MEDIA Comments turned off

The Media Failed On Collusion Because They Wanted Trump To Be A Traitor How did the doyens of media fail so spectacularly for two years on the matter of Trump-Russia collusion, while anti-establishment journalists and media neophytes succeeded? Ben Weingarten

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/02/media-failed-collusion-wanted-trump-traitor/

Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation findings confirmed not only the conclusions of congressional committees in the House and the Senate, but the work of left-wing and conservative writers and freelance internet sleuths.

Nonprofessionals and nonexperts unraveled the treasonous Trump-Russia collusion narrative months before their media competitors (not to mention investigators) did, in spite of their comparative lack of inside knowledge and resources. How did the doyens of media fail so spectacularly for two years on the matter of Trump-Russia collusion, while anti-establishment opinion journalists and media neophytes succeeded?

One answer: The mainstream media was never seeking the truth, while its skeptics were. Were the mainstream media honest, it would admit it graded itself not on journalistic accuracy, but on the amount of damage it inflicted on President Donald Trump—while generating ratings, and thus increasing market share in a tough environment.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Britain’s Version Of ‘Medicare For All’ Is Struggling With Long Waits For Care Sally Pipes Sally Pipes

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2019/04/01/britains-version-of-medicare-for-all-is-collapsing/#1cbea0d736b8Nearly a quarter of a million British patients have been waiting more than six months to receive planned medical treatment from the National Health Service, according to a recent report from the Royal College of Surgeons. More than 36,000 have been in treatment queues for nine months or more.

Long waits for care are endemic to government-run, single-payer systems like the NHS. Yet some U.S. lawmakers want to import that model from across the pond. That would be a massive blunder.

Consider how long it takes to get care at the emergency room in Britain. Government data show that hospitals in England only saw 84.2% of patients within four hours in February. That’s well below the country’s goal of treating 95% of patients within four hours — a target the NHS hasn’t hit since 2015.

Now, instead of cutting wait times, the NHS is looking to scrap the goal.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Hispanics Rally to Trump, Boosting His 2020 Chances Steve Cortez

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/02/hispanics_rally_to_trump_boosting_his_2020_chances_139933.html

Get ready for the anti-Trump “resistance” to go truly loco, because new polling data indicates Hispanic support for the president is swelling, a trend that could seal his 2020 re-election victory.

When I helped lead the Trump Hispanic Advisory Council in 2016, our effort was widely derided by skeptics certain that the narrative of Trump as anti-Latino would doom his candidacy, particularly in heavily Hispanic states like Florida. But that November, Hispanics saw through the media smears and Trump massively outperformed dour expectations, actually surpassing Mitt Romney’s 2012 percentage among Latino voters.

Since then, prospects have only improved – most importantly for the overall well-being of America’s Hispanic citizens, but also for the political prognosis of President Trump. So much good news erupted last week for the president with the conclusion of the Mueller inquiry that stunning new polling data was largely glossed over. McLaughlin & Associates revealed that Hispanic approval for Trump in March jumped to 50%. This number matched the January Marist/NPR/PBS survey that shocked cynics with its own 50% approval finding. Even if those polls are too aggressive, February’s Morning Consult/Politico poll showed Trump’s Hispanic approval vaulting to a still-impressive 45%.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Social Justice Is at Odds with American Ideas of Justice By Christopher Roach

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/01/social-justice-is-at-odds-with-american-ideas-of-justice/

What is justice? This complicated question is the subject of much study by philosophers, lawyers, clergy, and laymen. It is often easier to determine the metes and bounds of justice from what it is not than to define what it is in the abstract. Unfair procedures, treating the rich differently from the poor, racial discrimination, or the infusion of bribery and perjury into criminal procedures strike almost everyone as forms of injustice. Likewise, light punishments for serious crimes or excessive punishments for minor ones all have the stench of injustice. In criminal matters, justice chiefly requires that the guilty are punished and the innocent go free.

Individualized Justice
This understanding stems from the traditions of western justice, particularly the Anglo-American variety, which places a premium on the rights of the individual and the importance of fair procedures. This is why our Constitution allows one the right to remain silent and prohibits the use of illegally-obtained evidence, while permitting the accused a defense counsel and a trial by jury. These procedures were the products of centuries of experimentation. They reflect the concern not only with justice but also the fear of the “run-amuck” majority, i.e., the mob.

