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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Nancy Pelosi Is Damaging Democrats’ Takeover Chances

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/nancy-pelosi-damaging-democrats-midterm-election-chances/

Will her party reach out to swing voters by persuading her to step aside?

Will Democrats pull an “October Surprise” this year and announce that the highly polarizing Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco won’t be their candidate for House speaker after all? Growing up in the Bay Area, I saw Pelosi’s iron will and stubbornness up close for decades. The possibility of her stepping back seems remote. But she’s also the shrewd tactician who always tells moderate Democrats they can publicly spurn her because the imperative is “Just win, baby.” If the race for House control is close in October, many Democrats hope she’ll step back to deprive the GOP of a campaign issue.

Some Democrats are willing to publicly acknowledge that the highly liberal Pelosi alienates independents and moderates. “People pretend that it isn’t a problem, but it’s a problem that exists,” Representative Brian Higgins (D., N.Y.) told the Washington Post last week. He said frustrated colleagues told him that Republicans’ anti-Pelosi ads cost Democrats the House special election in Ohio, where they trailed by only 1,500 votes. One third of the national ads run by Republicans in that race mentioned Pelosi, and she became a real issue when Democrat Danny O’Connor, after first saying that Democrats need “new leadership,” finally admitted he would vote for her as speaker over a Republican if Democrats put her forward: “I would support whoever the Democratic party put forward.” This comment dominated local coverage of the House race for the week leading up to the special election.

Higgins says that challengers in other competitive districts are getting the same treatment when it comes to Pelosi: “They are stuck with that question, and they do not deal with it well. You equivocate, and it jams you up, and it costs you votes.”

Our Era of Malice :Edward Cline

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/08/our-era-of-malice.html

The malice shown for Donald Trump before and after his election had always been there. Not just for Trump, but for America. For the Democrats and their allies in and out of newsrooms, having lost the election in 2016, it had to be expressed, in the news, and in print. It is a necessary urge to vent the venomous lump of hatred in its soul. It didn’t come from nowhere, as a sudden hatred. It had been growing and lurking for years, and awaited the chance to bellow, when its prancing unicorns were being disassembled and dissolved by Trump. The malice is evident in the ubiquity of hate speech, in the rants of Maxin Waters and others in and out of Congress.

Aside from political correctness, “hate speech” is the most pernicious anti-concept in today’s cultural circulation of mental submission. Today, hate speech is as common as cursing. Separated from the object of its wrath, it is an emotional expression that means nothing. It is vibrations in the wind. In print, or physically, hate speech of the anti-Western or anti-Semitic kinds, is just bellows in the air, akin to gorillas roaring and beating their chests in contesting superiority as an alpha male. Unless the gorilla attacked following his roar, it means nothing but a lot of vacuity.

The “tech giants” – Facebook, Google, and others – ban sites such as Alex Jones and others because they violated some ambiguous and relatively unknown“ rules” of publication of what they deem “hate speech.”

There is no one irrefutable authority that defines the meaning of hate speech. Wikipedia tries to cover all the usual but unprovable objects of it but does not define the concept itself:

Hate speech is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Devin Nunes: Clinton campaign colluded with ‘nearly every’ top official at the DOJ and FBI by Daniel Chaitin

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/devin-nunes-clinton-campaign-colluded-with-nearly-every-top-official-at-the-doj-and-fbi

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes declared Sunday that Hillary Clinton’s campaign “colluded” with nearly every top official in the Justice Department and FBI.

An interview on Fox News had turned to the topic of Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and his ties to Bruce Ohr, a high-level DOJ official who fed the FBI information from the ex-British spy even after he was cut as a source for providing confidential information to the media.

The dossier, published last year by BuzzFeed, contains unverified claims about the Russians having information on President Trump that could be used as leverage. Republican investigators are concerned the FBI deceived a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court when it used information from the dossier without disclosing its Democratic benefactors to gain the authority to spy on onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Clinton’s campaign, as well as the Democratic National Committee, retained Fusion GPS’ anti-Trump research through October 2016 after it was initially funded, then dropped by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication.

Nunes, R-Calif., blamed the media for largely ignoring the revelations surrounding the origins of the federal investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and stressing that the American people “need to know it” called for the declassification of “an unprecedented amount of information.”

Ohr, who was the fourth-highest ranking official in the Justice Department, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Aug. 28 “to answer why he had 60+ contacts with dossier author, Chris Steele, as far back as January 2016,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., announced on Twitter late Friday.

Media covering (up) Dianne Feinstein’s major spy scandal By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/08/media_covering_up_dianne_feinsteins_major_spy_scandal_.html

The mainstream media desperately want to deflect attention away from a huge spy scandal involving the ranking Democrat senator on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. For two decades, Senator Dianne Feinstein employed a Chinese spy on her staff. And when it was discovered, she was notified, the spy was fired (but not prosecuted), and the entire matter was kept secret from the public.

Only 5 years later did the news appear in public to almost no fanfare, bured deep in a Politico story on other matters.

