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Ruth King

A Labour Revolt Against Corbyn Seven MPs bolt over anti-Semitism and Brexit abdication.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-labour-revolt-against-corbyn-11550508910

A British political party splintered on Monday, and for once it wasn’t the ruling Conservatives. Seven members of the Labour opposition resigned from the party in protest over leader Jeremy Corbyn’s inconstant dealing on Brexit and tolerance for anti-Semitism.

The rebel Members of Parliament include Chuka Umunna, the party’s former spokesman on business affairs, and Luciana Berger, who has endured anti-Semitic abuse by Corbyn supporters. All seven have held senior party positions and hail from the centrist wing in charge during the Tony Blair era. They aren’t forming a new political party and will keep their seats while voting as independents.

All seven cited the excuse-making of Mr. Corbyn and his allies regarding abuse of Jewish members, spread of anti-Jewish tropes and sympathy for anti-Israel terrorists. The number of such cases referred to the party for disciplinary proceedings has skyrocketed under Mr. Corbyn, yet last summer he resisted formalizing an internationally accepted definition of anti-Semitism in party rules. The willingness of the rebels to leave raises questions about why so many others are still working for Mr. Corbyn.

As for Brexit, this is the latest evidence that Britain’s impending departure from the European Union is scrambling domestic politics. Both major parties remain deeply divided on Brexit and the bigger question of what the British economy should be after it leaves. Theresa May’s Conservatives are split between free-market Brexiteers and Remainers who are woolier on economics.

The FBI’s Trump Panic McCabe reveals how officials contemplated a bureaucratic coup.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbis-trump-panic-11550508578

The American people have largely taken the disruptive Trump Presidency in stride, going about their lives and expressing their approval or not the constitutional way—at the ballot box. The same can’t be said for many of the country’s panicked elites, as we are learning anew about the Federal Bureau of Investigation as former deputy director Andrew McCabe hawks a new memoir.

Mr. McCabe now says that, after Mr. Trump fired FBI director Jim Comey in May 2017, Mr. McCabe and senior Justice Department officials “discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the President of the United States under the 25th Amendment.” That’s according to Scott Pelley’s account of his interview with Mr. McCabe aired Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

In the interview, Mr. McCabe says Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein raised the 25th Amendment scenario “and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort.” Mr. McCabe says he didn’t contribute much but seems to excuse the conversation because “it was an unbelievably stressful time.”

Mr. McCabe was fired last year for lying to FBI investigators, so it’s hard to know how much to believe. He’s also tried to qualify the interview after excerpts were disclosed, with a spokesperson saying that while Mr. McCabe “participated in a discussion that included a comment by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein regarding the 25th Amendment,” he did not participate in any “extended discussions” about removing Mr. Trump.

Debunking Qanta Ahmed’s Corrosive Claim, ‘Antisemitism Is Profoundly Against Islam’ By Andrew G. Bostom

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/debunking-qanta-ahmeds-corrosive-claim-antisemitism-is-profoundly-against-islam/

“Until Qanta Ahmed musters the intellectual and moral courage to similarly connect the modern scourge of Islamic Jew-hatred to Islam itself, she and her obfuscating misrepresentations will continue to do more harm than good.”

Qanta Ahmed is a secular Pakistani Muslim physician, and occasional talking head, who fancies herself “a Muslim expert in Islamism.” As I have demonstrated previously, she in fact has a very thin veneer of understanding of Islam, and an apparent willingness to engage in takiya, sanctioned Islamic dissimulation.

Appearing Saturday evening with Judge Jeanine Pirro, Ahmed elaborated on an op-ed she had published in The Daily Caller on February 14 that claimed:

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), an American Muslim of Somali origin, shames American Muslims with the antisemitism she has brought to Congress.

Notwithstanding this rather dubious assertion of “shame,” given the global pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred, which now includes Muslim diaspora populations in the West, Ahmed had the following exchange (from 35:14-35-37) with Judge Pirro. Ahmed observed, appropriately, “Empowering antisemitism is against every American value,” which elicited a quick interjection from Judge Pirro, “And against our Judeo-Christian ethics,” prompting Ahmed to aver, “And it is also against Islam, which reveres the Torah and Judaism.” This latter, patently false statement by Ahmed, in turn, prompted Judge Pirro to add the requisite cultural relativist fig leaf caveat, “And you and I understand when you say, ‘Islamist’ there is a political ideology, versus the Muslim religion,” because Ahmed had earlier (32:07-17) accused Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of “ringing completely true with Islamist antisemitism”—as if this artificial construct was completely divorced from Islam’s intrinsic Jew-hatred. Nodding approvingly, Ahmed quickly chimed in, “Exactly,” and the segment ended.

