NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Barack Obama’s return just reminds us how he fueled the distrust that led to Donald Trump James Bovard,

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/13/barack-obama-fueled-government-distrust-elected-donald-trump-column/1260175002/
Who cares if Obama belatedly cheers for transparency and accountability? He should admit that he made the government more dangerous at home and abroad.

Former president Barack Obama is back. He kicked off a series of campaign appearances last week with a blistering attack on the Trump administration and said the Republican Party had “embraced a rising absolutism.” President Donald Trump deserves plenty of harsh criticism, but Obama’s indictment is akin to the kid who killed his parents and then sought mercy from the judge because he was an orphan.

Obama declared that“the biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism.” He also called for “a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government.” But his eight years as president fueled the distrust of Washingtonthat Obama now condemns.

How can Obama blame Americans for being cynical after repeating dozens of times his false promise that “If you like your doctor, you’ll be able to keep your doctor,” despite the dozens of mandates in Obamacare? How can he blame Americans for being cynical after his 2015 assertion that “it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book”? How can he castigate cynics after he campaigned in 2008 on a peace platform and then proceeded to bomb seven nations? How can he complain about distrust after he flip-flopped on illegal surveillance and unleashed the National Security Administration to target anyone “searching the web for suspicious stuff”?
Obama created the problems he lists

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Grim Cost of the “Oslo War” by Guy Millière

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12999/oslo-war

Twenty-five years after Oslo, the balance sheet is more like what in 2003 the historian Efraim Karsh called the start of the “Oslo war”. In this war, he wrote, Israel had conceded from the beginning a major victory to its worst enemies by giving them a respectability they did not deserve, and thus placed itself in a losing position from which it never fully recovered.

“Contrary to Rabin’s slogan, one does not ‘make [peace] with very unsavory enemies’ but rather with former very unsavory enemies. That is, enemies that have been defeated… Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted its will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.” — Daniel Pipes, Commentary, January 2017.

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.” — PLO leader Zuheir Mohsen , interview in Trouw, March, 1977.

September 13, 1993. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the lawn of the White House. They have just officially signed the document that was supposed to start Peace: the Oslo Accord. The cogs of this machine began their work.

Overnight, Yasser Arafat was no longer the leader of a defeated terrorist organization. He had suddenly become the President of a quasi-state; his Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had been transformed into the “Palestinian Authority”.

Terror attacks against Israelis attacks during this “peace” grew even more bloody and more profuse, and soon were being perpetrated at a frantic pace. Some deliberately targeted children and youths, such as the Dolphinarium discotheque massacre and the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing. Arafat condemned none of them.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

State Department Warns John Kerry Not to ‘Compromise’ Iran Strategy By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/state-department-warns-john-kerry-against-talks-with-iran/

The State Department on Thursday warned former Secretary of State John Kerry against holding diplomatic talks with Iran behind the current administration’s back, possibly compromising the government’s Iran strategy.

“It’s unfortunate if people from a past administration would try to compromise the progress we’re trying to make in this administration,” the assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, Manisha Singh told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I don’t have personal knowledge of those meetings, but if that is happening, again, I would find it very inappropriate,” the senior State Department official said.

Kerry has admitted to meeting “three or four times” with his counterpart Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif after leaving his position as secretary of state. The two were key players in negotiating former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration scrapped in May.

“Every secretary of state, former secretary of state, continues to meet with foreign leaders,” Kerry told Fox News on Wednesday. “We don’t negotiate. We’re not involved in interfering with policy, but we certainly have reasonable discussions about nuclear weapons, the world, China, different policies, obviously.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

New York Voters Sentence Cynthia Nixon to Lifetime of Minor Roles on Sitcoms Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271325/new-york-voters-sentence-cynthia-nixon-lifetime-daniel-greenfield

New York voters cast their ballots yesterday and the wisdom of the crowd determined that the best lifetime role for Cynthia Nixon involved not the governor’s mansion, but a few decades of minor roles on sitcoms lightly referencing her Sex and the City years.

