PrairiePundit

It is a good ad that shows the real consequences of socialism.  It deserves wide distribution to show the real-world results of the policies several Democrats are pushing this year.

Patricia McCarthy:
Throughout the Democrat presidential debate Thursday night, the candidates were positively entertaining in their quest to out-pander each other (can we say Yang?) — on health care, of course, but especially on race, then guns.  The agreed-upon talking point since the day he was elected has been that "Trump is a racist" even though for the first seventy-one years of his life, no one had ever, even once, suggested such a thing. Trump had long been friends with nearly all high-profile African-Americans from all walks of life in New York.  He has helped countless African-American individuals, schools, and charitable organizations.  The man has never demonstrated an iota of racism or even race consciousness.  But as we all know by now, the truth is not a left-wing value, as Dennis Prager often reminds.  They don't like Trump, so any slur, any fabricated indictment of his character is A-OK, a sanctioned furtherance of the agenda to transform America into their…

NY Times:
‘People Actively Hate Us’: Inside the Border Patrol’s Morale Crisis Overwhelmed by desperate migrants and criticized for mistreating the people in their care, many agents have grown defensive, insular and bitter. I certainly do not hate the people of the Border Patrol.  It is made up mostly of Hispanics who live on the border.  They do not deserve the Democrat hatred directed toward them.  The Democrats now are pushing an open borders policy, but they do not have the support of a majority of Americans for that policy so they lash out at those who are enforcing the laws they helped write.  I find the attitude of the Democrats toward the Border Patrol and ICE totally disgusting and hypocritical.  The media has also contributed to that hatred with bias reporting.

Reuters:
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday accused Iran of leading attacks on Saudi oil plants that have cut the kingdom’s output roughly in half, as he ruled out Yemeni involvement and denounced Tehran for engaging in false diplomacy.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group claimed credit for the attacks on two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including the world’s biggest petroleum processing facility.

Pompeo, however, said on Twitter that there was no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.

“Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy,” Pompeo said, referring to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif.

“Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply,” he added. The State Department declined to provide any evidence to bolster Pompeo’s claim.

“We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally con…

Deroy Murdock:
“Donald Trump is a racist.”

Democrats deploy this lie more often than commas and periods. Look no further than Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate in Houston.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey declared: “We know Donald Trump’s a racist, but there is no red badge of courage for calling him that.” He claimed that America has “a president that [sic] can’t condemn white supremacy.”

“Anyone who supports this [President Trump’s immigration policies] is supporting racism,” said Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind. “The only people, though, who actually buy into this president’s hateful rhetoric around immigrants are people who don’t know any.”

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas shouted: “We have a white supremacist in the White House, and he poses a mortal threat to people of color all across this country.”

“President Trump, you’ve spent the last two-and-a-half years full-time trying to sow hate and division among us,” Sen. Kamala Harris of California hectored, “and tha…

Jamie McIntyre:
Legendary military commander retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis is on a whirlwind publicity tour promoting his book Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, which he co-authored with Bing West. Washington Examiner senior writer Jamie McIntyre covered Mattis both when he was in uniform and during his stint as President Trump’s first defense secretary. The two spoke by phone last week, after McIntyre promised in an email that he wouldn’t ask the same dumb questions as everyone else, but instead would ask entirely new dumb questions. That apparently appealed to Mattis, who immediately called. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and space. Washington Examiner: I'm wondering about some of your judgments. You seem pretty confident after you've made a decision that you've made the right one. For instance, the account you give of how you were certain that you could've captured or killed Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora in 2001, ev…

Bryon Preston:
Don't Move to Austin. It's Rotting from Within. As a former resident of Austin, I now avoid it whenever possible.  The city has down a poor job of handling traffic for some time and downtown parking is also a problem.  Mobility and parking are so much better in Houston a city that is six times larger than Austin.  Dallas is also easier to navigate.  Austin used to be a clean city, but liberals have turned it into a place to dump people who probably should be institutionalized.  Now they live on the medians and byways in the city in tents they somehow had the money to buy.

