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Ruth King

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Trump’s Strike On Soleimani Is About America First, Not Reckless Interventionism Ben Weingarten

By on January 4th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/03/trumps-strike-on-soleimani-is-about-america-firs

Now Iran knows America is unconstrained by politically correct rules of engagement, and no longer acting out of delusions about bribing a jihadist regime into peace.

On New Year’s Eve, Iran-backed militias attempted to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, engaging in an unsuccessful act of war as American forces secured the compound. In the aftermath, President Trump warned Iran that it would “be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities,” and “pay a very BIG PRICE. This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei shot back, “You can’t do anything.” A day later, President Trump did something.

His decision to strike Qassem Soleimani was a game-changing act with immense substantive and symbolic implications.  It finally brought a modicum of justice for the hundreds of Americans murdered and thousands injured at the hands of the head of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, his henchmen, and their proxies.

It took off the battlefield a genocidal military mastermind responsible for spreading Iran’s Islamic Revolution globally, constructing its Shiite Crescent in the Middle East, and threatening America and our allies at home and abroad.

It represented a decisive response to Iran’s act of war in Baghdad, as well as its repeated assaults on Iraqi coalition bases including last month’s rocket attack that killed one American and injured several others, and additional imminent strikes for which Soleimani would have been responsible. It was about putting America first.

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Citizens across Middle East celebrate US take down of Qassem Soleimani by Dominick Mastrangelo

By on January 4th, 2020

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/citizens-across-middle-east-celebrate-us-take-down-of-qassem-soleimani

As politicians and pundits in the United States debated the merits of President Trump’s order to take out Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, citizens of countries across the Middle East celebrated the swift killing of Iran’s top military mind.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shared a video of Iraqi citizens celebrating in the street after hearing the news of Soleimani’s death.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

IRAN, IRAQ…..

By on January 4th, 2020

America “Cannot Do a Damn Thing,” Eh?

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/american-cannot-do-a-damn-thing-eh/90961/

So much for the taunt from Iran’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Khamanei, that America “cannot do a damn thing” about Iran’s attack on our embassy in Baghdad. It took President Trump but a day after that jibe to wheel on the Iranians. He launched a drone attack that found and killed the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Qassim Soleimani. It is likely to mark a turning point in the not-so-quasi war that Iran has been levying against us — and, among others, Israel.

The Game Has Changed with Iran Frank Gaffney, Jr.

www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2020/01/03/the-game-has-changed-with-iran/

President Trump’s liquidation of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian terrorist with immense amounts of American blood on his hands, has not only exacted a measure of revenge for Iran’s murderous jihadism. He has struck a direct blow at the regime in Tehran that brutally oppresses its own people and increasingly threatens ours. 

Soleimani’s assassination must now be followed up with an intensified campaign aimed at empowering Iranians to bring about, at last, the removal from power of the rest of the thugs who have, for forty years, called for “Death to America.”

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

LITTLE WOMEN A REVIEW BY MARILYN PENN

By on January 4th, 2020

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/topic/politics/

One of the main handicaps in watching the latest incarnation of this classic novel is the difficulty in recognizing that any of these “girls” is meant to be truly young. Amy, the youngest sister, looks as developed and fully grown as Beth, Jo and Meg. Because of this, the audience has no way of contextualizing her behavior as that of the little girl who is frequently excluded from some activities because of her tender age. It’s impossible to understand her unforgivable and un-fixable act without recognizing that it’s driven by the uncontrollable impulse of a child, not yet a teenager. Serendipitously, the viewer has a chance to see what I mean by watching the 1994 version of Little Women which will be on Showtime Showcase at 7 pm tonite – Friday, Jan 3rd. Record it.

I saw this before I went to see Greta Gerwig’s version and cannot recommend the former highly enough. It’s a spirited version in which you see the girls put on plays written by Jo and costumed by her – a reminder of how young people entertained themselves before their heads were buried in phones and virtual everything. That cast is brilliant – Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Trini Alvarado as the older March sisters and a young, adorable Kirsten Dunst as Amy. In Gerwig’s version, the role of Laurie (Theodore Laurence) is played by Timothee Chalamet, an effete actor who looks younger than the girls and as gay as he was in Call Me By My Name. By contrast, in the 1994 rendition, his role is played by a handsome and very masculine Christian Bale with another important male part given to Gabriel Byrne The private dance that is done by Jo and Laurie is a romantic connection in the earlier film whereas in the update, Saiorse Ronan and Timothee merely let loose without any emotional imprint on the audience.

