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October 2018

Two Minnesota Republican Candidates Assaulted By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/two-minnesota-republican-candidates-assaulted/

Two Republican candidates for state office in Minnesota have been physically assaulted in recent days, leading prominent Republican lawmakers to caution their Democratic colleagues against employing inflammatory rhetoric.

Republican state representative Sarah Anderson was punched in the arm last week after confronting a man who was destroying yard signs promoting Republican candidates.

“It was just insane. He was charging at me, saying, ‘Why don’t you go kill yourself?’” Anderson told the Washington Free Beacon. “To have someone physically coming after you and attacking you is just disheartening.”

Shane Mekeland, a first-time Republican candidate for the state legislature, suffered a concussion over the weekend after he was sucker punched while meeting with constituents at a local restaurant.

“I was so overtaken by surprise and shock, and if this is the new norm, this is not what I signed up for,” said Mekeland, who has suffered from memory loss and sensitivity to light since the incident.

Local police confirmed that a suspect had been identified in connection with both assaults and said charges will likely be filed in the coming days.

The attacks took place days after the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party suspended a communications staffer for one week for writing in a Facebook post that Democrats would “bring [Republicans] to the guillotine” in the coming elections.

Lee Smith:Ten Key Questions About the Khashoggi Affar

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/15/10-key-questions-khashoggi-affair-answer-buying-press-narrative/
The discipline shown in the messaging campaign against Saudia Arabia suggests Turkish President Recep Erdogan is managing the Khashoggi file directly.

On October 2, Saudi national and U.S. green-card holder Jamal Khashoggi reportedly walked into the Saudi consulate to resolve issues related to his marital status. Through anonymous leaks to the press, Turkish sources claim he did not leave the diplomatic facility alive. More anonymous sources claim he was tortured and murdered, allegations repeated in the U.S. press without evidence.

It is possible that the circumstances around Khashoggi’s disappearance will soon come to light. However, it’s equally likely that the passage of time will only further obscure events. To cast some light on the issue, I thought it was worthwhile asking what seem to me the central questions.
1. Is There Evidence Khashoggi Was Murdered?

Turkish sources say there is. The U.S. press has reported that unnamed Turkish officials have told them—or unnamed second-hand Turkish sources had told them—they have evidence, audio and video, that a team of Saudi officials detained, tortured, and killed Khashoggi.

However, no reporters, neither Western nor Turkish, have seen that evidence. If it exists, the Turks have not made it public. In one of the few leaks from the U.S. government, an intelligence official told CNN there is no hard evidence as to whether Khashoggi is dead or alive.
2. Why Has Turkey Asked Saudi Arabia to Join Its Khashoggi Investigative Team?

According to press reports, the government in Ankara has asked Riyadh to help investigate what happened to Khashoggi. The Turkish foreign minister recently complained that the “[Saudis] aren’t cooperating in full extent to uncover the circumstances of Khashoggi’s disappearance. We would like to see a genuine cooperation from them.”

This makes no sense. If Saudi Arabia is suspected of abducting or killing Khashoggi, its involvement in the investigation would compromise the probe, even giving a potential suspect opportunity to tamper with evidence. Further, if there is audio and video evidence that a Saudi team killed Khashoggi, as Turkish and U.S. media report, there is no need for an investigation—the case has already been solved.

Democrats’ treatment of Kavanaugh was depraved. America won’t reward them at the polls.By Marc A. Thiessen

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-treatment-of-kavanaugh-was-depraved-america-wont-reward-them-at-the-polls/

Just a few weeks ago, analysts thought that control of the U.S. Senate was in play this November and that momentum was shifting to the Democrats. Thanks to their brutal campaign of character assassination against now-Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, those chances appear to be slipping away.

Case in point is Tennessee, where Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn was struggling in her Senate race against popular former Democratic governor Phil Bredesen. In mid-September — after the first Kavanaugh confirmation hearings — a CNN poll showed Blackburn trailing by five points (in a state Donald Trump won by 26 points). But as the ferocity of the attacks on Kavanaugh grew, so did Blackburn’s poll numbers. By early October — after Christine Blasey Ford testified and Kavanaugh was accused of exposing himself to a college classmate and participating in high school gang rapes — a CBS News poll showed that Blackburn had pulled ahead by eight points. And last week, after Kavanaugh was finally confirmed amid scenes of angry protesters banging on the doors of the Supreme Court, a New York Times poll showed Blackburn leading by 14 points. That is a shift of 19 points in one month.

In other words, the Democrats’ smear campaign of uncorroborated sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh has united Tennessee Republicans behind Blackburn and poured cold water on Democrats’ chances in the Volunteer State. And rightly so. It probably didn’t help with Tennessee voters that Democrats excoriated Kavanaugh for his high school drinking and for inside jokes in his high school yearbook — as if being a beer-drinking jock was some sort of crime. Worse, Kavanaugh was publicly branded a sex offender for accusations decades old and uncorroborated by any witnesses or evidence. A man’s good name was being destroyed.

