Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories

There is no urgency about the ‘emergency’ stimulus

I still believe we are in an emergency and that the pandemic requires attention now. But it seems President Biden and congressional Democrats are having a difficult time understanding what ‘emergency’ means. If they did, they surely would not have pushed legislation that spends almost half of the funds after this fiscal year and 10 percent of it three years from now. The legislation proposed by President Biden is a sleight of hand, pretending to fund the critical components of our recovery — vaccine production and distribution — while doling out taxpayer dollars to groups, industries and special interests that are still sitting on funding from last year’s coronavirus relief bills.

stimulus urgency gibbs
amnesty

Amnesty travesty

An open letter signed by major Irish NGOs — including Amnesty International (AI) and the National Women’s Council (NWC) has called for the removal of media and political representation for women who won’t capitulate to the demands of extreme trans activists. ‘We call on media, and politicians to no longer provide legitimate representation for those that share bigoted beliefs, that are aligned with far right ideologies and seek nothing but harm and division,’ reads the letter. ‘These fringe internet accounts stand against affirmative medical care of transgender people, and they stand against the right to self-identification of transgender people in this country... they stand against trans, women’s and gay rights by aligning themselves with far-right tropes and stances.

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China has humiliated the Vatican 

Last week, it emerged that the Chinese government has issued new rules for religious ministers in the country. Amid the regulations was a new official process for the appointment of Catholic bishops in the country, one which makes no reference to the Vatican or the deal the Catholic Church and China signed in 2018. The rules are the latest in a series of pointed humiliations inflicted on the Vatican since it handed over control of the country’s Catholics to the Communist party two years ago.

Joe Biden is a China patsy

Joe Biden is a Chinese asset. His family’s business dealings with Beijing have compromised his leadership of America and the free world. Look at his recent statement in which he suggested that ‘cultural differences’ might explain why the Chinese thought it was OK to brutally oppress Uighurs. An unnamed source within the intelligence community has revealed that Biden could not unequivocally condemn China’s human rights abuses because Xi Jinping has ‘has something’ on him. The 46th President therefore cannot be trusted to stand up to Xi on the world stage. ‘The Russians deploy kompromat as leverage over foreign assets,’ says my source. ‘Chinese agencies use something called “black materials” to extort western authority figures into doing what they want.

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Medieval fantasists have infiltrated America’s Catholic right

When John F. Kennedy was president, McDonald’s invented the Filet-O-Fish to cater for Catholics who wouldn’t touch hamburgers on Fridays and were harming their profits. Nearly 60 years later, the flaccid fish sandwich is still on the menu, but it’s unlikely that McDonald’s or anyone else will introduce products catering specially for Catholics during the administration of America’s second Catholic president. The tumbleweed in the ruined dioceses of the rust belt is rolling across the country. Countless parishes will die of the complications of COVID-19; many will be euthanized by their own bishops, who’ve found just the excuse they needed to close them.

Inside the American Moment launch party

What will the conservative movement look like post-Trump? Establishment Republicans seem eager to shake former President Donald Trump's influence on the party and the new right would like him to be a kingmaker for years to come. But while pundits opine and politicians dream, three young conservatives are building. American Moment, a new nonprofit organization founded by Saurabh Sharma, Nick Solheim and Jake Mercier launched Wednesday. The organization is dedicated to reshaping the political class to reflect populist priorities. Sharma is the former Chairman of Young Conservatives of Texas, Solheim the founder of The Wallace Institute for Arctic Security and Mercier an independent writer and editor.

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When ‘white supremacists’ aren’t even white

If your only source of information is progressive politicians and media, you might think that the Ku Klux Klan had invaded the Bay Area of California and New York City in order to commit crimes against Asian Americans. Democratic lawmakers have been quick to blame former President Donald Trump’s anti-China rhetoric for the violence. A lengthy New York Times op-ed on the topic goes back further, positioning the latest spree of violence as an extension of white mobs in the 19th century brutally assaulting immigrants. The article carefully avoids identifying the ethnic background of the assailants in this year’s attacks. In New York City, hundreds of people marched in a rally that called on the city to 'unite against White nationalism’.

