Daniel Greenfieldwrites:It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn’t set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, “Oops, I Did It Again.” And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.
In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That’s up from 16 in 2000.
What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.
It was 2004. The poncho was the hottest fashion trend, there were 5 million new cases of AIDS and a former Nazi collaborator had bought the Democrat Party using the spare change in his sofa cushions.
And gone to war against the will of the people. This was what he modestly called his own “Soros Doctrine”.
“It is the central focus of my life,” George Soros declared. It was “a matter of life and death.” He vowed that he would become poor if it meant defeating the President of the United States.
Instead of going to the poorhouse, he threw in at least $15 million, all the spare change in the billionaire’s sofa cushions, dedicated to beating President Bush.
In his best lisping James Bond villain accent, Soros strode into the National Press Club and declared that he had “an important message to deliver to the American Public before the election” that was contained in a pamphlet and a book that he waved in front of the camera. Despite his “I expect you to die, Mr. Bond” voice, the international villain’s delivery was underwhelming. He couldn’t have sold brownies to potheads at four in the morning. He couldn’t even sell Bush-bashing to a roomful of left-wing reporters.
But he could certainly fund those who would. And that’s exactly what he did.
Money poured into the fringe organizations of the left like MoveOn, which had moved on from a petition site to a PAC. In 2004, Soros was its biggest donor. He didn’t manage to bring down Bush, but he helped buy the Democratic Party as a toy for his yowling dorm room of left-wing activists to play with.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Soros hasn’t had a great track record at buying presidential elections. The official $25 million he poured into this one bought him his worst defeat since 2004. But his money did transform the Democrat Party.
And killed it.
Next year the Democracy Alliance was born. A muddy river of cash from Soros and his pals flowed into the organizations of the left. Soros had helped turn Howard Dean, a Vermont politician once as obscure as this cycle’s radical Vermont Socialist, into a contender and a national figure. Dean didn’t get the nomination, but he did get to remake the DNC. Podesta’s Center for American Progress swung the Democrats even further to the left. And it would be Podesta who helped bring Hillary down.
The Democrats became a radical left-wing organization and unviable as a national political party. The Party of Jefferson had become the Party of Soros. And only one of those was up on Mount Rushmore.
Obama’s wins concealed the scale and scope of the disaster. Then the party woke up after Obama to realize that it had lost its old bases in the South and the Rust Belt. The left had hollowed it out and transformed it into a party of coastal urban elites, angry college crybullies and minority coalitions.
Republicans control twice as many state legislative chambers as the Democrats. They boast 25 trifectas , controlling both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion. Trifectas had gone from being something that wasn’t seen much outside of a few hard red states like Texas to covering much of the South, the Midwest and the West.
The Democrats have a solid lock on the West Coast and a narrow corridor of the Northeast, and little else. The vast majority of the country’s legislatures are inRepublican hands. The Democrat Governor’s Association has a membership in the teens. In former strongholds like Arkansas, Dems are going extinct. The party has gone from holding national legislative majorities to becoming a marginal movement. Read the rest of this entry »
Counterterrorism officials in Hungary believe ISIS set up a ‘logistics hub’ in the country in the Summer of 2015 at the peak of the migrant crisis, with jihadis taking advantage of Europe’s porous borders to slip into Western Europe.
Lisa Daftari reports: Seven of the nine ISIS jihadis who launched a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris last November entered Europe by posing as refugees.
The attackers were part of a group of 14 who plotted their way into Western Europe by riding the wave of the migrant crisis last year, according to Hungarian security officials.
By using fake Syrian passports, many of the attackers, already on European terror watch-lists, were able to slip back into Europe undetected, along with thousands of other refugees.
PETER DEJONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
One hundred and thirty people were killed in November when a group of gunmen and suicide bombers launched a wave of attacks across Paris, targeting the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade De France and several restaurants and bars. Three hundred sixty-eight people were also injured in the attacks, almost 100 of them seriously.
Peter Hasson reports: Leaked documents from left-wing financier George Soros’s Open Society Foundations continue to reveal the extent to which the group has influenced the political response to Europe’s refugee crisis. Internal documents show OSF used $600,000 in reserve funding in March 2016 to bring pro-refugee positions into the “political mainstream.”
Jordi Vaquer, OSF’s regional director for Europe, approved a $600,000 proposal entitled, “Countering the anti-migrant rhetoric and toxic narratives surrounding migration in Europe.”
According to OSF documents, half of the $600,000 would go towards lobbying efforts. All $600,000 came from OSF’s “Europe Reserve Fund.”
A summary of the proposal notes that “the proposed reserve fund allocation will allow for additional resources to be allocated towards countering xenophobic attitudes in Europe, move parts of the political mainstream towards more pro-refugee positions, and build constituencies around a more progressive approach to migration and asylum.” Read the rest of this entry »
Billionaire George Soros has funded liberal organizations intent on bringing confusion, disarray and trouble to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week.
