There's nothing over the top about saying that the Left is waging civil war

There may - may- have been some justification in claiming so a few years ago, but at this point it would be such an understatement as to be irresponsible.

The freedom-haters are playing for keeps.

Check out this report, not only for coverage of what happened to Andy Ngo, but the spin some tried to put on it, and some backstory on previous praise for Antifa:

Quillette editor Andy Ngo was attacked with fists and cement on Saturday at an Antifa rally in Portland. Ngo’s recording equipment was stolen, but footage of the latter parts of the assault were uploaded to Twitter by Oregonian reporter Jim Ryan.

The milkshakes-as-weaponry concept has morphed into something really ugly since it was introduced:

Portland PD has asked people on Twitter to report instances of milkshakes being thrown at the Antifa demonstrations because some were filled with quick-drying cement.

And here's some of the lame spin:

New York Times opinion writer Charlie Warzel referred to the attack as being in the context of an “information war”, implying that Ngo is nefariously weaponizing the fact that Antifa is violent for the sake of obtaining “ammunition for a culture war.”

Middle East Eye journalist CJ Werleman falsely accused Ngo of being “one of the leading amplifiers of Islamophobia” and “participat[ing] in white supremacist violence,” implying that Ngo deserved the beating. Rolling Stone and Vice Contributor Dan O’Sullivan criticized Jake Tapper for Tapper’s criticism of Antifa violence.

And this:

Freelance writer Rob Roussau mocked Ngo, tweeting, “I can’t believe that the totally objective ‘journalist’ who shows up to every far right protest in order to sanitize what they’re doing and claim the people who oppose them are The Real Fascists wasn’t welcomed with open arms by antifa today. you hate to see it.”

Mashable reporter Matt Binder implied that Ngo must have deserved it because there were other photographers and reporters present with Ngo being the only one getting beaten.

The propaganda arm of the enemy has been spinning Antifa for a while:

Multiple CNN hosts have defended Antifa in the past. “It says it right there in the name- Antifa: anti-fascist, which is what they were there fighting,” Don Lemon said on June 29 of last year. “No organization is perfect.” Lemon’s CNN colleague Chris Cuomo argued that Antifa are the modern-day D-Day soldiers storming the Normandy beaches.

An "assistant professor of human rights" (a sure sign that she holds actual human rights in the ultimate disdain), writing in the New York Times, says it's time to dox border-patrol personnel, but just to make sure not to call it that:

New York Times author Kate Cronin-Furman, an assistant professor of human rights, wrote an op-ed on Saturday entitled “The Treatment of Migrants Likely ‘Meets the Definition of a Mass Atrocity’.” Her lede? “Children are suffering and dying. The fastest way to stop it is to make sure those responsible, including the foot soldiers, face consequences.” Cronin-Furman emphasizes that   “this is not an argument for doxxing.”

She sure could have fooled us. She writes:

The identities of the individual Customs and Border Protection agents who are physically separating children from their families and staffing the detention centers are not undiscoverable. Immigration lawyers have agent names; journalists reporting at the border have names, photos and even videos. These agents’ actions should be publicized, particularly in their home communities.

This is not an argument for doxxing — it’s about exposure of their participation in atrocities to audiences whose opinion they care about. The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements. For those who won’t (or can’t) quit, it may induce them to treat the vulnerable individuals under their control more humanely. In Denmark during World War II, for instance, strong social pressure, including from the churches, contributed to the refusal of the country to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens.

Here's the difference, you slime bucket: the Danish Jews in the 1940s were Danish citizens. They already legally lived there. The people in detention centers on the US southern border came in illegally. They are not supposed to be here.  

