FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Xi Changed My Mind About Trump The president defends not only U.S. sovereignty but the entire world order. By Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on July 25th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-changed-my-mind-about-trump-11564008053

At first I had no idea why President Trump talked so much about sovereignty. I’ve changed my mind. To be more precise, Xi Jinping changed it. Mr. Trump is the only thing that stands between us and a world dominated by China.

“We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government,” Mr. Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017. “But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties: to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation.”

Mr. Trump mentioned sovereignty 21 times in that speech. Why? Everyone knew America was a sovereign state, one of nearly 200 in the world. The idea of sovereignty has been firmly established for more than three centuries. Mr. Trump’s defense of it seemed unnecessary.

Yet for more than a decade, President Xi has been dropping audacious hints that China is the world’s only sovereign state. As a result, I have come to believe that Mr. Trump’s defense of sovereignty is essential to maintaining international peace and stability.

The world is full of “experts” who will tell you China and the U.S. are locked in a contest for dominance. Technically, that’s true. The idea that the two nations are struggling for control, however, falsely implies that America is jealously guarding its position atop the international system. That’s Beijing’s narrative. Chinese leaders disparage the U.S. by implying it is in terminal decline and accusing it of attempting to prevent China’s legitimate rise.

In reality, America is preserving more than its role in the international system. It is trying to preserve the system itself—which Mr. Xi is working to overthrow by promoting imperial-era Chinese concepts.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Tedious Failure of the Mueller Hearings Democrats needed a “win” to spark impeachment; They didn’t get it. Charles Lipson

Posted By on July 25th, 2019

https://spectator.us/democrats-events-mueller-trump-2020/

Lights! Camera! Inaction!

The hearing, pushed hard by House Democrats, was supposed to be a major public event, designed to highlight allegations against President Trump in the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. It was always about convincing the public that the report was far more damning than the public initially thought. It was never about new evidence — only about putting the existing report up in lights.

It failed in that theatrical goal. The phrase of the day is a stumbling Mueller asking, time and again, ‘Can you repeat that?’

For Democrats: the hearing was all about revving up public support for impeachment. That meant building enthusiasm well beyond their base. The key was to highlight President Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice in a convincing, gripping fashion.

For Republicans, the hearing was all about stopping that and defending the president. Their party cannot retake the House and retain the Senate if the top of the ticket is badly damaged.

Given these political stakes, the Democrats needed to ‘win’ the hearing outright, to show that they need to keep investigating the president, even if that prevents them from advancing other legislation. The Republicans had an easier task. They merely had to stop the Democrats from using the Mueller report to fuel impeachment. That’s exactly what they did. They succeeded not by winning outright but by blocking a Democratic victory.

As political theater, the hearing was a dud. The five-minute question periods, alternating between parties, made it hard for Democrats to build a convincing narrative. Even worse, the Democrats’ star witness was a visibly aged special prosecutor. Robert Mueller capped a distinguished career of public service with an undistinguished performance. He looked weak and sometimes befuddled, repeatedly asking for questions to be repeated. He refused the Democrats’ invitation to do a ‘show and tell,’ in which he would read his report aloud and embellish its findings. He essentially told the country, ‘I have nothing to say beyond the report itself. Please move along.’

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mueller’s Muttering Misfire For Democrats — by Thomas McArdle

Posted By on July 24th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/24/

How big a nothingburger was Robert Mueller’s testimony on Wednesday? Within thirty minutes of the end of his sad, near-senile performance lasting over six hours, MSNBC’s out-for-Trump’s-blood commentators had turned to asking defeated Missouri Democrat ex-Sen. Claire McCaskill to describe to viewers how the Russians are promoting the anti-vaccine movement.

Americans wouldn’t read the book, i.e,. Mueller’s report, but they’ll watch the movie. That was the Democrats’ bet in forcing Mueller to appear before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. But they lost big, and Mueller’s appearance on screen is a shoe-in for the Golden Raspberry Award, right down there with the very worst investments Hollywood has ever made, like “Heaven’s Gate,” “Ishtar,” and “Leonard Part 6.”

Mueller was “exactly the right kind of individual for this job,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said when he was appointed special counsel in 2017. We’ve been told for over two years now that the former FBI director is a lion, a dogged crusader for the truth, a national treasure within the law enforcement establishment. But on Wednesday he was a shell of a man; he stammered, sat open-mouthed, gawking, endlessly asked for questions to be repeated and rephrased, and failed to remember what was contained in his own 448-page report — strongly indicating that it was not Mueller, but his team of left-leaning, Democrat-contributing prosecutors, like Andrew Weissman, who actually penned the document bearing his name.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Death of the Impeachment Dream The Mueller hearings confirm that voters will decide when Trump leaves office. By James Freeman

Posted By on July 24th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-of-the-impeachment-dream-11563999203?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s

House Democrats hoped that Wednesday’s hearings would allow them to highlight their favorite portions of the Mueller report for people who haven’t read it. Democrats didn’t expect this segment of Americans to include the author.