And they’ve already had some victories.
Civil rights group Color of Change — which Mr. Soros gave $500,000 to in his Foundation’s latest tax return — collected more than 100,000 signatures on a petition to demand Coca-Cola and other companies withdraw their support from the convention. The petition that featured a Coke bottle with the label, “Share a Coke with the KKK.”
George Soros
Color of Change was joined by UltraViolet, another Soros-backed women’s rights organization, in the petition…(read more)
Hillary Clinton, the dominant front-runner in the Democratic field, is facing a massive pile of money on the Republican side, with early numbers showing that the GOPers have outraised Clinton more than four times over.
So far, the 15 candidates vying for the Republican nomination have raked in more than $280 million to Clinton’s $69 million, through a mix of campaign fundraising, super PAC donations, and other money groups.
Yes, the field is lopsided, but that doesn’t diminish this fact: Hillary’s squaring off against a lot of Republican cash. Read the rest of this entry »
For Dailymail.com, Kieran Corcoran reports: Liberal billionaire George Soros donated $33million to social justice organizations which helped turn events in Ferguson from a local protest into a national flashpoint.
“Organizers from professional groups in Washington, D.C., and New York were bussed into the Missouri town to co-ordinate messaging and lobby to news media to cover events using the billionaire’s funding.”
The handouts, revealed in tax filings from Soros’s private foundation, were given to dozens of different groups which weighed in on the crisis.
Organizers from professional groups in Washington, D.C., and New York were bussed into the Missouri town to co-ordinate messaging and lobby to news media to cover events using the billionaire’s funding.
“The slew of organizations reportedly created their own online ‘echo chamber’, by using their extensive social media presences to ‘like’, repost and comment on articles putting across their point of view.”
Unrest: Some of the groups Soros funded came up with slogans and social media campaigns to keep the event in the national consciousness
The cash was reportedly funneled into keeping up numbers of protesters in the community over a period of months by bringing in outside activists.
“Soros also gave money to the Drug Policy Alliance, which worked on the perpetuation of the ‘black lives matter’ buzz phrase, which has been incorporated into speeches by political figures including Hillary Clinton.”
Meanwhile papers from think tanks were disseminated to bring in extra coverage of the civil unrest, also linked to the police killings of Eric Garner in Staten Island and Tamir Rice, 12, in Cleveland, Ohio.
“One recipient of his funding is the Organization for Black Struggle, which in turned established a group called the Hands Up Coalition, that has helped make ubiquitous the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ slogan.”
Outlets which covered the research, and the movements themselves, included one, Colorlines, which Soros himself has funded.
Bankrolled: Tax filings revealed that Soros pumped millions into groups that bussed protesters to Ferguson, Missouri, from around the country and co-ordinated campaigns to keep it in the media
The slew of organizations reportedly created their own online ‘echo chamber’, by using their extensive social media presences to ‘like’, repost and comment on articles putting across their point of view.
The director of Soros’s fund said that they have no direct control over the groups they give to, and said they are all trying to improve accountability. Read the rest of this entry »
Robert Wilde reports: In a variation of the nationwide “Knockout Game,” billionaire ultra liberal George Soros’s ex-girlfriend suckerpunched him in the headduring a deposition in their palimony law suit.
In a vivid display of profanity, Adriana Ferreyr, a South American soap actress, screamed at the Hungarian- born businessman, calling him an “a–hole!” and a “piece of s–t!” For good measure, she knocked the glasses off his California lawyer Martin Singer, berated his other lawyer William Zabel, and then scorched her own high powered attorney William Beslow with more obscene language, according to papers filed Friday by Singer.
Billionaires Alice Walton, George Soros and Marc Benioff are helping to finance a super-political action committee encouraging former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run for president, according to a report filed yesterday with the Federal Election Commission.
The super-PAC earlier reported raising about $4 million last year from 30,000 donors, most of them giving small amounts, such as $20.16. Walton, Soros and Benioff were among 33 people or companies that gave $25,000 in the second half of 2013, the FEC report shows. New Yorkers who chipped in to help their former senator include Roger Altman, the chairman and founder of New York-based Evercore Partners Inc...
Elizabeth Scalia writes: I was really disappointed to read that 85 year-old comedian, Bob Newhart — a man who managed to have not one, but two highly successful television sitcoms and end both of them on brilliant, darn near iconic notes — recently cancelled a speaking engagement rather than have to deal with being hassled.