NY Times:
With Markers and Straws, Trump’s Campaign Sells Defiance as a Lifestyle Trump-branded products celebrate the president’s urge to fight back. Trump raises funding by resiting crazy things liberals do.  When they outlaw plastic straws while giving away plastic needles to druggies which are then thrown on the streets of their cities they certainly deserve the ridicule of the President.

Wall Street Journal:
When Donald Trump broke the hold of Democrats in Pennsylvania and parts of the industrial Midwest in 2016, credit went to many blue-collar, manufacturing-oriented counties that backed him by lopsided margins, drawn in part by his promise of economic renewal.

More than two years into Mr. Trump’s presidency, employment growth and other measures of economic robustness in these politically important counties have lagged behind the national trend, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

And yet, Mr. Trump’s job-approval rating in the blue-collar counties has risen since he took office, polling shows. Together, the data suggest that even growth below the national rate could be enough to satisfy many voters that Mr. Trump has fulfilled his promises.

“There hasn’t been a big uptick” in the economy, said Anthony Seiwell, a Pennsylvania official with the Laborers’ International Union of North America. “It’s not much different than it was five years ago.” The political impact:…

National Review:
Yes, They Are Coming for Your Guns

...
For years, advocates of the right to keep and bear arms have suspected that confiscation was the endgame but have been rebuffed as paranoiacs in the press. Such a rebuffing is no longer possible. If it ever was, “Nobody is coming for your guns!” is no longer true — which means that a host of commonly posed inquiries now have the same simple answer. “Why do you oppose federal licensing?” Because leading Democrats are threatening confiscation. “Why do you oppose ‘universal’ background checks?” Because they would create a registry. “And why do you oppose a registry?” Because leading Democrats are threatening confiscation. Unwittingly or not, O’Rourke and his acolytes have stuck a dagger into the exquisitely calibrated gun-control messaging on which their party has worked for the better part of 20 years. No voter can now say he wasn’t warned. And why do you oppose Red Flag laws--Because Democrats already accuse members of the NRA of b…

Perviz Khazia:
It is increasingly clear that Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran is effective and has damaged Iran's economy, particularly the energy, shipping, and financial sectors.  Oil exports have dropped from 2.5 million barrels per day in 2018 to only 100,000 BPD in 2019, causing foreign investment to dry up.  Iran is facing "unprecedented" pressure from international sanctions, President Hassan Rouhani has said.  On the other hand, hope for possible new U.S.-Iran negotiations has failed, because Iran has not changed its malign behavior, ballistic missile development, and aid to regional terrorist allies Hamas, Hezb'allah, and the Houthis and violation of human rights at home continue.  The regime's reaction to the people's uprising has been to crack down further on dissent.  Civil liberties are being suppressed even further.  However, the strong people of Iran will not be silenced by this torturous and suppressive regime.  In…

Power Line:
Several months ago, General Michael Flynn replaced his original defense team with Sidney Powell, a Texas lawyer who is a veteran of the Department of Justice and author of Licensed To Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. Powell is a self-promoter, but she also appears to be a very good lawyer.
...
It remains to be seen how Judge Sullivan will respond to the motion. A long time has gone by since Flynn pled guilty to one count of lying to the FBI (which I suspect he likely didn’t do), and Judge Sullivan seems to have reservations about the prosecution. In any event, as Cleveland points out, Powell’s detailed requests indicate that she has a good idea what went on behind the scenes as DOJ and the FBI were trying to set up Donald Trump: [H]er bid for this information shows that Powell has in three short months pieced together more tiles in the mosaic of the Russia collusion fraud than Robert Mueller did in two years. Ms. Powell’s motion is embedded below. I will n…

Rep. Tom Emmer:
Republicans’ special election victory Tuesday in North Carolina’s 9th District is the latest evidence that 2020 will be a very different election from 2018.

Rep.-elect Dan Bishop didn’t just overcome his Democrat opponent’s two-year head start and millions of dollars in out-of-state money. He also outperformed the GOP candidate’s 2018 efforts by 2 points — quite a different narrative from what the cable news pundits want voters to believe and great news for Republican prospects next year.

House Republicans are now 3-0 in special elections this cycle and, in all three races, the GOP nominee outperformed the 2018 result. In Pennsylvania’s 12th and North Carolina’s 3rd districts, Republicans even outperformed President Donald Trump’s 2016 numbers.

