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August 2019

A Centrist Debate Shutout The next Democratic debate is going to list hard to the left.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-centrist-debate-shutout-11567033452

Democrats on Thursday will announce the lineup for their next presidential debate, and the good news is that New Yorkers Kirsten Gillibrand (who dropped out Wednesday) and Bill de Blasio won’t be on stage to afflict viewers. The bad news: Neither will the centrists who dared in the first two debates to raise questions about the party’s leftward lunge.

By Wednesday 10 candidates had met the Democratic National Committee criteria of at least 2% support in four polls and donations from 130,000 people. That means no appearance in Houston on Sept. 12 for Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock.

These candidates were truth-tellers on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, free health care for undocumented immigrants from everywhere, slavery reparations and more. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper have ended their campaigns, so Americans are likely to hear an unrelieved bidding war of spending promises and higher taxes. The centrist dearth will put more pressure on former Vice President Joe Biden to defend what is left of his moderate policy positions. But it might open running room for Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a liberal who understands the need for a private economy.

By the way, billionaire Tom Steyer might not make the stage despite having spent more than $325,000 a day on campaign advertising since entering the race. This would prove again that Democrats are wrong about money dominating politics.

Israel Faces a Serious Escalation in its Proxy War with Iran by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14784/israel-proxy-war-iran

The fact that Israel has found it necessary to attack targets so far from its traditional area of military operations close to its immediate borders is indicative of the alarming escalation that has taken place in recent months in the threat Iran poses to Israeli security.

Earlier this week, in Lebanon, an Israeli drone was reported to have bombed a Palestinian base that is said to be funded by Iran. Israeli warplanes were also reported to have bombed Iranian military bases on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus.

The very idea of Washington sitting down with the Iranians at a time when it is continuing to threaten the security of its closest Middle Eastern ally would be unconscionable.

The reality is that there can be no meaningful dialogue between Washington and Tehran on a future deal so long as Iran remains committed to its long-standing policy of seeking the wholesale destruction of the Jewish state.

The recent confirmation by US military officials that Israeli warplanes were responsible for the recent attack on an Iranian military base in Iraq demonstrates the alarming extent to which the so-called proxy war between Tehran and Jerusalem has escalated in recent weeks.

According to senior Israeli security sources, spoken to on an off-the-record basis, the base in the northern Iraqi province of Salaheddin was targeted because they believed it was being used to assemble Iranian-made medium-range missiles with the capability to hit targets in Israel.

The threat was deemed so important that senior Israeli officers decided to launch a daring bombing raid that required F-35 stealth warplanes to penetrate Saudi airspace to achieve their objective. It is unclear whether the Saudis, who oppose Iranian meddling in Iraq but do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, gave permission for the Israeli warplanes to enter their airspace.

Iranian Women Fight for Freedom by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14773/iranian-women-freedom

“The Islamic Republic authorities say ‘compulsory hijab’ is the law and must be obeyed. However, bad laws must be challenged and changed.” — Masih Alinejad, Iranian-American journalist and award-winning activist.

“The basis of this tyranny is the religious law that the government has been enforcing since the 1979 revolution. Women are second-class citizens, and essentially slaves in Iran. The international community needs to have the courage to delegitimize religious law and call it out for its tyrannical nature. Just as the free world delegitimized communism during the Cold War, it should do the same to religious law.” — Nasrin Mohammadi, author of Ideas and Lashes: The Prison Diary of Akbar Mohammadi, about the torture and death in prison of her late brother; to Gatestone Institute.

“The international community should also focus on Iran, struggle to end that regime and other similar governments across the world. With Iran, it should also point out the corruption, where religion is used as an excuse to steal money and power from the people.” — Nasrin Mohammadi.

“But we need support of the international community to raise this issue with Iranian authorities and take action.” — Masih Alinejad.

Three Iranian women held in Tehran’s notorious Qarchak prison were sentenced recently to what could amount to more than 10 years in prison. Their “crime”? Failing to wear headscarves, thereby defying the country’s Islamic dress code.