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More people are dying of COVID under Biden

Monday marked a solemn day for America, as the coronavirus death toll in the United States crossed the 500,000 mark. By this weekend, 100,000 will have died during Joe Biden’s short tenure as President. One hundred thousand. Think about that for just a second. Let that sink in. We could do what all the Trump-deranged pundit class did when the 45th president was in charge. That is, compare the COVID death count 'under this President's watch' to various unrelated historical atrocities. One hundred thousand deaths is the same death toll as the German Peasants’ War, a populist revolt in 1524 which lasted an entire year.

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Who is really pushing misinformation?

There’s a new administration in town. On Monday, House Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, both members of the House Energy and Commerce committee, sent letters to 12 grand poobahs of television to make sure they were properly updating their ideological software. ‘Some purported news outlets have long been misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm,’ the letter says. ‘Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN… now and beyond any contract renewal date? If so, why?’ Sadly, America’s government grows less transparent by the day, so the letter conceals half its content beneath a layer of subtext. That’s a nice TV company you have there, it says.

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Neera Tanden is being treated differently because she’s a woman

Why is Neera Tanden, Joe Biden's nominee to head up the Office of Management and Budgets, stumbling where his other cabinet picks have sailed through confirmation? The senators who say they won't vote for her see her as an obstruction to Biden's efforts to govern in a bipartisan manner. 'Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency,' Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said yesterday. 'Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend.

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fauci biden school

Biden goes back to school with Dr Fauci

We’ve all had to learn more than enough about pathogens in recent months — how contagion spreads, how our immune systems work, what vaccines do and so on. All of us, that is — apart from President Joe Biden, it seems. On Sunday, in order to demonstrate that he ‘listens to scientists’— an important campaign promise — the Commander-in-Chief posted a video of himself being lectured by the Scientist-in-Chief, Dr Anthony Fauci, the man who used to tell us not to bother with masks but now says we’ll still be wearing them until, oh, maybe forever. 'This is the spike protein,’ explains Dr Fauci, patiently. ‘This is the protein of coronavirus.

Biden’s twisted immigration policy

Immigration, a top issue before and during the Trump presidency, has become much less of a concern for Americans over the past year due to the primacy of the pandemic and the ensuing economic shutdown. That, combined with the press's lackadaisical approach to covering the Biden administration, means there hasn't been enough media scrutiny of Biden's incoherent border policy. Frequently the Biden administration's words do not match its actions, primarily because it does not seem to understand that policies have real-world consequences. For example, after Biden campaigned on loosening Trump's stricter enforcement of immigration law, thousands of Honduran migrants formed a caravan to come to the US in hopes of gaining entry. The Biden team tried to put the genie back in the bottle.

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kamalamania

The trouble with the media’s Kamalamania

If you’re one of the few countries storming ahead with a vaccination program, you’d think this would be something to cheer. But not all countries see it that way. Both the UK and the US rank in the top five countries for total doses given per 100 residents, according to The Spectator’s vaccine tracker: 27 and 19 respectively. Yet in the UK, the government is set to crawl its way out of lockdown (currently the most restrictive in the developed world), setting out a roadmap today that will see retail, hospitality and ability to socialize take longer to come back than it did last spring, when zero vaccines were on offer. Meanwhile, in America, a game of denial is taking place, with suggestions the country has had very little success at all.

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Joe Biden, the background-noise president

I’m not in the habit of feeling sorry for Joe Biden, but for a few minutes last week, it was difficult not to. Biden was asked during a CNN town hall about — what else? — Donald Trump. His response sounded exasperated: ‘For four years all that has been in the news is Trump,’ he said. ‘The next four years I want to make sure that all the news is about the American people. I’m tired of talking about Trump.’ How galling it must be.

