[The National Interest] The naïve assumption of interventionists that U.S.-orchestrated forcible regime change would usher in new, democratic political systems was evident in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
The hostile reaction among most members of Washington’s political and media elites to President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria involves several factors. One is simply a knee-jerk (largely partisan) rejection of any policy Trump proposes on any issue, foreign or domestic. Another is policy inertia that makes it difficult to dislodge a military commitment once undertaken. The United States still has military forces in such places as Germany, Japan and South Korea decades after the original rationales disappeared. Such inertia also helps account for the resistance to Trump’s planned troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Still another element in the case of Syria policy is the lobbying effort by foreign powers (primarily Israel and Saudi Arabia) determined to keep the United States heavily engaged in the Middle East.
There is one other reason for the entrenched resistance to ending the Syria mission: a reluctance to acknowledge the failure of any high-profile U.S. foreign-policy venture, regardless of the accumulating evidence. That unhealthy attitude goes back at least as far as the Vietnam War. The survival (and increasingly likely victory) of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is a graphic reminder that Washington’s strategy of forcibly ousting targeted secular dictators in the greater Middle East (what George W. Bush described as America’s “freedom agenda”) has been a fiasco. The architects of and cheerleaders for Washington’s regime change crusades stubbornly resist acknowledging how badly their cherished policy has flopped. In all three cases, though, it is clear that U.S. policy made already bad situations much worse.
#1
There is one other reason for the entrenched resistance to ending the Syria mission: a reluctance to acknowledge the failure of any high-profile U.S. foreign-policy venture, regardless of the accumulating evidence.
Soetoro AFG Policy, Benghazi attack, and 'Iran nuclear deal' all classic examples. Domestic examples include 'Affordable Care Act' and 'Fast & Furious.'
[BabylonBee] U.S.‐In a stunning new poll, Americans indicated they are OK with a 70% marginal tax rate, indicating that since the hefty taxes would only apply to other people and not themselves, they are alright with the extremely high taxes.
"See, a lot of people think the proposed 70% tax rate is way too high," said one woman in California. "But what they don't understand is that the 70% is only on really rich people---in other words, not me. Let's crank it up to 90, 100, or 110% even. I don't mind in the slightest."
Americans all over the country suggested they are OK with a majority of the people voting to take a minority of the people's money, as long as they are not part of that minority.
"I am a very generous person, so I believe everyone else needs to pay their fair share," said Lyle Hartright of Maine. "Everyone that isn't me, I mean."
"These are stunning results," said one analyst. "We always believed that Americans were generous, but we never knew how generous. To offer to raise taxes to 70% or more on other people just goes to show how much compassion people have."
#1
I said it before and I'll say it again - Other Peoples Money is why we are $20 trillion in debt, EPA, bankrupt pension plans - the whole enchilada.
I'm sure somebody here can point to the appropriate biblical verse - Thou shall not covet, perhaps?
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/17/2019 9:54 Comments ||
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#2
There's an old saw about support for the death penalty: "It's not about whether you'd be willing to pull the switch, it's about whether you'd be willing to sit in the chair if you deserve it..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/17/2019 10:04 Comments ||
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#3
"We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you!"
---Chilcoot Charlie
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/17/2019 10:13 Comments ||
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#4
Thou shall not covet
The original sin of communists, socialists and Democrats.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/17/2019 11:53 Comments ||
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[American Thinker] When a CNN anchor warns that "It’s a fine line to walk between being a blank canvas and an empty vessel," a pretty boy, Kennedyesque empty suit progressive candidate, already recognizable by his first name alone, is in trouble.
Beto looks like a beta, if we are to judge by the Washington Post’s account of his "lengthy" interview with their writer Jenna Johnson. The title gives away the verdict: "Beto O’Rourke’s immigration plan: No wall but no specifics." The lead paragraphs are no kinder. Jenna Johnson wrote:
In a digital ad that recently went viral, Beto O’Rourke tore into President Trump’s desired border wall with soaring footage of the Rio Grande Valley and an explanation of what the wall would do: cut off access to the river, shrink the size of the United States and force the seizure of privately-held land.
It noted that most undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States in the past decade came not over the border but on visas that then expired.
