…in which Our Brrrrrrrrave Gal approved the transfer of 20% of the U.S. ongoing supply of uranium to Russian control, while taking millions in Russian- and/or deal-related donations.

I’m following this New York Times article from April 2015:

…the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, [took] over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal…brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain…

At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

…the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States…the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among [them] was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns…Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show…

Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. [ed: Riiiiiight.] But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors…

The article continues with pages of details. One tiny sample:

The path to a Russian acquisition of American uranium deposits began in 2005 in Kazakhstan, where the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra orchestrated his first big uranium deal, with Mr. Clinton at his side.

…several months later, Mr. Giustra had donated $31.3 million to Mr. Clinton’s foundation.

Did the Clintons hide some large donations, possibly showing consciousness of guilt? Yes. Example:

To judge from [Clinton] disclosures…the only Uranium One official to give to the Clinton Foundation was Mr. Telfer, the chairman, and the amount was relatively small: no more than $250,000, and that was in 2007, before talk of a Rosatom deal began percolating.

But a review of tax records in Canada, where Mr. Telfer has a family charity called the Fernwood Foundation, shows that he donated millions of dollars more, during and after the critical time when the foreign investment committee was reviewing his deal with the Russians.

By the way, I didn’t know that “While the United States gets one-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces only around 20 percent of the uranium it needs, and most plants have only 18 to 36 months of reserves…”

Exit questions:

1. Why would NYT publish such an article? Why in April 2015? On whose hidden agenda? Just because Schweizer’s book was about to come out?
2. Why has no Special Counsel ever been appointed to look into all this?

UPDATE: Do the Clintons profit personally from the Clinton Foundation? (more…)

That’s the title of an article by Caitlin Johnstone which I came across. She seems more lefty/Democrat than me and I don’t endorse her every notion. Still, she seems populist and has some interesting notions. To start:

…the single best way to take down the oligarchy is by aggressively and relentlessly attacking its propaganda engine.

Johnstone sees “the oligarchy” as more about corporations than about Big Government’s politicians and bureaucrats; while I’m the reverse. But at least we agree there is an oligarchy.

The elites who manipulate your government are more vulnerable now than ever before and they know it — the solution just isn’t in politics, it’s in media…old propaganda systems which have been used to lull Americans into accepting the establishment narrative are wielding less and less influence…

So what can we do? We make them fight our fight. If they’re a shark and we’re a tiger, we make them fight us in the jungle…

1. Increase public distrust of the mainstream media.
…Imagine if [people] knew that CNN has been trotting out a seven year-old Syrian girl with an extremely popular fake Twitter account and making her recite scripted lines in order to manufacture consent for another regime change invasion…The Bana Alabed psy-op is the single most transparent piece of war propaganda that I have ever seen in my life, and we should be talking about it constantly, because they really left themselves exposed with that one.

I think Johnstone is talking about changing the frame. “Bana” was indeed Syria war propaganda. I mentioned it awhile back, but didn’t go far enough. The Resistance Chicks (2 populist-moderate, Christian sisters from Ohio) show Bana literally reading a script while the CNNwhore plays along and pretends it’s real.

When you expose Bana, putting her into a new (and 100% truthful) frame as a propaganda pawn, CNN’s power dissipates.

To continue – I won’t quote it all, but this gives you an idea of the rest of Johnstone’s eight points:

2. Shatter the illusion of normalcy.
…These [media, CNN-type] predators use their trusted, ubiquitous presence in the lives of the public to convince them that everything [bad] that’s happening is normal…It’s normal for your country to be bombing sovereign nations every single day and have hundreds of military bases all over the world…It’s normal that all these politicians seem to do pretty much the same things once elected despite campaigning on very different platforms. It’s normal for elected officials to lie. It’s normal for your government to have the ability to spy on you….We need to snap mainstream America out of this lullaby of normalcy. We need to be the caring friend who tells them that it’s not normal for their boyfriend to be violent and controlling…without the spell of normalcy, the whole thing falls apart.

3. Shatter the illusion of unanimity.
4. Stay loudly politically active.
5. Hold a grudge. [i.e., keep bringing up stuff / reminding people]
6. Always be attacking. [the oligarchy’s / media’s “normal” consensus]
7. Find the others. [telling people “Nah, you’re not crazy — I see it too.”]
8. Have fun. “We have the opportunity to be basically wizards, fighting the word-spells these bastards are casting on the sleeping mainstream and screaming ‘You shall not pass!'”

