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Ruth King

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Right From Wrong: Benny Gantz’s immoral analogy Yes, the leading contender in the race for the premiership actually compared the incumbent leader of the only democracy in the region to a radical Islamist autocrat. By Ruthie Blum

By on April 5th, 2019

Blue and White Party chairman Benny Gantz crossed a rhetorical redline this week that made every other malicious maneuver of the current campaign, on both sides of the political spectrum, seem like child’s play.
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-From-Wrong-Benny-Gantzs-immoral-analogy-585792

In an interview he gave on Tuesday – exactly one week ahead of the Knesset elections – Gantz likened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-From-Wrong-Benny-Gantzs-immoral
Expressing “deep worry” for Israeli democracy, Gantz explained, “What we… see is a phenomenon reminiscent of Turkey, where Erdogan is protecting himself from investigations and from other efforts aimed at preventing corruption.”

Even the Times of Israel reporters did a double take on that statement – which was not only a pathetically mild and misleading description of Erdogan’s Stalin-like purges and absolute control of every sector of Turkish society, but also an egregious misrepresentation of Netanyahu’s legitimate efforts to counter charges that have not even been formally brought against him. Unlike Turks subjected to Erdogan’s repressive rule, after all, Israeli citizens enjoy human and civil rights. Among these is the presumption of innocence.But it was only the former part of Gantz’s outlandish analogy that his interviewers challenged, by asking whether he really fears that Israel “could become like Turkey.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey’s Elections: What Do They Mean for Turkey and Erdoğan? by Burak Bekdil

By on April 5th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14004/turkey-municipal-elections-results

The election results in Istanbul, now disputed by the AKP, put the opposition candidate into the lead by a margin of 23,000 votes in a city with 10.5 million voters.

“Though Turkey’s government and many commentators are blaming the Trump administration and foreign speculators for the country’s economic downturn, the reality is that it was already ‘baked into the cake’ many years ago due to the credit bubble that formed.” — Jesse Colombo, Forbes.

Simple religious Islamist conservative and ultra-nationalist populism are still keeping Erdoğan in power, but there are signs that, if the economy keeps getting worse, those forces may not be able to save him. There are signs that this is taking place.

On March 31, the Turks went to the ballot box to elect mayors for their cities. Ostensibly the election results marked President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 15th consecutive election victory since his (Islamist) Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in November 2002. The AKP won the biggest number of votes (44%) nationwide. Its ultra-nationalist ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) won 7% of the vote. That was good news for Erdoğan. In reality, it was good but incomplete news for Turkey’s Islamist strongman.

“Who loses Istanbul [in elections] loses Turkey,” Erdoğan roared in a 2018 speech, underlying the importance of big Turkish cities in municipal elections.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dear Citizen Collusion Truther—You Own This, Too By Julie Kelly

By on April 5th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/04/dear-citizen-collusion-truther-you-own-this-too/

Hey, what’s up . . . wait, where are you going?

Why the dark glasses? Did you dye your hair? What’s with all the deleted tweets and Facebook posts lately?

Oh, I get it. Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller didn’t find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Ruskies to throw the 2016 election, you want to move on. Act like it never happened. Or at least pretend that you weren’t part of the whole damn hoax from the start.

But . . . not so fast.

It wasn’t just the entire American media infrastructure—every broadcast network, cable news outlet, opinion page, political website, blue-checked social media account, washed-up D.C. pundit, unhinged MSNBC host, irrelevant Bush hanger-on, complicit Obama lackey, and Clinton bitter clinger who fell for the Trump-Russia collusion fairy tale. It wasn’t just every Democratic lawmaker and candidate—and a good chunk of the establishment Republican elite—who peddled a bogus story for two years. It wasn’t just every Hollywood actress, producer, legend, fluffer, has-been and late night host who caterwauled for months about Trump’s treachery.

You did it, too, my fellow citizen.

For two years, you helped do the dirty work of the vanquished Hillary Clinton campaign and the sore-loser Democratic Party. You reposted memes on your Facebook and Instagram pages that depicted Donald Trump as a Putin puppet, even suggesting tongue-in-cheek (in a way that you’d call homophobic if the other side did it) that Trump was Putin’s gay lover. You warned your neighbors that Trump’s son was a traitor. You insisted to your co-workers that, yes, Trump’s campaign team was populated by Russian agents and that the president’s attorney general, his secretary of state, his education secretary, his national security advisor, his son-in-law—among others—were Kremlin plants in the new administration.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Mayor Buttigieg Runs for President While His City Bleeds What the media isn’t reporting about a 2020 candidate from a failed city. Daniel Greenfield

By on April 5th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273361/mayor-buttigieg-runs-president-while-his-city-daniel-greenfield
On March 31, a South Bend grandma brought her grandson to the hospital. The 11-month-old baby boy had been shot. His grandmother’s car had also taken fire. It was another early morning in South Bend.