So what should be done to address visa overstays?
"I don’t know," O’Rourke said, pausing in a lengthy interview.
The vacuity was so obvious that even CNN anchor Brianna Keilar felt compelled to raise the alarm. The segment is embedded below, but Tommy Christopher of Mediaite cuts to the chase:
#5
So what should be done to address visa overstays?
"I don’t know," O’Rourke said, pausing in a lengthy interview.
Idiot. The answer to that question is simple. When the visa expires, it triggers a computer program to check a database to determine whether or not the holder of the visa has left the country. If not, send agents to deport his ass. And then, that person never receives another visa to enter this country. And then, if they are subsequently caught in this country without a visa, they do hard jail time and then get deported again. But, with a wall, it'd be harder for them to get back here.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/17/2019 12:29 Comments ||
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#6
But, of course, the point is that Beto is an idiot and a lightweight to boot. He couldn't win a Senate seat in his home state. Lightweight.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/17/2019 12:31 Comments ||
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#8
#6 But, of course, the point is that Beto is an idiot and a lightweight to boot. He couldn't win a Senate seat in his home state. Lightweight.
Dad was a Judge and Father-in-law's a billionaire. Forbes tries hard to disprove that but then says: "As for Sanders —it's unlikely, though possible, that he's a billionaire. Without more info in his deals, we can’t know how well Sanders has managed the proceeds from his paydays, how much personal debt he’s taken on, or what he’s really worth. Based on the public information that Forbes has reviewed, Beto O’Rouke’s “billionaire” father-in-law is more likely to have a net worth in the neighborhood of $500 million."
So, like his emulative Kennedy clan. Born with the silver spoon planted in one or another orifice
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/17/2019 19:32 Comments ||
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#9
A slick politician of Cork,
Sodomitically porked with a spork,
Lit out for New York
Just ahead of the stork
To establish the family O'Rourke.
I got nuthin. Just wanted to chuck that image back at you, gingerly-like.
[Guardian] The first science-based diet that tackles both the poor food eaten by billions of people and averts global environmental catastrophe has been devised. It requires huge cuts in red meat-eating in western countries and radical changes across the world.
The "planetary health diet" was created by an international commission seeking to draw up guidelines that provide nutritious food to the world’s fast-growing population. At the same time, the diet addresses the major role of farming ‐ especially livestock ‐ in driving climate change, the destruction of wildlife and the pollution of rivers and oceans.
Globally, the diet requires red meat and sugar consumption to be cut by half, while vegetables, fruit, pulses and nuts must double. But in specific places the changes are stark. North Americans need to eat 84% less red meat but six times more beans and lentils. For Europeans, eating 77% less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds meets the guidelines.
The diet is a "win-win", according to the scientists, as it would save at least 11 million people a year from deaths caused by unhealthy food, while preventing the collapse of the natural world that humanity depends upon. With 10 billion people expected to live on Earth by 2050, a continuation of today’s unsustainable diets would inevitably mean even greater health problems and severe global warming.
[American Thinker] Iranian officials and the Islamic Republic's propaganda machine usually complain that Western media do not report the realities of Iran under the IRI. To cover this guilt, the Western media send a correspondent to Iran, and he tries to find positive things to say about the country. What is missing here is a lot of interesting aspects of Iran under the mullahs. Some of these aspects are so fantastic that they may encourage Westerners to move to the country.
Here you have ten reasons to move to Iran under the Islamist rule:
1. If you are a child-molester and want to have four permanent nine- to fifteen-year-old wives and unlimited non-permanent wives (more than nine years old), you should immigrate to Iran. All these relationships are legal and cheap in the country. You can even informally purchase a girl for some thousand dollars in some deprived provinces. Not even in Saudi Arabia can you do child marriage anymore, but it is free in Iran. Lovers of child marriage have an oasis there.
2. If you hate paying taxes and you work in the private sector, Iran is your heaven. You can be a physician and make a fortune, not paying a penny to IRS. You can do it in Iran by receiving cash from your patients.
3. If you want to get super-rich (more than 100 million dollars), it is very easy: register yourself in the Basiji militia in high school and college. Then work for the IRGC security branch and be courageous in persecuting, torturing, and killing dissidents. In ten years, you will have riches no one can imagine even in developed and capitalist societies. The government will sell you government-owned companies for one tenth of the normal price and give you low-interest loans to do the transaction.
