BRANDON MORSE: “Wonder Woman” Noticeably Absent From Oscar Nominations, And It’s Little Mystery As To Why. “A very successful film directed by a woman will get no recognition at the Oscars because it starred the wrong woman, sporting the wrong values, having the wrong looks, and promoting the wrong behaviors. For Hollywood, Wonder Woman was just too… well, American.”
The “revolt against the masses” indeed.
NO. WAY. Here’s A Crazy Theory: Maybe Americans Just Want A Rational Immigration Policy.
David Harsanyi:
Logically speaking, Democrats can’t simultaneously contend that the borders are already secure and argue we have an obligation to legalize 800,000 illegal immigrant children and another 11 (or whatever it is) million illegal immigrants. How did they get here? How will the dynamic change in the future? All the arguments now in play for DACA will be in play a decade from now. Do we do this every decade?
Now Mitch McConnell has promised to allow an up-or-down vote on DACA in early February that ensures the immigration debate will consume Washington for the next few weeks. It seems there’s already consensus forming among analysts that this is a loser for Republicans. But maybe the lesson of the shutdown is that DACA, and the debate surrounding illegal immigrants in general, isn’t as simple or as powerful as Democrats imagine. Maybe the shutdown’s lesson is that Trump can hold out for a wall and other concessions on chain migration and enforcement in exchange for an easier path towards legalization for those already here. Maybe the lesson is that a deal is available.
Because if the wall is just a silly, ineffective, useless prop then certainly it would make sense for Democrats to accede to its creation to help legalize the Dreamers and create a more rational and ethical immigration policy. If they don’t, cynical people might start to get the impression that Democrats are far more interested in creating millions of new Democrats than they are in creating a lawful and rational process that respects the sovereignty of their nation.
I guess I’m a cynical person then.
IN THE MAIL, From James O’Keefe, American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News.
ROGER SIMON: What Do We Do about the FBI?
ANALYSIS: TRUE. America Needs More Ladies.
It’s a surefire fix for creating more gentlemen.
FIVE THINGS THE ABORTION INDUSTRY DOESN’T WANT WOMEN TO KNOW: Kim Ketola explains in LifeZette why, to cite just one of her five examples, 100 percent of abortions performed at home (i.e. abortion pills) are fatal to at least one human being. But that’s just the beginning because there is also this, which Ketola says pro-abortion media like Women’s Health don’t dare mention:
“At no point does Women’s Health tell its readers their regular doctor won’t likely cooperate with their plan, and that the provider they do see will not likely treat them if there are complications. And isn’t it just a little misleading to reassure women about having an abortion in the comforts of their home — while not warning them they will have to deal with the ‘remains?'”
There’s just no other way to deal with what’s left of the dead baby: “That will involve either retrieving the fetus from the toilet or soiled linen, and/or making the devastating decision to flush.”
And no, I am not mansplaining. Just reporting.
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A FIRST-PASS ANSWER IS “LOTS”: How Much Worse Can it Get for Venezuela’s State Oil Firm PDVSA?
It’s getting ugly:
Finding a soft landing out of the crisis for PDVSA’s U.S. subsidiary Citgo Petroleum could become increasingly complex for the United States as it seeks to manage Venezuela’s deteriorating situation. Washington has placed sanctions on critical members of the Venezuelan government but has been reluctant to take action that could spill over to Citgo’s ability to operate. Citgo operates three of America’s largest oil refineries for a total capacity of 750,000 b/d, including an important regional facility near Chicago. Citgo supplied fifteen billion gallons of gasoline in the United States in 2015. So far, Citgo has been shielded from creditors by its corporate structure. But recently, impatient creditors of state oil company PDVSA are starting to use more aggressive tactics, with one such group trying to seize an oil cargo ship in an attempt to get paid. To avoid such circumstances, PDVSA, which for all intents and purposes can no longer attain bank letters of credit, is “time swapping” ownership of some of the undesignated crude oil cargoes it can muster for export for exchange of later delivery of badly needed fuel and feedstock. The arrangements are designed to discourage creditors from trying to grab oil in international locations because, in effect, the oil is already owned by other parties before it sets sail from Venezuela.
Late-stage socialism always involves fights over who gets to plunder the last corpses.
THERESA MAY TO “TACKLE” FAKE NEWS: How does that work, exactly?
Officially named the National Security Communications Unit, it will be tasked with deterring adversaries and combating misinformation spread by state actors, Press Gazette understands.
Having a bureaucrat decide what is and isn’t legitimate news will never end well. Do they block the the publication from access? Arrest the poster? Flag such postings as fake? What ideological tests will be imported into the decision making process?
