Posted tagged ‘Democrat National Convention’

Welcome to the Communist Party, U.S.A.

July 29, 2016

Welcome to the Communist Party, U.S.A., Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 29, 2016

hilly cp

Wearing a white pantsuit, Hillary Clinton plodded out on stage to accept the nomination that she had schemed, plotted, lied, cheated, rigged and eventually fixed a series of elections to obtain.

Then she claimed that she was accepting the nomination of a race she had rigged with “humility”.

Humility is not the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Hillary Clinton. It is not even the last word. It is not in the Hillary dictionary at all. But this convention was a desperate effort to humanize Hillary. Everyone, including her philandering husband and dilettante daughter, down to assorted people she had met at one point, were brought up on stage to testify that she really is a very nice person.

This wasn’t a convention. It was a series of character witnesses for a woman with no character. It was an extensive apology for the Left’s radical agenda cloaked in fake patriotism and celebrity adulation.

Sinclair Lewis famously said, “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”. More accurately, when Communism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. That’s what the Democratic National Convention was.

This night presented Hillary Clinton as all things to all people. She was a passionate fighter who found plenty of time to spend with her family. She is for cops and for cop-killers. She likes the Founding Fathers and political correctness. She wants Democrats to be the party of working people and of elitist government technocrats. And, most especially, she cares about people like you.

The convention, like everything about Hillary, was awkward and insincere.

There was Bernie glaring into the camera just as Hillary was thanking him for rallying a bunch of young voters whom she hoped to exploit. There was Chelsea Clinton reminding everyone that the Clintons are a dynasty and that everyone in it gets a job because of their last name, right before introducing her mother whose only real qualification for her belated entry into politics was her last name. And there was Jennifer Granholm who got an opportunity to have an incoherent public meltdown at the convention.

There’s the mandatory video explaining how Hillary Clinton personally hunted down Osama bin Laden while sitting in a chair. “She’s carrying the hope and the rage of an entire nation,” Morgan Freeman intones. Coming in November 2016. And Hillary Clinton will be played by Meryl Streep. Donald Trump is compared to Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s rather obvious even to the handful of Hillary supporters that their candidate fits the Ratched role much better than Trump does.

The audience was told incessantly that Hillary Clinton loves small children. Once would have been enough. Twice would have been enough. By the millionth repetition, it seems more like Hillary is the witch trying to lure children into her gingerbread house.

Helping out with that task were a continuing parade of young female celebrities. If you thought that Elizabeth Banks and Lena Dunham were awkward, just wait for Katy Perry and Chloe Moretz urging their cohort to go out there and vote for Hillary right after a bunch of ex-military people claim that the woman who helped ISIS take over two countries and the Muslim Brotherhood even more countries than that will be good for national security.

General John Allen, formerly of the Marine Corps, currently employed by Qatar’s pet Brookings think tank, insisted that only Hillary Clinton could defeat ISIS. That’s like saying that only Mrs. O’Leary’s cow could put out the Great Chicago Fire which she started. Furthermore Qatar played a major role in the expansion of Islamic terrorism that helped culminate in the current crisis.

There were treasonous Republicans, confused celebrities and a weirdly lifelike Nancy Pelosi. There was yet another New York politician likely to be indicted, Andy Cuomo, trying much too hard. But topping them all was Hillary Clinton who was in her manic mode, trying too hard to be human, and failing.

Eyes wide, looking suspiciously from side to side, shrilly barking lines into the microphone that stripped them of their emotional context, Hillary delivered both sides of her personality in one speech.

And both sides of her agenda.

The radical agenda of the Left was clumsily cloaked in references to the Founding Fathers. The same group of people whose names the Left want to see ground into the dirt. Hillary’s call for collectivism, the insistence that none of us can do anything as individuals, was dressed up in E Pluribus Unum and the Founding Fathers.

Sinclair Lewis was almost right. When Communism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag.

The old Elizabeth Warren-Barack Obama theme of “You didn’t build that” had become Hillary’s theme once again. No one does anything on their own. It takes a village of bloated bureaucrats to do anything. And Hillary has to be appointed to run this village of bloated bureaucrats who, like her, never actually do anything but sing their own praises and then give themselves pay raises and more power to abuse.

Donald Trump, we are told, is a terrible person who actually believes in individualism. While good progressives like Hillary know that individualism is a pernicious lie told by running dog capitalists.

And Hillary will be a “a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents”. She’ll be such a good president that we won’t even need elections anymore. Just like the Democrats dispensed with them. There will just be one “village” under Hillary and Huma and the rest of their ridiculous neo-Reds.

Then Hillary will fix the economy by banning people from giving money to Republicans and promoting voter fraud. She will legalize illegal aliens to “grow our economy” by destroying still more American jobs. And she will see to it that companies “share profits” to working people. And by working people, she means the Clintons. College will be free. And the “super-rich” will pay for it all.

The “super-rich” are the really rich. Not flat broke paupers like the Clintons.