4. If you are looking for a young and cheap prostitute, Iran is your destination. The age of prostitution has decreased to 13 in recent years, and you can procure basic "services" for two dollars.
h/t Instapundit
Recently on CNN, former Republican politico and now Never Trump cable new analyst Rick Wilson characterized Donald Trump’s supporters as his "credulous rube ten-toothed base."
Wilson was not original in his smear of the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump. He was likely resonating an earlier slander of Politico reporter Marco Caputo. The latter had tweeted of the crowd he saw at a Trump rally: "If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth."
...In the now notorious text communications between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, fired FBI operatives on Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, Strzok right before the 2016 election had texted his paramour Page: "Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support."
...What does all this hate speech signify?
One, there is terrible frustration among both the progressive Left (and the Never Trump Right whose luminaries have mused about replacing a supposed spent white working class with purportedly more energetic immigrants). So far Trump has not been stopped. His foreign and domestic agendas often find success and resonate with about 40-45 percent of the American people. Much of the uncouthness, then, reflects their own frustrations and sense of alienation that millions of Americans have tuned them out.
h/t Instapundit
It wasn’t quite the Cena Trimalchionis, but the robust, non-sissy feast that the President of the United States laid on for the Clemson Tigers ‐ the college football team that just won the national championship ‐ would in its own way have been the envy of Petronius’s diners. No larks’ tongues, but plenty of Big Macs, Whoppers, French fries, and pizza, all served up on gleaming White House china with the condiment proffered from silver bowls.
Donald Trump paid for the repast himself ‐ 1,000 hamburgers he said at one point, though fact checkers at the publicity arm of the Democratic National Committee said that there were probably no more than 300. Since FBI agents were in attendance, the matter was being referred to Special Counsel Robert Mueller for investigation.
The unusual catering arrangements were sparked by the make-believe government ’shutdown.’ The usual staff were unavailable to perform their duty; the Democrats among them were presumably on a fact-finding mission to inspect lanky blondes in bikinis in Puerto Rico and other sunny climes.
...The second fact is that the Left’s yapping, hysterical reaction to the event‐’Sexist!’ ’Unpresidential!’ ’Unhealthy!’ ‐ reminds most of America just how out of touch with most of America they are. There is a menopause of the spirit as well as of the body, and the Left is deep into heat-flash and night-sweats territory.
[Townhall] Let’s be clear: My pronouns are "he," "his," and "stop being creepy weirdos."
Okay, maybe the last one isn’t a pronoun, but then again, I’m a man and if I want an insulting string of words directed at the nattering nabobs of gender neutrality to be a pronoun, it is a pronoun. And if you don’t like it, fight me.
We need more masculinity, and the more toxic the social justice warriors think it is, the better.
Bizarrely, now shaving companies are allying with the SJWs in an Axis of Irritants. Gillette is channeling campus gender studies dorks to try to sell you razors. They all think you should soften up, get in touch with your feelings, and submit.
...Much as I advocate global warming, I am a strong proponent of toxic masculinity. It’s also known as "masculinity."
Risk-taking.
Ferociousness.
Independence.
These are the qualities the SJWs want to wring out of us. Why? Because these are the qualities they cannot overcome. They want us weak, passive and obedient. That’s how they get power. Some bloated Trigglypuff screaming about the male gaze can’t force us to do anything. Sure, a lot of them have weight on us, but if we laugh at them and simply say "No" to their demands, they’re stuck. Are they going to go get a rifle and make us? Whenever I hear about "toxic masculinity", I feel like saying: You don't like my toxic masculinity dear? OK - I want you to discuss the subject with an acquaintance of mine 'Ahmad, come over here!'"
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The National Interest] The naïve assumption of interventionists that U.S.-orchestrated forcible regime change would usher in new, democratic political systems was evident in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
[American Thinker] When a CNN anchor warns that "It’s a fine line to walk between being a blank canvas and an empty vessel," a pretty boy, Kennedyesque empty suit progressive candidate, already recognizable by his first name alone, is in trouble.
