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So Much for the Blue Wave — GOP Expands Senate Majority

by Thomas Gallatin:  More history was made yesterday in the era of Donald Trump. As USA Today reports, this midterm election result “was the first time since the nation started directly electing senators in 1914 that a party has won control of the House without gaining seats in the Senate.” That’s right — not only did Democrats fail to gain in the Senate but they actually lost ground. Republicans picked up at least two seats and likely four or five; we’re still waiting for the final results in Arizona, Montana, and a special election in Mississippi, as well as Bill Nelson’s futile call for a recount in Florida. So what are the takeaways for Trump and Senate Republicans going forward?
               First, any Democrat fever dreams of removing Trump from office are gone. He’s here to stay. We’ll see if sick-Nancy Pulosi and the House Dems are foolish enough to follow through on their impeachment threats, as doing so would only prove to be futile.   

by Nate Jackson:  Get ready for subpoenas, investigations, obstruction, and maybe impeachment in 2019, as the one thing the underwhelming “blue wave” did manage to accomplish yesterday was flipping the House to Democrat control. Democrats needed to pick up 23 seats and they’ve gained at least 27. For perspective, however, scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton lost 52 House seats in 1994 and Barack scumbag/liar-nObama lost 63 House seats in 2010. By comparison then, 2018 GOP losses are what former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer called “in line with the historical average” and what Demo cheerleaders in the Leftmedia consider a “heartbreaking” disappointment.

             In fact, despite not being on the ballot and his party losing the House, President Donald Trump might be the night’s biggest winner. Yes, likely incoming Speaker sick-Nancy Pulosi plans to push legislation antithetical to the Trump agenda — new gun laws, Demo-friendly changes to scumbag/liar-nObamaCare, expanded special protections for “LGBTQ” Americans, and legal status for “Dreamers” and no border wall — but those bills will die in the Senate, while Trump will find a willing partner for his desired infrastructure spending.
               Most importantly, however, Trump does best when he has a “foil” — an enemy to run against. The #Resistance House Democrats, suffering as they do with Trump Derangement Syndrome, will fill that role perfectly. sick-Pulosi even mused recently that “subpoena power is interesting … in terms of negotiating other subjects.” She claimed Tuesday night that the midterms were about “restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances on the Trump administration,” as well as that the House’s job will be “stopping the [Senate] GOP.”
               Trump didn’t wait to fire back, declaring this morning, “If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!”
               That Trump did so little to shore up GOP prospects in the House lends credence to the idea that he’s setting up just the foil he needs for reelection.
               Notably, women favored Democrats by 19 points. Democrats were strong in the suburbs with more moderate candidates, though the leadership is still moving ever more to the extreme left. And Democrat Socialist commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may remain the “new face” of the party after her landslide win. Thus, the Demo majority may be difficult to maintain in 2020 — if the GOP narrows the gap with women. Footnote: One Leftmedia list of “first” female House victors excluded Young Kim, the first Korean-American woman elected to Congress. Why? She’s a Republican.

~The Patriot Post  

             While some conservatives have complained that the sanctions don’t go far enough, pointing to the fact that eight nations were granted a waiver from the sanctions to continue purchasing oil and gas from Iran, others argue that this gives the U.S. greater room to make the argument that the sanctions are targeted at the regime in Tehran and not the Iranian people. The Wall Street Journal notes, “Even with the waivers, the expectation of sanctions has already taken 1.1 million barrels of Iranian oil a day off the market. That’s a lot of lost income for the Iranian economy. Note, too, that the Administration didn’t spare the European Union from the oil sanctions following its refusal to cooperate with helping the U.S. renegotiate Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s flawed nuclear deal with Tehran.”
               On the other hand, The Washington Free Beacon reports, “Iran is being given a pass from the administration to continue nuclear projects at the Arak, Bushehr, and Fordow facilities, all contested sites that have been at the center of Tehran’s secretive nuclear enrichment work in the past.” Evidently the Trump administration values economic pressure over tightening other restrictions at this time. We’ll see if that pans out.
               While this latest action may not be perfect, it goes a long way in correcting the course on Iran. scumbag/liar-nObama helped make this mess and Trump is left working to clean it up, and thus far it’s a good start. Europe’s leaders are likely to continue squawking their opposition, but in the long run, their financial ties to the U.S. will motivate them to get in line and follow along. Remember the ultimate goal here is to see the end of the current Iranian regime’s threat.
               Footnote: The Democrats’ favorite anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan, was in Iran over the weekend, where he declared, “America has never been a democracy and has always leaned towards the wealthy and powerful class.” He then led a crowd of law students in chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” Perhaps he’d prefer to stay out of our country, then.

