ISRAEL Comments turned off

‘Palestinians’ Lie and Count on Your Ignorance By Dan Calic

Posted By on December 18th, 2017

In the Arab-Israel conflict, one issue which rises above every other is the accuracy of what is presented. The Palestinians are relying on people not knowing history in order to advance their narrative. Israel on the other hand is relying on people knowing history. From where I sit, over the past two or three decades, it appears most people do not know history very well. Thus, the Palestinian narrative has gained popularity and has shaped much of public opinion.

What’s especially troubling is that the mainstream media has adopted most of the Palestinian propaganda, or seems to sympathize with it. Sadly, the days of objective news reporting appear to be gone. Today’s reporting has pretty much turned into op-eds, rather than simple straightforward news.

Regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, we hear noble words such as “just solution,” “dignity,” “peace,” etc. on a regular basis. Who has fault with these?

Yet, if this conflict ever stands a chance of being resolved, isn’t it incumbent upon the world to know the actual facts and to stand for the truth, so these noble goals actually apply to its resolution?

If so, we need to understand whose narrative reflects the truth and whose are false. For this we need to unpack what we frequently hear and apply a litmus test.

For example:

CLAIM: Palestinians are an ethnically unique people or nationality

The Facts:
The Palestinians are Arabs. They are a mix of Jordanians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrian, etc. Several hundred thousand of them were displaced, many by choice, as result of the 1948 and 1967 wars. In both wars, the goal of the Arab nations was to destroy the Jewish state. They failed. Eventually their tactics changed. Not that destroying Israel militarily was dropped, it remains their goal. However, in 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was formed for the specific purpose of destroying the Jewish state of Israel.

After the devastating defeat in the Six Day War, and the refusal of the surrounding Arab nations to absorb the displaced Arabs, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat embarked on a campaign to bring their plight to the world stage. Part of his effort included calling them “Palestinians.” This took root and the world bought into calling them Palestinians to this day.

Answer to the claim: FALSE

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Why I Quit Teaching By David Solway

Posted By on December 18th, 2017

Some years back, I decided I had to quit the teaching profession to which I had dedicated half my life. The modern academy, I felt, was so far gone that restoration was no longer possible. Indeed, I now believe that complete collapse is the only hope for the future, but as Woody Allen said about death, I’d rather not be there when it happens.

Three reasons determined my course of action. For one thing, administration had come to deal less with academic issues and more with rules of conduct and punitive codes of behavior, as if it were a policing body rather than an arm of the teaching profession. Woe betide the (male) student accused of sexual assault or misconduct; the administration will convene an extra-judicial tribunal to punish or expel the accused, often with a low burden of proof. It will find ways to shut down conservative speakers. It will browbeat faculty and students to attend sensitivity training sessions on matters of race and gender. It will strike task forces to deal with imaginary issues like campus rape culture and propose draconian measures to contain a raging fantasy. The administration is now beset by two basic compulsions: to expand its reach at the expense of the academic community and to ensure compliance with the puritanical norms of the day. I thought it prudent to take early retirement rather than wait for the guillotine to descend.

For another, colleagues were increasingly buying into the politically correct mantras circulating in the cultural climate. The dubious axioms of “social justice” and equality of outcome, the postmodern campaign against the Western tradition of learning, and the Marxist critique of capitalism now superseded the original purpose of the university to seek out truth, to pursue the impartial study of historical events and movements, and to remain faithful to the rigors of disciplined scholarship. Most of my colleagues were rote members of the left-liberal orthodoxy: pro-Islam, pro-unfettered immigration, pro-abortion, pro-feminist, anti-conservative, anti-Zionist, and anti-white. Departmental committees were now basing their hiring protocols not on demonstrated merit, but on minority and gender identities, leading to marked pedagogical decline. Professional hypocrisy could be glaring. Case in point: The most recent hire speaking at a department meeting was a white woman advocating for more brown and black faces on staff – though, as a recent hire, she had never thought of stepping aside in favor of minority candidates vying for her position. In any event, faculties were and are progressively defined by firebrands on the one hand and soyboys on the other – partisans rather than pedagogues, plaster saints all. I found I could no longer respect the majority of people I had to work with.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Resistance’ Members, Including Former Obama Officials, Threaten to ‘Take to the Streets’ if Trump Fires Mueller By Debra Heine

Posted By on December 18th, 2017

In what looked like a coordinated messaging campaign over the weekend, the organized left threatened to “take to the streets” if and when President Trump fires Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

MarchForTruth was the “central organizing account” for the 150+ cities that demonstrated on June 3, 2017, “to call for urgency & transparency on #TrumpRussia.”