Around the same time, Mayor Buttigieg, was toting up the $7 million in donations from his charm offensive as his bid for the 2020 Democrat nomination got underway. The national media never bothered reporting the shooting of an 11-year-old boy in the city he was supposed to be running, but instead confined its coverage of South Bend matters to a publicity stunt wedding officiated by Buttigieg.

The horrifying shooting of an 11-month-old boy on the millennial mayor’s watch was not an unusual incident. In the last few days, even the media was gushing over Buttigieg’s presidential ambitions, two Indiana University South Bend players were injured in a shooting on Notre Dame Avenue, a blind date ended in a shooting, and yet another shooting added to the bloody toll in the real South Bend.

Those are quite a few shootings for a city of barely 100,000 people. But South Bend is a violent place.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Mueller ‘Coverup’ Gambit Why Barr is right to release the report with redactions and publicly, all at once.By Kimberley A. Strassel

By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mueller-coverup-gambit-11554420235
The only surprising thing about the new “coverup” accusation against Attorney General William Barr is that it took it two weeks to get there. The question is whether Republicans fall for this naked effort to revive the collusion-and-obstruction narrative.

Democrats and the media are still smarting over special counsel Robert Mueller’s no-collusion findings, but their “coverup” fallback has its advantages. They can claim Mr. Barr’s four-page summary of the report is a sham, that he’s hiding the real truth. That’s nonsense, but it allows them to continue stoking Trump-Russia collusion fantasies.

It also aids the Democrats in their larger goal: getting their hands on a fully unredacted report, along with its underlying documentation, before the public can see it. That way, they could plumb the voluminous documentation for more wild allegations and personal smears—and leak away.

The “coverup” claim is only one of the levers Democrats are pulling, aided by friendly scribes at the New York Times and Washington Post, who published stories Thursday claiming anonymous members of the Mueller team are dissatisfied with the Barr summary. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday also authorized subpoenas for an unredacted report and documents. And Democrats everywhere are accusing Republicans of hypocrisy. How dare Republicans spend two years demanding documents from the Justice Department about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s behavior in 2016, but now accept a redacted report?

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The Top 5 Investigations Obstructed by the Obama Administration By Matt Margolis

By on April 4th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-top-5-investigations-obstructed-by-the-obama-administration/

With Democrats and the media licking their wounds over the Mueller Report not finding Russian collusion, they’ve been refocusing their energy on claims of obstruction of justice, even accusing Trump Attorney General William Barr of “protecting” Trump. Which is both amusing and hypocritical considering how they tolerated obstruction of justice by the Obama administration and sometimes assisted in that obstruction.

If Robert Mueller couldn’t conclude that Trump obstructed his investigation, then it’s quite clear there wasn’t any. Having written extensively about Obama-era corruption, I felt it was necessary to remind everyone that not only was the Obama administration plagued by multiple scandals but that obstructing investigations was standard operating procedure. For Democrats, Trump calling the Mueller an investigation a witch hunt is an impeachable offense, but Obama refusing to cooperate with investigations was much ado about nothing.

Despite many abuses of power during the Obama years, not once did Attorney General Eric Holder or Attorney General Loretta Lynch ever appoint a special counsel to investigate them. Instead, they’d occasionally launch their own investigations, which always exonerated them, or, when the Republican-controlled House launched their own investigations, the Obama administration refused to cooperate and obstructed their investigations. In August 2014, 47 of 73 inspectors general wrote an open letter to Congress informing them that the Obama administration of obstructing investigations by not giving them full access to the information they need to investigate properly. Such a letter was unprecedented, and the systemic corruption and obstruction the inspectors general would have been considered an impeachable defense for almost any other president. Emboldened by the lack of outrage (thanks to lack of media attention to the scandal) emboldened the Obama administration to impose new restrictions on the investigative powers of inspectors general. Imagine President Trump trying to get away with that today?

Obstruction of justice was integral to the entire operation of the Obama administration. Whenever a scandal erupted, the kneejerk reaction by Obama and his cronies was to cover-up and obstruct. Below are the top five examples of investigations obstructed by the Obama administration.CONTINUE AT SITE

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Revolution Comes For Creepy Uncle Joe In a saner world, Biden’s perplexing olfactory manners around nubile women would be a cause of minor amusement and disgust. But he helped set the standards now being used against him.By Sumantra Maitra

By on April 4th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/04/revolution-comes-creepy-uncle-joe/

“To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency,” Maximilien Robespierre wrote in his post-French Revolution impassioned defense of state tyranny against the ruling class. “To forgive them is cruelty.” Robespierre, was, of course, the architect of the great terror, where thousands of innocents were sacrificed in the zeal of purifying fire, as every revolution undergoes.

