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Inspector General’s Report Exposes Another ‘Collusion’ Myth Julie Kelly

Posted By on September 3rd, 2019

amgreatness.com/2019/09/02/inspector-generals-report-exposes-another-collusion-myth/

The Michael Flynn “thing” President Trump discussed with James Comey in 2017 wasn’t Russian collusion. It was the bogus Logan Act claim.

It is the most damning memo in James Comey’s dossier on Donald Trump: An account of an alleged conversation between Comey and Trump about then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

According to Comey, during a private meeting in the Oval Office on February 14, 2017, President Trump asked the former FBI director to drop an inquiry into Flynn about his discussions with the Russian ambassador shortly after the election. (Flynn had resigned amid media reports he possibly violated an arcane federal law.)

“He misled the Vice President but he didn’t do anything wrong in the call,” Comey claimed Trump said to him. “[Trump] said, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”

According to Russian collusion truthers, those alleged comments form the most convincing evidence that Team Trump not only conspired with the Russians and tried to cover it up, but that the president broke the law by asking his FBI director to halt an investigation into one of his top advisors.

The memo is cited numerous times in the second volume of the Mueller report to implicate the president for obstructing justice by interfering in the Russian investigation, although Comey’s memo is the only evidence of such an act. (Trump has disputed Comey’s description of the conversation.)

Ever since the memo was leaked to the news media by a Comey pal more than two years ago, the American public has been warned how that brief discussion between Comey and Trump represented an egregious presidential power play: Trump, the story goes, was squeezing his top G-Man to stop looking into his campaign for conspiring with the Kremlin because everyone associated with Trump, we were told, was guilty.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Rules of Geopolitics Are Different in Asia Indo-Pacific states care about great-power balance, not promoting democracy. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on September 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rules-of-geopolitics-are-different-in-asia-11567460320

Colombo, Sri Lanka

The drama in Washington sometimes makes this difficult to remember, but the most important foreign-policy development of the current presidential term isn’t the president’s tweets. It is the slow, inexorable shift in American strategy from the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters of world politics to what U.S. diplomats and military officials call the “Indo-Pacific.” That shift, which the Obama administration called the “pivot to Asia,” isn’t the special property of Republicans or Democrats, of national-security hawks or doves.

Yet if Americans are increasingly united on the importance of the Indo-Pacific, we are very far from united on strategy there. This is partly because the executive branch is led by a president with unconventional views who is often at daggers drawn with the network of professionals and institutions that have shaped American foreign policy for many decades. But larger forces are at work than President Trump.

Never in human history have so many people and states faced such an avalanche of political and economic change as the Indo-Pacific faces today. If American policy makers find it challenging to understand and respond, they aren’t alone. The teams around Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe are often similarly perplexed.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Socialism Is for the Incurious Human reality is drained of dignity and reduced to raw material for the schemes of utopian power. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on September 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialism-is-for-the-incurious-11567460002

I was struck by a news report this summer about Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It has long been known that he and his wife chose to spend their honeymoon in the Soviet Union. But it was news that he never availed himself of the opportunity to visit Alexander Solzhenitsyn when the great writer and moral witness was living as a refugee in Cavendish, Vt., between 1976 and his death in 2008.

Some comments about that story attribute Mr. Sanders’s negligence to ideology, as if he, being a fan of the Soviet Union, made a silent protest by ignoring the famous anti-Soviet figure in his midst. But I think the deeper reason for his neglect was a quality of the socialist or communist or revolutionary sensibility that is too little remarked. I mean its ingrained, indeed its programmatic, lack of curiosity about other people.

The philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, in a thoughtful anatomy of the French Revolution, is one of the few people to underscore this feature of the totalitarian habit of mind. “This absence of curiosity,” Mr. Scruton notes, “is a permanent characteristic of the revolutionary consciousness.”

An important reason for this lack of curiosity is the prominent role that abstractions play in the mental and moral metabolism of the totalitarian sensibility. This feature was articulated with some poignancy by Rousseau, who, at the end of his life, sadly observed: “I think I know man, but as for men, I know them not.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Everyone Loses in Germany Voters in state elections effectively choose ‘none of the above.’

