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‘Not Suitable for Recruiting’: A Talk with Vladimir Bukovsky, Part I By Jay Nordlinger

Posted By on May 14th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/vladimir-bukovsky-legendary-dissident-conversation/

All Soviet dissidents are legendary, to one degree or another. Vladimir Bukovsky is especially so. He is held in awe by people whom the rest of us hold in awe. I’m speaking of his fellow dissidents. Bukovsky is a dissident’s dissident, so to speak.

A book of his, which originally appeared in 1995, is now being published in English for the first time. On his back patio, amid chirping birds, I talk with him about this and many other subjects.

And where is the back patio? In Cambridge, England, where Bukovsky has lived since the mid-1970s.

Bukovsky has had mighty health struggles — but he indulges his listener, his interviewer, gladly and ably.

• He was born in 1942 and quickly became dissident. Enrolled at Moscow State University for biology, he was kicked out at age 19. He had criticized the Komsomol, i.e., the Young Communist League.

I ask him, “Do you think you were born this way? Born to stick your neck out, born to get into trouble?” “Yeah,” he says. “There’s nothing you can do about it. I would feel uncomfortable if I tried to hide what I believe. It’s against my nature.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Kamala Harris’s Disastrous New Answer on Medicare for All By John McCormack

Posted By on May 14th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-medicare-for-all/

Soon after Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign back in January, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked her, at a televised townhall, the following question about Senator Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill (a piece of legislation that Harris is cosponsoring): “I believe it will totally eliminate private insurance. So for people out there who like their insurance, they don’t get to keep it?”

“Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on,” Harris said after making some brief comments about the problems with private insurance.

On Sunday, Harris appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” for her first interview with Tapper since January, and she insisted she had only endorsed eliminating health-care “bureaucracy” and “waste” in her previous comments.

“But the bill gets rid of insurance,” Tapper interjected.

“No, no, no, no, it does not get rid of insurance. It does not get rid of insurance,” Harris replied, insisting that “supplemental” insurance coverage would be available.

After Tapper pressed her some more on the details of the bill, Harris eventually seemed to concede that supplemental private insurance would exist only for things like cosmetic surgery that are not services covered by the government under Medicare for All.

So why did Harris insist in the first place that the Medicare for All bill doesn’t eliminate insurance? It is not a factual claim that is in dispute. As the New York Times has put it: “At the heart of the ‘Medicare for all’ proposals championed by Senator Bernie Sanders and many Democrats is a revolutionary idea: Abolish private health insurance.”

The Medicare for All bill “outlaws the market for selling insurance that covers the same services included in Medicare for All. You can only sell private insurance that covers services outside of what is covered by that bill,” James Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute tells National Review Online. Sanders wants “to fight what occurs in most other countries, which is people opting out of the [single-payer] system through private insurance and going to privately run, privately paid doctors and hospitals that are a little better than the public utility system that everybody else uses.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

What ‘America First’ Means to Pompeo The secretary of state elaborates on Trump’s slogan, appealing to the Founders’ vision. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on May 14th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-america-first-means-to-pompeo-11557788496

The U.S. faces a series of intractable crises and standoffs around the world. Trade talks with China have reached an impasse; North Korea has returned to threats and missile launches; the chaos on America’s southern border shows no sign of abating; relations with Germany reached new lows after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo canceled a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel so he could visit Iraq; Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro continues to defy U.S. pressure to stand down; and an apparent act of sabotage against ships in the Persian Gulf Monday ratcheted tensions another notch higher in the Middle East.

Against this background, Secretary Pompeo delivered his most comprehensive attempt yet to expound the core themes informing the Trump administration’s foreign policy. His speech—delivered Saturday to the Claremont Institute in Southern California—deserves careful study. Whether or not President Trump’s foreign policy is successful, the ideas laid out by Mr. Pompeo are likely to shape the Republican Party’s approach to statecraft for years to come.

From the end of the Cold War through the 2016 election, U.S. foreign policy oscillated between the liberal internationalism of the Clinton and Obama presidencies and the neoconservatism ascendant under George W. Bush. It was clear during his campaign for the Republican nomination that Mr. Trump (along with much of the Republican base) rejected key tenets of Bush-era foreign policy, but it was not clear what approach he would implement instead. He was against Mr. Bush’s approach to trade, against the war in Iraq, doubtful of the value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and deeply skeptical of democracy promotion in the Middle East. But what was he for?