And remember the Red Hen, the Virginia restaurant in the cute little cottage, at which a dinner party including Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave? Well, check this out. The owner sees justification for Eric Trump getting spit on at a Manhattan restaurant:

After recounting what happened to Trump, she writes, “no one in the industry condones the physical assault of a patron.” That seems sensible but we’re only halfway through the piece. Next comes the justification for the new rules:

…at bottom this isn’t about politics. It’s about values, and accountability to values, in business. On a variety of levels, pressure is increasing on companies to articulate and stand by a code. Customers are demonstrating that they want to patronize companies that share their values. Our workforce also increasingly demands that employers establish a set of ethical standards. The once-ubiquitous idea that companies exist purely and solely to provide profit to shareholders is withering away like corn husks in the summer sun.

The rules have shifted. It’s no longer okay to serve sea bass from overfished waters or to allow smoking at the table. It’s not okay to look away from the abusive chef in the kitchen or the handsy guest in the dining room. And it’s not okay to ask employees, partners or management to clock out of their consciences when they clock in to work…

The high-profile clashes rarely involve one citizen fussing at another over the entrees. It’s more often a frustrated person (some of whom are restaurant employees) lashing out at the representatives of an administration that has made its name trashing norms and breaking backs. Not surprising, if you think about it: You can’t call people your enemies by day and expect hospitality from them in the evening.

So when the day comes that the world feels returned to its normal axis, I expect we’ll see fewer highly charged encounters making headlines. In the meantime, the new rules apply. If you’re directly complicit in spreading hate or perpetuating suffering, maybe you should consider dining at home.

Like 10,000 resistance progressives before her, Wilkinson is claiming that Trump grants the left an exception to all the normal rules of social conduct. No one is for assaulting strangers in restaurants, she says, but on the other hand, he’s a Trump so the new rules apply.

So think about how the creatures who dish out the venom to you in social-media comment threads would deal with you if you were to encounter them in person. 

This is war, plain and simple. 

Your existence is not to be tolerated. 

 

 

 

 

 

It's this kind of stuff - today's edition

In yesterday's post with this same title - it seems there's content for them on a daily basis now; SAD! - we looked at a couple of train-wreck answers the Very Stable Genius gave to reporters, one of which was about something Putin had said in their exchange.

Here's another cringe-inducing moment from the Putin pow-wow:

Trump had met with Putin Friday where he was pressed by journalists on whether he would tell Russia not to interfere in U.S. elections.

“Yes, of course, I will. Don’t meddle in the election, please. Don’t meddle in the election,” Trump said, pointing to Putin and flashing a grin.

Putin appeared to chuckle in response.

The exchange drew sharp criticism from those who have accused Trump of being too friendly with Putin.

Now, let's look at his one-on-one with Xi, per Gordon Chang at the Daily Beast:

The United States will resume sales of products to Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer, President Donald Trump said in his post-G20 press conference Saturday in Osaka.

The action appears to be a surrender to publicly issued Chinese demands.

Effective May 16, the U.S. Commerce Department added Huawei, the world’s largest telecom-equipment manufacturer, to its Entity List. As a result, no American company, without prior approval from the Bureau of Industry and Security, may sell or license to Huawei products and technology covered by the U.S. Export Administration Regulations.

In recent weeks, Beijing had demanded the Trump administration withdraw the designation. On Thursday, for instance, the Wall Street Journal reported that Huawei’s removal was one of China’s three main preconditions to a trade deal. The other two demands were the lifting of tariffs Trump had imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and the end to Washington’s efforts to get China to buy U.S. goods in excess of what was agreed in December 2018.

American companies had begun complying with the Entity List prohibition, but Intel, Qualcomm, and other chip suppliers have lobbied the Trump administration to ease the ban on Huawei, which American officials believe poses a threat to American national security. Washington, to inhibit Chinese spying, is trying to persuade American allies to not install Huawei equipment in soon-to-be-built 5G telecommunications networks.

Trump, however, undercut these efforts Saturday by making it appear that his Huawei campaign was merely a tactic to gain an advantage in the so-called “trade war” with China.

Real nice.

