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September 2018

The Truths Behind Our Current Political Turmoil By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/27/the-truths-

Are there any guiding principles that can make sense of the sensational news that now overwhelms the senses seemingly every hour?

What is common to blaring headlines about the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings, an anti-Trump “resistance” buried deep in the permanent bureaucracy and the improper behavior by top officials of the Obama administration, FBI, and Department of Justice?

There are a few subtexts to all these spectacles, scandals, and melodramas.

First, those in power had never imagined that Donald Trump either could or should win the 2016 election.

That reality emboldened federal employees to take risks and step over the line in efforts to ensure that Trump would be humiliated at the polls. Officials assumed that incoming President Hillary Clinton would either overlook or reward their zealotry.

FBI kingpins such as James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok either broke the law or made a mockery of the FBI’s ethical guidelines. They acted as if Clinton would win, or should have won, the election.

Had Clinton won the presidency, we would have absolutely no knowledge of any prior misconduct at the FBI, the Department of Justice, the National Security Agency or the CIA under the Obama administration. Trump prompted all that hysteria by winning.

Second, both the Democratic and Republican establishments, as well as the proverbial “deep state” bureaucracy, agreed that President Trump was so crude and uncouth that he must not continue in office.

The idea that any means necessary were justified by the noble ends of destroying Trump explains everything from the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times detailing formal White House resistance to Trump’s governance, to Bob Woodward’s latest unsourced expose of purported Trump chaos, to Robert Mueller’s investigation that was mandated to find “Russian collusion” and has ended up desperate to find any crimes that might prove Trump guilty of something.

Third, had Trump simply failed, as predicted, there would be far less frenzy. His Democratic opponents and many in his own party would have quietly found ways to remove him.

But instead, the economy is booming in a way previously unseen in the 21st century, with near-record-low unemployment and stock market highs. The economy is growing faster than it has in years. Domestic energy production is also hitting record highs.

Israel’s Lessons From Two Historical Events This month marks the 45th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and the 25th Anniversary of the Oslo Accords signing. Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271413/israels-lessons-two-historical-events-joseph-puder

This month (September, according to the Hebrew calendar) marks the anniversary of two major historical events in the Middle East. Both of these events have had major repercussions on the region and in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Forty-five years ago, on October 6, 1973, the armies of Egypt and Syria launched an attack on Israel during the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. Israeli military intelligence cautioned against a rush to war. Major-General Zaira, Israel’s Chief of Intelligence, with an over-confident attitude, dismissed reports of Egyptian forces concentrating along the Suez Canal front as the same old Egyptian maneuvers. Prime Minister Golda Meir, conscious of what might be the western reaction to Israeli military mobilization, and in particular, wary of a negative U.S. reaction, declined to order full mobilization, even when the Mossad Chief Zvi Zamir brought her a tip from an Egyptian double-agent (President Sadat’s son-in-law) that the Egyptians would attack on Yom Kippur. As a consequence of the delay in Israel’s mobilization, and Egypt’s surprise attack, the Israeli fortification along the Suez Canal fell, albeit after a heroic fight by the defenders. The lack of preparedness on the part of Israel as a result of over-confidence stemming from the Six-Day War, cost the lives of almost 3,000 Israeli soldiers. Ultimately, Israel triumphed in spite of the early setbacks.

Twenty five years ago, on September 13, 1993, the Oslo Accords were formally signed on the White House lawn, with a grinning President Bill Clinton overseeing the historical handshake between Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman. The signing of the Oslo Accords launched what we now know as the “peace process.”

Avenatti’s Freak Show Creepy porn lawyer presents a woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh of gang rape. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271441/avenattis-freak-show-matthew-vadum

On the eve of a historic Supreme Court confirmation hearing, two more women have materialized out of thin air to accuse President Trump’s high court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual improprieties – bringing the total number of accusers to four.

Even more eleventh-hour character-assassination attempts may be coming given the enraged Left’s determination to prevent the judge’s ascent to the Supreme Court at all costs. Whether the claims are true is irrelevant to these people. Only the seriousness and luridness of the charges matter as they get aired over and over again in the 24-hour news cycle. They don’t care about the victims they create. Only the headlines.

The new allegations surfaced yesterday as the Senate Judiciary Committee battens down the hatches for a hearing today to receive oral evidence from the first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, 51, who claims Kavanaugh, 53, tried to rape her decades ago when he was a high school student.

The third accuser is Julie Swetnick, a 55-year-old certified systems engineer, who on Wednesday claimed that in the early 1980s Kavanaugh and others spiked the drinks of young women at high school parties with intoxicants to clear the way for them to be gang-raped.

