’t think that’s what they meant. Or was it when their affirmative action baby Jayson Blair was caught making up whole stories? That can’t be it either.

So what did they mean? The ad’s subtext isn’t difficult to interpret: Barely more than a month into Donald Trump’s presidency, the most circulated newspaper in the country suddenly promised its readers even more “truth.” The New York Times was clearly promoting itself as a Trump Administration Survival Guide of sorts. It’s going to be a long four years, so curl up with the newspaper of record and let their crack team of reporters get you through till 2021!

Will the New York Times concern itself as much with truth (or “truth”) four years from now? Well, that all depends. If Donald Trump wins reelection the New York Times will only increase its already considerable regard for the truth. But if his Democratic challenger wins, the Times’s passion for truth won’t burn so hot anymore. Has there ever been a better definition of journalistic bias? When the value that journalists place on truth rises and falls with elections, that’s prima facie evidence that the news is slanted.

Even if the Times doesn’t realize it, their “now more than ever” mantra is an admission of guilt. Deep down they know that they let the last guy off easy—but now things will be different! To be sure, the Times and the larger media establishment fought a few battles with the Obama Administration. Former editor Jill Abramson called the previous administration “the most secretive” she had ever dealt with. In the twilight of the Obama Administration the paper ran a scathing editorial entitled “If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama.”

But the New York Times never advertised itself as an Obama Survival Guide, either overtly or by innuendo. They spun the news his way most of the time because they largely shared his agenda. President Obama, however, was not satisfied with only 98% positive coverage. He wanted the newspaper to read like a White House press release every morning without exception. Obama picked a fight with the press but the press picked a fight with Trump.

I should mention that I totally support a vigorous free press. It wouldn’t bother me at all if the Times started caring about all those things they didn’t care about when Obama reigned supreme—enumerated powers, checks and balances, and federalism, for example. As long as the truth is their only agenda, I believe some robust journalistic oversight of this administration is in order. Unfortunately, I don’t think truth will be their agenda because it never has been.

The Times lies. A lot. There are many considerations it elevates above the truth but none more than their own deranged sense of “justice.” A telling example can be found in its coverage of the transgender bathroom wars. That story heated up again in recent weeks when a gender-dysphoric Virginia teenager, Gavin Grimm, seemed on the verge of taking her case to the Supreme Court. The court recently decided that it will not hear her case.

In story after story the Times has referred to Grimm with male pronouns and as “Mr.” They seemed to go out of their way to tell their readership that this confused 17 year-old girl is actually a boy. A naïve reader might think that the whole story is about a boy who isn’t allowed to use the boy’s bathroom, which is the exact deception that the propagandists want people to internalize. This story is about the freedom to pee, don’t you know? Except it isn’t. It’s about the freedom to speak the truth when powerful forces demand that you believe a lie.

Gavin Grimm’s femaleness is a fact—not an opinion, viewpoint, prejudice or conceptualization. It is not a social construct and it wasn’t “assigned” to her by the obstetrician who stamped her birth certificate. When people use male pronouns to refer to her they are consenting to a lie—which is itself a form of lying. If the New York Times wants to demonstrate its new and improved truth focus, it could start by not lying to its readers about Grimm and her story. That might hurt Grimm’s feelings, but so what? The New York Times is, or claims to be, concerned with truth first and foremost.

One of the Times’s premiere liars is its chief White House correspondent, Glenn Thrush. Thrush only began working for the Times in 2017 and he was hired for the prestigious position despite (or because of) the fact that he was caught submitting portions of an article he was working on to Clinton surrogate John Podesta for his approval. (In the email, Thrush even called himself a “hack” which is probably the most truthful thing he’s said in a while.) He recently penned what was supposed to be a factual news item about Trump’s second attempt at a temporary travel ban from terrorist hot spots, though it wasn’t subtle in its attempt to downplay the threat of Islamic terrorism.

According to Thrush, “Muslim extremists have accounted for 16 out of 240,000 murders in the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.” Wow! There’s wrong and then there’s crazy wrong. Even if we assume Thrush’s self-serving baseline (since 9/11), which necessarily excludes the largest terror attack in American history by design and by default, Thrush’s nifty factoid isn’t even close to the truth.