And, as you've no doubt heard, after G-20 he took 20 steps onto North Korean soil, shook Kim Jong-un's hand and invited him to the White House. That would be the Kim Jong-un who had his half brother murdered with VX nerve agent, who forced his uncle to watch the uncle's friends ripped apart by anti-aircraft gunfire - those executed were not in planes; they were standing on the ground - at close enough range that their blood splashed on him , who has resumed missile testing since the collapse of the Hanoi summit.

Cindy Warmbier, mother of Otto, who was returned to the United States comatose and who then died, is not impressed by this patty-cake.


The sum total of this does not paint a picture of a successful overseas tour. Anybody who's not a cult follower is unsettled today.

Barney and Clyde - episode 9

Here it is!

Welcome back to the Libation Station! Pull up a bar stool and get in on the fortnightly and forthrightly delivered exchange of libertarian (Clyde) and conservative (Barney) perspectives on the weighty matters of the day. Specifically:

1. Elections in Denmark swing back left but take the Danish right-wing party's identitarian madness to the next level...

2. The Left just can't be satisfied with destroying only 99% of Louis CK's career...

3. Employees of Wayfair stage a walkout to ensure that beds, blankets, and pillows don't make it to children at the border. 

4. From the Democratic debates to Trump accusers, we can't believe they said THAT!

Don't miss it! 

Send your feedback to barneyandclydeshow@gmail.com

Or comment at https://www.facebook.com/barneyandcly...

Please consider supporting us at: https://www.patreon.com/barneyandclyde

It's this kind of stuff - today's edition

These are the kinds of instances that point up the flimsiness of the cult followers' pooh-poohing of the Very Stable Genius's very-real-and-all-too-lamentably-frequently-on-display personality and character deficiencies, and indeed, his very essence, as if judicial appointments, deregulation and moving the US embassy to Jerusalem make up for it.

No, sorry, shills, boot-lickers and throne-sniffers, it harms US standing in the world and US strategic interests when the US president is this deeply embarrassing.

If he had ever done any significant reading in his life, he would not have found himself in this position:

Liberal democracy appears increasingly in the balance around the Western world, but the president of the United States doesn’t seem to even know what it is. Neither does he seem to grasp what “busing” means.

President Trump held a lengthy news conference Saturday in Osaka, Japan, during which he displayed his apparent ignorance of some very basic political terms and historical concepts.

When asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments saying Western-style liberalism was “obsolete,” Trump apparently thought this term literally referred to the western United States and American liberals.

Here’s the exchange (key parts bolded):

NEW YORK TIMES’S PETER BAKER: His comments to the Financial Times right before arriving here was that Western-style liberalism is obsolete. I know you probably --

TRUMP: Well, I mean he may feel that way. He’s sees what’s going on, I guess, if you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look, and what’s happening in San Francisco and a couple of other cities, which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people. I don’t know what they’re thinking, but he does see things that are happening in the United States that would probably preclude him from saying how wonderful it is. At the same time, he congratulated me, as every other leader of every other country did for what we’ve done economically, because we probably have the strongest economy we’ve ever had, and that’s a real positive. But I’m very embarrassed by what I see in some of our cities, where the politicians are either afraid to do something about it, or they think it’s votes or I don’t know what. Peter, I don’t know what they’re thinking. But when you look at Los Angeles, when you look at San Francisco, when you look at some of the other cities — and not a lot, not a lot — but you don’t want it to spread. And at a certain point, I think the federal government maybe has to get involved. We can’t let that continue to happen to our cities.

Democratic liberalism, of course, does not refer to the western United States, but rather the Western world— which generally includes the United States and much of Europe. And liberalism is a political theory that values the freedom of the individual. That term has come to be associated with left-leaning American politicians and political activists, but some right-leaning political thinkers still claim the term as their own.

Broadly speaking, democratic liberalism has been the leading political ideology across the western world since World War II. Of late, though, populist movements across Europe have gained power, leading to questions about how long liberal democracies can survive. Putin’s comments were clearly about that, but Trump doesn’t appear to have processed this very significant development on the world stage.