Half of Hillary’s new positions were things that she had rejected as too radical when Bernie proposed them. Now they’re not too radical anymore. Because the Democrats always keep turning Left.

Yesterday’s crazy radical idea is tomorrow’s Democratic slogan. Yesterday’s Alinsky disciple is tomorrow’s moderate Democrat. Yesterday’s Communist notion is tomorrow’s DNC speech.

And so Hillary Clinton embraced wealth redistribution and re-appropriation from people who aren’t her. She embraced it with verve and gusto. She pushed Communism dressed up in references to the Founding Fathers. It takes a village to take away all our political and economic freedoms.

Bernie Sanders lost, but he won. Or rather it didn’t matter which of them won since they both shared the same radical agenda. The only difference was that Bernie was willing to be honest about it.

Hillary wasn’t. Until now.

This was a speech that could have been given in Moscow during the Cold War. Instead it was delivered to an enthusiastic audience of Democrats who love the idea of taking away someone else’s money. Beneath all the distractions, the celebrities and family stories, is the fundamental idea that Hillary has more of a right to your money than you do because she is “humbly” more enlightened than you are.

There’s a name for that ideology. It comes with a hammer and sickle, with the color red, with gulags and firing squads, with little red books and big black prisons, and the death of the human soul.

Hillary made a mistake by wearing a white pants suit to her coronation. She should have worn red.

The dog that didn’t bark at the Democrats’ convention

July 29, 2016

The dog that didn’t bark at the Democrats’ convention, American ThinkerThomas Lifson, July 29, 2016

(The Clinton Cash video is available at Warsclerotic. It’s well worth watching.– DM)

If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were covering the Democratic National Convention, he could title his account, “The Case of the Missing Claim.”  There was a conspicuous absence amidst all the praise heaped on Hillary Clinton.   Warner Todd Huston of Breitbart noticed:

After nearly three days of speeches and video propaganda one major part of Democrat Nominee Hillary Clinton’s life’s work has gone virtually unmentioned during the Democrat National Convention in Philadelphia. Even as speaker after speaker lauded Hillary’s career in public life, no mention of the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation has been uttered from the dais.

It is true that for years we have heard of the “wonderful work” the Clinton Foundation does… something about poor people, AIDS, and so forth. Best not to ask for any details, though. Haiti does not seem to have benefitted enormously from the billion dollars-plus said to have been raised for it.

Huston attributes the silence likely to: “the wild success of the documentary film Clinton Cash.”

Maybe that is the trigger. But this silence also indicates that the Dems realize that they have lost the argument on what used to be one of the biggest talking points of the Hillary-as-savior faction.

I think that the image of Clintons raising money ostensibly for poor people that ends up hiring private jets, luxury hotels, and paying political staff in the out years is fairly toxic for Hillary. She is so unlikable that people can actually believe that she might be a big phony when she claims to be devoted to helping the poor but just accidentally ends up fabulously rich and living the jet set high life.

The Democrats may have signaled their greatest vulnerability.

 

New York Times Hails ‘Our National Poet’ Obama’s ‘Stirring Valedictory Address’

July 29, 2016

New York Times Hails ‘Our National Poet’ Obama’s ‘Stirring Valedictory Address’, MRC NewsbustersClay Waters, July 28, 2016

(All bold face type is in the original. Ain’t media love grand?– DM)

obama blabs

New York Times coverage of Night 3 of the Democratic National Convention could be characterized by an hour-long swoon over Barack Obama’s speech — pardon, his “stirring valedictory address.” Also, Democrats were (again!) finding their voice on gun control, and Bill celebrated Hillary, TMI-style, and Frank Bruni celebrated the president as “our national poet.”

Reporter Maggie Haberman, helping provide live nytimes.com coverage, was smitten by an introductory video: “Adam, as I watch this video, which is quite gauzy at points, it really does remind me that part of why Obama was re-elected in 2012, polls showed, was that a majority of people thought that his heart was in the right place and that he cared about people like them.”

During and after Obama’s speech Haberman hailed Obama’s style over any substance: “The man knows how to give a speech….It’s a dramatic moment….No matter what people think of Obama and Clinton, like them or don’t like them, the first black president just handed the baton to the first major-party female nominee in this country…..”

Jonathan Martin and Patrick Healy were no less laudatory in Thursday’s paper, “Obama Champions Optimism, Passing Baton to Clinton.”

President Obama delivered a stirring valedictory address at the Democratic convention Wednesday night, hailing Hillary Clinton as his rightful political heir and the party’s best hope to protect democracy from “homegrown demagogues” like the Republican Donald J. Trump.

Taking the stage to rapturous roars of “We love you” and “Yes we can,” Mr. Obama acknowledged that Democrats were still divided after a bruising nomination fight and that Mrs. Clinton had made “mistakes.”

….

President Obama’s eyes welled with tearsas he spoke of his faith in the American people and urged voters to transfer their trust to the woman he hoped would succeed him.