Our current GOP strategy is focused on two truths that spell disaster for Democratic prospects in 2020. First, House Democrats’ socialist agenda is wildly unpopular with voters and will be an anchor around the necks of their can…

Reuters:
At a dusty drilling site east of San Antonio, shale producer EOG Resources Inc recently completed its latest well using a new technology developed by a small services firm that promises to slash the cost of each by $200,000.

The technology, called electric fracking and powered by natural gas from EOG’s own wells instead of costly diesel fuel, shows how shale producers keep finding new ways to cut costs in the face of pressures to improve their returns.

E-frac, as the new technology is called, is being adopted by EOG, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp and others because of its potential to lower costs, reduce air pollution and operate much quieter than conventional diesel-powered frac fleets. Investment bank Tudor, Pickering Holt & Co analyst George O’Leary estimates e-fracs could lop off up to $350,000 from the cost of shale wells that run $6 million to $8 million apiece.

While a handful of oil producers are capturing savings from lower well costs, the picture is le…

Red States:
A new ad from California Republican Elizabeth Heng’s “New Faces GOP” PAC that ran Thursday night during the Democratic debate has got people talking.

The ad, which was broadcast on a local ABC affiliate in the Washington, DC area, portrayed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as the “face of socialism.” It’s what happened next in the ad that outraged AOC and her online sycophants:

A dramatic ad targeting Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aired during the third Democratic debate on Thursday, comparing Ocasio-Cortez’s support for democratic socialism to the brutal Khmer Rouge communist regime in Cambodia.

The ad shows a picture of the young congresswoman bursting into flame to reveal a picture of a pile of skulls. The narrator of the ad, onetime Republican congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng, is the daughter of Cambodian immigrants.

“This is the face of socialism and ignorance,” Heng says in a voiceover as the picture of Ocasio-Cortez burns. “Does Alexand…

Mark Levin reads the tea leaves in an attempt to accuse Israel of spying on the White House.  They were apparently hoping Trump would attack the Israeli leader who is running for reelection.  This looks like another Obama dirty tricks leak.

Washington Post:
Yemen rebels claim drone attack on Saudi oil sitesThe Houthis, who have been fighting a Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen for years, said they carried out the attacks, which sparked explosions and huge fires. The Houthis are armed by Iran and part of a strategic attempt to control the flow of oil through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.  Iran likely provided the drone and the explosives for the attack on the Saudi plant.

NY Times:
Trump Inspires California Lawmakers to Go on Offense California Democrats have been energized by a wave of anti-Trump sentiment to enact a sweeping liberal agenda that in almost every way offers a counternarrative to Trump administration policies. Liberalism is destroying the state.  People are leaving in droves or living in tents on the side of the road.  The state bans plastic straws but the government gives away plastic needles to druggies who throw them on the streets.   Allowing people to leave feces on the streets is leading to pollution and disease.  California is the poster child of what is wrong with liberalism.  Trump's policies, meanwhile, are bringing prosperity to much of the rest of the country.

Michael Goodwin:
And the winner is … Donald Trump.

The Democrats’ third presidential debate was a long-winded, platitude-filled disaster where no single candidate could claim a clear victory. Instead, the seven men and three women took turns displaying why they are all probably unelectable.

Start with Joe Biden’s incoherence. The nominal front-runner, the former vice president had a 40-year reputation for never shutting up. Now he can’t manage to finish a sentence without interrupting himself.

Nearly all his efforts to make a point were swamped by a sudden change of direction mid-sentence, and then another change a few words later as a random thought popped into his head and out his mouth. None of his rivals needed to interrupt him — he did it to himself.

Most of the time I had no idea what he was trying to say, let alone what he actually said. I veered between feeling sorry for him and expecting the AFLAC duck to come out on stage and shake its head in bewilderment.

I have said all a…

Margot Cleveland:

Sidney Powell’s Latest Motion In Michael Flynn’s Case Is A Russiagate Bombshell

Lawyer Sidney Powell’s bigger plan is to expose the breadth and depth of SpyGate and how flaying Michael Flynn lay at the heart of the soft coup attempt. If the judges order the government to turn over the 40 pieces of evidence she asks for, it could reveal much about the plot against the President and the use of Flynn as a target to achieve that objective.