And he took full advantage of this opportunity to toss a word salad dressed with a rich vacuity:

 In another portion of the news conference, he was asked about an exchange in Thursday night’s portion of the first Democratic presidential debate over busing. Trump, yet again, didn’t seem to understand what the term meant:

ABC NEWS’S JONATHAN KARL: I’m sure you saw the exchange between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the issue of federal busing — federally mandated busing. Biden thought that was a bad policy; he tried to stop it. Kamala Harris said it was an important part of desegregation, including in her own experience. Where do you stand on that issue of federally mandated busing?

TRUMP: First of all, before we get into that, I thought that she was given too much credit. ... And as far as that, I will tell you in about four weeks, because we’re coming out with a certain policy that’s going to be very interesting and very surprising, I think, to a lot of people. Jennifer, do you have a question?

So Trump is going to come out with a policy on federally mandated busing ... in 2019? After that odd answer and given Trump’s apparent desire to quickly move on from the issue, NBC News’s Kristen Welker followed up on it later:

WELKER: I just wanted to follow up on the question about busing. Do you see it as a viable way of integrating schools. Does that relate to the policy that you’re —

TRUMP: Well, that’s something that they’ve done for a long period of time. You know, there aren’t that many ways you’re going to get people to schools. So this is something that’s been done. In some cases, it’s been done with a hammer instead of a velvet glove. And, you know, that’s part of it.. But this has been certainly a thing that’s been used over the — I think if Vice President Biden had answered the question somewhat differently, it would have been a different result. Because they really did hit him hard on that one. But it is certainly a primary method of getting people to schools.

WELKER: And does it relate to the policy that you’re going to unveil that you just floated?

TRUMP: It relates to everything we’re doing. And you’ll be hearing about it over the next couple of months.

“A primary method of getting people to schools.” Trump apparently believes busing refers the federal government forcing local school districts to provide children with transportation. What’s most amazing about these answers is that not only was this issue the focus after Thursday’s debate, but also that Karl prefaced his question by explaining the term. Trump still couldn’t do anything with that.

The shills not only want us to consider the relative weight of this kind of thing vis-a-vis his undeniable accomplishments, but they want us to button our lips. They say that to point out such cringe-inducing utterances is to give succor to the enemy, the logic being that he is all that stands between us and the nightmare vision that those assembled on the stage in Miami last seek were putting forth. 

Minimally compelling, but, sorry, that's all.

It's time for all his drooling sycophants and worshippers to squarely face this reality:

2016 left the voters with no good options. 2020 will be the same.

I will not get on board any MAGA train on the basis of a binary-choice justification. For whatever length of time post-America has left, I want to be able to sleep at night.

Donald Trump is bad news, and so is the movement that basically deifies him.

Post-America's culture war is actually spiritual warfare

I won't belabor the entire matter of my becoming a Christian here. Longtime LITD readers know that it was a process of working through a series of sticking points, from Biblical accounts of supernatural occurrences to Christ as the exclusive route to salvation to man-woman relations. (Sometimes I shock myself at how far I've moved away from bristling at the notion of male headship in the family and the church - it just seemed so unfair and limiting to the entire female sex - to embracing it because it is the natural and God-designed way things work out.)

My focus here is one particular sticking point: the existence of a real Satan. Toward the end of my pre-Christian faith period - long after I'd considered myself a serious adherent of the whole Eastern all-is-one viewpoint - I'd become your basic postmodern secular agnostic. My attitude was, "Sure, I guess there's a God of some sort, but it's not really too far up my list of things to think about on a daily basis."

I was an ideologically solid conservative, though. That conversion experience came earlier. Naturally, then, much that was coming down the nation's sociocultural pike was sticking in my craw. The irritation turned into downright alarm. Still, I looked at the cultural rot as something to be dealt with in an earthly manner.

Finally, though, I took a look at developments like Obergefell v Hodges and the boycott-and-divest-from-Israel movement and the perpetuation of the lie that there was a racial angle to the Michael Brown / Darren Wilson / Ferguson incident and the perpetuation of the lie that the global climate was in a state of crisis, and the word "demonic" bubbled up quite on its own among my thoughts.

