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January 2020

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Postpone the Impeachment Trial until the House Finishes Investigating By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 16th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/trump-impeachment-postpone-senate-trial-until-house-finishes-investigation/

Letting House Democrats string the process along is not fair to Trump, the Senate, or the people.

Two things happened simultaneously on Wednesday: (a) The House of Representatives transmitted to the Senate two articles of impeachment approved on straight partisan lines a month ago, and (b) the House’s impeachment inquiry — yes, it’s still very much alive — highlighted new, relevant evidence it has turned up about the activities in Ukraine of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Giuliani’s associates.

The Democrats’ strategy is coming clear.

The House provided the Senate with two half-baked impeachment articles. House Democrats rushed through the investigation, forgoing salient witnesses and evidence, because of the political calendar. The charges are weak and the inquiry was needlessly short-circuited, so Democrats have continued investigating the premature allegations. Now they are publicly disclosing newly acquired evidence, with the promise of more to come. Transparently, their goal is to pressure the Senate not merely to conduct a trial but to complete the investigation that the House failed to complete — calling witnesses and gathering evidence, as if a trial were nothing more than an extension of an open-ended grand-jury probe.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans should not let them get away with it. No trial court would allow itself to be whipsawed this way. A federal judge would tell prosecutors to go back to the grand jury, finish the investigation, and come back to the trial court when they have a case ready to be tried, not investigated.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Cory Booker: Dems Shouldn’t Have Two White Men on Ticket Anymore Elizabeth Matamoros

By on January 15th, 2020

https://freebeacon.com/politics/cory-booker-dems-shouldnt-have-two-white-men-on-ticket-anymore/

Failed presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) on Tuesday argued the Democratic Party must prove its commitment to diversity by never again running a presidential ticket comprised of two white men.

“I don’t think we should have two white men on the ticket anymore,” Booker said during an interview on SiriusXM’s Joe Madison Show. “Not because there’s not great, talented, incredible white men, but I also believe that with the diversity of our party, the strength and leadership … as Harvard Business School has said, diverse teams are stronger teams.”

The New Jersey senator argued it’s critical that Democrats nominate a candidate that the African-American community can trust.

“No matter what, whoever the next nominee is for our party, they better have an authentic connection to African-American communities and inspire, and I’ll use this word very purposely, trust,” Booker said. “Because the Democratic Party has done a lot of things—you know mass incarceration is an example—that don’t necessarily align with the interests of African-American communities.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sound an Alarm: Gender Activism Is About To Silence Us Stuart Lindsay

By on January 15th, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/01/sound-an-alarm-gender-activism-is-about-to-silence-us/

The Victorian government intends to pass a law very soon that may see ordinary citizens imprisoned if they speak up against the chemical, psychological and physical mutilation of confused adolescents. Labor Attorney-General-Hennessey wants to outlaw conversion practices. They are defined in her discussion paper about the proposed Bill as

…any practice or treatment that seeks to change, suppress or eliminate an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to reduce or eliminate sexual and/or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender, or efforts to change gender expressions.

Queensland already has a similar bill before its parliament. It would authorise imprisonment for those who perform what is called conversion “therapy” in that state. Such therapy is defined as a treatment or other practice that attempts to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s very broad. While it is directed to those who provide a health service it includes “alternative” ones, and  will very arguably capture pastors, concerned family members, or other lay people who attempt to dissuade a young person they know from embarking upon a “transition” from their natal sex to its opposite.

Transitioning, in the parlance of the new medico-legal commissariat who run the clinics that administer these treatments, means, firstly, a child taking a drug that blocks the release of testosterone (in boys) or oestrogen (in girls) and then, in the next phase, loading them up with doses of the other sex’s natural hormone; physical mutilation is only involved if it moves to a third phase. It often does.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Some Palestinians Love Soleimani by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on January 15th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15425/palestinians-qassem-soleimani

Many] Arabs have claimed that they cannot understand why Hamas and Islamic Jihad are mourning an Iranian general responsible for the killing and displacement of thousands of people in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Some Arabs scoffed at the two Palestinian groups for labeling Soleimani as the “martyr of Jerusalem” at a time “when most of his rockets and bullets were being used to kill Arabs and Muslims to implement Iran’s scheme of expanding its control to Arab and Islamic countries.”

Without Iran’s financial, military and political support, Hamas and Islamic Jihad would not have been able to maintain their control over the Gaza Strip…. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have demonstrated that they care nothing for the thousands of Arabs and Muslims killed by Soleimani’s Quds Force. As far as these groups are concerned… [t]he end goal for Hamas and Islamic Jihad remains the elimination of Israel….

The ongoing cooperation between Iran and the Gaza-based groups poses an imminent threat not only to Israel, but also to the PA, Egypt and other Arabs who are opposed to Tehran’s expansionist schemes in the region.

