Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to a Washington Post report suggesting the 2018 Senate map gives the Republicans a chance to hold a 60-seat majority. They also shudder as German authorities confirm they’re looking for a Tunisian asylum seeker as the one responsible for the Berlin terrorist attack. And they scratch their heads over the reasons some Democrats are giving for opposing Keith Ellison as the next DNC chairman, instead of the really glaring reasons he would be a terrible choice.
News & Politics
‘Stealth Invasion’
The Berlin terrorist attack may well be the result of poor immigration and refugee policies that threaten the population now and even more so in years to come, and the author of a new book on the subject says it’s already happening in many parts of the United States.
Leo Hohmann is a longtime investigative reporter. He is news editor at WND.com and author of “Stealth Invasion: The Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad.”
On Tuesday, authorities in Berlin released a man originally suspected of carrying out the attack due to a lack of evidence. Hohmann says it could be very difficult for the Germans to track down the perpetrator due to their own loose immigration policies.
“The German government has imported so many of these refugees and asylum seekers over the past two years, up to 1.3 million have come in, that they don’t know exactly who they have that they’re dealing with here,” said Hohmann.
And he says the longer the manhunt goes on, the harder it will be to find the terrorist.
“The real killer, they said, remains on the loose. The problem is with that many refugees in Germany, they have set up many enclaves. There are many, many safe houses that the killers could have escaped to and in which they’re being harbored,” said Hohmann.
He has no doubt this attack is an an example of radical Islamic terrorism.
“There’s no question about that. The only question in my mind is was it done by a refugee or could it have been a son of a Muslim migrant,” said Hohmann.
He reaches that conclusion by using the past as prologue in evaluating terrorism in the U.S. and abroad.
“They all have Islam in common and the other thing they have in common is that they’re all perpetrated by either Islamic immigrants or sons of Islamic immigrants. So you have a whole class of people who have isolated themselves in these western countries, come in through liberal immigration policies, live in enclaves, don’t assimilate and at some point or another get ‘radicalized,'” said Hohmann.
He rattled off a list of 10 recent terrorist attacks that fit the bill, from the Boston Marathon bombing to the Chattanooga military recruitment murders to last December’s attack in San Bernardino.
He says the liberal immigration policies in Germany have already reshaped that country.
“They’ve basically established a nation within a nation,” said Hohmann.
Hohmann says our media constantly treat terrorism as isolated attacks that share no common threads, thereby minimizing the threat. He says that has lulled Americans into not seeing the scope of the threat.
“The American people live in ignorant bliss and think that we’re really at a state of peace in the world when, as my book points out, we’re in the middle of World War III,” said Hohmann.
President-Elect Donald Trump drew political fire from many corners by calling for a temporary ban on all Muslim immigration. Hohmann believes that is the right policy. He says Trump’s updated call for “extreme vetting” won’t stop the threat.
“I’m not sure it would have caught a single one of the terrorists in this list of ten that I have on my page sitting in front of me over the past two years,” said Hohmann.
He says current vetting is worthless since U.S. officials only ask applicants if they are members of ISIS. But he says even much tougher scrutiny wouldn’t solve the problem.
“Say they answered all the questions correctly and we let them in. They does not preclude them from becoming radicalized after they get here. That’s what happens most often. Not to mention the second generation of migrants is more dangerous than the first generation,” said Hohmann.
But Hohmann says Muslim groups are playing a much longer game, namely changing societies as immigration continues.
“The violent jihad that we’ve been speaking about is only part of the problem and some could argue that it’s only the smallest part. There’s another problem and it’s a more long-term problem. That is civilization jihad,” said Hohmann.
“It’s a long-term plan by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate American society from within, using liberal immigration policies and lack of assimilation, to build what is called a nation within a nation,” said Hohmann.
He says tightening immigration laws might solve part of the problem but there is also a clear path forward for addressing those already here.
“You have to start requiring assimilation. You have to stop giving special favors to Islam. As we’ll read in my book, we’ve not only invited folks here from these areas of the world that hate American values, but we’ve been kowtowed to their values and not expected any sort of assimilation,” said Hohmann.