A principal characterization of Satan is that he is the father of lies. He furthers his darkness by convincing us of the supposed veracity of what is not true.

That's how the mainstreaming of transgenderism, which is a tragic mental illness, occurred.

Satan is a pretty good gaslighter, too. He says, "You are the one operating under a delusion if you insist that there are only two genders, and that a person is always of the gender that his or her DNA says that he or she is."

He's even convinced one current presidential candidate - the former mayor of San Antonio - that women under the delusion that they are men, and who mutilate their crotches accordingly, can then get pregnant.

In fact, he makes a moral case out of it. Our basketball league, my rock band, our corporation, will boycott your state if you insist on clinging to the rules for restroom use that everyone observed until last year! We will not tolerate your injustice!

The making of a moral case out of it is particularly horrifying when applied to the insistence that it is the just position to permit the popping of a hole in someone's skull and vacuuming her or his brains out - and them pulling her or his limbs from her or his torso. (It's appropriate here to extend kudos to Clint Eastwood, who intends to continue filming movies in Georgia.)

Can there be any doubt of the demonic essence of the continued harassment of baker Jack Phillips? Yes, he won his Supreme Court case, and, yes, there's no serious refuting of the argument that the free market provides a win-win for Christian wedding-service providers as well as homosexual couples who can go down the street and find a non-Christian provider who will happily bake the cake or provide the photography for their "wedding." So there is no reason for the continued harassment of Phillips other than to perpetuate the devil's designs. In fact, the latest example of harassment is quite explicitly about that:

One requester demanded that Jack Phillips bake a cake for Satan, complete with a working sex toy.

And the above-mentioned celebrants of gender dysphoria are trying to make his life miserable as well:

Another request involved a cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside — which wasn’t a problem until the caller said it was meant to commemorate her transition from male to female.

Is there any other explanation for the burgeoning child-drag-queen phenomenon?

Sorry, but I’ve had it with headlines like this: “Nine-year-old drag queen is a hit on Instagram.”

As the story explains, “Meet Kween Kee Kee – the ‘baby drag queen’ who is teaching his own teachers a lesson about gender identities.
“Keegan, 9, lives with his parents and brother in a Christian suburb just outside Austin, Texas. He plays football and video games, and also likes to dress in drag. He usually goes by the pronouns he/his, but his mother Megan describes him as ‘gender creative.’”

This is not healthy. This is not right. This is not good. No amount of LGBTQ spin can make this normal or positive or praiseworthy.

Another article reports, “the dance music is thumping, the audience is giddy and 10-year-old drag artist Queen Lactatia is sashaying up and down a makeshift catwalk in a shimmering metallic dress. The enthusiastic crowd hoots in approval as the diminutive style phenom weaves between tables at the all-ages brunch event, where the Montreal grade-schooler is followed by three more big-haired pre-teen performers, each in varying degrees of glitter, eyelash extensions and rainbow-hued attire.”

We are now at the point in the decline of Western civilization at which the scene resembles what Moses saw when he'd descended Mt. Sinai, tablets in hand. He was so furious he dashed them to the ground, where they shattered into pieces.

Ultimately, he convinced them to turn from their demonic ways. His argument went basically along the lines of, "Do you understand who it was I came face to face with up there? If you think I'm exhibiting wrath, watch his display if you don't knock it off. Now, we still have a long journey through this desert ahead of us. We're not going to make it if you continue to engage in this debauchery. Pull yourselves together, and let's get moving toward the promised land."

Who among us will convincingly exhort us in the present to say with one voice to the father of lies, "get thee behind us"?

If AOC isn't primaried next year, it's going to be a long four or five decades

She's pretty enraged about the passage of the Senate border-crisis bill. Here's her tweet about it:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‏Verified account @AOC

Under no circumstances should the House vote for a McConnell-only bill w/ no negotiation with Democrats. Hell no. That’s an abdication of power we should refuse to accept. They will keep hurting kids if we do.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‏Verified account @AOC

His Senate bill is a militarization bill. McConnell killed the House Bill & dropped this one right before recess to force passage.
 

