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September 2019

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The Dems take a swig from The Pickwick Papers Roger Kimball

By on September 26th, 2019

https://spectator.us/dems-swig-pickwick-papers-impeachment/

Compare the anodyne narrative of the transcript to the mad impeachment hysteria that has addled the brains of the anti-Trump sorority in the Democratic party.

I am not thinking of that scene at the beginning of Dickens’s novel where Mr Blotton says he regards Mr Pickwick as a ‘humbug’. That was nice, especially when Mr Pickwick angrily demands to know whether the Rt. Honorable gentleman called him a humbug in its ordinary or ‘common sense’. No, no responded Mr Blotton, he had ‘merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view’. Well, that’s all right then, rejoined Mr Pickwick, and peace and amity reigned once more among the members of the Pickwick Club.

There is a lesson in there somewhere for the Democrats, but when it comes to their virulent case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, more pertinent is the episode describing the case of Bardell v. Pickwick. The widow Bardell, ‘fat, fair, and forty’, is Mr Pickwick’s landlady. She willfully misconstrues some innocuous comments he makes. Item: ‘Dear Mrs. B., Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick.’ Out such gossamer musing she constructs a proposal of marriage and, when no proposal is forthcoming sues Pickwick for breach of promise. Much hilarity, and not inconsiderable inconvenience, ensues, but it all comes right in the end, at least for Mr Pickwick.

It’s not so great for Mrs Bardell, but what happens to her is nothing like what is about to happen to the Democrats. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House was opening a ‘formal’ impeachment inquiry. Why? Because the president had a conversation with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in July. President Trump congratulated Zelensky on his recent victory and expressed the wish that the US and Ukraine would work together in a spirit of friendship. He noted that the US had an ongoing inquiry into Ukrainian-based efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election and he asked Zelensky to talk to Attorney General Barr. ‘There are a lot of things that went on,’ Trump said, and ‘I would like you to get to the bottom of it.’ For his part, Zelensky expressed the hope that Rudy Giuliani would be available to help them with the inquiry. Trump is enthusiastic about that idea and notes that ‘there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.’

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Complaint From So-Called ‘Whistleblower’ Is Riddled With Gossip, Blatant Falsehoods The complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower,” released Thursday, is a mix of gossip, hearsay, and misstatements of fact contradicted by publicly available evidence. By Sean Davis

By on September 26th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/26/complaint-from-so-called-whistleblower-is-riddled-with-gossip-blatant-falsehoods/

The formal complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower” alleging various crimes by President Donald Trump is riddled with third-hand gossip and outright falsehoods. The document was declassified by Trump Wednesday evening and released to the public Thursday morning. The complaint, which was delivered to the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees, follows the same template used in the infamous and debunked Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier.

Rather than provide direct evidence that was witnessed or obtained firsthand by the complainant, the document instead combines gossip from various anonymous individuals, public media reports, and blatant misstatements of fact and law in service of a narrative that is directly contradicted by underlying facts. A footnote in the document even boasts about its use of “ample open-source information.”

Contrary to news reports asserting that the complaint included volumes of information incriminating Trump, it is instead based entirely on the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and various public media reports.

“I was not a direct witness to most of the events” characterized in the document, the complainant confesses on the first page. Instead, the complainant notes, the document is based on conversations with “more than half a dozen U.S. officials.” Those officials are not named, and their positions are not identified anywhere in the letter.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Humanitarian Hoax of Zero Population Growth (ZPG): Killing America With Kindness – hoax 48 by Linda Goudsmit

By on September 26th, 2019

 http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/23290/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-zero-population-growth

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The Humanitarian Hoax series has discussed the Humanitarian Hoax of Globalism, The Humanitarian Hoax of Socialism, The Humanitarian Hoax of Climate Change, The Humanitarian Hoax of Climate Change II, The Riddle of Climate Change, and the Humanitarian Hoax of the United Nations. Now it is time to examine the Humanitarian Hoax of Zero Population Growth and see how these hoaxes are all connected.