Despite Nixon’s promise to fix the subways (without knowing how) or immediately implement socialist medicine while figuring out how to pay for it later, New York voters wisely determined that the socialist candidate’s talents should be best used for minor indie movie roles and voiceovers.

While Nixon had promised to make New York the contact point for UFOs and to round up all the Zionists while curing all known diseases with healing crystals, New York voters thought that she should focus on doing funny voices for cartoons and other things that has been actresses with plenty of contacts in the industry can continue to do.

Despite Nixon’s contention that as the 22nd incarnation of the Dalai Lama, only she was qualified to reform New York’s budget by putting all the illegal aliens on the state payroll, New York voters thought that her talents should be best utilized surprising tourists who spot her crossing the street on the Upper West Side, and then wonder if she’s that woman from Suddenly Susan who tried to behead Trump.

But either way, New Yorkers won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

CAIR in the Classroom A Hamas-linked group partners with public schools. Cinnamon Stillwell

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271311/cair-classroom-cinnamon-stillwell

Reprinted from Algemeiner.com.

In 1993, Ibrahim Hooper, director of strategic communications for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said that, “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.” Twenty-five years later, CAIR could be making headway on that goal, through its relationships with US public school districts in at least three states.

CAIR — an Islamist group and United Arab Emirates-designated terrorist organizationthat bills itself as a defender of civil rights — has achieved special concessions for Muslim students and launched the inappropriate insertion of religion into publicly-funded education. Meanwhile, pushback from parents and outside organizations is building.

Seattle Public Schools’ partnership with CAIR’s Washington chapter is the latest incident to cause controversy, but the relationship dates back to at least 2011, when CAIR-WA sent the district a letter proposing accommodations for Muslim students and classroom lessons on Islam. Then as now, CAIR-WA claimed to be fighting “anti-Muslim bullying.” To that end, in 2012 and 2013 the organization contacted the school district to complain about “Islamophobia” among teachers.

That approach eventually paid off. In a Ramadan crowd-funding campaign in May of this year, the CAIR-WA chapter outlined its plan “to provide educational training for teachers and staff on things like Ramadan, Eid, and how educators can support Muslim students in the classroom.” Accordingly, that same month, CAIR-WA ran a “professional development session” in a Seattle high school that “addressed providing identity-safe spaces in schools for Muslim families” and “how to support students during Ramadan.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Trump Administration Reopens Rutgers Anti-Semitism Case Campus hate groups have just been put on notice. Joseph Klein

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271321/trump-administration-reopens-rutgers-anti-semitism-joseph-klein

The Trump administration has decided to reopen a case brought by a Zionist group against Rutgers University, previously closed by the Obama administration in 2014, alleging that the university had allowed Jewish students to be subjected to a hostile environment in violation of Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act. The issue, ignored by the Obama administration, was whether the students were discriminated against based on their actual or perceived Jewish ancestry or ethnicity. Kenneth L. Marcus, the new assistant secretary of education for civil rights, decided that the case deserved another look. As the New York Times reported, Mr. Marcus’s decision “put the weight of the federal government behind a definition of anti-Semitism that targets opponents of Zionism, and it explicitly defines Judaism as not only a religion but also an ethnic origin.” The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will be examining not only the past case it has reopened. It will also examine whether a hostile environment for Jewish students continues to exist at Rutgers.

According to the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which filed the original complaint on July 20, 2011, the allegations included claims of physical threats and anti-Semitic comments posted on Facebook against at least one Jewish student, and discrimination against Jewish and pro-Israel students. The discrimination charge involved an anti-Israel event entitled “Never Again for Anyone,” sponsored by an anti-Israel student group called “Belief Awareness Knowledge and Action (BAKA),” where an admission fee was allegedly imposed and selectively enforced against Jewish and pro-Israel students.