Three Martini Lunch 12/20/16
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America shudder at the public assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey and the truck attack at a Christmas market in Berlin. They also unload on the 10 faithless electors in Monday’s Electoral College vote. And they get a kick out of Pres. Obama urging Donald Trump to take it easy in issuing executive orders.
‘Turkey Is Basically on the Cliff’
Terrorism reared its deadly head again in Turkey on Monday and an attack in Germany is also strongly suspected of links to radical Islamic terrorism, events that Act for America President Brigitte Gabriel says appear to be the latest indications of a bloody ideology fighting for power.
On Monday, Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov was gunned down while speaking at an art gallery in the Turkish capital of Ankara. According to reports, the killer then shouted a familiar Islamic refrain.
“God is great! Those who pledged allegiance to Muhammad for jihad. God is great!” he said, while also condemning the crushing of the Syrian rebels in Aleppo.
“Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria! Step back! Step back! Only death can take me from here,” he reportedly said.
Turkey has been inundated with terrorist attacks this year in addition to the failed attempt to topple increasingly radical President Tayyip Erdogan.
“Turkey is basically on the cliff of a complete collapse, between the forces of moderation within Turkey who feel they are losing the fight and the forces of the radicals who feel empowered and that they are winning,” said Gabriel.
She says the best chance for Turkey to reverse course has come and gone.
“I think it’s already too late for the moderates to turn the ship around. Unfortunately, the coup was the last straw, the last attempt at being able to take over the government . Moderates realize that Erdogan has literally driven the country, over the decades since he has been leading the country, into the abyss of radicalism,” said Gabriel.
“That basically killed any chance or any hope for the moderates to really take back their government,” said Gabriel.
She says it is a tragic departure from Kemal Ataturk, who less than a century ago turned Turkey into a secular Muslim nation.
“It is sad to see how far Turkey has come from being a beacon of moderation in the Islamic world in the last century under President Ataturk. He basically ended the Islamic caliphate back in 1924, less than a hundred years ago,” said Gabriel, noting Ataturk banned women from wearing hijabs or men from sporting long beards.
“Turkey went from being the example of what secularism under Islam looks like to being more radicalized now with the world heading back into the Dark Ages,” she added.
Hours after Karlov was assassinated, reports emerged of a shooting at an Islamic Center in Switzerland and a deadly truck attack at a Christmas market in Berlin, leaving at least nine dead and 50 injured.
Gabriel says while the tactics vary, the motivations are often the same.
“What is driving everything is the ideology that is bringing all the radicals together: the warning not only of the caliphate which was established, but the growth and power of the caliphate . And the radical Islamists now feel that the caliphate is under attack,” said Gabriel.
“They are using the attacks against ISIS as a rallying cry to basically recruit and mobilize anybody who believes the way they do,” said Gabriel.
She says inspiring jihadists is far easier now than it was on 9/11 thanks to the internet and the power of videos and social media.
“Any jihadi, regardless of what tongue he or she speaks, they can listen to these jihadi messages and they can feel inspired to carry on their own jihadi attacks and their own martyrdom operation,” said Gabriel, who says the inspiration is working because we can see many of the deadly suggestions being carried out.
“They are instructing people to go out and plow into people using a truck or a fast-driving machine, go out and slash people with a knife and cutting them, go out and carry out your own personal jihad. You can make bombs under your mom’s kitchen or in your own kitchen,” she said, noting many of the ingredients for explosives can be found in a grocery store or pharmacy.
Gabriel urges intelligence officials to be more aggressive in pursuing terrorism leads in order to avoid cases where advanced warning went unheeded, such as the 2009 Christmas Day underwear bomber or the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers.
She also says individual citizens can make a difference.
“On our website, ActforAmerica.org, we have a program called ‘Open Eyes Save Lives.’ We are carrying this campaign on social media, on Twitter. If you go to our website, we give tips as to what people can look out for, what you can do in the case of a terrorist attack, how to protect yourself, how to protect your community,” said Gabriel.