Posted By on September 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/everyone-loses-in-germany-11567445967

European elections these days are generally contests between a beleaguered mainstream and insurgent alternatives. Voters in two German states on Sunday chose a form of “none of the above” as the country stumbles out of the Angela Merkel era.

The biggest vote-getters were the main parties of the center. Mrs. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) came out on top in Saxony, a state they’ve governed since 1990. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), with whom Mrs. Merkel maintains an awkward coalition at the national level, are on track to maintain their long-time control in Brandenburg.

Yet both parties emerged with diminished support. The CDU’s share in Saxony fell to 32% from above 39% in 2014, while the SPD’s Brandenburg total dropped to 26% from 32%. The result raises new questions about Mrs. Merkel’s preferred successor to lead the CDU and the country, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who doesn’t excite voters anywhere. It also accentuates the crisis of confidence afflicting the leaderless SPD, which can’t decide whether its national coalition with Mrs. Merkel is hurting or helping its fortunes.

The alternatives also underperformed expectations. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party did increase its vote totals to 27.5% in Saxony and 23.5% in Brandenburg from 10% and 12% five years ago, respectively. But this is unlikely to be a harbinger of national success, even if the AfD is currently the largest opposition party in the national parliament.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Thoughts of a hungry but woke white man By Gamaliel Isaac – Satire –

Posted By on September 3rd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/thoughts_of_a_hungry_but_woke_white_man.html

In the winter of 2016, Liz Connelly and Kali Wilgus took a road trip from their home in Portland, Oregon to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico.  They fell in love with the tortillas they ate on the beaches there.  Liz told a reporter from the Willamette Week, “I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did.”

Liz and Kali came back to Portland, and they opened a food cart from which they sold burritos comparable to what they had tasted in Puerto Nuevo.  Alas, Kali and Liz did not realize they were committing a great wrong in selling delicious burritos culturally appropriated from Mexico.  Fortunately, this wrong was halted (along with their food cart business) when some brave Portlanders went to battle on their computers and, with death threats and tweets, stopped this outrage.

When I read about this heroic fight against injustice, a sudden uncomfortable question popped into my head.  If selling food from other cultures is cultural appropriation, then isn’t eating it cultural appropriation as well?  I couldn’t sleep worrying about this.  I had been going to Indian restaurants and Chinese food trucks for years, not knowing I was committing a crime against foreign cultures.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The quantum revolution is coming, and Chinese scientists are at the forefront Jeanne Whalen

Posted By on September 3rd, 2019

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/18/quantum-revolution-is-coming-chinese-scientists-are-forefront

China’s drive to dominate a field with big economic and military applications outpaces some U.S. strides

HANGHAI — More than a decade ago, Chinese physicist Pan Jian-Wei returned home from Europe to help oversee research into some of the most important technology of the 21st century.

At a conference in Shanghai this summer, Pan and his team offered a rare peek at the work he described as a “revolution.”

They spoke of the hacking-resistant communications networks they are building across China, the sensors they are designing to see through smog and around corners, and the prototype computers that may someday smash the computational power of any existing machine.

All the gear is based on quantum technology — an emerging field that could transform information processing and confer big economic and national-security advantages to countries that dominate it. To the dismay of some scientists and officials in the United States, China’s formidable investment is helping it catch up with Western research in the field and, in a few areas, pull ahead.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

“Our Boys”: The HBO Series Uses a Jewish Tragedy to Condemn Israeli Society

Posted By on September 3rd, 2019

https://www.aish.com/jw/me/Our-Boys-The-HBO-Series-Uses-a-Jewish-Tragedy-to-Condemn-Israeli-Society.html

It’s a despicable misrepresentation of truth.

Whoever had any part in producing the new HBO 10 part series teasingly titled “Our Boys” should be profoundly ashamed – and whoever is misled into believing that they will have an opportunity to see a fair re-creation of the events in 2014 that began with the kidnapping and murders of three Israeli teenagers leading up to the Gaza war of that horrible summer deserves a fair warning: This is perhaps one of the most outrageous and deceitful distortions of a historically significant moment in the story of Israel’s struggle with barbaric acts of terrorism.