In reopening the case, Assistant Secretary Marcus focused on the anti-Israel event held on January 29, 2011. He concluded that the Obama administration had erred in dismissing the case because it disregarded evidence that the admission fee allegedly imposed on Jewish students seeking to attend the event was discriminatory, based on ethnicity. The Obama administration also disregarded evidence that Rutgers had failed to respond appropriately to student complaints regarding the pricing policy. The evidence of discrimination, as reported by Algemeiner, included an e-mail purportedly from a BAKA student volunteer at the anti-Israel event stating that there was a need to start charging an admission fee because “150 Zionists just showed up,” although “if someone looks like a supporter, they can get in for free.” Assistant Secretary Marcus noted that singling out “150 Zionists” for an admission fee “could have been based at least partially on a visual assessment, as opposed to individually polling all 150 such unexpected arrivals as to their views on the policies of the state of Israel.” The selection of whom to charge, he said, “could have been rooted in a perception of Jewish ancestry or ethnic characteristics common to the group.” He added that it is “important to determine whether the conduct related to Israel was motivated by anti-Semitism” and to “determine whether terms such as ‘Zionist’ are actually code for ‘Jewish.’”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

GOP Gives Up On Repealing Obamacare They claim to have more important things to do. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271322/gop-gives-repealing-obamacare-matthew-vadum

Republican lawmakers have made it clear they have no intention of repealing Obamacare in the current Congress.

Republicans in the nation’s top lawmaking body have never really wanted to get rid of Obamacare. They would prefer to present the program, which David Horowitz correctly describes as “the greatest assault on individual freedom and individual choice in our lifetimes,” as a villain and whip up sentiment against it and run against it every election. They view Obamacare as good for the business of politics. They may chip away at it from time to time or tinker with it at the margins, but make no mistake: these creatures of Washington want to keep it in place. This is the Republicans’ dirty secret.

Republicans have been promising to rip Obamacare out root and branch ever since it was enacted. They ramped up their rhetoric after the allegedly conservative-dominated Supreme Court declared the blatantly unconstitutional Obamacare law constitutional in the incoherent NFIB v. Sebelius ruling of 2012. Americans responded to this government takeover of a huge chunk of the economy by electing GOP-controlled congresses in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, and by electing Donald Trump as president.

Unintimidated by the Left and sneering hack journalists, Trump began the push to bury the misnamed Affordable Care Act and as a result the individual mandate will die at the end of this year. But the bulk of the statute and related rules such as the economically suicidal pre-existing medical conditions mandate remain in place, complete with federal insurance-purchasing subsidies for people who don’t need the help, as well as the sclerotic administrative apparatus, and the odious rule that prevents health insurers from competing across state lines.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why President Trump Is Keeping Those Classified DOJ Docs In His Back Pocket Here, based on the interviews, is perspective on how and why President Trump is playing things cool for now—and could well burn hot later. Lee Smith

Posted By on September 13th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/13/president-trump-keeping-classified-doj-docs-back-pocket/

President Trump’s allies in Congress and the media have long wondered why he doesn’t declassify documents withheld by the Department of Justice that could vindicate him in the Russia probe. What’s stopping him from exercising his constitutional authority, they ask? Doesn’t he recognize the growing danger of inaction with the midterm elections at hand, which could spell his impeachment if he loses his Republican congressional majority?

RealClearInvestigations sought insight into the president’s thinking from current and past senior U.S. officials, most of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity. The picture of Trump that emerges plays against type.

On declassification, the president is not the impulsive hothead major media portray, as epitomized by his “witch hunt” bluster on Twitter. Rather, the sources characterized him as a deliberative, strategic executive inclined to keep his powder dry now for possible detonation later. (Because his supporters—some of whom have seen the documents—are pushing for declassification and his opponents are not, the assumption is that the documents would help the president.)