The humanitarian hoaxes are globalist cons designed to redistribute the world’s wealth and the world’s population to establish a new internationalized world order of one world government under the corrupt auspices of the United Nations. The 2020 American presidential election is a domestic political contest between Americanism and globalism that reflects the worldwide political contest between national sovereignty and globalism.

President Donald J. Trump stunned the world 9.24.19 with his brilliant speech to the 74th United Nations General Assembly. It was a calm, measured, powerful statement of purpose and resolve highlighting the 21st century conflict between the United States demand for national sovereignty under the Trump administration, and the United Nation’s increasing efforts to globalize the world. President Trump presented his proud, America-first leadership unapologetically and with equal respect for the national sovereignty, cultures, and religions of the nations of the world represented in the general assembly saying:

“In America, the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign. I was elected not to take power, but to give power to the American people where it belongs. In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our government’s first duty is to its people, to our citizens, to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values. As president of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

500 Scientists Write U.N.: ‘There Is No Climate Emergency’ Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

By on September 26th, 2019

https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/24/500-scientists-write-u-n-there-is-no-climate-emergency/

More than 500 scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking for a long-overdue, high-level, open debate on climate change.

Just as 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York accusing world leaders of robbing her of her future, scientists were begging the United Nations to keep hysteria from obscuring facts.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the declaration states. “Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”

The scientists underscored the importance of not rushing into enormously expensive climate action before fully ascertaining the facts.

“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” they declared. “However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sweden Spinning out of Control by Judith Bergman

By on September 26th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14819/sweden-crime

From the beginning of 2019 to the end of July, there were 120 bombings in Sweden, according to police statistics.

In Uppsala alone, a picturesque Swedish university town, where 80% of girls do not feel safe in the city center, four rapes or attempted rapes took place in early August within four days.

“Stop the rapes – you are letting the women down…. That women do not have the same opportunity to move freely in the streets and squares without having to worry about being exposed to crime, is a serious restriction on women’s freedom and self-determination”. — Josefin Malmqvist, member of parliament for the Moderate Party; Aftonbladet, August 24, 2019.

“Löfven, you have lost control of Sweden,” the leader of the largest opposition party, the center-right Moderate Party, Ulf Kristersson, recently wrote in an article in the daily newspaper Aftonbladet, in which he criticized Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven for failing to solve some of Sweden’s biggest problems. According to Kristersson:

“Two areas that we [the Moderate Party] highly prioritize are law and order and integration. Because Sweden’s biggest problems are there now.

“Last year, 306 shootings occurred and 45 people were shot dead. According to the police, the number of people killed has doubled since 2014. During the same period, the number of people who have been subjected to sexual abuse has tripled according to BRÅ [the Swedish Crime Prevention Council]…

“Concrete reforms are necessary. We have proposed them – the Social Democrats say no…

At the same time, we have an integration crisis: More than half of all the unemployed are born outside of Sweden. In our exclusion areas, [utanförskapsområden] there are schools where not even half of the students pass all subjects… Many children born in Sweden hardly speak Swedish, and there is extensive repression [in the name of] honor culture. Here too we have called for reforms, but the Social Democrats say no.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Denying Jerusalem’s Jewish History Despite Archaeological Evidence by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on September 26th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14909/jerusalem-jewish-history

As has been true with previous archaeological discoveries in Israel, however, this one is unlikely to put a dent in the long-term international campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state by rewriting and distorting its history, even by renaming the Jewish sites Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem to “Bilal ibn Rabah mosque” (it was never a mosque) and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs the Ibrahimi Mosque.

“Rewriting the history of the Land of Israel in order to deny Israel’s right to exist is central to Palestinian Authority (PA) policy. Long before it started the PA terror campaign (the ‘Intifada,’ 2000-2005), the PA was fighting a history war – erasing Jewish history and replacing it with a fabricated Palestinian history.” — Palestinian Media Watch.

