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August 2019

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Was Always the Target of the Russia Investigation By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on August 30th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/trump-was-always-the-target-of-the-russia-investigation/

The IG report confirms it.

Donald Trump was always the target.

The point of the Russia investigation was to make a case against Donald Trump. Preferably, the case would drive him from office. At a minimum, it would render him unelectable by the 2020 stretch run. The kind of case was less important than the objective: criminal prosecution or impeachment. In accordance with the collusion narrative, the latter would mean trying to show that Trump was compromised by the Kremlin.

That is the astonishing takeaway from Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on former FBI director James Comey’s handling of his memos.

In truth, it’s not that astonishing. It happens to be the theory of my new book, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. Obviously, if a book can show that Donald Trump was in the FBI’s crosshairs all along, that fact had to have been knowable for some time.

Still, if you’re going to write a book about a mind-blowing theory, it is gratifying to have that theory confirmed — notwithstanding how alarming it may be for the state of our republic.

It is an offhanded confirmation. The burden of the IG report is not to break news about the true purpose of the Trump-Russia investigation. It is to assess former director Comey’s conduct in generating, maintaining, and disseminating information in the memos he made about most of his interactions with President Trump. On that score, the IG report is scathing.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA Comments turned off

Media Ignores Climate Alarmist’s Court Loss — It Doesn’t Fit The Warmist Agenda

By on August 30th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/30/media-ignores-

Last week, a Canadian court tossed out a lawsuit in which Michael Mann, the researcher who published the idolized hockey stick temperature chart, had sued another researcher for libel. Did the mainstream media run with this story? Of course not. That would ruin the narrative.

Mann became famous for the chart, which showed temperatures running along in a horizontal fashion before spiking at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the “evidence” the global warming alarmists had been waiting for — “science” that showed human activity was overheating Earth. It was included in at least one United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Not all were convinced, however. There were questions about the data he used to create the stick, which he wouldn’t release. It has been called “100% fraudulent,” an “artifact of poor mathematics,” and a violation of “of scientific standards.”

Mann has been accused of engaging in “data manipulation,” and “academic and scientific misconduct.”

Some years after the stick was constructed, Canadian statisticians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick challenged Mann’s work. They argued the “recent paleoclimate reconstruction by Mann et al. does not provide reliable evidence about climate change over the past millennium, because their data are inconsistent and their confidence intervals are wrong.” 

Climate researcher Tim Ball even went so deep as to say that Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State,” where Mann conducts research.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

To European Leaders: Jewish Flesh Is Cheap by Guy Millière *****

By on August 30th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14786/europe-jewish-flesh-is-cheap

The Oslo Accords were based on the illusion that the PLO could totally change and suddenly become a “partner for peace”… It soon became clear that the Palestinian Authority was still the PLO: terrorist attacks quickly multiplied. The money received by the Palestinian Authority was used to continue incitement to murder and payments to incentivize it.

In 1967, a change of strategy took place. No one, the PLO decided, would speak of a “war for the destruction of Israel”. Instead, they would call it a “war of national liberation”. From then on, the PLO was presented as a “liberation movement”.

Arabs who had left Israel in 1948-49, many of whom remained in refugee camps, were defined as the “Palestinian people”; in this way were the Palestinian people invented. As PLO Executive Council member Zuheir Mohsen said in 1977: “The Palestinian people does not exist… Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people…”

The leaders of the Palestinian Authority have, in fact, never stopped resorting to “armed struggle”, the name they give to terrorism and murdering Jews. To “frustrate all the schemes of Zionism”, they invented the Palestinian people; their “struggle for national liberation” gave them international recognition. By renaming terrorism and murdering Jews “armed struggle”, they made their use of terrorism and murder acceptable. By signing the Oslo Accords, they could appear interested in peace without having to renounce terrorism. They could even demonize Israel and give it the image of a barbaric and cruel country while continuing to murder Jews.

“If you look at history… what ends conflicts is one side giving up…. and then it’s over…. in World War II, [the Germans] were forced to give up… and note how much they benefited by giving up.” — Daniel Pipes, historian, November 19, 2017.

August 7th. Israel. When Dvir Sorek, an 18-year-old student returned from Jerusalem to his school after having bought some books for his rabbis as an end-of-year gift, he was stabbed to death by two Arab terrorists.

As his funeral took place, while his father was delivering the eulogy, the inhabitants of the Arab village of Silwad, two miles North, to celebrate the murder, were setting off fireworks.

Sorek was apparently a peaceful teenager who had never hurt anyone. Among the books he brought was one by an Israeli left-wing writer, David Grossman, supporting the need to create a Palestinian state.

Sorek’s “fault” was to be a Jew.

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EDUCATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Daring to Suggest that All Cultures Aren’t Equal The Acting Provost of DePaul University issues a formal censure against me. Jason D. Hill

By on August 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274741/daring-suggest-all-cultures-arent-equal-jason-d-hill

“Sudan, Nigeria, Mauritania, Libya and Algeria —all countries which still practice and/or tolerate chattel slavery by Arab and black Muslims against other Muslims and Christians—are not the moral, political or cultural equals of the United States, Israel, Great Britain and, say, France. Those countries are vastly superior to Saudi Arabia or Iran, or North Korea and Gaza, which do not permit religious reciprocity. Its political leaders permit the beheading of homosexuals in the streets, legalize torture, and have some of the most egregious records of gender inequality in the world. In the cases of Iran, Qatar and Saud Arabia, we witness them as sponsors of world-wide terrorism, and of placing restrictions on civil liberties and a free press.”

