REPORT: Republican Lawmakers Laugh In Paul Ryan’s Face For Trusting Harry Reid

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty

by MICHELLE FIELDS23 Dec 20155,185

Republican lawmakers reportedly laughed at House Speaker 

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

56%

 after he told them he had been given a promise from Senate Democratic Leader 

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)

2%

.

Lawmakers were amused at Ryan’s naiveté for thinking that Reid is someone their party can trust.  “I know, I know,” Ryan replied with a smile, according to The Hill.

Reid and Ryan just finished working together to help pass a $1 trillion dollar spending bill, which many argue contained far more liberal policies than conservative ones. Reid has promised Ryan that he will return to regular order in the New Year. According to the Hill, Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t buying it.

They feel they’ve been burned one too many times by Reid, who repeatedly filibustered House-passed appropriations bills this year and has a reputation for launching broadsides against the GOP from the Senate floor. And they’re not so sure the Nevada Democrat will allow bills to move through the Senate Appropriations Committee to the floor, where after they are approved they could be merged with House-passed legislation.

“I personally don’t trust Harry Reid as far as I could throw him,” quipped 

Rep. John Carter (R-TX)

49%

 (R-Texas), chairman of the Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

“I’m extraordinarily skeptical,” added Ryan’s Wisconsin colleague, GOP 

Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI)

64%

.

“I don’t want to be pessimistic, but Harry’s a tough character to deal with and he’ll find some way to stop virtually anything that he doesn’t completely support, which is most of what we care about,” said House Small Business Committee Chairman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio). Still, he added, “I wouldn’t discourage Paul from trying.”

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U.S. plans raids to deport families who surged across border

www.washingtonpost.com

The Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation hundreds of families who have flocked to the United States since the start of last year, according to people familiar with the operation.

The nationwide campaign, to be carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as soon as early January, would be the first large-scale effort to deport families who have fled violence in Central America, those familiar with the plan said. More than 100,000 families with both adults and children have made the journey across the southwest border since last year, though this migration has largely been overshadowed by a related surge of unaccompanied minors.

The ICE operation would target only adults and children who have already been ordered removed from the United States by an immigration judge, according to officials familiar with the undertaking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because planning is ongoing and the operation has not been given final approval by DHS. The adults and children would be detained wherever they can be found and immediately deported. The number targeted is expected to be in the hundreds and possibly greater.

The proposed deportations have been controversial inside the Obama administration, which has been discussing them for several months. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson has been pushing for the moves, according to those with knowledge of the debate, in part because of a new spike in the number of illegal immigrants in recent months. Experts say that the violence that was a key factor in driving people to flee Central America last year has surged again, with the homicide rate in El Salvador reaching its highest level in a generation. A drought in the region has also prompted departures.

The pressure for deportations has also mounted because of a recent court decision that ordered DHS to begin releasing families housed in detention centers.

Although Johnson has signaled publicly for months that Central American families not granted asylum would face deportation, the plan is likely to trigger renewed backlash from Latino groups and immigrant advocates, who have long accused the administration of overly harsh detention policies even as Republicans deride President Obama as soft on border security.

Advocates have not been briefed on the plans and on Wednesday expressed concern. They cited what they called flaws and abuses in the government’s treatment and legal processing of the families, many of whom are fleeing danger or persecution in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

“It would be an outrage if the administration subjected Central American families to even more aggressive enforcement tactics,” said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “This administration has never acknowledged the truth: that these families are refugees seeking asylum who should be given humanitarian protection rather than being detained or rounded up. When other countries are welcoming far more refugees, the U.S. should be ashamed for using jails and even contemplating large-scale deportation tactics.”

Groups that have called for stricter immigration limits said the raids are long overdue and remained skeptical about whether the scale would be large enough to deter future illegal immigration from Central America.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “What share is this going to be?. . . It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the number they’ve admitted into the country. If you have photogenic raids on a few dozen illegal families and that’s the end of it, it’s just for show. It’s just a [public relations] thing, enforcement theater.”