Why we need an inquiry into January 6

I support Nancy Pelosi’s call for a '9/11-style inquiry' into the mêlée at the Capitol on January 6. I do so not because I think there is any valid analogy between the terrorist attack on the United States by Muslim fanatics on September 11, 2001 and the low-level riot at the Capitol. There isn’t. On 9/11 some 3,000 innocent people were murdered, billions of dollars of property was obliterated and important symbols of American economic and military might were attacked, utterly destroyed in the case of the World Trade Towers, seriously damaged in the case of the Pentagon. On January 6, a pro-Trump rally got out of hand despite the president’s instructions to proceed to the Capitol 'peacefully and patriotically’.

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What ‘America is back’ really means

‘America is back.’ Speaking to the 57th annual Munich Security Conference, Joe Biden made that point for the umpteenth time in his short presidency. His crisp declarative sentence requires decoding, of course. To his audience of European elites, he was offering this assurance: ‘Trump is gone and won’t be returning anytime soon: trust me.’ In expanding on this basic thesis, Biden’s presentation covered a totally predictable range of topics and reached totally predictable conclusions. While repeatedly insisting that history had reached ‘an inflection point’, he simultaneously reiterated the claim made by every US president since Harry Truman (Trump excepted) that ‘the partnership between Europe and the United States’ will determine the fate of humankind.

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Harvard study: reparations for slavery would reduce COVID-19 infections

Throughout the dark years of the Trump administration, brave, isolated voices in America’s richest, most liberal cities needed a means to communicate. They needed a kind of secret signal to show other liberals they were not alone, that the flame of liberalism was still burning. You may have seen the sign above and been confused: Now, thanks to Joe Biden’s triumphal arrival in the capital, these symbols can be deciphered. In each line, the glyphs carry a hidden, greater meaning: 'Black Lives Matter' translates to 'we should defund the police and increase the crime rate in predominately black areas.' 'Women’s rights are human rights' is coded language for 'biological males should win every women’s track meet.' And so on. What about 'Science is real?

Ted Cruz’s moment in the sun

So one disaster wasn’t enough for you, Ted? You had to create a new, very personal one by hightailing it to Cancun together with your wife Heidi and the girls to stay at the oceanfront Ritz-Carlton. Texans may shiver but Ted didn’t quiver. Instead, he made a run for the sun. The irony isn’t rich; it’s gluttonous. For Cruz has made a career out of mocking the establishment in a role as an avatar of the Tea Party. He may have attended Princeton and Harvard Law together with the young swells, but he always made sure to let everyone know that he was made of better stock than them. He was a man of the people, just plain folks Ted, not hifalutin Rafael, who liked nothing better than to spend his weekend nailing an eight-point buck.

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texas

The Texas energy blame game

The joy of life in America, in the 21st century, consists partly in the knowledge that whenever something bad happens, it’s ipso facto someone else’s fault. So let’s go get the so-and-so! Welcome to frozen-over Texas, where on Wednesday morning, February 17, 2.7 million households were without heat, owing to the uninvited and unwelcome presence of an Arctic cold front spreading suffering and inconvenience through every one of this energy-rich state’s 254 counties. The last time it got anything like this cold around here was 1949. I was here in ’49, albeit too young to appreciate the icicles.

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Why are people gloating over Rush Limbaugh’s death?

The gloating over Rush Limbaugh's death ought to shock the conscience. That’s not a political statement. That’s a cri de coeur about how our basic sense of human decency has been warped by political differences. To take one example, a Yale Law professor tweeted he wasn’t just happy Limbaugh had died, he was euphoric. He’s not some drunk being carried out of a rowdy bar. He’s the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale Law School and the Director of Yale's Center for Law and Philosophy. A lesser mortal, a blogger for Media Matters, tweeted her mock condolences to “hell’s other residents.” Does anyone doubt her reception at work will be a pat on the back, not a pink slip? https://twitter.