With FL, IA Races in Play, Ryan’s PAC Ponies Up . By Adele Malpass –

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/10/17/with_fl_ia_races_in_play_ryans_pac_ponies_up_138374.html

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, announced Tuesday that it reserved $1 million in television ads in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for two-term incumbent Rep. Rod Blum and a mid-six-figure amount for Maria Salazar, who is running against former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala in South Florida’s 27th Congressional District. Just a few months ago, these seats had been written off as flipping from red to blue; however, the combination of strengthening poll results in both districts and a narrowing of the overall enthusiasm gap has put them back into play.

Miami-based FL-27 was supposed to be an easy pickup for the Democrats after 15-term Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen announced her retirement. This is a district that Hillary Clinton won by almost 20 percentage points and is nearly 57 percent Hispanic. Throughout the campaign, Shalala, 77, has been criticized for her low-energy campaign style — with even Democrats complaining that she was in “sleep-mode.” Salazar, 56, is a well-known Spanish-language TV newswoman and a native of the district. She’s effectively landed punches on her opponent as being a carpetbagger who doesn’t speak Spanish and who won’t be effective in Washington. In an Oct. 6 Mason-Dixon Telemundo 51 poll, Salazar had a two-point lead, which is well within the survey’s four-point margin of error. RealClearPolitics rates the race as a toss-up.

MY SAY: OBAMA AND THE RAPPERS

The Dems and their obedient media are in a snit about Kanye West’s proximity to President Trump. Hmmm. However, when the controversial rapper Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr. known as “Common” who glorified police killers and sang about burning President George W. Bush, was invited to the Obama White House they were only mildly perturbed. President Barack Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney defended “Common” by stating that in his “poetry reading” he had a broader message.

Or, how about Obama’s invitation to the rapper Jay-Z? As Humberto Fontova pointed out:

“But for inviting a rapper who identified with Che Guevara a Stalinist mass-murderer who denounced President Obama’s co-citizens as, “hyenas fit only for extermination!” and who openly craved to incinerate millions of them with a surprise nuclear attack….well, not much. Such is the news cycle. ”

For the record:

“I’m like Che Guevara with a bling on!” (Jay-Z in his Black Album)

Carter Page Seeks Justice While the Real Trump-Russia Perps Sweat By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/17/carter-page

If you are the karma-believing type, this week is filled with events that should nourish your political soul. A few of the masterminds behind the bogus Trump-Russia collusion tale finally are getting some payback—and one of their targets is going to court to get his reputation back.

Two years ago this week, the Obama Administration’s FBI sought and received an order to spy on Carter Page, a private citizen who briefly volunteered for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. On October 21, 2016, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved an application to wiretap the former Naval officer amid suspicions he was a working for Russia and engaged in “clandestine intelligence activities…on behalf of a foreign power.”

Although the information was presented to the secret court as legitimate intelligence from reliable sources, it actually was nothing more than manufactured political dirt on the Trump campaign commissioned by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The shady opposition research was produced by Fusion GPS, a consulting firm headed by Glenn Simpson, retained in mid-2016 by the DNC and Clinton team to sabotage Trump’s campaign.

The sketchy allegations about Page’s ties to Russia—contained in the so-called Steele dossier—made several unsubstantiated but explosive claims; it nonetheless was peddled to top law enforcement officials, lawmakers, and journalists as credible material just weeks before the election.

During the same time period, the dossier’s author, ex-British spy turned hired gun Christopher Steele, and Simpson personally were meeting with reporters to seed the story that the Trump campaign nefariously was conspiring with the Kremlin to influence the election. News articles about the FBI’s interest in Page began appearing in the media in late September, and continued until Election Day.

Thus, the Trump-Russia election collusion “crime” was born.

Now, two years later, Page is seeking redemption while the perpetrators of the case against him run for cover. On Monday, Page filed a lawsuit in federal court against the DNC and Perkins Coie, the connected law firm that was the payment conduit between the DNC, Clinton campaign and Fusion. (Law firms are hired in order to circumvent election reporting laws that would reveal which political consulting shops are being paid.) Two Perkins Coie principals are individually named as defendants.

Page’s defamation lawsuit accuses the parties of “directly expos[ing] Dr. Page to public hatred, contempt, ridicule and obloquy, which severely deprived him of public confidence, and injured him severely in all his occupations, and tended to scandalize both his colleagues and friends.”

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: FLORIDA: MARIA SALAZAR (R) FOR CONGRESS DISTRICT 27

She is running against Clinton clone Donna Shalala….rsk

After graduating the University of Miami with a B.A. in Communications, Maria Elvira acquired a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Maria Elvira’s passion for promoting news transparency and communicating salient national affairs continued as she served as Miami’s local reporter for Univision Network’s flagship station, Channel 23. With 35 years of experience of breaking-news coverage under her belt, Maria Elvira has now become one of the nation’s most recognized Latin American political affairs journalists for the U.S. Hispanic community. Her established reputation as a leading television news reporter comes from a culmination of accomplishments and awards throughout her career, including:

Winner of 5 Emmy Awards in broadcast journalism
News Anchor – MEGA TV, Telemundo, CNN español
Host – Maria Elvira Live TV Show
Senior Political Correspondent – Telemundo
Central American Bureau Chief – Univision
White House and Pentagon Correspondent – Univision
First and only U.S. Spanish-language T.V. journalist to interview Fidel Castro one-on-one
Bestselling Author – “If God is With You, Who Could be Against You?”

