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May 2018

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Spinning a Crossfire Hurricane: The Times on the FBI’s Trump Investigation By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

By on May 20th, 2018

If you’re a fading Baby Boomer, you’re faintly amused that the FBI code-named its Trump-Russia investigation “Crossfire Hurricane.” It’s an homage to the Rolling Stones golden oldie “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” — which, come to think of it, might just be a perfect handle for John Brennan, the former Obama CIA director whose specter hovers over each critical juncture of the case.

The young’uns may not believe it, but back before it was known as “classic rock,” you couldn’t just play your crossfire hurricane on Spotify. You had to spin it. Fittingly, that is exactly what the New York Times has done in Wednesday’s blockbuster report on the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

The quick take on the 4,100-word opus is that the Gray Lady “buried the lede.” Fair enough: You have to dig pretty deep to find that the FBI ran “at least one government informant” against the Trump campaign — and to note that the Times learned this because “current and former officials” leaked to reporters the same classified information about which, just days ago, the Justice Department shrieked “Extortion!” when Congress asked about it.

But that’s not even the most important of the buried ledes. What the Times story makes explicit, with studious understatement, is that the Obama administration used its counterintelligence powers to investigate the opposition party’s presidential campaign.

That is, there was no criminal predicate to justify an investigation of any Trump-campaign official. So, the FBI did not open a criminal investigation. Instead, the bureau opened a counterintelligence investigation and hoped that evidence of crimes committed by Trump officials would emerge. But it is an abuse of power to use counterintelligence powers, including spying and electronic surveillance, to conduct what is actually a criminal investigation.

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The Media See Only One Collusion Story By John Fund

By on May 20th, 2018

Anyone examining FBI and Justice Department abuses is smeared and ridiculed.

President Trump is opening a whole new chapter in the war between him and the investigators pursuing him. Today, he tweeted: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

It’s unclear how the Justice Department will respond. In March, Justice’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, announced he would be examining exactly how the DOJ set about employing the so-called Steele dossier to help obtain permission from a special court, the FISA court, to eavesdrop on Trump foreign-policy adviser Carter Page. Apparently, Trump is demanding that the DOJ now look at a range of recent developments, including the news that an FBI informant was fishing for information from Trump officials before any Justice investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia was supposed to have begun.

For well more than a year, we’ve heard about the “Did Trump Collude with Russia” storyline that the special counsel Robert Mueller is pursuing. In recent months, a parallel narrative has been developing. In this account, for which a case is slowly building, figures inside the Obama administration and in the Hillary Clinton campaign may have actively spied on and tried to undermine Trump’s presidential campaign.

But anyone who broaches the thought that there might be two stories relating to 2016 campaign skullduggery rather than just one is viciously attacked. When radio and TV host Mark Levin stitched together mainstream media reports to allege that FISA-court warrants had been sought by the Justice Department to investigate Team Trump, he was branded a conspiracy theorist by Trump critics. He has since been vindicated.

Trump foes have also launched attacks against Kimberly Strassel, my former colleague at the Wall Street Journal. She has done pathbreaking reporting on the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over documents on its 2016 actions to the House Intelligence Committee, chaired Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.).

Nunes believes that the American people deserve to know whether or not their intelligence agencies have followed the law.

On Friday, the Washington Post’s David von Drehle sniffed that “there’s nothing surprising about pundits under the influence of the president attacking U.S. intelligence agencies while minimizing the threat from Russia.”

But it’s Nunes who has faced the most vitriolic attacks. Nunes believes that the American people deserve to know whether or not their intelligence agencies have followed the law. “Someone has to watch the watchers,” he told me recently. “The Constitution vests Congress with oversight powers over the executive branch.”

But that’s not how the media see it. Last month, Jason Zengerle of the New York Times wrote a scathing profile of Nunes, whom he dismissed in a tweet as someone “who’s been propagating (and/or falling for) conspiracy theories since before the Deep State was even a gleam in Donald Trump’s eye.”