Marsha Catron, a DHS spokeswoman, would not comment on any possible ICE operations but pointed out that Johnson “has consistently said our border is not open to illegal immigration, and if individuals come here illegally, do not qualify for asylum or other relief, and have final orders of removal, they will be sent back consistent with our laws and our values.”

The raids could become a flash point on the 2016 campaign trail, where GOP presidential contenders, including front-runner Donald Trump, have made calls for stricter border control a central issue. Trump’s rise has come as he has promised to deport all undocumented immigrants and bar entry to the United States for Muslim refugees in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., policy prescriptions denounced by Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton.

The immigration issue has often bedeviled Obama, who came into office under pressure from supporters to end the George W. Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11, 2001, crackdown on illegal migrants. Instead, the administration increased deportations in its early years, drawing repeated fire from Latino groups and immigration advocates. Then, in summer 2014, came the surge of children flocking across the southwest border.

While most public attention focused on minors who were crossing the border alone, the number of children who came with a family member — known as “family units’’ in DHS parlance — also spiked dramatically.

With the government overwhelmed at first, many of the families were simply released and told to appear at later immigration court dates to determine if they would be granted asylum.

Some never showed up or had their asylum claims rejected and were ordered deported by immigration judges, officials familiar with the process said. That population is among those expected to be targeted in the upcoming raids, they said.

Immigrant rights advocates and legal experts say the families and minors were in many cases not granted adequate representation and were confused by the asylum procedures in court.

DHS, meanwhile, reacted to the surge by opening family detention centers, two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania. Those centers now house more than 1,700 people, DHS officials said Wednesday. But even as DHS officials have long vowed that the migrants will be treated humanely, their advocates have said conditions are crowded and inhumane in the centers, which often house women with children.

As the administration wrestled with how to handle the families, Johnson in November 2014 issued a set of new immigration enforcement priorities. Much of the attention focused on his public statements that undocumented immigrants who had been in the country for years should be integrated into society rather than deported. And Obama, on the same day, announced an executive action intended to shield up to 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation.

But Obama’s action has been blocked in the courts. And Johnson has also made clear that families, children and others who had illegally crossed the border recently and did not obtain asylum status — and anyone ordered deported starting on Jan. 1, 2014 — would be subject to removal.

DHS “will also continue to expedite, to the greatest extent possible, the removal of those who are not eligible for relief under our laws,’’ Johnson said in a September statement about the family detention centers. “We take seriously our obligation to secure our borders.’’

In August, a federal judge in California ordered the administration to begin releasing in October children and family members from the detention centers. The judge said DHS had violated a 1990s consent decree that said minors taken into custody, whether accompanied by an adult or not, had to be treated humanely and allowed to quickly contest their incarcerations.

The administration has said it is complying with the ruling, but it has also filed an appeal with a federal appeals court, and officials said the decision left them feeling hamstrung. “It doesn’t allow us to hold onto people, to detain them until we can deport them,’’ said one person familiar with the internal debate.

Then, in recent months, the flow of families crossing the border suddenly shot up again. The numbers of family units apprehended rose 173 percent in October and November, compared to the same period last year, according to DHS data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

The court decision and the sudden spike led to the decision to begin planning the upcoming raid, said officials familiar with the deliberations, who said DHS knows the deportations will be inflammatory but believes it must enforce the law.

COMMENTS

Utopia and Communism share a common thread

Private car ownership is on the road to becoming a rarity

www.marketwatch.com

Henry Ford was a smart guy, but he never did the math when he decided to put every American household on wheels.

A century after the Model T, the world has a problem with cars. The U.S. and China will consume about 40 million light vehicles in 2015, according to IHS. Globally, we’re on track to hit 100 million vehicles in 2020.

