ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump Must Navigate in a Wilderness of Mirrors By Michael Walsh

Posted By on July 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/19/trump-must-navigate-in-a-

So the Straight Arrow has now gone and indicted a dozen members of the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, on charges relating to—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—meddling in America’s internal affairs. That such meddling entirely fits their job description, and that Mr. Well Respected has exactly zero chance of ever bringing them to “justice” in an American courtroom is beside the point.

The partisan clown car that is the Robert Mueller investigation into something—anything!— continues to roll along, excreting great columns of smoke behind it in the hope that an even more partisan media can convince the public that it’s the result of fire, instead of hot air.

When the best you can do is bark at the canine for biting the man, you know your “investigation” has descended to a level of self-parody physically embodied by its hangdog front man, the Real Inspector Hound. Mueller has doggedly gone about accomplishing exactly nothing since (follow the bouncing ball): Rod Rosenstein wrote the memo that president Trump used as justification for firing former FBI chief and sanctimonious scold James Comey; who had succeeded his pal Mr. Incorruptible in that office; who then wrote some memos to himself and leaked them to the New York Times, in order to; motivate Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel to look into wholly (and still) unsubstantiated charges of Trump’s putative “collusion” (not a statutory crime, by the way) with the Russians; to the cheers of former members of the intelligence community, including Comey, as well as its long-time laughingstock, former CIA director John Brennan, whose antipathy for Trump is daily on display.

In short, the whole mess stinks to high heaven and has since the bumbling Jeff Sessions mysteriously recused himself from anything to do with the Russians and has basically vanished since. This has left the president pretty much at the mercy of his enemies on both sides of the aisle (Rosenstein the butler; Brennan the saboteur) and unable effectively to fight back except via Twitter. For the truth is, the most virulent opposition Trump has faced since his surprise election has come from the Intelligence Community—which, at the top, is largely a left-leaning collection of malignant bureaucrats entirely intent on career advancement.

And how do these left-leaning IC bureaucrats assure their career advancement? By not upsetting the cozy arrangement they’ve long had with … the Russians.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

NATO’s Challenge Is Germany, Not America By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/19/natos-challenge-is-germany-not-

During the recent NATO summit meeting, a rumbustious Donald Trump tore off a thin scab of niceties to reveal a deep and old NATO wound—one that has predated Trump by nearly 30 years and goes back to the end of the Cold War.

In an era when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are now ancient history, everyone praises NATO as “indispensable” and “essential” to Western solidarity and European security. But few feel any need to explain how and why that could still be so.

Does NATO still protect the West? Does it prevent destructive European feuding? Does it ensure the postwar global order of free trade, commerce, travel, and communications? And is NATO—or the United States and its leadership of NATO—the real reason there has not been a World War III or a return to global tribalism and chaos?

NATO’s post-Cold War expansion to 29 nations and to the border of Russia meant the alliance became more expansive at the very time the old existential Soviet threat disappeared. Larger membership tended to weaken common ties, even as common dangers disappeared.

The result was that the idea of NATO membership became more important to the countries that are part of it than the reality and responsibility of actual military readiness.

Polls show that in most NATO countries, the idea of fighting on behalf of another country receives scant public support. The notion that the Dutch would march into Estonia to save its capital, Tallinn, from Russia is a cruel joke.

NATO’s 21st-century problem is not the United States, which provides a large percentage of its wherewithal, but Germany. As the most populous and most affluent of European nations, Germany still insidiously dominates Europe as it has since its inception in 1871.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

TED KENNEDY AND THE KGB A reflection on the late Democratic Senator’s outreach to the Kremlin to undermine President Reagan. Jamie Glazov (2008)

Posted By on July 19th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270783/ted-kennedy-and-kgb-jamie-glazov

Editors’ note: In light of the Left’s deranged hysteria in response to President Trump’s recent press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, marked by pathological accusations that Trump has engaged in “treason,” Frontpage has deemed it important to bring attention to a forgotten story of verifiable scheming with the Kremlin — by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy against President Ronald Reagan. We are reprinting below Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov’s 2008 interview with Dr. Paul Kengor, who unearthed documentation detailing Kennedy’s outreach to the KGB and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov during the height of the Cold War, in which the Democratic Senator offered to collude with the Soviets to undermine President Reagan. There were no screams of moral indignation, or accusations of treason, about this matter from the Left at that time — nor since.

