THERE WILL BE NO POSTINGS UNTIL MARCH 30, 2019
https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/20/mccains-key-role-in-fueling-post-election-trump-russia-hysteria/
In his 2018 book, The Restless Wave, the late Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) wondered aloud why he was sought out and given the infamous Steele dossier shortly after the 2016 presidential election.
After suggesting that anyone who questioned his role in handling the political document was indulging in “conspiracy theories,” McCain offered his explanation: “The answer is too obvious for the paranoid to credit. I am known internationally to be a persistent critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime and I have been a long while.”
It is true that McCain was an outspoken critic of Putin. But the big problem with McCain’s defense is that by the time he wrote those words—presumably the end of 2017, since the book was published in late May 2018—it already was public knowledge that the dossier had been authored and distributed by political pimps funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. When McCain was writing his book, many of the culprits were in serious legal jeopardy.
Christopher Steele, the dossier’s author, was being sued for defamation and was under congressional scrutiny in 2017. (McCain had sent his close associate, David Kramer, to meet Steele in London shortly after the 2016 election to track down gossip about the president-elect.) Steele also remains the subject of a criminal referral at the Justice Department for lying to federal officials.
McCain’s Senate colleagues were investigating Fusion GPS and its owner, Glenn Simpson, who produced and peddled the fabricated document, in the summer of 2017. (It was Simpson, not Steele as McCain suggested in his book, who gave Kramer the dossier in late November 2016; McCain would later provide that copy of the dossier to former FBI Director James Comey, who already had used the sleazily obtained and Democrat-funded opposition research to get a secret court’s approval to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.)
Kramer also testified before the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 related to its probe of the dossier, and he later invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid further questioning.
And if his book was still in production in February 2018, McCain would have known that the FBI withheld crucial details about the dossier’s political provenance in a shameful scheme to violate the privacy rights of a U.S. citizen whose only offense was volunteering to help Trump in 2016. McCain knew it because he vehemently opposed the release of the bombshell memo authored by Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which detailed how the dossier was presented as evidence to the FISA court. The senator accused Trump and Nunes of attacking the FBI and for “looking at the investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows,” McCain wrote in a statement the day the memo was released. “If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”
None of these facts are addressed in McCain’s book. Simpson and Fusion GPS are not mentioned, even though Simpson was McCain’s source for the dossier. There was no acknowledgement that McCain and his associates were complicit—either unwittingly or intentionally—in a wide ranging plot to sabotage the incoming president of the United States by sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the election and Trump’s alleged fealty to Putin. Instead, McCain wrote that anyone who doubts his actions can “go to hell.”
https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/20/can-trump-win-again-in-2020/
In 2016, Donald Trump overwhelmed 16 qualified Republican primary rivals and became the first major-party presidential nominee without prior political or military experience. Against even greater odds, Trump defeated in the general election a far better funded and politically connected Hillary Clinton.
What are his chances of repeating that surprising victory in 2020?
In 2016, Trump had no record to run on. That blank slate fueled claims that such a political novice could not possibly succeed. It also added an element of mystery and excitement, with the possibility that an outsider could come into town to clean up the mess.
Trump now has a record, not just promises. Of course, his base supporters and furious opponents have widely different views of the Trump economy and foreign policy.
Yet many independents will see successes since 2017, even if some are turned off by Trump’s tweets. Still, if things at home and abroad stay about the same or improve, without a war or recession, Trump will likely win enough swing states to repeat his 2016 Electoral College victory.
If, however, unemployment spikes, inflation returns or we get into a war, he may not.
At about the same time in their respective presidencies, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had approval ratings similar to Trump’s. In Clinton’s first midterms, Democrats lost 14 more House seats than Republicans lost last November. Democrats under Obama lost 23 more seats in his first midterms than Republicans lost under Trump. Democrats lost eight Senate seats in 1994 during Clinton’s first term. They lost six Senate seats in 2010 during Obama’s first term. Republicans actually picked up two Senate seats last fall.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13931/palestinians-hamas-fatah-repression
Hamas is now accusing the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah of exploiting the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip to call on Palestinians to overthrow the Hamas regime. Fatah, for its part, is accusing the “dark forces” of Hamas of acting on orders from outside parties to establish a separate Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip.