Why Does the MSM Keep Falling for Obvious Hoaxes? By Debra Heine

https://pjmedia.com/trending/why-does-the-msm-keep-falling-for-obvious-hoaxes/

This is just sad:

The national outrage that simmered after actor Jussie Smollett said he was attacked by people shouting racial and anti-gay slurs was fueled in part by celebrities who spoke out loud and strong on social media.

But the outrage has now been replaced by surprise, doubt and bafflement as the singers, actors and politicians who came out in support of the “Empire” star struggle to digest the strange twists the case has taken. Some conservative pundits, meanwhile, have gleefully seized on the moment.

The narrative that just a week ago seemed cut-and-dry has become messy and divisive — and it’s all playing out again on social media.

If there was a “national outrage” over the dubious incident, it was limited to gullible left-wing journalists, celebrities, politicians and activists.

The “narrative” only seemed “cut-and-dry” to people who were looking at the case through lenses clouded by their anti-Trump bias. It seemed made-up to those of us who noticed that Smollett’s allegations were outlandish, implausible and riddled with inconsistencies from the get-go.

Yet even as his story started falling apart (which happened almost immediately), the national media clung to their precious narrative.

MY SAY: ON PRESIDENTS DAY 2019

Today we honor the memory of our magnificent Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

On November 19, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery. In only ten sentences, 272 words and delivered in two minutes, the speech is a national treasure….rsk

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Why the Media Can’t Stop Promoting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez By Lisa Schiffren

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/17/why-the-media

By this point, not yet seven weeks into the current congressional term, the whole country has grown tired of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The freshman radical socialist phenom from New York’s 14th congressional district has been radically overexposed by the media.

Her gaffes are getting old. Her narcissistic, defensive tweeting is tedious. And yet, the media keeps obliging her with photo ops, social media clips, and endless sound bites. They cannot look away, lest they forfeit clicks.

Last week she grimaced at the State of the Union, while wearing white. Half the Democratic field of Presidential candidates embraced her “Green New Deal,” before it was withdrawn out of embarrassment. This week she took credit for tanking 25,000 potential Amazon jobs in her district, and betrayed her stunning ignorance of what a tax incentive is, by demanding that the $3 billion dollars in incentives promised to Amazon be used to give stuff to the poor, as if it were cash in hand. If the media really loved her they might help her maintain some mystique. Instead, Annie Leibovitz just photographed her and her live in boyfriend at the Bronx apartment she barely lived in.

The media chases AOC because she generates clicks: Watching a train wreck is mesmerizing. Seeing a live demonstration of everything we fear about the ignorance of millenials is riveting. But those are small matters.

The real reason that neither cameras nor citizens can look away is, of course: sex. The woman exudes a wild kind of sex appeal. She is hugely mediagenic. Her thin, lanky body, with the attention grabbing, er… rack; the expressive face; the crazy eyes and large, invariably red lipsticked mouth—any casting director could have predicted her ability to grab attention.

To use the Hollywood term of art, young Alexandria is, “fuckable.” That is a rare quality among political women, possibly never previously seen in any elected female Congresswoman or Senator. (Though Harry Reid thought that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D, N.Y.) had it early on, when he called her “the hottest Senator.”) Remember how the extremely hot Sarah Palin disrupted the political landscape, and we learned the acronym MILF? This attribute explains why there are so many politically conservative men telling the world that they would “do” her, while complaining about her “stupidity,” and irritating voice. Men are obsessed, despite the fact (or because of it?) that she is a clear candidate for the top right corner of the Hot-Crazy matrix.

Autopsy of a Dead Coup By Victor Davis Hanson *****

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/1

The illegal effort to destroy the 2016 Trump campaign by Hillary Clinton campaign’s use of funds to create, disseminate among court media, and then salt among high Obama administration officials, a fabricated, opposition smear dossier failed.

So has the second special prosecutor phase of the coup to abort the Trump presidency failed. There are many elements to what in time likely will become recognized as the greatest scandal in American political history, marking the first occasion in which U.S. government bureaucrats sought to overturn an election and to remove a sitting U.S. president.

Preparing the Battlefield
No palace coup can take place without the perception of popular anger at a president.

The deep state is by nature cowardly. It does not move unless it feels it can disguise its subterranean efforts or that, if revealed, those efforts will be seen as popular and necessary—as expressed in tell-all book titles such as fired FBI Directors James Comey’s Higher Loyalty or in disgraced Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s psychodramatic The Threat.

In candidate and President Trump’s case that prepping of the battlefield translated into a coordinated effort among the media, political progressives and celebrities to so demonize Trump that his imminent removal likely would appear a relief to the people. Anything was justified that led to that end.

All through the 2016 campaign and during the first two years of the Trump presidency the media’s treatment, according to liberal adjudicators of press coverage, ran about 90 percent negative toward Trump—a landmark bias that continues today.