Ted Kennedy and the KGB.
Frontpage Magazine, May 15, 2008.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Paul Kengor, the author of the New York Times extended-list bestseller God and Ronald Reagan as well as God and George W. Bush and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. He is also the author of the first spiritual biography of the former first lady, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life. He is a professor of political science and director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College.

FP: Paul Kengor, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.

Kengor: Always great to be back, Jamie.

FP: We’re here today to revisit Ted Kennedy’s reaching out to the KGB during the Reagan period. Refresh our readers’ memories a bit.

Kengor: The episode is based on a document produced 25 years ago this week. I discussed it with you in our earlier interview back in November 2006. In my book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, I presented a rather eye-opening May 14, 1983 KGB document on Ted Kennedy. The entire document, unedited, unabridged, is printed in the book, as well as all the documentation affirming its authenticity. Even with that, today, almost 25 years later, it seems to have largely remained a secret.

FP: Tell us about this document.

Kengor: It was a May 14, 1983 letter from the head of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, to the head of the USSR, the odious Yuri Andropov, with the highest level of classification. Chebrikov relayed to Andropov an offer from Senator Ted Kennedy, presented by Kennedy’s old friend and law-school buddy, John Tunney, a former Democratic senator from California, to reach out to the Soviet leadership at the height of a very hot time in the Cold War. According to Chebrikov, Kennedy was deeply troubled by the deteriorating relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, which he believed was bringing us perilously close to nuclear confrontation. Kennedy, according to Chebrikov, blamed this situation not on the Soviet leadership but on the American president—Ronald Reagan. Not only was the USSR not to blame, but, said Chebrikov, Kennedy was, quite the contrary, “very impressed” with Andropov.

The thrust of the letter is that Reagan had to be stopped, meaning his alleged aggressive defense policies, which then ranged from the Pershing IIs to the MX to SDI, and even his re-election bid, needed to be stopped. It was Ronald Reagan who was the hindrance to peace. That view of Reagan is consistent with things that Kennedy said and wrote at the time, including articles in sources like Rolling Stone (March 1984) and in a speeches like his March 24, 1983 remarks on the Senate floor the day after Reagan’s SDI speech, which he lambasted as “misleading Red-Scare tactics and reckless Star Wars schemes.”

Even more interesting than Kennedy’s diagnosis was the prescription: According to Chebrikov, Kennedy suggested a number of PR moves to help the Soviets in terms of their public image with the American public. He reportedly believed that the Soviet problem was a communication problem, resulting from an inability to counter Reagan’s (not the USSR’s) “propaganda.” If only Americans could get through Reagan’s smokescreen and hear the Soviets’ peaceful intentions.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Glazov Gang: Avi Jorisch on “Thou Shalt Innovate”. How Israeli ingenuity repairs the world. VIDEO

Posted By on July 19th, 2018

http://jamieglazov.com/2018/07/19/glazov-gang-avi-jorisch-on-thou-shalt-innovate/

This new edition of The Glazov Gang features Avi Jorisch, the author of Thou Shalt Innovate.

Avi discusses Thou Shalt Innovate and unveils How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World.

Don’t miss it!

ISRAEL, MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

THE CAKEMAKER-REVIEWED BY MARILYN PENN

Posted By on July 19th, 2018

http://politicalmavens.com/

A movie in which Jerusalem symbolizes religious oppression while Berlin represents freedom and liberty is a particularly obscene type of propaganda. Europe frequently compares Israelis to Nazis, claiming that the Jewish state does to Palestinians precisely what the Nazis did to Jews – a blasphemous comparison that an educated person should be ashamed to utter. Yet, here we are viewing “The Caretaker” and watching Shabbat become synonymous with narrow-minded, even violent religious Jews – people who don’t trust non-Jews and punish those Jews who don’t subscribe to strict orthodoxy. In actuality, only 8% of Israelis identify as ultra-orthodox while 20% of Israelis are Arabs.