Largely unwilling to promote, defend or elaborate on a document with which he seemed strangely unfamiliar, former Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller let stand the report’s finding of no Trump-Russia collusion and, intentionally or not, ensured that his work will not be used to drive a duly-elected President from office.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Mueller Show Is a Bust The special counsel hearings refute the case for impeachment.

Posted By on July 24th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mueller-show-goes-bust-11564003715

The only person in Washington happier than Donald Trump about Robert Mueller’s Wednesday appearance before Congress is Nancy Pelosi. The House Speaker’s impeachment caucus had hoped the hearing would mobilize new public support despite her opposition, but it was more likely their last gasp.

Mr. Mueller provided little news during his many hours before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. Democrats strained to place their obstruction of justice and Russia collusion theories in his mouth, but Mr. Mueller stuck to the script of his 448-page report. He even refused to read aloud from that document—denying Democrats an audio version for their TV ads.

Democrat Ted Lieu (California) sought to lure Mr. Mueller into saying he would have indicted Mr. Trump for obstruction if he weren’t a sitting President. “That is not the correct way to say it,” Mr. Mueller said. “As we say in the report and as I said at the opening, we did not reach a determination as to whether the President committed a crime.”

Mr. Mueller also refused to answer Republican queries about why he didn’t fully explore the origins of the Russia-Trump conspiracy story, including the Steele dossier that was used to gain a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign adviser. Mr. Mueller said those issues were “beyond” his “purview,” though Russia’s election interference was central to his mandate. Mr. Mueller probably didn’t want to question the performance of the FBI he led for more than a decade.

ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

Bid to Unify House Democrats Is Threatened by Tests on Issues House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will meet to bridge differences By Natalie Andrews

Posted By on July 24th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bid-to-unify-house-democrats-is-threatened-by-splits-on-issues-11563976552

“Israel has been an especially sensitive topic within the caucus since Mses. Omar and Tlaib made remarks perceived as anti-Semitic earlier this year, upsetting Jewish lawmakers. Ms. Omar in February sent tweets that tied Jews to money and political influence. A month later, at an event in Washington, she accused politicians and special-interest groups, urging her and others to support Israel, of trying to “push for allegiance to a foreign country.” She drew rebukes that she was being anti-Semitic from lawmakers in both parties.All except one of the 17 lawmakers who opposed the nonbinding BDS resolution were Democrats, many of whom argue that state laws opposing the movement violate the First Amendment, a topic on which federal courts have split.”

The tenuous peace deal struck by the Democratic leadership between its moderate and liberal flanks is facing a series of tests as lawmakers confront differences within the party on topics ranging from spending to impeachment and Israel.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is set to meet with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) on Friday in an effort to deal with acrimony that erupted when moderates encouraged the leadership to take up an emergency bill that sent $4.6 billion to the border, which progressives opposed. The meeting had originally been scheduled for Thursday.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is one of four high-profile freshman lawmakers who have squabbled with the speaker and become a target for President Trump. But whatever happens between Mrs. Pelosi and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, several legislative obstacles to House Democratic unity lie ahead before members’ six-week break.

This week, House Democrats will face a vote on a spending resolution and calls within the caucus to impeach the president.

BOOKS Comments turned off

While We All Have Mueller on the Brain . . . By Jack Fowler

Posted By on July 24th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/while-we-all-have-mueller-on-the-brain/

You might want to get hold of Andy McCarthy’s timely and terrific forthcoming book, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency, which you can pre-order from the publisher, Encounter Books, here (its official release date is August 13th). While we’re at it, here’s a snippet from Andy’s introduction:

As for collusion, that word we’ve heard so incessantly from pundits and leaky government officials, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has rendered his judgment that there was none — at least, not the collusion he was hunting for. There really was a collusion plot, though. And it really did target our election system. It absolutely sought to usurp our capacity for self-determination. It was just not the collusion you’ve been told about. It was not “Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia.” 

Here is the real collusion scheme: in 2016, the incumbent Democratic administration of President Barack Obama put the awesome powers of the United States government’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus in the service of the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, the Democratic party, and the progressive Beltway establishment. This scheme had two parts: Plan A, the objective; and Plan B, a fail-safe strategy in case Plan A imploded — which all the smartest people were supremely confident would never, ever happen . . . which is why you could bet the ranch that it would. 

 

Plan A was to get Mrs. Clinton elected president of the United States. This required exonerating her, at least ostensibly, from well-founded allegations that were both felonious and politically disqualifying. 

Plan B was the insurance policy: An investigation that Donald Trump, in the highly unlikely event he were elected, would be powerless to shut down. An investigation that would simultaneously monitor and taint him. An investigation that internalized Clinton campaign– generated opposition research, limning Trump and his campaign as complicit in Russian espionage. An investigation that would hunt for a crime under the guise of counterintelligence, build an impeachment case under the guise of hunting for a crime, and seek to make Trump un-re-electable under the guise of building an impeachment case.

EDUCATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Colorado State: Don’t Use the Word ‘America’ Because It’s Not ‘Inclusive’ By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on July 24th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/colorado-state-dont-use-the-word-america-because-its-not-inclusive/

The whole goal of language is to communicate, and there’s little point to removing any of it when it’s not actually causing harm. 