Soros-backed MoveOn.Org is organizing “emergency ‘Nobody is Above the Law’ rallies around the country” in the event Trump fires Mueller.

The anti-Trumpers have been in a lather over the possibility that the president could fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller before Christmas, after Congress leaves Washington for the winter recess.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that he has no plans to fire Mueller, but that didn’t stop Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) from repeating the “rumor” on California’s KQED News on Friday.

“The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week. And on December 22, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller,” Speier said.

Some prominent members of the Resistance spread the message this weekend, including President Obama’s former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Attorney Walter Shaub, who resigned in July, was one of the first to tweet about “taking the streets” on Friday.

Shaub blocked everyone who reacted negatively to his hysterical tweet — including this writer, who wondered how he had managed to miss Hillary Clinton’s many ethical lapses while she was secretary of state (when he was Obama’s ethics czar).

Shaub later tweeted: “This tweet apparently triggered the tiki torch crowd. My theory is people with violent tendencies will hear violence in the language of peaceful protest. But you literally have to agree to the policy of nonviolence and complying with all law enforcement orders to sign up, so…”

Because everyone who finds him ridiculous is apparently a white supremacist.

Left-wing celebs soon jumped on the bandwagon.

Rob Reiner (aka “Meathead”) on Saturday morning urged his followers to prepare to “take the streets.”

George Takei encouraged “massive and sustained protests.”

Attorney and law professor Seth Abramson went on a long Twitter rant over the rumored firing, calling it a “constitutional crisis” and “actual emergency.”

Naturally, he too called upon his followers to “take to the streets.”

Worst of all, Eric Holder, Obama’s disgraced former attorney general, also called for massive protests if Trump ends the witch hunt:
CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another Escalation in the Judicial War What will happen when a Senate majority votes in unison against every presidential nominee? By Ilya Shapiro

Posted By on December 18th, 2017

With last week’s confirmations of Don Willett and James Ho to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, President Trump set a record for most appellate judges confirmed in a president’s first year. Twelve judges have joined the federal circuit courts in 2017, beating by one the record previously held by Presidents Kennedy and Nixon. The quality of these new appointees is exceptional, with seven having clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court and six appearing on Mr. Trump’s impressive list of potential high-court candidates.

Add Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation, and that’s quite a year. Even after Candidate Trump released his list of prospective justices, conservative legal elites were not at all confident that President Trump would—or would be able to—execute a concerted plan to put a stamp on the judicial branch. Credit goes to White House counsel Don McGahn, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley —and to the president, who deferred to their legal expertise and political strategy.

At the same time, with only six confirmed district-court judges, Mr. Trump’s total number of judicial appointments stands at 19, not even close to a record. While President Obama didn’t prioritize judges in his first term, George W. Bush filled 28 slots on the federal bench his rookie year and Bill Clinton 27 (plus Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ). Ronald Reagan had 40 lower-court judges confirmed his first year, along with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Many executive-branch positions remain vacant because Mr. Trump has not put forth nominees. Not so for judges. With 58 judicial nominations, Mr. Trump is second to George W. Bush at this point. Instead, the problem is that Senate Democrats have demanded “cloture” votes on all but one of the nominees. That is, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has forced votes on whether to proceed to a final vote, each of which eats up 30 hours of Senate floor time. That’s been the case even for district-court nominees, the closest of whose confirmation votes was 79-16 (the nays notably including potential 2020 presidential contenders Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ).

