Of course, Supreme Court justices are only human, and they’re just as susceptible to outside influences as any politicians on Capitol Hill. But the very nature of their position demands more discipline in order to fight the temptations of a society that can turn just about anyone into a celebrity overnight.
               And even the most independent nominee can become more ideologically hardened after surviving the grind of the nomination process.
               Politico’s Peter Canellos writes, “Even if nominees aren’t particularly partisan at the outset, they quickly learn to recognize their friends and enemies; the loyalties forged in the furnace of the confirmation process carry over onto the bench. It’s only human that such anger or gratitude, growing out of a trauma that some compare to a near-death experience, would alter judicial decision-making.”
               Canellos adds, “There’s a third element to the politicization of the courts, though. That’s the visceral sense of approval and validation that judges get when they please their fans. The 60,000-member Federalist Society provides conservative judges with a Greek chorus of admirers. And many members of the Supreme Court, such as the late Antonin Scalia, couldn’t resist taking bows before conservative audiences for court rulings that devastated liberals.”
               But earning the admiration of a respected organization like the Federalist Society is nothing compared to Ginsburg’s celebrity status among leftists, many of whom weren’t even born when Ginsburg was appointed to the High Court by scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton in 1993. From the “RGB” documentary of last year to the recent biopic entitled “On the Basis of Sex,” the leftist Supreme Court justice is being turned into a mythical figure. How can fair-minded Americans expect Ginsburg, a former ACLU general counsel, to make independent decisions based on the law when she’s been deified by millions on the Left?
               As Ginsburg said in the RGB film, “I’m 84 years old and everyone wants to take their picture with me.”
               In 2016, seemingly emboldened by her superstardom, she joked that it’d be time to move to New Zealand if Donald Trump were elected. “I can’t imagine what the country would be,” she said. Later, under intense criticism from both the right and the left, she admitted regret for the comments. But she never apologized — not to the American people, nor to the Republican nominee.
               As Stephanie Mencimer writes at the far-left Mother Jones, “Ginsburg has since been tattooed on women’s arms, immortalized in song and a children’s book, and featured on [‘Saturday Night Live.’] She’s had her face plastered on everything from tote bags to water bottles. This merchandising could not have happened without the justice’s blessing; the law gives her a fair amount of control over the use of her image, as she well knows. Rather than start copyright battles, Ginsburg has encouraged her cult following. She assisted Carmon and Knizhnik with their book, appeared in the CNN documentary and makes a cameo in ‘On the Basis of Sex,’ carries an RBG tote bag in public, distributes RBG T-shirts to friends and admirers, and generally has reveled in her celebrity.”
               Mencimer adds that Ginsburg’s desire to hang on to her position on the Court actually threatens to undermine the Left’s agenda. For years Ginsburg rejected suggestions by “progressive” supporters that she retire during the Barack scumbag/liar-nObama years to ensure a like-minded successor. Now, her desire to fight on through various health issues — including recent surgery for lung cancer — at an advanced age may be setting the stage for a conservative replacement if she’s unable to outlast Donald Trump. But that’s not stopping her.
               NPR’s Nina Totenberg writes, “Even as she was secretly undergoing a series of tests and consulting an array of doctors, she made multiple public appearances and was interviewed in front of audiences three times, at one point reciting from memory the words of several arias from an opera about her famous friendship and legal dueling with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.”
               The Left has professed to do just about anything, even offering to donate their own organs to Ginsburg, in order to keep her on the bench.
               But should Ginsburg retire or pass away before Trump leaves office, allowing him to replace her with a Constitution-friendly justice, the Left may one day regret the cult of personality that they alone created. And rightly so.  ~The Patriot Post

             The House’s Millennial heartthrob is pushing what Democrats are calling a “Green New Deal,” which is a series of legislative proposals that the Heartland Institute’s Justin Haskins calls “the most radical policy shift in modern U.S. history, dramatically increasing the size and power of government and running up the national debt by trillions of dollars.” He explains, “According to commie-Ocasio-Cortez, the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by Sens. commie-Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., scumbag-Cory Booker, D-N.J., Elizabeth dinky-Warren, D-Mass., and at least 40 House Democrats, would eliminate nearly all fossil fuels from the electric grid and force everyone in the country to buy from power companies selling only renewable energy.”
               Haskins also notes, “commie-Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal doesn’t merely advocate for a gigantic shift in the U.S. energy industry. Her draft resolution says one of the proposed House committee’s priorities would be ‘upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety.’ Taken literally, this mandate would cost trillions of dollars.” How would she pay for that? With a 70% tax on the wealthy.