“Welled with tears” was a popular phrase in theTimes’ convention coverage. Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear used it in “The Diagnosis: Disunity. His Remedy: ‘This Fighter.’

Mr. Obama’s eyes welled with tears as he spoke of his faith in the American people and urged voters to transfer their trust in him to the woman he hopes will succeed him. “Time and again, you’ve picked me up and I hope, sometimes, I’ve picked you up, too,” he said. “Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me.”

It was Mr. Obama’s lyrical rejection of “a politics of cynicism” 12 years ago to the night, as the keynote speaker of the 2004 Democratic convention, that dazzled a national audience and thrust him into the spotlight, setting him on his path to two terms in the Oval Office.

Davis consistently hailed Obama, from before the beginning to the very end of his presidency.

In his 2004 convention speech, a testimonial to John Kerry, the Democratic nominee that year, Mr. Obama decried the “spin masters and negative-ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,” and he foreshadowed the political theme that would ultimately carry him into the White House by urging “a politics of hope.”

Then as now, Mr. Obama was vouching for someone else, but what many Americans actually heard was a compelling argument for his own leadership.

White House reporter turned columnist Frank Bruni couldn’t stop quoting the chirpy, optimistic speech of President Obama, “our national poet,” in Thursday’s “Freedom From Fear.

It’s hard, frankly, to stop quoting from his remarks because they amounted to one of the most moving, inspiring valentines to this country that I’ve ever heard, brimming with regard for it and gratitude to it.

We’re going to miss this man, America. Whatever his flaws, he’s been more than our president. Time and again, he’s been our national poet.

This coming from the same journalists who mocked Reagan’s optimism and spent decades criticizing America for racism, sexism, heartlessness, etc…

And Patrick Healy showed Bill Clinton getting up close and personal with Hillary in the icky “Words Depict Feminine Side of Candidate as Strength.”

He spoke of desiring her: her thick blond hair, her flowery white skirt, her magnetic personality.

He was almost titillating as he recalled chasing after her and getting close enough to “touch her back.”

He used intimate details to reveal her feelings about his three marriage proposals.

Healy portrayed Bill Clinton, womanizer extraordinaire, as doing his bit for feminism.

In doing so, Mr. Clinton began redefining the American presidency as a female institution.

A Clinton win in November would obviously give the country a female president. But for 227 years, the presidency has been associated with stereotypically male qualities — strength, resolve, fearlessness — and the embodiment of power in a deeply patriarchal political system….

….

Whether his speech causes people to see Mrs. Clinton differently — or makes people uncomfortable with the Clinton marriage all over again — will become clearer in time, not only through polls but also in the chatter among voters.

The gush got unbearable by the end.

Political wives often make their husbands sound like saints. Mr. Clinton made Mrs. Clinton sound likable, which is no small thing in politics.

“I married my best friend,” he said. “I have lived a long, full, blessed life. It really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl in the spring of 1971.”

His implication was obvious. America would really take off as well, if voters would just fall in love with that girl, too.

Veteran congressional reporter Carl Hulse’s column, “Gun Laws, Long Avoided, Return to the Agenda,” was devoted to the Democrats (this time for real!) finding “their voice” on gun control. On a busy day for politics, it somehow made the front of Thursday’s paper.

After treating gun control as political poison for two decades, Democrats led by Hillary Clinton are again vigorously championing new gun restrictions as a central element of their campaigns.

Hulse saw current events as helping the Democrats (as he so often does).

But a string of mass shootings involving high-powered weapons, rising anxiety about domestic terrorism, and killings of and by police officers have emboldened Democrats. They say the shootings are intensifying support for gun control, elevating weapons policy to a top-tier issue, with particularly strong appeal to suburban female voters.

Nothing about the spate of terror attacks helping Republicans on national security issues.

Citing polls showing strong support for new restrictions even among gun owners, gun control advocates believe the public is open to expanded background checks, new limits on gun purchases and more scrutiny of gun manufacturers and dealers. They intend to enthusiastically press the case in races across the country.

….

Given deep Republican resistance in Congress, major changes in gun laws anytime soon seem unlikely. But the convention is demonstrating that Democrats have recovered their voice on the issue.

Once again.

#DemExit begins as Hillary Clinton coronation draws to close

July 29, 2016

#DemExit begins as Hillary Clinton coronation draws to close, Washington Times

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders cheer at a rally in Philadelphia on Thursday during the final day of the Democratic National Convention. (Associated Press)

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders cheer at a rally in Philadelphia on Thursday during the final day of the Democratic National Convention. (Associated Press)

A Pew Research Center survey this month found that 85 percent of Mr. Sanders’ supporters intend to vote for Mrs. Clinton, with 9 percent switching to Mr. Trump and 6 percent unsure whom they will back in November.

But Sanders supporters were skeptical of the polling and estimated that the number of defections among their ranks may be closer to 50 percent.

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PHILADELPHIA — Hours after Hillary Clinton gave her speech Thursday accepting the Democratic presidential nomination and capping the national convention, thousands in the rank and file planned to quit the party in a #DemExit protest.