The US administration says it will publish its long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East, known as the “Deal of the Century,” after the general elections in Israel on April 9. Perhaps it would be a good idea if the US administration came up with a plan to make peace between Palestinians and Palestinians before attempting to make peace between the Palestinians and Israel.
What is clear, meanwhile, is that the Fatah and Hamas leaders are more interested in warring with each other than improving the living conditions of their people. The two groups have already rejected the upcoming “Deal of the Century”: for now, that is the only deal they seem ready to make.
Hamas and Fatah, the two major Palestinian parties ruling the Gaza Strip and West Bank respectively, have been at war with each other for the past 12 years. They disagree on many things, but when it comes to repressing and violating the human rights of their people, Hamas and Fatah have proven that they are comrades-in-arms.
In the past week, Fatah has been launching scathing attacks on Hamas for using excessive force to suppress Palestinians protesting economic hardship in the Gaza Strip. Fatah says that hundreds of Palestinians, including political activists and journalists, have been arrested or severely beaten by Hamas security forces.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13911/turkey-women-rights-abuse
“As the largest jailer of journalists in the world, it’s no surprise that Turkey has the most female journalists behind bars… most detained on anti-state charges.” — Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The new bill, expected to be voted on ahead of the March 31 local elections, aims to lower the age at which sexual relations with a child (under the cover of marriage) is considered a crime from 15-years-old to 12-years-old. If it passes, it will “pardon” the underage-marriage offenses of approximately 10,000 men currently serving prison sentences on sexual-abuse charges.
“Such an amnesty would whitewash… and encourage… illegal ‘marriages’ with children… It would also discourage the victims from appealing to the legal mechanisms and reintroduce the concept of ‘marriage with rape offenders’ into law.” — The “TCK (Turkish Penal Code) 103 Women’s Platform,” an umbrella organization for 157 women’s and LGBT groups.
International Women’s Day kicked off in Istanbul with the murder of a woman by her boyfriend. A few hours later, thousands of mostly female demonstrators participating in the “17th Feminist Night March,” were attacked with pepper spray by riot police attempting to disperse the annual March 8 event, launched in 2003. This year, however, Turkish police had declared the march “unauthorized,” and closed off all streets leading to the avenue on which it was to take place. Scuffles ensued between the police and women who circumvented the barricades.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273213/springtime-terrorist-lloyd-billingsley
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of Lee Boyd Malvo, sentenced to life in prison without parole for his role in killing 10 people in Maryland, Virginia and Washington in 2002. Malvo was 17 at the time and his accomplice, John Allen Muhammad, was sentenced to death and executed in 2009.
Muhammad was a member of the Nation of Islam and his “Islam-centric” partner Malvo was a Jamaican who used forged documents to enter the United States. More than 17 years have passed since their terror spree and for many the events have faded from memory, if they were known at all.
In 2002, the Baltimore Sun provided a timeline of the killing spree, noting that, on October 2, “a 55-year-old man becomes the sniper’s first victim when he is killed by a single bullet around 6 p.m. in a grocery parking lot in Montgomery County.” Then, on October 6 “a 13-year-old boy is critically wounded moments after being dropped off at a middle school in Bowie in Prince George’s County.”
In the early going, police thought a single sniper was at work and were baffled how he was able to shoot without detection. As it happened, Muhammad and Malvo had rigged a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice with holes that enabled fire without opening the trunk. They setup near a school and on October 7, 2002 shot 13-year-old Ian Brown who took a .223 round in the chest.