               It’s ironic but predictable that just as the economy has come out of the Barack scumbag/liar-nObama doldrums, and just as U.S. energy production — primarily fossil fuels — is booming,  commie-Ocasio-Cortez and Company are increasing their socialist pressure on the energy sector. “We can use the transition to 100% [renewable] energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social, and racial justice in the United States of America,” commie-Ocasio-Cortez said, giving away the game.
               To be sure, with an expanded Republican majority in the Senate, this proposal stands little chance of making it beyond the House in this session of Congress. But commie-Sanders, scumbag-Booker, and dinky-Warren are all either declared or likely presidential candidates in 2020, which puts this issue at the forefront of that campaign and makes it a dire threat to American Liberty.  ~The Patriot Post

             The rabidly anti-Trump Washington Post ran what was framed as a news story but was really another editorial in disguise. That said, the paper wasn’t wrong in its lede: “President Trump, 12 days into a government shutdown and facing new scrutiny from emboldened Democrats, inaugurated the new year Wednesday with a Cabinet meeting. It quickly became a 95-minute stream-of-consciousness defense of his presidency and worldview, filled with falsehoods, revisionist history and self-aggrandizement.”
               Two comments in particular highlighted the problem with Trump’s freewheeling rhetorical style. Of former Defense Secretary James Mattis, Trump declared, “What’s he done for me? How had he done in Afghanistan? Not too good. … I’m not happy with what he’s done in Afghanistan. I want results.” Then Trump posited, “I think I would have been a good general, but who knows?”
               Maybe if Trump hadn’t received five draft deferments from serving in Vietnam we’d see how he compared to Gen. Mattis’s lifetime of dedicated service to our nation. In any case, the commander-in-chief should not be so condescending and arrogant toward career uniformed Patriots.
               Trump’s comments about the Soviets in Afghanistan also merit a facepalm. “Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan,” Trump said, arguing that’s why American should pull out of long and expensive wars. But the Soviet Union became Russia again because of Ronald Reagan’s successful efforts to win the Cold War.
               Moreover, Trump continued, “The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.” Wrong. The Washington Examiner’s Quin Hillyer explains why: “The invasion was an application of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which promised the use of Soviet armed force to crush any attempt to roll back communism or attain human rights, anywhere the Kremlin considered within the Soviet sphere of influence. The doctrine was, in a word, evil. Tens of millions of people had human rights, or hopes for them, destroyed, and of course many thousands lost their lives.”
               Trump either doesn’t understand this or, as he is wont to do, he gets himself tied in rhetorical BS knots because he rambles — especially when on the defensive.
               But never mind all that. Trump asserted, “They say I am the most popular president in the history of the Republican Party.” There are indeed metrics by which that might be true.
               A final note: We’re often accused of being “too anti-Trump,” and this piece probably serves as evidence to those folks that we’re no different than rino-Mitt Romney. But we’re also accused of being “too pro-Trump,” which is a good way to remind readers that we endeavor simply to call it like it is. Our mission is to advocate Liberty and constitutional government. When Trump aligns with that, great. When he doesn’t — or when he gets in his own way — we’ll call him out for it. That isn’t “anti” or “pro” — it’s just the truth.  ~The Patriot Post

             The Federalist’s Mahir Ahmed notes the irony, writing, “Of all the ideologies the left has aligned itself with through minority representation, I find the strangest of all to be Islam. The left’s alliance with Islam is unique, not only because Islam is at odds with Enlightenment values, as most collectivist systems are, but mainly because Islam is at odds with rights the left pride themselves in protecting.”
               Ahmed continues, “Ex-Muslims, LGBT Muslims, and independent, dissenting Muslim women have always had to fear for their lives, and they continue to do so today in Muslim-majority countries. It is extremely strange that the same left that used to defend human rights worldwide somehow decided to align itself with Islam, only to help further endanger the lives of dissenting individuals within the Muslim community, not only in Muslim-majority countries, but even here in the West.”
               The obvious question arises: What is the endgame for leftists who so willingly embrace Islam, which itself promotes a value systems that runs counter to almost everything the Left claims to value? The modern Left has become so obsessed in its commitment to destroy capitalism and the Western “patriarchy” that it has willingly and eagerly aligned itself with a medieval-era monster that will turn and eat it at the first opportunity.
               The Left warns of the danger posed by a nonexistent Judeo-Christian “theocracy” while at the same time blindly embracing an alliance with a worldview that fundamentally rejects the concept of the separation of church mosque and state. As Ahmed concludes, “The message I am trying to convey here is not about waging war against Islam. It is rather about going back to the basics of Enlightenment values, and to set the individual above all else. It is about pushing back against granting Islam immunity from criticism.”