Kanye West and the Fugitive Slave Law Exposing the Left’s ferocious hate for blacks who dare to think for themselves. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271643/kanye-west-and-fugitive-slave-law-bruce-thornton

After rapper Kanye West’s appearance with Donald Trump at the White House, the progressives unleashed their cable news and twitter bloodhounds to pursue West and drag him back to the Democrat plantation. Commentators who relentlessly police language for racial slurs no matter how barely detectable, suddenly were reveling in old demeaning insults like “minstrel show” and “token,” new ones like “Negro” (which I’m betting few of us know is now a slur), and idiotic ones like being a spokesman for “white supremacy.”

The warning is clear for black dissidents, and has been since the “high-tech lynching” of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose scolding of the Senate Judiciary Committee put it best:

This [hearing] is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.

The Thomas hearings in 1991 exposed just how far the once-noble Civil Rights Movement had degenerated into the illiberal identity politics that now defines the Democrat Party, and informs its electoral strategy of bundling various victim-groups into a coalition. While the Civil Rights Movement wanted the nation to honor its classical liberal ideals of inalienable rights like equal opportunity and equal justice, and its Judeo-Christian heritage that a dehumanizing segregation besmirched and betrayed, identity politics scorns those ideals as instruments of an oppressive Western Civilization. Virtues like self-reliance and personal autonomy that racists once claimed to be impossible for black people, are now similarly discarded for being racist excuses for black poverty and social disorder created by systemic “white privilege” and endemic “racism.”

Instead, the federal government became the plantation of the mind, its powers to regulate and redistribute eroding the virtues of self-sufficiency and responsibility, which are the necessary foundations of true freedom. The equality of opportunity became the equality of result, one engineered by federal agencies and policies like affirmative action or minority set-asides or federal dollars promiscuously pumped into black neighborhoods without thought for the moral hazard that accompanied this largess. The consequence, of course, was the dependence that erodes freedom and encodes inferiority. For as the African proverb says, “The hand that gives is always above the hand that receives.”

Big Tech Snuffing Free Speech; Google’s Poisonous ‘Dragonfly’ by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13129/google-censorship-china

If the big social media companies choose what to publish and what not to publish, they should be subject to the same licensing and requirements as media organizations.

Google has decided it will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work because Google employees were upset that the technology might be used for lethal military purposes. Yet Google is planning to launch a censored search engine in China that will empower a totalitarian “Big Brother is watching you” horror state.

Freedom Watch filed a $1 billion class-action lawsuit against Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, claiming that they suppress conservative speech online.

A Media Research Center report found that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube stifle conservative speech and that in some instances staffers have admitted that doing so was intentional.

Chinese officials prevented a journalist, Liu Hu, from taking a flight because he had a low “social credit” score. According to China’s Global Times, as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.

The internet, especially social media, has become one of the primary places for people to exchange viewpoints and ideas. Social media is where a considerable part of the current national conversation takes place.

Arguably, big tech companies, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, therefore carry a responsibility to ensure that their platforms are equally accessible to all voices in that national conversation. As private commercial entities, the social media giants are not prima facie legally bound by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, and are free to set their own standards and conditions for the use of their platforms. Ideally, those standards should be applied equally to all users, regardless of political or other persuasion. If, however, these companies choose what to publish and what not to publish, they should be subject to the same licensing and requirements as media organizations.

Turkey: Enabling Mass Illegal Migration into Greece by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13127/turkey-greece-migration

Turkish authorities repeatedly have threatened Europe with an influx of migrants. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threats should not be ignored.

Ever since the migrant crisis started to escalate in 2011 — with the onset of civil war in Syria — those who were critical of mass, unchecked immigration have been called “racists,” “bigots” or “Islamophobes.”

Today, however, the continued chaos in many European countries caused by immigration, and accompanying increase in crime — including murder and rape committed by Islamist extremists — appear to have proven the critics right.

Greece is currently facing a serious surge in undocumented migrant arrivals in the Evros region, an entry point for migrants illegally trying to enter the country from Turkey. Arrivals have roughly doubled since 2017, and Athens is holding Ankara responsible.

The influx from places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Bangladesh and African countries into Turkey reportedly has been on the rise in recent months, with 1.5 million people from Muslim countries waiting on the Iranian border to enter Turkey. This has sparked fears in Athens that they could be heading for Greece.

According to a fact sheet released last month by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), “Sea arrivals [in Greece] peaked this month with 4,000 people. Land arrivals through Evros also increased to 1,400.”

As a result, the Greek city of Thessaloniki is in crisis. According to a recent article in The Greek Reporter, “Dozens of migrants have turned Aristotelous square in the center of Thessaloniki to a makeshift camp,” with many “sleeping in the open.”