The women were apprehended after a video they posted online during International Women’s Day went viral. In the clip, they are seen walking bear-headed on a Tehran metro and distributing flowers to female passengers.

U.S. Intel Gatekeeper Dragging Feet on Trump-Russia Files, Insiders Say Paul Sperry

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/08/28/top_us_intel_office_dragging_feet_on_russiagate_files_for_trump_insiders_say_120135.html

More than three months after President Trump granted his attorney general unprecedented power to declassify intelligence files, key U.S. intelligence agencies are still withholding documents related to the Trump-Russia affair, say people with direct knowledge of White House discussions on the subject.

The source of the logjam: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which Trump is in the process of shaking up after the resignations last month of its director, Dan Coats, and principal deputy, Sue Gordon. “Establishment” officials in that agency are still dragging their feet, say the sources, who spoke on condition that they not be further identified.

Sources who have seen the documents generally described their contents to RealClearInvestigations. They said the material still under wraps includes: 

Evidence that President Obama’s CIA, FBI, and Justice Department illegally eavesdropped on the Trump campaign — cases separate from the FBI’s disputed FISA court-approved surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Why Doesn’t Stacey Abrams Want to Run for Senate? By Jim Geraghty see note please

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-doesnt-stacey-abrams-want-to-run-for-senate/

Something ‘s afoot here….Stacey Abrams a sore loser without any national prominence was chosen to give the opposing  party’s rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union speech in 2019. Until 2019, all previous responses were delivered by contemporary senators, representatives, or governors. She is being groomed and aiming for a place on the National ticket…..rsk

Life just got a little more complicated for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The 2020 elections looked challenging but manageable, needing to defend Colorado’s Cory Gardner, Maine’s Susan Collins, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, and Arizona’s appointed senator Martha McSally. The risk of losses were somewhat offset by some low-hanging fruit in Alabama Democrat Doug Jones, an open seat in New Mexico, and maybe some chances for an upset in New Hampshire or Michigan.

But now Republicans have to worry about an open seat Senate race in Georgia, as Senator Johnny Isakson said today that he will step down from office at the end of this year due to complications with Parkinson’s disease.

Yes, Georgia is a Republican-leaning state. When Stacey Abrams calls herself the legitimately elected governor of her state and refuses to concede the race, Republicans can point out that the official final vote count in 2018 put her down by 54,723 votes, not exactly a small margin. But Abrams did do better than almost any Georgia Democrat running statewide in a generation, with 48.8 percent, and came within 1.4 percentage points of winning.

ISIS Beheading Plotter’s Conviction Overturned by Obama-Appointed Judge By Pamela Geller

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/isis_beheading_plotters_conviction_overturned_by_obamaappointed_judge.html

Daoud Wright is a former Islamic State (ISIS) operative in Boston who was the ringleader of a plot to behead me. In December 2017, he was found guilty on five counts in this terrorist plot against me, which involved Wright maintaining close contact with and even financing a major American ISIS leader, Zulfi Hoxha. Yet late Wednesday afternoon, one of those convictions was overturned. Federal Appeals Court Justice David J. Barron said Wright “could have been simply been ‘role-playing’ with respect to following ISIS’s direction.”

Back when Wright was convicted, the jury didn’t think Wright was just “role-playing.” They brought the verdict in swiftly: according to WBUR, they “reached five verdicts in six hours.” Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said: “Mr. Wright is a terrorist, an ISIS supporter and recruiter who intended to wage war against the United States by beheading people and killing Americans.”

Barron, in contrast, clearly has embraced the claim of the defense during the trial, that Wright was just a fat fantasist sitting in his mother’s basement playing video games and dreaming of glory. But in an extraordinary article that appeared in the left-wing Atlantic in January 2018 entitled “A New American Leader Rises in ISIS,” Seamus Hughes, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, and Bennett Clifford revealed that a “shared interest in video games may have been one of the first things that brought Hoxha together with David Wright.” The video games were not an idle pastime:

This is what energy independence looks like By Silvio Canto, Jr. (Finally!!!!rsk)

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

The U.S. is now the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas.

Let me reveal my age and remember that I watched President Richard M. Nixon call for “energy independence” many years ago.   His successors have more or less said the same thing.