Omar Mateen, the infamous Pulse nightclub shooter, killed more than three times that many people (49 in total) all by himself. A Muslim married couple in San Bernardino killed 14. And that doesn’t include the Chattanooga and Little Rock recruiting station shootings, the Boston marathon bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, the St. Cloud mall stabbing, and the Ohio State rampage. Even the Beltway Sniper case had an Islamist (and racist anti-white) angle and could be counted as Islamic terror.

How could Thrush have gotten the number so wrong? Was it just an honest mistake? I doubt it. Whenever bias rears its ugly head, claims of mere error can usually be laid to rest by asking one simple question—what are the odds that this writer would have made a proportional mistake in the other direction? It stretches credulity to think that Thrush might have overblown his number by a factor of five or six instead of minimizing it by the same factor.

Glenn Trush lied to advnce his agenda. The Times’s factcheckers must have been on vacation or something because they also failed to catch this obvious falsehood. Or are they similarly unconcerned with the truth?

The New York Times can’t possibly rededicate itself to the truth because they never cared about it in the first place. It’s a newspaper written by liars for audience that likes being lied to. It’s Fake News™ of the worst variety and should be treated as such.

Why Are Rats Proliferating in Paris? Could it be the European Union and its faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats?

Rat invasion is an old problem in Paris 

writes Alissa J Rubin

— and a new one — and it is hard to get a grip on.

In 2014, the city promised a 100 percent “de-ratization.”

In the 19th century, rats terrified and disgusted Parisians who knew that five centuries earlier, the creatures had brought the bubonic plague across the Mediterranean.

The plague ravaged the city, as it did much of Europe, killing an estimated 100,000 Parisians, between a third and half the population at the time. It recurred periodically for four more centuries. Not surprisingly, the experience left Paris with a millennium-long aversion to rodents.

Today, no one talks about a 100 percent rat-free Paris. But why is the problem worse now than in the past?

“We don’t know exactly why,” Mr. Demodice said. “I think it might be because there is an overpopulation underground because the usual habitat for this animal are the sewers, underground, not above ground.”

“Our work is to push them back down,” he said.

But why are they proliferating? Could it be everybody’s favorite scapegoat — the European Union and its faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats?

 

Yes, it could.

New regulations from Brussels, the European Union’s headquarters, have forced countries to change how they use rat poison, said Dr. Jean-Michel Michaux, a veterinarian and head of the Urban Animals Scientific and Technical Institute in Paris.

The old way of poisoning rodents involved a sort of deadly snack service in which park employees put lethal pellets directly into the burrows where the rats lived or sprinkled a poison powder along the underground byways used by the rats.

 … Now the European Union requires that the poison be secured in small black plastic boxes, known as bait stations, and the rats have to actively seek it out. The United States has similar restrictions.

In Paris, however, the rats can easily find a three-course meal much of the year within a stone’s throw of their burrows — at least around the Tour St. Jacques. And they appear to prefer a half-eaten baguette with butter and ham, a piece of apple and an unfinished container of pasta, prosciutto and peas.

Three park workers tasked with checking the poison boxes scattered every 25 feet among the shrubbery at the Tour St. Jacques did not find even one breached by a rat last Friday.

Is it unreasonable to ask people who want to live in open societies to show their faces to the community?

Anne Rosselot of Concord, New Hampshire, self-identifies as follows:

I am a woman, a feminist, a Democrat, an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter, the proud mother of a lesbian, a progressive Christian, a supporter of civil rights, a believer that Black Lives Matter, and a welcomer of refugees and other immigrants.

Yet because I oppose the wearing of the full Muslim veil in public, which functions as a face mask, [the New York Times] would label me a bigot [“Veiled Bigotry in Germany” (editorial, Dec. 8)].

People may feel that masked people in public are vaguely sinister and threatening; one instinctively looks at a person’s face to see whether this is a friend or a foe. It isn’t bigotry.

While the wearing of the veil may be protected speech here, it is not unreasonable to ask people who want to live in open societies to show their faces to the community. This is not bigotry.

By Inserting a Modifier Before the Words that Are Valuable to Society, Says Evan Sayet, the Modern Liberal Changes the Meaning of Concepts Like "Correct," "Justice," and "Violence" 180 Degrees

Wednesday No Pasarán gave you some key excerpts from Evan Sayet's

ten-year anniversary speech at Heritage Foundation on How the Modern Liberal Thinks: And Why He’s Convinced That Ignorance Is Bliss (thanks to Duncan).