               In reality, it’s no surprise to see leftists fighting against the very values system that gave them a right to free thought in the first place.  ~The Patriot Post

             In a Washington Post op-ed, rino-Romney hit Trump over his character deficiencies. Memo to rino-Romney: Everyone knew what those flaws were; they were baked into the cake in 2016, as they are today. Anyone who followed celebrity gossip over the last 30 years knew Trump was a womanizer. He’s rude and bombastic — or, some could say, a typical New Yorker. Indeed, rino-Romney weighed in on Trump in much the same way in a 2016 speech.
               But, again, all of that was weighed prior to the 2016 election, which Trump won. Primarily, that victory was because of the political conditions at the time. Far too many conservatives who declared themselves “Never Trump” ignored those conditions, part of a pattern of tactical and strategic incompetence that has at best delayed the achievement of conservative objectives and the advancement of conservative principles.
               Looking at the actions of Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, where the power of the state government is being turned on opponents of his anti-Second Amendment and  ecofascist policies, concerns about free speech were arguably understated. The fact that the National Enquirer’s editorial decisions have become fodder for a federal investigation should also raise red flags. So should Silicon Valley’s decision to censor conservative arguments. Too many Republican leaders — including rino-Romney — were unwilling to fight these battles.
               As another example, NATO dawdled for over a decade on reaching the agreed-upon military spending level of 2% of GDP. Along the way, America was treated to a complete lack of military readiness on Germany’s part, and Canada was in bad shape, too. Trump’s “get tough” attitude yielded the results two previous presidents failed to achieve.
               For all of Trump’s flaws, he got results. In 2012, rino-Romney was a gentleman, even as Democrats smeared him as a racist Hitler wannabe. He lost. rino-John McCain went so far as to admonish his own supporters for attacks on Barack scumbag/liar-nObama he felt were unfair. His repayment for that personal decency was to be labeled a racist and “out of touch.” He lost, too.
               Furthermore, rino-Romney is being very naive if he thinks the folks who viciously trashed him in 2012 have had a true change of heart. Does he really believe that, had he won the 2012 election, he would not be facing a form of “the Resistance” due to the “racism” of beating the first (half) black president in an election?
               No conservative denies that the country would have been better off had rino-Mitt Romney won the 2012 election. It would have been even better off had he won the 2008 nomination and election. But it’s worth remembering that if he had shown the Democrats or the Leftmedia a tenth of the fight that Donald Trump is showing today, he very well could have won either of those elections. A little righteous anger toward dinky-Harry Reid and Candy Crowley would have made a difference, as would have following our advice on how to attack scumbag/liar-nObama.
               Yet when rino-Romney is showing a willingness to fight, it’s not against Democrats who smeared him or the media that was complicit in perpetuating those smears. Instead, he’s battling the president of his own party, who is actually fighting the Left and the biased media to implement a number of the policies rino-Romney himself campaigned for in 2008 and 2012. rino-Romney may gain the temporary approval of the Washington Post editorial board, but he traded a fair amount of goodwill from those who supported his 2008 and 2012 presidential runs to get it. It was a bad deal by a good man.  ~The Patriot Post

             So what’s on the agenda for Pulosi and House Democrats? To put it succinctly, two things: pushing socialism and destroying Trump.
               Prior to the midterm elections, Pulosi sought to tamp down impeachment talk, calculating that it wouldn’t play well with voters. But since securing the House majority, she has changed her tune, now signaling that impeachment is indeed on the table. Thursday Pulosi cryptically stated, “We shouldn’t be impeaching for a political reason, and we shouldn’t avoid impeachment for a political reason.” Impeachment or not, Pulosi’s agenda is clear: Do everything possible to prevent Trump from winning reelection in 2020. Hence the shutdown.
               As the partial government shutdown nears two full weeks, Pulosi and the Democrats have stubbornly refused to offer any true compromise spending proposal by steadfastly rejecting any deal that provides funds for construction of a border wall. While the $5 billion Trump demanded for a wall is mere pittance when compared to the overall budget, the Democrats’ refusal is purely a political play. Pulosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer (D-NY) will do everything in their power to prevent Trump from following through on his biggest campaign promise. For Democrats, this fight over the border is a calculated effort to severely damage Trump’s 2020 reelection bid. They can’t let Trump get a win on his signature campaign issue. They couldn’t care less about strengthening our nation’s border security and protecting Americans.
               Thus, for the foreseeable future, Americans have a lot more political gridlock to look forward to, as coming to any legislative compromises will be tough sledding. Indeed, it’s foreboding that the transition to the 116th Congress comes in the midst of a shutdown. If Democrats were bad over the last two years, how much worse will they be with a House majority?  ~The Patriot Post

             American leftists are not stupid. They know the likelihood of eliminating Americans’ right to bear arms via the only proper method for doing so — a constitutional amendment requiring the approval of two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and three-fourths of the states’ legislatures — is virtually nil. Yet they also know something else: Substantial numbers of Americans, poisoned by years of indoctrination in a corrupt education system, are more than willing to embrace the Left’s “win by any means necessary” approach to governance.