Many of the Legatus folk are well-to-do, which in America circa 2013 means theymight be morally evil people. I say might because — partly thanks to the cognitive dissonance of the New York Times, I’ve always been fuzzy on that notion about good rich and bad rich. Apparently if you’re terribly rich and very progressive — ala George Soros, John Kerry et al, — you’re the good rich, but if you’re rich and more conservative in your thinking (Koch brothers, I guess?) you’re evil.
Personally, I don’t think being rich automatically makes one good or bad, and the rich and well-connected certainly have their place in the pageant of salvation: it took a wealthy, connected man named Joseph of Arimathea to bring Christ Jesus down from the cross and get him enshrouded and entombed before sundown, on Good Friday. His help and participation have an assist to Easter, and all of its promise.
Newhart wasn’t discouraged from speaking before Legatus because they are wealthy, though. He was persuaded not to go there, because we Americans now live in a perpetual high school environment, and at the moment, the “cool kids” are telling everyone else in the cafeteria who it is okay to befriend and who is to be shunned for being, like, a social-zero. So. Uncool. What a year or two I called tolerance disconnect is now beginning to border on purposeful blacklisting. One either says the right things, at all times, and dares not debate a point, or hold to a contrasting religious belief, or even cite the inborn right one has to the freedom of one’s own conscience — of one’s own way of thinking — or one is to be shunned and bullied until one either submits or goes away.
You won’t want to miss the self-defeating intra-conservative circular-firing-squad in the comments section, inspired by this article about Ann Coulter. Apparently Coulter still has a talent for inflaming readers and entertaining audiences.
Question: Is Ann not right wing enough to satisfy some of the sore losers out there? Answer not needed, it’s not a serious question.
Coulter’s apparent disinterest in indulging a self-serving question from a radio-call-in listener (a peculiar self-appointed “Republican precinct committeeman” fetishist) inspired him to take his crackpot complaints to the article’s comments section. Not satisfied with annoying the disinterested Coulter (who had the good sense to not take it seriously) the radio-call-in guy took his tiresome laundry list of “important unanswered questions”–to the comments section, to draw attention to himself for the next ten hours. And a lot of unrelated comments, too. Very funny stuff. Here’s the article from Breitbart. Then check out the long, long chain of comments at the source page.
Joel B. Pollak reports: Conservative columnist Ann Coulter entertained an audience of 400 at the University of Southern California on Sunday night at an event co-sponsored by the USC College Republicans and the Hancock Park Patriots, a local Tea Party group.
Fears of large and violent protests failed to materialize, as five peaceful demonstrators were the only presence outside the Ronald Tudor Campus Center.
Coulter spoke at length about crime, and the New York of the 1980s–to which, she joked, New Yorkers were about to return with leftist Bill de Blasio as mayor. (She is re-reading Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities to prepare, she joked.)
Though she has written about race and crime, she is an equal-opportunity critic–arguing, for instance, that accused murderer Amanda Knox was protected by the U.S. media because she is a “pretty white girl.”
There were plenty of macabre jokes to follow–including an extended riff on how several MSNBC hosts would each commit suicide (“Chris Matthews would bungle it…Al Sharpton would do it in such a way as to blame some poor white guy”). On a more serious note, she slammed MSNBC for attacking what they called “pro-rape Republicans” over the Jamie Lee Jones rape case, in which the victim’s claims were dismissed and she was ordered to pay the attorneys’ costs of her former employer, an American military contractor.
The mask has slipped from pro-reform vigilantes — now it’s death threats and intimidation.
By Michelle Malkin
You can try to put “conservative” lipstick on the lawless amnesty mob. But in the end, it’s still a lawless mob. The big government–big business alliance to protect illegal immigration got a lot of mileage using foolish Republicans Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan as front men. But the true colors of the open-borders grievance-mongers always show through.
After America said no to a pork-filled security-undermining amnesty bill in 2007, the No Illegal Alien Left Behind lobbyists changed their overtly thuggish tactics. They put down their upside-down American flags, stopped wearing their Commie Che Guevara T-shirts, and cloaked their radical “Aztlan” aspirations in the less divisive rhetoric of “reform” and “opportunity.”
It was all just an act, of course. Inevitably, the mask has slipped. Over the weekend, illegal-alien protesters descended on the private residence of Kansas secretary of state and immigration-enforcement lawyer Kris Kobach. As Twitchy.com reported on Saturday, 300 amnesty activists marched into Kobach’s neighborhood and barged up his driveway and right onto his doorstep. It’s how the Alinskyite “community organizers” roll.
Shouting into a bullhorn and waving their fists from his front porch, the property-rights invaders dubbed Kobach “King of Hate” for his work representing border-security activists and federal customs-enforcement agents who are fighting the systemic sabotage of immigration law. Thankfully, Kobach, his wife, and their four young daughters were not home at the time.
But the aggrieved amnesty demanders are not done yet. And Kobach is not the only one in their crosshairs.
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.