One of the main weapons of the Modern Liberal, Evan Sayet said during the lecture which was introduced by Becky Norton Dunlop, is language:

I want to talk a little bit about the language of Modern Liberalism. Because since the Modern Liberal is always wrong, he has had to find a way to manipulate the language, to turn wrong into right. And you will notice there is a pattern, this is something he does repeatedly, he takes what is valuable, what is important, what is important to us, as a society, and then he inserts a modifier, just before the word, that changes the meaning of the word 180 degrees.

For example, the most obvious one, the one that we see and speak of the most, you and I know how important it is to be correct: we need to be correct in our facts, we need to be correct in our logic, we need to be correct in our conclusions, because if we're not, then we cannot better ourselves, we cannot find the right answer to things, we need to be correct all along those lines.

Since the modern liberal is never correct, he inserts the modifier "politically" before the word, and it switches the meaning of the words 180º.

I'll give you another example: dear to our hearts, central to our purpose, is the concept of justice — justice being (I made up this definition, but it works for me) the closest possible wedding of behavior to outcome. If you work hard, if you do the right things, justice requires — justice doesn't always prevail — but justice requires that you be rewarded. If you do the wrong things, justice should see you in some way hindered or punished.

But since the modern liberal does not believe in justice, he does not believe in individual behavior dictating righteous outcomes, he inserts the modifier "social" before the word "justice" and it spins it 180º.

So that you and I will look at something like Ferguson, Missouri, and while it saddens us to the core that Michael Brown died, there was no injustice in that outcome — it was closely wedded to Michael Brown's own behaviors. But to the Social Justice Warriors, Michael Brown is a hero, there is a plaque in Ferguson, Missouri, and [their] justice required that Darryl Wilson and others, police officers, they are the bad guys, not because anything they did made them bad, but because social justice is the antithesis of justice. …

Modern Liberalism is also the antithesis of Judaism. The great gift of the Jews was the concept of justice, the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth — which sounds and is misused by many to mean vengeance, it doesn't mean that in the slightest, it means the exact opposite. So one of the first times in human history that it was codified that the punishment should not exceed the crime — it didn't matter if you were a pharaoh, and somebody stepped on your toe, you couldn't kill their families — the punishment should fit the crime. Modern Liberalism, the dominant ideology of today's Democratic Party, is the antithesis of Judaism, the gift of the Jews is justice, but the Modern Liberal does not believe in justice, he believes in its antithesis.

The author of The Kindergarden of Eden (How the Modern Liberal Thinks), also on Kindle, concludes his speech by giving us a third example, one "so ludicrous … it would be funny if it wasn't so horrifying," from Hollywood honchos responding in the 1990s to charges of violence in gangsta rap and in the movie industry. The producers replied that, compared to their own "realistic violence", everybody seemed to be ignoring

the worst kind of violence of all … the psychic violence of (beat) the Bill Cosby Show. [!] … It's insane. But once again you see that [the Modern Liberals] have inserted the modifier [psychic] before the word, and it quite literally spins the meaning of the word 180º.

Question time starts at 48:00, with the second question going to a blogger from No Pasarán.

The view from the seventh floor of the Heritage Foundation

Evan Sayet: The only way not to be a bigot is to never think at all … The first time you do think is the last time you're a leftist

Evan Sayet returns to Heritage to revisit his “unified field theory” of Liberalism and break new ground in explaining the ideology that he argues leads those on today’s Left to ignore the facts, manipulate the evidence, reject reason and, in doing so, end up not only always wrong but always as wrong as wrong can be.

Ten years after his momentous speech on How the Modern Liberal Thinks — the "single most-viewed lecture in Heritage Foundation's entire history" was called by Andrew Breitbart one of the five most important conservative speeches ever given — Evan Sayet returned to the Heritage Foundation (following a stint at CPAC) to be introduced by Becky Norton Dunlop for a tenth-anniversary re-do (thanks to Duncan), similarly entitled How the Modern Liberal Thinks: And Why He’s Convinced That Ignorance Is Bliss.

[after 14:40] In the 1980s, thinking was outlawed.  It was deemed by the left to be a hate crime. … The only way not to be a bigot (beat) is to never think at all. … It's actually a utopian ideology … the mindless foot-soldiers, those who have been indoctrinated, they believe that if you eliminate thinking — because thinking is an act of bigotry — you can eliminate bigotry. And if you eliminate bigotry, the world would be a place where everybody loves one another, and: kumbaya. … So the Modern Liberal is raised to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative, because it will bring about paradise.