The reason is obvious. The contrast with the treatment received by the Trump campaign when a Russian spy was merely suspected (on the basis of what appear to be ginned-up concerns over Carter Page, an FBI informant) is so stark as to raise serious question as to the integrity of the FBI counterintelligence operation. The NSA’s ability to monitor every form of electronic communications except ham radio[i] was mobilized to spy on the presidential campaign of the opposition party to the Obama administration. No notification to the campaign was offered, unlike Feinstein’s treatment.

The entire incident is being presented to the public as no big deal. That is a classic example of the fake news of which President Trump so vocally complains. Fortunately, Mark Thiessen checked out the real dimensions of the spy operation:

Deep State Husbands by Marilyn M Barnewall

https://newswithviews.com/deep-state-husbands/

Most of us are familiar with the Stepford Wives, but how many of us realize that the men involved in the so-called Deep State have wives that are anything but Stepford-type women?

Those of us who seek news outside of the mainstream know who Nellie Ohr is. Fox News spent the past week inundating us with information about her. The question is: Why did they wait so long to broadcast data published seven months ago? Fox News treated it like a news alert – called it that, in fact.

It’s almost as if everything is being carefully timed to achieve a very secret objective.

Do the words “statute of limitations” resonate as the reason behind Robert Mueller’s, the FBI’s, the DOJ’s and Congressional Committees’ unreasonable delays? If truth can be delayed long enough, no one goes to jail because the statute of limitations comes and goes so no one can be prosecuted.

When a crime (with a few exceptions – like murder) is perpetrated, the authorities have a limited amount of time to catch and prosecute the offender. If the statute of limitations says the authorities have three years to solve and prosecute the crime, the perp can confess the day after the three year limit passes and cannot be prosecuted for it. The crime is “dead.”

The Obama administration, the FBI and Department of Justice have handled many of their responsibilities to department policies and to our Constitution with reckless disregard. If they delay things beyond the statute of limitations they cannot be prosecuted. Thus they get to maintain their fictitious record of upholding the Constitution against enemies, foreign and domestic, and all of the mafia-like characters who have caused this challenge to our Constitutional Republic — and they get to retire at taxpayer expense.

WHO IS NELLIE OHR?

1. We know her husband is Bruce Ohr, fourth in command at the DOJ under Loretta Lynch at the time the phony Trump Dossier was created by Nellie Ohr and Christopher Steele for Fusion GPS.

2. We know that both Bruce and Nellie Ohr knew Steele before the Russia/Trump Dossier was plotted by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. We know Bruce Ohr was e-mailing Christopher Steele about it as early as January 2016.

3. Nellie worked at Fusion GPS. She (Dr. Ohr) is a recognized Russia expert and studied in the Soviet Union in 1989 before getting her PhD in 1990. She is said to be fluent in the Russian language and is an expert on cyber security (an unusual combination to say the least). Bruce Ohr is a Deep State husband. We know Nellie Ohr wrote the dossier for Fusion GPS and we know Bruce Ohr gave all of his wife’s writings about the Trump Russia delusion to the FBI.

4. According to a sworn statement by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, Dr. Ohr was hired to conduct opposition research on behalf of the Clinton campaign against presidential candidate Donald Trump.

5. Nellie’s Degrees include an A.B. from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, major: Russian History and Literature; and an M.A. and a PhD in History at Stanford University.

Russian Collusion Investigation Has Orwellian Roots By Thomas Farnan

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/11/russian-collusion

Paul Manafort may or may not have violated tax and banking laws in 2010. Given the twisted and arcane nature of those laws, who knows?

What we do know is that Manafort first was investigated for breaking those laws in that year by Robert Mueller’s FBI. A discretionary decision was made not to prosecute. It wasn’t a priority of the Obama Administration to indict consultants over how they reported income from foreign governments. If that were a priority, a lot of big shots in Washington would have gone down.

There is insufficient concern that what is broadly called “election tampering” really means efforts to influence voters by legitimate means. It was unnervingly Orwellian when Congress cudgeled Facebook’s founder for selling ads to the highest bidder without first assessing the worthiness of the content. Manafort’s real crime is not that he chose to book certain income as loans from offshore shell companies, because a lot of people do that.

No, Manafort’s crime is the same as Facebook’s: he failed to measure the orthodoxy of his political client’s message and, because of that, he now faces an inquisition.

In 2010, pro-Russia candidate Viktor Yanukovych was elected as president of Ukraine. Manafort provided extensive consulting services for Yanukovych’s campaign. Politico has called it “a political love connection.” Vladimir Putin was pleased. His strategic endgame has been to create a united Eurasia that is nationalistic, Christian, and steeped in local culture and history, that would compete with Europe for regional hegemony.

This was an early inkling of the zeitgeist that would later lead to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Manafort was one of its architects.

Of Course There Is Such a Thing as a ‘Perjury Trap’ By Andrew C. McCarthy

Of Course There Is Such a Thing as a ‘Perjury Trap’ And it’s a legitimate reason for President Trump to decline to be interviewed. Studies will someday be done on the deleterious effect Donald Trump has had on the brains of people who loathe him. It drives them to say things that are as palpably […]

Marxism in the Mainstream By Bill Kilgore

Don’t miss the significance of the Sarah Jeong affair. In this story freedom of speech, double standards, and the question of whether someone should be fired are all secondary distractions from what should be most alarming about it. The most important thing to note is that Marxism is now in the mainstream.

