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October 2019

Uncovering Russiagate’s Origins Could Prevent Future Scandals There are legitimate grounds to probe the intelligence officials behind the all-consuming Trump-Russia affair. By Aaron Maté— 

https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-brennan/

FROM THE ULTRA LEFT MAGAZINE “THE NATION”

The Justice Department’s inquiry into the origins of Russiagate has now expanded into a criminal matter, raising alarm bells among intelligence officials, Democratic leaders, and media pundits who promoted the theory of a Trump-Russia conspiracy.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump would like to exact political revenge on those behind the Russia probe, and it is fair to be skeptical of his Department of Justice. But it would be a mistake to reflexively dismiss the inquiry, which is led by US Attorney John Durham and overseen by Attorney General William Barr. The public deserves an accounting of what occurred. And given the intrusion of the nation’s intelligence’s services into domestic politics, a failure to learn lessons and enact safeguards could leave future candidates, especially on the left, vulnerable to similar investigations.

For more than two years, the FBI investigated a presidential campaign and then sitting president as a conspirator or agent of Russia. The story engulfed US media and political energy and had major consequences on domestic US politics and foreign relations. The probe found not only no Trump-Russia conspiracy, but barely even any contact between the two sides suspected of conspiring. Carrying a Russian passport (as the Russians in the Trump Tower meeting did), or falsely suggesting in an e-mail that you are acting at the Kremlin’s behest (as the British music publicist who arranged that meeting did), does not mean that you are actually working with the Russian government. Mueller, ultimately, showed no evidence that they—or any other suspected Kremlin intermediary—were Kremlin intermediaries. This helps explain why, as the report found, Kremlin officials trying to reach out to the Trump campaign after its election victory “appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.”

Obama Successfully Hunted Trump Campaign Aides Instead of Terrorists Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/28/obama-successfully-hunted-trump-campaign-aides-instead-of-terrorists/

For more than a year, the leaders entrusted to protect the country and administer justice on behalf of Americans victimized by terrorists instead used their awesome reach against a domestic political rival.

The weekend raid that resulted in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was named after Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker killed in Syria in 2015 while being held captive by the sadistic ISIS leader. During his Sunday morning announcement from the White House, President Trump twice invoked Mueller’s name in addition to the names of other Americans murdered under the Islamic State’s ongoing reign of terror. According to reports from some of his escaped victims, Baghdadi took Mueller as his secret bride in 2013. “We were told Kayla was tortured, that she was the property of al-Baghdadi,” her parents said in an August 2015 interview.

Mueller was raped repeatedly by the ISIS caliph, then killed in February 2015 during a coalition strike on the compound where she was confined.

After the U.S. confirmed Mueller’s death, President Obama issued a statement. “ISIL is a hateful and abhorrent terrorist group whose actions stand in stark contrast to the spirit of people like Kayla. No matter how long it takes, the United States will find and bring to justice the terrorists who are responsible for Kayla’s captivity and death.”

Obama, however, did not bring those terrorists to justice; nearly five years later, it was Donald Trump who made good on that promise.

Kamikaze Schumer Wants to Repeal Private Health Insurance: Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/28/kamikaze-schumer-wants-to-repeal-private-health-insurance/

The more voters know about the New York senator’s initiative and his heavy-handed efforts to push the agenda of the far-left wing of the Democratic party, they more vigorously they will reject it.

While the Democrats continue their impeachment pantomime war dance in the mirror-clad corner in order to keep up their spirits, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is ginning up a much more fateful danse macabre on health care. He has promised to force a vote this week on various Trump Administration directives that have injected flexibility into Obamacare. As The Hill reports, “Senate Democrats plan to force vulnerable Republicans to vote on legislation that would overturn a controversial Trump administration directive on ObamaCare.”

The idea is that Democrats can force besieged lawmakers such as Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Martha McSally (R-Arizona) to take a stand and make an unpopular vote on the issue that voters consistently identify as the most important: health care.