As always, I’d encourage you to Read The Whole Thing, and/or to share your thoughts.

We’ve been having fun in the comments about Representative-Elect Greg Gianforte (R-MT). He body-slammed a reporter in rage, probably committing misdemeanor assault, then lied about what he did. Later, he apologized – but only sort of – because he never said what for and, to my knowledge, he has not yet corrected his false witness. (Feel free to update me in the comments)

His actions are bad. Both violence and lying are totally unacceptable, in our politics, from whatever side. And I think he’s just sorry that he was caught. If he merits prosecution (or censure or expulsion in the House), let the right thing happen.

He also needs to be seen in perspective. As usual, Tucker Carlson and V the K nail it. From V:

Gianforte doesn’t seem like someone I’d defend to the last, but I’m not going to let people who supported Ted Kennedy and Gerry Studds lecture me on who’s unfit to serve in Congress.

Also, is it just me, or has this one dust-up between a Republican congressman and a reporter gotten more mass media coverage than all the violence inflicted by Antifa, the Portlandia Anti-Trump mob, the Middlebury/Berkeley/UW-Madison college Democrats, and the woman in Tennesee who tried to run a Republican congressman off the road combined?

And Tucker Carlson for your enjoyment:

Tucker has a laundry list of recent, left-wing political violence – including threats and violence against at least 3 Republican Congresspeople.

Gianforte lost all control of himself – as a 56-year old man – and muddied the waters. For that, he has my contempt. But he’s a globule of mud, in a virtual La Brea Tar Pits of left-wing political violence in America today that many Democrats refuse to condemn.

As always, the Left and the Controlled Media (but I repeat myself) would rather pretend that the speck in Republicans’ eyes is the New Coming of Hitler, than look at the many logs in their own.

In between coughing fits, she-who-will-never-be-president offered up this bit of wisdom to the graduating snowflakes of Wellesley.

“When people in power invent their own facts and attack those who question them it can mark the beginning of the end of a free society”

Really, Mrs Clinton? You mean self-serving lies like “the Benghazi attack was caused by a YouTube video?” Or, “I never used my private email server for classified documents.” Or even, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

Tell us again how you came under sniper fire in Bosnia, and how your husband did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. And how you were named after Sir Edmund Hillary.

You know, come to think of it, I agree with her.

Yet another story that should be all over the media, but I haven’t seen it much. (If you have, let me know.)

Why wouldn’t it be covered? I find that it reflects great discredit on the Establishment (both political parties, Deep State and Controlled Media). As I started to say yesterday, they have ways to decide what you’re going to hear about. For as long as they can, they will bury stories that don’t fit their agenda.

To review some background:

• Under the 4th Amendment, the government isn’t supposed to spy on U.S. people without a court-ordered warrant.
• “The FISA Court” is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 “to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.” (Wiki)
  Note, foreign.
• But FISA Court hearings are secret and only the government and the court judge are present, like a kangaroo court. The adversarial system is abandoned.
• As such, FISA tends to be very lenient to the government. Over time, they have created a secret body of law that gives the government sweeping powers to do domestic warrantless surveillance under an alleged “special needs exception” to the 4th Amendment.
• One example – In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked a FISA order that requires phone companies to provide a daily, ongoing feed of everyone’s phone call data to the NSA. Super invasive!
• Even so, FISA isn’t toothless and doesn’t approve everything – as you shall see. They need to preserve respectability, at least in their own eyes.
• FISA judges are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States. In this regard, Establishment Republicans control the FISA court.

That’s just background. Now for the news, as reported by John Solomon and Sara Carter at Circa.com.

Under President Obama, the NSA secretly conducted years of surveillance and searches on Americans that not even the secret, super-lenient FISA Court would approve.

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community…

The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm…

The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.

The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans.

Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011.

Officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice have argued their activities were legal under the so-called minimization rule changes Obama made, and that the intelligence agencies were strictly monitored to avoid abuses.

