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August 2019

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IL State Senator Apologizes After Pics of Mock Trump Assassination Surface Debra Heine

By on August 19th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/19/il-state-senator-apologizes-after-pics-of-mock-trump-assassination-surface/

Disturbing pictures that appeared online following a political fundraising event in Illinois on Friday, have landed a powerful Democratic state lawmaker in bipartisan hot water.

The photos show an attendee of state Senator Martin Sandoval’s (D-Chicago) campaign event pointing a fake gun at another person wearing a Mexican costume and a mask of President Donald Trump, to mimic an assassination, WCIA reported.

The governor of Illinois, as well as the state’s Democrat Party and Republican Parties have all condemned the photos.

“As our nation grapples with the epidemic of gun violence, purposely pointing a fake gun at anyone is insensitive and wrong,” Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said Saturday night. “I condemn actions like the ones displayed in the pictures because they lack the civility our politics demands.”

“The tragedies in El Paso and Gilroy have demonstrated how hate-filled political rhetoric can fuel violence,” Maura Possley, a spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Illinois, said. “These images are unacceptable and dangerous. The place to make our voices heard against Trump is at the ballot box.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Advocates try drawing international aid to help free Raif Badawi from Saudi prison Badawi, a 30-year-old Saudi blogger, has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes for ‘insulting Islam’

By on August 19th, 2019

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/advocates-internationalize-the-fight-to-free-raif-badawi-from-saudi-prison

MONTREAL — More than seven years after Raif Badawi was thrown in prison, lawyers and allies of the Saudi blogger are increasingly lobbying foreign governments in an effort to secure his release as Saudi Arabia prepares to host next year’s G-20 meeting.

Irwin Cotler, a human rights lawyer and former federal justice minister who represents the family internationally, says advocates for Badawi have recently been meeting with foreign governments, UN representatives and others to encourage them to call for the release of Badawi, his sister Samar, their former lawyer Waleed Abulkhair and other imprisoned human rights defenders.

People hold pictures of Samar Badawi (C) and her brother jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi (R) as they demonstrate in support of Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam, on May 7, 2015 in Paris. Stephane de Sakutin / AFP/Getty Images

Cotler sat down with The Canadian Press to discuss the intensifying effort to free the 35-year-old Badawi, who was arrested on June 17, 2012, and was later sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail for his online criticism of Saudi clerics.

Cotler said it is urgent “to both internationalize and intensify our advocacy” as Saudi Arabia chairs the G-20 ahead of the meeting in Riyadh in November 2020.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada ‘disappointed’ after Britain revokes terror suspect Jihadi Jack’s citizenship

By on August 19th, 2019

Jack Letts, dubbed ‘Jihadi Jack’ by British media, has been detained for about two years after a 2014 trip to Syria where he helped the Islamic State

OTTAWA — The United Kingdom is shirking its share of the international community’s duty to help keep the world safe from terrorism, the federal government suggested Sunday after the British Home Office revoked the citizenship of a dual citizen imprisoned in Syria.

Jack Letts, a British-Canadian man who has been behind bars in a Kurdish prison since 2017, has been stripped of his British citizenship, the office of Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale confirmed in a sternly worded statement.

“Canada is disappointed that the United Kingdom has taken this unilateral action to off-load their responsibilities,” the statement said. “Terrorism knows no borders, so countries need to work together to keep each other safe.”

Letts, who was dubbed “Jihadi Jack” by the British media, has been detained for about two years after he travelled to Syria in 2014 to support the Islamic State group.

A statement from the Home Office said revoking British citizenships is one way it counters terrorist threats. It said it does not comment on individual cases.

“Decisions on depriving a dual national of citizenship are based on substantial advice from officials, lawyers and the intelligence agencies and all available information,” the statement said.

Letts’ parents, John Letts and Sally Lane, were found guilty in June for funding terrorism when they tried to send him money. The couple, from Oxford, England, received suspended sentences of 12 months in prison.

John Letts wrote a letter to Canadian MPs last year that said his son is not a terrorist and deserves Canada’s protection. In his letter, Letts wrote that the money was to pay “people smugglers,”which he described as his son’s “only way out” of Syria.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

From Trump’s Fat To ‘I’m A Mom’: Crazy Reasons Democrats Think They Can Beat Trump By Tristan Justice

By on August 19th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/19/trumps-fat-im-mom-crazy-reasons-democrats-think-can-beat-trump/

Some Democratic presidential candidates are coming up with some odd reasons they think they are the right person to take on Donald Trump next year.

While most candidates in the race are running on platforms to give America “free everything” while calling Trump and his supporters racist, these candidates have additional arguments.

Andrew Yang: I’ll Beat Trump Because Trump Is Too Fat

The tech entrepreneur took shots at Trump’s weight Thursday at an Everytown For Gun Safety event in Iowa, as reported by The Atlantic.

Yang proposed a series of challenges to prove his masculine worthiness over Trump’s, arguing that the only thing Trump could beat Yang at is being a “slob.”