Jeong is the poster child for modern leftism. In a genuine and unassuming way, she dislikes people based on race and gender. Of course it is racist on its face, but so what? For her, everything comes down to group identity and the didactic world of who has power and who does not. That she and the New York Times are comfortable enough to openly spout this view is telling.

Is it Marxist?
Is this Marxism in the original sense of the term? No, but it is a descendant of the original. Marxism denies that human beings are individuals first, and instead identifies them first as members of a particular class. Ultimately, it divides the world between two classes: the oppressor and the oppressed. Whereas Marx divided the world only between rich and poor—the proletariat and the bourgeoisie—contemporary Marxists also divide the world along the lines of race, gender, and sexual preference. Everything comes down to power and group identity.

Those who want to be precise might take issue with me lumping together these new Left-wing categories with the old Marxist ones. As I understand it, the early progressives, themselves influenced by German idealism, unintentionally laid the foundations for this totalitarian view in America. Others, notably Antonio Gramsci, made it cultural; others still in the Frankfurt School brought it to the university. Finally, John Rawls probably made it palatable for polite society. But what does it matter? The end result is the same, and Marx was the father of it all.

To be fair, most people today who hold and espouse Marxist views may not even see themselves as Marxists. Most don’t even know they are Marxists. Very well; we can call it whatever you want: cultural Marxism, neo-Marxism, new-Left, Leftism, progressivism or neo-progressivism, identity politics, democratic socialism, feminism. The list of names is long and parts of these approaches conflict with one another, but the core thought is the same. And all of it is subversive and destructive of American ideals.

Democrats Have Become What They Say They Despise By Laura Hollis August

Earlier this week, Candace Owens, a young black conservative, was shouted out of a restaurant by a white crowd screaming obscenities and racial epithets at her and her dining companion, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk (who is white). The police had to be called, and the mob shouted obnoxious slurs at the officers as well. Owens tweeted: “To be clear: ANTIFA, an all-white fascist organization, just grew violent and attacked an all-black and Hispanic police force.

“Because I, a BLACK woman, was eating breakfast.

“Is this the civil rights era all over again?”

It is. And many Democrats are on the wrong side.

It would be easy to dismiss that statement as hyperbole if this were not the latest in a distressingly long line of examples of the left abandoning principles in pursuit of the bogeymen they themselves have created.

Also within the past week, The New York Times announced that it had hired tech writer Sarah Jeong to join its editorial board. Jeong has a long history of nasty and racist tweets directed against white people. She claimed that she was merely responding to trolls who had lobbed racial insults at her. But Jeong also tweeted insults against men in general, as well as police, and this went on for more than a year. Video has now emerged of Jeong spewing her ignorance and hatred during a speech at Harvard Law School.

The Times stands behind Jeong. Some applaud this as long-overdue courage in the face of torch-and-pitchfork crowds. Perhaps. But Jeong’s conduct isn’t merely bigoted; it is also immature and unprofessional and, in the case of her University of Virginia rape-hoax tweets, completely counterfactual. The Columbia School of Journalism issued a scathing report slamming Rolling Stone’s article about the alleged gang rape at UVA, and Rolling Stone lost one defamation case (and settled a second) as a result of it. This is who The Times hires, at a time when the press complains about diminishing credibility?

Antifa, the Real Fascists The assault on Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens is just the beginning. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270986/antifa-real-fascists-matthew-vadum

Foul-mouthed Antifa demonstrators went on a rampage August 6 as they assaulted two high-profile conservative activists at a downtown Philadelphia restaurant for being conservatives and supporters of President Trump.

The attack came the day after Antifa smashed the windows at a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office in Berkeley, Calif., during a leftist counter-protest of a “No to Marxism” rally. Twenty people were arrested. “Besides the damage to the Marine Corps post, Berkeley police also said ‘an extremist element among a large group’ damaged 21 city vehicles, setting one on fire, and slashed their tires,” Fox News reported.

The incident in Pennsylvania’s biggest city also came after the leftist mayor of Portland, Ore., Ted Wheeler (D), allowed anarchy to break out in his city, instead of cracking down on Antifa troublemaking. For 38 days Wheeler, who is also police commissioner, allowed hundreds of his Antifa allies to unlawfully occupy public property at an Occupy ICE protest site that eventually became a biohazard. “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track,” he tweeted. “If [ICE is] looking for a bailout from this mayor, they are looking in the wrong place.”

The attack in Philadelphia and other recent violent actions by Antifa are yet another reminder that the totalitarianism-loving domestic terrorists of Antifa, who call themselves anti-fascist activists, are the real fascists in today’s America because, among other things, they use violent tactics pioneered by the real-live fascist storm-troopers of Weimar Germany, the Sturmabteilung (SA). These Antifa goons opposed the Nazis but eagerly copied their tactics, using their fists to shut down political opponents and break up meetings and rallies. Some Antifa today even dress like Nazis, wearing black and red, the anarchist colors which traditionally have also been used by Nazis.