The intelligence court and the NSA’s own internal watchdog found that not to be true…

The American Civil Liberties Union said the newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself…

RTWT. Naturally, the NSA is scrambling to reassure people that it has fixed the problem. Riiiiiiiight. And Susan Rice didn’t lie and none of the surveillance data was ever misused against Obama opponents or improperly unmasked. Riiiiiiiight.

To people who understand civil liberties and limited government, all this is a huge deal that shows how far out of control the U.S. “intelligence community” (Deep State) has gotten. Chris Farrell at Judicial Watch compares it to President Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus during the U.S. Civil War.

Where is the Special Counsel on this?

Or the media coverage? Bush’s NSA did some illegal surveillance in the 2000s – and in 2005, was duly slammed by The New York Times. A large kerfuffle. “But that was then.” It served the interests of someone powerful – someone in deep alliance with, or control of, The New York Times – to weaken Bush. Not so much with Obama, eh?

See the FISA Court’s declassified order spanking the Obama administration, here. By the way, note how large sections of the relevant law and dockets are blacked out, showing how the FISA system has created secret law that the citizens aren’t supposed to know about. That’s horrible.

Also from Circa: Comey’s FBI was neck deep in the abuses.

The FBI has illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections, according to newly declassified government documents that undercut the bureau’s public assurances…

There’s a handful of other things Jeff could have mentioned.

• On his last day in office, Barack Obama commuted the sentence of an unrepentant communist terrorist (who participated in over a hundred terrorist bombings that killed six people) Oscar Lopez Rivera. In New York City, Rivera is being honored at the annual Puerto Rican Day event, because left-wing Democrats love people who murder for communism.  The Democrat mayor of New York will march in solidarity with the communist terrorist. The Democrat governor is polling the issue to decide if he should also march in solidarity.
• Also, it turns out Obama knowingly allowed MS-13 and other violent gang members into the United States as part of his “Illegals claiming to be unaccompanied minors get to come into America and get welfare and vote for Democrats” program. People claim Obama was not out to deliberately destroy the United States, but frankly, I’m not seeing it.
• Also, in the wake of the Manchester Islamic Supremacist bombing, even an idiotic vegan socialist wanker like Morrissey is questioning whether mass immigration of violent, gay-hating, intolerant Mohemmedans is as smart and wonderful as the politicians claim it is.  (When you’ve lost Morrissey…)
• Students Inmates  at the University of Chicago are demanding racially segregated student housing, so the races don’t have to mix. They haven’t demanded separate drinking fountains and lunch counters yet, but I’m sure that’s coming.
• Also, Mattress Girl, the mentally-ill women who destroyed a young man’s life with a false rape accusation and became a hero to Democrat feminist (New York’s senator Gillibrand had her as a guest at the State of the Union speech) has gone on to become a tax-supported “performance artist,” whose act consists of being tied up in BDSM by a Daddy while she denounces Donald Trump, or something.

As Jeff put it so well, “Yawn.”

• Oh, and Ben and Jerry’s Communist Cop-Killer-Supporting Ice Cream company is protesting for gay marriage by not allowing customers to have two scoops of the same flavor as yet another effing-stupid leftist virtue-signaling stunt.

Consider this an open thread to talk about anything listed here, or not listed here.

• Eric Clanton has been arrested by Berkeley police.

  Score one for the good guys. This is the Nutty Professor who was allegedly assaulting people with bike locks on behalf of Antifa, during those riots in Berkeley.

  “His work in political philosophy also centers on mass incarceration and the prison system,” Clanton’s former faculty page read. “He is currently exploring restorative justice from an anti-authoritarian perspective.”

  I hope Prof. Clanton will be finding out a lot about mass incarceration, the prison system, restorative justice, and authority.

• The 4th Circuit has blocked Trump’s travel suspension.

  I find this a bit of a yawner. President Trump’s orders on the suspension (sometimes called a “Muslim Ban” by our biased media) have been pretty reasonable. The opinions blocking the suspension have been mostly ridiculous. There’s nothing I can do about it except hope it goes to the Supreme Court. And SCOTUS will do whatever they’re going to do, one way or the other.