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Imam Who Gave Congressional Invocation: “Deceitful” Jews, Per Koran, Are Apes and Pigs Andrew Bostom See note please

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/05/imam-who-gave-congressional-invocation-deceitful-jews-per-koran-are-apes-and-pigs/

This is a major story which is being ignored by the media and the critics of Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Andrew Bostom has done a yeoman’s job in exposing Suleiman’s  bias and his faith driven hatred of Jews. These anti-Semitic vituperations are repeated by Imams throughout our country.  Dr. Bostom’s research is unimpeachable as documented in his book “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.”

Controversy has erupted over Imam Omar Suleiman having been granted the privilege of giving an invocational prayer to the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, May 9, 2019. The good Imam’s invitation was rather ordinary:

“Suleiman’s congresswoman, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, invited him to deliver the prayer through a standard form on the webpage of the Office of the Chaplain of the House, according to a congressional official.”

Despite this anodyne process, New York Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin, in particular, raised concerns that as documented elsewhere, Suleiman “accused Israel of being terrorists, posted in support of [the traditionalist Muslim, pro-jihad] Muslim Brotherhood, called for [a] Palestinian Intifada, and more.”

Suleiman’s Islamic advocacy group and Leftist supporters have counterattacked spraying charges of “Islamophobia”, while the Imam himself tweeted,

“It is clearly part of an attempt to erase Muslim leaders from public life and also to keep deflecting from the real Antisemitism of the right”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Leftist Finnish Party Embraces Homophobic, Racist MP By Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://saraacarter.com/leftist-finnish-party-embraces-homophobic-racist-mp/

How odd – the Social Democrat Party (SDP) in Finland just minted a brand new member of Parliament who insulted gays, Somalis, America, Israel, Jews and Sunni Muslims. The SDP is the leftist party of progressives, kind of like the Social Democrat wing of our own Democratic party. Notwithstanding their political “convictions,” the party has stood by the man whose election victory last month gave the SDP the majority over the right wing Finns Party.

The 35-year-old MP in question, pro-Iran Iraqi refugee Hussein al-Taee, enabled the SDP to reach 40 members in the Parliament, narrowly besting the Finns Party showing of 39. For months Al-Taee denied authorship of the offensive statements, that is until his party won the election.

Why a leftist party embraces as one of its own someone who ridiculed gays or Somalis on his Facebook page at first blush is puzzling. His homophobic post was perhaps the most shocking. In 2011 al-Taee posted a scandalously scatological reference to a gay Finn who attended a public event with Adam Lambert, an internationally known gay entertainer.

It is less surprising, if no less inappropriate, that Al-Taee slammed the U.S., Jews and Israel, and even Sunni Muslims.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Ocasio-Cortez realizes she said something stupid and reacts badly By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/ocasiocortez_realizes_she_said_something_stupid_and_reacts_badly.htm

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez finally understands that her claim that we have only 12 years to save the world from global warming disaster was a ridiculous statement. Having been mocked by her many enemies, and unable to defend the absurdity, she is actually digging a deeper hole for herself, trying to maintain the self-righteousness that seems to power her drive for political power.

In a tweet Sunday morning, she implausibly claimed that the 12 years ’til doom prediction was “dry humor” and that the GOP is too stupid to grasp her wittiness:

This is a provable lie. She spoke in public last January about her claim of 12 years to escape doom, and nobody laughed.  Her audience clearly did not think it was a joke, and she did not pause for laughter at the punch line.  Rather, she was greeted by applause:And she doubled down in April on Instagram, without a trace of a smile or humor. (view here).  The only mention of laughter was her explicit denial of any humor in the situation:For everyone who wants to make a joke about that, you may laugh, but your grandkids will not.

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Immigration Offenses Topped List of Federal Crimes in FY 2018 By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/immigration-offenses-topped-list-of-federal-crimes-in-fy-2018/

Immigration offenses became the biggest category of federal crime in fiscal year 2018, surpassing the number of drug offenses.

Crimes relating to immigration comprised 34.4 percent of all federal sentencing cases, an increase from last year’s 30 percent, according to the United States Sentencing Commission’s annual report. While the vast majority of crimes in the U.S., including most violent crimes, are dealt with at the state level, immigration offenses stand out as as category under the purview of federal authorities.

96.3 percent of the 23,883 immigration cases recorded in the report involved Hispanics, 92.7 percent of them male. Approximately 94.7 percent of the cases led to prison sentences, and 13,500 led to supervised release. Only 866 cases involved a defendant under 21 years old.