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The Impeachment Article for Obstructing Congress Is Frivolous By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/trump-impeachment-obstruction-article-frivolous/

We want our presidents to be elected democratically and to serve out their terms, with impeachment reserved for outrageous abuses of power.

Honor a congressional subpoena to appear at President Trump’s (presumably eventual) Senate impeachment trial? Joe Biden, still the odds-on favorite to be the Democrats’ standard-bearer in the 2020 election, scoffed at the very idea — No way!

The former vice president’s knee-jerk obstinacy illuminates — we should say, provides even more illumination of — the patent farce that is the second article of impeachment passed by the House on a strict party-line vote: the accusation that the president has obstructed Congress. As we saw in a committee hearing, featuring the spectacle of staffers questioning staffers with no actual fact witnesses in sight, Democrats have no problem when Democrats blow off congressional demands for information. “Obstruction” is a one-way street.

Trump regards the impeachment inquiry as a partisan witch hunt, just the latest phase of the Democrats’ project to remove him, which began even before his term started. He certainly has a point . . . although that is not a good reason to give his opponents fuel for the project, as he did by pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden. That is the allegation in the first article of impeachment. Under the circumstances, I believe it falls well short of the egregious misconduct for which impeachment should be reserved; it was, nevertheless, a foolish thing for the president to do.

Let’s focus, though, on the second impeachment article, obstruction of Congress.

The president directed his underlings and executive branch components not to comply with congressional demands for information. To be clear, Congress has undeniable constitutional authority, broad in scope, to conduct oversight of the executive branch. The president, with all the authority of a peer branch of government, has extensive privileges of confidentiality, rooted in Article II, particularly when it comes to communications with his staff and high executive officials. Congress, however, is empowered to probe, especially when its concern is presidential malfeasance, or the activities of executive branch agencies Congress has created — such agencies, after all, are led by officers subject to Senate confirmation, and Congress both underwrites them with taxpayer funds and limits their operations by statute.

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Targeting Soleimani: Trump was justified, legally and strategically By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 4th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/476736-targeting-soleimani-trump-was-justified-legally-and-strategically

“If a war be made by invasion of a foreign nation, the President is not only authorized but bound to resist force by force. He does not initiate the war, but is bound to accept the challenge without waiting for any special legislative authority.”

So said the Supreme Court in the Civil War-era Prize Cases more than 150 years ago. It has been the law of the United States as long as there has been a United States. It reflects the venerable law of nations, derived from natural law and long pre-existing our republic.

When there are forcible threats to the United States, the president has not merely the power but the obligation to repel them. In large measure, that is why there is an Office of the President. The Framers grasped, in a time of dire peril to the fledgling nation, that national security cannot be achieved by committee. A single chief executive, the president, was necessary to marshal the might of the nation with dispatch when America was under siege.

These are rudimentary principles. Alas, they obviously need restating in the wake of the attack President Trumpauthorized late Thursday that killed General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), founder of its jihad-exporting Quds Forces, and Tehran’s terror master nonpareil.

Soleimani was taken out near the airport in Baghdad, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy chief of the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. The PMF make up one of several networks that Soleimani and the mullahs forged on the model of Hezbollah, their longtime terrorist faction in Lebanon — indeed, the outfit al-Muhandis directly led is known as the Hezbollah Brigades, or Kata’ib Hizbollah.

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Celebrating a decade of life-changing Israeli inventions From Waze to cancer-busting nano-ghost cells and 3-D printed hearts, The Times of Israel takes a dive into tech that helps us get where we’re going and keeps us safe and healthy By Shoshana Solomon

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://www.timesofisrael.com/celebrating-a-decade-of-life-changing-israeli-invention

As we enter 2020, The Times of Israel has taken a look at some of the coolest Israeli technologies and inventions of the past 10 years — those that are already hugely impacting the way we live and those that have the potential of changing our lives and health.

The list is of course purely subjective, and there are so many other Israeli technologies and startups out there that are making a difference to our world.

Driving with your personal navigator: Waze

This GPS navigation software works on smartphones or car screens, providing turn-by-turn information to drivers about how best to get to their destination, including estimated length of travel and time of arrival.