The shooting caused Montgomery County police chief Charles Moose to break down on television. After capture, Lee Boyd Malvo told jail guards he shot Brown to show the authorities the snipers “meant business” and that he had been pleased to see chief Moose cry on television.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273188/immigration-big-lies-michael-cutler
The Third Reich’s principle of the “Big Lie” involved the frequent repetition of lies so that the lies became perceived as the truth by the masses.
Orwell noted, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ”
In this era of “Fake News” those tactics are purposely wielded by “journalists” to mislead Americans.
On March 15, 2019, News Leader, a subsidiary of USA Today, published an infuriating opinion piece, School owes apology for ICE agent talk at Kate Collins Middle: Our View.
While the article noted that the ICE agent was invited to the school and limited his activities to simply addressing the students of that school to explain the mission of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the mere presence of that federal agent was enough to set off the editors who wrote their “hit piece” about the mere presence of an ICE agent at a public school.
The editors of the publication then spewed utter lies and false “facts” to justify their vitriolic attack on the federal agency that is charged with enforcing federal immigration laws.
In fact, the lies began at the beginning of the editorial and were liberally sprinkled throughout that which followed.
Here is the opening salvo they fired against ICE:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273229/maine-gop-leader-attacked-opposing-open-borders-matthew-vadum
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that “[t]ravelers with measles continue to bring the disease into the U.S.” So far this year the CDC has confirmed 268 individual cases of measles in 15 states, including three states that border Mexico (Arizona, California, and Texas).Nick Isgro has the facts on his side, but when have facts ever mattered to leftists and open-borders fanatics?”
The vice chairman of the Maine Republican Party, Nick Isgro, is under fire for inveighing against open borders and the health problems that unvaccinated migrants from Third World countries are bringing with them to America.
This blowback against Isgro is part of the Left’s ongoing effort to stigmatize conservatives by presenting their views as abnormal, antisocial, racist, and xenophobic. Isgro hasn’t said anything millions of conservatives haven’t said before, but the open-borders movement and its attack dogs in both political parties are always on the lookout for new scalps.
Some Republicans like Maine Senate Minority Leader Dana Dow attack Isgro for standing up for America and American values, while others praise him for his principled stands. Isgro, who said he has received “a massive outcry of support,” is also mayor of Waterville, Maine. He survived a recall election in June.
Isgro said he wrote the controversial tweets “to open a dialogue concerning all of the things that are in play when affecting public health policy.”
As the father of five children, I know exactly what it’s like to be a parent up in the middle of the night, with a child with high fever and wondering if things are going to be okay. It angers me to see families like mine attacked for simply wanting to do with [sic] they know what is best for their own children rather than the government. Families should be engaged and respected – not attacked. [M]y own family will always be my first priority and I will continue to defend the families of Maine and their freedoms.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/pizzeria-mural-city-government-regulations-sign-code/
But a mural of something else (burgers, cars, unicorns … ) would be just fine.
The government of Arlington, Va., just forced a local pizza restaurant to paint over a mural of pizza that was outside of it — because the mural was of pizza and not something else.
So, you might ask: What could possibly be the problem with an artistic depiction of pizza? After all, I myself saw a lot of cartoon pizza in episodes of Ninja Turtles as a child, and I can confidently say I have suffered absolutely no damage — emotionally or physically — because of it.
Well, according to an article in Reason, the pizza place (called “Goody’s”) was forced to paint over the mural because of the county’s sign code, which prohibits any business from having a mural outside that depicts what’s sold inside. So, basically, the pizza place could have had a mural of pretty much anything else (aside from, like, violence and/or pornography, probably), and it would have been just fine. Here’s the thing, though: Why the hell would the pizza place have a mural of something other than pizza, if the goal of the mural was to get people to buy more pizza? Not to mention the obvious fact that there is literally no discernable reason that a business shouldn’t be able to advertise its legal, family-friendly products using a mural if it chooses to do so. After all, I did a little research, and I was able to find exactly zero examples of anyone being killed (or even injured!) by a painting of dough, sauce, and cheese.