It reminds me of Obama’s deservedly mocked “Attack Watch.”
KOREA DECEMBER 1950: A USMC howitzer defends the Hagaru-ri airstrip against Chinese Communist troops. The second photo in StrategyPage’s Korean War photo series.
RELATED: In case you missed it, the first photo in the series (tank convoy to Chosin).
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UConn offers counseling, restricts access to Shapiro event. If you treat conservatives as an invasive species, you’re not really promoting the “diversity and inclusion” you’re always yammering about:
YAF Spokesperson Spencer Brown asserted that the review process was adopted by the public university after a controversial scuffle between Gateway Pundit journalist Lucian Wintrich and a protester at his on-campus lecture in November.
“This level of review was imposed upon the conservative students at UConn who are hosting Shapiro due to the school’s inability to maintain the rule of law at a previous lecture hosted by the campus conservative club,” Brown remarked.
“Student safety may seem a noble cause for UConn to cherish, but why isn’t the same level of restraint imposed on speaking events by prominent leftists?” he asked, noting that “just last week, Anita Hill spoke on campus at UConn in an event advertised as ‘free and open to the public,’ with ‘no tickets required for entry.’”
Think of universities as politicized leftist redoubts and you won’t go far wrong.
WHAT A SHAME: No one is going to win the Google Lunar X Prize competition.
“After close consultation with our five finalist Google Lunar X Prize teams over the past several months, we have concluded that no team will make a launch attempt to reach the Moon by the March 31st, 2018 deadline,” the X Prize Foundation released in a statement. “This literal ‘moonshot’ is hard, and while we did expect a winner by now, due to the difficulties of fundraising, technical and regulatory challenges, the grand prize of the $30 [million] Google Lunar X Prize will go unclaimed.”
I’d like to see more of the regulatory hurdles either lowered or removed.
THEY’RE NOT GOING TO LIKE THE NEW RULES: Stanford student groups call for resignation of professor with Antifa ties. “Students with several right-of-center organizations at Stanford University are calling for the resignation of a professor who has ties to the radical extremist group Antifa. Students with the Stanford Review and Stanford College Republicans are pushing for the Stanford University professor to either resign or cut ties with the Campus Antifascist Network he co-founded.”
MICHAEL GOODWIN: Evidence suggests a massive scandal is brewing at the FBI. “During the financial crisis, the federal government bailed out banks it declared “too big to fail.” Fearing their bankruptcy might trigger economic Armageddon, the feds propped them up with taxpayer cash. Something similar is happening now at the FBI, with the Washington wagons circling the agency to protect it from charges of corruption. . . . Yet each day brings credible reports suggesting there is a massive scandal involving the top ranks of America’s premier law enforcement agency. The reports, which feature talk among agents of a ‘secret society’ and suddenly missing text messages, point to the existence both of a cabal dedicated to defeating Donald Trump in 2016 and of a plan to let Hillary Clinton skate free in the classified email probe.”
The “lost” texts are a huge blow to the FBI’s credibility, which suggests that whatever is being covered up must be much, much worse.
UPDATE: Nothing sketchy here: Comey ‘Friend’ Who Leaked FBI Memos Now Claims To Be His Attorney.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Secret Society Update, Schumer Rescinds Wall ‘Offer’ and Much, Much More.. “Democrats do not want the public to see the House Intelligence memo outlining FISA abuse by federal law enforcement. Since they have no control over that, the Democrats are trying to smear, discredit and undermine it before it sees the light of day. DiFi and leaker Rep. Adam Schiff are doing their part in the smear.”
THE FIX WAS IN: Andrew McCarthy: Clinton–Obama Emails: The Key to Understanding Why Hillary Wasn’t Indicted. “If Clinton had been charged, Obama’s culpable involvement would have been patent. In any prosecution of Clinton, the Clinton–Obama emails would have been in the spotlight. For the prosecution, they would be more proof of willful (or, if you prefer, grossly negligent) mishandling of intelligence. More significantly, for Clinton’s defense, they would show that Obama was complicit in Clinton’s conduct yet faced no criminal charges. That is why such an indictment of Hillary Clinton was never going to happen. The latest jaw-dropping disclosures of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, illustrate this point.”
TAMARA KEEL: Home On The Range.
WHITE HOUSE: ‘Flake-Graham-Durbin’ Agreement on Immigration ‘Dead on Arrival.’
“In short, it’s totally unacceptable to the president and should be declared dead on arrival,” she said.
She also said Trump has consistently called for these principles in immigration reform.
“The president has been extraordinarily consistent on immigration and what his priorities are,” [White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders] said. “His views are shared by the vast majority of the American people and have bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.”