Be sure to check out his comments about Steven Spielberg (the man behind Munich is "a terrific director") and especially the writer of Born in the USA ("I am the world's biggest Bruce Springsteen fan — I think he is a lyrical genius, I think he is a good and decent man, I also think when it come to politics he's an idiot") and his protest song about the Vietnam War.

[29:50] I have an expression: The first time you think is the last time you're a Democrat

Comparing conservative organizations with liberal groups:

The biggest difference between the left and the right [is that] we recognize the existence of the better … But because the liberal does not believe in the better — while we spend our lives trying to better ourselves — they spend their lives just being—themselves. And its the same self they were, unchanged.

And it's very telling: the organizations that we join are organizations that are intended to better ourselves — whether it's the church where we go to better ourselves, morally, whether it's the boy scouts that we join to better ourselves in the real world, of practicality — while the groups that the left joins are groups that are designed to change you—not themselves …

One class of organization that are designed to better ourselves is the 12-Step Programs, and Evan Sayet concludes his comments on Alcoholics Anonymous and the like-minded groups inspired by AA with this thought:

 … there is one word that is spoken over and over and over and over again, almost like a mantra, and that's the word "grateful" — and "gratitude." Yet modern liberalism is the antithesis of gratitude — you cannot be grateful for what you are entitled to. Entitlement is the antithesis of gratitude, so every step along the way, the one program, the one set of rules, that take the failure and [turn it around, making the group members] successful and happy, is the antithesis of how the Modern Liberal lives his life.

More:

One of the really childish things, and more evidence that [the leftists] really are children, is the hyperbolic language that they use, that's reminiscent of children … It's true. If George Bush is Hitler, Barack Obama is God. Truly: Evan Thomas, a once important reporter for a once important newsweekly called Newsweek — imaginatively — said "Barack Obama stands above us like a god." And this is nothing new, of course it doesn't even have to be anything that's real, the real world doesn't even contain their hyperbolic talk. So: Dick Cheney was Darth Vader, while John Kennedy was a mythological character living in Camelot. And this is very much the same conversation, the same thing, you hear from a 5-year old child, where if they get what they want, you're the best mommy in the whole wide world, and if you don't get what they want, you're the worst parent who's ever lived. It's the same hyperbolic thing…

That was from question time, which started at 48:00, with the second question going to a blogger from No Pasarán.

And don't forget: Evan Sayet is the author of The KinderGarden Of Eden
(How the Modern Liberal Thinks), also on Kindle.

Related: By Inserting a Modifier Before the Words that Are Valuable to Society, Says Evan Sayet, the Modern Liberal Changes the Meaning of Concepts Like "Correct," "Justice," and "Violence" 180 degrees

Evan Sayet next to the bust of Edwin Feulner

CPAC Attendees Reveal What Trump Agenda Item Is Most Important to Them and Share Their Hopes for the Future

At CPAC in the Gaylord resort's Potomac Ballroom, Da Tech Guy interviews two Pennsylvanian gals, Carla and Michelle, in what seems to be the special Pennsylvania section at CPAC.

Being interviewed by Peter Ingemi earns each interviewee a cannoli every year (the final and most important question of all: "May I offer you a cannoli?"), but because women often seem to be (trust me on this) on a diet, they often pass, although one of them "passed" her Italian dessert over to the (lucky) webmaster of No Pasarán.

Joy Villa Is the Keynote Speaker at March4Trump's D.C. Event

At the March4Trump event beside the Washington Monument:
Joy Villa Speaks At the March 4 Trump Rally In Washington, D.C.

Patriotism runs deep and full in America 🤗💯🇺🇸😘 #March4Trumpdc #March4Trump #trump @realDonaldTrump @POTUS pic.twitter.com/wCVJuqX43a

— Joy Villa (@Joy_Villa) March 5, 2017

I'm honored to support our Nation as we stand behind our President ❤️🎶🇺🇸🏛 https://t.co/0KXkQ98Z69

— Joy Villa (@Joy_Villa) March 4, 2017

So much support and Lövë! #USA #MAGA 😍🇺🇸🎉🏛@March4Trump @realDonaldTrump @TrumpTrainLGBT @andresoriano pic.twitter.com/fmDanQkyC4

— Joy Villa (@Joy_Villa) March 5, 2017

Applause at March4Trump Event in Washington, D.C., for Savvy Insights About Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus Poem

During the March4Trump event beside the Washington Monument on the capital's mall, one Paris blogger got up (at 8:50) to speak about the era of the drama queens and to read excerpts from one Tennessee native's insightful thoughts about the Statue of Liberty and and the Emma Lazarus poem.