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In Politicized Justice, Desperate Times Call for Disparate Measures By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on May 20th, 2018

FBI director Comey and the Obama Justice Department applied a double standard in their handling of the Clinton-email and Trump–Russia investigations.

We wuz robbed. That’s the theme Democrats and their media allies are working hard to cement into conventional wisdom. And robbed in a very specific way: The 2016 presidential election, we’re to believe, was stolen from Hillary Clinton by disparate treatment. As Democrats tell it, the FBI scandalized their candidate while protecting Donald Trump.

You might think peddling that story with a straight face would be a major challenge. But they figure it may work because it was test-driven by the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, in his now infamous press conference on July 5, 2016 — back when the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus on which we rely to read the security tea leaves was simply certain that Mrs. Clinton would win.

If you or I had set up an unauthorized private communications system for official business for the patent purpose of defeating federal record-keeping and disclosure laws; if we had retained and transmitted thousands of classified emails on this non-secure system; if we had destroyed tens of thousands of government records; if we had carried out that destruction while those records were under subpoena; if we had lied to the FBI in our interview — well, we’d be writing this column from the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth. Yet, in a feat of dizzying ratiocination, Director Comey explained that to prosecute Mrs. Clinton would be to hold her to a nitpicking, selective standard of justice not imposed on other Americans.

So it was that the New York Times, in this week’s 4,100-word exposé on the origins of the FBI’s Trump–Russia probe, recycled the theme: Government investigators were savagely public about Clinton’s trifling missteps while keeping mum about the Manchurian candidate’s treasonous conspiracy with Putin.

As we contended in rebuttal on Thursday, the Times’ facts are selective and its narrative theme of disparate treatment is hogwash: Clinton’s bid was saved, not destroyed, by Obama’s law-enforcement agencies, which tanked a criminal case on which she should have been indicted. And the hush-hush approach taken to the counterintelligence case against Donald Trump was not intended to protect the Republican candidate; it was intended to protect the Obama administration from the specter of a Watergate-level scandal had its spying on the opposition party’s presidential campaign been revealed.

But let’s put that aside. Let’s consider the disparate-treatment claim on its own terms.

The DNC Server

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MARILYN BARNEWALL REVIEWS LINDA GOUDSMIT’S BOOK “DEAR AMERICA: WHO’S DRIVING THE BUS”

By on May 20th, 2018

One of the best books I’ve read this past year is “Dear America: Who’s Driving the Bus?” by Linda Goudsmit (Contrapoint Publishing). I would recommend it to anyone who wants to understand school shootings, millions of abortions, fatherless homes, the Deep State, today’s social chaos, and just about any other new millennium societal problem. I wish I had read the book before I married… certainly before I had children. It would be great input for a first-time voter, too.

As Goudsmit explains it, the “Bus” is you. It’s me. It’s the narcissistic amoral teenager who killed 10 and injured 10 people in Santa Fe, Texas last week; it is the narcissistic amoral teenager who has been charged with 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the February 14 shootings in Parkland, FL. Donald Trump, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and all familiar political names have a “Bus.” Each of the treasonous Deep State participants who think they know better than the people what’s good for America has a “Bus.” It is who is carried on each of our busses that make the Never Trumpers think they have the right to undo the results of a democratically-elected President and try to force him by crook and hook to leave office – a coup of which any third world dictator would approve. The “Bus” is each individual liberal who thinks decisions are best made with emotions rather than logical facts and truth — and the “Bus” is each conservative who disagrees.

Goudsmit explains that each of us carries within us the personal hurts and emotional traumas suffered at various times of our lives – mostly from childhood. These personalities, buried so deeply within each of us that they are often totally unknown to us, are passengers on our individual busses. We are unaware that these personalities live within us. When life circumstances create a mirror-like threat that shouts “danger” to one of these trauma-induced personalities from childhood, they often try to take control of the way in which we respond to the perceived threat. If our adult identity chooses to let the emotionally traumatized childhood personality dictate our response to the perceived threat, a child is driving our bus.

