All around the mulberry bush ... and then some

If you’re wondering about the recent love and concern that Democrats have voiced for Syrian refugees, please understand that their love and concern are spawned by the recent assumption of power of one Donald J. Trump.  Or said much more succinctly – politics, with a side of opportunistic outrage and a huge dollop of hypocrisy.

The Syrian Civil War touched off in 2011. Here are the Syrian-refugee admissions to the U.S. until Obama decided to admit more than 13,000 in 2016:

Fiscal Year 2011: 29

Fiscal Year 2012: 31

Fiscal Year 2013: 36

Fiscal Year 2014: 105

Fiscal Year 2015: 1,682

To recap: While the Syrian Civil War was raging, ISIS was rising, and refugees were swamping Syria’s neighbors and surging into Europe, the Obama administration let in less than a trickle of refugees. Only in the closing days of his administration did President Obama reverse course — in numbers insufficient to make a dent in the overall crisis, by the way — and now the Democrats have the audacity to tweet out pictures of bleeding Syrian children?

Well of course they have the audacity to tweet out such pictures.  There’s no shaming the shameless.

Virginia Postrel caught something interesting in a WaPo article.  “Not a sign of a healthy economy:”

“Nestlé was lured to the area, executives say, by its proximity to lawmakers, regulators and lobbyists — and more than $16 million in state and county subsidies.

“Frankly, this brings us closer to the heartbeat of our industry,” said Paul Grimwood, chairman and chief executive of Nestlé USA, which is part of the global giant Nestlé SA, based in Vevey, Switzerland. “It allows us to collaborate not just with consumers but also with other important stakeholders in Washington and on Capitol Hill.””

No, it’s not a sign of a  healthy economy.  But it is a huge sign of how out of control crony “capitalism” has become, but also it is seen as the “norm”.

Richard Fernandez says that Trump is “Out Alinskying” the left.  Via Facebook:

Possible reasons for the Democratic panic.

1. Much of the rout is imagined. The liberals are scaring themselves to death thinking that concentration camps, Nazis, KKK are taking over the world, but it’s mostly projection. They are jumping at shadows. 

2. Their responses are limited by the speed of the narrative which can track at most 3 to 4 issues. Their engagement queue is saturated by 10 bandits, 20 bogies incoming. The Talking Points fire control system has shorted out.

3. Trump’s Twitter feed and Spicer and Breitbart are acting like Jericho’s Trumpet. It’s just a Twitter feed. It’s just a website. It’s not the drum of doom.

I, as well as others, have mentioned that the Trump administration doesn’t just put a couple of things out there that the left can focus on and try to kill, they flood the field in such a way that the left always looks both foolish and impotent because they can’t control the narrative.

In case you wondered – this is what fascism looks like:

Add a few books, a few browshirts and a few raised arm salutes and it looks just like an event held in Germany in the 1930’s.

Roger Simon has had enough of the self-righteous left.  This is pretty spot on:

“You can be a virtue-signaling moral narcissist and get all exercised about Donald Trump’s executive order suspending visas from seven primarily Muslim countries for the next ninety days, but I have a question for you: what do we do about Islam?

You will note I say Islam and not some other euphemistic expression like radical Islam or Islamism or Islamofascism. Islam.

I know that disturbs you because chances are you live in a world where cultural relativism prevails and all religions — fusty old things that they are — are equal.

Well, it is so if you think so, but I will note again that at least one interested party — the current president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — has declared bluntly that his religion is in dire need of a reformation. Chances are he knows more about Islam than you. He certainly does than me. Also, he lives in a hellacious region of the world dominated by that religion and its violent ideology.

How dangerous is that ideology? Ask yourself this: Why is it that since 9/11/2001 there he have been 30,209 terror attacks in the name of Allah? There have been 38 in the last six days alone, resulting in 425 killed and 419 injured. There were also nine suicide bombings during that time frame.

So I repeat, why is that? DNA? That would be racist. Poverty? But most of the terror masters are rich. How about an ideology that urges you to do these things, just as it always has since the seventh century? Could that be the reason — just possibly?”

One of the incredibly tiresome things about the left is the “virtue signalling” in which they take every opportunity to demonstrate.  They’re just better than you.  Why?  Because they’ve decided they are.  Not much else supports the contention, certainly not their actions.

The NYT characterizes (to no one’s surprise) that the SCOTUS nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is vying for a “stolen seat”.  Why “stolen”.  Because the GOP abided by … the “Biden Rule”. 

In 1992, then-Senator Joe Biden made an impassioned case for such a delay during the presidency of President George H. W. Bush.

“The tradition against acting on Supreme Court nominations in a presidential year is particularly strong when the vacancy occurs in the summer or fall of the election season,” Biden said on the Senate floor in 1992. “Thus, while a few justices have been confirmed in the summer or fall of the presidential election season, such confirmations are rare.”

“As we enter the Summer of the presidential election year, it is time to consider whether this unbroken string of historical tradition should be broken,” Biden went on to say. “It is my view that if a Supreme Court Justice resigns tomorrow or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not–and not–name a nominee until after the November election is complete.”

But, but, but … Trump!  Of course Democrats have absolutely no use for “tradition” except when it serves their political needs – and, as of the moment, it doesn’t.  I know, I know, I can see your shocked face from here.

~McQ