Where Palestinian propaganda is concerned, however, none of the above [documentation or archeological evidence] appears to matter.

The City of David Foundation recently delivered a major blow to the Arab effort to erase Judaism’s 3,000-year ties to Jerusalem. On September 9, the foundation’s leading archaeologist, Eli Shukron, announced the discovery of a 2,600-year-old royal seal, found near the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, which bears the name (in Hebrew) of Adenyahu, a son of King David mentioned in the biblical Book of Kings.

As has been true with previous archaeological discoveries in Israel, however, this one is unlikely to put a dent in the long-term international campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state by rewriting and distorting its history, even by renaming the Jewish sites Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem to “Bilal ibn Rabah mosque” (it was never a mosque) and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs the Ibrahimi Mosque.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Impeach Joe Biden…He did what Trump did not do

By on September 26th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/26/impeach-joe-biden/

Until the transcript of President Donald Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky emerged on Wednesday, Democrats were in a mad fury with accusations that Trump had bribed a foreign government to investigate the business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The claim, based on a whistleblower’s second-hand account, which none of them had seen, alleged that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine on the condition that it open an investigation on Biden.

Circumstantially at least, there seemed to be some crumbs to back this up. Aside from the mysterious whistleblower claim, the administration had held up an aid package shortly before the call. And then, statements made by Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, seemed to confirm some elements of the story.

When the transcript of the call came out, however, the story fell apart. There was no discussion of aid. Trump did not cajole or pressure Zelensky.

Of course, since the impeachment train had already left the station, Democrats couldn’t suddenly shrug their shoulders and say “never mind.” So the mere fact that Trump brought up the topic of the Biden investigation is now grounds for impeachment.

But if that’s all there is to it, why isn’t Biden under the impeachment cloud?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Ukraine-Gate’ Is About the Russian Hack That Wasn’t Julie Kelly

By on September 26th, 2019

amgreatness.com/2019/09/25/ukraine-gate-is-about-the-russian-hack-that-wasnt/

“CrowdStrike’s Ties to Democrats While lawmakers and pundits on the Left and NeverTrump Right breezed past Trump’s mention of CrowdStrike—either out of subterfuge or ignorance—it is significant. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm with strong ties to the Democratic Party. After the DNC server was hacked in early 2016, Perkins Coie, a politically connected law firm, hired CrowdStrike on behalf of the DNC to find out who was behind the intrusion. (Perkins Coie is the same law firm that hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up Russia-related dirt on Team Trump before the election.)”

One of the animating chapters in the Trump-Russian collusion saga was the claim that Russia infiltrated the Democratic National Committee’s email server in the spring of 2016. That hack, according to collusion truthers, and the subsequent release of damaging emails exchanged between top Democratic Party officials was central to Vladimir Putin’s scheme to sway the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

But the evidence to support this widely accepted claim is sketchy at best and appears to be under appropriate scrutiny by prosecutors now examining the origins of the FBI’s pre-election investigation into the Trump campaign for “colluding” with Russia.

According to the transcript of a July call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s newly elected president, Trump raised the issue of “CrowdStrike” and suggested Ukraine might be in possession of the “server,” a reference to the DNC server.

“I would like you to do us a favor,” Trump said. “I would like you to find out what happened with the whole situation with Ukraine, with CrowdStrike. The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.”

To say the least.

CrowdStrike’s Ties to Democrats

While lawmakers and pundits on the Left and NeverTrump Right breezed past Trump’s mention of CrowdStrike—either out of subterfuge or ignorance—it is significant.

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm with strong ties to the Democratic Party. After the DNC server was hacked in early 2016, Perkins Coie, a politically connected law firm, hired CrowdStrike on behalf of the DNC to find out who was behind the intrusion. (Perkins Coie is the same law firm that hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up Russia-related dirt on Team Trump before the election.)