But just like that impeachment fracas taking place in the Romper Room, this ploy on healthcare threatens to recoil badly on Democrats.

Remember “if you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan”? That was the rubric under which President Obama sold the American public the bill of goods we now know as Obamacare. Even Politifact called it the lie of the year. He promised premiums would go down. In fact, they have skyrocketed. Thanks to Obama, when it comes to health care, people have fewer choices, pay more, and have to wait longer to receive treatment, which is increasingly rationed by the bureaucrats in Washington.

Apocalypse Not! How Science Is Distorted To Serve The Activist Agenda Henry I. Miller

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/28/apocalypse-not-how-science-is-distorted-to-serve-the-activist-agenda/

Part 1 in a series

Much of modern environmental activism, which owes more to zealotry than evidence, has spawned a nasty perversion — let’s call it the Pseudo-Scientific Method. As employed by environmental campaigners and the activist scientists who enable them, it has little to do with scientific discovery or the accumulation of knowledge; rather, it is “advocacy research” that creates “evidence” to support a pre-determined public policy — usually, inappropriate regulation or even bans.

The “target” is usually an ideologically disfavored industry or its products, such as nuclear power, genetic engineering, or pesticides. The result is flawed public policy choices and the ever-deepening corruption of the scientific enterprise.

Take the Great Bee Hoax, for example. If you’re still relying on the mainstream and social media for your information, you probably believe that honeybee populations are crashing worldwide, that without bees to pollinate our crops we’ll all soon starve, and that we’re in this sorry state because evil pesticide companies are reaping huge profits and despoiling the environment, while crony regulators look the other way.

At least, this is what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer seems to believe. When the Agriculture Department recently suspended its annual census of U.S. honeybee hives due to budget cuts (a decision that was soon reversed), the Democratic senator from New York rose in high dudgeon claiming — what else? — collusion.

“Schumer demands USDA continue counting honeybees as populations plummet,” headlined a newspaper account of one of Schumer’s numerous statements on the subject. Suggesting that “corruption may be afoot,” he explained: “There’s great speculation that this [falling bee populations] is done by pesticides. … Maybe the pesticides industry went to the USDA and got them to quietly kill the survey.”

Ten Years After Fort Hood Massacre For Obama, it was “workplace violence.” Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/ten-years-after-115-lloyd-billingsley/

On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, Major Nidal Hasan, a self-proclaimed “soldier of Allah,” gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant. Yelling the familiar “Allahu akbar,” Hasan chased down the wounded and shot them in the back. The major would have killed many more if police officer Kim Munley had not fired on the shooter. For the more than 30 the Muslim major wounded, the troubles were only beginning.

The 11/5 Fort Hood massacre was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

For the president of the United States formerly known as Barry Soetoro, it was only “workplace violence,” not even “gun violence.” That prevented the survivors from getting the medals and medical treatment they deserved. For his part, Major Hasan never should have been in a position to attack them.

As Robert Spencer notes, Maj. Hasan told colleagues infidels should have their throats cut, heads chopped off, and boiling oil poured down their throat. He told students Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution and suicide bombings were justified. Hasan’s jihadist tilt was well known but his Army superiors “kept promoting him” even as the FBI tracked his terrorist contacts.

As a 2012 congressional hearing revealed, Hasan openly communicated with Muslim cleric and terrorist mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki. In one email, Hasan told al-Awlaki, “Please keep me in your Rolodex in case you find me useful, and please feel free to call me collect.” Even so, under FBI boss Robert Mueller “the case was dropped until November 5, when the media began circulating reports of the massacre” and at that time the FBI agents “knew exactly who the perpetrator was.”

The Moral Idiocy of Linguistic Segregation A reflection on the brouhaha over Trump’s use of the word “lynching”. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/moral-idiocy-linguistic-segregation-bruce-thornton/

The Race Gestapo pounced on Donald Trump recently for comparing the House’s Constitutionally dicey attempt to impeach him to a “lynching.” Apart from the political motive of damaging Trump, the uproar illustrates once again how illiberal identity politics racializes language, turning words into ideological weapons that serve one faction’s own power and influence rather than the people it supposedly represents.