It is a common canard among the educated cognoscenti that all cultures are equal. Indeed, a few weeks after writing an article in which I declared that not all cultures were equal, the Acting Provost of DePaul University—where I am a full tenured professor of philosophy—issued what I and many others considered to be a formal censure against me. She declared that at her university it is considered an accepted truism that all individuals are valued equally, and that she was truly disheartened that a member of the academic community would assert that “not all cultures are indeed equal.”

I had stated that some cultures are abysmally inferior and regressive based on their comprehensive philosophy and fundamental principles, or, lack thereof—that guide or fail to protect the inalienable rights of their citizens.

Therein lay the category mistake that an educated academic along with countless others commit conflating the individual with the cultural. A culture may be described as a multiplicity of complex systems that include the arts, laws, customs, practices, norms, mores, beliefs, knowledge, and human capabilities acquired by human-beings in society. Culture also includes language, ethical systems, and religious institutions. One can indeed say that all persons are endowed with equal and intrinsic moral worth as human beings which they may corrupt by committing morally egregious acts; but as human beings, they are possessed of inviolable moral worth and dignity.

It is, however, a category mistake to transfer this innate respect and reverence for the individual on to the landscape of culture which is not an indivisible whole, and which possesses none of the requisite attributes of individuals that make them deserving of such unassailable respect. Persons’ identities are not reducible to the practices of their cultures. Some cultural practices are downright horrific and evil; some are better than others. Persons in their respective cultures are free to identify themselves with those cultural practices that align themselves with their moral identities, and distances themselves from those they find repulsive.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Political Class Is ‘Exhausted’ Julie Kelly

By on August 30th, 2019

amgreatness.com/2019/08/29/the-political-class-is-exhausted/

There is a small slice of the American populace who, by their own admission, are exhausted.

No, I do not refer to new moms caring for cranky infants or emergency room nurses working the night shift or tactical officers patrolling the ’hood or farmers plowing their soybean crops.

Our bone-weary countrymen populate opinion magazines, newsrooms, editorial boards, and cable networks up and down the Acela corridor. Their fingertips, nearly stripped of all flesh from excessive tweeting, have lost agility. Heads droop over coffee-stained laptops; they can’t even muster enough energy to brush off the morning’s donut crumbs from the keyboard.

Cognitive fatigue has set in: “How do you spell Haberman again,” they mumble to themselves as they struggle to search the pages of the New York Times. Slippered feet shuffle aimlessly under the desk of their home office. Makeup artists in the MSNBC green room desperately try to conceal dark circles sagging under the eyes of barely-functioning hosts and guests.

Now, one can understand the fatigue associated with a prolonged hangover after a two-year bender on Trump-Russian collusion that came up empty. One can certainly sympathize with talking heads and columnists who want to crawl under the covers after being wrong about nearly everything since 2016. And, really, having to interview Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for the umpteenth time would take its toll on any mere mortal.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Jim Comey’s Higher Virtue The righteous former FBI director thinks the rules don’t apply to him.

By on August 30th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jim-comeys-higher-virtue-11567121926

Beware the righteous man with power. That’s the great lesson of James Comey, as the 79-page report released Thursday by the Justice Department Inspector General makes clear. The former FBI director willfully violated multiple rules as he sought revenge against Donald Trump while pursuing his own self-interest in the name of higher virtue.

The report focuses on how Mr. Comey handled seven memos he wrote in 2017 about his interactions with Mr. Trump. IG Michael Horowitz finds that in treating his memos as personal documents rather than official FBI records, improperly storing them at home, failing to inform the bureau he had them, or leaking them to the press, Mr. Comey ignored FBI and Justice protocols and broke his employment agreement.

“By not safeguarding sensitive information” and “by using it to create public pressure for official action,” Mr. Comey “set a dangerous example” for every FBI employee, the IG says. Mr. Comey admitted that he violated the rules to cause the appointment of a special counsel after Mr. Trump fired him in May 2017.

“Comey said he was compelled to take these actions ‘if I love this country . . . and I love the Department of Justice, and I love the FBI,’” the report says. But the IG concludes that if everyone violated the rules “to achieve a personally desired outcome” as Mr. Comey did, “the FBI would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly.”

Translated from the bureaucratic prose: Mr. Comey thought he was above the rules because he wanted to save the country from Mr. Trump. No doubt J. Edgar Hoover felt a similar afflatus as he wiretapped Martin Luther King.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sneaky, Leaky James Comey The inspector general takes apart the former FBI director’s excuses for his actions. By Kimberley A. Strassel

By on August 30th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sneaky-leaky-james-comey-11567121062

Of all the tall tales James Comey has told, none compare to the line he fed President Trump at their infamous January 2017 dinner. As recounted in the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director’s memo about that evening, “I said I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.”