Well, too bad. This is our job. Cancel vacation, fly the Senate in. Pass a clean humanitarian bill & stop trying to squeeze crises for more pain.

Is this the way she's going to characterize, as her stint in the House goes forward, every situation in which those with whom she's supposed to be allied, hammer out legislation that comes as close as is politically possible, given the realities of the moment?

And are we going to be subjected to years and years of this level of hyperbole ("keep hurting kids" . . . "militarization bill")?

Guy Benson at Townhall debunks her throbbingly outlandish assertions:

(1) This "McConnell only" bill was co-written by Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Pat Leahy (D-VT).  It won 84 percent of Senators' votes.

(2) The "no negotiation with Democrats" is patently false, as evidenced by Leahy's co-sponsorship and explicit endorsement, as well as the support of more than half of the Senate Democratic caucus -- including Chuck Schumer.

(3) McConnell "killed" the House bill by bringing it up for a vote.  It failed to attract even 40 Senators' support.  And guess who voted against that very same House bill?  That's right: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

(4) As for "hurting kids," AOC is on the record opposing all proposed legislative solutions to the border crisis.  She voted against each bill put forward -- and as I just mentioned, was one of just four Democrats (along with her radical pals Omar and Tlaib) to break with Pelosi on the House bill whose Senate demise she's now cynically lamenting.  She has encouraged boycotts and collective action against a private company fulfilling a government contractor's order to provide more beds to children she claims to want to help.  Relatedly, she'd absolutely fume and fulminate over images of those same kids sleeping on floors, having agitated against beds for them.  Will she also rail against the food service providers feeding these children?  After all, they're also "complicit" under her twisted rationale.

(5) Would Ms. Ocasio-Cortez care to offer a workable solution under which the US government treats these children humanely, while also (a) respecting existing legal requirements regarding the detainment of unlawful immigrants, (b) allowing for proper vetting of adult asylum seekers (without separating real and claimed families), and (c) not actively encouraging more illegal entries?  I'll wait.   Meanwhile, she also quadrupled down on her "concentration camps" smear and supporting lies, defying rebukes from Holocaust historians and survivors.  It's almost as if she's a reckless blowhard. 

Her favorability and trustworthiness numbers in her own district are underwater big-time, and a majority of folks there are ready to vote against her.  The best outcome, then, for those Democrats and for the nation as a whole, would be to send her back to the taco bar.

The current G-20 summit: another chance for Trump to show some foreign-policy depth - or not

He's already had sit-downs with a number of leaders since arriving in Japan, with more scheduled. There are also the official group sessions with the entire assemblage.

The prospects that he'll represent the United States with consistency and an understanding of the framework necessary for really enhancing the stability of the world's various neighborhoods is not encouraging.

Let's start with US relations with the host country. It's said that Trump enjoys a warm personal relationship with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but observers are already remarking that the degree of that comity is going to be key to getting past the way the Very Stable Genius shot off his mouth quite recently:

Though he conceded that the U.S. would honor its mutual defense obligations with its ally in the Pacific if it came to that, Trump asserted that the alliance is a one-way street. “If we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us at all,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo. The Japanese, he added, “can watch it on the Sony television, okay, the attack.”

In a moment of spiking tensions with Iran, the US really needs to foster a sense of a unified front among its allies and potential coalition partners:

Our sanctions on Iran -- including the most recent round targeting the Supreme Leader -- would benefit greatly from getting more G20 countries to mirror them. Iranian officials don't have a lotof assets in the US and didn't do a lot of trade with us to begin with, but if countries with whom Iran has a deeper financial relationship -- including China, the United Arab Emirates and European Union countries -- mirror our sanctions, they would have even more of an impact.