• The Gianforte matter. Again, yawns from me. If Gianforte committed assault, let the police/justice system take care of it and let him rot in jail. That’s what the police/justice system is for. Let it work. There, I just condemned Gianforte (provided he’s guilty).
• NYT reporting that Russian officials discussed how they might influence Trump. Again: Yawn. Does anyone think that Russian officials hadn’t spent the previous 8 years discussing how they might influence Hillary and Obama?
• This is more interesting. The Washington Post discusses how Russians may or may not have tipped off the FBI that Obama’s AG Loretta Lynch was planning to block any prosecution of Hillary Clinton in her e-mail scandal.

  So…Hillary Clinton(‘s campaign) colluded with the Obama administration, to block investigation and/or prosecution? And Russia had spies, in the Obama administration? Or somebody fooled them with phony tips? Sorry, my head is spinning from all the Inside Baseball.

The Obama administration used the IRS to target their domestic political opponents. AND they used the intelligence agencies as well (“unmasking”, “distributing” and leaking data from the U.S. surveillance apparatus) to target U.S. opponents.

Why has no special counsel ever been appointed, to investigate all that?

Or the Clinton Foundation corruption?

Or the innumerable classified-info leaks of recent months, many likely to be from Obama holdovers in the government?

Trump-Russia has been Fake News from minute one. My first reaction when a special counsel was appointed there was “Fine, let them spin their wheels on nothing”. That was too sanguine of me. It is indeed bad, for a couple of reasons.

First, as it is a witch hunt, they will keep looking until they entrap somebody in the Trump administration into a “process” crime. A la Scooter Libby, in the Plame affair. He ended up in jail, even though it was Richard Armitage who had illegally leaked Plame’s name.

Second and probably more important, it consumes DOJ and FBI resources that could and should be used to look elsewhere. And that’s the point of the thing. Democrats want to make sure no one will look at their horrific scandals.

Having a special counsel on the comparatively scandal-free President Trump, instead of themselves, is a huge coup. As in, coup d’etat against a lawfully elected President.

UPDATE: We could also talk about other types of investigation, such as complaints to the House Ethics Committee. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch asks, “Why the double standard?” against Rep. Devin Nunes.

• Rep. Devin Nunes chairs the House Intelligence Committee. He blew the whistle on the Obama administration’s illicit “unmasking” of surveillance data. Democrats responded by filing an ethics complaint on him.
• Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat of the same committee, has been all over the media for months, possibly leaking classified information (or at least confirming leaked info, improperly). Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint on him.
• Guess Which the Ethics committee is acting on? And why?

I’ll say why: This is how the U.S. power structure works. By manufacturing (or at least spreading) one narrative; burying another. What you hear about, from investigations and the Controlled Media, is decided behind the scenes. Someone decides which thing you’ll hear about, and they decide because they have the hidden political power and it suits their agenda.

In this case, the House Ethics committee is run by Establishment Republicans. As such, they’re part of The Swamp; they are bedfellows to Democrats and the Deep State. Nunes sinned by bringing out a (true) story that strengthens Trump’s position. They would rather intimidate, mislead or weaken Trump into “playing ball”.

With every Deep State investigation and every Controlled Media “narrative”, you should ask: Why this one, not that other one? And why now?

(NB: Added and rewrote a lot, after first publication. Will stop now.)

In a statement that the left-wing media have ripped out of context, HUD Secretary Ban Carson (who was raised in severe poverty and rose to become the nation’s foremost pediatric neurosurgeon and is, therefore, approximately 50,000 times smarter than the average journalist) said that poverty is largely a result of a person’s own choices and not something inflicted upon them.

“I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview that was released on Wednesday. “You take somebody that has the right mind-set, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there.”

He added that helping people may not better their lives.

“You take somebody with the wrong mind-set, you can give them everything in the world — they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom,” Mr. Carson said.

He is absolutely correct.

There’s a huge difference between being poor and being in poverty. And it’s more than a matter of being able to work out of deprivation. One can be poor in the sense of having limited economic assets and still live a life of meaning and dignity. But to be in poverty… to accept one’s condition of deprivation and wallow in it… that is indeed a state of mind.

My grandmother used to say “There’s nobody so poor they can’t pick up their own front yard.” She fled Detroit in the mid-1970’s, after the city government was solidified under the corrupt racist mayor Coleman Young and the city was commencing its downward spiral into an urban dystopia. Her wisdom was based on watching middle class neighborhoods be destroyed in real time.