The Justice Department’s inspector general begs to differ. In a new report about Mr. Comey’s handling of those memos, Michael Horowitz demonstrates that Mr. Comey in 2017 was consistently leaky and sneaky. The report refutes any claim that the then-director was justified in taking these actions. He repeatedly, and knowingly, broke the rules.

For more than two years, we’ve heard Mr. Comey’s characterization of his actions, popularized by an adoring media: He felt compelled to memorialize his private discussions with the president, to protect the FBI. He had no choice but to use an intermediary to leak memo contents, to save the nation by forcing the appointment of a special counsel. He was entitled to do so because the memos were his personal papers, and by that time he was a “private citizen.”

The inspector general calmly and coolly dismantles these claims. There’s good reason to suspect Mr. Trump was the focus of the bureau’s counterintelligence probe from the start, since that is the only way to explain the FBI’s outrageous decision to hide the probe from the president. The inspector general reports that Mr. Comey’s first briefing of the president-elect, on Jan. 6, 2017, was partly done in the hope that “Trump might make statements about, or provide information of value to,” that probe. That may be the real reason everyone on the FBI leadership team agreed “ahead of time that Comey should memorialize” what happened.

Mr. Horowitz’s report methodically skewers Mr. Comey’s claim that his memos were “personal” and therefore his to keep and use.  CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Mandatory Teacher Training Denigrates Christianity, Exalts Islam Christian scriptures described as “corrupted” while the Koran contains the “pure” word of God. Sara Dogan

By on August 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274787/mandatory-teacher-training-denigrates-christianity-sara-dogan

A Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan revealed deeply concerning information on a mandatory two-day teacher training session on Islam conducted for public school teachers in the state which denigrated Christianity while presenting Islam in an exclusively positive light.

“We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers,” explained Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Law Center. He noted that the school district had not sponsored teacher trainings on Christianity, Judaism, or other religions over the past five years, but solely on Islam.

The “cultural competency” expert hired by the Novi Community Schools District in Michigan is Huda Essa of Culture Links LLC, a hijab-wearing woman of Arab descent. After examining numerous documents relating to Essa’s presentation including audio transcripts from her talk, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) found that “information on Islam she provided to Novi teachers was riddled with falsehoods and errors of omission that were clearly meant to deceive.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Mexico Bleeding Mexican murder rate hits unprecedented all-time high. Stephen Brown

By on August 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274735/mexico-bleeding-stephen-brown

It is a very tragic story currently unfolding in America’s southern neighbor where deadly violence is now almost a way of life.

According to data released by Mexico’s National System for Public Security, murders this year in the Latin American country are at an all-time high. Statistics show there has been more killings in the first six months of 2019 than ever before in the country’s history. (Mexicans started keeping records on their country’s murder rate in 1996.)

The total number of victims for the first half of 2019 comes to more than 17,000 people, a new record. This represents a 5.6 per cent increase in killings over the same time period last year. And also amounts to about 90 people slaughtered per day.

Three thousand murders were recorded in June, 2019, alone, which is an increase of 232 over the same month last year. This is the most murders ever recorded for a single month.

These figures do not include victims of other serious crimes such as, for example, kidnapping, attempted murder or extortion.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Jihad on Christian Cemeteries A hate that pursues “infidels” even after death. Raymond Ibrahim

By on August 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274765/jihad-christian-cemeteries-raymond-ibrahim

Although the Islamic persecution of actual, living Christians is certainly more deplorable, Islamic attacks on inanimate Christian symbols are often more indicative of the existential hate borne for the other.

Consider, for instance, the phenomenon of Muslims desecrating and destroying Christian cemeteries and their crosses.  While the act itself is largely “symbolic”—in that no living person gets hurt—it is also reflective of a committed, viral hatred that transcends subjective circumstances.  In other words, whereas the persecution of this or that Christian can be motivated by particular circumstances—conflicts, sexual attraction, convenience, gain, etc.—attacks on inanimate Christian symbols reflect an objective, transcendent hatred for Christianity and its followers, one that needs no “reason” and gains nothing in its expression.

From one end of the Islamic world to the other—in Arab, African, and Asian nations, and increasingly in the West—this sort of hate is becoming a regular occurrence.  A brief list follows; it is ordered by desecrations committed by formal terrorists (“ISIS,” etc.), informal terrorists (Muslim mobs), and Muslim governments:

Libya: In March 2012, a video of a Muslim mob attacking a commonwealth cemetery near Benghazi, where WWII British officers were buried, appeared on the Internet. As the vandals kick down and destroy headstones with crosses on them, the man videotaping them urges them to “Break the cross of the dogs!” while he and others cry “Allahu Akbar!” At one point, he chuckles as he tells an overly zealous desecrater to “calm down.” When another Muslim complains that he is unable to kick down a particular stone, wondering if it is because “this soldier must have been good to his parents,” the man videotaping replies, “Come on, they are all dogs, who cares?” Finally the mob congregates around the huge Cross of Sacrifice, the cemetery’s cenotaph monument, and starts hammering at it, to more cries of “Allahu Akbar.”

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