“In fiscal year 2018, 54.3 percent of all offenders were Hispanic, 21.2 percent were white, 20.6 percent were black, and 3.8 percent were of another race. Non-U.S. citizens accounted for 42.7 percent of all federal offenders,” the report stated.

MEDIA, POLITICS Comments turned off

CNN Fact Checks Tlaib’s Holocaust Comments: ‘She Can’t Rewrite History’ By Jack Crowe

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cnn-fact-checks-tlaibs-holocaust-comments-she-cant-rewrite-history/

CNN’s John King corrected Representative Rashida Tlaib’s (D., Mich.) revisionist history of the Holocaust on Monday, pointing out that Palestinian leaders supported the German extermination of Jews and violently resisted the creation of a Jewish state.

“It was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity. Their existence, in many ways, had been wiped out,” Tlaib said last week on the Yahoo News Skullduggery podcast. “I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.”

“[Tlaib] ignored the fact that Palestinian leaders at the time allied themselves with Hitler and that total war is how the Arab world reacted to the declaration of Israeli independence,” King said Monday. “She can’t rewrite that history and you can’t project revisionist history,” he added before introducing his guest, Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to six secretaries of state, who castigated Tlaib for enflaming divisions by resorting to ahistorical Holocaust references.

“They were considering extermination of the entire Jewish community there as well,” Miller said of Palestinian leaders who believed German forces might arrive in the region after defeating allied forces in North Africa. “So this was ill-timed, ill-advised, and I think it clearly is simply going to antagonize and polarize the already polarized debate in Washington.”

MEDIA Comments turned off

Against Progressive Plans to Tinker with the Senate By Jay Cost

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/progressive-plans-change-senate-response-jamelle-bouie/

I n a provocative Sunday opinion piece for the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie takes aim at the United States Senate. It is “is highly undemocratic and strikingly unrepresentative” institution, dominated by a “Republican coalition of rural whites, exurban whites and anti-tax suburbanites.” This needs to be changed — because everybody knows it is un-American to oppose higher taxes!

Bouie offers an outside-the-box idea. Rather than change the Senate via constitutional amendment, progressives should look to increase the number of Democrats in the Senate by giving representation in the Senate to non-state units—“Washington, D.C., the Atlantic territories, the Pacific territories and the Native tribes.”

Normally, I do not write columns responding to other columns. But Bouie’s piece is typical of the progressive Left’s frustration with the Senate, as well as of an inability to reckon with its role in our constitutional regime. For these reasons, it merits a thorough examination.

For starters, full disclosure: I get it. The Senate is not democratic, and in a republic, that is problematic. All else being equal, I would agree with Bouie. But all else is not equal. This is in fact a very old debate, whose context demands some thoughtful appreciation before slashing changes are made. Why do you think the Constitutional Convention dragged on through the entire summer of 1787? James Madison, James Wilson, and other federalists from the large states insisted on a fully majoritarian system. But the small-state representatives, including John Dickinson and Roger Sherman, said, No dice — you want our assent to this Constitution, we need guarantees.

ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

David Harsanyi :Rashida Tlaib’s Lies Remind Us Why Israel Must Exist The Palestinian tragedy is self-perpetuating, led by those unable to come to terms with history.

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/13/rashida-tlaibs-lies-remind-us-why-israel-must-exist/

During a recent SkullDuggery Podcast on Yahoo!, Rep Rashida Tlaib dropped a few historically illiterate thoughts on the Holocaust and Israel. None of it was especially surprising to anyone who’s followed far-left or Palestinian rhetoric for any amount of time.

For Tlaib, the Holocaust was primarily a tragedy for the Palestinian people, who were unable to repel Jews’ immigration and stop the formation of a Jewish state. Her words are a helpful reminder of not only why Israel exists, but also that the tragedy of the Palestinian people is neither the fault of the Jews, nor the British, nor the Holocaust.

Tlaib offers two important revisionist claims: The first revolves around the contention that Palestinian Arabs were not only welcoming of the Jews, but actually sacrificed their own dignity and lives so Jews could be safe. The second revolves around the notion that Jews were, or would be, safe under Palestinian rule. Here is how she put it:

I think two weeks ago or so we celebrated, or just took a moment I think in our country to remember the Holocaust. There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports… all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them. And so, when I think about a one-state, I think about the fact that why can’t we do it in a better way? And I don’t want people to do it in the name of Judaism, just like I don’t want people to use Islam in that way. It has to be done in a way of values around equality and around the fact that you shouldn’t oppress others so that you can feel free and safe. Why can’t we all be free and safe together?