No one forces the poor to live in litter-strewn neighborhoods, among smashed windows and graffiti-scarred walls. No one forces poor neighborhoods into states of dilapidation. The people who live there create those conditions. They elect the political leadership that allows their schools and neighborhoods to rot and fester.

What he said is really no different than the axiom that you cannot help people who refuse to be helped; most would regard this as a truism.

On a related note: A dimbulb California Dhimmicrat congresswoman says terror attacks are because Mohammedans “feel isolated.” (It’s always about feelings with those dingbats.)

In the uber-leftist utopia of Seattle Washington (a city whose gay Democrat mayor is having to step down after a scandal involving him paying for sex with underage boys) , Police have been instructed to no longer use the term “suspect,” but must describe those suspected of committing crimes as “members of the community.” Because surely this change of words will help end crime and social inequality.

When Seattle police officers write use of force reports they no longer call a suspect a suspect.

“Community member” is the new term. Several officers say the term is offensive, explaining their work with violent suspects.

Sources point to the suspect who shot three officers last month after a downtown Seattle armed robbery. When officers involved in that incident were writing their use of force reports they were required to refer to the shooter, Damarius Butts, as a “community member,” not a suspect, police sources said.

Also, inmates in the city’s jails may no longer be referred to as “inmates,” but the politically correct mandated term is “students.” Because the delicate feelings of violent criminals are just, oh so precious.

After expressing solidarity with the Manchester bombing victims, he said:

So many young, beautiful, innocent people, living and enjoying their lives, murdered by evil losers in life. I won’t call them monsters, because they would like that term. They would think that’s a great name. I will call them, from now on, losers, because that’s what they are, they’re losers. And we’ll have more of them. But they’re losers, just remember that.

This is what I’ve spent these last few days talking about in my trip overseas. Our society can have no tolerance for this continuation of bloodshed. We cannot stand a moment longer for the slaughter of innocent people. And, in today’s attack, it was mostly innocent children. The terrorists and extremists, and those who give them aid and comfort, must be driven out from our society forever. This wicked ideology must be obliterated, and I mean completely obliterated.

Emphasis in President Trump’s delivery. I find this interesting on several levels.

First, calling them “losers” is a Trumpism. He’s spent his life focused on the issue of winning vs. losing in business, and he speaks colloquially and from his heart. Translators (into other languages) may have to footnote the expression or come up with some local idiom that would strike us as odd (if we heard it translated back).

Second, it’s an Americanism. Trump is a throwback to a time when most Americans were focused on winning vs. losing. As General Patton said in a bygone era, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.” This was before the Left programmed us to look down on winners and give everyone a participation trophy.

Third, it’s true. These terrorists are losers. They can’t think of anything better to do with the wonderful gift of life, than to try to ruin it for others. In addition to being evil, vicious, nihilistic, malicious, etc., they’re indescribably stupid. As such, only the stupidest of women should want to have sexual intercourse with them. They lack evolutionary fitness.

Fourth, it’s something new. I mean, I’ve called these Islamist terrorists “losers” before – but to hear the President of the United States do it, seems new. (If President Obama did it, please let me know in the comments. A search for “obama calls terrorists losers” turns up only Trump doing it.) It expresses a (rightful) depth of contempt for the terrorists that Obama probably never had. I also doubt that Obama ever talked about “completely obliterating” them.

Fifth, it’s strangely persuasive. Killing terrorists in wars, policing and effective border control all do have a place in the War on Terror. But, to really end terrorism, we will need to thrust a moral and social frame upon the terrorists that makes them seem “obviously” contemptible, or even ridiculous. So that, even to an America-hating leftist or a Muslim who may feel oppressed, being a suicide bomber no longer carries any status or moral authority or cachet. “Ugh, what a bunch of losers” is such a frame – and has the virtue, again, of being true.

Sixth and not least: Trump is saying it in the Middle East, to the faces of Palestinians (and earlier, Saudis). Kudos, Mr. President!

Seventh, the Usual Suspects hate it – you know, Whoopi Goldberg, The View, the leftie newspapers saying it makes light of things and doesn’t show enough seriousness – so you know that Trump must be on the right track.

UPDATE: Scott Adams seems to agree.

What kinds of people join the Losers [terrorists]? Mostly young males. And you know what brand young males do not want on them? Right: Losers.