Not surprisingly, the votes on most of the circuit judges were much closer. Ralph Erickson sailed through to the Eighth Circuit 95-1, with only Ms. Warren in the negative. Kevin Newsom of the 11th Circuit somehow drew 16 Democratic ayes, for a 66-31 tally. But the others have faced a blue wall. With the occasional exception of Democrats representing states Mr. Trump won overwhelmingly, the votes were essentially party-line. While the average Bush and Obama circuit nominee received about 90% of senators’ vote—many confirmed unanimously or by voice vote—Mr. Trump’s have averaged less than 60%, and have all been subjected to both cloture and roll-call votes. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democrats Against Tax Reform Unlike the past, the GOP has had no help passing these tax cuts.

Posted By on December 18th, 2017

Republicans are poised this week to cut taxes for most American workers and businesses, fulfilling a core campaign promise. But before the House and Senate vote, it’s worth noting that they may do so without a single Democrat in support. How has the party of the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s and the co-writers of the Reagan reform in the 1980s become implacably opposed to pro-growth tax policy?

A little history shows how remarkable this is. The Kennedy marginal tax-rate cuts were pushed by White House economist Walter Heller and powered the economic expansion for another half-decade. In the 1981 tax debate, William Brodhead of Michigan and other Ways and Means Democrats offered an amendment that cut the top rate on investment income to 50% from 70% in the first year.

The 1986 tax reform was driven as much by Democrats as by Ronald Reagan. Dick Gephardt and Dan Rostenkowski helped move it through the House, and Bill Bradley was a leading architect in the Senate. Thirty-three Democrats voted for the bill that passed the Senate 74-23 and cut the top marginal income tax rate to 28%.

Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993, but after his re-election he compromised with Newt Gingrich in 1997 to cut the capital-gains tax rate to 20% from 28%. That drove investment and growth through the rest of the decade. Even as recently as 2001, a dozen Democrats in the Senate and 28 in the House compromised with George W. Bush to cut the top income-tax rate to 35%.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah’s billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House’s desire for a nuclear deal with Iran. By Josh Meyer

Posted By on December 18th, 2017

Part I
A global threat emerges
How Hezbollah turned to trafficking cocaine and laundering money through used cars to finance its expansion.

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

They followed cocaine shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE DECEMBER 16,1944- JANUARY 25, 1945

Posted By on December 17th, 2017

In late 1944, after the successful Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, many thought that World War 2 in Europe was almost over. On December 16th the Germany launched a final offensive intended to turn the tide for Hiter and Germany. That morning 200,000 German troops and nearly 1,000 tanks attacked and surrounded four exhausted American divisions in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium, Northern France, and Luxembourg. Lt. General George Patton Jr. deployed his Third Army unit to counter attack and thwart the Nazi advance.

American troops slogged through ice and snow in bitter conditions defending crossroads, and sabotaging Nazi gasoline depots. They restored the front and began the final march to victory.On Tuesday, May 8th, 1945 the Germans surrendered.

In that final battle of the Bulge more than 19,000 Americans soldiers died. May God bless their memory.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Austria: New Government to Resist “Islamization” by Soeren Kern

Posted By on December 17th, 2017

A coalition between the anti-immigration Austrian People’s Party and the anti-establishment Austrian Freedom Party, which will be sworn into office on December 18, is poised to catapult Austria to the vanguard of Western Europe’s resistance to mass migration from the Muslim world.

The massive demographic and religious shift underway in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country, appears irreversible. Austria has also emerged as a major base for radical Islam.

“We have a lot in common [with Israel]. I always say, if one defines the Judeo-Christian West, then Israel represents a kind of border. If Israel fails, Europe fails. And if Europe fails, Israel fails.” — Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Austrian Freedom Party.

The anti-immigration Austrian People’s Party and the anti-establishment Austrian Freedom Party have reached a deal, creating a new coalition to govern Austria for the next five years. The ground-breaking political alliance, which will be sworn into office on December 18, is poised to catapult Austria to the vanguard of Western Europe’s resistance to mass migration from the Muslim world.

Chancellor-elect Sebastian Kurz, 31, who won Austria’s national election on October 15 after campaigning on a promise to halt illegal immigration, will govern with Heinz-Christian Strache, 48, the Freedom Party leader, who has warned that mass migration is “Islamizing” Austria. Under the agreement, Strache will become the vice-chancellor; the Freedom Party will also take control of the ministries of defense, interior and foreign affairs.

