POLITICS Comments turned off

Mark Penn: Pelosi, Dems wrong to hound Trump with continuing investigations

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mark-penn-dem-calls-to-impeach-trump-echo-partisan-impeachment-of-president-andrew-johnson-in-1868

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mark-penn-dem-calls-to-impeach-trump-echo-partisan-impeachment-of-president-andrew-johnson-in-1868

Impeach him! He has disobeyed Congress!

Those words rang out both this week and in 1868. While the themes then and now are the same, hopefully the outcome will be different.

The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson is widely recognized as one of the most embarrassing moments in American history, in which unrestrained partisanship almost won the day. But it was also a day in which one senator, as recounted by President John F. Kennedy in his book “Profiles in Courage,” stopped us from becoming just another banana republic.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., missed her “Profiles in Courage” moment Thursday, adding “villainous” to her laundry list of accusations against President Trump. Rather than stand firm against her caucus and move the country forward, she caved and started to call the assertion of executive privilege a “cover-up.”

Pelosi might oppose it and might fight it in the courts, but it’s no cover-up. It’s a clear and legally appropriate message that enough is enough.

Remember that there were already multiple all-out congressional investigations over the last two years in addition to Special Counsel Robert Mueller issuing 2,800 subpoenas, interviewing 500 witnesses and ordering 280 interceptions of communications while employing 40 FBI agents and 19 lawyers.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Loretta Lynch Deals Another Blow to FBI’s Cover-Up Story By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/23/loretta-lynch-deals-another-blow-to-fbis-cover-up-story/

The implausible justification for why James Comey’s FBI opened an investigation into the Trump campaign—a drunken encounter between a low-level campaign aide and an Australian diplomat in the spring of 2016, we’ve been told—is falling apart quickly.

And the newly-released testimony of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch just gave Comey’s cover-up story another blow.

As congressional investigators in 2017 closed in on the political origins of the unprecedented counterintelligence probe into four U.S. citizens associated with the Trump campaign, the New York Times threw the perpetrators a lifeline. It was not the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, who in 2016 indirectly was being paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, that alerted Comey’s cops to the potential for chicanery between Team Trump and the Kremlin to rig the election.

No, it was when George Papadopoulos—a young, unpaid foreign policy adviser to the campaign—allegedly told Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, in May 2016 at a London bar that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. “The . . . revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” the Times reported on December 30, 2017.

Not coincidentally, this is the same month the House Ethics Committee cleared Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence committee, of a bogus ethics complaint that sidelined for eight months his crucial work into the handling of the dossier by top Obama officials. He would release his bombshell memo a few months later, exposing for the first time how the FBI used the Steele dossier as evidence on a FISA application to wiretap campaign volunteer Carter Page.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Virtues of Patriotism By John Fonte

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/23/the-virtues-of-patriotism/

The elections to the European Parliament underway now through Sunday present a major war of ideas between the “Europe of Nations” and the “Europe of Brussels”—between national democratic sovereignty and supranational authority.

On May 13, I participated in a conference in London organized by the White House Writers Group and attended by leading conservative intellectuals and political figures, including Yoram Hazony, Daniel Hannan, Roger Scruton, John O’Sullivan, Nile Gardiner, and Polish cabinet minister Anna Maria Anders, among others. The conference, “Europe at a Crossroads: The Virtue of Nationalism,” for the most part echoed Margaret Thatcher’s famous Bruges speech advocating a Europe of “independent sovereign states” in opposition to a democracy-deficient supranational EU that would “try to suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the center of a European conglomerate.”

Two days before, on May 11, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the Claremont Institute’s 40th anniversary gala dinner with a spirited defense of the universal principle of democratic sovereignty as central to the new Trump doctrine in American foreign policy. Pompeo declared:

This new pride in taking America’s interests seriously is not just an American phenomenon. Countries all over the world are rediscovering their national identities, and we are supporting them. We are asking them to do what’s best for their people as well. The wave of electoral surprises has swept from Britain to the United States all the way to Brazil.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

On Iran Strategy, Donald Trump Replaces Barack Obama’s Mirage with Containment Michael Doran

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/05/19/iran-donald-trump-replaces-barack-obama-mirage-editorials-debates/3735836002/

Donald Trump has a well-articulated strategy toward Iran. Like almost every other Republican candidate for president in 2016, he argued that President Barack Obama empowered Iran at the expense of America’s traditional allies and its own vital interests. Trump has implemented instead a policy of containment.

When critics claim that his strategy lacks an “endgame,” they are really expressing nostalgia for the clarity of Obama’s vision. The Iranian regime, Obama told us, was moderating, it was willing to dispense with its ambitions to become a nuclear weapons state and was eager to stabilize the Middle East in cooperation with the West. Taken together, these trends inevitably led to an attractive endgame: strategic accommodation between Washington and Tehran.