               The New York Times’s Andrew Sorkin sets the stage. “Mass shootings routinely set off a national debate on guns, usually focused on regulating firearms and on troubled youths,” he writes. “Little attention is paid to the financial industry that has become an instrumental, if unwitting, enabler of carnage. A New York Times examination of mass shootings since the Virginia Tech attack in 2007 reveals how credit cards have become a crucial part of the planning of these massacres. There have been 13 shootings that killed 10 or more people in the last decade, and in at least eight of them, the killers financed their attacks using credit cards. Some used credit to acquire firearms they could not otherwise have afforded.”
               Sorkin and his fellow travelers envision a world where such credit-providing companies become de facto Big Brothers. And true to their fascist tendencies sold as virtue signaling, entities such as Citigroup and Bank of America have jumped on the bandwagon. Citigroup’s “U.S. Commercial Firearms Policy” prohibits firearms sales to customers who haven’t passed a background check and are younger than 21, and bars the sale of high-capacity magazines. The policy applies to clients who offer Citigroup-backed credit cards, borrow money, use Citigroup’s banking services, or raise capital through the company. And the Times reported last April that Bank of America “will stop lending money to gun manufacturers that make military-inspired firearms for civilian use, such as the AR-15-style rifles that have been used in multiple mass shootings.”
               First, “military inspired” is rank propaganda. Moreover, from 1982 through November 2018, the number of mass shootings committed with handguns is more than the number committed by rifles and shotguns combined. Thus what this effort is really all about is expanding the power to “decide on a case-by-case basis” whether the Second Amendment per se is worth “insisting upon.”
               In other words, it’s all about the Left’s tried-and-true incrementalist approach, aimed at eliminating the Second Amendment in its entirety.
               The key word in Sorkin’s piece? Affordability. As National Review’s David French explains, guns are expensive, and many non-wealthy Americans save up money for a long time before making a purchase. “What’s the level of expense to trigger the proposed system and cause the bank to either decline the transaction or notify law enforcement?” he wonders.
               French and other pro-Second Amendment Americans already know the answer: Whatever gun-grabbers decide, and nothing makes this reality clearer than The New York Times. The paper cites eight mass shooters — over the course of a decade  — who used credit to purchase weapons and other gear as justification to create a system that would flag millions of law-abiding Americans purchasing the same items to protect their lives and families.
               A system of flagging that would create a de facto registry of gun owners.
               And if banks, along with business owners who abet them, get their way, the ultimate guy-buyer “work-around,” better known as paying in cash, would also be eliminated. As a recent Wall Street Journal article reveals, increasing numbers of business have stopped taking cash completely, despite the fact that 30% of all transactions, and 55% of those under $10, are still made with it, according to an October 2017 survey of 2,800 people conducted by the Federal Reserve.
               Businesses and banks have different reasons for wanting to eliminate cash. Businesses cite reasons like employee safety and efficiency, even as they apparently remain oblivious to the rank elitism and the possibility they remain vulnerable to charges of discrimination made by those who don’t have bank accounts or credit cards, but still possess legal tender. Massachusetts is currently the only state requiring retailers to accept cash, but one suspects other states will follow suit.
               As for banks, their motives are far more nefarious. The European Central Bank has been charging negative interest rates for two years, and cash remains the largest impediment to such a contemptible idea. The very same banks American taxpayers (including gun owners) bailed out in 2008 would love nothing better than implementing a similar scenario here. And there is little doubt a debt-addicted ruling class, citing “dire” economic circumstances, would be accommodating, if they could manage the political backlash.
               If cash is eliminated, monitoring and controlling gun purchases — and every other transaction made by every American — would be an added “bonus.”
               And if one is oblivious enough to think corporate virtue signaling in tandem with complete control over all transactions would be limited to determining which Americans can or cannot buy guns, think again. Want to buy gasoline for that weekend trip to the country? Credit denied, because you’ve exceeded the limits of your personal “carbon footprint.” A six-pack of beer? You’ve exceeded your weekly limit of alcohol, according to federal dietary restrictions. Food? Vegetables and fruits only, until your Body Mass Index reaches the government-approved range. No cash? No freedom — period.
               “Never forget,” French warns, “American corporations often have progressive monocultures, and their elite ranks are often populated by individuals who want to use their considerable power to advance social justice.”
               Of course, “social justice” is repackaged totalitarianism — for our own good, no less. Which is exactly why the Founding Fathers created the Second Amendment.  ~The Patriot Post