Additionally, several G20 leaders have leverage with the regime. Since American credibility is in question, particularly after we withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, finding a G20 leader to vouch for us would go a long way. China is Iran's largest oil customer and President Xi Jinping will be at the G20. Getting someone like Xi to convince the Iranians to sit down with us again may be the best bet.

Trump isn't exactly off on the right foot with regard to achieving that:

In the last two months, Iran has been implicated in assaults on six foreign merchant vessels, and it has claimed responsibility for an attack on a $130 million American surveillance drone—an attack that reduced U.S. reconnaissance capabilities over the crucial Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s response to these unacceptable provocations was to vent his frustration with America’s prohibitive naval dominance and to fantasize about ceding control of the waves to America’s adversaries.

“China gets 91 [percent] of its Oil from the Straight [sic], Japan 62 [percent, & many other countries likewise,” the president barked on Twitter. “So why are we protecting the shipping lanes for other countries (many years) for zero compensation. All of these countries should be protecting their own ships on what has always been a dangerous journey.”

“We don’t even need to be there in that the U.S. has just become (by far) the largest producer of Energy anywhere in the world!” he continued. “The U.S. request for Iran is very simple – No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!”

That last line of that tweet revisits something LITD has noted often: that Trump has no understanding of the nature of these rogue states, that, for them, it's not a matter of getting something in a "good deal" that would prompt them to ditch the nukes and terror sponsorship. Those activities are at the core of their essences.

It's a lesson he seems not to have learned regarding North Korea, either:

Earlier this week, officials from both countries confirmed North Korean leader Kim Jong Unsent President Donald Trump a letter that North Korea's state news service described as "of excellent content." Neither side disclosed any additional details about the letter's contents. 

Thursday's statement, however, blasted Pompeo for "sophistry" and said that his comments are "full of falsehoods and fabrications." North Korean officials have previously said they will no longer negotiate with Pompeo, accusing him of "talking nonsense" and being "reckless." Pompeo has responded that the North Koreans don't get to decide the composition of the U.S. delegation. 

The latest rhetoric comes at a low point in diplomatic relations between the two countries following two summits the Trump administration organized, one in June 2018 and another in February, which ended abruptly. Both failed to secure any sort of meaningful progress toward denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula in exchange for easing U.S. sanctions. Each side insists the other must act first.

And it follows other new signs that whatever goodwill the Trump administration was able to develop with the Kim regime is deteriorating rapidly. 

In May, North Korea test-fired short-range missiles, which Trump dismissed shortly afterward as not "anything major." His assessment differed from those of some of his top officials, including then-acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan who believed the tests violated U.N. resolutions. 

North Korean officials said Wednesday that South Korea must cease serving as a mediator between Pyongyang and Washington. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal, has served as a conduit between the two powers as he seeks to achieve one of the principal elements of his administration.

It's possible that by the time this post goes up, some unforeseen breakthrough at G-20 may render all this obsolete, but long-set patterns would argue against it.

He'll more likely wing it, ruffling the feathers of those who could be helpful in steering strategy favorably for the nation-states interested in a stable, safe, prosperous and hopefully ever-more-civilized world - and then expecting them to agree to "beautiful deals."

 

 

Leftists' need for self-congratulation is perpetuating the misery of illegal aliens

It's often said that leftism is really all about a lust for power.

I submit that that's one of two strata regarding what motivates someone to become a leftist. People are either driven to it by an overweening need for self-congratulation - to perceive themselves as caring - or by a desire to boss other people around and be in charge of whether they have access to life's basic resources or not.. There are a lot of people on the cusp between the two motivations. Think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Some seem to have been driven by the latter motivation from the get-go. Think Stalin, Mao and Castro.

But there's nothing admirable about the self-congratulation motive. It keeps those about whom one "cares" in pitiable circumstances in perpetuity. It gives a resolute thumbs-down to actual solutions to the plight of the beleaguered. A solution is the last thing self-congratulatory leftists want; they're thereby deprived of the opportunity to see themselves as champions of "social justice."

