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2016

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The Roof Blows Off the Echo Chamber Trump Will Win the National Battle for Legitimacy By David P. Goldman

By on October 21st, 2016

“We created an echo chamber. They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say. In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this….The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience is being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

Thus spake a certain Ben Rhodes, literary dabbler and Don DeLillo wannabe, in a stunning interview-essay by David Samuels in the New York Times last May. Rhodes was describing the sale of the Iran nuclear deal to America’s body politic, fed by media ignoramuses who dutifully repeated the echoes of the administration’s stable of putatively independent experts. But the “echo chamber” principle applies just as well to anything that the Establishment media wants to sell to the public. The trouble with echo chambers, of course, is that positive feedback can blow the roof off. That is what is happening in American politics right now.

There is no news cycle. There is no national debate. There’s no Ed Murrow, no Walter Cronkite, no figure of authority from whom the public can learn the facts with a reasonable degree of trust. We have had so many iterations of lies, cover-up, cover-up malfunction, new lies, new cover-up and new cover-up malfunction that the experts are in information overload. What is going on in the head of an ordinary voter with a passing interest in politics and ten or fifteen minutes a day to devote to news?

The answer is: Almost anything you might imagine. Sixty-two percent of Americans get at least some of their news via social media according to a Pew Research survey and the proportion is growing fast. Facebook and other social media allow individuals to customize their news consumption on the basis of recommendations and re-posting by friends, and news consumers increasingly depend on their networks rather than the media.

That’s how Steve Bannon’s Breitbart news organization, with its edgy mix of salacious gossip and right-wing politics, morphed almost overnight into a major media player. That’s why the Drudge Report got 1.47 billion page views in July. There is no way of knowing what Americans believe. Only one in nine Americans believes that Hillary Clinton is “honest and trustworthy.” They don’t trust the media’s cover-up of her misdeeds, and the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.
Trump Will Win the National Battle for Legitimacy

Do they believe what the National Enquirer put at the top of its website, namely that Hillary had her “bagman” arrange lesbian trysts? Do they believe she called Muslims “sand N—ers”? Do they believe that the Clintons are responsible for 46 unsolved homicides? Or do they just believe that Bill and Hillary made $250 million by peddling influence, used a private email server to hide their self-dealing at the State Department, and lied until their faces turned blue when caught?

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James O’Keefe Says Donna Brazile’s Head May Be Next to Roll By Stephen Kruiser

By on October 21st, 2016

Having already gotten Democrat operatives Scott Foval and Robert Creamer (Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s husband) to “resign” after the release of the first two parts of his recent sting, James O’Keefe just hinted that he’s got bigger fish to fry:

Yes we do. Oh, we’re just getting started. @donnabrazile may be forced to resign next week after what comes out. https://t.co/dmAKlCgiEq

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 20, 2016

The MSM has been dismissing the videos that sunk Foval and Creamer with weak nonsense about them being “low-level” and “unknown,” despite the fact that Creamer is married to a member of Congress. If Brazile is forced to go, look for a lot of unfounded attacks on O’Keefe designed to distract. Brazile has her current job because her predecessor was forced to step down under scandalous circumstances. I would say “resign in disgrace,” but Democrats really aren’t embarrassed by their behavior.

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Clinton Foundation Subsidized Now-Imprisoned Senior Muslim Brotherhood Official :By Patrick Poole

By on October 21st, 2016

Gehad El-Haddad, the now-imprisoned former spokesman for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s so-called “Freedom and Justice Party,” was effectively the “Baghdad Bob” of the Arab Spring.

Educated in the UK and the son of a top Muslim Brotherhood leader, Essam El-Haddad, the special advisor on foreign policy to deposed Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi, Gehad incited violence, justified the torture of protesters, recycled fake news stories, and staged fake scenes of confrontation during the 2013 Rabaa protests.

Gehad was arrested in September 2013 after the fall of Morsi and the bloody confrontations during the breakup of the Muslim Brotherhood’s protest camps in Rabaa Square and around Cairo.

