ISRAEL Comments turned off

Right From Wrong: Sexual-harassment hypocrisy? Ruthie Blum

Posted By on March 8th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-From-Wrong-Sexual-harassment-hypocrisy-582783
The exception to this rule, it turns out, is a woman whose accusations could cause problems for the only candidate who poses a threat to Netanyahu’s continued premiership.

When Israeli ex-pat Navarone (Nava) Jacobs came forward on February 27 with a Facebook post about having been sexually victimized by Blue and White Party chairman Benny Gantz some 40 years ago, the only person who seemed to respond without stammering was the alleged perpetrator himself.

Indeed, while the Israeli #MeToo movement barely blinked over the allegations – and said that there is “no corroborating evidence” to back up Jacobs’s account – Gantz immediately filed a NIS 500,000 ($142,000) libel suit against her at the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court. The suit claims that Jacobs’s accusations are “false from start to finish,” and that she “acted at the behest of, or with the help of political parties that seek to humiliate and discredit Gantz,” ahead of the April 9 Knesset elections.

In her social-media post, the New York-based Jacobs, who has been living in the United States since 1980, wrote that when she was a 14-year-old freshman at Hakfar Hayarok boarding school in Ramat Hasharon, Gantz — who was 17 or 18 at the time and a senior at the same institution — cornered her in the cowshed and exposed himself.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Democrats’ Civil War Begins By Sebastian Gorka

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/07/the-

When the American Conservative Union asked if I wanted to address CPAC this year, of course I said yes. Then came several weeks of discussion as to what the subject of my speech should be. This is the biggest event of its kind in the nation, with more than 200 speakers and this year in excess of 10,000 attendees, more than half under the age of 25, so I am not envious of the job Matt Schlapp and Dan Schneider have to do to pull off such a feat. (Especially when your speakers include the president and the vice president and all the security that entails).

The topic we eventually settled on was the threat Russia poses to America, a subject I am always happy to address given my family history. With parents who suffered under a Stalinist dictatorship and a father who escaped from a Communist political prison, providing a reality-check on the menace posed by a Russia still run by a KGB colonel comes easy.

However, on the day, eight minutes into my speech I decided I needed to change tack. Russia is a threat, but it is not the Soviet Union. Instead I felt compelled to talk about the real threat we face as the free-est nation on God’s Earth: the rise of socialism within our borders.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy by Diana West

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

The first investigation into why a ring of senior Washington officials went rogue to derail the election and the presidency of Donald Trump.

There was nothing normal about the 2016 presidential election, not when senior U.S. officials were turning the surveillance powers of the federal government — designed to stop terrorist attacks — against the Republican presidential team. These were the ruthless tactics of a Soviet-style police state, not a democratic republic.

The Red Thread asks the simple question: Why? What is it that motivated these anti-Trump conspirators from inside and around the Obama administration and Clinton networks to depart so drastically from “politics as usual” to participate in a seditious effort to overturn an election?

Finding clues in an array of sources, Diana West uses her trademark investigative skills, honed in her dazzling work, American Betrayal, to construct a fascinating series of ideological profiles of well-known but little understood anti-Trump actors, from James Comey to Christopher Steele to Nellie Ohr, and the rest of the Fusion GPS team; from John Brennan to the numerous Clintonistas still patrolling the Washington Swamp after all these years, and more.

Once, we knew these officials by august titles and reputation; after The Red Thread, readers will recognize their multi-generational and inter-connecting communist and socialist pedigrees, and see them for what they really are: foot-soldiers of the Left, deployed to take down America’s first “America First” and most anti-Communist president.

If we just give it a pull, the “red thread” is very long and very deep.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

San Bernardino County Says No to Big Renewables By Robert Bryce

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/renewable-energy-land-use-san-bernardino-county/

The biggest county in America doesn’t want big solar or wind projects.

It may be the largest county in America by land area, but San Bernardino County, Calif., has decided it doesn’t have enough room for big wind or big solar projects. On February 28, the county’s board of supervisors approved a measure that bans large renewable-energy projects on more than 1 million acres of private land.

The move provides yet another example of how the energy sprawl that inevitably comes with large-scale renewable-energy deployment is colliding with the interests of rural landowners and local governments that don’t want “green” projects in their neighborhoods. Of course, there’s no small irony that that collision is happening in California, which passed a law last year that requires utilities to be getting 60 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030.

As Los Angeles Times reporter Sammy Roth drily noted, achieving those renewable-energy goals “will require cooperation from local governments — and big solar and wind farms, like many infrastructure projects, are often unpopular at the local level.” All across the country rural landowners and governments have been rejecting or restricting renewable projects, and they’re doing so at the very same time that left-leaning politicians and some of the country’s biggest environmental groups are claiming that the U.S. must quit using hydrocarbons and nuclear energy, and instead rely solely on renewable energy for our electricity.

In January, some 600 environmental groups, including 350.org, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, and the Environmental Working Group, submitted a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives, which said that the U.S. must shift to “100 percent renewable power generation by 2035 or earlier.” It continued, saying any “definition of renewable energy must . . . exclude all combustion-based power generation, nuclear, biomass energy, large-scale hydro, and waste-to-energy technologies.” For good measure, it said this new hypothetical electric grid must have the “ability to incorporate battery storage and distributed energy systems that are democratically governed.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Democratic Crackup Pelosi and her chaotic caucus manage to overshadow Trump—a dubious achievement. By Kimberley A. Strassel

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democratic-crackup-11552003045

Americans love a good political brawl, and that’s terrible news for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Her Democratic Party has commenced a full throw-down—with itself.