Polling shows Americans want a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) deal that does not increase legal immigration or continue the practices of chain migration and the visa lottery system.
A January 2018 Harvard-Harris poll found 81 percent of respondents want 1 million or fewer total immigrants allowed into the U.S. per year, which is fewer than 2015’s total of 1.38 million.
Trump rescinded President Barack Obama’s DACA executive order in September and gave Congress six months to find a legal solution.
McConnell should bring it to the floor anyway, and see if Schumer is willing to go to the shutdown mattresses again over losing a legitimate Senate vote, or even over a perfectly kosher presidential veto.
BYRON YORK: NeverTrumpers face vexing question: What to make of Trump successes?
The start of President Trump’s second year in office has given Republicans and conservatives an opportunity to review a solid list of achievements: corporate and individual tax cuts; economic growth; wage growth; a conservative Supreme Court justice; a record number of circuit court confirmations; deregulation; the defeat of Islamic State, and more. Each is a development worth celebrating, either by the standards of conservatism, or the general welfare, or both.
But for NeverTrump conservatives, the list presents a challenge. Many support the actions, like cutting taxes and reducing regulation, on Trump’s list. Yet some have also staked their credibility and prestige on declaring Trump’s election an unmitigated, historic disaster that will lead to an autocratic, dystopian future. Many want to force Trump out of office, either by impeachment, the 25th Amendment, or, at least, defeat in 2020.
So how to deal with the current good news?
The most extreme NeverTrumpers, like the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, simply rail against everything the president does. But more sophisticated NeverTrumpers are looking for nuanced ways to recognize the president’s accomplishments while maintaining that he remains a menace — and that they have been right about him all along.
Jennifer Rubin, like Ana Navarro, is just a Republican-for-media-purposes.
HMM: Loretta Lynch – Bill Clinton tarmac meeting now makes sense, it was the end not the beginning.
William Jacobson:
We now know a lot more about the sequence of events, which now strongly suggests that the tarmac meeting was not the start of events that led to the exoneration. Rather, it now appears that the tarmac meeting was the end of that process, the signal to the Clintons that all was taken care of.
The key facts we know now but did not know then are:
The tarmac meeting was planned, not spontaneous, as we covered on August 5, 2017, ACLJ: DOJ Document Dump Shows Lynch-Clinton Tarmac Summit Planned, Media Coverup.
The conduct of Lynch in trying to conceal details was not consistent with it being an innocent meeting, as we covered on August 7, 2017, Loretta Lynch used alias “Elizabeth Carlisle” to email about Bill Clinton tarmac meeting and August 10, 2017, Why did Loretta Lynch need DOJ Talking Points about a meeting she alone attended?
The FBI has tried its best not to produce documents regarding the tarmac meeting, and when it did, those documents focused heavily on how the meeting was discovered, as Judicial Watch reported on November 30, 2017.
The FBI decided, sometime by early May 2016, not to charge Hillary. The drafts of the exoneration statement now are public, and show a concerted effort to reword the language to support exoneration. These drafts took place prior to the tarmac meeting and prior to the interview of Hillary on July 4th weekend.
Senior FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was part of the team investigating Hillary, was removed from the Mueller investigation of supposed Russia collusion in the summer of 2016 for sending anti-Trump text messages (though the removal was not disclosed for several months). Strzok was involved in editing and softening the Comey draft exoneration statement.
Strzok was having an affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Based on text messages recently released, it appears they believed Hillary would not be charged and suggested Lynch Knew the Outcome of FBI Hillary Probe in Advance.
So what significance does the tarmac meeting take in this new context?
Read the whole thing.
I’d ask why it’s up to pajama-clad bloggers to do the dot-connecting the mainstream media should be doing, except we already know the answer.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I ask the Special Counsel’s office if Lisa Page was involved in approving Peter Strzok’s warrant requests, they decline to answer.
MOMENTUM: Emboldened conservatives press Ryan to bring hard-right immigration bill to floor.
Related: Shock poll: Americans want massive cuts to legal immigration: Cutting chain migration even more popular than legalizing Dreamers. “A Harvard-Harris poll taken in the run-up to the shutdown found Americans strongly support granting citizenship rights to illegal immigrant Dreamers. But they also back Mr. Trump’s three demands for a border wall, limits to the chain of family migration and an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery. Most striking of all is the public’s demand for lower overall legal immigration — a position that has little traction on Capitol Hill but one that is overwhelmingly popular across the country.”
Also: Immigration deal in jeopardy after Democrats retract border wall funding.
Plus: Michael Barone: After shutdown, Republicans have leverage on immigration.
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