And during his ascendancy in 2011 and 2012, at which time he served on the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Nahda” (Renaissance) Project to revive the caliphate and reinstitute Islamic law and also served as Morsi’s campaign spokesman, he was being paid by the Clinton Foundation, having been employed for five years as the Cairo director of the foundation until August 2012, according to his own LinkedIn page.

www-linkedin-com_2016-09-20_11-48-31

This shows that the Clinton Foundation effectively subsidized one of the senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood officials in his rapid rise to power.

His LinkedIn shows he was employed by the Clinton Foundation from August 2007 through August 2012, during which time he served in several positions within the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Oh, That War on Cops By Jack Dunphy

By on October 21st, 2016

“46 police officers have been shot to death in the United States so far this year, a staggering 55 percent increase over the number seen at this time in 2015”

Writing in the Washington Post thirteen months ago, Radley Balko assured his readers that, contrary to widespread belief, there was no “war on cops.” He cited a Rasmussen poll taken the week before that found 58 percent of respondents believed there was indeed such a war while just 27 percent did not. Public opinion was at odds with the truth, Balko wrote, and he had the data to support his position: FBI statistics showed that officer deaths from gunfire and non-fatal assaults on police had been declining for years. Balko wrote that 2015 was “shaping up to be the second safest year for police ever, after 2013.”

It’s good to be reminded when the actual statistics run counter to public perception. Police work is after all concerned with seeking the truth, and law enforcement is not served when hysteria is fomented by misleading information. That said, what would Balko say about this year? Has the war whose existence he denied last year now begun?

According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, 46 police officers have been shot to death in the United States so far this year, a staggering 55 percent increase over the number seen at this time in 2015. Balko would perhaps argue that this is an aberration, a statistical blip on an otherwise downward trend, like a brief rally in a long-term bear market. And maybe it is, but whatever the multi-year trend may be, a 55 percent increase surely bears examination. Even the skeptics of the “war on cops” must admit that there has been a change in attitudes regarding crime and policing over the last several years, a change that became all the more pronounced with the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. Lest we forget, the officer who shot Brown was acting completely within the law when he did so. Despite this, the Brown shooting brought the Black Lives Matter movement to prominence, and despite its origins in the poisonous lie of “hands up, don’t shoot,” it continues to shape both perceptions and policy in American policing.

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

New York Times: Trump triggering mass hysteria among rape victims By Ed Straker

By on October 21st, 2016

The New York Times is reporting that many victims of rape are running to therapists because of the mere possibility that Donald Trump could get elected president.

For women, particularly those who have been victims of sexual assault, the election has triggered painful memories. Ms. Elias [a therapist] said that after the second debate, “many of my female patients came in and wanted to talk about Trump.” She said patients felt that Mr. Trump seemed to stalk Mrs. Clinton and invade her space. Some patients needed to process incidents in which they had felt belittled or harassed by men in their lives.

“Women said their hearts were racing during the debate, they were that triggered,” Ms. Elias said. “Some came in complaining of having had nightmares.”

First there were trigger words, words that liberals simply could not endure. Now we have trigger people, people whose mere existence causes panic! And Donald Trump is one of them.

Thankfully, this triggering experience is limited to the thought of Donald Trump and no one else.

Women do not report being triggered by the thought of accused rapist Bill Clinton returning to the White House. Nor are they triggered by Mrs. Clinton’s legal representation of a child rapist, or her seeming indifference to the Disney ride length line of women whom Mr. Clinton allegedly abused or raped during his long politica and sexual career. Nor are they apparently triggered by Mrs. Clinton’s receipt of large sums of money from Muslim countries who literally, and I do mean literally, enslave their women.

Women seemed more concerned that Mr. Trump “invaded” Mrs. Clinton’s space during the debate, but Mr. Clinton invaded a lot more intimate spaces of women than Mr. Trump did that night.