Why are Iran’s Palestinian proxies, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, disturbed about the death of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, who was killed in a US airstrike on January 3, 2020?

The two Iranian-backed groups in the Gaza Strip were quick to mourn the “martyr” Soleimani and condemn his assassination as an “American-Zionist scheme.” Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad described the death of Soleimani as a “big loss for Palestine and the Palestinian resistance.”

Hamas and Islamic Jihad set up a mourning tent for Soleimani in the Gaza Strip, where their representative invited Palestinians to offer condolences for the death of the Iranian military commander. The heads of the two groups, Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas) and Ziad Al-Nakhalah (Islamic Jihad) also travelled to Iran to attend the funeral of Soleimani and offer condolences to Iran’s leaders over his death.

The reaction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to the death of Soleimani is proof that the two groups have long been serving as Iran’s proxies in the Gaza Strip, home to two million Palestinians. Without Iran’s financial, military and political support, Hamas and Islamic Jihad would not have been able to maintain their control over the Gaza Strip.

Soleimani used his Quds Force to support Iran’s proxies not only in the Gaza Strip, but also those in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. While he used the pro-Iran militias in the Arab countries to kill many Arabs, Soleimani and his Quds Force supported Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their jihad (holy war) against Israel. Soleimani also supported Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their conflict with the Palestinian Authority (PA), and by doing so further contributed to deepening divisions among the Palestinians.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Erdoğan’s ‘Make-Turkey-More-Islamic’ Campaign Is a Failure by Burak Bekdil

By on January 15th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15440/erdogan-islamic-campaign

Half the population of Turkey is under the age of 32 — a young population. Many of these young Turks are, it seems, pushing back against Erdoğan’s state-imposed Islamization.

The more Erdoğan uses the state’s police power to indoctrinate young Turks in favor of devout political Islam, the more they tend to put a distance between themselves and Erdoğan’s “devout generations” campaign.

Perhaps Erdoğan’s best service to his country is to show young Turks what it actually means to live under an Islamist regime.

Trust for Islamist politics in both the Middle East and North Africa has plummeted since the beginning of the Arab Spring. A survey for BBC Arabic found that since 2012-13, public trust in Islamist political parties in Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Iraq has significantly declined, from nearly 40% to less than 20%. The survey also found a similar decline in trust for religious leaders in the same countries. In the Gaza Strip alone, public trust in Hamas fell from 45% to 24%. In Turkey, Islam does not appear to be appealing to masses as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan apparently hoped it would.

In 2012, Erdoğan described his political mission as “raising devout generations”, a remark for which Turkey’s main opposition called him “a merchant of religion”. In November 2019, Erdoğan repeated his quest for “devout generations” so that “we will not see alcoholics on the streets”. He boasts that since he came to power in 2002, the number of imam school students has risen from 60,000 to 1.3 million. No doubt, that is an impressive record for an Islamist strongman. But too premature to cheer about.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Environmentalists Caused Australia’s Fires, Not ‘Climate Change’ Edward Ring

By on January 15th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/14/environmentalists-caused-australias-fires-not-climate-change/

Is this kind of conflagration too convenient to ever try to prevent, insofar as such generates righteous ‘Thunbergian’ green thunder across the world, solving nothing, but further empowering the bureaucrats?

These greenies and the government don’t want to burn s— off. We’re going to lose all our houses and properties because of you useless pieces of garbage will not burn off when its supposed to, through the winter time like we used to do years ago out in the farms up in the mountains; burn all the undergrowth off so everything was safe. But you p—–, you want to have a really good look at this, look at the state you’ve caused here. You are the biggest bunch of useless loser pieces of garbage God ever had the misfortune to blow life into.”

– Australian resident of New South Wales, January 7, 2020

Environmentalist regulations are the reason for this year’s devastating wildfires in Australia. These misguided measures prevented landowners from burning off dry brush. For decades, every year during the Australian winter, across the continent, brushfires were deliberately set to safely burn the undergrowth. Even in pre-colonial times, the aborigines set brushfires to prevent tinder from accumulating.

If you want to watch an authentic, eyewitness account of what really happened—quoted above—you’ll find it 2:56 minutes into “The Truth About the Australian Bushfires,” a January 7 video by the inimitable Paul Joseph Watson. (But watch out. Most of the profanity is edited out of the above transcription.)

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Nigel Farage gets his way, and last laugh: Brexit is coming

By on January 15th, 2020

https://www.ap.org/en-us/

Nigel Farage, the self-declared “pantomime villain” of Brexit, is leaving his favorite theater — the European Union’s parliament in Strasbourg — this week with a sense of mission accomplished.

Ridiculed for years, and thriving on the abuse he got from, and dealt to, pro-EU legislators and politicians, he now feels he got the last laugh. On Jan. 31, the U.K. will be leaving the EU, in a historic loss for the bloc — and a historic gain for the likes of Farage.