That isn’t the extent of CrowdStrike’s dubious political ties. Its co-founder, Moscow-born Dmitri Alperovitch, is associated with the Clinton Foundation; in 2015, CrowdStrike received $100 million in funding from Google whose chairman, Eric Schmidt, was a generous supporter of Hillary Clinton. CrowdStrike’s president is Shawn Henry, who headed up the FBI’s cybercrimes division during the Obama Administration when Robert Mueller was director.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dems Bet It All on a Telephone Call Transcript The president breaks no law – but facts elude leftists in full Trump Derangement Meltdown. Matthew Vadum

By on September 26th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/democrats-bet-it-all-trumps-telephone-call-matthew-vadum/

A day after Democrats vowed to open a formal impeachment inquiry, President Trump dropped a bombshell Sept. 25 by releasing the transcript of a conversation he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Trump’s enemies insist is the smoking gun that should drive him from office.

That the impeachment push is an attempt to placate the Democrats’ increasingly affective Antifa-loving base and probably also a tactic to direct attention away from the at least questionable dealings in Ukraine of Democrat presidential frontrunner Joe Biden and his cokehead grifter son, Hunter, have barely been mentioned in the media. The media is promoting the theory – based on an anonymous “whistleblower” complaint – that Trump tried to enlist a foreign government to help him in the 2020 election, even though Department of Justice lawyers have already issued an opinion that Trump’s conversation did not constitute a violation of U.S. campaign laws.

After months of hand-wringing, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pulled the trigger to begin the process of impeaching Donald Trump, even before she read the transcript, dogmatically declaring that Trump “asked a foreign government to help him in his political campaign at the expense of our national security.”

The unsubstantiated claim is that Trump threatened to withhold a military aid package from Ukraine to pressure that country to investigate the Bidens.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Epochal Challenge of Mass Immigration Wolfgang Kasper

By on September 26th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/09/the-epochal-challenge-of-mass-immigration/

Wolfgang Kasper is an emeritus Professor of Economics. This is an edited version of an address to a meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society in Fort Worth, Texas, in May. Professor Kasper thanks Regine Kasper, Jeff Bennett (Canberra), Václav Klaus (Prague), Stefan Markowski (Warsaw and Canberra), Tom Sowell (Stanford) and many attendants at the Fort Worth gathering for their comments, but of course retains all responsibility for judgments and errors. 

Allow me to begin on a personal note. When I was a child, my family was “ethnically cleansed” and, soon after that, we became refugees because my father had to flee for his liberty from the Soviet effort to “harvest” German engineers for the post-war reconstruction of the Russian Fatherland. Later, we became migrants. As an adult, I have been a guest worker in half a dozen countries. And over the past forty-six years I have lived in Australia, the country with the biggest share of foreign-born residents, bar Israel.

I therefore claim to know a thing or two about migration.

Migration and integration

The most important thing I know is that one cannot and must not discuss the act of migration without considering the subsequent process of integration. To me, integration means that the newcomers must make every effort to learn the host community’s rules of conduct in the public domain, and obey them. What meals they cook at home, to what gods they pray—that is left to their own private choice. Integration, though personally gratifying and potentially rewarding, is a huge challenge. It touches on deeply held feelings of personal identity and demands the adaptation of normally persistent cultural norms[1].

Insisting on the newcomers adopting the habits and modes of public behaviour of the host community is not racist. Racism is abhorrent, because it amounts to discrimination according to what we have been given by nature, characteristics which we cannot change. By contrast, habits and modes of behaviour come from nurture; they are cultural features, which are learnt and can be relearnt.

In this article I shall use the shorthand “the West” to describe the countries of Western Europe, North America and Australasia, which are the three pillars of Western civilisation. By and large, they are democratic and have capitalist market economies. I shall speak summarily of “the South” when I refer to Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America, namely the regions that are the main sources of the new mass migration.

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