Three Martini Lunch 12/19/16
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America cheer Donald Trump’s selection of Rep. Mick Mulvaney to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. They also slam Pres. Obama for dismissing the Electoral College as a vestige of an earlier vision of America. And we react to Michelle Obama comparing the American people to toddlers.
The Problem with Puzder
Many of Donald Trump’s cabinet selections are getting strong reviews from grassroots activists and traditional Republicans, but a leading immigration expert says Trump’s choice to head the Department of Labor could be a threat to American jobs.
Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian sees fast food titan Andrew Puzder as a problem across the board on immigration, but he says his biggest concern with a Puzder-led Labor Department is the influx of legal immigrants who could put American citizens out of work.
“The primary problem is you have to get the okay from the Labor Department before you can bring in one of these people on worker visas. There’s something like three quarters of a million people we bring in. These are people who are often directly replacing American workers,” said Krikorian.
“We saw this at Disney about a year-and-a-half ago. We just saw it with Carnival Cruise Lines, I think just this week. They fired their American workers, usually their IT workforce. They bring in foreign workers on visas that have been okayed by the Labor Department. And then (the American workers) are forced to train their replacements,” said Krikorian.
While that does happen with some frequency, Krikorian says the big picture is murkier and there are no hard numbers on how many Americans lose their jobs to legal immigrants.
“It’s never a one-to-one thing. You can’t say that one immigrant worker comes in and that means one fewer job for an American. The economy doesn’t really work that way,” said Krikorian. “There’s no way to say this guy lost his job because of that guy. It doesn’t work that way.”
However, Krikorian says it is clear which Americans are most at risk of losing their jobs through the importing of foreign workers.
“At the bottom of the labor market, and that means less-skilled workers and that means teenagers looking for work and others – people who get out of prison and want to clean up their act,” said Krikorian. “Anybody who’s getting on to the first rung of the job ladder. Those people are hurt by ongoing immigration,” he said.
So where does Puzder fit into all this? Krikorian says Puzder has long been an outspoken proponent of bring in foreign workers.
“Andy Puzder has for years shown himself to be a big fan of importing more and more and more and more foreign guest workers to compete with Americans,” said Krikorian.
He also sees Puzder as being on the wrong side of the most recent congressional fight over immigration reform.
“[Puzder supported] that Gang of Eight bill from a few years ago that would have amnestied illegal aliens – the one Rubio and Schumer and Obama were pushing. It would have amnestied illegal aliens, would have hugely increased legal immigration, almost doubled it, and supposedly would have enforced the law better at some point down the road,” said Krikorian.
He says Puzder also weighed in on immigration policy during the 2016 campaign.
“Just last year he made a press statement with several other people, calling on the Republican primary candidates to support so-called comprehensive immigration reform, in other words Obama’s immigration agenda,” said Krikorian.
In response to criticism of Puzder’s previous immigration pronouncements, the Trump transition is trying to assure skeptics they have nothing to worry about.
“A statement was issued under his name, which I think was pretty clearly written by the campaign, that said he would be tough in protecting American workers and that sort of thing. Maybe. I’m skeptical because his whole life has actually been the opposite so why would we believe in this sudden change,” said Krikorian.
Krikorian says Trump’s vision on legal immigration has always been a bit fuzzy but that the president-elect has made several strong promises.
“He’s always been kind of shifty on this and vague, but he has been very clear that these visa programs must never be used to replace American workers. And the law allows that now,” said Krikorian.
Other members of Trump’s cabinet who will deal directly with immigration issues are getting rave reviews, especially Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the nominee for attorney general.
“Jeff Sessions is a top pick. He has the potential to be the best attorney general in American history. I have great respect for Jeff Sessions. I think he’s going to be great across the board at the Justice Department, both immigration stuff and everything else,” said Krikorian.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly is Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Krikorian says Kelly is a well-known “border hawk” but isn’t sure how he will approach concerns over legal immigrants overstaying their visas or making sure businesses do not hire people in the U.S. illegally.