Much of the criticism of Trump was quickly exposed as hypocritical, morally incoherent, or just plain ignorant. The Associated Press, for example, faulted the president for “stirring up painful memories of America’s racist past.” Seriously? All we’ve been doing for more than half a century is “stirring up” racial grievances in politics, curricula, and popular culture. Historical racial offenses are repeated ad nauseam, even though many of them took place long before the end of legal segregation in 1964. And we know why. The race industry and identity politics are predicated on grievances over racists offenses for which white people must feel guilty.

And if such offenses are lacking, either they will be invented, like the myth that the police target black men for extra-legal assassination; or recycled from history, as in the current outrage over Trump’s use of the word “lynching.” Without grievances and the white guilt they provoke, activists and political factions have no leverage over lawmakers for getting regulations that privilege their interests.

What these ideological ploys actually reveal, though, is not the persistence of racism, but how much black lives have improved since even before the Civil Rights Act, and how discredited and ostracized old-school public expressions of racist attitudes have become. If these views still had widespread political and social power, nobody would have to invent racist hoaxes a la Jussie Smollett, or redefine racism into ever more subtle manifestations, or create psychological fictions like “implicit bias.” As any black man over the age of 60 can tell you, during segregation nobody needed such magnifying glasses to see racism in action. It was brutally obvious.

Will Impeachment Change Opinions of Trump? By Matthew Continetti

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/will-impeachment-change-opinions-of-trump/

Robert Samuelson’s latest column on impeachment brought to mind Lincoln’s remark during his first debate with Douglas: “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”

Samuelson notes that, if the House impeaches President Trump, at least 20 Republican Senators would have to vote with every Democrat to remove him from office. “For now,” he writes, “the Democrats have zero.”

That may be an overstatement. GOP senators criticize the impeachment process, while avoiding extended discussions of the president’s underlying behavior. Fifty of 53 Republican senators have joined Lindsey Graham’s call for the House to authorize its impeachment inquiry.

Republican opinion of Trump has to turn squarely against him for impeachment to succeed. What are the chances of this happening? Not great.

Samuelson acknowledges that public opinion is sticky. People don’t like changing their minds. “People define themselves by their beliefs. It’s who they are and want to be.” Their views of Trump are like hardened concrete. “At least for his core supporters, Trump has seemed remarkably adept at controlling the narrative of his presidency.”

Samuelson offers two examples of shifts in public opinion: same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization. The public changed its mind about both. But advocates of impeachment shouldn’t get their hopes up. The comparison between cultural issues and political figures is misguided.

The timeline for cultural change is much longer than the political calendar. It took decades for the public to accept same-sex marriage and pot. The rising generation is responsible for much of the difference in attitude.

House Democrats hope to vote on impeachment by the end of 2019. Absent some technological breakthrough, there is not enough time for a pro-conviction GOP youth movement to be born, come of age, and displace Senate Republicans.

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The Democratic strategy, Samuelson writes, “is premised on the hope that further shocking revelations will alter the political climate. Trump’s image will be so shattered that Republican senators will feel free to join the revolt against him.” This assumes the aim of the Democratic strategy is Trump’s removal, and not simply weakening him ahead of reelection while putting at-risk Republican senators like Susan Collins and Cory Gardner in difficult positions.

The record is clear that not much Donald Trump does shocks conservative Republicans. They are prepared to tolerate a high degree of instability and dysfunction simply to prevent the Democratic left from gaining power. They would have to reject this bargain rapidly, wildly, stunningly, and decisively for the Senate to remove the president from office. As Lincoln said: Public sentiment is everything.

Nancy A. Youssef U.S. Recovered Valuable Intelligence in Baghdadi Raid Defense officials say data on Islamic State and its leaders will likely lead to more operations against militant group

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-recovered-valuable-intelligence-in-baghdadi-raid-11572301388?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=contextual&cx_artPos=6#cxrecs_s

The U.S. military raid resulting in the death of Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi also yielded an array of valuable intelligence concerning the militant group and its top leaders, defense officials said, providing details that likely will lead to future operations.