That is not the show of party unity Democratic officials hoped for coming out of the four-day convention, where they went to great lengths to quiet disgruntled supporters of Sen. Bernard Sanders and present an image of solidarity for the race against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

“It’s a dog-and-pony show,” Seamus Berkeley, a Sanders delegate from New Mexico, said of the convention. “They’re shutting opposition down and making it look like everyone is falling in line.”

From concerns over her environmental policy to the extent of her commitment to taxpayer-funded health care to her murky stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal, Mrs. Clinton has not overcome the doubts of a number of Sanders delegates and supporters at the convention.

“I think she has work to do, and I think the party has some work to do to convince us that not only are they going to live up to that platform the party passed, but that they’ll work with us,” said Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America.

Rose Watson, 61, one of 200 Sanders volunteers credentialed for the convention, said they all were shut out after the first day.

The first day was when Mr. Sanders addressed the convention and party officials handed out signs for the audience to wave that said, “Stronger together.”

“If we’re so strong together, then why not let us back in the room?” said Ms. Watson, who plans to switch her registration from Democrat to independent.

Sanders backers were also stymied in their attempts to derail the nomination of vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, angered by party officials’ clampdown on signs of protest within the convention hall and enraged by leaked emails in recent days showing that party officials conspired against Mr. Sanders’ campaign.

Ms. Watson said she would join a large contingent of Mr. Sanders’ delegates and supporters at the convention in what they have dubbed #DemExit — a Twitter campaign that has been masterfully promoted by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

Ms. Stein aggressively wooed Sanders supporters during the convention, and many pro-Sanders demonstrators outside the convention and delegates inside the Wells Fargo Arena said they will vote for Ms. Stein in November.

Still, the Democratic faithful insist that Mrs. Clinton is on stronger footing after the convention and are optimistic that the party will coalesce behind her.

“There’s a lot of work to do,” said North Carolina delegate Marc Friedland.

He anticipated that the Clinton campaign would make a concerted effort to reach out to Mr. Sanders’ supporters. But he also said that the importance of party unity was often overemphasized in the media.

“We don’t want to leave anyone on the sidelines, but we’re not going to let them drag us backward,” he said.

Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said top-notch speeches from President Obama and other prominent Democratic leaders brought the party together at the convention. He predicted that Mrs. Clinton would get a bounce after Philadelphia.

“The difference between this convention and the Republican convention is that we have had really heavyweight speakers,” he said. “I noticed here that the mood got better every day, and its largely because of the speakers.”

Democratic consultant Craig Varoga agreed.

“Monday was Bernie Sanders’ night and everyone appropriately credited him for his great organizing, his victories and the fact that he generated millions of new voters,” he said. “The rest of the week has gone a long way to uniting everyone in the party in defeating Trump this November.”

Mr. Trump also experienced dissent within the party at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, especially from rival Sen. Ted Cruz, who refused to endorse him during a prime-time speech.

However, the rift among Republicans did not result in massive party defections.

The Clinton campaign mostly succeeded in putting on a show of unity. The outbursts from Sanders supporters were kept to a minimum after the first day. Mr. Sanders helped clear the way Tuesday to Mrs. Clinton’s uncontested nomination. Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden and vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine gave rousing speeches Wednesday. And Mrs. Clinton’s speech Thursday launched her into the general election race.

Democrats also got encouraging news in recent polls.

A Pew Research Center survey this month found that 85 percent of Mr. Sanders’ supporters intend to vote for Mrs. Clinton, with 9 percent switching to Mr. Trump and 6 percent unsure whom they will back in November.

But Sanders supporters were skeptical of the polling and estimated that the number of defections among their ranks may be closer to 50 percent.

“They need to be convinced, and Hillary has her work cut out for her to earn their votes,” said Chuck Pennacchio, a Sanders delegate to the convention from Pennsylvania.

White Noise? What White Noise?

July 29, 2016

White Noise? What White Noise? Hot Air, Duane Patterson, July 29, 2016

I have no idea whether this video is on the up and up, but it seems genuine enough. This is a California Bernie Sanders delegate who has attended the Democratic Convention all week, allegedly, and like her fellow Bernie people, has been a little vocal in her anti-war, anti-Hillary, anti-establishment sentiments. When this woman and the rest of the Bernie delegation showed up early to claim their seats for the main event last night, Hillary Clinton riding in wearing her white pantsuit, with literally the only thing missing being the white steed on which to ride to the podium, the seats were already reserved by paid seat fillers wearing a Hillary shirt. The price to buy a crowd? $50 a person.

Where the Bernie people were crammed into was a pre-planned section by the DNC that happened to have a white noise generator behind them. That’s fancy talk for loudspeakers that are controlled by the convention sound board so that if there are any troublemakers booing or carrying on during Hillary’s speech, the speakers with canned crowd noise are instantly brought up to drown out the protesters.

