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‘Same Bus, Different Driver’ By Jay Nordlinger

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/same-bus-different-driver/

One of the most remarkable men I have ever met is Evan Mawarire, a pastor and democracy leader from Zimbabwe. In July 2017, I wrote a piece about him called “Zimbabwe’s Freedom Pastor: Evan Mawarire, the anti-Mugabe.” Robert Mugabe ruled over Zimbabwe from April 1980 to November 2017.

In May 2017, I did a Q&A podcast with Pastor Evan at the Oslo Freedom Forum. At that time, he was out on bail. The authorities had let him have his passport because his parents had turned the title deed to their home over to them. That was the deal: title deed for passport.

Six months later, Mugabe fell from power. This year, in May 2019, Evan Mawarire was back at the Oslo Freedom Forum. I again did a podcast with him: here.

We sat at the same table as before. He was once more out on bail. Once more, his parents had turned over their title deed, in exchange for his passport. Etc., etc.

When we talked, I shared with Evan an old American saying (or perhaps it is British): “second verse, same as the first.” He shared a Zimbabwean saying with me: “same bus, different driver.”

The current regime in Zimbabwe is just as bad as Mugabe’s. In fact, it is a continuation of it. As Pastor Evan says, Mugabe is gone but the Mugabe system remains.

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Is Germany Becoming Germany — Again? By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/angela-merkel-germany-anti-american-views/

Merkel’s evident anti-Americanism is a familiar refrain. 

The more things change, well, the more they . . . So it is with the perpetual German resentments of the U.S.

Recently German chancellor Angela Merkel reminded us of that German fixation, when she made some astounding statements to the German media that revealed what many Americans had long ago surmised.

Merkel all but announced that Germany, or for that matter Europe itself, is no longer really an ally of the United States: “There is no doubt that Europe needs to reposition itself in a changed world. . . . The old certainties of the post-war order no longer apply.”

She insisted that Germany views the democratic United States as not much different from autocratic Russia and Communist China: Urging Europe to present a united front in the face of Russia, China, and the U.S., she said, “They are forcing us, time and again, to find common positions.” And Merkel concluded that therefore Germany must find “political power” commensurate with its economic clout to forge a new independent European path.

In other words, in the calculus of the supposedly sober and judicious Merkel, the democracy that saved Europe twice from a carnivorous Germany — and Germany once from itself and once from becoming a Soviet vassal — is now similar to the world’s two largest authoritarian dictatorships, nations that not so long ago murdered respectively 30 million and 70 million of their own citizens. And how odd a sentiment for someone who grew up in Communist East Germany, a nightmarish state whose collapse was largely attributable to the Reagan-era effort to bankrupt and roll back the Soviet empire.

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Ruthie Blum: Pompeo’s justified low expectations for the Mideast plan

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/pompeos-justified-low-expectations-for-the-mideast-plan/

On the very day that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was convening in New York with Jewish leaders, P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas was at a ceremony in Ramallah denouncing the Trump administration’s “deal of disgrace,” which he said “will go to hell.”

In a private meeting on May 28 with the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged that his administration’s “deal of the century” between Israel and the Palestinians is “currently unexecutable.”

No kidding.

Although details of Washington’s much-touted plan for a resolution of the conflict have yet to be revealed, the Palestinian Authority rejected it publicly even before it had begun. This was to be expected. Every previous agreement put forth or brokered by the United States, including those that involved serious Israeli territorial and other concessions, has resulted in greater, not less, Palestinian intransigence and violence towards neighboring Jews.

Indeed, the Fatah-led P.A. in Ramallah and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip both have made it crystal-clear that their goal is neither peace with Israel nor independent Palestinian statehood, but rather the destruction of the Jewish state. In fact, the latter is one of the few issues on which the two terrorist entities are in complete agreement. About all else, they are at each other’s throats, literally and figuratively.

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Keeping the Russia collusion hoax alive By Robert Knight –

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/2/since-mueller-didnt-explicitly-condemn-trump-democ/

“In the aforementioned book, “The Red Thread,” Ms. West gives chapter and verse on the main characters in the now-obvious cabal to overturn the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Brennan’s admission of voting for the Communist Party ticket in 1976 came during a Sept. 16, 2016, panel discussion at “The Summit on Increasing Diversity in the Intelligence Community” hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year-long fishing expedition found no evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russians. So why is Mr. Mueller now hinting that Mr. Trump is somehow guilty after all?

Maybe it’s because the media, which had heaped praise on him, now see him as a sellout or loser. Or maybe it’s because he wants to distract from a glaring fact: He never addressed the real scandal, which is the Obama administration’s flagrant abuse of the FBI and intelligence agencies to damage a presidential campaign and then, failing that, to destroy a sitting president.