Anglo-American justice fundamentally is an individual affair. The question it normally confronts is whether a particular person committed a particular offense. One’s station in life, his relative wealth, background, race, and the background of his relatives are supposed to be irrelevant. This is the origin of the expression, “Justice is blind.” Justice deliberately averts its gaze from one’s other social merits and demerits. It presupposes that otherwise good people can do very bad things and that otherwise bad people may not have done the bad thing they may be accused of having done.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Rep. Omar Investigation Over Paying Divorce Lawyer w/Campaign Funds Reaches End Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273355/rep-omar-investigation-over-paying-divorce-lawyer-daniel-greenfield

“Last year, Alpha News investigated the interesting background of Omar after Powerline Blog writer Scott Johnson indicated Omar may have engaged in marriage fraud. Omar, who publicly identified Ahmed Hirsi to be her husband, is currently married to Elmi – who through extensive investigation appears to be Omar’s brother.”

Clearly the fault of the Jews.

WASHINGTON (SBG) – Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., the controversial freshman House Democrat, is soon to learn the results of a probe into her campaign spending as a state lawmaker in Minnesota, Sinclair has learned, with authorities there having recently completed their investigation and preparing to issue rulings in a pair of complaints Omar faces.

The complaints were filed last year, while Omar cruised to election to the House of Representatives, by a Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Steve Drazkowski. In referring Omar to the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, Drazkowski alleged that Omar improperly spent close to $6,000 in campaign funds for personal use, including payments to her divorce attorney and for travel to Boston and Estonia. Drazkowski’s filing of the two complaints followed an earlier episode in which Omar repaid $2,500 for honoraria she received for speeches at colleges that receive state funding, a violation of ethics rules for Minnesota lawmakers.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Will Betomania Sweep America? His appeal testifies to the political power of militant vagueness. By Ted Rall

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-betomania-sweep-america-11554160473

A $6 million day of fundraising elevated former Rep. Beto O’Rourke from the fringes of speculative Democratic presidential politics to can’t-be-ignored viability. Edging out Sen. Bernie Sanders’s record chummed a media feeding frenzy.

Mr. O’Rourke officially kicked off his campaign in El Paso, Texas, his hometown, Saturday. “This is a campaign for America, for everyone in America,” he said, sounding either breathtakingly aspirational or hopelessly naive.

Mr. O’Rourke is taking fire from people on the left, like me, who see him as all hat, no cattle. But he keeps rising in the polls. It is entirely possible to imagine him winning. And that’s thanks to the eternal appeal of a pretty face. He’s a rising star in today’s Democratic Party despite losing a Senate race, merely because he managed to keep it close. Where I come from, one who loses is a loser. And the loss was to Ted Cruz, who is highly intelligent but gleefully smug and was tarnished by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Beto is young, has hardly any national political experience (six years each on the El Paso City Council and in Congress), and is an ideological cipher who evidently doesn’t know what he believes. Evoking Hillary Clinton’s “listening tour” of 2000, he plans to travel around to “listen to those who I seek to serve, to understand from your perspective how we can best meet these challenges.”

Mr. O’Rourke probably won’t be the nominee. There’s lots of competition to be the Democratic “fresh face,” including candidates such as Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, who can credibly claim to have accomplished something. But Betomania is real and weird. Cory Booker didn’t get this much media love when he rescued a neighbor in Newark, N.J., from a burning building. CONTINUE AT SITE

POLITICS Comments turned off

What If You Launch a Presidential Campaign and No One Shows Up? Welcome to the worst 2020 kickoff rally in America. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273338/what-if-you-launch-presidential-campaign-and-no-daniel-greenfield

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was going to launch her kickoff rally right in front of President Trump’s front door. “No other candidate has done something like this,” she bragged. “We’re rallying at Trump’s doorstep to send a message loud and clear: We’re together, we’re brave.”

By the time she showed up in front of “Trump’s doorstep” at the Trump International Hotel off Manhattan’s Central Park, the President of the United States was traveling back from Florida to Washington D.C. He was nowhere near the hotel where Gillibrand had decided to “confront” him.