Now when Hillary Clinton did mention having the need for having the strongest military in the world, you could hear the Bernie people starting to ramp up. But they instantly got drowned out. Now we know why.

Poor, delusional Bernie people. They never had a chance from start to finish. Never.

The fun part of this video is the first few minutes. If you want to pop the popcorn and enjoy all of it, be warned that the woman making the video gets a little more profane the more exasperated she gets.

(The video at the link does not embed. Here’s a YouTube version with essentially the same content. — DM)

O’Keefe Undercover With Outraged Dems at the DNC

July 29, 2016

O’Keefe Undercover With Outraged Dems at the DNCProject Veritas Action via YouTube, July 28, 2016

According to the blurb beneath the video,

In this new video from Project Veritas Action, James O’Keefe goes undercover as a Hillary Clinton supporter with outraged Democrats at the DNC. Angry protesters scream and shout about their hatred for Hillary Clinton and how they’ve been disenfranchised by the DNC, the Democratic Party establishment and political elites. James O’Keefe gets assaulted by an angry Bernie Sanders supporter. Watch this video to see what the mainstream media refuses to cover.

What if an Anti-American Cult Had a Convention?

July 29, 2016

What if an Anti-American Cult Had a Convention? American ThinkerJeffrey T. Brown, July 29, 2016

Anyway, I used to wonder what it would look like if such a cult had a convention.  I don’t anymore. 

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Have you ever wondered what it might look like if a cult that enabled death and destruction and chaos and anarchy had its own national convention?  I have.

Preceding that convention, we might already presumably know something about that cult, as well as its goals and objectives, since cults exist to spur larger and more oppressive versions of themselves that usurp power and mandate allegiance.  They can’t very well do this under a bushel basket.  They have to go public in order to recruit enough gullible and warped individuals to swell the ranks.

If there were such a cult, we might foresee that it would be made up of narrow-minded, intolerant, hate-filled people who reject the dignity of human life and self-determination.  They would so resent the individualism and freedom of other segments of society as to believe that their superiority, and that of their vision, entitles them to do anything, and take anything, they wish.  I imagine that such people, driven by a bizarre lack of self-awareness, and an equally impressive degree of selfishness and narcissism, would not only condone the death of others, but capitalize on death as a tool to further their agenda of control and oppression.  After all, the rationalization goes, the exploited are dead.  What do they care?  And what is death but a practical response to an inconvenient obstacle to primacy?

If such a cult had its own convention, its members might prominently reward those who had committed the most damage.  In the event that members had died doing damage, their family members would make worthy stand-ins.  They could proudly tell lies about their ideological enemies, the ones whose deaths they threaten and chant about, while flaunting their fake victimhood for all their fellow believers.  What a heartwarming moment that would be.

If there were such a convention, perhaps we could expect to see flags representative of regimes that soaked themselves in the blood of their own citizens and their enemies.  Maybe some nice Soviet flags, or Communist Chinese flags, or some Palestinian flags.  What a pretty spectacle that would be at a convention of supposedly American citizens who left American ideals behind decades ago in pursuit of domination, increasingly by any means necessary.  Of course, they get to arbitrarily decide what is “necessary” to achieve their objectives.  They really don’t want to hear from the rest of us.  When it’s time, they will tell us what flag we are permitted to fly, if we survive their plans for us.

At such a convention, we might expect that God and religion are so objectionable that they are booed and marginalized.  Why, they might even boo during the invocation at the outset of the convention, though why such people would have an invocation is beyond me.  Perhaps they await the blessing of the entity to whom Saul Alinsky, one of their patrons, dedicated his book.  Certainly that would make sense.  After all, such a cult would probably have officially removed the actual God from its party platform years ago.

Such a convention might prominently feature those who have not only broken the law, but are immensely proud of their lawlessness and how they have gained from it, along with their friends.  After all, what good is massive corruption if you can’t share it with those you wish to keep from stabbing you in the back?  Soulless cults aren’t known for their sincere camaraderie, you know.

These folks wouldn’t admit to their crimes, of course, but would go out of their way to demonize those who believe that criminals should be treated like criminals.  Going to jail is bad for business, and once one goes, a lot of them could follow.  Therefore, it’s best to make sure there is no “first one” heading to the slammer.  The answer is to condemn the law-abiding, smear them, and bring the weight of the cult down on their heads, so they know that it is better that they, or someone coming along after them, suffer in silence.

The members of such a cult would not only engage in their own mayhem, but embrace and protect other like-minded criminals.  After all, there are plenty of spoils to be shared if all of the murderers and thieves simply accept their fair share.  So the domestic cult would run interference for the foreign death cults.  The American cult members would lie about the foreign cultists’ deeds and motivations, proclaiming that the foreign agents can’t be believed when they openly and consistently profess that they are motivated by their own death cult, with rules contained in a book they treat the way their American allies treat Saul Alinsky’s book.  Cults have to have their “bibles,” after all.  Lord knows the real Bible doesn’t help them out very much.