Few things have benefited Democrats more in the past few years than the Donald Trump show. The president likes to be the center of attention, and the media likes nothing more than to oblige him. This dynamic helped make the 2018 election a referendum on the man himself rather than his policies, and that made Mrs. Pelosi speaker of the House.

Democrats envisioned the same dynamic helping them win the White House in 2020. Mrs. Pelosi has been to that rodeo before, after the 2006 election, when she was first elected speaker. She mobilized her committee chairmen to launch focused investigations to keep the spotlight on George W. Bush’s Iraq war, energy policy, detainee treatment, etc. She corralled a diverse caucus to pass a modest agenda, “Six in ’06,” that showed Democrats could get things done but didn’t put them in the limelight, much less make them look crazy. This paved the way to the election of Barack Obama in 2008, and Democrats figured Mr. Trump would make a repeat even easier.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Barack Obama Is Still Trying To Rewrite His Presidential Legacy By Matt Margolis

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/barack-obama-is-still-trying-to-rewrite-his-presidential-legacy/

He continues to lie about what happened during his two terms.

Have you been following Obama’s post-presidency career as a comedian? Well, I have. His most commonly used bit was the claim that he didn’t have any scandals during his presidency. Though his usual audience tends not to laugh but to cheer at this claim, it is easily debunked by anyone who paid attention during that time.

It appears that Obama is now testing out some new material. In addition to his “I didn’t have any scandals” bit, he’s now working in a couple new ones:

Former President Barack Obama says he tried to build a culture centered around problem-solving and not personal gain while in the White House.

He said on Wednesday it was an effective strategy for any organization that also prevents “big scandals and indictments.”

Obama’s comments drew applause from a crowd of about 9,000 people at a business conference in Salt Lake City.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Erielle Davidson: Labour Party’s Response To Anti-Semitism Accusations Appears To Confirm Them A recording leaked from a recent Labour Party meeting reveals the depth of the party’s depravity, and the challenges it will likely face as it attempts to correct course.

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/07/labour-partys-response-anti-semitism-accusations-appears-confirm/

As reported here, almost a dozen people have recently left the United Kingdom’s Labour Party over what they have labeled its “culture of anti-Semitism.”

The Labour Party’s latest attempts at quelling accusations of anti-Semitism have done little to put the allegations to rest. If anything, Labour Party’s response this past week to the party’s recent exodus of members of Parliament (MPs), as well as leaked material from the past year, suggest the party’s leadership has little genuine desire to address the issue and that, more darkly, the accusations are likely true. Neither situation bodes well for the party.

A recording leaked from a recent grassroots meeting reveals the depth of the party’s depravity, and the challenges it will likely face as it attempts to correct course. In response to the defections, Chris Williamson, an MP for Derby North, delivered a speech where he celebrated the defection of MP Joan Ryan, who left the Labour Party due to the party’s growing anti-Semitism problem. In explaining her departure, Ryan had reiterated, “The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has become infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism. The problem simply did not exist in the party before his election as leader.”

But what sparked even greater ire were Williamson’s comments regarding the party’s anti-Semitism problem, about which he felt the party had been “too apologetic”: “I have got to say I think our party’s response has been partly responsible for that because in my opinion… we have backed off on too much, we have given too much ground, we have been too apologetic.” Williamson also claimed that anti-Semitism was being “weaponized,” decrying that it was “like 1984.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

ONE ALMOST UP (BIDEN) TWO DOWN (SHERROD BROWN AND BLOOMBERG)

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

Sherrod Brown: “I will not run for president in 2020”https://www.cleveland.com/politics/2019/03/sherrod-brown-i-will-not-run-for-president-in-2020.htmlJoe Biden’s 2020 Plan is Almost Complete. Democrats Are Impatient.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/politics/biden-2020.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

POLITICS Comments turned off

Pelosi Says House Will Condemn All Hate as Anti-Semitism Debate Overshadows Congress By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/politics/ilhan-omar-anti-semitism-vote.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Democratic leaders are planning to put a far-reaching resolution condemning anti-Semitism and bigotry on the House floor for a vote on Thursday, hoping to put to rest the internal uproar that erupted after Representative Ilhan Omar insinuated that backers of Israel exhibit dual loyalty.

“I see everything as an opportunity,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday morning. “This is an opportunity once again to declare as strongly as possible opposition to anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim statements,” and “white supremacist attitudes.”

The resolution, released hours after Ms. Pelosi spoke, states that “whether from the political right, center, or left, bigotry, discrimination, oppression, racism, and imputations of dual loyalty threaten American democracy and have no place in American political discourse.” It also evokes white supremacist attacks in Charlottesville, Va., Charleston, S.C., and Pittsburgh as well as numerous attacks on Muslims and mosques.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats’ Troubling Silence on Omar’s Anti-Semitism By Charles Lipson –

Posted By on March 7th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/07/democrats_troubling_silence_on_omars_anti-semitism_139677.html

When a member of Congress makes bigoted comments, political leaders have a moral duty to condemn them. A special obligation falls on those who lead the member’s party. They should speak out in blunt, clear language and say why the comments are unacceptable. They need to “name and shame,” and demand a forthright apology. No mealy-mouth press release saying “if anyone is offended …” If the violation is egregious or repeated, the punishment should be commensurate.

House Democrats now face that test after Rep. Ilhan Omar’s repeated slurs against Jews. So far, they have failed.

Omar represents a Minnesota district heavily populated by fellow Somali immigrants. It has been characterized by illiberal politics and political representatives who defend it. Omar’s predecessor in Congress was Keith Ellison, whose close ties to Louis Farrakhan raised similar questions of anti-Semitism. He, too, escaped condemnation from his party, probably because he made few statements as raw and offensive as Omar’s, and partly because he claimed to have severed ties to Farrakhan.