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November 2018

POLITICS Comments turned off

Vengeance is Ours, Sayeth the Democrats….Edward Cline

By on November 14th, 2018

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/11/vengeance-is-ours-sayeth-democrats.html

One way to understand the depthless malice exhibited by the Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, the MSM, Hollywood, and other anti-Trump trolls and activists over the last two years is to grasp that the urge to flood the country – and Europe – with “illegal’ immigrants and to swamp Western culture under the demands of arrogant, predatory non-citizens who promised to smother it is to wreck vengeance on those who either voted for Trump or opposed borderless nations, and to have a taste of rape and theft. Americans will learn the hard way to conform to Democratic priorities, or suffer if they don’t.

One variation of the vengeance quotation is from Deuteronomy 32:35

‘Vengeance is Mine, and retribution, In due time their foot will slip; For the day of their calamity is near, And the impending things are hastening upon them.’

Here in America, our vengeance is also to steal elections from the legitimate election of conservatives and other fascists by finding new Dem ballots behind soda vending machines, in secret storage facilities, and in Brenda Snipes’s purse.

Here in America, our first priority is to drown America and hold its head in the water until it dies. We can do that and not be called treasonous, even though that term means nothing to us, unless you suddenly advocate capitalism, individual rights, and the Constitution.

It is also to steal your guns and leave you helpless before our onslaught.

We’re going to encourage Antifa and other violent activists to harass Americans wherever they go to shop or eat, or at gas stations, or at home, and to make their lives miserable and unlivable. Pro-Trumpers will be mobbed and beaten in Wall-Marts, Targets, supermarkets, and churches. We’re going to sanction using bike locks and fists and acid to put them down and to experience the pain of being pro-Trump voters. They will be charged with opposing the “freedom of speech” of activists if they fight back and injure an ally of the Democrats. The feet of our enemies will slip, and we will “kick ‘em”when they’re down. We will implement Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to the maximum. Calling us Leftists or any other name will not hurt us. We’re taking our power back.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

“Purpose of Government and the Downside of Dependency” Sydney Williams

By on November 14th, 2018

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“The purpose of government is to enable the people to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the people, not the governors.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Last weeks’ election was a manifestation of the fortune that is ours to live in this country. Forty-seven percent of the electorate (110 million people) cast ballots. That would compare with 36.7% in 2014 and 41% in 2010. While results were not as I would have liked, especially here in Connecticut where voters are in denial as to the fiscal situation, they were a reminder of the first two parts of Lincoln’s famous sentence uttered at Gettysburg, “…a government of the people, by the people…” Now, it is incumbent on those elected to ensure it is “…for the people…”

It is important to remember that, while our government was forged from a cauldron of revolution, the Founders understood the need for order – for government – for without it a liberal, civil society cannot function. Its antithesis is either anarchy or tyranny. And the Founders, despite combatting the British, knew that what they sought was based on a philosophy derived from, among others, such British figures of the enlightenment as John Locke, David Hume and Thomas Hobbes and precedents drawn from English common law. As well, the Founders would have been familiar with Adam Smith through his Theory of Moral Sentiments, and a few may have read The Wealth of Nations, published in March 1776. While desirous of a country where people might pray as they choose, they recognized that the principles embedded in their Christian-Judeo heritage were fundamental to the morality and virtue they espoused and that they expected of those elected to serve.

Ronald Reagan once deadpanned that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Humorless and patronizing Leftists, who always portrayed Mr. Reagan as a dunce, repeated his words, but without the whimsey. Mr. Reagan’s point was that people cannot live freely when government becomes too big, that people lose their sense of self-reliance as dependency on “Big Brother” grows – and that autocracies can emerge from the left, from those who operate from gift-giving platforms. President Obama’s “Life of Julia” was an Orwellian (and frightening) indication of the direction he wanted to take the country.