The way the story played out in fact begins with three 16-year-old religious Israelis, Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel, (full disclosure: Naftali was my cousin) deciding to hitchhike at Alon Shvut in Gush Etzion. Picked up by Arabs, they almost immediately realized they were being kidnapped and one of them was able surreptitiously to call the police. The police heard gunshots but didn’t know anymore. The entire country joined in a paroxysm of fear, prayer and hope. The mood of Israel was perhaps the finest example of its potential for unity, total and complete caring and sharing as one national family.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mattis slams Obama for giving him ‘contradictory objectives’ in Afghanistan by Caitlin Yilek see note please

Posted By on September 2nd, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mattis-slams-obama-for-giving-him-contradictory-objectives-in-afghanistan

MEDIOCRE STRATEGIST NOW PEDDLING HIS NEW BOOK….Remember when he said:

“If I’m Jerusalem and I put 500 Jewish settlers out here to the east and there’s 10,000 Arab settlers in here, if we draw the border to include them, either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say the Arabs don’t get to vote—apartheid. That didn’t work too well the last time I saw that practiced in a country.”

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis criticized President Obama’s orders to withdraw forces in Afghanistan without consideration for what was happening on the ground.

Mattis, in an interview with NPR, said he had been given “two contradictory objectives” in 2011 when he was leading Central Command and overseeing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“The forces under my command at CENTCOM were to degrade the Taliban while building up the Afghan army. They were also to withdraw on a strict timetable, independent of circumstances on the ground. We could do one or the other, but not both,” he said.

“What you have got to do is figure out what it is you intend to do at the outset [of a war] and then hold firm to that and don’t half-step it,” Mattis said. “I think that we have had serious policy challenges in figuring out exactly what it is we intend to do and then holding firm to that vision.”

In recent months, the U.S. has been in negotiations with the Taliban about withdrawing American troops. About 14,000 troops remain in Afghanistan.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: GRANNIE GETS A NEW CAR

Posted By on September 2nd, 2019

This past weekend I set off to lease a new car. I knew exactly the make, the model and the trim that I wanted. Since Google does what it does, I was contacted by many dealers with a variety of incentives. I chose the one with the best deal in a low-end business corridor in the East Bronx.
When I arrived, the concierge called me “mami” and directed me to Steve, from Ghana, who called me “nana” and took me to Ramon in sales who informed me that his grandmother has the car which is best for old people. My salesperson whose white beard and cane indicated more senior status told me that his mother in law has the same car. (?)
The sales manager Sal groaning and pretending to suffer because he was taking a hit told me that the reason he accepted my offer is that I reminded him of his great aunt Ruth.
During the tedious wait for the new registration, license plate transfer, and servicing, every single person on the staff offered me coffee, donuts, a sandwich, a more comfortable chair- in several variations of the word “mother.” Ah, the perks of superannuation. They could not have been kinder.
When my spiffy new vehicle was ready, they helped me adjust settings and preferences and pair my cell phone and navigation. They all offered admonitions about driving safely and when I pulled out, they shouted “goodbye and God bless you!”
I did not just get a new car. I feel as if I got a gift that gives the lie to the media’s continual and disturbing claims that racial and ethnic relations among Americans are terrible. RSK

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

President Trump Furious With Washington Post: I’m Not Racist, The Squad Is! By Michael van der Galien

Posted By on September 2nd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/president-trump-furious-with-washington-post-im-not-racist-the-squad-is/

On Monday, the Washington Post published a ridiculous article in which President Trump is, among other things, accused of leveling “racist attacks against four congresswomen of color dubbed ‘the Squad’.” Oh yes, the newspaper owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos argues, he can only possibly disagree with those radical leftists because he hates people of color.

In case you’ve got some time to waste today you can read the entire piece here. My advice: don’t do it, I summarized it for you, let that be enough. Every single minute you spend reading the Washington Post you’ll have to explain to God in the hereafter. Let me do it for you. After all, it’s my job. I’m sure He’ll accept that explanation.

As you’d expect from him, President Trump isn’t exactly happy with the Washington Post’s articles. In one tweet, the leader of the free world wipes the floor with the newspaper, its owner, The Squad, and the Democratic Party:

The President: “The Amazon Washington Post did a story that I brought racist attacks against the ‘Squad’,” the president wrote earlier on Labor Day. “No, they brought racist attacks against our Nation. All I do is call them out for the horrible things they have said.” He finished it off with:

“The Democrats have become the Party of the Squad!”