There was nothing “brave” about venturing into the Upper West Side, where the locals would rather commit ritual suicide with a spork or shop at Walmart, before voting for Trump. Starting your rally in a place where Hillary Clinton won 80% of the vote isn’t brave. It’s cowardly. Gillibrand would have shown more courage by going back to her old district where Hillary only won 54% of the vote.

But instead her campaign threw up a giant American flag and then brought out two illegal aliens.

“Our next president will lead with bravery. Our next president with be Kirsten Gillibrand,” declared Monica Sibri, an illegal alien who won’t be able to vote for Gillibrand.

It was a balmy spring day in the Big Apple with sunshine and a high of 60. The NYPD, out in force, had roped off blocks to accommodate the crowds of the brave expected to turn out on Trump’s doorstep.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Maxine Waters: Prosecutors Did ‘Correct Thing’ Dropping Smollett Charges By Jack Crowe

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/maxine-waters-jussie-smollett-charges-dropped-correct/

Representative Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) claimed over the weekend that Cook County prosecutors did the “correct thing” by dropping the charges pending against Empire actor Jussie Smollett after a grand jury indicted him for staging a hate crime.

“It’s the correct thing that the charges were dropped,” Waters told Extra in a Sunday interview. “First of all, we probably will never know all of the details. We’ve heard a lot of information. No one was hurt — that is, physically, killed, shot — he never committed a crime before, he forfeited the bail, and it’s this kind of situation where they close the case all over the country every day. I have learned this isn’t unusual.”

Cook County state’s attorney Kimberly Foxx announced Tuesday that she had dropped disorderly-conduct charges against Smollett due to his history of community service and the nature of the crime.

“After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case,” a statement from Foxx’s office said.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Pompeo: Paris Climate Deal ‘Didn’t Change a Thing’ By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mike-pompeo-paris-climate-deal/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that the Paris Climate Agreement signed by the Obama administration “didn’t change a thing” regarding the carbon emissions of the more than 170 other countries that chose to sign it.

“Go look at the countries that are still in the Paris agreement and see what their CO2 emissions were. It’s one thing to sign a document; it’s another thing to actually change your behavior,” Pompeo said. “Go look at Chinese carbon emissions since they entered the Paris agreement. They may feel good about being in the deal. Their people may — you may feel good about their people being in the deal, but it didn’t produce. If you’re looking for a change, it didn’t change a thing.”

The 2015 Paris deal required China to reduce emissions 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Beijing has struggled to stay on track to hit that target since signing the deal, despite President Xi Jinping’s claims that his country is leading the global push to combat climate change. Methane emissions from the country’s coal sector have risen at a steady rate despite government regulations designed to slow them.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Christchurch Murders: The Real Accomplices by Guy Millière

Posted By on April 2nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13984/christchurch-murders-accomplices

Two days before the tribute to the victims and the broadcasting of the call to prayer, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern invited an imam to read the Koranic verses of Surah al Baqarah before the opening of a parliamentary session. Surah al Baqarah speaks of “those who are killed in the way of Allah” and evokes a “great punishment” for “those who disbelieve”. Do New Zealanders really deserve a great punishment because an Australian came to New Zealand and committed a mass murderer?

In Saudi Arabia, the good news is that in 2018, a few laws were changed to allow women to drive. The bad news is that women are still not allowed to travel, get married or divorced, file a police report, or even leave prison, without the permission of a male guardian. If they try to flee, they risk being arrested or killed. In November, “dozens” of activists involved in the “right to drive” campaign were arrested and are currently on trial. Apple and Google, in their app stores, offer a Saudi Arabian government app that “allows Saudi men to track women under their sponsorship.”

The real accomplices of Christchurch mass murderer are not those who sounded the alarm about Muslim immigration to the West, but those in the West who embrace this passive submission, weakness and cultural suicide and refuse to see the potential storms ahead.

The Christchurch massacre — in which dozens of innocents were slaughtered in cold blood because of their religion, as they were assembled to pray — was a despicable, indefensible act. The murderer, Brenton Tarrant, is a criminal. The manifesto text he left to justify his act is in no way a justification.

The reactions that followed were marked by legitimate indignation. Unfortunately, the attack was also used to launch a campaign both dangerous and treacherous.