A perfect example is on the nation's plate this very day:

Employees of the online housewares giant Wayfair announced Tuesday that they would stage a walkout at the company’s Back Bay headquarters on Wednesday to protest its decision to sell furniture to the operators of facilities for migrant children detained at the southern US border.

Last Wednesday, they learned that a $200,000 order of bedroom furniture had been placed by BCFS, a government contractor that has been managing camps at the border. More than 500 employees signed a letter of protest sent to company executives. When the company refused to change course, employees organized the walkout.

“Knowing what’s going on at the southern border and knowing that Wayfair has the potential to profit from it is pretty scary,” said Elizabeth Good, a manager on the engineering team at the company and one of the walkout’s two dozen organizers. “I want to work at a company where the standards we hold ourselves to are the same standards that we hold our customers and our partners to.” 

The mention of profit was a nice touch, no? That the detained illegal aliens' comfort level was going to be considerably improved is a fact that these snot-noses would like to keep obscured. Can't have anybody making the connection that that - not the camps in and of themselves - is what the company would be profiting from. That might open the door to someone considering the viewpoint that it's a fine thing for a furniture company to be in the business of ameliorating misery.

Everyone who is not stupid knows that Congress - you know, the one in which AOC, who's been front and center among the preeners on this matter, sits - holds the key to better conditions for detained illegal aliens. Everyone who's not wickedly disingenuous also knows that the conditions now are exactly as they were during the Obama administration.

If there's one question these "compassion"-mongers are deathly afraid of, it's this: Fine, what would you have everyone do? That question has to be kept under lock and key at all costs, because the answer is, Let them all just come in with no processing or anything, so that the number of people confirming our self-perceived big-heartedness swells, and those among us interested in power get enough votes that there's no stopping us.

Elizabeth Warren is no moderate alternative to anything

There are some who want very much to position her as such, as a hedge in case Joe Biden flames out. Alas, it seems really unlikely that most voters are going to be anything but creeped out by her having "a plan for that."

She sure does. How about this one?

On Thursday, presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) came out in favor of legislation that has been equated to "gay reparations." Under the Refund Equality Act, same-sex couples would be able to amend their past taxes, readjusting with jointly-filed tax returns and accepting refunds from the IRS.

“The federal government forced legally married same-sex couples in Massachusetts to file as individuals and pay more in taxes for almost a decade,” Warren said in a statement, according to NBC News. “We need to call out that discrimination and to make it right — Congress should pass the Refund Equality Act immediately.”

"It wasn’t until marriage equality became law that gay & lesbian couples could jointly file tax returns—so they paid more in taxes," the Democratic presidential candidate posted to Twitter on Sunday. "Our government owes them more than $50M for the years our discriminatory tax code left them out. We must right these wrongs."

Yo, toots, you're talking about matters internal to the state of Massachusetts. Us taxpayers elsewhere in the country aren't the least bit interested in ponying up to "right these wrongs."

She's not done:

 . . . the far-left Democrat outlined her plan to "cancel" student loan debt for some 42 million Americans. "The ambitious student loan forgiveness plan would cancel student loan debt for more than 95% of borrowers, and would entirely cancel student loan debt for more than 75% of Americans with student loan debt," Forbes reported.

Plus, as reported by CNBC, Warren wants to “eliminate tuition and fees at all two-year and four-year public universities through a federal partnership with states to ‘split the costs of tuition and fees and ensure that states maintain their current levels of funding on need-based financial aid and academic instruction.’” 

When she's taking some birthday time off from announcing plans, she likes to chill at this place:

Kirsten Gillibrand . . . [and] Elizabeth Warren [ran into each other] on the campaign trail [and went in for a demonstration of candidate comity] . . . [at] that big Dem Planned Parenthood town hall.

The end of [the video] clip where Warren says, “What better way to celebrate my birthday than right here with Planned Parenthood?”

Moderate alternative? To what? She basically said to the nation, "Hello, I am a spiritually grotesque monster."