The software has revolutionized how people drive: like old-school GPS systems, it does away with printed maps and recalculates if you make a mistake, but this unflappable piece of software also smoothly updates its instructions based on real-time conditions and bases its advice partly on user input relating to traffic jams and other road pitfalls.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Triggering A Recession Tops The Dems’ Presidential Agendas by Frank Bullit

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/01/03/starting-a-recession-tops-the-democratic-presidential-candidates-agendas/

The 2020 Democratic presidential field is in near unanimous agreement that fracking has to be banned or at least regulated to death over time. It plays well to the party’s base, especially its green fringe. It’s also an endorsement of recession.

Joe Biden, currently atop the Democratic primary polls, recently said he would “love to” ban fracking “right now,” and would also “love to make sure we can’t use any oil or gas, period,” reports Common Dreams, a website that caters to leftist and socialist devotees.

But the decelerated Delawarean’s plan is to “transition away from” fracking rather than killing it all at once. So put him in the “slow death” category among Democrat candidates. Meanwhile, in the summary execution category we find Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and former Indianapolis Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Warren even said that on the day she is inaugurated, “I will ban fracking — everywhere.”

The Democrats are shockingly insensitive to the harm their energy plans would inflict on Americans. Former Vice President “‘We’re all dead‘ if we don’t stop using fossil fuels” Biden told the crowd at a coal town earlier this week that miners can just learn code after Democrats kill their jobs. The callousness and arrogance are appalling.

But it’s not only coal miners who will suffer under the Democrats’ energy agenda. The entire world would be hurt.

“If the U.S. imposed a fracking ban, the supply disruption would trigger the biggest oil and natural gas price spikes in history — almost certainly by more than 200% — which would, in turn, tip the world into recession,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Mark Mills wrote last month in a policy brief.

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Washington Post vs. the Steele Dossier Julie Kelly

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/02/washington-post-vs-the-steele-dossier/

In a compelling, if incomplete, account of some of the worst media actors in the Russian collusion hoax, the Washington Post neglects its own complicity.

In the thick catalog of media players responsible for promoting the phony Russia collusion storyline, the Washington Post occupies a marquee spot. The Post arguably inflicted the most damage on the first few months of Donald Trump’s presidency by pushing the concocted collusion drama even before Inauguration Day.

The Post first published illegally leaked classified information about former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in early 2017; articles detailing Flynn’s intercepted conversations with the Russian ambassador led to Flynn’s ouster in February 2017.

In April 2017, the Post first revealed the foreign intelligence surveillance warrant on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. Several unnamed government officials leaked the explosive news that a former Trump campaign advisor was under government surveillance for his suspected ties to the Kremlin. The purpose of the report was to legitimize the rapidly unfolding narrative that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians to hijack the 2016 election.

Since then, thousands of articles, columns, and editorials bolstering the hoax have dominated the paper’s website. In fact, Post reporters and editors met with dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson months before Election Day as they attempted to plant damaging stories about Team Trump’s canoodling with Russians.

After Steele’s name became public in early 2017, the Post routinely portrayed Steele as a trustworthy “former British intelligence officer” just trying to protect Americans from the Putin puppet running for president.

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Palestinian ‘Moderates’ Celebrate Terror by Bassam Tawil

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15364/palestinian-moderates-celebrate-terror

It is worth noting that the published statements made in the past few days by the Fatah group in the Gaza Strip are almost entirely consistent with the Hamas ideology [of replacing Israel with an Islamic state through violent jihad (holy war)].

“We will continue the struggle until the liberation of the entire Palestine lands from the filth of the Zionist occupation.” – Fatah, Kataeb Shuhada Al-Aqsa – Liwa’ Al-Shaheed Nidal Al-Amoudi, November 13, 2019.

Those who continue to refer to Fatah as a “moderate” Palestinian faction need to take into account that it speaks in different voices in Arabic and English and sends conflicting messages as to its true intentions.

Either… Fatah members in the Gaza Strip are convinced that the talk about a two-state solution is purely a ploy to gain international funding and sympathy, or because they want to ensure that Abbas continues to provide them with financial aid….

One thing remains clear… Abbas and the Fatah leaders who are talking about a two-state solution are at the same time endorsing the strategy of their military wing to destroy Israel.

The Palestinian ruling Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is celebrating the 55th anniversary of its first terrorist attack against Israel by reminding everyone that it remains committed to the “armed struggle as the only way to liberate Palestine.”

Thousands of Fatah supporters took to the streets in the Gaza Strip on December 29, 2019 to celebrate the anniversary. The celebration was organized by the armed wing of Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – Nidal Al-Amoudi Battalion, a rogue Fatah splinter group. Hundreds of masked Fatah gunmen dressed in military uniforms marched through the streets of Gaza City. Some carried rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.

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