There’s plenty to criticize about what Donald Trump has said about women (and perhaps done), but this asymmetical hysteria shows how liberal women conveniently ignore the excesses of their own candidate and focus, to the extreme, on the other. If only there were a treatment for politica brainwashing, perhaps some of these women could be cured.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Chris Wallace’s rigged question about a rigged election By J.B. Williams

By on October 21st, 2016

It was déjà vu all over again when Fox News debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump the question that has dominated the news media ever since, drawing new attacks on Trump from political establishment stooges everywhere.

Back in the spring, during the primaries, Trump was asked if he would sign a pledge to support whoever the eventual GOP nominee might be, pledging not to challenge that nominee and, in the end, to support that nominee. Trump, along with every other GOP primary candidate, agreed to take that pledge, only to watch other GOP candidates refuse to keep that pledge and support him.

Trump didn’t fall for the same trick twice. This time, he answered Wallace by saying he would look at the situation at the time and leave everyone in suspense on the matter – a conservative approach to a blind loaded question aimed more at Trump’s supporters than at Trump himself. The real question was, would Trump supporters accept the outcome of a rigged election?

Wallace had posed a loaded question, and much to the disdain of the pro-Clinton propaganda media, Trump was smart enough to stay out of the corner this time.

Finally grasping the level of anger in millions of American voters fed up with establishment politicians, their complicit news media, phony polling data, and a growing mountain of evidence proving that the election is indeed “rigged” in favor of Hillary Clinton, the media is in a mad search for any way available to quell the rising tide of angry voters before the pot boils over on November 8.

Hard evidence of “election-rigging” is so overwhelming at this point that the only way to deny it is to flat-out lie about it.

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“First They Came for Asia Bibi” by Douglas Murray

By on October 21st, 2016

The same week that Mr Yousaf was extolling the idea that Britain is a proto-Nazi state and Pakistan a potential safe-haven, the Pakistani authorities saw the latest round of the interminable and unforgivable saga of Asia Bibi. This is the woman who has been on death-row in Pakistan for no crime other than the crime of being a Christian. Bibi has been awaiting execution for five years, purely because a neighbour claimed that Bibi had insulted Mohammed during an argument.

They attack the Conservative government of the UK for Nazism while not merely praising, but lauding as a safe haven, a state which actually persecutes and murders people because of their religion.

Which means that he is doing what many other people today are doing, which is knowingly to cover for a racist despotism, so long as it is despotism with an Islamic face.

Is Britain becoming a Nazi state? It would seem unlikely, but to listen to some of the critics of the Conservative government in recent days it would appear that we are only moments away from become a racist despotism.

Last week the convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee, one Christina McKelvie, pronounced that the Conservative party is displaying “some of the most right-wing reactionary politics that I’ve heard in my lifetime” and claimed that the Conservative party’s recent conference showed what will happen in Britain “if we become bystanders and do not speak out against discrimination.” She said that some recent Conservative proposals were “reminiscent of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.”

Higher up the Scottish Nationalist Party food-chain, one of their MPs, Mhairi Black last week also compared the recent Conservative party conference to the Nazi party. She wrote without irony that she was vexed by its alleged “nationalism’, all the more “when that “nationalism” is used as a motivation or an excuse for racist, bigoted and small minded policy.” The policies of the Conservative party, she claimed, were increasingly “reminiscent of early 1930s Nazi Germany.” As though to demonstrate how sparse her knowledge of that period is, she concluded her piece by citing — as though no one could possibly have come across the quotation before — Pastor Martin Niemoller. “First they came for the Jews.”

Having sparked some criticism, other nationalists soon came to the aid of Ms Black. Notable among them was Humza Yousaf, one of the ministers of the SNP and himself a member of the Scottish Parliament. While many people on social media criticised Ms Black’s absurd rhetoric, he chose to back her up. “Those criticising, I have friends/family who have applied for dual nationality with Pakistan. Feel UK will be unbearable for Muslims in future.” This gained headlines of its own. But nobody pointed out the twin outrages of this grotesque nonsense.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Denis MacEoin: (video) Nothing to do With Islam?