Perhaps, if there were such a convention, there would be anger, and resentment, and envy, and jealousy, and bitterness, and derision, and violence, since there isn’t much sweetness and light in death cults.  Even their attempts at sweetness and light are patently false and condescending and obviously scripted and insincere.  Destroying the lives, fortunes, and opportunities of hundreds of millions of people, and consigning some of them to suffering and death, is a mean business.  For instance, you can’t be a happy soul while you make health care so unaffordable and poor that people perish for lack of funds to get treatment.  You can’t be a kind soul while fervently advocating the death of millions of unborn human beings based on the lie that they aren’t real.

Death cults exist to extinguish happiness and kindness.  They exist to rule and crush their enemies until they win.

And if there were such a convention, we shouldn’t expect to be truthfully told that any of the foregoing events were occurring.  After all, such cults are still able to admit to themselves what they are about, and that there are still a lot of people who haven’t consented to be owned and ruled like subjects who can foresee where the cult is going and what is likely to happen before it gets there.

One thing we know about cults is that there were other cults like them before the most recent version.  Cults that use death and destruction and anarchy to achieve their ends are really nothing new.  What is new, however, is the seemingly growing number of Americans who are willing to empower the hierarchy of the cult to complete its mission.  In the end, the cult will treat them the same as it treats the rest of its enemies.  They will be just as expendable as those who resisted.  By then it will be too late.

Anyway, I used to wonder what it would look like if such a cult had a convention.  I don’t anymore.

Peace Now, the Philly version

July 29, 2016

Peace Now, the Philly version, Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth, July 29, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama tried to sell Hillary Clinton to the American people when he spoke to the Democratic National Convention in Cleveland on Wednesday. After eight years in the White House, she is the most optimistic thing he has to offer, and Obama spoke about hope as if it was still 2008. If Clinton represents hope, fresh ideas and innovation, than Republican nominee Donald Trump has a lot of reasons to be optimistic.

In 2008 we witnessed a brutal fight between the Democrats. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had no mercy for each other. We all know how that fight ended: Obama became president; Clinton was left in debt. But the Clintons have this magic ability to land on their feet. In 2008, Clinton endorsed Obama (at the very last moment), then became his secretary of state and traveled the world. She saw conflicts up close. That is, she saw them rather than solved them.

The president getting emotional in Philadelphia was very emotional. His speech was too long, and he was too indignant. At the end of his address Clinton got up on stage, and the two hugged each other for a long minute. Bill Clinton, who watched from the VIP seats, had no reason to be jealous. He knows full well that this strong embrace was Obama’s way of asking for a third term.

It seemed as though the Democratic National Convention was taking place in a parallel universe. Recent polls show Americans are concerned over terrorism, over their personal safety, the rise in crime and the erosion in America’s status. But the Democrats in Philadelphia were determined to sell a utopian reality to America. The U.S. has never been stronger, the speakers insisted, even as Syrian President Bashar Assad was taking over Aleppo with Russian help.

As far as the Democrats are concerned, America has never been in a better shape, and that is why wars and conflicts were all but ignored in the convention. The message coming out of the city of brotherly love was this: We all like one another; there are no bad guys.

However uplifting that may be, terrorism was almost nowhere to be mentioned because Democratic conventions steer clear of that issue as much as possible. On Wednesday night the speakers had no choice, though, because national security was front and center. The Democrats’ tendency to bury their heads in the sand can play into the hands of the Republican nominee, because terrorism has increasingly become an issue in this election. Clinton has become associated with the Obama administration’s incompetency in the fight against the Islamic State, and rightly so.

Senators Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Brian Schatz (Hawaii) are concerned that Republicans are perceived as stronger on terrorism. This was reinforced when they heard the delegates in Cleveland shouting “No more war!” on Wednesday during former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s speech to the convention floor. As if America gets to decide if wars break out.

If Democrats want to win in November they have to address the issue that worries Americans the most: national security and terrorism, which according to one survey, is the top concern for 28% of Americans. But the Democratic National Convention’s message was heard loud and clear: peace now. This could explain why the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times daily tracking poll had Trump lead by 7 percentage points as of Wednesday.

Raising the Palestinian cause at the DNC

July 28, 2016

Raising the Palestinian cause at the DNC, Vice NewsDalia Hatuqa, July 28, 2016

pal rightsA delegate holds a sign reading ‘I support Palestinian Human Rights’ at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia [Tannen Maury/EPA]

An issue that was once sidelined even in progressive circles, Palestine was pushed to the forefront of the electoral campaign this year, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders showing that policy change on a seemingly intractable conflict is possible.

For the first time, the platform reflected the right of Palestinians to “independence, sovereignty, and dignity” in addition to Israel’s security. In a recent poll (PDF) of American attitudes on the conflict, 49 percent of Democrats said they recommended economic sanctions or other more serious action to counter settlement construction.

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Eva Putzova held a banner with a simple message just outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) floor on Tuesday: “I support Palestinian rights.”

