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Ruth King

Now the Washington Post Admits Trump Did Not Incite the Capitol Riot By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/01/20/now-the-washington-post-admits-trump-did-not-incite-the-capitol-riot-n1398722

With the second bogus impeachment in the books, the Washington Post has finally seen fit to admit that President Trump did not incite the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 with his speech, acknowledging that it was, in fact, planned in advance.

The article, published Tuesday, the day before Biden’s inauguration, declares in its headline “Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in advance of Jan. 6 attack, court documents say” and opens with the following paragraphs.

Self-styled militia members from Virginia, Ohio and other states made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol days in advance of the Jan. 6 attack, and then communicated in real time as they breached the building on opposite sides and talked about hunting for lawmakers, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

While authorities have charged more than 100 individuals in the riot, details in the new allegations against three U.S. military veterans offer a disturbing look at what they allegedly said to one another before, during and after the attack — statements that indicate a degree of preparation and determination to rush deep into the halls and tunnels of Congress to make “citizens’ arrests” of elected officials.

U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack, alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who coordinated their movements as they “stormed the castle” to disrupt the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

Several paragraphs later, here’s what the authors of the article concede:

The arrests this weekend of several people with alleged ties to far-right extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, suggest that the riot was not an entirely impulsive outburst of violence but an event instigated or exploited by organized groups. Hours of video posted on social media and pored over by investigators have focused on individuals in military-style gear moving together.

National Guard troops gave their response to Democrat insults By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/national_guard_troops_gave_their_response_to_democrat_insults.html

Democrats are ambivalent about the military, something clear from their approach to the inauguration. The Democrats summoned 26,000 National Guard troops to D.C., purportedly to protect Joe Biden from rioters. They then accused those same troops of being potentially dangerous White supremacists. Many of the troops responded, not by being dangerous, because they’re patriotic, constitutionally guided Americans, but by apparently turning their backs on Joe Biden.

Trump Criticized For Loudly Denouncing Incoming Administration And Not Just Spying On Them Like A Normal President

https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-criticized-for-loudly-denouncing-incoming-administration-and-not-just-spying-on-them-like-a-normal-president

President Trump is taking heavy criticism for loudly denouncing the incoming Biden administration and not just spying on them as other presidents have done in the past. The nation is demanding that Trump remain “presidential” by appearing to say nice things about the incoming president and secretly try to undermine his next four years in office.

Two Wyoming Republicans Announce 2022 Primary Challenges Against Liz Cheney After Impeachment Vote By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/20/two-wyoming-republicans-announce-2022-primary-challenges-against-liz-cheney-after-impeachment-vote/

Two Wyoming Republicans have filed papers to challenge House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) in the 2022 primaries following her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump.

Wyoming State Sen. Anthony Bouchard and Rep. and business owner Marissa Selvig both filed statements of candidacy in the 2022 primary election on Wednesday.

Citing Cheney’s recent vote to impeach President Trump, Wyoming State Sen. Anthony Bouchard called her “out of touch” with Wyoming voters.

“Wyoming was President Trump’s best state both times he ran. That’s because Wyoming voters are strong conservatives who want their leaders to stand up for America, defend our freedoms, fight for our way of life, and always put working people first as President Trump did,” Bouchard said in a press release. “Liz Cheney’s long-time opposition to President Trump and her most recent vote for impeachment shows just how out-of-touch she is with Wyoming.”

Bouchard added that Wyoming needs “a voice in Congress” who will stand up to Speaker Pelosi and the radical Democrats in Congress.

Fox News Purge Begins By Julie Kelly

As ratings tank amid hostile coverage of former President Donald Trump, Fox News is purging its newsroom in an attempt to salvage the network’s fading brand. Political editor Chris Stirewalt, a NeverTrumper, and several digital editors were fired Tuesday; on Election Night, Stirewalt defended the network’s decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden, a move that infuriated the president and Fox News viewers. (The outcome of Arizona’s election wasn’t finalized until late November.)

“Though the network never backed off its Arizona call, and followed other major news outlets in calling the entire election for Biden days later, Stirewalt soon apparently found himself on the outs at Fox News,” the Daily Beast reported Tuesday. Fired staffers attempted to spin the purge as higher-ups ridding the network’s digital arm of “real journalists” who don’t hold a political agenda. Anonymous ex-employees told the Beast it “was part of the network’s larger effort to pivot its website from straight-news reporting to right-wing opinion content in the mold of Fox’s primetime programming.”

Fox News has been bleeding viewers since November, quickly losing its perch in the cable news rankings. Conservatives have long viewed Fox News as the only channel to offer a counterbalance to the biased cable and network news channels that overwhelmingly mimic the Democratic Party’s company line while vilifying conservatives and Republicans. But its tone and coverage dramatically shifted during Trump’s presidency making it almost indistinguishable from left-leaning competitors such as CNN and MSNBC.

