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July 2019

Slavery’s Decision Day In Mauritania Anti-slavery activist takes second place in dubious election — in one of the world’s worst slave states. Stephen Brown

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274214/slaverys-decision-day-mauritania-stephen-brown

Mauritanian anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Obeid, a much-jailed human rights protester on behalf of his country’s approximately 500,000 chattel slaves, took second place in contested presidential elections in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania last month.

Dah Obeid announced his candidacy for the president’s office only days after his being released from prison last December for once again angering the government. He had been incarcerated, and tortured, many times before.

Dah Obeid won 18.75 per cent of the vote last month for his Radicals For Global Action Party, an increase of 10 per cent over his 2014 election showing. Presidential elections are held every five years in Mauritania.

The third place opposition finisher, a former prime minister, backed by the country’s main Islamic party, received 17.87 per cent.                                            

The winner was former defense minister Mohamed Ould Ghazouni, a retired general, with 52 per cent of the vote. Ghazouni was handpicked by outgoing president Abdel Mohamed Ould Aziz, another general, leading Mauritanians to wonder whether their country will always have a military figure as leader. Ould Aziz couldn’t run again because the Mauritanian constitution only allows two terms.

Ould Aziz seized power in Mauritania in a coup in 2008. He won an election in 2009 and again in 2014 — where he received 82 per cent of the vote, not unusual in an African dictatorship. Dah Obeid hotly contested that result — just as he is contesting the recent election.

Using U.S., Qatari Funding, Duke University Teaches K-12 Teachers Biased Info About Islam By Sloan Rachmuth

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/08/using-u-s-qatari-funding-duke-university-teaches-k-12-teachers-biased-info-islam/

Documents shed light on the workings of Duke University’s unique influence operation targeting the U.S school system with funds from a global terrorism supporter.

By accepting more than $111,000 from Qatar Foundation International to provide U.S. teachers anti-Israel training, Duke University is abusing its status as one of only 14 Middle East National Resource Centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education to provide guidance on curriculum materials and teacher training for K-12 Middle East studies.

From June 30 to July 5 on the Duke campus this year, “Dimensions of the Middle East” was an immersion program for grades 6-12 U.S. educators. Presented by the Duke Islamic Studies Center, Duke University Middle East Studies Center, and Qatar Foundation International, the institute trains 40 teachers who are hand-selected by QFI, according to a Duke University spokesman.

Qatar Foundation International (QFI), based in Washington, DC, is a subsidiary of the Qatar Foundation (QF), with direct ties to the Sharia-law government of Qatar. While QFI cuts a moderate, even scholarly image in public, its parent QF has been tied to supporting terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. QFI partners with other elite universities for student outreach, but will resort to lawsuits to keep the financial details of these programs secret once the public begins to ask questions.

Documents received by the Haym Salomon Center shed light on the workings of Duke University’s unique influence operation targeting the U.S school system.

Stop The U.S. — I Want To Get Off Bob Maistros

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/08/stop

Sometimes commentary is real work. Other times all that’s necessary is to let facts speak for themselves.

For example, in the last two weeks:

10 presidential candidates all stood on a stage and pledged to make U.S. taxpayers — who would lose their private insurance under most of their plans — subsidize health care for illegal immigrants.
One candidate promised to make the selfsame taxpayers pay for abortions for men who become women.
A prominent United States Congresswoman — who had previously referred to border detention facilities as “concentration camps” — charged that detainees were told by immigration officials to drink out of toilets. After which a group of Latino pastors and immigration advocates toured the facilities, with one insisting that there were “no deplorable conditions and no lack of basic necessities.”
A leading athletic equipment company recalled an Independence Day commemorative shoe that displayed — no, not the Confederate Stars and Bars — but the Betsy Ross version of Old Glory. According to reports, a paid endorser, infamous for his National Anthem protests, complained that the flag seen by many as one of the last emblems of national unity was instead “an offensive symbol because of its connection to an era of slavery.” An MSNBC commentator raised the stakes by comparing the flag to a swastika or burning cross.
Meanwhile, the latest “Pride Month” was capped by now familiar parades in which participants shamelessly march down the streets of our largest cities in various stages of undress — including “full frontal.” These days, barely an eye was batted at such seemingly unlawful behavior, including by event sponsors that encompassed, in New York City alone, T-Mobile, MasterCard, Hyatt, TD Ameritrade, Target, Coca Cola, Procter & Gamble, Chase, Nissan, American Airlines, Airbnb, United Airlines, IBM, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, New York Life, the NBA, Uber, Lyft, Microsoft, Kellogg, Johnson & Johnson and Starbucks. (Message: resistance is futile if you plan to converse, charge, compute, lodge, launder, invest, bank, fly, drive, drink, eat, medicate, spectate or be transported.)
The President of the United States engaged in a spur-of-the-moment summit meeting with the world’s most unstable and murderous dictator, taking an unprecedented stroll into North Korean territory that he called a “great honor.” After decades in which successive administrations had withheld such a prized photo op as the ultimate diplomatic bargaining chip. And took along his daughter and a Fox News commentator while dispatching his hawkish National Security Advisor on a trip to Mongolia. All days after joking with Russia’s president on-camera over the former’s interference in U.S. elections. And barely a week after the same Commander-in-Chief recalled a retaliatory attack while planes were reportedly in the air. Then publicized the fact of the aborted assault in a tweet and interviews that certainly misrepresented the facts about what the president knew and when he knew it. Followed up by leaked accounts of White House conversations that didn’t just throw that very national security adviser under the bus, but backed it up and ran over him again. In the same time frame that the chief executive was making and then withdrawing a promise to round up undocumented immigrants, just as he previously threatened and withdrew a threat to close the border. And dealt with yet another accusation of sexual assault.
Not to mention a brazen Antifa assault on a journalist in front of police. A married gay candidate again lecturing Christians on Christianity. The Supreme Court disallowing a citizenship question on the Census because it subjectively doubted a Cabinet official’s perfectly legal rationale for it. Special Counsel Robert Mueller rolling over and agreeing to appear before Congress to testify on the report he previously insisted must speak for itself. Charlottesville, Virginia — during the week of Independence Day — replacing a holiday celebrating the author of the Declaration of Independence (who lived in their town) with one celebrating the emancipation of slaves.

Gov’t Dependency Plunges Under Trump — Why Aren’t We Celebrating? John Merline

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/08/govt

Friday’s jobs report showed that the economy created 224,000 new jobs, yet the unemployment rate edged up to 3.7%.

Both are welcome news. The unemployment rate went up because 158,000 rejoined the labor market. These are people who previously didn’t have a job and weren’t looking for one.

The labor market is tight enough that people who’d given up on work are getting lured back into the job market. And they’re finding work.

As of June, there were 5.6 million more people with jobs than when President Trump took office — despite claims by prominent economists that the economy was already at full employment when he was sworn in.

The healthy labor market has resulted in something even more important yet little noticed: A sharp trend away from dependency on federal welfare and other benefits.

Take a look at the numbers:

Food Stamps. The Department of Agriculture reports that April enrollment in food stamps — which is officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — was down more than 308,000.

So far this year, SNAP enrollment has declined by nearly 1.2 million. And since Trump took office, the number of people collecting food stamps has plunged by more than 6.7 million.

Enrollment is now lower than it’s been since August 2009.

Pelosi, AOC Clash over Reach of Progressives’ Influence By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nancy-pelosi-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-clash-over-reach-of-progressives-influence/

House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) clashed over the weekend with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) after making dismissive remarks about the influence of Ocasio-Cortez and other young progressives in the caucus.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told the New York Times. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

Pelosi, 79, was referring to Ocasio-Cortez, 29, and Representatives Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. The four freshman members, nicknamed “the Squad,” voted against the $4.6 billion emergency-disaster-aid bill signed into law last month, or “our bill,” as Pelosi called it. The bill included funding for more resources to address the increasing flow of migrants over the southern border, and the four congresswomen said it did not contain strong enough protections for migrant children.

Ocasio-Cortez did not appear to appreciate the speaker’s comments and responded with a few choice words on her Twitter account, which has 4.7 million followers.

No-Hope Presidential Candidates and the Emperor’s New Clothes By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/no-hope-presidential-candidates-and-the-emperors-new-clothes/

Today’s hot rumor is that Representative Eric Swalwell — the trying-too-hard, gun-confiscation-promoting, nuclear-strike-on-Americans endorsing, Biden-death-speculating white man who’s running to increase diversity —  will quit the presidential race today.