KNOWN WOLF: Westminster Terror Attacker Was on Radar of UK Authorities Since 2004 By Patrick Poole

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/known-wolf-westminster-terror-attacker-was-on-radar-of-uk-authorities-since-2004/

An ongoing inquiry into the March 22, 2017 terror attack near the Houses of Parliament in Westminster has revealed that the UK’s MI5 spy service knew about attacker Khalid Masood and his connections to terrorists since 2004. However, an investigation of him had been dropped.

UK authorities now defend their decision to stop the investigation as “appropriate” despite his continued association with a banned organization.

The terror attack killed five and injured nearly 50 more. Masood ran over pedestrians, and then stabbed a police officer to death guarding the gates to Parliament’s entrance. Masood was shot and killed by police at the scene.

Just moments prior to the attack, Masood sent out a document entitled “Jihad” on WhatsApp that featured a picture on the cover of him standing in front of the Kaaba in Mecca.

The Daily Mail reports:

Masood’s phone number appeared in the contact list of one of the central figures in Operation Crevice, a plot to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub and Bluewater shopping centre in Kent using half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, in April 2004.

He continued to pop up as a link to a man associated with the Crevice plotters before appearing in another investigation six years later, as a potential facilitator for extremists travelling to Pakistan through Saudi Arabia.

But an MI5 witness told the hearing, from behind a green curtain, that the security service had taken the correct decision in closing their investigation into him in 2010 and did so two years later.

The MI5 officer, known only as Witness L, told the inquest that a person ‘subsequently identified’ as Khalid Masood had appeared in the contacts list for Waheed Mahmood, the man considered the spiritual leader of the fertiliser bombers…

Europeanize America? Not on Your Life by David C. Stolinsky

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13022/europeanize-america

Europe did not invent racism and religious bigotry, but it surely perfected them.
Europeans lived for centuries under kings and emperors. They came to believe that power flowed from the top down. The “elite” decide what is best for the “common people” — the “masses” — and then cram it down their throats.
The “elite” send their children to the best schools and universities, and relegate the children of the “common people” to lousy schools, where they get lousy educations, which prepare them for lousy jobs, which pay lousy salaries, which leave them dependent on the government for a lifetime of “assistance.” But they expect the “common people” to be grateful for the “universal education” — and for the “assistance.”
The American idea of individuals being responsible and taking responsibility is utterly foreign to the “elite,” who seem much more comfortable with the European idea of infantilizing subjects to make them dependent on a parentified government to protect them, care for them, dole out money to them, and in general control their lives. If people cannot even choose their own light bulbs, toilets, or dishwasher detergent, in what sense are they free?

If Europeanize were not a word, we would have to invent it, because that is what many are doing to America. Remember when candidate Obama was asked if he believed America is exceptional? He answered yes, but only in the sense that Britain, Greece, and other nations are exceptional.

As Gilbert and Sullivan said, “When everyone is somebody, then no one is anybody.”

If every nation is exceptional, none is.

It is not that Obama and his friends really think America is unexceptional. They may well believe it is exceptional, but that it should not be. So they do everything they can to end its exceptional nature, and to make it resemble other nations. They are Europeanizing America.

No Arab demographic time bomb :(Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/2N1nMZ6

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Jewish State is not facing an Arab demographic time bomb; but, benefits from a robust Jewish demographic tailwind of births and net-immigration.

For example, between 1995 and 2017, the number of Israeli Jewish births surged by 74%, from 80,400 to 140,000, while the number of Israeli Arab births grew by 19% during the same period – from 36,000 to 43,000 births.

Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, the trend of Israeli emigration has slowed down. Thus, the number of Israelis staying abroad for over a year was expanded by 6,300 in 2016 (the lowest in ten years – a derivative of the growth of Israel’s economy), compared to 8,200 in 2015 and 14,200 additional emigrants in 1990. At the same time, Israel’s population surged from 4.8 million in 1990 to 8.8 million in 2018.

Since the end of the 19th century, the Jewish-Arab demographic balance has systematically defied the demographic establishment’s assessments and projections.

Who is the real extremist? By Michael Berenhaus

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/who_is_the_real_extremist.html

Dana Milbank calls Israelis “extremists” in his editorial ‘America’s Jews are watching Israel in horror” (9/23/18). Milbank adapts the perennial straw man approach, this time using his rabbi, whom Milbank brags comes from a long lineage of rabbis. Milbank quotes this rabbi as saying that under right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there is: “religious extremism and an upsurge in settler violence.” This, one week after an Israeli “settler” Ari Fuld was stabbed in the back and murdered by a 17-year-old Palestinian. The Palestinian would have killed more had it not been for the dying Fuld shooting at him as he went down. Is it really that hard to identify the extremists in this conflict?

Milbank claims that “Netanyahu, with President Trump’s encouragement, leads Israel on a path to estrangement and destruction.” He provides no evidence of this. The Washington Post and its editorial staff have been repeating this apoplectic warning about Israel causing its own demise for decades. Israel has only grown stronger!