The plot that cloaks the anti-religious sentiment concerns Oren, an Israeli man who travels frequently to Berlin on business. While there, he frequents a cafe from which he purchases cookies for his wife while entering into a torrid love-affair with Thomas, its baker and owner (or manager). After Oren’s sudden death, Thomas travels to Israel and, mirabile dictu, gets a job working in a cafe owned by Oren’s widow, where his baking improves her business, while his restrained personality seduces her into finding him an emotional crutch for her grief and sexual frustration. Need I tell you that he’s also great with her troubled son and soon has him decorating cookies with artistic elan.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Meet The Texas Teachers $100,000 Club: 7,300 Six-Figure Salaries Cost Taxpayers $903 Million Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on July 19th, 2018

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/07/18/meet-the-texas-teachers-100000-club-7300-six-figure-educators-cost-taxpayers-903-million/#5716c31710ae

Do public schools in Texas pay $232,000 for coordinating PE classes? What about paying $340,000 to a high school music teacher and $127,000 to a librarian?

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 7,327 Texas public school administrators, athletic directors, teachers, and other employees pulled down six-figure salaries costing taxpayers nearly $1 billion. In fiscal year 2017, superintendents earned as much as $450,000; “executive directors for assessment and compliance” received up to $302,820; and principals made as much as $313,870.

Using our interactive mapping tool at OpenTheBooks.com, quickly review (by zip code) every Texas educator who made a salary of $100,000 or more in 2017. Just zoom in, click a pin (zip code), and scroll down to see the results.

To see all 2017 Texas Education Agency payroll data at OpenTheBooks.com, click here.

Less than six percent of these highly compensated Texas educators were teachers. In fact, we found as many athletic directors and business managers (406) earning six figure salaries as teachers (407). Additionally, “educational aides” received up to $203,658; “assistant principals” made up to $202,115; “counselors” earned up to $186,092. What about those “athletic directors?” They received up to $155,156.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A GI Bill Wrong From the Pentagon Benefit restrictions that kick in after 16 years of service. By Maria Biery

Posted By on July 19th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gi-bill-wrong-from-the-pentagon-15319529

Donald Trump promised in his victory speech that he would “finally take care of our great veterans.” He took a step in the right direction last year by signing the Forever GI Bill, which lifts the time limit on veterans’ educational benefits and makes it easier to transfer benefits to dependents. But the Defense Department took a step in the wrong direction last week, prohibiting members of the armed forces who have been in the service for more than 16 years from transferring their GI Bill benefits to dependents.

The new rule is meant “to more closely align the transferability benefit with its purpose as a recruiting and retention incentive,” the Pentagon explained in a statement. The idea is that people who’ve served for 16 years have already shown a propensity to stay and therefore don’t need an incentive.

After six years of service, members can transfer their GI Bill benefits to a spouse or child—under the condition that they commit to serve at least four more years. After 10 years, service members can still cash in on the benefit, subject to the requirement only that they “serve for the maximum amount of time allowed by such policy or statute”—which can be less than four years. Transfers must be submitted while one is still in active-duty service.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Of Particular Importance for the Women of Europe” VIDEO

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/07/of-particular-importance-for-women-of.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=rtDvtc2EFak

Feministas, with very few exceptions, close their eyes and ears to the menace to European women and girls mass Muslim migration has wrought. And their mouths as well.

Not so Hungarian MEP Krisztina Morvai.

At the FEMM (Women’s Rights) Committee of the European Parliament (Austria’s Juliane Bogner-Strauss presiding) the charmingly feminine (will the leftist thought police hunt me down for saying that?) Ms Morvai, with admirable directness and clarity, raised the issue of the negative impact for women and girls that such migration into Europe is having.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump Delivers on Russia His Helsinki outing was tone-deaf but his policy is cribbed from Bush and Obama By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-delivers-on-russia-1531868274?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=2&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Robert Mueller did his reputation for nonpartisanship no service by launching his indictment of Russia’s military hackers on the eve of what 99% of the media now say was a disastrous performance by President Trump in his summit with Vladimir Putin.