Kurz has been a strong critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door migration policy, which has allowed more than a million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to enter the country during the past two years.

During his time as foreign minister, Kurz was instrumental in garnering parliamentary approval of a groundbreaking new law that regulates the integration of immigrants. The so-called Integration Law — which bans full-face Muslim veils in public spaces and prohibits Islamic radicals from distributing the Koran — establishes clear rules and responsibilities for recognized asylum seekers and refugees granted legal residence in the country.

The new law requires immigrants from non-EU countries to sign an “integration contract” which obligates them to learn written and spoken German and to enroll in courses about the “basic values of Austria’s legal and social order.” Immigrants are also required to “acquire knowledge of the democratic order and the basic principles derived from it.”

Previously, Kurz was instrumental in reforming Austria’s century-old Islam Law (Islamgesetz), governing the status of Muslims in the country. The new law, passed in February 2015, is aimed at integrating Muslims and fighting Islamic radicalism by promoting an “Islam with an Austrian character.” It also stresses that Austrian law must take precedence over Islamic Sharia law for Muslims living in the country.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Jordan Option By Ted Belman

Posted By on December 17th, 2017

There is nothing to stop Jordan from changing its name to Palestine and making Amman its capital city.

Geert Wilders, the leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, just tweeted “Jordan=Palestine. So, the capital of Palestine is not Jerusalem but Amman.”

It can’t get any simpler than that.

The primary stumbling block to Israel annexing the land she was promised in the Palestinian Mandate and which she conquered in 1967, Gaza aside, is the fact that 1.6 million Arabs live there. All solutions put forward by the Israeli right take a stab at the problem. They range from offering the Arabs a path to citizenship to incentivizing them to emigrate voluntarily.

Amman, Palestine?

There is great opposition in Israel to the citizenship idea as it would present Israel with an Arab population amounting to 35% of the total population. To have an understanding of how big a problem that would be for Israel, just look at the problems European countries are having with a Muslim minority of only 5 to 10%. Israelis want no part of that nightmare. Paying Arabs to leave is a far more attractive solution.

The leading Israeli voice for offering compensation as an inducement to emigration, is Martin Sherman, the founder of Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He suggests offering $300,000 per family. Such a plan would cost at least $100 billion to get West Bank Arabs to emigrate. This is a mindboggling sum to most Israelis, but Sherman argues that it is affordable.

The Jordan Option represents a different solution, one which would be far less costly to Israel. It requires changing Jordan from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy.

After the voluntary or forced abdication by King Abdullah, the Jordan Opposition Coalition, (JOC) led by Mudar Zahran, would form the interim government. Given the fact that 75% of Jordanian citizens are Palestinian, i.e., their grandparents were/are Palestinian, this is only fitting. Besides in the last few years, King Abdullah has alienated both U.S. and Israel for different reasons. They now want him out.

New alliances are forming in the Middle East as the feud between Iran and Saudi Arabia heats up. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Egypt are committed to fighting terrorism and the ideology which fuels it. To this end they have banned the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a terrorist organization and have placed sanctions on Qatar who continues to support them and other terrorist organizations.

Jordan hosts the world headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood and its parliament is controlled by both MB and ISIS members.

The King also supports Palestinian resistance to Israel and from time to time encourages them to start an intifada.

As further evidence of the alliances being formed, it is instructive to look at the Islamic Summit held last week in Istanbul. It was organized as a response to President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Eqypt did not attend. Jordan, on the other hand, did and aligned with Iran, Turkey, and Qatar who dominated the discourse.

MEDIA Comments turned off

I’m Still Strzok by the “Espionage Machine Party” by: Diana West

Posted By on December 17th, 2017

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3652/Im-Still-Strzok-by-the-Espionage-Machine-Party.aspx Out of a reported 10,000 texts between senior, adulterous Justice Department/FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, Strzok’s “insurance policy” text is naturally attracting considerable attention — although noticeably not in the New York Times and assorted media followers who set course by it. Predictably, neither is Peter Strzok’s mention of the “Espionage Machine Party.” Then again, the “Espionage […]