That’s not a lot of cars. That’s an ocean of cars, an inundation, wave after wave breaking on the shores of the industrialized world. And yet policy makers and common folk alike have been powerless against the siren song of the automobile. Even in the most car-blighted burg in the world, the toxic parking lot they call Beijing, the appetite for the automobile—as status item, as luxury, as totem of personal mastery in a fragile postcolonial mind-set—is driving millions more into its smoggy embrace, despite limits on ownership and the government’s rising alarm.

The Future of Everything: From the end of auto ownership to America’s changing battlefields to a revolution in fast food to the next sports superstar, a special Wall Street Journal magazine asks a team of experts and reporters to tell us what lies ahead.

The absurdity of our century-old, ad hoc approach to mobility is captured in one statistic: The utilization rate of automobiles in the U.S. is about 5%. For the remaining 95% of the time (23 hours), our cars just sit there, a slow, awful cash burn, like condos at the beach.

But what if, like condos, automobiles could be shared? It’s one of life’s first lessons—how to share toys, parents, rooms, feelings. But as little consumers grow into adults, they forget the joys of selflessness. That’s about to change. And I don’t mean the collaborative consumerism we see around us—peer-to-peer transportation like Uber—which is symbolic and transitional, lasting only until automation happens, at which point we can get rid of the wetware. And by wetware, I mean us.

The Waze app has packed residential side streets with traffic

The navigation app Waze offers drivers alternate routes to busy roads, but it's also clogging some local streets with bumper-to-bumper traffic — and upsetting residents. Photo: Joe Flint/Wall Street Journal.

Within a generation, automobiles will be endowed with what’s known as Level 4 autonomy—full self-driving artificial intelligence for cars—which will not so much change the game as burn down the casino. Autonomy will make it possible for unmanned automobiles to be summoned, via app, to your location. And not just any passing tramp steamer, but exactly the vehicle you need for the occasion, cleaned and fueled, for as little or as long as you need (offers may vary in your state). When you’re done—poof!—it will go away.

You don’t pay for the car. You pay for the miles. And only the miles. It’s a whole new way to fly. Let’s start small. Need a pickup for three weekends a year but don’t want to pay for the other 49? Autonomy can make that happen easily without a visit to the dreaded U-Haul depot. Need a car to take mom to the doctor’s, or fetch a spouse from the airport? A decade hence, major auto makers and smaller players will be at each others’ throats for the privilege of sending consumers vehicles a la carte, for a one-way trip, an afternoon, a weekend, a month. These transactions will move through the glowing bowels of your monthly credit accounts, and you won’t even feel them.

Americans will look back on pre-autonomy like the age of Casio calculators and DOS prompts. Remember cab drivers? Remember traffic jams? Remember when parents lived in dread that their children would die in a car accident? Death and major injury from traffic accidents will drop drastically. The automobile’s other costs—decreased productivity, fuel burned in uncoordinated traffic—will be swept away. “Beyond the practical benefits, autonomous cars could contribute $1.3 trillion in annual savings to the U.S. economy alone,” wrote Ravi Shanker, a Morgan Stanley analyst covering the U.S. auto business. Global savings? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.6 trillion.

Read: Elon Musk’s hyperloop fantasy may be more realistic than we think

You may be wondering, back here in 2015, if the auto industry is worried about shared mobility. Doesn’t it spell declining sales? It could. But in a mature market like the U.S. turnover will remain fairly stable. What would change is the number of passengers that passed through every vehicle—including a vast untapped market that doesn’t drive today. “Level 4 AV technology, when the vehicle does not require a human driver, would enable transportation for the blind, disabled or those too young to drive,” says the Rand Corporation in a report on the subject. “The benefits for these groups would include independence, reduction in social isolation, and access to essential services.”

These same benefits would return mobility to millions on the margins, including the elderly, the working poor and those who have lost their driving privileges due to a criminal record. (It’s not hard to see the throughline between autonomy and the hobbling economic effects of mass incarceration.)

In August 2015, Morgan Stanley nearly doubled its price target for Tesla TSLA, -0.11%  , to $465 per share, based on an analysis of Tesla’s so-far secret shared-mobility plan. “We view this as a business opportunity,” wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, “[that could] more than triple the company’s potential revenues by 2029.”