If you call them monsters, they like it. If you call them ISIS or ISIL they put it on a flag and wave it around. If you call them non-Muslim, it just rolls off their backs because they have Korans and stuff. Almost any other “brand” you can imagine is either inert or beneficial to Loser recruitment.

Loser is different. No one joins the Loser movement. Try at home, with your family or friends, to concoct a more effective brand poisoning than Loser. You probably can’t.

UPDATE: Just to give credit where it’s due: in 2015, there was a push from the Obama administration to refer to the ISIS as “Daesh”. That, too, was a brand-poisoning exercise. Maybe not a great one. In Arabic, the letters are an acronym of ISIS’ name and evoke the Arabic words for “one who crushes and tramples” others, and “one who sows discord”. Perhaps our words “sociopath” or “fascist” are dynamic equivalents? Daesh is derogatory enough to make ISIS want to cut your tongue out. So, it’s a good shot. But 1) it evokes nothing in English, 2) it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter: these jihadists are losers.

UPDATE: Sean L gets into the spirit of the thing:

Perhaps we need to start using phrases that carry the same level of contempt in the Arabic world as “loser” does over here. How about “pig penises”?

The above is the latest politically correct wisdom from the social justice left; which shut down a burrito restaurant in Portlandia because it was run by white women.

One commenter said: “Now that you all boldly and pretty fucking unapologetically stole the basis of these women’s livelihoods, you can make their exact same product so other white ppl don’t have to be inconvenienced of dealing with a pesky brown middle woman getting in their way. Great job.”

Another commenter explained what’s basically a sad truth underlying the Portland restaurant community: “If you knew anything of the restaurant industry (or Google) you’d know that this is true. ‘Ethnic’ chefs are expected to ‘cook from their ethnic backgrounds’ while White chefs can do what these two horrid women did: vacation somewhere and ‘get inspired’ and appropriate an entire culture’s cuisine and claim it as their own.”

Immediately after the fury continued online, a different resource emerged and quickly went viral: a Google doc showing exactly how prevalent this epidemic is. The list titled “White-Owned Appropriative Restaurants in Portland” provides a who’s who of culinary white supremacy.

Segregationist Democrats in 1955: “Folks should just keep to their own kind.”

Social Justice Democrats in 2017: “Folks should just keep to their own kind.”

Washington Post Headline: In suburban Manchester, a search for what might have motivated the attacker.

Yeah, it’s a mystery all right, but it seems to have something to do with “radicalization.”

Experts say Manchester’s hidden radicalization problem is not unique to the city.

“What we have seen recently is the emergence of clusters where groups of people — who often live close to one another — radicalize relatively quickly,” said Raffaello Pantucci, the director for international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “This isn’t only happening in London or Manchester, but also in much smaller towns.”

The article uses “radical” or “radicalize six times, but never quite gets around to explaining exactly *what* is “radicalizing” people to commit terrorism.

“This is such a cosmopolitan city, but there are circles and groups of people which are extremely closed to outsiders,” said the man, who spoke on the condition that only his first name, Jay, be used. “That is where teenagers or young men and women become radicalized. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”

“Radicalization” must be like some form of virus that just randomly strikes people and causes them to commit mass murder. I guess there’s no defense against it.

Leftists in the United States and Europe have responded to the terror attack in Manchester as they have to previous incidents of mass murder by Islamic Supremacists… by expressing their unwavering solidarity with “Muslim Communities” whose feelings might be hurt by “Islamophobia” and the fear of a backlash.

As Bruce Bawer notes, Progressive politicians around the world have expressed sympathy for the terror victims, while vowing to make sure nothing is done to prevent future attacks that might hurt the feelings of Islamic Supremacists.

Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese also spoke of “fear” and “division”: “Manchester is a proud, strong city and we will not allow terrorists who seek to sow fear and division to achieve their aims.” Guess what, pal? They did achieve their aims: they killed 22 people, including children, and injured several dozen. Dead infidels: that’s their objective, period. (Or, as you would say, full stop.)

As has been so often the case lately, the perpetrator of the mass murder was “known to authorities,” who did nothing to prevent his mass murder. Similarly, Omar Mateen had been interviewed by the FBI and determined not to be a threat. Likewise, the Tsaernev brothers, and the Fort Lauderdale airport shooters were also passed over by law enforcement before they committed their acts of terror.