“I don’t have any reason to think he’ll be bad on that but he doesn’t have any experience on it so we’re going to have to wait and see how he does,” said Krikorian.
Krikorian admits Puzder will likely be confirmed by the Senate. It’s only then that America will find out if his new assurances or his old positions carry the day.
“Supposedly he’s seen the light,” said Krikorian. “We’ll have to see whether that’s true or not.”
Three Martini Lunch 12/16/16
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the RNC for beefing up cyber security so the Russians could not hack it successfully. They also groan as Facebook picks several liberal outlets to decide if users are posting “fake news.” And we discuss Democratic donors demanding answers for Hillary Clinton’s defeat and some of them thinking about not donating in the future.
Walsh: Liberalism Has Descended Into Insanity
A popular conservative blogger and columnist is shaking his head after creating a Facebook video designed to satirize political correctness in America, only to discover millions of people thought he was serious.
Matt Walsh rose to prominence for his unflinching and vigorous blog entries in defense of conservative principle, particularly on the issues of life and family. He recently chose to mock politically correct sensibilities by pretending to suffer micro-aggressions by witnessing a mall Santa.
“A mall Santa in a public place in the year 2016. Apparently, this mall has never heard of the Declaration of Independence and the first amendment of it, which says that you can’t have religious holiday displays in places where there’s other people that are not of that religion. It says it right in there,” says Walsh in four-minute video that has nearly four million views.
Walsh says he made the video to document America’s deteriorating culture.
“Liberalism in this country has descended to a point of, I think, utter insanity. My goal was to try to make a parody of that or a satire of the overly offendedness and political correctness in our culture,” said Walsh.
He was stunned by the response.
“Of the four million hits, I’d say about 3.5 million of them are people who took it completely and totally seriously. They thought I was being 100 percent sincere,” said Walsh. “That’s because our culture is so absurd at this point that it’s hard to tell if anyone’s making fun of it,” said Walsh.
Walsh questions whether the leaders of politically correct movements actually believe what they’re pushing given how fast things are changing.
“You look at how rapidly these things have caught on. For instance, all this gender stuff. There are 56 different genders now and you can’t have men and women bathrooms. Five years ago, nobody was talking about that. Nobody cared. Nobody talked about it. Nobody believed that five years ago and here we are and it’s an accepted, mainstream thing,” said Walsh.
“It’s hard for me to believe that the people pushing it, whether they’re in academia or the media, it’s hard for me to believe they buy it. They didn’t buy it five years ago. They’re using it as a weapon. It’s a wedge that they can drive in there, identity politics, to control people,” said Walsh.
But whether the academics and media actually believe it, Walsh says an entire generation of young people believe it wholeheartedly.
“People in the older generation, a lot of them still reject it because they didn’t grow up with it. But in my generation, a lot of us have been indoctrinated into this way of thinking from a very young age. You have a generation now, from the age of four on or even younger, this is what they’re taught to believe,” said Walsh.
And he doesn’t see things improving anytime soon.
“I unfortunately think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. As the older generation’s going to die off and the millennial generation becomes the generation in charge, I don’t think we’re going to drop these things because this is how we were raised,” said Walsh.
Walsh was very critical of Donald Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, but he says there’s no doubt part of Trump’s win was due to a backlash against the aggressive liberal cultural warriors.
“I never thought that defeating political correctness is the number one job of the president. We shouldn’t necessarily elect a president based on that. But this is what happened. In a large part, I think liberals brought it upon themselves. They pushed a little bit too far, too hard, too fast. People lashed out and you ended up with Donald Trump,” said Walsh.
Walsh says there’s no magic bullet to reversing the liberal drift in the culture. He says it begins with each parent teaching their kids what’s right and wrong.
“The best thing we can do is to raise our families, to raise our kids to know better than this. Then maybe in the future, decades from now, we can have a sane country again. Who knows?” said Walsh.