It appears that President Nixon’s call may soon be reality.  In fact, it looks like we may be “drowning the world” with oil, according to Nick Cunningham:   

The U.S. is still expected to account of the bulk of new drilling and the vast majority of new production, with much of that coming from shale. 

Already, the U.S. is the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. 

And the pace has accelerated in recent years. 

Why Socialism, and Why Now? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/why-socialism-and-why-now/

“Socialist! is no longer a McCarthyite slur.

Rather, the fresh celebrity “Squad” of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen — Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas. A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country.

Five years ago, septuagenarian Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) was considered an irrelevant lone socialist in the U.S. Senate — Vermont’s trademark contribution to cranky quirkiness. But in 2016, Sanders’ improbable Democratic primary run almost knocked off front-runner Hillary Clinton, even as socialist governments were either imploding or stagnating the world over.

After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, Sanders is back, running as a socialist warhorse, promising endless amounts of free stuff, with those promises suddenly being taken seriously.

Sanders, like the members of the Squad, has limited political power. But the celebrity and social media influence of these new and retread socialists has been on the upswing — especially in the current 21st-century climate of radical transformations in economic and political life.

Note the shock over Clinton’s 2016 defeat, the furor directed at a take-no-prisoners Trump, and sudden progressive criticism of the Obama presidency as too temporizing, weak and ineffectual. And there are still other undercurrents that explain why currently socialism polls so well among young Americans.

College-educated Americans collectively owe an estimated $1.5 trillion in unpaid student loans. Many of these debtors despair of ever paying back the huge sums.

ENGLAND AND ISRAEL FROM D.P.S.

Brexit: Boris Turns to the Queen

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/brexit-boris-turns-to-the-queen/90811/

Queen Elizabeth II’s approval of the suspension of Parliament next month is an important step in protecting Britain’s decision to leave Europe. It is crucial to a plan of Prime Minister Johnson that is being set down by furious opponents as, in the words of one, “profoundly undemocratic.” What a hypocritical jibe. For Mr. Johnson seeks to redeem a Brexit referendum that is one of the great acts of direct democracy in modern history.

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/dsei/2019/08/27/can-an-israeli-missile-give-us-army-aviation-an-advantage-in-future-warfare/

Can an Israeli missile give US Army aviation an advantage in future warfare? Jen Judson

In the mountainous desert of Arizona, an AH-64E helicopter hiding behind 1,600 feet of craggy mountain fires a missile at a target representing a Russian Pantsir medium-range, surface-to-air missile system on the opposite slope.

The Aug. 26 scenario, attended by Defense News, was part of a U.S. Army experiment to achieve greater standoff against enemy threats using the Rafael-manufactured Spike Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) anti-tank, guided missile.

Breaking News: CAIR Touts Partnership with Census Bureau by Steven Emerson

https://www.investigativeproject.org/8045/breaking-news-cair-touts-partnership-with-census

Federal law enforcement knows enough about the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to order its agents not to engage with the group outside of criminal investigations. But despite that, the U.S. Census Bureau believes the conservative, Sunni-dominated Islamist organization is a trustworthy organization to partner with in next year’s national population count.

“CAIR is proud to partner with the U.S. Census Bureau to ensure American Muslims are fairly and accurately counted in the 2020 Census,” Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a CAIR news release. “Full participation in the census ensures that American Muslims will be better represented in Congress and that their communities receive an equal share in state and federal programs.”

It isn’t clear what CAIR or the Census Bureau will do as part of the partnership. The statement indicated CAIR will promote participation in the Census and advise people how to avoid scams. The Census Bureau did not respond to a request for comment.

“CAIR wants to ensure that that not only are American Muslim communities being fairly counted – but that their neighborhoods are getting a fair share in federal and state funding,” the CAIR release said.

Internal documents seized by the FBI show that CAIR and its founders, Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, were deeply involved in a Hamas-support network in America created by the Muslim Brotherhood. A committee report described the group’s mission as “defending the Islamic cause in Palestine and support for the emerging movement, the Hamas Movement.”