~The Patriot Post  

             Trump noted that he would be releasing the “comprehensive” order next week, adding, “Those who choose to break our laws and enter illegally will no longer be able to use meritless claims to gain automatic admission into our country. We will hold them — for a long time, if necessary. The only longterm solution to the crisis, and the only way to ensure the endurance of our nation as a sovereign country, is for Congress to overcome open-borders obstruction.” He also emphasized, “We will end catch and release. We are not releasing any longer.”
               This is indeed a welcome announcement from Trump. For too long the U.S. asylum system has been abused by illegal aliens who are caught sneaking across the border. If one’s asylum request is legitimate, then go to a legal port of entry and apply.
               Trump is also making it clear that he is interested in stopping illegal immigration, not legal immigration or the legal process for making genuine and needed asylum requests. This is not, nor has it ever been, a quest to stop legal immigration or asylum. Nor has it been about the ethnic background of those seeking entry into the U.S. It hasalways been an issue of enforcing our nation’s sovereignty and laws.
                  The truth is that most illegal aliens who sneak into the U.S. do so because they know they don’t meet the asylum requirements. That fact is borne out by the regular practice of illegal aliens making requests for asylum only after they have been apprehended by the Border Patrol. Secondly, as Trump noted, escaping poverty is not legitimate grounds for asylum. Socialism south of our border is certainly bad, and these countries are often economically wrecked, but that’s not sufficient to grant access to our own lavish benefits.

~The Patriot Post  

             You may have guessed already — that “scholar” is none other than Barack scumbag/liar-nObama, the same hypocrite who “decided on his own who’s an American citizen” with his unconstitutional DACA gambit. Remember? Armed with his phone and pen, scumbag/liar-nObama decided that since Congress had declined to advance his preferred legislation to grant citizenship to “Dreamers” — immigrants of a certain age brought here by their parents — he would do so himself. And that was despite scumbag/liar-nObama’s previous repeated declarations that the president had no such authority.
               To be sure, there’s a key difference between  scumbag/liar-nObama’s action and Trump’s proposal — beyond the fact that Trump hasn’t actually done anything yet. As we explained last week, we believe it’s clear the authors of the 14th Amendment did not intend to extend citizenship to the children of illegal aliens. That means, contrary to breathless Leftmedia assertions, Trump would not actually be changing the Constitution with an executive order. He’d be changing the executive branch’s interpretation of it to match the original intent.
               Yet Trump quickly tempered his idea by saying that he’d rather see Congress address the issue. He’s on far better footing with that suggestion, but that doesn’t make scumbag/liar-nObama’s demagoguery any more accurate.
               Meanwhile, scumbag/liar-nObama is the same guy who also not long ago hypocritically lectured, “I’d like to think there are compassionate conservatives out there who think there’s nothing compassionate about ripping immigrant children from the arms of their mothers at the border and putting them in pens.” You know, like his administration did.
               On a final note, scumbag/liar-nObama wondered at another rally, “Why is it that the folks that won the last election are so mad all the time?” First of all, conservatives are mad that hypocrites like scumbag/liar-nObama are still sanctimoniously telling us how evil we are. Second, conservatives are pleasantly happy compared to the rage of the Left.

