#17826

Assume, for the next few minutes, that you are a Machiavellian political strategist. You do not care about the liberty and prosperity of our nation or of future generations. The only thing you want to ensure is that all American presidents elected after Donald Trump are liberals in the mold...

#17827

CNN Leftist Charles Kaiser Uses N-Word Live on Air, Makes Anchor Cry

#17828

But the award-winning comic author has plans to fight back

#17830

President Barack Obama described Islamic terrorism - which he dubbed “violent extremism” - as a function of poverty during his Tuesday evening national security address at Macdill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL.

#17831

1791L - An independence collective ✖ Twitter https://twitter.com/1791L ✖ Facebook https://facebook.com/1791L ✖ Personal Twitter https://twitter.com/jesuaflor...

#17832

0 points and 0 comments so far on reddit

#17833

Six years ago, Newsweek sold for a grand total of one dollar. Many would say that amount was way overpriced and one big reason is the completely unprofessional sick smear job they are pulling on Donald Trump. An example is an article written by their culture writer Ryan Bort who makes no attempt to hide his Trump hate. Bort uses a timeline of very bad years to exhibit his Trump Derangement Syndrome which is so far gone as to even include Trump in regards to the Bubonic Plague in the year 1347.

#17834

An owner of a propane dealership in Maine is refusing to deliver gas to anyone who voted for President-Elect Donald Trump. Michael Turner, owner of Turner LP Gas in Skowhegan, Maine, recorded a voicemail greeting that leaves little question as to his feelings for those in his community who supported Trump. “If you voted for Donald Trump for president, I will no longer be delivering your gas — please find someone else.” “Thank you for calling Turner LP Gas. If you voted for Donald Trump for president, I will no longer be delivering your gas — please find someone else,” the message states. Turner isn’t the first person to refuse to do business with Trump voters — in late November, Mathew Blanchfield, CEO of an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based marketing firm, issued a statement saying he would no longer work with Trump supporters. But unlike Blanchfield, who lives in a county that voted solidly for Hillary Clinton, Turner lives in a

#17835

We expect Democrats to field candidates — just not competent or satisfactory ones.

#17836

Kerry said Israel's long-term security depends on a peace agreement with Palestinians.

#17837

Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway joined Fox News's Special Report Thursday night to discuss outgoing President Barack Obama's legacy.

#17838

Trump supporters are becoming increasingly agitated over the mysterious
disappearance of their “God Emperor Trump” Facebook group which has
garnered over 211,000 members.
Former members are accusing Mark Zuckerberg of purposely pushing forward a
conservative censorship effort to suppress overwhelming support for the
president-elect.
Recent censoring efforts on social media platforms are starting to brew
opposing strategies, one proposal is to start a religion which would be
exempt from persecution.
Citing HBO comedian John Oliver’s “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption” as
precedent, theoretically a religion worshipping Trump would be plausible.
What is perhaps most troubling about Facebook's censorship is their
acceptance for anti-semitic hate groups which are allowed to flourish. One
active Facebook hate group is “Death To America & Israel”, which was
established in 2013.
Apparently Facebook thinks the following image is less offensive than The
President Of The United States

