Everyone in the room was groaning, saying, ‘What is going on?'

'it was a mistake not to stay in France longer – and I apologise'

Claudia Sheinbaum, the hand-picked successor of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will be the next president of Mexico. Unfortunately, that means U.S.-Mexico relations remain on a dangerous course that has empowered drug cartels and brought skyrocketing overdoses and uncontrolled migration to the United States. Sheinbaum owes her victory almost entirely to Lopez Obrador’s highly popular government, leaving little chance that she will distance herself from the man universally known as AMLO. Under the incumbent’s government, U.S.-Mexico relations have seen a dangerous deterioration. New threats have emerged on the border—ranging from fentanyl, weaponized mass migration, and terrorist networks—and important opportunities for collaboration, such as nearshoring supply chains from China, have been largely squandered. Worse still, deepening narco-corruption adds a powerful force working against a necessary change of course in Mexico. All this means that if the vital relationship between the U.S. and Mexico is to stabilize, the Biden administration must right the ship. To date, Washington has largely been a passive observer of the relationship’s continued collapse. This is best evidenced by the utter breakdown of counter-narcotics cooperation with Mexico. Opioid overdoses, facilitated by the free flow of Chinese precursor chemicals to Mexico’s cartels, continue to kill over 100,000 Americans each year. Nevertheless, the Biden administration has stood by as AMLO has repeatedly denied Mexico’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Even when Mexico’s government terminated the longstanding Merida Initiative, upending counter-drug cooperation with U.S. law enforcement, President Joe Biden remained silent. American permissiveness goes back years, through multiple presidential administrations. In 2020, under President Donald Trump, U.S. law enforcement agents arrested former Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos after uncovering his collaboration with the drug cartels. Yet after substantial diplomatic pressure from Mexico, the U.S. released Cienfuegos, whom AMLO subsequently decorated with a medal honoring his service. In 2011, the Obama administration dropped a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation revealing credible narco-corruption directly implicating Lopez Obrador, then a presidential candidate. Originally published by the New York Post The post Mexico’s Next President Won’t Alter Dangerously Corrupt Course in US Relations appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Symbols matter. The Left understands this. They understand that the symbols and statues on public display in a society can have profound meaning and shape the way people think about the world. These symbols and statues can represent something about our past or something that reflects the values that we hold as a society. That should be the takeaway from a particularly illustrative news story from Wethersfield, Connecticut. Wethersfield, population 27,300, was among many towns in Connecticut to pay tribute this week to state trooper Aaron Pellatier, who died after being stuck the afternoon of May 30 by a hit-and-run driver who allegedly was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The Wethersfield Town Council, which includes six Democrats and three Republicans, voted to turn down a request to fly a “Thin Blue Line” flag at the town hall. The flag looks like a standard American flag, but in black and white with a blue line running through the middle. The flag symbolizes how a small number of police officers represents a thin line of order to protect society from crime, violence, and chaos. That’s the way I see it. Why did the local lawmakers turn down this flag? Now, if the policy was simply that town hall displays only the American and state flags, that would be one thing. But it turns out that’s not the case. Let’s hear the reason from Emily Zambrello, one of the six Democrats on the nine-member Town Council. UNFREAKINGBELIEVABLEDemocrats in CT voted against flying the American blue line flag to honor fallen officer Aaron Pelletier who was kiIIed in the line of duty.Instead they flew the pride flag at half staff to honor him. The pride flag. I have no words. This is disgraceful.… https://t.co/J0jLfj7j6l pic.twitter.com/7qJQ9oZqSA— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 6, 2024 In an interview with WTNH-TV, a local ABC affiliate, Zambrello was asked what she thinks the “Thin Blue Line” flag stands for. “It represents racism and antagonism to many, many people,” she replied. “And even if you don’t personally believe that and you fly that at your own house and you think it means something to you that’s much more positive, it’s just not how many people feel about it.” Zambrello concluded that flying the “Thin Blue Line” flag is “not appropriate” to raise over town hall and that local flag policy prohibits the council from putting up “anything associated with hate.” If that didn’t enrage you enough, this story gets even worse. The Town Council decided to keep up an LGBTQ “Pride” flag, but lowered to half-staff to “honor” Pellatier. From the video, this doesn’t appear to be just a standard rainbow flag, but the new, evolving flag you’ve probably seen that includes additions for the transgender movement and Black Lives Matter. I’ll call this the “woke” flag for lack of a better description. Frankly, I associate the woke flag with the chemical castration of children, riots and looting, and certainly hate. I’m sure there are more than a few people in Wethersfield who would agree. So, why is it that this flag stays up at a state trooper’s funeral and the “Thin Blue Line” flag is prohibited? Because the Left takes public displays very seriously. They want to make sure that the symbols they’ve chosen to reflect the values of our brave new world reflect their vision of things. That vision can’t coexist with the older values our country was built upon. They’ve made that quite clear. This tussle over the “Thin Blue Line” flag mirrors the debates over historical statues. The Left has insisted on removing or demolishing statues that generally represent our past. Such statues have run the gamut from Robert E. Lee to Abraham Lincoln.  