Washington Examiner:
Gun control featured prominently in the third Democratic debate in Houston, with most of the 10 candidates trying to one-up each other on the issue while also jabbing repeatedly at President Trump.

The Democratic White House hopefuls gathered on stage at Texas Southern University, a historically black college about 700 miles from El Paso, where 22 people died in an August shooting massacre, and 500 miles from Midland-Odessa, where eight people died weeks later in another rampage. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who represented El Paso in Congress, won praise from many of his rivals for his leadership after tragedy shook his hometown.

O’Rourke offered some of the most memorable rhetoric over gun control, including calls to confront the National Rifle Association. O’Rourke, 46, also used the nationally televised platform to reiterate his unabashed plan for a mandatory firearm buyback program.

"Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” the former lawmake…

Becket Adams:
Former Vice President Joe Biden went big Thursday evening at the Democratic primary debate in Houston, declaring that nonviolent criminals should not be in jail.

The moment occurred after the 2020 front-runner was asked specifically to explain his plan to release “nonviolent drug offenders from prison." Biden was asked also to respond to critics who say his plan is not “ambitious enough.”

"The fact of the matter is that what's happened is that we're in a situation now where there are so many people who are in jail who shouldn't be in jail," he said, adding [emphasis added], "Nobody should be in jail for a nonviolent crime.”

Biden obviously needs to refine that a bit. Because the way it stands now, he just advocated for the release of all nonviolent criminals, including Ponzi scammer Bernie Madoff, FBI-agent-turned-Russian-spy Robert Hanssen, and, of course, President Trump’s one-time campaign chairman and all-around sleazebag Paul Manafort…

Marc Thiessen:
CNN tries to blame Trump for Obama administration leaks I get the impression that at CNN the employees sit around and bitch about Trump and think about news ways to attack him.

NY Times:
Cable Cars Over Jerusalem? Some See ‘Disneyfication’ of Holy City The architecture of occupation: A planned cable-car network to Jewish holy sites bypasses Palestinians and furthers Israel’s claims over East Jerusalem. The so-called Palestinians are part of an Arab Muslim colonial effort in Israel.   The Muslim holy sites were part of that colonial effort and an attempt to suppress Judaism.  Muslims made similar efforts in India to suppress the Hindu by building mosques over Hindu temple ruins.  They converted Christian church buildings to mosques in Turkey.  It is historically illiterate to ignore these facts and call Jews occupiers in a land in which they have thousands of years of ties.

Washington Post:
Is the Supreme Court too deferential to Trump — or worried some lower courts are overstepping their power? Since June, the high court has approved two emergency requests from the Trump administration to overrule lower courts on border security matters. The Court is being deferential to the law and is telling judges to quit abusing their power because they do not like the President's policies.  A District Judge in California was not appointed to wag the dog.

At a recent Town Hall on CNN you promised to stop fracking and halt the use of all fossil fuels and also attacked hamburgers produced by ranchers.  How do you expect to turn Texas blue with an agenda that will put millions of Texans out of work? 

The Democrat agenda looks like a war against the Texas economy.

David Catron:
Last week the Democrats were touting the special election in North Carolina’s 9th District as the first major contest of the 2020 cycle, and the polls indicated that Democrat Dan McCready might win what should be a pretty safe GOP seat. By Wednesday morning, after Republican Dan Bishop had won, their focus had shifted and much commentary was devoted to his “thin margin of victory.” Little notice was taken of certain voting patterns that should frighten the Democrats. Specifically, McCready did far worse than expected in every county but one, and many of those counties are dominated by minority voters.

The most unnerving example, from the Democratic perspective, is rural Robeson County. The ethnic makeup of this county is as follows: Native American (38.6%), White (25.7%), Black (24%), Hispanic (8.52%), Two or More Races (2.15%), Asian (0.66%), Other (0.275%). On Tuesday the Democrat received a fraction of the votes he received in 2018, running for the same seat. Ryan Mat…