#17839
#17840

Trump Offers Father Down on His Luck $10,000 Check at Inaugural Event

#17841

To read the online commentary, one would think that President Trump just fundamentally corrupted the American character. You would think that the executive order on refugees he signed yesterday betrayed America’s Founding ideals. You might even think he banned people from an entire faith from American shores.
Just look at the rhetoric. Here’s Chuck Schumer:
Chuck Schumer of Trump’s ‘extreme vetting’ Exec. Order: “Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty tonight.” pic.twitter.com/ONz3Ss6BJ5
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 28, 2017
If you thought only Senator Schumer saw tears in Lady Liberty’s eyes, think again. Here’s Nancy Pelosi:
Pelosi blasts Trump’s ‘extreme vetting’ Exec. Order: “This Administration has mistaken cruelty for strength and prejudice for strategy.” pic.twitter.com/LNBnDTNvGe
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 28, 2017
CNN, doing its best Huffington Post impersonation, ran a headline declaring “Trump bans 134,000,000 from the U.S.” The Huffington Post, outdoing itself, just put the Statue of Liberty upside down on its front page.
So, what did Trump do? Did he implement his promised Muslim ban? No, far from it. He backed down dramatically from his campaign promises and instead signed an executive order dominated mainly by moderate refugee restrictions and temporary provisions aimed directly at limiting immigration from jihadist conflict zones.
Let’s analyze the key provisions, separate the fact from the hysteria, and introduce just a bit of historical perspective.
First, the order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. Outrageous, right? Not so fast. Before 2016, when Obama dramatically ramped up refugee admissions, Trump’s 50,000 stands roughly in between a typical year of refugee admissions in George W. Bush’s two terms and a typical year in Obama’s two terms. The chart below, from the Migration Policy Institute, is instructive:
In 2002, the United States admitted only 27,131 refugees. It admitted fewer than 50,000 in 2003, 2006, and 2007. As for President Obama, he was slightly more generous than President Bush, but his refugee cap from 2013 to 2015 was a mere 70,000, and in 2011 and 2012 he admitted barely more than 50,000 refugees himself.
The bottom line is that Trump is improving security screening and intends to admit refugees at close to the average rate of the 15 years before Obama’s dramatic expansion in 2016. Obama’s expansion was a departure from recent norms, not Trump’s contraction.
Second, the order imposes a temporary, 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. These are countries either torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments.
The ban is in place while the Department of Homeland Security determines the “information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.” It could, however, be extended or expanded depending on whether countries are capable of providing the requested information.
The ban, however, contains an important exception: “Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.” In other words, the secretaries can make exceptions — a provision that would, one hopes, fully allow interpreters and other proven allies to enter the U.S. during the 90-day period.
To the extent this ban applies to new immigrant and non-immigrant entry, this temporary halt (with exceptions) is wise. We know that terrorists are trying to infiltrate the ranks of refugees and other visitors. We know that immigrants from Somalia, for example, have launched jihadist attacks here at home and have sought to leave the U.S. to join ISIS.
Indeed, given the terrible recent track record of completed and attempted terror attacks by Muslim immigrants, it’s clear that our current approach is inadequate to control the threat. Unless we want to simply accept Muslim immigrant terror as a fact of American life, a short-term ban on entry from problematic countries combined with a systematic review of our security procedures is both reasonable and prudent.
However, there are reports that the ban is being applied even to green-card holders. This is madness. The plain language of the order doesn’t apply to legal permanent residents of the U.S., and green-card holders have been through round after round of vetting and security checks. The administration should intervene, immediately, to stop misapplication. If, however, the Trump administration continues to apply the order to legal permanent residents, it should indeed be condemned.
Third, Trump’s order also puts an indefinite hold on admission of Syrian refugees to the United States “until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.” This is perhaps the least consequential aspect of his order — and is largely a return to the Obama administration’s practices from 2011 to 2014. For all the Democrats’ wailing and gnashing of teeth, until 2016 the Obama administration had already largely slammed the door on Syrian-refugee admissions.
The Syrian Civil War touched off in 2011. Here are the Syrian-refugee admissions to the U.S. until Obama decided to admit more than 13,000 in 2016:
Fiscal Year 2011: 29
Fiscal Year 2012: 31
Fiscal Year 2013: 36
Fiscal Year 2014: 105
Fiscal Year 2015: 1,682
To recap: While the Syrian Civil War was raging, ISIS was rising, and refugees were swamping Syria’s neighbors and surging into Europe, the Obama administration let in less than a trickle of refugees. Only in the closing days of his administration did President Obama reverse course — in numbers insufficient to make a dent in the overall crisis, by the way — and now the Democrats have the audacity to tweet out pictures of bleeding Syrian children?
It’s particularly gross to see this display when the Obama administration’s deliberate decision to leave a yawning power vacuum — in part through its Iraq withdrawal and in part through its dithering throughout the Syrian Civil War — exacerbated the refugee crisis in the first place. There was a genocide on Obama’s watch, and his tiny trickle of Syrian refugees hardly makes up for the grotesque negligence of abandoning Iraq and his years-long mishandling of the emerging Syrian crisis.
When we know our enemy is seeking to strike America and its allies through the refugee population, when we know they’ve succeeded in Europe, and when the administration has doubts about our ability to adequately vet the refugees we admit into this nation, a pause is again not just prudent but arguably necessary. It is important that we provide sufficient aid and protection to keep refugees safe and healthy in place, but it is not necessary to bring Syrians to the United States to fulfill our vital moral obligations.
Fourth, there is a puzzling amount of outrage over Trump’s directive to “prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.” In other words, once refugee admissions resume, members of minority religions may well go to the front of the line. In some countries, this means Christians and Yazidis. In others, it can well mean Muslims.
Sadly, during the Obama administration it seems that Christians and other minorities may well have ended up in the back of the line. For example, when Obama dramatically expanded Syrian refugee admissions in 2016, few Christians made the cut:
The Obama administration has resettled 13,210 Syrian refugees into the United States since the beginning of 2016 — an increase of 675 percent over the same 10-month period in 2015.
Of those, 13,100 (99.1 percent) are Muslims — 12,966 Sunnis, 24 Shi’a, and 110 other Muslims — and 77 (0.5 percent) are Christians. Another 24 (0.18 percent) are Yazidis.
As a point of reference, in 2015 Christians represented roughly 10 percent of Syria’s population. Perhaps there’s an innocent explanation for the disparity. Perhaps not. But one thing is clear — federal asylum and refugee law already require a religious test. As my colleague Andy McCarthy has repeatedly pointed out, an alien seeking asylum “must establish that . . . religion [among other things] . . . was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant.”
Similarly, the term “refugee” means “(A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality . . . and who is unable or unwilling to return to . . . that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of . . . religion [among other things] . . . [.]”
But don’t tell CNN’s chief national security correspondent, who last night tweeted this:
There is no basis to the claim Muslim refugees were prioritized over Christians. Fact is, refugee policy not based in religion, until now.
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 28, 2017
False. False. False. Religious considerations are by law part of refugee policy. And it is entirely reasonable to give preference (though not exclusivity) to members of minority religions.
Finally, you can read the entire executive order from start to finish, reread it, then read it again, and you will not find a Muslim ban. It’s not there. Nowhere. At its most draconian, it temporarily halts entry from jihadist regions. In other words, Trump’s executive order is a dramatic climb-down from his worst campaign rhetoric.
You can read the entire executive order from start to finish, reread it, then read it again, and you will not find a Muslim ban. It’s not there. Nowhere.
To be sure, however, the ban is deeply problematic as applied to legal residents of the U.S. and to interpreters and other allies seeking refuge in the United States after demonstrated (and courageous) service to the United States. Twitter timelines are coming alive with stories of Iraqi interpreters who’ve saved American lives. Few have bled more in alliance with America than Iraq’s Kurds, but the order itself provides for the necessary case-by-case exemptions to the temporary blanket bans. It is vital that General John Kelly, the newly confirmed secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, move expeditiously to protect those who’ve laid down their lives in the war against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. Given his own wartime experience, I believe and hope that he will.
Trump’s order was not signed in a vacuum. Look at the Heritage Foundation’s interactive timeline of Islamist terror plots since 9/11. Note the dramatic increase in planned and executed attacks since 2015. Now is not the time for complacency. Now is the time to take a fresh look at our border-control and immigration policies. Trump’s order isn’t a betrayal of American values. Applied correctly and competently, it can represent a promising fresh start and a prelude to new policies that protect our nation while still maintaining American compassion and preserving American friendships.
— David French is a staff writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

