HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The Jihad Plot Against New York City You Heard Nothing About By Robert Spencer

Posted By on September 27th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2020/09/26/the-jihad-plot-against-new-york-city-you-heard-nothing-about-n972477

“Let it be clear, I am against America. America is my enemy.”

This was written in an online chat by a man in Texas, Jaylyn Christopher Molina, who has been charged with conspiring with another American, Kristopher Sean Matthews of Elgin, South Carolina, to commit “Netflix worthy” terror attacks at Trump Tower and the New York Stock Exchange, which they thought would gain them “rock star status.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed Thursday that white supremacists were the biggest terror threat the country faced: “Within the domestic terrorism bucket, the category as a whole, racially motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group. And within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that.”

With antifa and Black Lives Matter burning down city after city and threatening and intimidating Americans on an increasingly frequent basis, while white supremacist terror has been conspicuously absent, Wray’s assessment was curious in the extreme and ignored not just the obvious threat from the Left, but the ongoing terror threat from the stalwart allies of antifa and BLM: Islamic jihadists.

After all, antifa and Black Lives Matter would do nothing but applaud the desire of Matthews and Molina to “hit government centers.” They could have been antifa operatives when they talked of hitting the headquarters of the CIA, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Molina wrote: “We need to stick together, we need to defeat them, we need to take a lot of casualties, a lot of numbers.” Matthews stated: “I would hit places like that to send a message.” Would an antifa member have stood up and told them that they must not talk that way, but stick to peaceful protest?

MEDIA Comments turned off

Media’s Wuhan Lies Lengthen, Deepen By Trevor Thomas ******

Posted By on September 27th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/medias_wuhan_lies_lengthen_deepen.html

Because they’ve made a god of government, there’s seemingly always another low to which liberals will stoop in order to help slow, sleepy Joe defeat Donald Trump in November.  Many of these lows involve the numerous nefarious reactions to the Wuhan virus.  Make no mistake about it: we have suffered an unprecedented loss of jobs and businesses, the shutdown of schools, entertainment, and hospitals; the mandating of masks and “social distancing”; and the like, not because of a global pandemic, but because of our foolish and unprecedented reaction to a global pandemic. 

In other words, much of what was “unprecedented” in the fight against the Wuhan virus was simply unnecessary.  As Tim Black at Spiked recently put it, because of what leftism has wrought worldwide, we have turned a pandemic into an apocalypse.  Mr. Black writes: 

To varying degrees, political elites, screamed on by the media, have responded to the threat posed by this virus as if it is world-ending. As if it demands the complete reorganisation of social and economic life around the supreme principle of safety. As if there is no way back. They treat it not as a nasty virus that poses a significant but manageable health risk to certain sections of the populace. No, they treat it as a god-like judgement on the old structures of social life, now deemed, in the jargon of the day, unsafe and unsustainable. 

This is what is unprecedented. Not the novel virus itself. But the panicked, fear-laden and, in some quarters, gleefully apocalyptic response.

Because viruses are simply going to virus — not at all unprecedented — in order to keep the fear and the panic high, American leftists in politics, academia, and the media must regularly lie.  This is especially the case as the lockdowns drag on and as the actual evidence contradicts what those who have a vested interest in keeping the Wuhan virus fear level high and the lockdowns in place are telling us. 

Probably the most repeated lie in this evil episode is the near-endless reporting on Wuhan virus “case counts.”  As has been noted multiple times, these reports are filled with numerous deceptions.  The drive-by media in my home state of Georgia again provide a clear example. 

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The University as Madrasah By Rick Fuentes

Posted By on September 27th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/the_university_as_madrasah.html

A progressive and tenured professoriate who luxuriate in a rewarding lifestyle and station have held sway over the student body politic in higher education for generations.  Bred of a style of campus Marxism seeded in the sixties and disbelievers of free-market capitalism, they shunned the rigors of the competitive workplace and snuggled up to academia as the best excuse for employment.  Their avocation is a latter-day version of critical race theory (CRT), the brainchild of a Harvard law professor and early mentor of Barack Obama that breaks everything down to race, law, and power and views the American DNA as strands of intolerance, greed, and systemic racism.  Its most recent variant ascribes social and racial injustices to frame a system so corrupt in its origins that it must all be burned to the ground. It embraces a social studies syllabus that has replaced an even-handed warts and all view of American history with an all warts set of grievance studies.

With increasing audacity, progressive faculty in social sciences and gender studies programs are preaching a groupthink that brings undergrads to a low opinion of themselves and their country.  They impugn whole races and genders over privilege and power, promote class warfare as atonement, and give a wink and nod when rioting overtakes propitious moments of social unrest.  Allegiance to this thinking requires the abrogation of all opposing views.  