And, far from funneling consumers into fleets of lustless electric drones, autonomy could have the opposite effect. Immersive-connected consumers will be able to draw from a vast and constantly replenished motor pool of shared vehicles—dune buggies, pickup trucks, German luxury sedans—with little or no notice, a cast of automotive avatars.

At this point a fair reader might wonder if I have ever been to America. The notion that we as consumers will forgo the awesome pleasures of the automobile—the privilege, the mobility, the identity—to share vehicles is, I grant, unfamiliar.

But America’s much-sung-about love affair with the automobile has grown cold. Rates of motor-vehicle licensure are already plummeting among young Americans. The obligations and costs of transportation—an average 17% of household budgets—are driving them out of automobility altogether. And enthusiasm for automotive culture is waning too, as the empty seats at Nascar events attest.

Personal-vehicle ownership isn’t going away. Some people will own and cherish cars. But those people and their cars will be considered classics. Rates of ownership will decline, an artifact of an era of hyperprosperity and reckless glut. Twenty-five years from now, the only people still owning cars will be hobbyists, hot rodders and Flat Earth dissenters. Everyone else will be happy to share.

Don’t miss: The Future of Everything.

More about cars:  

Obituary 1776 - 2016

THINK ABOUT IT AFTER YOU READ IT  THEN READ IT AGAIN!  

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: "A democracy is always Temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent Form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until The time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous Gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority Always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from The public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally Collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a Dictatorship."     "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the Beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 Years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:     From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage." The Obituary follows:     " United States of America ",  Born 1776, Died 2016 It doesn't hurt to read this several times. Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning The last Presidential election:     Number of States won by:         Obama: 19               Romney: 29 Square miles of land won by:    Obama: 580,000      Romney: 2,427,000 Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million  Romney: 143 million Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:                                            Obama: 13.2             Romney: 2.1     Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Romney won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.     Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low Income tenements and living off various forms of government Welfare..."     Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of Democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population Already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase..     If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million Criminal invaders called illegal’s - and they vote - then we can say Goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years .     If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message.     If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how Much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our Freedom..

Under Vladimir Putin, Josef Stalin’s Popularity on the Rise in Russia

Getty Images

by MARY CHASTAIN22 Dec 201596

Under leader Vladimir Putin, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who purged between 20 and 60 million of his own people, has become increasingly popular in Russia.

The Russian Communist Party celebrated Stalin’s birthday on Monday at Moscow’s Red Square. Gennady Zyuganov, head of the party, gushed over Stalin to the crowd.

”Today, the experience and courage of Stalin, his genius and talent, should nourish all government officials who truly desire Russia to be kind, happy, and truly sovereign,” raved Zyuganov.

Zyuganov did not mention Stalin’s atrocious history and war crimes. Instead, he praised the mass murderer for leading “the Soviet Union to victory in World War II and stood up to the West during the Cold War.”

“By reinstating and continuing the best Russian imperial practices, following the war he created the most powerful block,” he continued. “A block of Slavic governments and their friends that held NATO at bay, which the entire world feared.”

The Communist Party in Penza declared2016 as “the year of Stalin” and will conduct many events to honor the dictator. Local party chief Georgi Kamenev declared events at the local Stalin Centre will “counter the falsehoods and attacks on Stalin’s reputation and legacy with facts and the truth.”

Kremlin propaganda outlet reported the “long-awaited cultural center” opened on Monday.

“Time itself defines the actual heroes of today,” declared Kamenev. “The image of Stalin is becoming more and more popular, first as a person, but as a simple man too. He was very modest, even though he was the head of a huge country.”

The so-called Luhansk People’s Republic in east Ukraine, a breakaway region, unveileda statue of Stalin this month. Luhansk is one of the areas controlled by pro-Russian rebels and Russian soldiers since March 2014. After Parliament ousted Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych, east Ukraine declared itself independent from Kiev. The area’s leaders placed the statue at the offices of the Union of Communists of the Luhansk Oblast.