Netanyahu, according to Milbank, “is dissolving America’s bipartisan pro-Israel consensus” along with Trump creating this “division.” Is it really Netanyahu and Trump causing the division or those who Milbank supports?

Why am I not surprised that Milbank adds a quote, that he says he agrees with, claiming that Israel “aims to advance its own expansion through seizure of land, violation of international law, exclusion and discrimination.” Israel is .1% of the Middle East, it violates no international laws, and has less discrimination than any country in the region, if not the world.

Surviving Our ‘Survivors’ By David Solway

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/surviving_our_survivors.html

According to the feminist mantra, a veritable epidemic of male violence against women is sweeping the country. Women in every walk of life are apparently prey to a wave of male sexual harassment, assault, and rape; they are victims of a nefarious consortium called “the patriarchy,” which has been oppressing women in the home, the workplace, and the professions from time immemorial. Women who bring forth allegations of male sexual misconduct, whether proven or not and no matter how frivolous or innocuous, are now classified as “survivors” who must be believed and afforded remedial counseling and legal recourse. Accused men are regarded as bearers of a pathology known as “toxic masculinity” and must be prosecuted as undoubted perpetrators.

I have observed and recorded innumerable examples of the phenomenon. The litany of dodgy #MeToo grievances is common knowledge – the preposterous allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is only the most currently prominent such episode – and even women who have not entered the hashtag world are primed and provoked to join the vendetta. Four more such instances have just now come to my attention, a grouping that, in effect, constitutes a full data set.

Marcus Knight, a student at Saddleback College in the California Community College system, who suffers from dysphasia, autism, and cerebral palsy and is fitted with a drainage shunt to relieve pressure on the brain, has been the target of two Title IX complaints. His transgression? Asking for a fist bump and a selfie with a presumably friendly co-ed. Knight was not allowed to defend himself against the allegations. The “survivor” of a fist bump and a selfie must be protected at all costs.

Cowardly Republicans Grant a False Premise By Angelo Codevilla

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/26/cowardly
The logic of a premise will drag you to its conclusion. When Senate Republicans accepted the premise that Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh was a legitimate personal complaint rather than a political maneuver orchestrated by the Democratic Party, they placed themselves in the grips of a logic leading them through bargaining about how to accommodate her as he was dogged by a nationwide campaign of personal and political vilification.

The logic’s next step is likely to come Thursday, when Ford does not show at the Judiciary Committee hearing amidst renewed Democratic and media accusations of a litany of sins by now all too familiar.

Republicans will be left with the same option they had when the Democrats first brought up their last-minute landmine—to press ahead with confirmation. But by accepting a premise they knew was false, they energized the Democrats’ constituencies and dispirited their own.

They embarrassed themselves by volunteering to be played for suckers, as well as looking callous toward victims of sexual assault. Brilliant.

The substance, the manner, and the circumstances of Ford’s accusation shouted that it is a hoax—that the Democrats had conjured a political bludgeon of last resort, and never intended for Ford to testify. But the Republicans, being pusillanimous, refused to acknowledge the reality of what they were getting into.

The accusation’s substance advertised its unseriousness. The total lack of specifics about the time and place of the alleged assault, of anything that might be an investigation’s staring place, was red flag enough. But the contradiction between the original report to a therapist about four men in the room—and nothing about Kavanaugh—and the subsequent account of two, Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, was as obvious to the Democrats making the charge as to the Republicans. When Judge denied any knowledge of the alleged party, followed by all others who Ford named as having knowledge of it, the Republicans had no reason to refrain from labeling the accusations the very definition of slander. No reason except cowardice.

Laugh at the U.N., Not With It The world body’s record on human rights is a cruel joke. 3 Comments By Elliot Kaufman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/laugh-at-the-u-n-not-with-it-1538002997

Oh, how they laughed.

When President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” the delegates of the world couldn’t contain themselves. “I didn’t expect that reaction,” Mr. Trump responded to the laughter ringing through the hall, “but that’s OK.”

Mr. Trump’s boast merited an eye roll, but I’d laugh right back at the U.N. It deserves it.

Who but the U.N. would elect some of the world’s leading human-rights abusers—Saudi Arabia, China, Venezuela, Pakistan and others—to run a Human Rights Council and lecture the rest of us? In 2016 many of these members even tried to silence Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, in midsentence as he exposed their hypocrisy.

Who but the U.N. would elect the Islamic Republic of Iran to the executive board of its agency “dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women”? The World Economic Forum ranks Iran 140th out of 144 nations in parity between the sexes for a reason. Its regime arrests and beats women who peacefully protest for their rights. It imprisons and tortures women for removing their headscarves. Discrimination is written into every area of Iran’s civil code, from marriage and divorce to employment.