#March4Trump Tips? https://t.co/Co4HHX86Ok https://t.co/Th2Udal2UE

— March 4 Trump (@March4Trump) March 4, 2017

At 08:50 @nopasa's #Eriksvane reads @chip_crain's insightful comment about the Statue of Liberty & Emma Lazarus poem https://t.co/k8wIklnpYM https://t.co/CHBUx99IjN

— ¡No Pasarán! (@nopasa) March 5, 2017

In the Kellyanne "Scandal" Photo, French Magazine Lops Heads Off Trump's Visitors, Hiding the Fact that They Are All Black

Asking "Is there still a president in the White House?", a French People-type magazine reports the news (sic) by showing the famed Kellyanne Conway picture on the Oval Office couch (with the word Scandal superimposed, at the link), while cutting off the heads of the visitors present, all of whom happen to be African-American.

Apparently, the conservative contention that without Kellyanne, the MSM would never have showed Donald Trump in a room full of blacks turns out to have been overly optimistic. In a move reminiscent of the treatment of the armed Tea Partier at the beginning of the Obama administration (a black man filmed from the shoulders down to hide his race and thereby pretend he is one of the movement's nefarious white supremacists), the Gala editors do their bit to make sure that Donald Trump and all Republicans can still be called racist in the future.

There is not even attempt to achieve balance by similarly cutting off the right side of the photo to make it into a more traditional 4:3 or 3:2 shot (as they do in their email service, below), Gala renders it into a little-used panoramic 16:9 by simply slicing off the top.

We go on to hear about how this is but the latest way in which "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has evidently lost its prestige", after such things as Donald Trump's daughter coming to the White House unannounced (Ivanka, who is never mentioned by name, has "no official function"!), and letting her three children run around, "as if it were a drop-in daycare center." (No mention of the Kennedy clan in the White House, Obama's feet on the Resolute desk because, hey, that's okay, they are Democrats, and when JFK Jr peeks out from a panel in the desk, that's cute, that's part of the charm, part of the glamour! and how 'bout Bill Clinton?)

The "50ish-year-old blonde" thought it alright, "in spite of the presence of an AFP photographer" (pretending the Agence France Presse shutterman was the only reporter in the room manages to add a French touch o' pride to the article), to "act like a teen-ager" and "like an out-of-control groupie."

Only once or twice does Thomas Durand mention the fact that the visitors are black and that is to ask whether the "50-year-old blonde's" attitude can be explained by "extreme relaxation or [by] lack of respect for these leaders of the African-American community?"

Just to make sure its readers understand how insidious the whole Trump administration is, Gala goes on to describe every blunder of the "former New Jersey beauty queen" in the past year or so, real or alleged, has made, including the fact that she is the one who came up with "the concept of 'alternative facts,' developed by the writer George Orwell in his novel 1984."

No, we are not entirely sure, with that last quote in mind, to what degree Gala's censors and photo-cutters are aware they are being, shall we say, disingenuous…

But you have to show understanding for the liberals, American as well as foreign, and for the mainstream media, American as well as foreign.

If they didn't do things like focus on the minutiae of a presidential adviser or lop off the heads of minority visitors to the Oval Office, how else would they manage to convince people, American as well as foreign (first and foremost among whom, themselves), that U.S. Republicans and conservatives are nefarious beings and despicable racists that need to be resisted, and combated, heroically, every inch of the way?

Obviously #Dems made a big issue over @KellyannePolls feet on the couch to draw away attention of Black leaders supporting #PresidentTrump pic.twitter.com/HAulwmpFsR

— Brian Fraser (@bfraser747) March 2, 2017

CPAC Memories

Check out the National Review's slideshow (CPAC at Twitter).

John Lewis knows which buttons to push to inflame black people and he relishes every opportunity to pound on them like an amateur pianist

What Moral Authority Does a Lying Racist Like John Lewis Have?

asks Benny Huang.