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Burning Tires in Gaza, Flaming Newsprint Worldwide Nidra Poller *****

By on May 20th, 2018

It was all so predictable: Billowing clouds of dense black smoke in Gaza, satisfaction in technicolor at the inauguration of the American embassy in Jerusalem. With varying degrees of sarcasm, on a familiar scale from naïve humanism to virulent Jew hatred, commentators commented on the contrasted images. Forcibly to the detriment of Israel. The Jews dance while Gaza burns and bleeds. Bloodbath in Gaza, broad grins in Jerusalem. Indecent! Provocation! And they deliberately chose this highly sensitive date—confluence of the Nakba and the first day of Ramadan—to dangle the red meat of their triumph in front of starving Gazans.

I don’t waste my time analyzing this discourse detail by detail. I did it in September 2000 [Al Dura: Long Range Ballistic Myth, Troubled Dawn of the 21st Century] and have followed the consequences over the years and to date. And I dare believe that my work, and that of other fearless thinkers, has not been in vain. If the adversaries pursue the same strategy and the unthinking commentators respond with the same half-truths and wholesale lies, the results on the ground are no longer in their favor. And that’s what counts.

There is another way to read those iconic images. The Gazan March of Return appears in all its nullity. Hate-filled individuals choke on their own smoke, blinded by their own stupidity, reveling in their self-imposed immobility. The very image of the slingshot-wielding shabab with his head wrapped in a keffieh is lost in the black smoke of burning tires. In civilized societies tires are made for vehicles that transport people, goods, and livestock. The invention of the wheel stands as a turning point in human history. The retrograde March of Return turns that potential for movement into volcanic self-destruction. And Israel doesn’t have the right to bask in the light of its accomplishments?

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Outside the Defensible Perimeter By Karin McQuillan

By on May 20th, 2018

Five years ago, my husband and I bought a house in the emptiest county in America. We went there because the night sky is so dark, you can walk in the high desert by starlight and cast a shadow, so dark you can see distant galaxies and the zodiacal light. Three types of people live in our rural area: amateur astronomers, ranchers, and illegal aliens.

If you climb the mountains behind our house and look south, you look into Mexico. If you climb those mountains to the top, you are on one of the major drug trafficking routes into America. If you stay in the desert at the foot of the mountains, you are in rattlesnake country—the greatest biodiversity of rattlers in America, and the night path of illegal aliens.

It is not even a secret that the 60 miles between the border and Interstate 10 are treated as a no man’s land. We live and vote and pay taxes in America, but the government acts as if we are beyond the defensible perimeter of the country. Border Patrol is everywhere, but even with President Trump, they are just going through the circular motions of catch and release.

They have high tech listening stations in the mountains, trucks equipped with radar on the back roads. They know when drugs are moving through, know regular drop-offs, are adept at finding caches. But if they can’t secure the border, they can’t keep the families that live here safe—and they don’t even try.

We are the deplorables. All of my rancher neighbors have guns. Most are Evangelicals. To Democrats and open-borders Republicans, we are throwaway people. The Other. Disposable.

The reason I am not naming names, even place names, is that these are my neighbors’ stories, not mine, and my neighbors—farmers, cowboys, and ranching families, strong, resourceful, tough people—my neighbors are wary and they are weary. They fear retribution by the drug runners and coyotes who bring the illegals across, because they have seen it happen.