Since the “Russia collusion” scandal dominated the news every day, Mr. Mueller may have helped Democrats take the House in 2018. You’d think they’d be grateful. But, since he did not outright nail Mr. Trump, Mr. Mueller’s star has fallen.

For his part, former FBI Director James Comey has been outed as a squirrely partisan who used his office to target Mr. Trump and allowed Hillary Clinton to skate away from actionable offenses connected with her unsecured email server. Her people wiped evidence-bearing computers and used hammers on cellphones? What’s the big deal?

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Why Rep. James Clyburn just walked back his prediction of impeachment By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/why_rep_james_clyburn_just_walked_back_his_prediction_of_impeachment.html
“Do Dems really want to start impeachment against Trump, given the prospect that Obama/Biden/Hillary (and perhaps others in the Obama administration) engaged in what would clearly be impeachable offenses?”

Nancy Pelosi, desperately trying to hold onto her speakership in the face of the Trump-haters (nearly all from safe districts) demanding impeachment, must have been furious at her second-highest-ranking member yesterday saying it’s only a matter of time until President Trump is impeached.  Pelosi knows that if impeachment proceeds, the freshmen Democrats in the House who provided the Democrat majority that made her speaker, most of them elected in swing districts, will face a tough re-election bid.  She would revert back to minority leader in a GOP-run House that could enable a re-elected President Trump to advance his legislative agenda when voters react negatively to what would be an impeachment fiasco.

Rep. James Clyburn is the majority whip in the House of Representatives, second only to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer as an aide to Pelosi.  And yesterday he lobbed what amounts to a stink bomb at Pelosi’s dream of returning as speaker.  Clyburn acknowledged that the public does not yet support impeachment:

Clyburn, who serves as the Democratic whip, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that his party’s leadership is waiting to open an impeachment inquiry until there is broader public support for for [sic] the move, but effectively guaranteed that the president would be impeached at some point.

“We think we have to bring the public along. We’re not particularly interested in the Senate,” Clyburn said, pushing back on Tapper’s suggestion that Democrats might wait to impeach until there is support for the move among Senate Republicans. “We think if we efficiently and effectively educate the public, then we will have done our jobs and we can move on an impeachment vote and it will stand and maybe it will be what needs to be done to incentivize the Senate to act.”

“But it sounds like you’re — you think that the president will be impeached, or at least proceedings will begin in the House at some point, but just not right now?” Tapper went on to ask.

“Yes, exactly what I feel,” Clyburn responded.

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AOC: Everybody Should Live in a Place Like My Luxury Apartment Building, or Something By Jim Treacher

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/aoc-everybody-should-live-in-a-place-like-my-luxury-apartment-building-or-something/

The great thing about socialism is that it meets everybody’s needs and solves everybody’s problems, as long as it’s never, ever put into practice. As long as you’re just talking, socialism is great. Who doesn’t like a good fairy tale?

And nobody loves talking as much as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez loves talking. If words were deeds, she’d already be the most accomplished politician in the 21st Century. Here she is talking about how her recent move into a luxury apartment building in D.C. has taught her that, um… everybody should live in a luxury apartment building? I think that’s what she’s saying? Here, see if you can decipher this stream of syllables:

“So I move into this building, and it’s marketed as a ‘luxury’ building in D.C. Right? I’m keeping it 100% with you all… It’s an efficient building, it’s clean, it has public space, it has a rooftop garden (y’all watching my Instagram), it has all of these things. It has clean air, it has clean water. And I think about this and I’m like, ‘Hm, this is what a luxury building is like, right?’…”
“What we have been taught that is a luxury should not be a luxury… We can live in buildings that are non-for-profit, or tenant-owned. There are so many ways we can slice this and we can structure it in a way where all people have the right to a dignified home.”  CONTINUE AT SITE

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Dear Joe Biden: It Was Your Administration That Put Kids in Cage By Matt Margolis

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/dear-joe-biden-it-was-your-administration-that-put-kids-in-cage/

“Biden also doesn’t want the public to remember that it was the Obama-Biden administration that put immigrant children in cages. In fact, outrage over the policy was sparked in May 2018 by photos of immigrant children in cages that went viral. The images were from 2014, during Obama and Biden’s second term.”

It seems like only yesterday Joe Biden was claiming that he didn’t seek out Barack Obama’s endorsement for president because he wanted to win the nomination on his own merits, but ever since then he’s been finding some subtle and not-so-subtle ways to ride on Obama’s coattails, including using images of Obama on his website and social media.