The Defense officials and Pentagon leaders on Monday wouldn’t detail the intelligence recovered on Saturday, but said it consisted of data-storage devices and other files that will add to the understanding of Islamic State as the U.S. and allies continue pursuing its leaders and operatives.

In a sign of the continuing nature of the operations, a senior State Department official on Monday said a second U.S. raid closely following the operation against Baghdadi resulted in the death of Islamic State’s top spokesman.

The senior State Department official described the spokesman, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, as “kind of No. 2” in Islamic State. The operation was first announced by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which worked with U.S. troops in fighting Islamic State before President Trump ordered a U.S. withdrawal.

Walter Russell Mead: A Battle Won in the War on Terror Killing Baghdadi won’t ‘fix’ the Middle East, but ISIS’ failure is a crucial victory. By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-battle-won-in-the-war-on-terror-11572302844

The Washington Post may have hastily changed its embarrassing headline for its obituary of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—“austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State”—but that won’t be the end of the West’s difficulties in understanding and responding to the multifaceted crisis in the Middle East.

Movements like ISIS don’t spring from nowhere. It took centuries of decline, serial humiliations at the hands of arrogant European imperial powers, and decades of failed postcolonial governance to produce the toxic mixture of bigotry and hate out of which Baghdadi and his adherents emerged. That toxic brew won’t quickly disappear. Angry, alienated and profoundly confused people—many young and at best half-educated—will continue to find the message of ISIS and similar groups seductive. Baghdadi’s death isn’t the end of ISIS, and the collapse of the U.S.-backed order in northern Syria could provide conditions for its re-emergence as a serious military force.

Yet Baghdadi’s death was more than a meaningless episode in an endless game of Middle Eastern Whac-A-Mole. The fall of his so-called caliphate brings the U.S. a little closer to the end of its longest war.

Baghdadi’s reign of terror began with prophecies, visions and dreams. He and his lieutenants promised their followers paradise. They crafted a god in their own image—a god of genocide, violence, rape, enslavement—and claimed that this god was powerful enough to give victory in battle. It turned out they were wrong.

Baghdadi’s fate makes the task of recruiting fresh jihadists a little harder. The next “austere religious scholar” seeking recruits will face a bit more skepticism in the marketplace of ideas.

A Dissident Outlives Soviet Communism His book documenting Western complicity didn’t find a U.S. publisher for almost 25 years. By Juliana Geran Pilon

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-dissident-outlives-soviet-communism-11572302952

Only death could silence Vladimir Bukovsky. His crusade against the Communist system in Russia and beyond, before and after the Berlin Wall’s fall, was unequaled. He died Sunday at age 76 at his home in Cambridge, England, where he’d lived since the Soviet Union expelled him in 1976.

He didn’t seem to know fear. He was kicked out of high school for creating a satirical magazine. He took night classes and managed to enter Moscow University, where he held unofficial poetry readings and disseminated underground literature. He was expelled from university after denouncing the Young Communist League as useless and later arrested for possessing anti-Soviet literature. In prison he met other dissidents, was “diagnosed” as schizophrenic, read Dickens in English and studied Soviet law. After his release, he protested and was detained again. Altogether he spent 12 years in psychiatric hospitals, prisons or labor camps.

He realized that to make a difference, he had to get his message out to the West. He succeeded, but at the price of additional torture, which he described in his best-selling autobiography, “To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter.” He staged hunger strikes aimed at improving medical treatment in prison and encouraged others to do the same. The authorities force-fed the prisoners through the nose.

The book was published in 1978. By then Bukovsky had been in the West for two years, studying biology at Cambridge University and continuing to defend freedom. In 1983 Bukovsky and Armando Valladares, a Cuban dissident, co-founded the anticommunist Resistance International. His influence grew as he informally advised Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.