“I challenge Donald Trump to any physical or mental feat under the sun,” Yang told the audience. “I mean, gosh, what could that guy beat me at, being a slob?”

Yang went further, digging into Trump’s appearance to the crowd of Iowa voters.

Like, what could Donald Trump possibly be better than me at? An eating contest? Like something that involved trying to keep something on the ground and having really large body mass? Like, if there was a hot-air balloon that was rising and you needed to try and keep it on the ground, he would be better than me at that? Because he is so fat.

Of course, Trump has done his share of body shaming, most recently calling out one heckler at his New Hampshire rally Thursday night for being overweight.

“That guy’s got a serious weight problem. Go home. Start exercising,” Trump said to an arena packed with cheering supporters.

Bill de Blasio Says He’ll Beat Trump Because Trump Is Shorter

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose struggling campaign has made it almost certain he will miss the next round of Democratic debates in September and October, said he will beat Trump because of his height.

On Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” Wednesday, de Blasio made the case for this candidacy among the crowded field of candidates because of his height compared to Trump’s.

“A tall candidate has won, I think, every one but three of the presidential elections in history,” de Blasio said on the show. “The tall candidate almost always wins…And I’m taller than Donald Trump. Do the math.”

According to The Hill, de Blasio does indeed measure in at 6 feet and 5 inches, a whopping two inches taller than Trump, who measures at 6 feet and 3 inches.

Kirsten Gillibrand: Trust Me, I’m A Mom

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MEDIA, POLITICS Comments turned off

Media Won’t Report That Tlaib And Omar’s Israel Trip Was Planned By A Pro-Terrorist Group By Warren Henry

By on August 19th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/19/media-wont-report-tlaib-omars-israel-trip-planned-pro-terrorist-group/

The establishment press must be getting quite a crick in its collective neck from having to look away so often from the antisemitic elements of the left, including within the Democratic Party.

Amid last week’s debate over whether Israel should have issued waivers to Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, and allowed them to promote the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement from within Israel, two scandals went largely unreported. The first scandal is that Tlaib and Omar’s trip was planned by the antisemitic, pro-terror Miftah organization. The second scandal was the establishment media’s whitewashing of the first scandal.

It fell to the Elder of Ziyon blog to remind everyone on Twitter that in 2013, Miftah published a blood libel against Jews. The term “blood libel” has been applied in other contexts in recent years, but Miftah claimed Jews have murdered Christian children to use their blood for baking matzos at Passover.

Historically, blood libels resulted in pogroms, including in England, Poland, and Russia; they contributed to the expulsion of Jews from England from 1290 to 1657. Jews were tried. Confessions were extracted by torture. When Miftah published its lie, the final blood-libel trial of a Jew in Western history was only 100 years past. When their essay was publicized, Miftah first tried to attack those who exposed them, then apologized—but only in English, not in Arabic.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Stacey Abrams Defends Refusal to Concede Georgia Gov. Race: ‘The Game Is Rigged’ By Jack Crowe

By on August 19th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/stacey-abrams-defends-refusal-to-concede-georgia-gov-race-the-game-is-rigged/

Stacey Abrams defended her refusal to concede last year’s Georgia gubernatorial election on Monday, arguing that adhering to the democratic norm of conceding to a victorious opponent would make her “complicit” in a “rigged” system.

Abrams has consistently refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Republican Brian Kemp’s November gubernatorial victory and cites the dynamics of her loss as the motivating factor behind the launch of her national voting-rights-advocacy group Fair Fight 2020. During a Monday appearance on CBS This Morning, Abrams pushed back on the suggestion that her denial of the election result’s legitimacy resembles President Trump’s 2016 flirtation with the idea that he might refuse to accept the presidential election results if he was defeated.

“There’s a lot that’s been made of the fact that I did not concede my election,” she said. “But I never denied the legal sufficiency of that election, and that’s the difference between me and Trump. He refuses to acknowledge the legal sufficiency or threatens not to, but my point is that the laws are wrong. We have to fix those laws because as long as we have eligible American citizens who cannot cast a ballot, then the game is rigged.”

The failed gubernatorial candidate went on to argue that modern “voter suppression” efforts are more “insidious” than they were in the 1960’s because they are less blatant than the laws imposed under Jim Crow.

Abrams lost to Kemp by almost 55,000 votes but has maintained that the outcome was the product of Kemp’s voter-suppression efforts, which, she argues, were facilitated by his retaining his position as Georgia secretary of state while he ran for governor.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian Authority Bans LGBTQ Organizing in West Bank By Jack Crowe

By on August 19th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/palestinian-authority-bans-lgbtq-organizing-in-west-bank/

The Palestinian Authority has banned all LGBTQ political organizing in the West Bank in response to the news that a pro-LGBTQ advocacy group was planning to hold a gathering for its members at the end of the month.

The ban, which was first reported Sunday by the Jerusalem Post, was issued in response to the organizing efforts of Al-Qaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, a pro-LGBTQ political group that held an event last month and was planning to hold another in the coming weeks.