This vision, however, was a mirage. Events in Syria during Obama’s administration gave us a preview of the true consequences of his strategy. Out of a misguided belief that recognition of Syria as an Iranian sphere of interest would transform Tehran into an agent of stability, he made no attempt to counter the provocative new moves that Iran and Hezbollah made to save the Assad regime.

This miscalculation allowed Iran and Russia to form a military alliance that bears primary responsibility for the deaths of over half a million Syrians and the displacement of well over 10 million more.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinian People Taken Hostage by Their Own Leaders How Palestinian terror and “right of return” demands torture Palestinians. Joseph Klein

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273856/palestinian-people-taken-hostage-their-own-leaders-joseph-klein

Jason Greenblatt, President Trump’s special envoy, scolded the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday for refusing to accept the obvious cause of Palestinian suffering in Gaza. He said that the Security Council needs “to admit that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are the primary barrier to the dreams of those residents of Gaza who want to live in peace, raise their families and find meaningful work.” Mr. Greenblatt condemned both terrorist organizations for continuing “to target Israeli hospitals and schools” and using Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields. He asked, “When will the Security Council say this out loud? When will we clearly reject this terrorism?”

Mr. Greenblatt’s observation applies to the Palestinian people’s plight more generally. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority leaders are holding the people they claim to represent hostage to their campaigns of violence, incitement to hatred, and absolutist demands. These leaders have no more interest in genuine peace with Israel than their forebears who rejected the United Nations’ original two-state partition solution more than 70 years ago. Time and again, Israel offered major land concessions to the Palestinians within which they would have been free to determine their own future, so long as that future did not include continuing attacks against Israelis. Time and again, Palestinian leaders spurned the offers, insisting instead on “river to sea” elimination of the Jewish state achieved through violence and artifice.

EDUCATION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Minnesota Students Assigned to Color Reverential Photos of Rep. Ilhan Omar Scandal-ridden congresswoman is treated as an icon. Sara Dogan

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273854/minnesota-students-assigned-color-reverential-sara-dogan

In her short time in Congress, freshman U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar has made a name for herself as a vehement anti-Semite. She infamously invoked age-old anti-Semitic tropes when she tweeted “It’s all about the Benjamins [$100 bills], baby,” accusing the pro-Israel organization AIPAC of donating to politicians in order to secure favorable treatment of the Jewish state. Omar is also an ardent supporter of the Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.  Now it appears that despite her highly controversial record and short career in public service, schoolchildren in Minnesota are being taught to venerate the fledgling politician.

John Hinderaker the President of the Center of the American Experiment located in Omar’s home state of Minnesota, reports on Powerline’s blog that a public elementary school in the state assigned its students to color in reverential pictures of Omar and also to write a report on the Congresswoman.

“This photo came from a public elementary school in Minneapolis,” Hinderaker reports, citing an image featuring a display of coloring pages that each depict Omar standing with an almost military bearing, face upturned, staring off into the distance. She is wearing a headscarf and keffiyeh (prayer shawl). Several detailed floral designs are arranged around her face. “I’ve been told that the same coloring project has been reported in at least one suburban school district, but I don’t have definite confirmation of that yet,” Hinderaker adds. He does not identify the school districts participating in the assignment.  

MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The New York Times Does “What Went Wrong In Venezuela?”Francis Menton

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/

In the past couple of weeks, the New York Times has had two big articles about Venezuela, describing the horrific conditions that now exist there, and analyzing what went wrong. On May 14, it was “How Venezuela Stumbled to the Brink of Collapse”; and on May 17 it was “Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades, Economists Say.”

It will not surprise you that the word “socialism” does not appear in either article. But the stupidity here goes far beyond just not mentioning the subject of “socialism.” The affirmative effort in these articles is to somehow shift the blame for Venezuela’s economic collapse to something other than socialism, whether it be “poor governance,” corruption, or general incompetence. The May 17 piece does have a reference to “misguided policies,” but they never say what those “misguided policies” may be. Widespread nationalizations of industry? Massive public housing schemes? Heavily subsidized food and household products? “Free” healthcare? None of these are mentioned.

But of course they do mention — multiple times — the Trump administration’s sanctions, just imposed in the past couple of months, as if those have something meaningful to do with a 60-80% collapse of GDP that has taken place over a decade or more.

From a summary in the May 17 piece:

Venezuela, at one point Latin America’s wealthiest country, has not been shattered by armed conflict. Instead, economists say, the poor governance, corruption and misguided policies of President Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, have fueled runaway inflation, shuttered businesses and brought the country to its knees. And in recent months, the Trump administration has imposed stiff sanctions to try to cripple it further.

MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why is The New York Times Trying to Abort the Trump Peace Plan? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14264/new-york-times-trump-peace

No one ever lost money betting against peace between Israelis and Palestinians…. It would be far better if The New York Times waited until the plan was released and then commented on its specific provisions rather than stacking the deck against it by quoting only its most strident critics.

There are those who will criticize any plan, no matter how positive it may be, if it emanates from the Trump administration. When President Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, many Democrats who would have favored such moves if they had been done by Barack Obama, opposed them only because these same moves were done by President Trump. These Democrats do not want to see Trump succeed at anything, even if his success would be good for America, for Israel and for peace.

If the editors of The New York Times refuse to separate opinion and analysis from hard reporting, every reader has an obligation to make that separation for herself or himself. Bear this in mind when you read The New York Times.

The New York Times seems determined to kill the proposed Trump Middle East peace plan before it is even made public. In a recent article, it quoted only nay-sayers and critics, who without having even seen the plan have declared its demise. In the guise of news, the Times provided “analysis” in the news section, which was, in reality, an editorial. This has become more and more common on the news pages of The New York Times. The separation of news from opinion is in the highest tradition of journalism, but The New York Times seems determined to knock down that wall of separation, especially when it comes to subjects on which its editors and publishers have strong opinions. Among these subjects are both Israel, which can do no right, and Donald Trump, who is always wrong. When these two subjects come together, as they do with regard to the Trump peace plan, readers must be wary of accepting news reports as objective.

Every single expert quoted in the article predicted that it would not succeed. Many of these experts have been involved in past unsuccessful efforts to bring about a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not surprising that these experts would not want to see others succeed where they have failed, especially if those others were members of the Trump administration. Then one expert went so far as to say: “The only way to protect the long-term viability of the best aspects of the Kushner plan,” he wrote, “is to kill the plan.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama Appointees in the Communist Orbit By Karin McQuillan

Posted By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/obama_appointees_in_the_communist_orbit.html

This week Rush Limbaugh repeated a quote from James Comey in a  New York Magazine interview: 

“I’d moved from Communist to whatever I am now. I’m not even sure how to characterize myself politically. Maybe at some point, I’ll have to figure it out.”

It’s hard to pin too much on that quote.  Perhaps Comey was joking by calling his vote for Jimmy Carter a vote for a Communist, in mockery of his supposedly fellow Republicans. 

Joking about support for Communism is not all that funny in the Obama administration. Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan actually did vote for a Communist presidential candidate.  Brennan and Comey are two of the central players in the Russia Collusion Hoax.

Obama choose Communists and Marxists for the highest, most powerful positions in our land, including his closest political advisors, and his head of the CIA.  These facts are not in dispute.  Most are openly admitted by the people in question, as necessary damage control.  Our press  chooses not to report them.

Professor Paul Kengor has extensively researched the Chicago communists whose progeny include David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Hussein Obama.  Add the openly Marxist, pro-communist Ayers, and you have many of the key players who put Obama into power.

John Brennan

Brennan (who was sworn in as CIA director on a draft of the US Constitution, without the Bill of Rights, instead of a Bible) said that while he had voted Communist, he wasn’t an official member of the Communist Party – and was relieved that he had been accepted into the CIA.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Restoring the Lost Consensus By Roger Kimball

Posted By on May 23rd, 2019

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2019/6/restoring-the-lost-consensus

Editors’ note: The following is adapted from Roger Kimball’s acceptance remarks at the Bradley Prize ceremony in Washington, D.C., on May 7, 2019.

Looking around the cultural landscape today, I conclude that we are in the midst of a sort of negative religious revival: let’s call it America’s First Great Awokening.

Evidence of our society’s wokeness—a false awakening sparked by political grievance—is all around. I’d like to begin with what the philosopher Nicholas of Cusa called the “coincidence of opposites.” Unpacking exactly what Cusa meant by that arresting phrase would take us into the thickets of metaphysical speculation. But we see pedestrian examples of that strange coincidence everywhere. Indeed, one of the great tests of our wokeness is the extent to which many things have mutated into their opposites—not awake but awoke. Inversion is a dominant principle of our social life.

Consider, to take just one example, the fate of our colleges and universities. Once upon a time, and it was not so long ago, they were institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the transmission of the highest values of our civilization. Today, most are dedicated to the repudiation of truth and the subversion of those values. In short, they are laboratories for the cultivation of wokeness. This is especially true, with only a handful of exceptions, of the most prestigious institutions. The tonier and more expensive the college, the more woke it is likely to be.

There are two central tenets of the woke philosophy. The first is feigned fragility. The second is angry intolerance. The union of fragility and intolerance has given us that curious and malevolent hybrid, the crybully, a delicate yet venomous species that thrives chiefly in lush, pampered environments.