There’s been little discernment as far as the target goes. The Left finds America’s past to be shameful and hateful. Traditional values, whether about religion, family structure, or law and justice, are treated with outright scorn. Most of the statues torn down in Democrat-run cities in the riots of 2020 haven’t been replaced. The vandals were rarely apprehended or punished. But make a skid mark on a “Pride” flag placed on a street? You’ll be charged with a felony. Marring any one of the symbols of the Left’s new regime comes with extreme consequences. That’s because the Left seeks to fundamentally transform America as a means to secure power. Destruction of old heroes and the construction of new ones symbolizes one regime being torn down in favor of another. One set of values being replaced with another. It’s not just the “Thin Blue Line” flag that the Left sees as hateful. They’ve already found ways to condemn other traditional flags as symbols of racism or insurrection. The Left would surely prefer that the woke flag replace them all, including the American flag. Some would say it already has. They replaced the flag of the republic because they already replaced the republic https://t.co/hmfMzugfXr— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) June 6, 2024 The nature of what we are and will be in America, and the West more broadly, is certainly in question. Nevertheless, I don’t think the old republic is wholly dead. The woke flag may better symbolize the institutions and “our democracy,” as the Left calls it, but there are still many Americans who haven’t accepted the transition. Pun intended. We’ve had plenty of signs in the past few years that at the very least the American people aren’t going to wholly give up the blessings of liberty bestowed by the patriots of 1776 and the brave boys of Pointe du Hoc just yet. The result of the Left’s goal to morally transform our society have often been counterproductive and farcical. At times, they’ve been monstrously grotesque and their public displays of art often fittingly reflect that. The symbols the Left has chosen to revere hinge on grievance and “pride” without honor. They don’t elevate. Instead, they flatten the distinctions between good and evil, failure and merit. They put victimhood and narcissism above courage and sacrifice. If we want to “win” this country’s future, we must take the battle over symbols as seriously as the Left does—or else we’ll continue to live under the broken and distorted moral paradigm they’ve created. The post Connecticut Town Won’t Hoist ‘Thin Blue Line’ Flag for State Trooper, Lowers ‘Pride’ Flag to Half-Staff Instead appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Last week, a New York City jury, prompted by the legal coordination between Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan—both partisan actors—convicted Donald Trump on 34 felony counts having to do with falsification of business records. Or election fraud. Or more tax issues. Or … something. Nobody really knows, and apparently it was unnecessary for the jury to agree on the crime in order to find Trump guilty of one. No matter. Trump was convicted and may now face jail time. We’ll find out on July 11—just a few days before the Republican National Convention. Obviously, this represents opportune timing for the Biden campaign. And yet Donald Trump remains firmly knotted with Biden in the race for the White House. There have been four polls taken since Trump’s conviction. In all of them, Biden and Trump are either tied or within two points either way. But how? The question echoes throughout the media: How can a convicted felon be running even with the incumbent president? The answer is twofold: First, Joe Biden is a truly awful president; second, Biden has no ground to stand on in labeling Trump a threat to law and order. First, Biden’s terrible record. Americans have been slammed by inflation for three years. Our social fabric has continued to decay as Biden openly seeks “equity”—meaning discriminatory legal regimens designed at rectifying group disparities—in every area of the federal government. On the foreign front, Biden has hamstrung Ukraine in its defense against Russia, and openly manipulated on behalf of Iran and Hamas in Israel’s war against the terror group that performed Oct. 7. It is difficult to see an area of the world that is markedly better off since Biden took the White House. Second, Biden’s hypocrisy. In the aftermath of the Trump conviction, Trump naturally condemned the justice system that targeted him. Biden then responded by doubling down on his narrative that Trump’s pushback represents a threat to Our Democracy and Our Institutions: Last week, Biden staggered out to the podium to claim that “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.” He added that it was “dangerous” and “irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.” The problem is this: Biden as Defender of Our Democracy and Our Institutions just doesn’t play. This is the same president who tried to use his Occupational Safety and Health Administration to illegally cram down vaccines on 80 million Americans; who attempted, in defiance of law, to relieve student loan debt—and then bragged about defying the Supreme Court; whose DOJ even let him off the hook for mishandling of classified material by calling him a dotard. Biden’s party has spent years tut-tutting massive riots, appeasing pro-terrorist student trespassers and calling for an end to parental autonomy. There isn’t an institution in the country Biden hasn’t weakened. To hear Biden rail against Trump for undermining institutions, then, simply won’t play. But Biden doesn’t have much left in the playbook. All of which means that Trump still—still—has the upper hand. Ironically, Trump being sent to jail might actually help him, given that most Americans will correctly see the jailing of Biden’s chief political opponent as an act of vicious partisanship unworthy of the most powerful republic in world history. In 2020, Biden ran on the platform of stability and normalcy; he has exploded both. All he’s left with is slogans about Orange Hitler. And that’s unlikely to be enough come November if gas prices are high, groceries cost too much and the world remains aflame. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Of ‘Convicted Felons’ and Lying Frauds appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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