Palestinian Authority police spokesperson Luay Zreikat said that LGBTQ events were “harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society” in justifying the ban. Zreikat also accused unspecified “dubious parties” of attempting to “create discord and harm civic peace in Palestinian society” through the group’s events.

In response, Al-Qaws, which means “the bow” in Arabic, argued that it is an organization that is firmly embedded in Palestinian society and does not seek to disrupt it.

“The Palestinian police announcement about our activities is very unfortunate,” the group said in a statement. “It’s very strange that they are accusing us of being a suspicious entity working to take apart Palestinian society. Al-Qaws is a Palestinian organization that has been operating since 2001, and is carrying out educational and professional programs on sexual and gender diversity. We totally reject the attempt to create an atmosphere of prosecution and intimidation, as well as threats of arrest.”

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The Mooch, Bill Kristol and the NeverTrump quest for relevance Anthony Scaramucci is a slightly preposterous footnote to the spectacle that is the Trump presidency Roger Kimball

By on August 19th, 2019

https://spectator.us/mooch-kristol-nevertrump-relevance/

If The Onion didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it. The self-described ‘omnipotent’ purveyor of current-events satire may not be (as another motto claims) ‘America’s finest news source.’ But it does have a good claim to the nation’s nicest anatomist of political folly (using, I hasten to add, that capacious word ‘nice’ not in the sense of ‘kind, pleasant’ but ‘precise, exact, fine’).

Consider this headline: ‘Anthony Scaramucci talks to Bill Kristol about trying to force Trump off the GOP ticket in 2020.’ Can you guess the source? If you said ‘The Onion,’ you would have made a perfectly rational judgment. After all, Anthony ‘The Mooch’ Scaramucci is a metrosexual clothes-horse, hedge-fund guru, communications director for President Trump for 11 minutes — I mean ‘days,’ 11 days. (Calling up a reporter for The New Yorker and treating him to an insane, profanity-laced tirade does tend to be a career-shortening gambit.) What could this character have to do with Bill Kristol, destroyer of The Weekly Standard, serial endorser of failed political candidates, real and imagined, would-be thorn in the side of Donald Trump? Surely putting those two together was a joke, an absurdity.

But no. A joke it may be — an absurdity, too — but the source of that story is not The Onion but CNBC, not exactly an unimpeachable source, I know, but at least one with some pretensions to reporting as distinct from satire.

Still, I think we have to categorize the gist of this story under two headings: 1) truth can be stranger than fiction and 2) even the simplest fact can be the occasion of humor. Consider this elaboration: ‘Asked whether he has spoken to Scaramucci about trying to find another presidential candidate to replace Trump on the top of the GOP ticket next year, Kristol said: “Yup.”’

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

10,000+ Hindus unite in a major rally in India to denounce terrorism, show support for Israel By Souptik Mukherjee

By on August 19th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/10000_hindus_unite_in_a_major_rally_in_india_to_denounce_terrorism_show_support_for_israel.html

News that the MSM can’t be bothered to cover.

Braving extremely inclement weather, with a flood-like situation, Singha Bahini, a grassroots organization in India, held a pro-Israel rally in Kolkata, India on August 16, 2019.  Over 10,000 people braved the heavy sudden downpour and flooding, which caused bumper-to-bumper traffic and clogged roads.  Many thousands more could not make it through the treacherous conditions to the rally site.  While the organization SinghaBahini is just a year old, the organizers have been on ground helping in the existential battle for the Hindus in the villages of Eastern India for over a decade. 

Pro-Israel rallies are not new to the founder of the organization Devdutta Maji, who was instrumental in organizing two large pro-Israel rallies in India: 20,000 people in 2014 and 70,000 people in 2018.  At the rally, demonstrators held placards saying, “We Support the Jewish People in their 2,000-Year-Old Struggle,” “India and Israel Friends Forever,” and “We Support Israel in Her War against Terrorism.” 

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Calling out the climate hypocrites By Thomas Lifson

By on August 19th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/calling_out_the_climate_hypocrites.html

We all need to “do our part” for the planet…except for the people telling us to sacrifice our way of life, who ceaselessly jet around the globe telling us we’re doomed

Obvious and repulsive hypocrisy on the part of wealthy and connected people telling us we must sacrifice our standard of living — indeed, our very way of life — finally is being called out.  They want us to bear the entire burden, while their jet-setting lifestyles remain untouched.

The alarmists are getting more and more shrill about their predictions of doom due to the increase in an atmospheric trace gas, CO2, purportedly able to act as the control mechanism for world climate.  (Meanwhile, their climate models, the sole basis for their doomsterism, don’t know how to reckon with the influence of clouds, which have an obvious impact on temperature.)

Even as previous deadlines for doom have come and gone, they issue new and shorter deadlines for us to obey by paying more for electricity, junking our cars, and closing down our factories and transportation systems — ultimately roasting in the summer heat and freezing in the winter cold.

Climate hypocrisy is the only conclusion that can be drawn after just this last weekend, when there were two instances of ultra-prominent doom-sayers generating massive CO2 emissions while warning the rest of us to embrace impoverishment in the name of saving the planet.  The world’s media finally are taking

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