The oppression of conservative views and speech on campus is an alarm few university administrations have heeded.  A study of campus speaker and teacher disinvitations and disruptions by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) found that since the Trump administration took office in 2017 there have been 113 attempts or actual incidents of speaker cancellations, protests, or disturbances at public and private colleges.  In 76 of these cases, the controversy came from individuals and groups with leftist political leanings and 24 came from those on the right.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Barrett Announcement By Rich Lowry

Posted By on September 27th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-barrett-announcement/

It was outstanding. Trump is at his best in such settings, when he really has no choice but to be on his best behavior. As for Amy Coney Barrett herself, she is truly an inspired choice — a distinguished professor and jurist who is a deeply grounded originalist and, everything suggests, a composed and winsome public speaker.

 

She hit the right notes today. She honored the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, made her judicial philosophy crystal clear, and movingly introduced her incredible family. The high point may have been when Trump brought her family up on the stage with her. Her personal life shouldn’t strictly matter, but in the current context — when confirmations are political wars and there will be a determined attempt to portray her as a moral monster — it obviously does.

Democrats and the Left would be well-served to not wage a campaign of personal destruction against her and instead focus on the process and the supposed threat to the ACA, but they won’t be able to help themselves.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

What’s at Stake in 2020 By Matthew Continetti

Posted By on September 27th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/whats-at-stake-in-2020/

In short, the future of American government

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has clarified what is at stake in the 2020 election. It is not, as some believe, democracy itself. Nor is it, as others assume, our continued existence as a nation. Democracy will survive Donald Trump, and the United States of America will outlast Joe Biden. The question that 2020 will help to answer is what sort of democracy, and what sort of nation, America will be as it prepares to enter the second quarter of the 21st century.

The reaction to Ginsburg’s death, and to Republican plans to fill her seat on the Supreme Court, underscores the choice before the electorate: Does it prefer to live in a democratic republic ordered toward the principles of the Founders and the constitutional structure they designed to protect individual liberty? Or would it rather dwell in a plebiscitary democracy where the original meaning of the Constitution, when it is not explicitly repudiated, is politely overlooked in order to satisfy ever more radical egalitarian demands?

Needless to say, the answer is up in the air, and has been for some time. But we may be nearing a settlement, one way or another. The civil unrest of the past several months has made unignorable the existence of a large body of opinion that holds something is terribly wrong with America as founded, something that cannot be redeemed, and that American history and American institutions must be drastically revised to atone for the injustices committed against racial minorities. President Trump, in his inimitable way, has made the opposite argument, and called for a renewed appreciation of the American story and a resurgence of national pride.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tucker Carlson Names The Rich CEOs Funding Supplies, Bail For Louisville Rioters By Jordan Davidson

Posted By on September 27th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/25/tucker-carlson-names-the-rich-ceos-funding-supplies-bail-for-louisville-rioters/

Tucker Carlson broke the news Thursday evening that a rioter bail organization led by a “pampered group of revolutionaries” was responsible for bringing rioting supplies to downtown Louisville after the charges in the Breonna Taylor case were announced on Wednesday. Sitting on the organization’s board is a former president at NBC and a finance CEO with Princeton University ties.

“These are violent thugs obviously — many of them, by the way, have college degrees from expensive universities. But in the end, they’re all just foot soldiers. There are legions behind them. People you don’t see on camera. It takes legions, it takes money, and it takes organization to stage effective riots for three and a half months,” Carlson stated.

In a viral video from Wednesday, rioters are seen unloading a truck of supplies such as Black Lives Matter and “abolish the police” signs, shields, water bottles, and more just minutes after the verdict was issued.

“It’s worth asking who is funding all of this? That is a central question. Too few have tried to answer it,” Carlson said, as clips of people unloading the truck played.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

“What Does China Want?” Sydney Williams

Posted By on September 26th, 2020

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The hope was that exposure to the West would cause China to develop free market economies and more freedom for its people. Yet, as Kevin Rudd and Daniel Rosen wrote in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, “China’s economic norms are diverging from, rather than converging with, the West’s. Long promised changes detailed at the beginning of the Xi era haven’t materialized.” China’s defense spending has risen ten-fold in the past two decades, while the U.S.’ slightly more than doubled. The U.S. still spends more than three times what China spends, but the gap is narrowing. China has built at least seven artificial islands in the South China Sea and has conducted war games in that area, through which an estimated one-third of global trade passes. In consolidating power, Xi Jinping has become the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