“I think it’s time that Democratic candidates – Hillary, Bernie or anybody else – start taking the issue seriously and start a real national conversation and get behind all human rights, including Palestinian rights,” said Putzova, a city council member from Flagstaff, Arizona.

She was among many pro-Palestine activists at the DNC this week who came out in a show of force unprecedented at other political conventions. They marched and rallied, held talks and town halls, carried signs and, at one point, raised a Palestinian flag on the convention floor.

“The issue is getting more media exposure, more people are aware,” Putzova said. “I think we are on the brink of changing the policy stands of the US, but it will take all of us to push the political elite. I think [Palestinians are] a community that has been marginalised for so long.”

An issue that was once sidelined even in progressive circles, Palestine was pushed to the forefront of the electoral campaign this year, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders showing that policy change on a seemingly intractable conflict is possible.

In a debate last April, he pushed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to call the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza “disproportionate”. He said the US and Israel need “to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity” and that the US “has to play an even-handed role”. Sanders, however, was also criticised for not denouncing Israel more forcefully, and for the ousting of his campaign’s Jewish outreach director, who slammed Israel’s prime minister in a Facebook post.

A month later, Sanders assigned James Zogby, an advocate for Palestinian rights, and four others, including one of two Muslim congressmen, to the platform-writing committee, signalling his attempt to revise the party’s long-standing policy that favoured Israel.

“It took the work of a mass movement and a courageous person like Bernie Sanders, because if Bernie hadn’t elevated it, it wouldn’t have happened,” said Zogby, also President of the Arab American Institute, in a talk attended by pro-Palestine supporters in Philadelphia. “He gave us a qualitative boost forward.”

What’s on the platform?

On the DNC sidelines, pro-Palestine supporters discussed how the conflict with the Israelis was playing out on the domestic policy platform.

But in stark contrast to public support and activism, the party’s platform, which now supports a $15 minimum wage and Wall Street reform, did not include references to the Israeli occupation and its settlements.

Zogby said Clinton supporters cut out these references, fearing retribution from billionaire mogul and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson.  On an official level, Clinton’s backers said the call for negotiations for a two-state solution in the party’s platform was sufficient.

Going into the platform-writing committee, Zogby said he and other Sanders delegates were expecting to discuss removing a reference to Jerusalem being the “undivided capital” of Israel, and opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“We wanted to strike the BDS line, we wanted to strike out a line on Jerusalem,” said Zogby, who is also on the DNC’s executive committee. “I thought that would be the fight. I had no idea the fight would end up being over occupation and settlements.”

They lost on all counts, and pro-Clinton supporters said they couldn’t change the language. “Here’s what they told me: ‘We can’t do it because Adelson will come out against us,'” Zogby said. “He will come after you no matter what you do. The people who like [Adelson] won’t vote for you.”

The platform committee discussions leading up to the DNC also spurred controversy, as civil rights activist and scholar Cornel West made an impassioned appeal to change the language to include “an end to occupation and illegal settlements”.

He called Palestine a “Vietnam War” issue for young Americans, and likened the party’s indifference to the conflict to the same apathy to “these Negroes” in the Jim Crow era.

Despite the fact that the resolution was voted down, some believe that the discourse on Palestine has shifted.

For the first time, the platform reflected the right of Palestinians to “independence, sovereignty, and dignity” in addition to Israel’s security. In a recent poll (PDF) of American attitudes on the conflict, 49 percent of Democrats said they recommended economic sanctions or other more serious action to counter settlement construction.

A changing conversation

“The conversation has improved a lot … it is broader and more inclusive,” said Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, another Sanders pick on the DNC platform committee. “Over the past few years, members of Congress have gone to the Holy Land, not only to Israel, but also to Palestine. The perspective is changing, and it’s a good time to continue the work that you’re doing.”

Palestine supporters are banking on the presence of many activists and progressives in the city, in part because of Sanders’ candidacy, to expand and change the debate on the conflict.

They are also aware that the share of younger Americans sympathising with the Palestinian cause has risen significantly in recent years – from 9 percent in 2006 to 20 percent in July 2014, and finally to 27 percent today.

“We have seen some fairly remarkable changes in the landscape of how the issue of Palestine and Israel is being addressed – both in the news media and particularly within progressive circles,” said Mike Merryman Lotze, the American Friends Service Committee’s (also known as the Quakers) Palestine-Israel programme director.

“If we look back where the conversation was 15 years ago today, even really five years ago, we have to recognise that we are now in a fundamentally different place,” he said.

“That marks a shift … and that conversation has been pushed by the grassroots progressive movement.”

READ MORE: US Democratic Party – Closer to justice on Palestine?

Free Michelle Obama’s Slaves

July 28, 2016

Free Michelle Obama’s Slaves, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 28, 2016

michelle

At the DNC, Michelle Obama put on her victimhood hat one more time and declared, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.” It’s not a new line, but an ongoing mantra. Back in 2009, Michelle whined that, “Many slaves who couldn’t enter the building worked to create the building.”