“At the present time the ideology, symbol, personality of Stalin is important not only for the Luhansk [O]blast, but for the entire world since once again Nazism is on the rise, and for victory over it we need the harsh, strong hand of the leader,” claimed local communist Oleg Popov. “Stalin should serve as an example of creation and restoration against the destruction reigning in Ukraine.”

According to an April poll by the Levada Center, the enormous economic progress under Soviet Union dictator Josef Stalinjustified all the “sacrifices” made by Russians, including the genocide of his own people.

The independent center polled the same question two years ago, but only 25 percent agreed. The latest poll is up to 45 percent.

“[Stalin is being rehabilitated because] the current Russian authorities and [President Vladimir] Putin in particular seek the legitimization and justification of their actions by resorting to the past. It gives them a certain endorsement,” explainedAlexei Levinson, the head of the Levada Center’s social and cultural studies department. “There are two consequences of that: On the one hand, the state might triumph in the further consolidation of its power. On the other hand, we are engaging in a conflict with the rest of the world and our regime will not last long under such pressure.”

Putin has previously expressed nostalgia for the former Soviet Union. He once said the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. In April 2014, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told NBC News that Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union. Putin’s actions have indicated Yatsenyuk may be correct. Putin invested unused Olympic funds to start a fitness program that dates back to the Soviet Union. Putin also praisedthe horrific Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in World War II. Russia’s Ministry of Education and Science purged thousands of “unsuitable” textbooks from schools, eliminating the business of many book publishers. The only one left untouched was Soviet-era publisher Enlightenment, which is also owned by Putin’s close friend Arkady Rotenberg. Another example is Putin’s foul language law, which bans profanity in the arts–echoes of the Soviet days.

Communist leader Stalin murdered more people than Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Georgian historian Roy Medvedev listed the atrocities committed under Stalin:

Medevedev’s grim bookkeeping included the following tragic episodes: 1 million imprisoned or exiled between 1927 to 1929; 9 to 11 million peasants forced off their lands and another 2 to 3 million peasants arrested or exiled in the mass collectivization program; 6 to 7 million killed by an artificial famine in 1932-1934; 1 million exiled from Moscow and Leningrad in 1935; 1 million executed during the ”Great Terror” of 1937-1938; 4 to 6 million dispatched to forced labor camps; 10 to 12 million people forcibly relocated during World War II; and at least 1 million arrested for various “political crimes” from 1946 to 1953.

Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn claims the number is closer to 60 million, while writer I.G. Dyadkin suggests the number is between 56 and 62 million, “with 34 to 49 million directly linked to Stalin.”

Stalin conducted the Great Purge between 1936 and 1940, which eliminated Communist Party and government officials Stalin viewed as a threat. Historians believethe numbers of deaths connected to the purge are between 680,000 to 1.2 million.

He also executed the Holodomor, which means “extermination by hunger,” in Ukraine. Between 1932 and 1933, between 2.5 and 7.5 million people died due to aforced famine from Stalin, intended to end the Ukrainian independence movement. Stalin is dear to Russian imperialists for his work in Ukraine, as they consider Kyiv the birthplace of Russia. The regime received mass shipments of grain, but did not distribute enough to civilians. Stalin also forced Ukrainian farmers to participate in collectivization.

Stalin developed the gulags for criminals and those who threatened his regime. Figures show that he imprisoned ten million people between 1934 and 1947, but historians believe the number is higher. Officials believe 15 to as many as 30 million people died in the gulags from 1918 to 1956.

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EXCLUSIVE – Media Grinches Claim Israel Stole Bethlehem Christmas; Distort Facts, Ignore Muslim Persecution

Flickr / Sarah_Ackerman

by AARON KLEIN22 Dec 2015169

JERUSALEM – Major news media outlets are presenting a misleading picture of the current situation in Bethlehem, blaming an obscure, leaderless “wave of violence” – purportedly instigated by both Israel and the Palestinians – for a downturn in the number of tourists visiting the historic city this Christmas season.