Three Martini Lunch 12/15/16
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America enjoy watching more Clinton campaign fingerpointing – this time at Huma Abedin. They rip the intelligence community for being willing to offer anonymous stories to the press on Russian election hacking but being unwilling to brief members of Congress. And they get a kick out of celebrities launching a new video begging GOP electors to reject Donald Trump.
‘We Cannot Trust the Russians’
Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., is calling for immediate aid to the displaced Syrian people at risk of being butchered by the Syrian government forces and he warns the incoming Trump administration that Russia has designs on calling the shots throughout much of the Middle East.
Reacting to Tuesday’s news that Syrian rebels have effectively lost their stronghold on Aleppo, Pascrell says that leaves a massive humanitarian crisis.
“There’s a huge humanitarian problem there for the people who remain in Aleppo and the surrounding areas. Aid has not been able to get to them. Food has not been able to get to them because of the cabal between the Russians and the Syrian government,” said Pascrell.
“Right now, the immediate problem is to bring aid to those people who need it. There’s no water. There’s no food. And obviously, if you watch the pictures, there’s very little shelter,” said Pascrell.
He says the blame for the humanitarian nightmare belongs at the feet of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Assad has butchered his own people. He chooses to continue to do this. He wants to bring the people and anybody that joins them, such as the rebels, to their knees. While that’s happening, innocent people are dying,” said Pascrell.
Pascrell admits the crisis in Syria has no simple solutions, since trying to find and train moderate rebels has proved elusive and the U.S. is simultaneously fighting radical forces like ISIS and the Al Nusra Front.
“That’s a very difficult enterprise. Four years ago, we did know there were a certain amount of rebels who had the exact same agenda as we had, and that is is to overthrow the Assad government. We put that aside and allowed Assad to get stronger,” said Pascrell.
Russia is one of the key reasons for Assad;s ability to beat back the rebels, particularly in providing the air power that eroded the rebel grip in Aleppo. Pascrell says it’s long past time to impose economic sanctions on Moscow.
“We don’t want to risk outright war with the Russians. That’s not what we seek and I’m sure that’s not what they seek with us. But I think if we put economic sanctions on the Russians, it’s worked before. It could work again,” said Pascrell.
He says Americans should have no illusions about Russia.
“We cannot trust the Russians. We can’t trust the Russians now and we’re not going to be able to trust them after January 20. Anybody that’s foolish enough to think that we can do this is simply going to bring more misery upon the Syrian people,” said Pascrell.
But the wariness toward Russia extends far beyond Syria. To begin, Pascrell says you just have to look at how Vladimir Putin handles criticism from his own people.
“We’re dealing with a Russian government here that has suffocated any dissent in its own country. How many journalists have been thrown in prison? How many journalists have been thrown the heck out that are now in the United States?” said Pascrell.
He says the Russian involvement in Syria combined with the crackdown on rights in Turkey are combining towards the creation of a troubling and growing alliance throughout the region.
“Pretty soon you’re going to have an alliance between the Russians, the Turks, the Iranians and the Syrians. I see that developing there right now. The Turks have their own problems internally and [Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan] is going to take it out on American foreign policy. There’s no two ways about it,” said Pascrell.
“[The Russians] don’t want these countries to turn to the West. They want these countries to turn to Russia. So we’re between that rock and the rock of not getting involved where American lives are going to be lost. Not an easy question to resolve whether it’s Obama or Trump,” said Pascrell.
In fact, the congressman would not be surprised if Russia makes our fight to eradicate ISIS more difficult than it needs to be.
“While we’re fighting ISIS and giving all we can in order to fight the extreme jihadists, we need to recognize at the same time that Russia will simply go with the flow in whatever suits their purpose,” said Pascrell.
While he encourages President-Elect Trump to study up on all the ways Russian aggression is evident today, Pascrell says he has no idea what to expect from the incoming administration.
“I don’t know what to expect. Does anybody know what to expect? Whether it was the campaign or whether it was after the campaign, you never know what he’s going to say or what direction he’s going to go in. I don’t think it’s healthy for the region. I’ll tell you that,” said Pascrell.