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Trump Spares Stone from Imprisonment, Sparking Howls from Amnesiac Democrats By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on July 12th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/trump-spares-stone-from-imprisonment-sparking-howls-from-amnesiac-democrats/

“The Stone episode has been farcical from the start, and it’s still not over.”

One-time defenders of unsavory Clinton and Obama pardons are outraged by the president’s commutation of his old associate’s 40-month sentence.

Bill Clinton pardoned his own brother for felony distribution of cocaine. And a key witness in the Whitewater scandal for which he and Hillary Clinton were under investigation. And three others convicted in independent counsel Ken Starr’s probe. And Marc Rich, in what was a straight up political payoff. And his CIA director. And his HUD secretary. And eight people convicted in an investigation of his Agriculture Department.

No surprise there: The Clintons and their supporters then, like Trump and his supporters now, regarded the special-prosecutor probes into the administration as witch hunts.

Clinton also commuted the sentences of convicted terrorists, some of whom hadn’t even asked for clemency. Shameless as he was, though, even he couldn’t bring himself to pardon Oscar Lopez Rivera, the defiantly unrepentant FALN leader.

President Obama took care of that.

Obama also commuted the sentence of a U.S. soldier who passed top-secret information to WikiLeaks. He pardoned his former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman, who’d been convicted of making false statements about a leak of classified information to the New York Times. And when he couldn’t get Congress to amend federal drug laws the way he wanted them amended, Obama used the pardon power to slash hundreds of sentences, under an executive initiative later sharply criticized by the Obama-appointed DOJ inspector general.

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PARDONS GRANTED BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (2009-2017)

Posted By on July 12th, 2020

https://www.justice.gov/pardon/obama-pardons

Maybe the Democrats should read this to refresh their memories!

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Prophetic Pessimism of Michel Houellebecq Anthony Daniels

Posted By on July 11th, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/07-08/the-prophetic-pessimism-of-michel-houellebecq/

Asked what the post-COVID world would be like, the most famous of contemporary French writers, Michel Houellebecq (above), replied with his customary asperity, “The same—only worse.”

This is because, according to him, if I have read him aright, deterioration in our modern world never misses an opportunity to take place. Man does not learn from experience or from anything else, for that matter; and because time’s arrow flies in one direction only, we cannot reconstitute or restore our civilisation once we have smashed it up. In short, we are doomed.

Strangely enough, this superficially depressing view, that everything is terrible and getting constantly worse, is in a way consolatory, which is perhaps why Houellebecq is so wildly popular (his last book, Sérotonine, had an initial print-run of 330,000 in France alone). If we are doomed whatever we do, we are absolved of responsibility for our own doom. Moreover, by the time we have finished reading his enumeration and examination of the vacuity of existence in consumer society, we feel much the better for it. At least we are not as bad as that, and we have had a good laugh en route to the dismal conclusion.

Houellebecq is a gifted and brilliant, but also somewhat limited, writer who has gross lapses of taste. His brilliance can be appreciated by consideration of the titles of his last two books alone: Soumission (submission) and Sérotonine (serotonin).

Submission is, of course, what Islam means, but in the book it is France that submits to submission, not because of the intellectual strength of Islam (no one could have been more contemptuous of Islam’s claims to intellectual value than Houellebecq, who famously said of the Koran that it was a wretched, a truly wretched, book), but because of the nihilistic lack of faith of the French population in anything spiritually transcendent: especially in the intelligentsia and upper echelons who, after all, decisively set the tone for the whole of society. And what is true of France, of course, is true of the West in general.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

What Woke Women Want By Stella Morabito

Posted By on July 11th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/09/why-do-so-many-white-women-hate-themselves/

Amid societal unrest, woke white women are proving to be a brainwashed force to be reckoned with.

Some might find it odd that so many seemingly middle-class, young, white women are taking up street theater with a vengeance. We’ve seen the woke white woman spitting harangues into the faces of police officers, including black officers, trying to lecture and shame them into obedience.

We saw many of them acting up in the “autonomous zone” of CHAZ or CHOP in Seattle, condescendingly guarding a “blacks only” area. We’ve also seen these women physically attacking those they deem the enemy, including a Democrat state legislator in Wisconsin. A 29-year-old white woman was arrested for setting fire to the Wendy’s restaurant in Atlanta after the police altercation and shooting there last month. Another was filmed setting fire to police cars. The list goes on.

Some observers see all of this as a contradiction. Since the “woke white woman” tends to be college-educated, many think she must be smart. Since she comes from a middle- or even upper-class suburban background, people assume she must be emotionally stable. Because she is socially aware, she must be interested in trying to understand people as individual human beings. How is it that such a woman can so easily become an arsonist, a terrorist, a mobster, and a taunter of black police officers?

She shows none of the positive traits expected of her. Her commitment to identity politics demands she reject people as unique human beings. Since she insists racism is “systemic,” she is forever guilty and therefore cannot be emotionally stable. In her obedience to the coercive thought reform of the education establishment, she has surrendered the right to think independently.

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Justice for Roger Stone By Grant Baker

Posted By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/justice_for_roger_stone_.html

President Trump has corrected a miscarriage of justice. His commutation of the sentence, rather than a pardon, allows Stone to seek redress via the courts

On Friday, July 10th, President Trump commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence.  The clemency order, not to be confused with a pardon, allows Stone to fight in the appeals court to clear his name against what many consider a legal railroading. Friends of Stone claim that Trump had offered a pardon only to be rebuffed by Stone who asked for clemency to remain out of jail as he fights through the appeals court.