Joe Biden is still auditioning

Someone needs to tell Joe Biden he is the President of the United States. Yesterday he made his first real appearance before the country at a CNN town hall in Wisconsin. Even with pitched softballs from the host Anderson Cooper and a friendly, carefully chosen audience, Biden looked unfocused, unsure of statements from his own administration and off-balance on the two most important issues facing the country: reopening schools and foreign relations with China.  Candidate Biden was presented to the country as the anti-Trump, the passive-voice grandfather who was going to give America a Werther’s Original and regale us with some great stories and make us all feel better.

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roger stone times

Roger Stone: the New York Times is smearing me again

The New York Times is using guilt by association to imply that I was somehow involved in or had advanced knowledge of the senseless riot at the US Capitol on January 6. It’s a classic hit piece that takes journalistic sleights of hand to a new low. Legally speaking, it’s a high-tech but transparent plate of steaming horseshit. I have acknowledged using a voluntary security detail provided by a group called the Oath Keepers. The New York Times now claims that members of my voluntary security detail were among those inside the Capitol. The Times claims that six Oath Keepers they identify as guarding me at the Willard Hotel earlier on January 6 were also inside the Capitol later that day.

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Rush Limbaugh was a giant of talk radio

The news of Rush Limbaugh's death is certainly the end of an era. The voice of conservatism for over three decades, Limbaugh shaped the political landscape in ways that are nearly impossible to quantify. What's not understood by most is his talent as an entertainer, which is first and foremost what he was. No matter your politics, it was hard not to turn on the AM dial and be enraptured by the sound of his voice. Ira Glass, the founder and host of the long-running public radio show This American Life, once said this of Limbaugh: 'Rush is just an amazing radio performer... Years ago, I used to listen in the car on my way to reporting gigs, and I’d notice that I disagreed with everything he was saying, yet I not only wanted to keep listening, I actually liked him.

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Earmarks rise from the dead in the Democratic Congress

It wasn’t so long ago that Congress finally kicked its ‘earmarking’ habit, where they loaded up big spending bills with special projects to benefit donors and local interest groups. The idea was to give reluctant representatives and senators a reason to sign onto the bill. Congressional leaders thought it was a small price to pay. The benefits were obvious, both for party leaders and backbenchers. They captured specific benefits and offloaded the costs onto taxpayers. Best of all, the costs were nearly invisible until some high-profile scandals came to light. That’s what killed the whole arrangement in 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House and were forced to answer to the party’s rising populist movement.

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Vax bias matters

Canada’s vaccination rollout has gone poorly, to say the least. The country currently ranks just 40th in vaccine doses per capita. It is being soundly whipped by Morocco, Turkey, and Serbia — nations which aren’t known for bragging insufferably about their single-payer healthcare systems. Even worse for Canadians, they trail the United States. For a country that views its identity through the prism of its southern neighbor, this must be a most demoralizing experience. On Monday, Canada’s national advisory committee on immunization announced that 'saving lives' will be shoved violently down the list of priorities in its vaccination drive. Instead, the country is placing a focus on racial equity — 'Black Lives Matter More', if you will.

Major Jewish groups split over Biden’s anti-Israel staffers

‘I’m actually frightened,’ says Morton Klein. This is surprising: Morton Klein is supposed to be fearless. He’s the president of the Zionist Organization of America, the largest conservative Jewish lobby group in the country. He’s an outspoken defender of Israel and the Jews. He’s a scourge of his enemies — and sometimes his friends too. The Biden administration, Klein says, has made ‘the worst group of appointments to cabinet positions with respect to US-Israel relations ever’ and is ‘mainstreaming Jew-hatred’ at home. The goal, he contends, is to revive the Iran Deal despite the concerns of allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, and radicalize the Democratic party through ‘Corbynization’. So why aren’t the other major Jewish organizations also speaking out?