~The Patriot Post  

             Despite controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, Republicans couldn’t muster enough votes to pass the PROSPER Act in 2017. Instead of having enacted their own reforms to higher-education standards and student-loan reforms, including the assurance that freedom of speech and fiscal responsibility were key components of the new act, Republicans may well be handing this one over to dummycrats-Democrats.
               And don’t think for a moment that the dummycrats-Democrats don’t have a plan.
               House and Senate dummycrats-Democrats are planning to reauthorize the Higher Education Act in the form of the Orwellian Aim Higher Act, which will largely take student-loan borrowers off the hook for repaying their loans while leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. If dummycrats-Democrats have their way, billions of dollars in student loans will be forgiven in a move that takes us one step closer to their dream of “free” college for everyone.
               Of course, the AHA doesn’t bother to tackle government spending, ensure education quality, or incentivize lower tuition. Even illegal immigrants who quality for DACA will be free to rack up student-loan debt with no responsibility to pay it back. Prisoners, too, will be able to tap into Pell Grants and earn a college degree.
               The only thing that changes in the dummycrats-Democrats’ plan is that even more federal money will be spent on higher education. As with all other socialist fantasies, “free” education is anything but free — except for those most responsible for running up the tab.
               Jason Delisle and Cody Christensen write at National Review that payments on student loans under the revised program would barely cover the interest on those loans: “Such generous repayment terms transform federal loans almost into grants, signaling that borrowing more is better than borrowing less. For graduate and professional students who, unlike undergraduates, can access unlimited federal loans for tuition and living expenses, the Aim Higher Act would turn the loan program into a veritable ATM that dispenses taxpayer dollars, at least for those who ended up earning middle-class incomes.”
               One aspect of the new proposal that seems too bad to be true is that students who’ve borrowed a higher amount may simply be able to run out the clock on their debt. “Thanks to the income exemption in the Aim Higher Act,” Delisle and Christensen add, “payments are low enough that the additional principal and interest owed on debts higher than $65,000 for a borrower with the given income profile are simply forgiven at the 20-year point. A $165,000 loan costs this borrower the same as a $65,000 loan. Either way, monthly payments would be identical for 20 years, and then all remaining debt is forgiven. Graduate students who do not max out their loans under such incentives would literally leave free money — provided at taxpayers’ expense — on the table.”
               dummycrats-Democrats always claim that offering free public services will actually save money and reduce the national debt. In the end, forgiving more student loans under the Aim Higher Act will only add more weight onto the shoulders of future generations. Just last year, Money reported that student-loan debt had topped $1.3 trillion. But as long as college-age voters flock to the dummycrats-Democrat Party, no one in their leadership ranks really cares about the cost.
               As Margaret Thatcher once famously stated, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Free college for all? Don’t fall for it.

~The Patriot Post  

             Though Bredesen was originally considered a sacrificial lamb, a placeholder but not competitive, that shifted earlier this year for several reasons.
               First would be that the dummycrats-Democrats’ national strategy is “HATE TRUMP,” and Bredesen has received enormous support from out-of-state leftists, including $3.5 million in ad support from dummycrats-Demo Sen. Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer (D-NY), and big-dollar support from New York leftist Michael Bloomberg. Second, opposition from some wealthy establishment Republican elitists who don’t like Blackburn’s alignment with Trump (or more likely have problems with strong women) has helped turn Bredesen into a viable competitor. Last, even retiring Sen. Corker, who last year got into a distasteful spat with Trump, has offered tepid support for Blackburn, saying only that he will vote for her and has maxed out his donations to her campaign.
               As with many dummycrats-Demo campaigns across the country, Bredesen’s team has endeavored to paint him as a “moderate,” but that is a fallacious deception.
               To drive home that point, Marsha’s team developed what should serve as a model opposition ad for every Republican facing a “moderate” dummycrats-Democrat — pulling clips from Bredesen’s phony claims of bipartisanship and comparing those with identical fake claims by Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton.

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLUQfBingQo

~The Patriot Post  

             On Tuesday, amid a crowd of protesters, Trump and his family visited the Tree of Life synagogue, where he spoke privately with Rabbi Myers and offered his condolences. Following Trump’s visit, Myers was again interviewed by CNN’s Camerota, who renewed her negative narrative against the president. But once again the good rabbi refused, saying that he was “pleasantly surprised” by Trump’s warmth.
               Myer further related, “I was privileged to have a private 15 or 20 minutes with the [Trump] family. The president was very warm, very consoling. He put his hand on my shoulder and the first question he asked me was, ‘Rabbi, tell me — how are you doing?’ And I must say throughout the time we spent together, I was pleasantly surprised by a warm and personal side to the president that I don’t think America has ever seen.”
               Actually, the rabbi’s personal experience with Trump has been affirmed by many others. As Mark Alexander noted in 2016, “[Trump] is an interesting case study. On a personal level, those we know who are closest to him say that he is very personable and fair, that he demonstrates integrity and humility, and that he treats people with dignity and respect.” In a conversation Alexander had with a longtime friend who managed Trump’s personal security team prior to his nomination, he was told that, despite all of Trump’s brazen, brash bravado in public — his “New Yorker” side — he was universally admired by those on his staff as generous, kind, and fair to those around him, and that his personal interactions with guests were warm and accommodating. Yes, that is the polar opposite of his brawling public persona, but it’s still vintage Trump.
               Even exiting Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who often butted heads with Trump, confirmed this week that when visiting with Trump at the White House or other venues, he was very personal and hospitable. It’s too bad more of that Trump doesn’t come through in his public comments and interactions.