#17842

AMERICAN HEART MONTH, 2017 - - - - - - - BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

#17843
#17844

A drug dealer whose life sentence was commuted by then President Barack Obama is right back where he belongs: Behind bars.
Obama went on a mercy binge at the end of his final term in office, granting commutations and pardons for all sorts of criminals. He let drug dealers off who trafficked methamphetamine, crack cocaine, marijuana. He let people off who were caught with 200 pounds of drugs -- and arsenals of weapons. In all he let more than 1,700 criminals out of jail.

#17845

When the Left brags about winning the culture wars, they point to gay marriage. After all, thanks to the Supreme Court, in just about 10 years, we went from gay marriage being unthinkable to being the law of the land. And then there are the polls that show a majority of Americans back gay marriage. So case closed, right? Actually, no, and for a few reasons.

#17846

This is more than a little bit disconcerting. This past week former President Barack Obama was in Milan Italy; paid €3,000,000 ($2.5+ million) to deliver remarks to an international summit on food…

#17847

The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel joined Sunday's Meet The Press, describing the premise of a panel discussion on the "growing Russia investigation" as "divorced from reality."

#17848

Every group of people regardless of wealth, class, race, or gender has their shitty people. All the internet does is bring it to our view

#17849

Anthem, one of the largest health insurers in the nation, has announced that it will no longer offer plans through the exchanges of the Affordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — in Nevada beginning next year.

#17850

Kelly Gale is apparently a bit of a shooting fan. She shared a viral Instagram video of herself shooting a handgun.