As the leadership of the Democratic Party gathered in Atlanta this past weekend to choose a new chair the party’s rank and file waited with bated breathe to see who would carry their banner into 2018 and beyond. The acknowledged favorite was Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison, a practitioner of the same kind of poisonous identity politics that failed the Democrats in 2016 and seems to have cost them a plethora of governorships and state legislatures in the previous four election cycles. Ellison is a former member of Louis Farrakhan’s racist, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam and apparently used to refer to himself as Keith X. Ellison in obvious homage to Malcolm X. He has stated publicly that blacks have no obligation to follow the law and once compared 9/11 to the 1933 Reichstag Fire, implying that the attacks were staged in order to give President Bush unchecked Hitlerian powers.

But Ellison lost, thank goodness. The surprise winner in a very close election was the slightly less radical Tom Perez, former Secretary of Labor under President Obama. Perez then united the party’s left wing with its far-left wing by appointing Ellison as his deputy. To my knowledge, those are the only wings the jackass party has left.

Among those party heavyweights who lined up to support Ellison was Atlanta’s hometown congressman, John Lewis. The elderly Lewis is perhaps best known as a hero of the so-called civil rights movement. “Hero” is practically his middle name. Hardly a media report has been written about Lewis in the past thirty years that hasn’t mentioned that he is a “civil right icon,” or that he rode with the Freedom Riders—and had his skull split open for it.

Congressman Lewis has become a living symbol of the ideals that the movement supposedly espoused—justice, forgiveness, fairness, truth, and reconciliation. How then could he have supported a Farrakhan-wannabe like Keith Ellison? The answer is quite simple: John Lewis does not stand for any of the aforementioned virtues and likely never did. He’s a liar, a race-baiter, and a tribalist. He knows which buttons to push to inflame black people and he relishes every opportunity to pound on them like an amateur pianist.

John Lewis threw his support to the black supremacist Keith Ellison because the two are kindred spirits. Both are advocates for their race first and foremost. Their constituents come second, if at all. Both belong to the Congressional Black Caucus, a legislative body with the racist slogan “Black people have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies…just permanent interests.” The slogan begs the question—do congressmen represent the interests of their races or their constituents?

John Lewis’s whole persona is a lie. He’s not a dignified older gentleman who turned the other cheek when racist white people cracked him over the head. He’s a bitter old fogie who still seeks revenge for the way he was treated growing up some seven decades ago, if not against the people who dealt him injury at least against people of similar complexion. If he were honest he would admit it.

But John Lewis is [anything but] honest. In 2010, for example, Lewis and a party of congressional Democrats made the highly unusual move of crossing through a crowd of Tea Party protesters on their way toward the US Capitol at the height of the Obamacare debate. I say “unusual” because members of Congress almost never walk through the front doors of the Capitol; they enter through underground tunnels connected to the various office buildings that surround it. It seemed that Lewis et al. were trying to get a rise out of the protesters. They succeeded. Protesters chanted “Kill the bill!” which is policy-related and has nothing whatsoever to do with race.

Lying John Lewis, however, claimed that someone had shouted the word “ni**er” at him and the media reported his accusation as fact. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), who was also present, claimed that “It was a chorus” of n-words, while Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) claimed that he heard the word “fifteen times” from about fifteen people. Despite plenty of camera phones recording the encounter from various perspectives, none captured a single racial epithet.

The late Andrew Breitbart was so sure that it hadn’t happened that he offered to donate $10,000 to the United Negro College Fund if anyone could provide video evidence to prove Lewis’s claim. When no one came forward, Breitbart upped the ante to $100,000. To date, no one has provided any video evidence of Lewis’s allegations, though lying Al Sharpton claims to have seen this mysterious tape. He must not want the UNCF to get a big check.

No one called John Lewis a “ni**er.” Not fifteen times or even once. He lied. And I’m sure that he was quite disappointed not to be called a nigger because that’s the reaction he tried to provoke. After the Tea Partiers failed to take the bait, he and his buddies Cleaver and Carson slandered them with the heinous accusation of racism–an offense that is considered in our society to be roughly equivalent to pedophilia. Lewis was relying on his undeserved moral authority to make the slime stick to his opponents–and it nearly worked.

Lewis lies like he breathes. This past January he made headlines by refusing to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration, telling NBC’s Chuck Todd that “I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected.” That’s really rich coming from Lewis, given that the entire “civil rights movement” was the Communist Party USA’s pet project. If the KGB wasn’t calling the shots directly from Moscow they were only degree removed.