“When I first came here, I started saying the U.K. would leave the European Union. Everyone thought it was hilarious,” Farage told The Associated Press in an interview, speaking about his early days in the EU legislature in the late 1990s.

The European Union was still thriving, expanding at the time, and could shrug off a loud and sometimes foul-mouthed British parliamentarian as just a nuisance about to be swatted aside by the force of history of closer integration.

Britain may have been a halfhearted member with rumbling about holding onto sovereignty and complaints about “unelected bureaucraats” from Brussels having too much say in their lives. But thoughts of actually leaving? No. Those were left to fringe politicians like Farage.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Bernie Beats Hillary Activists celebrate the end of moderation in the Democratic field. James Freeman

By on January 15th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bernie-beats-hillary-11579044694?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton. But even if he loses again in 2020, his long-term project to pull Democratic candidates in the direction of socialism is already a success.

Today the left-leaning Americans for Tax Fairness is celebrating the end of moderation among Democrats seeking the White House. The organization gleefully announces:

All four leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have proposed tax and spending plans many times the size of Hillary Clinton’s fiscal plan in 2016, showing how far the debate has shifted in the progressive direction in four years. Like Clinton, they would all raise taxes almost exclusively on the wealthy and corporations to improve public services working families rely on like healthcare, education, and infrastructure.

Don’t believe that part about taxes only hitting the rich and corporations. But it’s hard to argue the point that radicalism is the new normal for office-seeking Democrats. According to the lefty outfit:

Clinton proposed upping tax revenue on the wealthy and corporations by $1.4 trillion over 10 years to pay for $1.7 trillion in public investments. Biden and Buttigieg have both offered up plans raising taxes on the rich and corporations by around $3.4 trillion, although both have made statements suggesting their totals could go quite a bit higher. Sanders and Warren are proposing around $10 trillion in high-income and corporate tax hikes, exclusive of the revenue they propose raising for their Medicare for All plans.
Notably, Michael Bennet, another moderate Democrat running for president, has proposed raising $5.2 billion from the wealthy and corporations to fund $6 trillion in new investments. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Dem Debate Flop Same old socialist, faux impeachment, climate change, and Trump Derangement Syndrome boilerplate. Lloyd Billingsley

By on January 15th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/dem-six-pack-serves-flop-lloyd-billingsley/

Most viewers were watching President Trump hold forth in Milwaukee but the run-up to Tuesday’s CNN Democrat debate in Des Moines features some stories of interest. Cory Booker had recently dropped up, so some Democrats were lamenting that all the candidates were white, a condition beyond their control. And as word had it, things were going to get tough on stage.

Tucker Carlson showed video of Sanders’ staffers warning of violence if Bernie did not get the nomination. And if he was elected, we would need re-education campaigns so people would not be “Nazis.”

The prevailing story was Elizabeth Warren’s charge that Bernie Sanders claimed a woman could not be president. Sanders claimed he never said it, and the debate kicked off on who would be the best commander in chief.

Bernie Sanders claimed he had opposed military and foreign policy blunders such as Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan. The Vermont socialist seemed unconcerned about actual enemies the nation was now facing.

Joe Biden said he would compare his record compare to anyone on this stage, but came up short on specifics. It was a mistake, he said, to give the president authority to go to war.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar wanted good health care and education for the troops. And she would get the nation back into the Iran deal from which President Trump had withdrawn.

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South Dakota State Rep Proposes Bill to Criminalize Gender-Transition Surgeries on Children By Tobias Hoonhout

By on January 15th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/south-dakota-state-rep-proposes-bill-to-criminalize-gender-transition-surgeries-on-children/

South Dakota State Representative Fred Deutsch introduced a bill Tuesday to prosecute medical professionals who attempt to transition children struggling with gender dysphoria, the latest state-level effort to prevent physicians from performing irreversible sex-change surgeries on minors.

The “Vulnerable Child Protection Act” is not Deutsch’s first attempt to limit transgender influence on children. He sponsored a 2016 bill that sought to limit the bathrooms and locker rooms that South Dakota’s transgender students can use, which passed the state legislature, but was vetoed by then-Governor Dennis Daugaard.

In recent months, and with the high-profile custody battle in Texas over James Younger’s potential transition, several states have introduced similar bills, which are intended to punish doctors and healthcare providers who attempt to transition children. Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, and South Carolina have all seen similar efforts at the state level.

“Every child in South Dakota should be protected from dangerous drugs and procedures,” Deutsch said in a statement emailed to National Review. “The solution for children’s identification with the opposite sex isn’t to poison their bodies with mega-doses of the wrong hormones, to chemically or surgically castrate and sterilize them, or to remove healthy breasts and reproductive organs. The solution is compassionate care, and that doesn’t include catastrophically and irreversibly altering their bodies.”

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