Colorado State University’s Inclusive Language Guide instructs students “to avoid” using the words “America” and “American,” because doing so “erases other cultures.”

“The Americas encompass a lot more than the United States,” the guide states. “There is South America, Central America, Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean just to name a few of 42 countries in total.”

“That’s why the word ‘americano’ in Spanish can refer to anything on the American continent. Yet, when we talk about ‘Americans’ in the United States, we’re usually just referring to people from the United States. This erases other cultures and depicts the United States as the dominant American country.”

The guide advises students to use the words “U.S. citizen” or “person from the U.S.” instead of “American.”

Some of the other words and phrases deemed not inclusive by the guide include the words “male” and “female” (because this “refers to biological sex and not gender,” and “we very rarely need to identify or know a person’s biological sex and more often are referring to gender”), “cake walk” (because it apparently has origins in “the racism of 19th century minstrel shows”), “freshman” (because it “excludes women and non-binary gender identities”), “Hispanic” (“because of its origins in colonialization and the implication that to be Hispanic or Latinx/Latine/Latino, one needs to be Spanish-speaking”), “hold down the fort” (because “the U.S. the historical connotation refers to guarding against Native American ‘intruders’ and feeds into the stereotype of ‘savages’”), “no can do” (because it was “originally a way to mock Chinese people”), “peanut gallery” (because it “names a section in theaters, usually the cheapest and worst, where many Black people sat during the era of Vaudeville”), “straight” (because it “implies that anyone LGBT is ‘crooked’ or not normal”), “food coma” (because it “directly alludes to the stereotype of laziness associated with African-Americans”), and “war” or “battle,” when used any way other than to describe a literal war or battle (because “they evoke very real tragedy that can be problematic for survivors of war or Veterans”).

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man: A Profile of Boris Johnson written by Toby Young

Posted By on July 24th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/07/23/cometh-the-hour-cometh-the-man-a-profile-of-boris-johnson/

“The rational part of my brain is still full of doubts and uncertainties. What sensible person would look at Boris’s peripatetic career and rakish personality and conclude that he is the right man to lead Britain at this moment of maximum danger? But at a more primitive level, a level impervious to reason, I cannot help but believe. From the first moment I saw him, I felt I was in the presence of someone special, someone capable of achieving great things. And I’ve never quite been able to dispel that impression.”

I first set eyes on Boris Johnson in the autumn of 1983 when we went up to Oxford at the same time. I knew who he was since my uncle Christopher was an ex-boyfriend of his mother’s and he had told me to keep an eye out for him, but I still wasn’t prepared for the sight (and sound) of him at the dispatch box of the Oxford Union. This was the world famous debating society where ambitious undergraduates honed their public-speaking skills before embarking on careers in politics or journalism, and Boris was proposing the motion.

With his huge mop of blond hair, his tie askew and his shirt escaping from his trousers, he looked like an overgrown schoolboy. Yet with his imposing physical build, his thick neck and his broad, Germanic forehead, there was also something of Nietzsche’s Übermensch about him. You could imagine him in lederhosen, wandering through the Black Forest with an axe over his shoulder, looking for ogres to kill. This same combination—a state of advanced dishevelment and a sense of coiled strength, of an almost tangible will to power—was even more pronounced in his way of speaking.

He began to advance an argument in what sounded like a parody of the high style in British politics—theatrical, dramatic, self-serious—when—a few seconds in—he appeared to completely forget what he was about to say. He looked up, startled—Where am I?—and asked the packed chamber which side he was supposed to be on. “What’s the motion, anyway?” Before anyone could answer, a light bulb appeared above his head and he was off, this time in an even more orotund, florid manner. Yet within a few seconds he’d wrong-footed himself again, this time because it had suddenly occurred to him that there was an equally compelling argument for the opposite point of view. This endless flipping and flopping, in which he seemed to constantly surprise himself, went on for the next 15 minutes. The impression he gave was of someone who’d been plucked from his bed in the middle of the night and then plonked down at the dispatch box of the Oxford Union without the faintest idea of what he was supposed to be talking about.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Boris Johnson appoints new cabinet with Sajid Javid, Priti Patel and Dominic Raab in top positions

Posted By on July 24th, 2019

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/sajid-javid-appointed-chancellor-as-boris-johnson-names-new-cabinet-a4197671.html

Sajid Javid has been appointed chancellor, Priti Patel home secretary and Dominic Raab foreign secretary as Boris Johnson named his new cabinet.

Mr Johnson met with his new ministers this evening after he was given permission by the Queen to form a government.

Mr Raab was also appointed first secretary of state, effectively making him Mr Johnson’s deputy prime minister. The new cabinet will also see the return of Stephen Barclay as Brexit secretary.

Arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has been made Leader of the House of Commons. He was also made Lord President of the Council and Downing Street said he would attend cabinet meetings.

Mr Johnson’s Tory leadership rival Michael Gove was named Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, while Ben Wallace was given the key role of defence secretary.

Gavin Williamson has returned to the government as education secretary after he was sacked by Theresa May earlier this year over leaked information about Chinese mobile giant Huawei.