As I see it, the purpose of our federal government is:

To establish laws, so that a free people can live harmoniously in civil society under the rule of law, not men.
To protect all citizens against any diminution of natural rights, rooted in the Constitution and that bear fruit in the Bill of Rights.
To ensure that laws are obeyed, and to safe-guard the people against harm from home or abroad, (but not, as President Reagan once warned, to protect people against their own follies).
To ensure that a balance is maintained between government’s three branches – executive, legislative and judiciary.
To recognize that all citizens have equal rights – that the value of a vote is not determined by race, gender, religion, or the social and/or economic standing of the individual.
To establish treaties with foreign nations.
To enable interstate and international commerce through the building and maintaining of roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and sea ports, and to ensure that the skies and the seas remain free for the trade and transportation of goods and services.
To maintain a postal service and sound currency.
To promote the general welfare of the public.

a) To help provide for the elderly, the infirm and those unable to provide for themselves.
b) To conserve and protect national forests and parks, for the enjoyment of all people.
c) To help re-build communities when they have been devastated by natural disasters.
d) To regulate foods and medicines and other consumable products that may be harmful.
e) To ensure that youth is provided a basic education, including knowledge of history and civics, but leaving details to states and local governments

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POLITICS Comments turned off

NeverTrump’s Billionaire Leftist Benefactors By Julie Kelly

By on November 14th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/14/nevertrumps

“At what point do others stand up and not just deny Kristol his “conservative” cred, but acknowledge that he is now on the other side? When you join the battlefield alongside partisan hacks like Adam Schiff and take payoffs from leftist billionaires to do their political dirty work, there is nothing Republican or conservative, or frankly, decent, about you.”

Just hours after Jeff Sessions resigned as attorney general last Wednesday at the president’s behest, #TheResistance found its newest target for destruction: Sessions’ interim replacement, Matthew Whitaker.

Negative coverage about the acting attorney general has dominated national publications and cable news outlets. Reporters have portrayed Whitaker as a Trump lackey, a crackpot, and an “attack dog”; Democratic leaders are demanding that he recuse himself from overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation; on Tuesday, incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) warned that if Whitaker fails to step aside from the probe, “his actions will be exposed.” (Of course, this is pure propaganda. As Andrew McCarthy explains, Whitaker is well-qualified and meets the legal requirements for an interim presidential cabinet appointment.)

NeverTrump “conservatives” are aiding Schiff and the media in their campaign to paralyze if not remove Whitaker. Commercials attacking the acting attorney general were aired on several Sunday morning political shows. The ads were sponsored by “Republicans for the Rule of Law,” a group founded earlier this year by Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard. The group’s primary role so far appears to be pimping for the Mueller probe, a political witch-hunt that Kristol and his fellow NeverTrumpers pray will lead to the impeachment and removal of the president. The Left and their NeverTrump footsoldiers fear Whitaker will thwart the special counsel’s investigation instead of rubber stamping Mueller’s ever-expanding investigation as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has done over the past 18 months.

Buying primo air time on network television doesn’t come cheap. So who is funding “Republicans for the Rule of Law” and their attacks on the Republican president and his acting attorney general? Is it big Republican donors?

We haven’t found any, but we have learned learned that one of Kristol’s benefactors is progressive billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the co-founder of eBay.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Women’s March’s Refusal to Condemn Farrakhan Daniel Greenfield

By on November 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271935/womens-marchs-refusal-condemn-farrakhan-daniel-greenfield

The Women’s March has put out yet another statement trying to act as if it’s condemning Farrakhan, without actually condemning him.

The statement by the lefty group, whose leaders, Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour have made anti-Semitic statements and expressed support for Farrakhan, is a masterpiece of careful wording.

Women’s March wouldn’t exist without the leadership of women of color, and we stand with Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory. Women’s March leaders reject anti-Semitism in all its forms.

We recognize the danger of hate rhetoric by public figures. We want to say emphatically that we do not support or endorse statements made by Minister Louis Farrakhan about women, Jewish and LGBTQ communities.

Then it quickly shifts over to attacking the right and pretending that anti-Semitism is just a problem of white supremacism.

But never mind that.

The Women’s March still can’t even condemn Farrakhan’s bigotry. Instead it does “not support or endorse statements made by Minister Louis Farrakhan about women, Jewish and LGBTQ communities.”

Does it support or endorse other statements by Farrakhan?

Does not “support or endorse” is very different than “reject and condemn.”

When you refer to the leader of a racist hate group who praised Hitler with a honorific, distancing yourself from his rhetoric, without condemning it, you’re cowardly and complicit.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Schumer Urges Florida to Ignore Ballot Deadlines By Mairead McArdle

By on November 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chuck-schumer-urges-florida-to-ignore-ballot-deadlines/

Senator Chuck Schumer on Tuesday encouraged Florida to blow off fast-approaching deadlines to submit vote totals for the Senate race where Republican Rick Scott leads incumbent Democratic senator Bill Nelson by a tiny margin.

“The more time that passes since election day, the better things keep looking for Democrats,” Schumer said at a joint press conference with Nelson in Washington, D.C.