In Paris, some women have started a protest against certain neighborhoods of the city that are so infested with Islamic Supremacist migrants that French women are no longer safe there. It’s a safe bet that almost all of these women voted for left-wing French politicians who supported the mass immigration of these Islamists.

And In Britain, a woman who tweeted that British Men should stand up and protect women from terrorists is being investigated for a “hate crime.”

Per The Telegraph, The suicide bomber who killed 22 people and injured dozens more at the Manchester Arena has been named as 22-year-old Salman Abedi.

Born in Manchester in 1994, the second youngest of four children his parents were Libyan refugees who came to the UK to escape the Gaddafi regime.

His parents were both born in Libya but appear to have emigrated to London before moving to the Fallowfield area of south Manchester where they have lived for at least ten years.

He had become radicalised recently – it is not entirely clear when – and had worshipped at a local mosque that has, in the past, been accused of fund-raising for jihadists.

(They’re still changing the article, so you might not find the exact text above.)

I’m sorry to say that lots of us saw this coming. As of last night, the media weren’t releasing his name; the delay always means that the perpetrator is a left-winger or (more likely) a Muslim.

Also, for anyone who follows the situation of Europe drowning under its Muslim immigrants, a recurring theme is that the immigrants very often don’t work (the supposed reason for bringing them in), don’t integrate, and give birth to a second generation that is MORE radical and LESS integrated than the first.

Old and busted: Lou Reed is so cool. He did a song about trannies that makes the squares uptight!

New hotness: Lou Reed is so bigoted. He did a song about trannies that makes us SJWs uptight!

A student group at the University of Guelph in Canada has apologized for including the Lou Reed song “Walk on the Wild Side” on a playlist at a campus event…

The Guelph Central Student Association wrote “We now know the lyrics to this song are hurtful to our friends in the trans community and we’d like to unreservedly apologize for this error in judgement.”…

In a further statement a spokesperson said: “The lyrics, ‘and then he was a she,’ devalues the experiences and identities of trans folks.

Huh? How?

Don’t think I’m going soft on the Saudis. I’ve just not seen a recent image from California where there were this many American flags and none of them were on fire.

But let’s not forget that we are dealing with a corrupt, degenerate, autocratic state where there is no free speech, where universities are run by fanatics who indoctrinate students with radical ideology; where street thugs aligned with the ruling party freely commit acts of violence against opposing views, and whose ruling elite routinely violates the basic rights of Christians and other minorities. Also, Saudi Arabia is pretty bad too.

Probably more than any other country, Saudi Arabia has “hacked our democracy”. I keep meaning to write a post on their ownership share of U.S. media, and why they would be on board with a “Trump is a Russian agent!” narrative.

During the election, Trump rightly criticized Hillary for taking money from the world’s worst country for women and gays. And he had a nasty Twitter exchange with a Saudi prince.

What a difference a year makes. First, the new US-Saudi arms deal:

According to a statement just issued by the White House, Trump “has just completed largest single arms deal in US history, negotiating a package totaling more than $109.7 billion” which will boost Saudi Arabia’s defense capabilities, bolstering equipment and services in the face of extreme terrorist groups and Iran. The White House added that the deal will create defense jobs while also reaffirming America’s commitment to Saudi Arabia…

According to estimates cited by The Independent, including restocking and future commitments over the next ten years, the deal could balloon to $350 billion worth of arms…

I’m not at all sure this is good news.

• How is it different from what any pet of the Deep State would have done? (Obama, Hillary, Jeb Bush, Lindsay McCain?) I don’t know.
• Does it boost U.S. jobs as much as Trump says? I don’t know.
• I know it will help Saudi Arabia to conquer its neighbor Yemen and gain control of its oil reserves. (Not necessarily good.)
• Does it put U.S. defense technology in the hands of people who hate us? Probably.
• Does it mean that Saudi-controlled elements of U.S. media will ease their war on Trump? I don’t know.

I do know that Trump’s speech in Riyadh was epic. As Bruce Bawer puts it:

It was gag-inducing to hear him praise the “magnificent kingdom” of Saudi Arabia, “the splendor of your country,” “the grandeur of this remarkable place,” and so on…But then something happened…

…he began mixing the ethereal praise with realistic businessman-type talk about the value of international partnership…[and] underscored the fact that in order for such a partnership to work, something would have to change. And it would have to change a lot. The Islamic world, he insisted, had to turn into a place where young Muslims could grow up “innocent of hatred.”