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FkW1zUGGrU

~The Patriot Post  

             That’s right, those very same Gitmo terrorists are now part of the Taliban’s “peace” negation team. So after 17 years of fighting a seemingly never-ending war, the U.S. is left negotiating a “peace” deal with the very terrorists scumbag/liar-nObama released. And why are we negotiating “peace” with the Taliban — the terrorist overlords we went to Afghanistan to destroy? Because scumbag/liar-nObama was content to let the U.S. military languish there in a holding pattern rather than giving American Patriots in uniform the necessary means to win. The net effect is the same as his disastrous withdrawal from Iraq, which brought about the rise of the Islamic State. That’s right, the Taliban now controls nearly half of Afghanistan and thus has the necessary leverage for negotiations.
               scumbag/liar-nObama started out his term apologizing for American exceptionalism, he allowed for the growth of ISIS, which almost reversed all gains made in Iraq, and he went out appeasing one of America’s biggest enemies with his terrible Iran nuclear deal. These Afghanistan “peace” talks are a tragic bookend to the absolute futility of scumbag/liar-nObama’s foreign policy.

~The Patriot Post  

             In 2009 the woman, called “Mrs. S” by the court but identified as Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, conducted two seminars entitled “Basic Information on Islam.” During those seminars, Sabaditsch-Wolff included the scripturally accurate account of the 50-year-old prophet of Islam taking Aisha as his wife when she was six or seven, and consummating the marriage when Aisha was nine.
               During those lectures, NEWS magazine, a leftist Austrian publication, planted a reporter in the audience to secretly record them. Lawyers for the magazine subsequently provided transcripts to the Viennese public prosecutor’s office as evidence alleging Sabaditsch-Wolff had violated Section 283 of the Austrian Criminal Code that criminalizes “hate speech.” Initial charges against her were filed in September 2010, and her jury-less trial, adjudicated by Judge Bettina Neubauer, began that November.
               It quickly devolved into farce. Neubauer pointed out that only 30 minutes of the first seminar had been recorded, and that statements attributed to Sabaditsch-Wolff were actually offhand comments made during breaks. Moreover, far fewer than the 30 people required by Austrian law to define a statement as “public” heard them. Sabaditsch-Wolff asserted her comments were not made in a public forum because the seminars were provided to a select group of people who had pre-registered to attend them. The fact that Sabaditsch-Wolff had actually quoted the Koran and other Islamic texts proved “problematic” as well.
               A suspension of the original trial occurred on January 18, 2011, ostensibly so Neubauer could review the recordings more thoroughly. However when the trial resumed, Neubauer — not prosecutors — added the charge of “denigrating religious symbols of a recognized religious group” to the original indictment. The trial was again postponed by Sabaditsch-Wolff’s attorneys so they could address the additional charge. When it resumed on Feb. 15, 2011, Sabaditsch-Wolff was exonerated of the original charge but, convicted of violating Section 188 of the Austrian Criminal Code, which prohibits “denigrating or mocking any person or thing that is the object of worship of a domestically existing church or religious society, or a doctrine, lawful practice, or lawful establishment of such a church or religious community.”
               In short, the judge ruled that Sabaditsch-Wolff had accused Muhammed of being a pedophile. What she actually said was that “Mohammed had a thing for little girls.” Sabaditsch-Wolff’s initial appeal of her $547 fine and the costs of the proceedings, or the alternative sentence of 60 days in prison, was rejected by the Vienna Court of Appeal the following December.
               Sabaditsch-Wolff moved her appeal to the ECHR, using as her vehicle Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It states that everyone “has the right to freedom of expression.” Yet the same article notes that such freedom engenders “duties and responsibilities,” that may be “subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others.”
               Thus, the ECHR ruled that the domestic courts “comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria.”
               Columnist Andrew McCarthy cuts through the double-speak. “Europeans are free to say only what they are permitted to say by the unelected judges of the European courts,” he writes. “Truth is irrelevant.” Columnist Bruce Bawer goes even further. “The ECHR has totally capitulated to Islam,” he explains. “It has dealt a major blow to freedom of speech in Europe. At this point, indeed, the ECHR might as well be a sharia court.”
               More like a court dedicated to the idea that “peace at any price” — better known as the utterly bankrupt exigency that precipitated WWII — is now the law of the land.
               McCarthy sees part of the big picture, noting that “one objective of sharia supremacists is to establish Muslim enclaves in the West and then pressure the host governments to concede their right to govern themselves under Islamic law.” He adds, “That is not seen as a permanent arrangement. It is a transition on the path to imposition of sharia standards on all of society.”
               The other part of the big picture? America already has its own wannabe supremacists. Nearly half of America’s college students believe “problematic speech” should be restricted, and only 53% believe handing out literature on controversial subjects is “always acceptable.” Even worse, 37% are on board with shouting down speakers, and one in 10 had no problem with resorting to violence to same.
               Students are joined by a cadre of progressive tech titans, suffused with their own notions of permissible speech. Thus Google CEO Sundar Pichai rationalizes his company’s proposal to create a censoring search engine for a liberty-crushing Communist Chinese government, by insisting it will “serve well over 99% of the queries.”
               China has more than 800 million Internet users. If 1% of a single query by each is censored, eight million queries go down Orwell’s memory hole.
               As for the media in general, Victor Davis Hanson sees a nation where “celebrities, politicians, and almost anyone of influence and wealth are always an incorrect or insensitive word away from the contemporary electronic guillotine.” Columnist Robert Stacy McCain aptly notes that the real hate problem in America centers around the “media elite’s hatred of anyone who disagrees with them.” A media who, along with their dummycrats-Democrat allies, would prefer that debates about critical issues like illegal immigration be “effectively criminalized.”
               Americans themselves are also well on their way toward criminalizing hate speech. While the Cato Institute reveals 71% of Americans believe that political correctness silences discussions the nation needs to have, a substantial number of Americans across the political spectrum are still okay with censorship, regulation, and punishment of speech that is “hateful” or “offends” them, even as 82% admit that people can’t discern what speech qualifies as either, or both.
               The ECHR’s ruling is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. As a result of it, McCarthy wonders how long Europe survives if free speech dies. A better question? How long before American courts become like those of the EU, defending the “right” not to be offended in order to “preserve peace?” It doesn’t get more “transformational” — and unconstitutional — than that.