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace is widely disliked; Martha MacCallum just lost her 7 p.m. show to a rotating cast of hosts. A few days after Election Day, Bret Baier deleted an innocuous tweet promoting his 6PM p.m. show after more than 22,000 people responded to the tweet with harsh criticism of Fox News’ election coverage. Anchor Sandra Smith was forced to clarify an off-mic moment whenafter she mocked one of Trump’s lawyers who correctly pointed out that networks don’t decide presidential elections.

Even the network’s marquee names such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity now trail the evening lineups at CNN and MSNBC for the first time in years. Conservative competitors One America News and Newsmax are vying for Fox’s disgruntled viewers.

The 1861 Project Biden has the power to turn the lyricism of a dream into a long national nightmare of violence and hate, thereby reducing the words of America’s only King to a footnote in the pages of history. By Bill Asher

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/20/the-1861-project/

Blind to age and deaf to the age we live in, Joe Biden on Wednesday spoke like a politician of a previous age. He used allusions and direct quotations to perform an illusion. But his performance was too old, his movements too obvious, his hands—his rhetorical sleight of hand—too overt to succeed. 

Biden’s inaugural performance failed because the performer failed to see that an illusion must be believable, that to play the part one must look the part, that the part is historic, not a historical reenactment. The performance failed because it was an act of procedure with bad acting; it was a repetition of words read to Mr. Biden, followed by an even worse speech by Biden.

Facts made the performance unbearable, because reality—the plain, visible reality of a multiracial assembly of former presidents and first ladies, of Barack and Michelle Obama alongside Bill and Hillary Clinton and George W. and Laura Bush—made the rhetoric unbelievable. 

The fact that Kamala Harris is not only our first female vice president but also the first Democratic vice president who is a person of color, the fact that her charge of “systemic racism” would make it impossible for her to discharge the duties of her office because she would not be eligible to vote or serve in public office if it were true, the fact that systemic racism would require the interposition and nullification of the 15th and 19th Amendments to the Constitution: these facts do not matter.

What matters to the faithful is the inerrancy of scripture, not contradictions in a bible with no text. How else to explain faith in a “living Constitution” and belief in the existence of eternal injustice toward nonwhites? How else to explain faith in the mastery of certain words and belief in the freedom to choose what a word means? How else to explain trespass as treason and unlawful entry in the Capitol as a capital offense?

What matters is power. 

The Mock Inauguration Conservatives should treat the Biden-Harris Administration exactly the way the Democrats treated Trump’s presidency, by totally dissociating themselves from any of its actions. By Paul Gottfried

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/20/the-mock-inauguration/

The conservative Catholic columnist John Zmirak ends his inauguration day column for The Stream with this expression of profound disgust:

So by all means enjoy the mock-inauguration of a corrupt, senile hack as the fruit of ballot-box stuffing and fake COVID panic. But remember that now we all live in a tinpot Bananas Republic. And a disciplined, fanatically nationalist, resurgent Red China is smiling. The virus it shipped worldwide succeeded beyond its leaders’ wildest expectations.

I quote Zmirak’s peroration because of the openness of his loathing for the administration that began its reign on Wednesday. Pat Buchanan, Roger Simon, Newt Gingrich, Roger Kimball, and Michael Walsh have all recently produced informative and eloquent columns underscoring the lies, deceit, and intimidation that they associate with the woke Left. These columnists have also documented the extent of leftist control and underlined the need to resist their odious domination.

The conservative movement has reacted to this political and existential crisis in one of two ways: either by turning viciously on the outgoing president to accommodate hoped-for talking partners on the Left, or by sounding the call for resistance, which seems the admirable position of this website.

Morally and emotionally I’m a résistant, but I think the Right must face certain problems in working out how best to resist the cultural Marxist power grab.

What we are observing is not a recent development but part of a revolutionary process that began decades ago. The Left moves incrementally, while the Right usually reacts to the most recent crisis. The Left also puts itself in a position to determine the meaning of emotive terms like “equality” and “fairness.” Leftist activists took over mass education and the culture industry without breaking a sweat. Our side allowed this power grab to go mostly unnoticed, except for a few discordant voices who failed to prevail.

Defining ‘Metrics’ to Measure Radical Islam is Vital to Defeating It by Tawfik Hamid

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16915/radical-islam-definition

Al-Azhar, the most respected Islamic university and organization in the Sunni world, is not – by their own definition – a terrorist organization. Yet the question remains. Is al-Azhar truly moderate, or could it be radical? If we fail to establish clear definitions, we can create chaotic situations that result in our asking radical institutions to help us counter radicalism.