Journalists themselves consulted with the Clinton campaign to coordinate attacks. From the Wikileaks trove, journalistic grandees such as John Harwood, Mark Leibovich, Dana Milbank, and Glenn Thrush often communicated (and even post factum were unapologetic about doing so) with John Podesta’s staff to construct various anti-Trump themes and have the Clinton campaign review or even audit them in advance.

Some contract “journalists” apparently were paid directly by Fusion GPS—created by former reporters Glen Simpson of the Wall Street Journal and Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post—to spread lurid stories from the dossier. Others more refined like Christiane Amanpour and James Rutenberg had argued for a new journalistic ethos that partisan coverage was certainly justified in the age of Trump, given his assumed existential threat to The Truth. Or as Rutenberg put it in 2016: “If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, non-opinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable. But the question that everyone is grappling with is: Do normal standards apply? And if they don’t, what should take their place?”

Pat Caddell: The Pollster Who Foresaw and Helped Shape Trump’s Victory By John Fund

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/pat-caddell-pollster-foresaw-trump-victory/

“Caddell wasn’t a fan of Donald Trump. He was a fan of giving the sclerotic U.S. political system a kick in the rear and forcing it to respond to the concerns of millions of ordinary voters who felt ignored. In polling he conducted at the very beginning of the 2016 primary season, he found that none of the candidates fully satisfied voters or fit the description he gave of Mr. or Ms. Smith. But he knew that upstarts such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump would do much better than anyone thought. He was right.”

More than most, he understood how disgusted voters were with leaders in both parties.

Pollster and political analyst Pat Caddell died from a stroke on Saturday at the age of 68.

Few people had more to do with Donald Trump’s amazing victory in 2016. The Washington Post concluded that Caddell “first wrote the instruction manual” for Trump when, entirely on his own, he conducted polls showing that the public “was ripe for an outsider candidate to take the White House.” No one I know in public life better grasped the angry voter mood that lifted both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016.

Palestinians’ U.N. Propaganda Tool Israel rejects Palestinian ploy to host official Security Council West Bank visit. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272877/palestinians-un-propaganda-tool-joseph-klein

The Palestinian leadership continues to avoid direct negotiations with Israel, preferring to use the United Nations as a tool to delegitimize the Jewish state. Their latest gambit was an attempt to initiate an official visit by the UN Security Council hosted by the Palestinian Authority to their stomping ground in the West Bank. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, knew that the Palestinians were looking to exploit the Security Council’s presence for propaganda purposes. He objected to Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador to the UN, Anatolio Ndong Mba, who is currently president of the UN Security Council. Israel would be willing to host individual visits by UN ambassadors, he told Ambassador Mba, but not as part of a Palestinian initiative aimed at exploiting the Security Council visit for more propaganda fusillades aimed against Israel.

“The Palestinian initiative is part of an ongoing effort to present a false narrative to the international community,” Ambassador Danon said. “Israel has hosted dozens of UN ambassadors from around the world in recent years, exposing them to the historical truth the Palestinians refuse to accept, and instead choose to engage in terrorism and incitement.” Israel’s ambassador noted the recent brutal murder of a 19-year-old Israeli girl and called upon the Security Council to act against the Palestinian Authority’s “incitement campaign and policy of paying salaries to terrorists.”

All 15 members of the Security Council must approve an official visit along with the countries concerned. Equatorial Guinea’s delegation is still working on the matter. Hopefully he is on a fool’s errand. Talking about foolishness, Kuwait’s UN Ambassador Mansour Al-Otaibi, who currently serves on the Security Council, whined that “We want an official trip.”

America’s Newest Muslim Martyr is a Child Rapist and Killer Linda Sarsour raises money for a monster. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272828/americas-newest-muslim-martyr-child-rapist-and-daniel-greenfield

The road to the Supreme Court for the country’s newest Muslim martyr began with an Alabama tractor. It was a long way from County Road 62 in Alabama to One First Street, NE, in Washington, DC. And it all began in the summer of ’95 when a Selma mom gave her daughter $6 and never saw her again.

While the frantic mother tried to find out what happened to her daughter, Domineque Hakim Marcelle Ray promised to help. He offered to put up fliers for the missing 15-year-old girl and put out a reward. Hakim kept on checking with Tiffany’s mother to learn if any clues had turned up in her disappearance.

Hakim had a very good reason for his helpfulness.

On the evening of July 15, as her mother was getting ready to head home, Hakim and one of his friends picked up Tiffany Harville.

Hakim drove her out near Highway 41, and raped her while she pleaded, “God, God, help me. Please help me, God.”

When Tiffany threatened to tell her mother what he had done, he slashed her throat.

Hakim then made off with her purse and the $6 her mother gave her. Then, with her daughter’s blood on his hands, he showed up to tell her mother how much he cared and offered to put up fliers.