“Supervisors of the elections should have all the time they need to count every Floridan’s ballot,” the Senate minority leader said. “Even if the vote count has to go beyond Sunday.”

Schumer said the deadlines should be ignored since the Senate race does not have an electoral vote in Congress scheduled for December as the 2000 presidential race did when it underwent a recount in Florida.

“We will not have a rerun of 2000, when bullying and intimidation ruled and created a rush to judgement that, to this day, many Americans believe that election was unfairly decided,” Schumer said. “That cannot happen again.”

The Florida governor has a mere 12,562 more votes than Nelson according to the current count.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The West Must Offer Immediate Asylum to Asia Bibi by Giulio Meotti

By on November 14th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13306/asia-bibi-asylum

Asia Bibi is expected to remain in Pakistan until her case is once again “reviewed in an appeal process” ordered by the Prime Minister. Bibi’s judicial process now looks infinite. Meanwhile, thousands of Islamists fill the Pakistani streets, calling for her execution.

Many of the values that make the West “the West” are now at stake in her fate: freedom of expression, religious freedom, freedom of movement, the rule of law, human dignity, and the separation of church and state. If the West does not fight for Asia Bibi, for whom should it fight?

“If Asia Bibi is denied asylum in the UK then what the heck is the point of the asylum system?” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, refugee from Somalia, author and human rights campaigner.

A London where an ISIS-supporting preacher of Pakistani descent, Anjem Choundary, is free and comfortable, while a Pakistani Christian woman, Asia Bibi, would be unsafe and threatened, is the end of the West as we know it.

Asia Bibi’s case looks as if it is coming from “another, medieval world.”

Her “guilt,” as an “unclean” Christian, was for drinking water from a communal well, used by Muslim neighbors. Two Muslim women alleged that because she, a Christian, had touched the water from the well, the entire well was now haram (forbidden by Islamic law). Bibi responded by saying “I think Jesus would see it differently from Mohammed,” that Jesus had “died on the cross for the sins of mankind,” and asked, “What did your Prophet Muhammad ever do to save mankind?” She was accused of insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad and put on trial for “blasphemy.” She was told to convert to Islam or die.

Bibi spent more than eight years in a Pakistani prison, in solitary confinement, much of that time on death row. On October 3, 2018, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted her. Then, for a whole week, her fate remained unclear. After violent protests by “hard-line Islamists call[ing] for her execution” that “paralyzed large parts of the country for two days,” the government made “concessions” to the Islamists, and capitulated to their demands. The government pledged not to oppose adding Bibi to a “no-fly list,” which would prevent her from leaving the country.

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BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Jews of the North Africa under Muslim Rule by Ruthie Blum

By on November 14th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13237/jews-north-africa

David Littman, before his untimely death from leukemia in 2012, had intended this book on the Maghreb to be the first in a series that would cover the social condition of the Jews in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and Turkey — an ambitious project that he was unable to tackle in its entirety.

“To his credit, King Mohammad VI has made a point of preserving the Jewish heritage of Morocco, especially its cemeteries. He has better relations with Israel than other Muslim countries but still does not recognize Israel and have diplomatic relations with the nation state of the Jewish People.” — Alan M. Dershowitz, “What Is a ‘Refugee’?”

“[T]he task of completing this exploration of the historical reality of Jewish existence under the Crescent rests upon future generations of researchers, to whom, it is hoped, our modest contribution will serve as an inspiration.” — David Littman.

Exile in the Maghreb, co-authored by the great historian David G. Littman and Paul B. Fenton, is an ambitious tome contradicting the myth of how breezy it was for Jews to live in their homelands in the Middle East and North Africa when they came under Muslim rule.

“Ever since the Middle Ages,” the book jarringly illustrates, “anti-Jewish persecution has been endemic to Muslim North Africa.”

Littman, before his untimely death from leukemia in 2012, had intended this book on the Maghreb to be the first in a series that would cover the social condition of the Jews of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and Turkey — an ambitious project that he was unable to tackle in its entirety.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

They’re Not Waving EU Flags A dispatch from Vienna. Bruce Bawer

By on November 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271937/theyre-not-waving-eu-flags-bruce-bawer

I’ve always enjoyed being in German-speaking cities, even though my German isn’t what it used to be (and wasn’t even much back then), and even though it’s hard not to be reminded, now and then, of, well, you know. In Germany, to be sure, they go out of their way to remind you of that unpleasant interval from 1939 to 1945, filling their cities with hideous examples of what you might call the architecture of atonement – brutalist eyesores that we’re supposed to perceive as heartfelt proclamations of sincere Holocaust remorse. At the same time, however, paradoxical though it may sound, they’re determined to put their past behind them.