It is notable in this context to mention that French President Emmanuel Macron met with the Grand Imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, and called for all French imams to be trained at the Al-Azhar religious institution. The President of France probably has asked for this form of training without determining if Al-Azhar itself was a radical organization or a moderate one.

Other metrics of Islamic radicalism such as accepting child marriage, considering the lives of Muslims to be more precious than the lives of non-Muslims, and accepting force or violence to impose Islamic religious values upon others can be also included.

Based on these metrics, if any person or Islamic organization fails to reject such abhorrent ideological values, they should not be called moderates. Instead, they should be called what they are: Islamic radicals. We urgently need to detect and expose ideological radicalism before it turns – as it inevitably will – into acts of terrorism.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks by 19 radical Islamists, the main response by many governments – as well as the United States – has been conducting direct, kinetic warfare to fight the threat of Islamic terrorism. No doubt there is a need to use kinetic force to fight militant jihadists; however, failing to fight the ideology that drives them ensures an endless supply of such individuals who will fight eternally against what they believe are infidels.

Things get more complicated when we realize that what we call radical Islam is not clearly defined – there are no standard metrics by which to measure it. In other words, we are fighting an undefined enemy. It is like fighting or trying to treat diabetes without applying metrics to the disease to determine who is diabetic and who is not, and who has improved with treatment.

The lack of metrics to measure Islamic radicalism is further confounded by the fact that the word “radicalism” can be such a relative term. We could argue about it forever as long as we do not have clear metrics for it. In other words, people can disagree whether an Islamic organization is moderate or radical if they lack the means to determine what is radicalism.

Palestinians: Victims of an Arab Country by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16948/palestinians-victims-syria

Like most Arab countries, Syria denies citizenship to Palestinians. Children born in Syria to fathers who are Palestinian nationals are considered Palestinians, not Syrian nationals.

Palestinian leaders see no evil or wrong-doing when their people are being killed, injured, displaced, arrested and tortured in an Arab country. The attention of these leaders is solely focused on Israel, which they denounce day and night not only for what it does, but also for what it does not do.

On January 9, Abbas entered the 17th year of his four-year term. He is again talking about his desire to hold new elections. This charade is played at least once or twice a year so that people will believe that he really wants elections.

The Palestinians do not need new elections. They need new leaders who will guide them out from their longstanding morass into a future of promise and peace.

As Palestinian leaders condemn Israel almost on a daily basis, they continue to ignore the ongoing suffering of Palestinians living in a number of Arab countries, especially Syria.

Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, 4,048 Palestinians have died – but Palestinian leaders hardly seem to notice. Another 333 Palestinians have gone missing, while 1,797 are being held in prisons controlled by the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Like most Arab countries, Syria denies citizenship to Palestinians. Children born in Syria to fathers who are Palestinian nationals are considered Palestinians, not Syrian nationals.

Palestinian leaders who meet on a regular basis in the West Bank city of Ramallah seldom discuss the tragedy that has befallen their people in Syria.

Similarly, the leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who relish giving interviews to the media, seem oblivious to the existence of Palestinians in Syria.

Palestinian leaders see no evil or wrong-doing when their people are being killed, injured, displaced, arrested and tortured in an Arab country. The attention of these leaders is solely focused on Israel, which they denounce day and night not only for what it does, but also for what it does not do.

Will Israel Be Able To Withstand Biden Administration’s Pressure? A new administration’s unbridled hostility towards Israel. Caroline Glick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/will-israel-be-able-withstand-biden-caroline-glick/

In an interview with The New York Times last month, President-elect Joe Biden restated his intention to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Israel opposes this plan because the 2015 deal ensures Iran will become a nuclear-armed state.

Media reports over the past few weeks have detailed some of Israel’s plans to convince the incoming administration to reconsider its position. Among other things, the government intends to use documents from Iran’s nuclear archive, that Mossad agents spirited out of Tehran in 2018, to show Biden and his advisers that the 2015 deal was based on the incorrect assumption that Iran’s nuclear program was defensive and civilian.

The archive proves incontrovertibly that Iran’s nuclear program was conceived with the aim of and has always been about making nuclear bombs, not medical isotopes, and that the purpose of that nuclear arsenal is not to defend against its enemies, but to obliterate them.

Although Israel’s case is rock solid, it is unlikely to convince the Biden team to change course. Even without the benefit of the archive, there was massive evidence five years ago that Iran’s actions and intentions in relation to its illicit nuclear program were aggressive.

Israel shared that evidence with the Obama administration, and Barack Obama and his advisers didn’t care. They drove forward and demonized Israeli leaders and their American supporters as warmongers.

The same people who dismissed Israel’s evidence then are now leading Biden’s national security team.