By on October 21st, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F5bm2NHDa4

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BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Restoring the Fortunes of Zion Neil Rogachevsky reviews “Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn” by Daniel Gordis.

By on October 21st, 2016

In the old days, Israelis displayed a charming if not always prudent insouciance about what the rest of the world thought of their country. But anti-Israel opinion, always high, has spiked in recent years, including in the United States. And so Israel and its supporters have been forced to step up their efforts to defend the Jewish state in the so-called battle of ideas. Pro-Israel philanthropists have sponsored trips to Israel, boosted advocacy efforts on college campuses and founded a plethora of research institutes, social media feeds and journals aimed at making Israel’s case.

Despite the billions that have been spent on pro-Israel programs, there’s a lack of approachable, popular histories that avoid polemics and actually teach you something. This is what Daniel Gordis aims to supply with “Israel,” which narrates the story of Israel from the origins of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century until today. Though written as a chronological narrative, Mr. Gordis’s purpose is more poetic than historical. The author does not revise previous accounts of Israeli history; the book has very limited original scholarship. He rather wishes to tell the story of the Jewish return to political sovereignty after two millennia of exile, and, despite its flaws, the stunning success of the enterprise so far.

Mr. Gordis, a Jerusalem-based commentator and academic born in New York, deserves credit for ignoring at least one fashion of the history profession: the view that identifying with one’s subject is the mark of a fool or a shill. The author loves his adopted homeland without ignoring its blemishes. He treats the most contested episodes in Israeli history, such as the plight of both Arab and Jewish refugees during the 1948 War of Independence, honestly and fairly.

ENLARGE

Israel

By Daniel Gordis
Ecco, 546 pages, $29.99

Yet the emotional writing has some pitfalls. Though he tries to move and inspire, Mr. Gordis’s prose is sometimes cloying. Yes, Bill Clinton did say “shalom chaver,” or “goodbye friend,” at the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. But to claim that these words have become “forever engraved on Israelis’ memory,” is the stuff of a National Jewish Democratic Council fundraising email. Discussing the return of the ancient Israelites from Egypt, Mr. Gordis turns Pharoah into a kitschy theorist of nationhood. Pharaoh, says Mr. Gordis, recognized “a magnetic attraction between a people and its land.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How Islamic State Weaponized the Chat App to Direct Attacks on the West Police alarmed by emergence of militants that they say are using chat apps and social media to recruit militants in Europe from abroad By Stacy Meichtry and Sam Schechner

By on October 21st, 2016

PARIS—A predawn attack on a French policeman’s home, the killing of a priest during Mass and a car bomb planted near Notre Dame Cathedral in recent months were plots that appeared isolated until investigators discovered a common thread.

Their authors had all allegedly been in contact with a man whom authorities identify as 29-year-old Rachid Kassim.

From somewhere in Islamic State-held territory in Iraq or Syria, authorities say, the French national had used the encrypted Telegram chat app and other social-media tools to contact people back home—mainly French teenagers who are believed to have little or no previous connection to the terror group or each other—and instruct them on how to mount attacks.

Investigators across Europe are alarmed by the rise of militants such as Mr. Kassim, who they suspect have developed a way to “remote control” attacks from far away. That is blurring the lines between assaults carried out by militants trained in Islamic State territory and those by so-called lone wolves who authorities assumed were acting without the direction or support of terror groups.

“What worries us is a new type of attacker who only appears to be acting alone,” said Hans-Georg Maassen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence. “Such assailants are being steered virtually from abroad via instant messaging.”

Followers of Mr. Kassim’s private channel on Telegram received instructions in mid-August on how to buy cooking-gas canisters for a car bomb, according to a copy of the channel’s content provided to The Wall Street Journal by a person with access to it. The content was confirmed by French authorities.

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