While observing that revolutionary social restructuring, Edmund Burke compared the virtues of a fixed rule of law in relatively peaceful England: “To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.”

In what became the most recurring twist of irony thereinafter, Robespierre was himself guillotined. Talking of revolutions devouring their own children brings us to Joe Biden, who is the frontrunner in the Democratic primary without having announced that he is running. He is also perhaps the first candidate whose candidacy is already toast, even before he starts the sprint.

He seems to be aware of the great danger to his possible campaign, as he’s released a response to the mounting allegations of sexual impropriety and weirdness against him:

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DOJ Defends Barr’s Summary of Mueller Report from Critics By Mairead McArdle

By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/doj-defends-barrs-summary-of-mueller-report-from-critics/

The Justice Department on Thursday defended Attorney General William Barr’s short outline of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report, hours after the New York Times reported that some members of Mueller’s team were concerned Barr had downplayed the results of the investigation to make it seem more favorable to President Trump.“Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the Attorney General decided to release the report’s bottom-line findings and his conclusions immediately – without attempting to summarize the report – with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redactions process,” read a statement from DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec. “The Department continues to work with the Special Counsel on appropriate redactions to the report so that it can be released to Congress and the public.”Barr’s four-page outline of the report’s conclusions stated that Mueller had found no collusion between the Trump team and the Kremlin but left open the question of whether the president had obstructed justice during the investigation. It also made clear that Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had concluded there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Dem. Rep. Bashes Green New Deal: ‘There’s No Need to Lie to Voters’

By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/dem-rep-bashes-green-new-deal-theres-no-need-to-lie-to-voters/

Representative Max Rose (D., N.Y.) lambasted fellow New York freshman Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday for using the threat of climate change to advance a “massive socialist economic-policy platform” via the Green New Deal plan she introduced earlier this year.

Rose, during a Wednesday interview on New York’s local Metro Focus program, agreed with Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow progressives that climate change is an existential threat that requires a commensurate response, but argued that the federal-jobs and housing guarantees included in the plan are not necessary to combat climate change.

“This is not the time for milquetoast incrementalism,” Rose said. “It just isn’t. But with that being said, nothing about what I just said would provide a justification for a massive socialist economic-policy platform. [It’s] just not needed.”

“There’s no need to lie to voters right now,” he added. “We don’t need the Democratic version of ‘repeal and replace.’”Rose, who earned a Purple Heart and a bronze star for his Army service in Afghanistan, dared Ocasio-Cortez to back a primary challenger against him when asked about her threat to unseat any Democrat who refused to back her progressive vision.

“She’s going to keep a list,” Rose said, referring to reports that Ocasio-Cortez threatened to make a list of uncooperative Democrats to provide to liberal activists. “This is very simple because I’m not one to deal in subtleties. I think it’s best not to be passive-aggressive. If she wants to primary me, if the Justice Democrats want to primary me, I’ll lay out the red carpet. We can settle this at the polls.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

California AG: Illegal Immigration Should Be Decriminalized By Mairead McArdle

By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/california-ag-illegal-immigration-should-be-decriminalized/

California attorney general Xavier Becerra called Thursday for unauthorized immigration to be decriminalized, saying those crossing the southern border are “not criminals.”

“They haven’t committed a crime against someone, and they are not acting violently or in a way that’s harmful to people,” California’s top cop told HuffPost. “And I would argue they are not harming people indirectly either.”

“If you call them criminals, it’s a lot easier to get people to turn against them than if you call them undocumented immigrants,” he added.

Becerra’s comments came just as President Trump on Thursday issued a “one-year warning” to Mexico to control the flow of migrants and illegal drugs before he closes the border.
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Several prominent border-state Democrats have echoed the California AG’s calls for illegal entry to be decriminalized, including Representatives Raúl Grijalva of Arizona and Veronica Escobar of Texas. Former representative Beto O’Rourke, who hails from the border town of El Paso, Texas and is seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said during his Senate campaign last year that he, too, supports decriminalizing illegal immigration.

“These asylum-seekers — penniless, at wit’s end, after surviving three weeks on the road, very often with their children — then attempt to do what I think any human would do, which is to request asylum in between the ports of entry,” O’Rourke said. “We should not criminalize that.”

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