But Tom Steyer, the billionaire who financed a campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment, is reportedly jumping in. To paraphrase Andy Warhol, in the future, everyone will run for the Democratic presidential nomination for 15 minutes.

There are a lot of reasons why no-hopers jump in, but a big one is the fact that the vast majority of elected officials and wealthy people live in a bubble, where they are surrounded by brown-nosers who tell them their ideas are brilliant and constantly tell them things like, “Of course the American people are yearning for inspiring leadership like yours, sir.”

The moment you become an elected official, people start to look at you a little differently. Occasionally you’ll encounter protesters or an angry crowd at your town hall, but by and large, people usually seem happy to see you — particularly people who come into your office in government. Many of the people you encounter ask for favors or describe problems in their community and hope you are the one who can fix them. Often you are indeed a person who can help them — whether it’s getting the town zoning board to move a little faster or get that pothole filled, or help enact that legislative change your company has been hoping for, or even just get one of those nifty U.S. Capitol flags. You also become a valuable friend and a potentially dangerous enemy. Until you’re out of office and can no longer use the levers of government to help friends and punish foes, it’s best to avoid irking you too much.

Impeachment-Obsessed Environmentalist Billionaire Tom Steyer Considering 2020 Run By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/impeachment-obsessed-environmentalist-billionaire-tom-steyer-considering-2020-run/

Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire who emerged as the biggest individual donor in American politics and launched a campaign demanding President Donald Trump’s impeachment, is reconsidering his decision not to run for president in 2020. Sources confirmed the 2020 consideration to The Atlantic and The Washington Post.

“You never know with Tom until he actually pulls the trigger, but he’s telling a lot of people he works with and trusts that he’s going to do it,” one of the Democrats with knowledge of Steyer’s plans told The Post. “He wants in.”

Last week in San Francisco, the billionaire told staffers at Need to Impeach and NextGen America — two organizations he funds — that he is launching a 2020 campaign and that he intends to make the formal announcement on Tuesday, The Atlantic reported.

Steyer has changed his mind before, however. In January, he told his people to expect a presidential run. He even took a trip to Iowa for the launch, only to reverse course at the last minute. Instead of starting a 2020 race, he hosted a Townhall for Need to Impeach, which has 8 million members and has become the largest liberal activist group in the country.

Steyer has emerged as one of the biggest single donors in American politics over the last decade. In 2013, he founded the NextGen Climate super PAC (now called NextGen America), which contributed about $74 million to Democratic causes in the 2014 midterms, making Steyer the single biggest individual donor in American politics that a year. The group also spent $96 million in 2016 and nearly $61 million in the 2018 midterms.

According to The Post’s Robert Costa, Steyer may already have a campaign manager lined up. Heather Hargreaves, a Democratic field organizer who worked on President Obama’s 2008 campaign and currently executive director of NextGen America, is expected the manage the campaign, according to Costa’s sources.

Fact Check: Antifa Is for Angry White Fascists By Stephen Green

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/fact-check-antifa-is-for-angry-white-fascists/

Babylon Bee and Christian Daily Reporter founder Adam Ford tweeted, “Portland Antifa mugshots have been released and I’m sure you’ll agree that the lack of diversity is extremely problematic.”

So problematic. TMZ has more diversity in their collection of mugshots from New Hampshire’s North Country. You’ll find a better cross-section of intersectionality on Martha Stewart’s mailing list. Or maybe these are just everyone’s headshots from a recent casting call for a reboot of “Fargo.”

After sending journalist Andy Ngo to an overnight hospital stay for a brain-bleed last week for the crime of reporting while Asian (or was his crime being gay?), Antifa thugs took their audacity to new lows over the weekend. In more Portland street violence last week, the Rose City Antifa account blamed John Blum for getting in the way of their fists and clubs.

Valerie Richardson reported:

“Oregon III% member John Blum rushed into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters swinging a metal baton at them … the protesters defended themselves,” tweeted Always Antifascist, the Rose City Antifa account.

Mr. Blum insisted that’s not the way it happened. He said he was trying to help a friend who was under siege as well as protect himself after being sprayed by mace. He suffered bruises, a cut over his eye and a gash to his head that required four staples at the emergency room, while his attackers appeared to escape unscathed.