And behind you, too. In Berlin, that once gray but increasingly shiny city, you get the distinct impression that the inhabitants desperately want to pretend that the world was reborn anew after World War II and that a dynamic, hyper-contemporary Deutschland, its sins washed entirely clean by all those flagrant public gestures of apology for Auschwitz, is leading us all into a post-national, post-historical utopia, hoisting the EU banner aloft and singing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in joyful chorus. Yes, if you’re visiting Berlin, by all means do your duty by wandering around that dreary landscape of stone near the Brandenburg Gate that purportedly memorializes the dead of the Shoah – but then get your ass out of there, head down the Eberstraße, and start shopping like crazy at the high-end boutiques of ultra-glitzy Potsdamerplatz.

Vienna, where I am right now, is of course a German-speaking city, but it’s different in key ways from Berlin – or, for that matter, from any burg I know in Germany. Like Rome (also a Catholic capital), Vienna has a feel of being utterly at ease with its history, its cultural heritage, and its national identity. Around the corner from where I’m staying is a shop crammed with immense early nineteenth-century portraits of Austrian aristocrats. In the front window of a nearby chocolatier is a big poster of a court painting of the same period. And a local taproom is decorated with framed photographs of Franz Josef-era military officers. All over town, national, but not EU, flags abound – the opposite of Germany.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Remains Steadfast in Face of Hamas War Crimes Terror group fires 400 rockets into Israel – as Israeli army gears up for major offensive. Ari Lieberman

By on November 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271939/israel-remains-steadfast-face-hamas-war-crimes-ari-lieberman

It began as a covert intelligence operation, one of many conducted by Israel in the hostile and densely populated Gaza Strip. Most of these operations occur without incident but on Sunday, we were reminded that these covert activities are not without extreme risk.

An undercover force reportedly from the elite Sayeret Maglan unit entered the Strip in civilian clothing using a nondescript vehicle. While in the Gazan city of Khan Yunis, the vehicle drew the suspicions of Hamas operatives who were in the vicinity. As the terrorists closed in, the Maglan boys opened fire on the AK-47 toting gangsters instantly sparking a ferocious firefight.

Three of the terrorists were shot dead during the initial exchange. The Israeli vehicle then frantically made its way through narrow streets of Khan Yunis toward the safety of Israel all while Hamas vehicles were giving chase. The Israelis called in for air support. Drones hovering above fired at the pursuing vehicles, destroying them, and killing an additional four more terrorists.

When it was over, seven terrorists, including a senior Hamas commander and one Israeli soldier were dead. The senior terrorist commander was identified as Nour Baraka, who oversaw terror tunnel operations. The deceased Israeli was a Lt. Colonel and a member of Israel’s Druse minority sect. His name has not been released to the public and he has only been identified as Lt. Col. “M.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Judicial Keystone Kop The anti-Trump legal resistance expands to the oil pipeline.

By on November 14th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-judicial-keystone-kop-1542153881

More and more liberal federal judges are posing as the front line of the anti-Trump resistance and subjugating the law to their political preferences. Consider the Obama appointee who last week blocked the Trump Administration’s permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

The oil pipeline has already been stuck in regulatory quicksand for a decade. In 2008 TransCanada applied for a permit to move up to 830,000 barrels of bitumen crude per day from the Alberta oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries. The State Department under a 2004 executive order must approve cross-border projects to ensure they serve the “national interest.”

Amid a drawn-out review, the Obama State Department issued five determinations that the pipeline would have no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Its final environmental impact statement in 2014 said bitumen would be extracted irrespective of the pipeline, and shipping the crude by rail or tanker instead would result in 28% to 42% greater CO2 emissions as well as more leaks.

Barack Obama ignored those findings and offered Keystone as a sacrifice to the 2016 Paris climate agreement. The U.S. government must “prioritize actions that are not perceived as enabling further GHG emissions globally,” the Obama Administration concluded.

TransCanada sued in federal court and under Nafta’s Chapter 11 investor-state arbitration, but it caught a break when Donald Trump was elected and his Administration granted the permit. Yet now it’s back to rolling the boulder uphill as environmentalists have sued.

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