Lewis claimed that this was the first inauguration he’d missed since his election to Congress in 1986, which the press reported as a fact. As usual, if John Lewis says it, reporters print it. But it was just another one of John Lewis’s lies, this one calculated to make it seem as if extraordinary circumstances had forced the honorable John Lewis to do something he really didn’t want to. The extraordinary circumstances are pretty simple—the Democrat lost. But as a matter of fact Trump’s was the second inauguration he’d spent pouting in the corner. The first was in 2001 when he’d stayed home in Atlanta on the grounds that George W. Bush was a pretender to the presidency.

Since coming to Washington more than thirty years ago, Lewis has boycotted exactly half of all Republican inaugurations. When seen in this light, his boycott seems a lot less principled and a lot more like sour grapes. I wonder how Lewis might have reacted to a congressman boycotting Obama’s inauguration because of a perceived lack of legitimacy. Might he have called that person racist? I think so. Obama was not illegitimate, of course, but neither was Bush and neither is Trump. All three of those men were duly elected, though Lewis boycotted two of them and then lied to make the second one look unprecedented.

Besides being a liar, John Lewis is also a racial demagogue. In 2006 he joined forces with two other members of Atlanta’s black political establishment to release a radio ad intended to scare blacks to the polls in a county election. “Your very life may depend on it,” said Lewis at the conclusion of the ad. Yikes! Whose life hinges on the result of a county election? The New York Times’s coverage of the ad was very vague, leaving the impression that it was a big to-do about nothing. (They made sure, of course, to mention that John Lewis was “was beaten during the 1965 voting rights march from Selma, Ala.,”—just in case you didn’t know.) Here’s what Lewis actually said: “On November 7^th, we face the most dangerous situation we ever have. If you think fighting off dogs and water hoses in the ’60s was bad, imagine if we sit idly by and let the right-wing Republicans take control of the County Commission?” It was fear-mongering of the lowest variety but it worked. The Republican was defeated.

Why do we hold this clown in such high esteem? Perhaps it’s because most of us, myself included, learned very poor history in public schools. Our teachers didn’t even attempt to tell the truth about the so-called civil rights movement. That’s why we grant this man almost unlimited moral authority. We think that calling John Lewis a lying racist is disrespectful—and we wouldn’t want to disrespect a “hero” of that vaunted movement because that feels too much like disrespecting the movement itself. We need to drop that inhibition; it hasn’t served us well and it’s only made us accomplices to John Lewis’s lies.

Fact-Checking Trump at CPAC: The MSM Thinks Americans Forget the Extent to Which Double Standards Rule, Depending on Whether the Person Fact-Checked Is a Conservative or a Liberal

The attempt by USA Today's D'Angelo Gore, Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, and Robert Farley to fact-check Donald Trump's CPAC speech falls flat.

Reminder to the MSM:

The press takes him literally, but not seriously;
his supporters take him seriously, but not literally

Beyond that, conservatives (and not only those at CPAC) are quite aware about the extent to which the goalposts move, insofar as the person being fact-checked is a Republican or a Democrat.

Pence at CPAC: "This is not a government by the elites, by the media, or for the establishment"

The establishment never saw [the Republican victory] coming. I mean, the media, the elites, the insiders, everybody else who profits off preserving the status quo, they dismissed our President, forgotten every step of the way.

 … And worse yet, they’re still trying to dismiss him. They’re still trying to dismiss all of us. They should have learned on Election Day is this is not a government by the elites, by the media, or for establishment.

At CPAC (Twitter), Vice-President Mike Pence gave a stirring speech Thursday afternoon.

What November 8th showed, even if they didn't listen, this is still government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

No Pasarán's Photos from Donald Trump's CPAC Speech

During Donald Trump's speech at CPAC, No Pasarán's webmaster sat in one of the best seats of the front row and thanks to that we can present the following photos.

That is the result when you arise for a 10:20 a.m. CPAC speech at 4:40 a.m. Another result is that when, upon arrival at the speaker's podium (at around 0:28), the President of the United States points out to a member of the audience, it is to No Pasarán's webmaster sitting in the front row who'd set up his thumbs in response (it can also be seen at Greta Van Susteren's video, at about 0:35 or on CPAC2017's Recap Video at about 2:06).

ICYMI: Our #CPAC2017 Recap Video, see you next year for #CPAC2018! pic.twitter.com/8wQYTQcki8

— CPAC 2017 (@CPAC) February 25, 2017