And then he spelled out the results of that hatred, presenting first a roll call of some of the “barbaric attacks” on America – 9/11, Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando – and then a list of other places (“Europe, Africa, South America, India, Russia, China, and Australia”) where that hatred has manifested itself.

However delicately he worked his way around to it, it was nothing less than an accusation.

No, he didn’t explicitly charge Muslim leaders with funding terrorism – but he told them, in no uncertain terms, that they needed to cut off funds to terrorists…And, yes, he spoke of “Islamic” (not “Islamist” or “radical Islamic”) terror. And he made it clear he wasn’t just talking about terrorism – he was talking about Islam itself. He condemned “the oppression of women, the persecution of Jews, and the slaughter of Christians.”

Kudos, Mr. President!

Full video here (scroll down). Short excerpts here and here. Full text here. Addressing Saudi princes, telling them to their faces, “Terrorists do not worship God, they worship death…Drive them out of this Earth!”

For the last 100 years – and, especially for the last 8 years under President Obama – more and more Americans have become feckless dependents of government.

They may be rich, middle class or poor. They may depend on government benefits, or on special favors written into our laws and regulations. Or they may be politicians and bureaucrats and government workers, deciding the fates of other people and taking paychecks a good deal larger than what most of them could get in the private sector. They may be journalists taking cash payments from the CIA, or billionaires with extensive government contracts.

And they are indeed feckless. They gladly believe and spread the most ridiculous things on zero evidence. For example, they choose a criminally dishonest politician (Hillary Clinton) to be president. When she doesn’t quite win the election, they gladly believe and spread rumors that the guy who did win is a Russian spy – on zero evidence, again – and chant “F*ck [him]!” at important political conventions.

On the other side are ordinary Americans who more-or-less believe in God, common sense, and supporting themselves through work. Again, they may be rich, middle class or poor. They choose 2 business people in a row to be president. The most recent one might not be a great role model in some ways, but at least he says sensible things in a forthright, unafraid manner. When he wins the election, he sets himself to the task of reviving America’s economy and manufacturing base – only to be undermined by the vast army and bureaucracy of the feckless government dependents, spreading their nonsense.

It’s a mortal conflict. And one side knows it: the feckless government dependents. Because America is fast reaching the point where it can’t afford to support them any longer. They, the cancer, are about to kill the host. They, the cancer, must be controlled and cut back – so that the rest of America can survive, and perhaps revive a little.

They, the feckless government dependents, know it deep-down. And, being out-of-control like any late-stage cancer, they are desperate to deny it and to continue a system – their own system – that promises to extract every last drop of life and treasure that can be extracted from normal Americans.

It’s Producers vs. Looters. Understand that the Producers are people of all classes and walks of life. Likewise, the Looters are people of all classes and walks of life.

And so we arrive at the political struggles of the last seven months. President Trump isn’t perfect. I did not support him. I still don’t support him, whenever and wherever I may disagree with him. But, somehow (and although I never wanted it), he became a leader for the Producers – or at least for the opponents of America’s looting, criminal Establishment. Imperfect Mr. Trump is the president we’ve got. And the vast army and bureaucracy of the feckless government dependents are determined to destroy him.

Thus the endless, utter nonsense they spew each day. I’m not sure what to do about it. I know that supporting Trump blindly will not help. But tolerating nonsense will also not help.

The only thing I know how to do, that might help in some tiny way, is to keep telling the truth as I see it unfolding around me.

Or posting links.

• Kurt Schlichter rightly calls the last several months of nonsense a ‘coup’ attempt against the People’s lawfully elected President.
• As does William A. Jacobson.
• Stephen Kruiser on the media’s new lows in the Age of Trump.

Schlichter sums it up well: “Someone came to Washington who wasn’t part of the club, and that’s intolerable. So they are desperate to expel him, and by extension, us. Every day will be a crisis, every action he takes will be the worst thing that has ever happened, and every step towards keeping his promises a crime.”

Each day, let us dedicate ourselves anew to rejecting the nonsense. And to offering truth, in its place.