Trump told Fox News last week that while he didn’t want to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, he may have no choice but to declassify. “At the right time, I think I’m going to have to do the documents,” the president said.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, for one, would be pleased with that step. Nunes told Fox recently that false “media narratives” are burying the real story of anti-Trump machinations within the government. “That’s why the sooner the president declassifies the better,” he said, with an eye toward the November midterm elections that—if Democrats win—would likely place Trump nemesis Rep. Adam Schiff as chairman of the committee.

Nunes and others note that Trump benefitted enormously when he did declassify documents withheld by the Department of Justice (DOJ): the memo written by House Intelligence Committee Republican staff showed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application used to spy on campaign adviser Carter Page relied on unverified opposition research funded by the Democrats.

POLITICS Comments turned off

7 Wild Claims Democratic Socialist Candidate Julia Salazar Has Made About Herself Reports say Salazar, a democratic socialist candidate for New York State Senate, has lied about her college degree, family heritage, religious background, and more. By Bre Payton and Madeline Orr

Posted By on September 13th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/13/7-wild-claims-democratic-socialist-candidate-julia-salazar-made/

Democratic socialist and feminist Julia Salazar is running for the New York state Senate’s 18th District, in North Brooklyn, where she’s challenging an incumbent Democrat in today’s primary election. She’s a former registered Republican who ran a pro-life group in college but is now a pro-choice candidate.

Salazar has been telling people she was raised Jewish in a “working class” home, when she’s actually a trust-fund recipient who was raised in a middle-class Catholic family. She was arrested in 2011 for allegedly impersonating the wife of a player for the New York Mets, with whom she was accused of having an affair.

She has publicly accused a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, David Keyes, of sexual assault, then claimed that she was “outed” as a sexual assault survivor when a news organization reported on it.

But none of that matters to Teen Vogue, which published a fluffy interview with Salazar today devoid of a single question about the conflicting statements she’s made about her background and identity. Here are seven wild stories that have been reported about the 27-year-old democratic socialist from Brooklyn.
1. She Claims She Was ‘Outed’ As A Sexual Assault Survivor

Earlier this week, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that, in a since-deleted Facebook post, Salazar accused Keyes of sexually assaulting her in his New York apartment. When the DCNF asked Salazar’s campaign for a comment, her spokesman confirmed the allegation and did not ask for the remark to be off-the-record nor for anonymity.

“Julia was a survivor of sexual assault by David Keyes, and she is aware of other women who have also been victimized by him,” the spokesman said, according to the DCNF. “There’s a reason women don’t often come forward after a traumatic experience-—because of the harmful responses and retaliation that can follow.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Trump Admin. Settles Lawsuits, Will Reconsider Asylum Claims of 1,000+ Immigrant Parents & Children By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on September 13th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-administration-settles-lawsuits-reconsider-asylum-claims-of-1000-immigrant-parents-children/

The Trump administration reached a settlement agreement late Wednesday in three lawsuits levied by the American Civil Liberties Union and Muslim Advocates over the Justice Department’s “zero tolerance” immigration-enforcement policy, which resulted in the separation of nearly 3,000 children from the adults who brought them across the border illegally.

Over 1,000 parents and children who crossed the border illegally and claimed asylum on the grounds of a “credible fear of persecution or torture” in their homeland will get a second chance to file their claims if the settlement is approved by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw. The ACLU said in a statement that under the settlement, there is also a possibility that some parents deported without their children may be allowed to reenter the U.S.

The administration halted the family-separation policy in June and attempted to defuse the bipartisan backlash it had caused. A California federal judge ordered the reunification of separated families days afterward, but the reunification process has been slow, and several hundred children remain separated from their guardians.Many of the immigrants in question may not ultimately gain asylum, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions reuled earlier this year that fear of domestic or gang violence would no longer be considered valid grounds for a claim. While their cases are being heard, often over a period of years, asylum seekers are allowed to live and work in the U.S., and under the settlement, some parents and children who are at different stages of the process will be allowed to live together in the country.