This is the same Mr. Mueller who, as FBI chief, sat for five years on the indictment of a Russian uranium executive when it would have been embarrassing to Mr. Obama’s own Russia rapprochement—and doubly embarrassing to his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, because of the connection of the Clinton Foundation to the Russian uranium business in question.

Mr. Mueller’s timing on Friday was unnecessary. His indictment is only for show. The Russian culprits will never be seen in a U.S. court.

It raises a question I did not expect to be raised: Should we now see Mr. Mueller as part of the retinue that includes former Obama CIA chief John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and (ambiguously) former FBI chief James Comey ? These men don’t like Mr. Trump or his Russia rapprochement; Mr. Brennan openly calls him a traitor.

One hesitates to draw the comparison, but Truman and Eisenhower were assailed as agents of the Soviet Union by Joseph McCarthy. Reagan was accused (by George Will) of selling out to Gorbachev. Critics of FDR’s foreign policy were actually proved right in the historical archives: The British were seeking to assure his re-election in 1940.

Politics never did stop at the water’s edge. It can’t. All presidents use foreign policy the way they do domestic policy: to create, expand or protect their domestic political capital. That’s how our system works.

And their opponents will always have recourse to the accusation that a president is a dupe or worse of foreign interests.

Mr. Trump’s performance in Helsinki left a great deal to be desired, but he delivered the policy he has promised since the 2016 campaign. It is identical to the policy of his two most recent predecessors.

Mr. Trump has a history of financial relations with Russians. He has a history of statements saying that American leaders were “weak” and relations with Russia would improve if the U.S. had a “strong” leader.

He has sought to expand America’s military power; he has sought to expand its energy power. One senses his walloping of Germany over the Nord Stream pipeline is less aimed at weakening Russia than at expanding U.S. gas sales but it would still weaken Russia.

He has said for 30 years that America’s trade deficits and its military spending on allies are related (as they are, sort of).

The best you can say about all this, there’s a consistency here. Mr. Trump may not know Palmerston, who said countries don’t have permanent friends, only permanent interests, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have seen the quote in a Charles Krauthammer column.

Of course, you can never disprove sinister influences, an impossibility on which certain fellow journalists will be hanging their reputations for years to come. But a reliable assumption that covers all cases is that presidents act in their own interest. Meanwhile, we have a democratic process, not to mention an extensive permanent bureaucracy with its own ideas, to help sort it out.

The hell of our situation is that 2016 created a big incentive for Democrats and others to adopt anti-Russia hysteria, likening Russia’s meddling to “Pearl Harbor,” a risky simile when two countries have enough nuclear weapons aimed at each other to make the world uninhabitable.

The only good news is Mr. Trump’s apparent indifference to the media’s attempt to shame him into adopting the media’s Russia policy. He may have no idea of the pressures and constraints under which Mr. Putin acts, but Mr. Trump is a one-man brake on a non-adroit hostility that doesn’t serve U.S. interests. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fired FBI Director James Comey: Vote Democrat, Or You’re A Traitor ‘All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall.’ By Madeline Osburn

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/18/fired-fbi-director-james-comey-vote-democrat-o

Former FBI Director James Comey implied anyone who doesn’t vote for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections is a traitor in a tweet Tuesday night. “All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall,” he said.

Comey has appointed himself as something of a moral compass for the country following his firing from the FBI last year.

He has been vocal in criticism of Republicans and President Trump. In April, he told ABC News he believes “the Republican Party has left me and many others.” But just a few months ago he said he doesn’t care which party Americans support, so long as they care about American values.

“I don’t think of it as my politics, I think of it as my values,” he told Meghan McCain on “The View” during his book tour. “I don’t care whether people support a Republican or a Democrat because I’m not either. I don’t care who they support. I hope the conversation with start with values, and come to policy second.”

Comey’s tweet could be considered an obstruction of justice, since Comey is currently under federal investigation. The Justice Department is examining whether he leaked classified information to the media.

The DOJ inspector general concluded his behavior as FBI director was “insubordinate” in a report released in June.