~The Patriot Post  

             Gelernter notes, “Every big U.S. election is interesting, but the coming midterms are fascinating for a reason most commentators forget to mention: The dummycrats-Democrats have no issues. The economy is booming and America’s international position is strong. In foreign affairs, the U.S. has remembered in the nick of time what Machiavelli advised princes five centuries ago: Don’t seek to be loved, seek to be feared. The contrast with the scumbag/liar-nObama years must be painful for any honest leftist. For future generations, the Kavanaugh fight will stand as a marker of the dummycrats-Democratic Party’s intellectual bankruptcy, the flashing red light on the dashboard that says ‘Empty.’ The Left is beaten.”
               While I think the “Blue Wave” has been overstated in the upcoming midterm election, though certainly not to the extent of scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s presumed victory in 2016, if the “Left is beaten,” we would expect to see “Republican Waves” as we did in 2010 and 2014. Indeed, based on the Trump administration’s extraordinary domestic and foreign policy record, we should see Republican gains in both the Senate and House.
               All Americans are MUCH better off today than they were two years ago, but that notwithstanding, Republicans will suffer losses in the House. And here is why: This election is a referendum on dummycrats-Democrat voter IQ and the  dummycrats-Demo/MSM chokehold on their opinion — not the considerable Trump record. The result of that chokehold and dummycrats-Demo voter delusion is, as Gelernter notes, one political theme: “We hate Trump.” All the Left has to offer is fear, anger, hate, and division.
               Indeed, Gelernter observes, “What the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America.” They fear him because, “He has no ideology except getting the job done. His goals are to do the task before him, not be pushed around, and otherwise to enjoy life. In short, he is a typical American — except exaggerated, because he has no constraints to cramp his style except the ones he himself invents.”
               Gelernter writes, “Mr. Trump reminds us who the average American really is. Not the average male American, or the average white American. We know for sure that, come 2020, intellectuals will be dumbfounded at the number of women and blacks who will vote for Mr. Trump. He might be realigning the political map: plain average Americans of every type vs. fancy ones.”
               He concludes, “This all leads to an important question — one that will be dismissed indignantly today, but not by historians in the long run: Is it possible to hate Donald Trump but not the average American?”
               At their core, Beltway dummycrats-Democrats, their Leftmedia publicists, and their wealthy elitist benefactors don’t like grassroots Americans and the Liberty they embrace. Unfortunately in this election cycle, we will learn how many Americans are not able to rise above the fear and hatred fomented by the Left.

~The Patriot Post