But that’s too past tense. Michelle’s house continues to be built and maintained by slaves. Her lavish lifestyle of endless vacations, parties and public appearances is funded by millions and millions of slaves.

Michelle Obama lives a life that is more lavish and luxurious than that of the average plantation owner. She has 26 staffers that are part of a White House staff of thousands. That’s more than many crowned heads of state. Compare that to 12 servants for Thomas Jefferson.

Michelle has more directors than some corporations. And working for her is a Marie Antoinette experience. “The First Lady having the wrong pencil skirt on Monday is just as big of a f___ up as someone speaking on the record when they didn’t mean to or a policy initiative that completely failed,” one former staffer said.

Of course that’s their business. Michelle’s staffers chose their jobs and they get paid. It’s the taxpayers who have to pay for it all who are forced to be her unwilling slaves.

Michelle’s house, her luxurious lifestyle, is built by taxpaying slaves who are forced to turn over their money to fund her pleasures. She spent more money on one night in Morocco than the average American family will see in five years.

In Dublin, Michelle Obama and her entourage took a sightseeing trip that cost over $250,000. Michelle’s people bought up 30 rooms at the five-star Shelbourne Hotel while she stayed in the Princess Grace Suite which has more living space than most American homes. The Shelbourne Hotel wasn’t built by slaves. But it was funded by them. So are all of her jaunts, excursions and parties.

When she shops around Paris and then flies over to London in a 757 to see the sights in London, her slaves pick up the tab. When she and her husband decide to fly out for a “date” to New York while the city is shut down, it’s her slaves in the big city watching the motorcade pass who have to pay for it. Their Africa trip cost millions. American slaves paid for it with their blood, sweat and toil.

Maintaining the Obama lifestyle cost $1.4 billion a few years ago. It’s unknown what it costs today.

Obama’s White House parties cost anywhere from $200,000 at the cheap end to over $500,000. Americans have no more freedom to decide whether to pay for another Obama vacation or event than slaves did in deciding how to serve their masters and mistresses.

All they can do is watch from a distance while their masters stuff their faces, gallivant cheerfully on tours through foreign countries while staying at posh hotels and then make them work to pay for it.

In the last election, Obama told Americans that they weren’t responsible for their accomplishments. “You didn’t build that,” was his message to his slaves. They didn’t build that. He did.

But they did build that.

Slaves built the Obama lifestyle.  Slaves who struggle to get by. Who scrimp and save to have a few hundred dollars on hand in case of an emergency. That’s the cost of a single dish at a dinner to their masters in the White House. Slaves who fear losing their jobs and being unable to provide for their families watch their hard-earned money being squandered on another vacation and another party.

America’s slaves have watched the nation’s wealth become concentrated around the Washington Versailles. At the peak of Obama’s misrule, the Beltway area boasted 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the country. Obama won 8 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the country in the last election.

It’s not hard to guess why.

The Obama lifestyle is just the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of more modest government plantation owners cling to their skirts living off the stolen toil of the government’s slaves.

Government, like slavery, is an institution. Like slavery, it claims to civilize its dependents. In reality it exploits them. It promises them security in exchange for freedom. It takes away the products of their toil and then tells them that they didn’t build that. It claims a false moral authority to exploit them.

Michelle Obama is a slave-owner lecturing her slaves about slavery. Her moral authority to enslave Americans is based on a slavery that took place 150 years ago. And Michelle and Barack are the tip of a very large institution which is built on depriving Americans of their political and economic freedoms.

Slavery was based on the notion that some people are superior to others. That same idea runs through Obama’s speeches. It is the lifeblood of the twisted thing that the left has turned liberalism into.

The Obamas have the right to enslave us because they are on “the right side of history”. They can exploit us because they know what is better for us. They can take the work of our hands from us because we didn’t build that, they and all the rest of our government masters did the real building.

As the Democrats continue their circus of hate in Philly, it ought to be remembered that this was where Thomas Jefferson wrote that “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” were inalienable rights and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Governments do not gain their authority from any innate superiority, but from consent. The Obama theory that government gains power in proportion to its historical moral superiority is slavery wrapped in hypocrisy. The attempt to perpetuate a new slavery by invoking 19th century slavery, as Michelle Obama did, is a moral obscenity.

It is time to end slavery all over again. It is time to free Michelle Obama’s taxpaying slaves.

The first step to ending slavery is to recognize its fundamental injustice. It is unjust that a working family ought to work its fingers to the bone so that Michelle Obama can enjoy yet another sightseeing tour. It is unjust that a class of parasites claiming to be public servants can draw unlimited amounts of money on the credit of people trying to make ends meet. It is unjust that Michelle Obama can own hundreds of millions of people as slaves.

And it is an injustice that must end.

Nineteenth century slavery ceased to be an issue in the nineteenth century. Twenty-first century slavery is the issue that we must tackle today. Scarlett O’Hara’s slaves have been freed. It’s time to let Michelle’s slaves go free.