Or as Blum put it in an interview, “The whole reason we do this is because in my opinion, they’re trying to stop us from doing this. Why do they have a right to stop people from doing what they feel is right? To be able to express themselves?”

Would President Joe Biden Become 25th Amendment Material? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/07/would-president-joe-biden-become-25th-amendment-material/

I speculate only because since January 2017 our popular culture and intelligentsia have suggested President Trump is crazy and should be removed under the 25th Amendment. Apparently, accusations about the mental health of presidents and would-be presidents are now legitimate political attack strategies under the new progressive rules.

After all, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe once bragged that he tried with former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to remove a supposedly unhinged Trump. Democratic members of Congress called in a Yale psychologist, Bandy X. Lee, to brief them that such Ivy League experts had diagnosed Trump in absentia as certainly unhinged. (She later attempted to walk back those claims.) The 25th Amendment, along with impeachment, the ossified Logan Act, and the Emoluments Clause, have now been mainlined by progressives as the sort of natural suspicions we cast on an elected president of the opposite party.

Yet, under these new progressive protocols, could a President Joe Biden be written off as delusional?

Addled Biden?
Biden once suggested that George Bush get on TV after the 2008 meltdown in the manner that President Roosevelt had addressed the nation after the 1929 market crash: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.” Biden was referring to a time when neither FDR was president nor was television commercially available.

More recently in the primary debate, when asked what was the first thing that a newly inaugurated Biden might do as president (presumably after defeating incumbent Trump in the 2020 election), he answered, “The first thing I would do is make sure that we defeat Donald Trump . . . Period.” Biden in this case was in Obama’s “57-states,” Hawaii is in Asia, and “corpse-men” Lala land.

Bullets and Baseball on the Fourth of July Remembering two Independence Days a generation apart, when shots rang out at two New York stadiums. Clark Whelton

https://www.city-journal.org/html/bullets-and-baseball-fourth-july-16005.html

On Tuesday, July 4, 1950, a New York Giants baseball fan named Bernard “Barney” Doyle was sitting in the grandstands at the Polo Grounds in uptown Manhattan, waiting for a Giants–Dodgers doubleheader to begin. Doyle, a 53-year-old ship’s carpenter and freight worker from New Jersey, had attended early mass that morning to give himself plenty of time for the drive into the city. The showdown between crosstown rivals was sure to be a sellout.

Seated next to Doyle, who had earned a niche in sports history managing the early career of heavyweight boxing champ James J. “Cinderella Man” Braddock, was 13-year-old Otto Flaig, a neighbor’s son. At 30 minutes past noon, as the Dodgers took the field for batting practice, Doyle leaned forward in Seat 3 of Row C in Section 42 and started to say something to young Otto. But before he could speak, he lurched backward in his seat, stone dead.

At first, the ballpark cops suspected a heart attack. Then they noticed the hole in Doyle’s left temple. The game went on as Doyle was carried out of the stadium, though several members of the overflow crowd were said to have scuffled over his empty seat. An autopsy showed that the Giants fan from Jersey had been struck by a .45 caliber bullet. Otto Flaig, who had missed death by inches and whom the cops said complained about missing the doubleheader, did not hear any shots. Neither did anyone else in Section 42. The bullet, detectives quickly realized, must have been fired from Coogan’s Bluff, the rocky escarpment that rose above the western end of the Polo Grounds.

Sometimes called “Tightwad Hill” because thrifty Giants fans atop the precipice preferred a partial view of the ballfield to the price of a ticket, Coogan’s Bluff was home to several apartment buildings on Edgecombe Avenue, which runs along the ridgeline. For two days, detectives scoured the neighborhood and the apartments before a tip led them to a 14-year-old boy named Robert Peebles. They found various weapons in the apartment where Peebles lived, and he confessed to firing the fatal shot. Six months earlier, he told the police, he had found the .45 in Central Park, with one bullet remaining in the magazine. He had been waiting to celebrate the Fourth with a bang. After climbing to the roof of 515 Edgecombe Avenue, he looked down on 49,000 fans jam-packed into the Polo Grounds, aimed the pistol into the air, and pulled the trigger. A few seconds later, 1,200 feet away, Barney Doyle fell dead. Peebles said that when he heard what happened, he threw the gun away. It was never found.