Over the weekend, Joe Biden spoke at the Human Rights Campaign gala in Columbus, Ohio, during which he referred to Obamacare as “the Affordable Care Act of our administration,” meaning his and Barack Obama’s. He never misses an opportunity to assume co-ownership of the Obama administration’s accomplishments—at least those that are still politically viable in his party.

In the same speech that he referred to the Obama administration as “our administration”, he accused the Trump White House as being “literally a bully pulpit” and “implementing discriminatory policies like Muslim bans, turning away asylum seekers, putting children in cages.”

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What David French Gets Wrong About David French By Julie Kelly

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/03/what-david-french

The dust-up between New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari and National Review author David French has offered an enlightening view into the chasm between Trump supporters and his detractors on the Right. For the past week, opinionists on both sides have weighed in on the broader and at times pedantic points of the dispute.

Here are some crib notes: Ahmari thoughtfully, and I think, accurately, argues that French is temperamentally and ideologically ill-equipped to effectively challenge the Left in this current scorched-earth climate of American politics and culture.

In what he defines as “David French-ism,” Ahmari essentially claims that French’s trust in traditional institutions, the good faith of the other side, and belief in neutral territory where everyone is respected not only is naïve but misguided to the extent of being destructive of the things conservatives believe are essential to a just society.

Further, French’s objections to fighting the Left’s winning rampage by deploying the same weapons they wield—power in the form of the law—is a prescription for continued defeat. French’s hollow tropes offer little in the way of a legitimate battle plan to ultimately prevail over the well-moneyed and vengeful interests who seek to irrevocably transform American society. Detailed policies or political tactics to mitigate the harmful outcomes of illegal immigration or Big Tech-imposed censorship or punitive trade deals are replaced with toothless platitudes. Ahmari mocks French’s cheesy bumper-sticker solutions:

How do we counter ideological mono-thought in universities, workplaces, and other institutions? Try promoting better work-life balance, says French. How do we promote the good of the family against the deracinating forces arrayed against it, some of them arising out of the free market (pornography) and others from the logic of maximal autonomy (no-fault divorce)? “We should reverse cultural messages that for too long have denigrated the fundamental place of marriage in public life.” Oh, OK.

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Rashida Tlaib and That ‘Safe Haven’ for Jews Created by the Palestinians Real and unreal history. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273909/rashida-tlaib-and-safe-haven-jews-created-hugh-fitzgerald

Appearing as a guest on the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery” in early May, Rashida Tlaib offered her own fantastical version of Israeli, and “Palestinian” history: 
“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 [sic] passports,” Tlaib said on the podcast’s most recent episode, published Friday [May 11]. “And, 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. And, I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right,[sic] in many ways, but they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it  was forced on them.”
What kind of person, what kind of moral idiot, says that when she “thinks of the Holocaust” there “is always kind of a calming feeling”? We could stop right there, for that ought to be enough to permanently earn her universal scorn.  But let’s continue.
 
What she claims, in her confused and tortured English, is this:
Israel came into being to provide a “safe haven for Jews” after the Holocaust; it was the local population, the “Palestinians,” who “provided that safe haven” but in so doing, they lost “their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways.” You see, they were made to suffer for the crimes against the Jews committed by others, while being themselves guiltless.

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Russiagate and the missing ducks By James V. DeLong

Posted By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/russiagate_and_the_missing_ducks.html

“In March 2018, the current [CIA] director, Gina Haspel, flatly lied to President Trump about an incident in the UK in order to persuade him to escalate measures against Moscow, which he then reluctantly did.  Several non–mainstream media outlets have reported the true story.  Typically, The New York Times, on April 17 of this year, reported it without correcting Haspel’s falsehood.”

Stephen Cohen of The Nation is consistently one of the best commentators on the Russiagate affair.

He just published another excellent piece analyzing “How Did Russiagate Begin?, which canvasses some possibilities and leans toward the explanation that it was (and is) an operation by U.S. intelligence agencies unhappy with the possibility that Trump will defuse our increasingly fractious relationship with Russia.

The whole article deserves attention, but one point he makes in passing is worth expanding.  Cohen notes:

In March 2018, the current [CIA] director, Gina Haspel, flatly lied to President Trump about an incident in the UK in order to persuade him to escalate measures against Moscow, which he then reluctantly did.  Several non–mainstream media outlets have reported the true story.  Typically, The New York Times, on April 17 of this year, reported it without correcting Haspel’s falsehood.

The reference is to the Skripal affair, in which the Russians, allegedly, used a nerve agent to poison a defector and his daughter.  The Brits responded with heavy sanctions, and the U.S., after some hesitation, did the same.  The story in the NYT said Trump agreed to the action only after Haspel showed him pictures, supposedly supplied to her by the British government, of collateral damage from the poisoning in the form of hospitalized children and dead ducks.