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cuomo

CNN is complicit in the Cuomo COVID cover-up

Last week, the homepage of CNN announced that 'The story keeps getting worse for Andrew Cuomo on COVID-19.' The story, penned by Chris Cillizza, is gripping. A top aide confessed that the New York governor’s office had 'knowingly undercounted deaths among nursing home residents during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’. This 'stunning admission’ is 'a very bad look — to say the least’ for an office currently dealing with separate scrutiny over having sent 9,000 patients recovering from coronavirus back to nursing homes. This figure was 40 percent higher than reported originally, indicating that deaths aren’t the only data Cuomo and his team are lying about. But what the CNN piece fails to mention is that the new, damning evidence about Gov.

Exclusive: Boebert, McCarthy and Biggs to speak at CPAC

Cockburn has always been a big fan of CPAC. Last year, he strutted around National Harbor with the spirit and energy of a College Republican from a major state school. Things will be slightly different this year: the flagship conservative conference will be held in Orlando, FL due to the intense coronavirus restrictions in the DC area. The change in locale hasn't stopped CPAC from nabbing headline-making speakers. Cockburn has learned from a well-placed source that freshman Colorado representative Lauren Boebert, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Arizona representative and House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs and Louisiana representative Mike Johnson will all be speaking at this year's event.

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The new Florida Man

If one state has everything left-liberals hate, it’s Florida. Floridians have no income tax, relaxed shutdown rules and, most egregiously of all, Florida men. I’m not talking about the colorful characters who inspired the ‘Florida man’ meme with their constant crimes and shenanigans. I’m referring to three different Florida men: the GOAT, the Governor and the Donald. Let’s start with the GOAT, Tom Brady. When the 43-year-old walked into Raymond James Stadium last weekend, he was wearing earbuds, shades and a Tom Ford jacket — but he was missing a mask. Uh oh. The Super Bowl had not even started and Tom had already sent the Twitter tattletales into a tailspin.

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ducklo

The Biden administration’s bad romance

In a modern romance reminiscent of the classics, two star-crossed lovers found one another on the fair 2020 campaign trail. Biden campaign national press secretary TJ Ducklo and Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond, who had been friends for years, reportedly started dating in November. McCammond allegedly asked to be moved off of the Biden beat to avoid a conflict. Axios obliged. Ducklo moved into a new role in the White House press shop. And the pair are now engaged to be married. But the story is a bit more complicated, even tragic than that. Not only was McCammond engaged to another man just last summer, she was still writing stories related to Biden and his administration in the months following the beginning of her and Ducklo’s relationship.

Schumer blindsided by Democrat impeachment managers

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was outfoxed by the House impeachment managers on Saturday as they moved to allow witnesses in the impeachment trial for former president Donald Trump. Many Senate Democrats signaled this week that they did not think that witnesses were necessary to convict Trump. The introduction of witnesses would also extend the length of the trial, providing poor optics of Democratic priorities in the middle of a pandemic and economic crisis. However, impeachment managers are seeking the testimony of those with potential insight into Trump’s mindset and conversations around the time of the Capitol riot, such as Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Sen. Tommy Tuberville.

Liz Cheney is no hero

When Rep. Liz Cheney recently said she would vote to impeach President Trump, most of the national GOP and Wyoming Republican party came down on her hard. She could be in real trouble in 2022. I loved every second. I celebrated on social media with other libertarians who also enjoyed her comeuppance. But some libertarians didn’t agree. They stood with Liz Cheney and even praised her stance and her as moral, good and righteous. That is something I can’t wrap my head around. This is Liz Cheney. You are a libertarian!

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lincoln project steve schmidt

Everything the Lincoln Project touches dies

Update 2/15 9 p.m. ET: Over the weekend, a number of senior Lincoln Project figures, including co-founder Steve Schmidt, have stepped back from the organization. The Lincoln Project also issued a statement Monday saying that the PAC is retaining the law firm Paul Hastings to 'investigate allegations of inappropriate behavior by John Weaver as part of a comprehensive review of our operations and culture.' This seems like a step in the right direction...let's just hope none of the five Paul Hastings lawyers who donated to the Lincoln Project are on the detail. Best to keep things independent and fair, right guys? *** Who could have predicted that the Lincoln Project would meet with a messier end than Abraham Lincoln?