In 2013, on visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia, Xi unveiled his “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), a center piece of China’s foreign policy. The “belt” refers to the old “Silk Road,” which extended from Xi’an in Central China to the Mediterranean Sea, just west of Aleppo. The “road” refers to 21st Century sea routes. Today, according to Wikipedia, 138 countries in Asia, Africa the Middle East, the Caribbean, South America and Europe have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China’s BRI. The stated purpose is to connect Asia with the Middle East, Africa and Europe to improve regional integration, increase trade and stimulate economic growth. This has been done through loans to countries and direct investments in ports, roads, rail lines, airports, “…one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived” is the way the Council on Foreign Relations put it in January of this year.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE DEPTH OF THE SWAMP

Posted By on September 26th, 2020

https://mailchi.mp/bdae29435382/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-orga

On February 20, 2020, just weeks before our country’s economic shutdown, Adam Andrzejewski, OpenTheBooks’ CEO/Founder, presented to the Hillsdale National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Florida — in a packed room of 900 guests.  

Since then, over 840,000 people have watched the speech on YouTube…

WATCH HERE: The Depth of the Swamp.

The American people want to know just how corrupt their government is, whether it’s at the local, state, or federal levels, or all of the above. 

What do you think – is it worse than you thought? 

In the presentation, Andrzejewski covers the federal bureaucracy, improper payments, federal waste and pork, the Ivy League, Rahm Emanuel, Andrew Cuomo, $300,000 LA lifeguards, our San Fran poop map, New York City rats, suing California and Wyoming, and so much more…

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Steele’s Dossier Source Was a Suspected Russian Spy By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 26th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/steeles-dossier-source-was-a-suspected-russian-spy/

On the newly declassified FBI documents.

Your head spinning? Mine too.

See if you can follow this: In an effort to depict Donald Trump as if he were in an espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin, the Obama administration used bogus information, from a man the FBI suspected was an actual Russian spy, to brand as a suspected Russian spy a former U.S. naval intelligence officer who had actually been a CIA informant.

And that’s just the beginning. It turns out that Igor Danchenko, the man the FBI suspected of being an actual Russian spy, initially provided the bogus information about the American, Carter Page, through a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Through a couple of cut-outs, Steele had been retained by the Clinton campaign to dig up — or, alas, to make up — Russian dirt on Trump. Through his private intelligence business in London, Steele was known to be working for Russian oligarchs, while Danchenko was on Steele’s payroll. That is, the Clinton campaign, and ultimately the Obama administration, colluded with Russians for the purpose of accusing Donald Trump of . . .  yes . . . colluding with Russians.

Danchenko, who in 2005 reportedly told a Russian intelligence officer that he hoped someday to work for the Russian government, became Steele’s source on Trump. Even before October 2016, when the FBI and the Obama Justice Department first sought a surveillance warrant against Page based on the information Steele was compiling, it was obvious that the information was unreliable — some of it laughably so.

But the story was just too good. Nobody bothered to check the information or press Steele about its sourcing.

For months, Steele had been logged on bureau records as an official FBI informant. Nevertheless, in the most significant investigation in its modern history, the FBI did not identify Steele’s “primary sub-source,” Danchenko, until December 2016 — two months after the bureau, under oath, used the uncorroborated Steele/Danchenko information in what the FBI and Obama Justice Department labeled a “VERIFIED” application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Amy Coney Barrett and Who We Are as a Nation By Austin Ruse

Posted By on September 26th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/25/amy-coney-barrett-and-who-we-are-as-a-nation/

We salute Trump for appointing a real believer to the high court. The stakes are nothing short of who we are as a people.

So, it’s Amy Coney Barrett. How great is that? Deo Gratias. For secularists and others out there, that means “thanks be to God.” He is the one who makes all things and keeps all things in existence, even you.

Amy believes that. Maybe that is shocking to you. She also believes that the meaning of her life and work is to see the face of God in the Beatific Vision and live with Him forever.

Once upon a time, these were unremarkable beliefs. They were commonly held. Not at all shocking as they are now.

There have been two competing visions of who we are as a people. One argues that we are a Christian nation and that we were founded that way, that Christianity has pride of place among all faiths, and that the roots of our governmental system are found in the Bible. There is another view: we may be a religious people, but our government may only ever be secular, that is, without God or religion.

Professor Stephen D. Smith of the University of San Diego School of Law calls these the “providentialist” and the “secularist” view. He writes, “Providentialists declare that God works in history, that it is important as a people to acknowledge, and that the community should actively instill such beliefs in children as a basis for civic virtue.” Secularists, on the other hand, “insist that acknowledgments of deity (if there is one) ought to be purely private and that government acts improperly if it enters into religion or expresses or endorses religious beliefs. Thus, what one constituency views as imperative, the other regards as forbidden.”