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Blind to Reality By Marilyn Penn

By on May 20th, 2018

Comedian Tig Notaro, interviewed in the NYTimes, had this to say about the possiblity of disgraced men of influence returning to their various jobs: “If a janitor was so great at cleaning the building but also tended to masturbate in front of people, would the people at that building be like, “yes, he masturbated, but I’ve never seen anyone clean so thoroughly, and I was just wondering when he’s going to get his job back, he so good at it.” No it would be “that’s not acceptable.” It’s fame and power that people are blinded by.” (NYT 5/19)

Exactly so Tig, but you have it backwards. In fact, there were no janitors who were outed by the women of MeToo or TimesUp and there’s a simple reason for that. Women were looking for the men who had the fame , power or money – the important thing Tig omitted from her list. In fact, women who hung around these men, sometimes for years, were not blinded by their desire for a piece of one or all of these commodities – they were willfully motivated to preserve their proximity no matter what . We are talking mostly about professional women in publishing, movies, t.v. entertainment – not battered wives with a handful of kids and no marketable skills. The two women who claimed that Eric Schneiderman beat them, choked them, degraded them and made perverse sexual demands, voluntarily kept coming back to the Attorney-General, unwilling to let go of whatever gratification they derived from being in his aura. The women who sat and watched Louis C.K masturbate were voluntarily in his apartment, not out on the sidewalk as passers-by. The young men who purportedly succumbed to James Levine were in his orbit hoping to further their careers as were most of the accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly, James Levine etc.

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NO POSTINGS UNTIL MONDAY MAY 21, 2018

By on May 17th, 2018

OUT OF TOWN

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MY SAY: HEADLINES AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

By on May 16th, 2018

1.I Helped Start the Gaza Protests. I Don’t Regret It. by Ahmed Abu Ratima, New York Times

2. A Grotesque Spectacle in Jerusalem Michelle Goldberg, New York Times

3. Trump’s Failure in Jerusalem New York Times

4. A Hope ‘Each Bullet Was Justified’: Israelis Reflect on Gaza Deaths A day after their soldiers killed 60 mostly unarmed Palestinians in Gaza, Israelis were defiant, defensive or blasé. By ISABEL KERSHNER and DAVID M. HALBFINGER

5.Amid Debate and Violence, Trump Delivers Embassy Victory to Christian Base By ELIZABETH DIAS

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Sweden in Free Fall by Judith Bergman

By on May 16th, 2018

If it is considered ‘objectionable’ in the West to talk about the factual consequences of migration, in Sweden it is now viewed as a crime.

The kind of ‘integration’ that the mosque in Växjö is reportedly spreading to the local Muslim inhabitants is that Muslims are urged not to participate in the Christmas celebration of “kuffars” [a derogatory term for ‘disbelievers’], and Jews are, of course, mentioned as the enemies of Allah. The mosque’s school uses Saudi Arabian school curricula, and encourages women not to dress in ‘Western clothes’.

“Silence has become an established norm in certain groups of inhabitants” in these areas…. there is pressure from relatives and religious communities, not to contact authorities, but to use the local alternative systems, such as the mosque, instead. Sometimes, the local criminal gangs even tell the residents to call them, instead of the police, to minimize the presence of police in the area. — BRÅ, the Swedish Crime Prevention Council

It increasingly appears that it will be Sweden that integrates into Islamic culture.

In 2017, a Swedish police report, “Utsatta områden 2017”, (“Vulnerable Areas 2017”, commonly known as “no-go zones” or lawless areas) showed that there are 61 such areas in Sweden. They encompass 200 criminal networks, consisting of an estimated 5,000 criminals. Twenty-three of those areas were especially critical: children as young as 10 had been involved in serious crimes there, including ones involving weapons and drugs. Most of the inhabitants were non-Western, mainly Muslim, immigrants.

A new report “The Relationship with the Judiciary in Socially Vulnerable Areas” from BRÅ (Brottsförebyggande Rådet), the Swedish Crime Prevention Council, shows that more than half of the inhabitants of these areas — around 500,000 people — think that criminals affect people in the areas by scaring people from appearing as witnesses, from calling the police, from moving freely, and from intervening when witnessing vandalism. Residents fear repercussions from the local criminals, not only against themselves but also against family members.

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