The outlets in question completely ignore the rampant Palestinian incitement that is driving the current violence and fail to report that the pseudo-intifada is instigated almost entirely by the Palestinians.

Also missing from the reportage is the larger story of Bethlehem’s dwindling Christian population. Over the last two decades, Christians have been fleeing persecution at the hands of Muslims.

A case in point is an AFP article republishedin numerous newspapers and websites titled, “Unrest puts heavy damper on Bethlehem Christmas festivities.”

The piece reports that “a wave of violence and protests has deterred many tourists from making the annual pilgrimage to the ancient city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, though much of the unrest has occurred away from Bethlehem, usually considered a safe destination.”

The article does not distinguish between Israeli victims of terrorism and Palestinian terrorists killed by Israelis in self-defense. As the AFP states:

The violence has killed 120 on the Palestinian side, several of them in and around Bethlehem, as well as 17 Israelis, an American, and an Eritrean.

Similarly, the Catholic News Servicepublished an article titled, “Few pilgrims, no sales: Mideast situation dampens Bethlehem Christmas.”

The first paragraph draws a moral equivalence between Palestinian terrorists and their victims as if both sides are equally to blame.

‘Though the Christmas tree was lit in Nativity Square in the traditional ceremony, and some  pre-Christmas parades have taken place, the Christmas spirit this year in Bethlehem has been dampened by the political situation which, since October, has taken the lives of almost 100 Palestinians and 22 Israelis.’

The article also distorts the cause of the violence, implying that “extremist Jews” provoked the Palestinians.

‘The most recent violence that has limited the tourists followed attempts by extremist Jews to visit and pray at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound, which is holy to both Jews and Muslim. Riots have broken out in the West Bank, and Palestinians have stabbed Israeli civilians as well as Israeli police and soldiers, both within the Green Line and in the West Bank.’

The “extremist Jews” in question were guilty of simply wanting to pray at Judaism’s holiest site.

The Catholic News Service failed to report that the Palestinian media fabricated a Jewish “threat” to the Al Aqsa Mosque in order to incite Palestinians to violence.

On the Temple Mount, the outlawed radical Islamic Movement has been mobilizingArab youth in an attempt to smuggle fire bombs, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and stones into the site in order to attack Jews.

While Palestinian media outlets have been broadcasting misinformation about Israeli police storming the Al Aqsa mosque unprovoked, Islamic Movement-tied youth have been using the mosque as a staging area to attack Jews. The goal seems to be to draw Israeli security forces into the sensitive mosque compound and thus fuel the cycle of rumors regarding Israeli incursions.

The Catholic News Service also neglected to mention that, while claiming there is an Israeli plot against the Al Aqsa mosque, hundreds of Palestinians in October set fire to the Joseph’s Tomb complex, causing severe damage to the revered burial place, considered Judaism’s third holiest site.

The news service went on to complain.

Bethlehem depends on the tourism industry, which has been hard hit for the past two months. Hotels are reporting dismal occupancy rates and no new reservations for the coming months, noted Manhal Assaf, director of the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism Information Office in Bethlehem.

Meanwhile, the Guardian blamed “recent violent incidents” for putting a damper on “this year’s Christmas celebrations in the holy city.”

“Fewer streets were decorated, some festivities were cancelled, and there was no fireworks display, which traditionally marks the lighting of the Christmas tree,” the Guardian reported.  The newspaper did not specify which “violent incidents” it was referring to.

The Guardian noted that progress in Bethlehem is difficult because “82% of Bethlehem falls inside Area C, which is territory under direct Israeli military and administrative control.”

The newspaper, like other media outlets, glossed over a far more important statistic. At Israel’s founding, Bethlehem was 80% Christian. But after the city was handed over to the Palestinians as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the city’s Christian population plummeted to 23%. And that statistic includes the satellite towns of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala. Christians now make up only about 12% of the population in the city limits.

What accounts for the Christian exodus?

As reported at WND:

‘As soon as he took over Bethlehem, Arafat unilaterally fired the city’s Christian politicians and replaced them with Muslim cronies. He appointed a Muslim governor, Muhammed Rashad A-Jabar, and deposed of Bethlehem’s city council, which had nine Christians and two Muslims, reducing the number of Christians councilors to a 50-50 split.

‘Arafat then converted a Greek Orthodox monastery next to the Church of Nativity, the believed birthplace of Jesus, into his official Bethlehem residence.

‘Suddenly, after the Palestinians gained the territory, reports of Christian intimidation by Muslims began to surface.

‘Christian leaders and residents told this reporter they face an atmosphere of regular hostility. They said Palestinian armed groups stir tension by holding militant demonstrations and marches in the streets. They spoke of instances in which Christian shopkeepers’ stores were ransacked and Christian homes attacked.

‘They said in the past, Palestinian gunmen fired at Israelis from Christian hilltop communities, drawing Israeli anti-terror raids to their towns.’

Human rights lawyer Justus Weiner toldCBN News:

‘The threat of persecution, including beatings and forced marriages between Christian women and Muslim men, are some of the reasons Christians have left.’

Christians in Bethlehem also speak of their land being unilaterally confiscated by Muslim gangs.

“There are many cases in which Christians have their land stolen by the [Muslim] mafia,” said Samir Qumsiyeh, a Bethlehem Christian leader and owner of the Beit Sahour-based private Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station.

“It is a regular phenomenon in Bethlehem. They go to a poor Christian person with a forged power of attorney document, and then they say we have papers proving you’re living on our land. If you confront them, many times the Christian is beaten. You can’t do anything about it. The Christian loses, and he runs away,” Qumsiyeh said.

Last year, a Christian woman from Bethlehem revealed to Fox News that her uncle was murdered because he refused to pay the jizyah, or “protection tax” to Muslims there.

In October, Breitbart News reported on threats to the First Baptist Church of Bethlehem, which has been bombed 14 times.

Apparently, the news media is mysteriously uninterested in highlighting the true plight of Bethlehem’s Christians or the real reasons for this year’s downturn in tourist visits to the city.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”  Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

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Paul Ryan: ‘I Hate Omnibus Bill’ But I Did It Anyway

AP/J. Scott Applewhite

by MICHELLE FIELDS22 Dec 20153,074

House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told radio host Bill Bennett that he hates Omnibus bills, but he passed a $1 trillion omnibus last week anyway.

“I hate omnibus bills and I don’t like doing these last-second bills,” Ryan said. He added that he blames Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) who filibustered, “all but one appropriations bill” and also his caucus who, “seized up in the middle of the summer, unable to pass any appropriations bills because of some poison pill amendments.”

Ryan was asked why $1.6 billion was allocated to the refugee program, especially considering there was support from dozens of Republican members of Congress for a proposal introduced by Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) that would temporarily halt the refugee program. Despite the broad support, Ryan decided to fund President Obama’s refugee program, which includes Syrian refugees. He argued that:

$1.6 billion is not simply for Syrian refugees. It’s for the entire refugee program. You remember the unaccompanied children that got dumped onto the border from Honduras and El Salvador? We had to go do emergency legislation…and put new resources on the border in anticipation of that. Well, there’s a fear that could happen again, so that’s what this money is for, to prevent and prepare for any chance that we might have a whole new raft of unaccompanied children getting put on the border.

Ryan also discussed what he hopes to accomplish in 2016, saying that Americans are, ” going to see us put a bill on the president’s desk going after ObamaCare and Planned Parenthood.”

He added that Americans will “see a return to regular order, where men and women in Congress can bring their bills to the floor, make their amendments in order, and we will run Congress the way the Founders intended it to be run.”

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Big Government, Immigration, Paul Ryan,Economics, omnibus, Bill Bennett