The decision to grant clemency came after a series of revelations which proved that Mueller’s team of prosecutors had tampered with evidence, manufactured statements, and buried exonerating evidence in their case against General Flynn, prompting the Justice Department to drop the case out of embarrassment. Mueller’s prosecutorial misconduct in the Flynn case strongly mirrors the prosecution of Roger Stone. Despite no underlying crime or Russian collusion found, the prosecution chose to push forward with process crimes.

Stone was accused of threatening a witness after sending text messages to comedian Randy Credico, telling him “my lawyers are dying to rip you to shreds…prepare to die”. Stone felt Credico had spun a false narrative to Mueller’s investigators to throw him under the bus. Even Credico claims the texts were taken out of context and were not threats of violence or intimidation.

Stone was also charged with lying to Congress. When Stone was asked by Congress if he was speaking with Wikileaks, Stone replied that he did not have a contact in the organization, but was speaking with Credico, who had interviewed Julian Assange. This turned out to be a factual statement, but prosecutors alleged that Stone claimed his contact was Credico in order to protect Jerome Corsi. In hindsight, the claim that Stone was lying to protect Corsi from prosecution rings hollow, as Corsi was never found to have committed any crimes and was never charged.

P.C.-CULTURE, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Winds of Woke By Matthew Continetti

Posted By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/joe-biden-political-correctness-can-he-withstand-winds-of-woke/

Can Joe Biden withstand the storm of political correctness?

Before Thursday morning I had not heard of Thomas Bosco, and I am willing to bet you haven’t heard of him either. He runs a café in Upper Manhattan. From the picture in the New York Times, the Indian Road Café is one of those Bobo-friendly brick-lined coffee shops with chalkboard menus affixed to the wall behind the counter and a small stage for down-on-their-luck musicians to warble a few bars of “Fast Car” as you sip on a no-foam latte while editing a diversity-training manual. It looks pleasant enough. “Local writers, artists, musicians, and political activists are regulars,” writes metro columnist Azi Paybarah. “And for years, two drag queens have hosted a monthly charity bingo tournament there.” Drag queens! You can’t get more progressive than that. Bosco seems like a noble small businessman making his way in a turbulent world.

There’s a problem, though. He once expressed an opinion. Though Black Lives Matter signs are posted throughout the restaurant, and its owner identifies as “a liberal guy who supports almost every liberal cause I can think of,” in early June Bosco told MSNBC that he voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and expects to do so again. Omigod no. “The backlash was swift, as you might expect,” writes Paybarah. Neighbors denounced Bosco on Facebook. Some vowed not to patronize the café. Randi Weingarten, who as president of the American Federation of Teachers draws close to half a million dollars in salary and benefits annually, wrote online that it would be “hard to ever go back.” No more tips for the barista from her. As for the drag queens, they are taking their glitter elsewhere.

Bosco is distraught. “My staff feels like I let them down to a certain extent,” he told the Times. He has supported Bernie Sanders, donated to immigrant groups, contributed to the food pantry, provided child care for an employee, and plans to change the name of the café to Inwood Farm to avoid any possible offense toward the Indigenous. None of this is enough to quell the fury of the Very Online. “Similar backlashes have erupted in liberal New York City, usually after a business is revealed to have financial links to Mr. Trump or socially conservative causes,” notes Paybarah, citing the example of Stephen Ross, an investor who had to cut ties to the Equinox and SoulCycle gym chains after it was revealed that he was going to throw a fundraiser for the president. “But Mr. Bosco is no Mr. Ross.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Supremes Signal a Brave New World of Popular Presidential Elections By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/supremes-signal-a-brave-new-world-of-popular-presidential-elections/

The Court’s decision in Chiafalo v. Washington seems sure to intensify the partisan fight over the Electoral College’s future.

Whither the Electoral College?

The Supreme Court had its say on the matter during the always-eventful last week of the term. To repeat a contention often made in these columns, the High Court has evolved into an essentially political institution, robed in the judiciary’s apolitical veneer. Given that we are a deeply divided nation, that the late-term cases are usually the most controversial, and that the four left-leaning justices — those appointed by Democratic presidents Clinton and Obama — tend to vote as a bloc in these cliffhanger rulings, one doesn’t expect many 9–0 decisions when the calendar reaches late June (let alone July).

Yet there it was on Monday: Chiafalo v. Washington. At issue was the question of “faithless electors.” Specifically, may a state enforce the pledge it compels electors to make to vote for the presidential candidate who wins the state’s popular vote? The Court’s holding that states have the power to do so was unanimous. Significantly, though, the Court was not of one mind about why.

The case is worth our attention because of what’s been going on under the radar.

Among the Left’s many transformative projects is the drive to have presidents elected by a national popular vote. The project, known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, would effectively eliminate the Constitution’s Electoral College system. It would reduce the College to a nullity by requiring a state’s electors to vote for the candidate who wins the national popular vote — regardless of whether that candidate loses the state’s popular vote. As Hillary Clinton and Al Gore could tell you, that would radically change how presidents are elected, and ultimately how we are governed.

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In War, It’s Total Victory or Nothing By Steve Feinstein

Posted By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2020/07/09/in_war_its_total_victory_or_nothing_498690.html

There’s a longstanding maxim that states that only the complete destruction of one’s enemies will suffice. Merely winning a particular battle is not enough. If they survive the defeat and can come back to fight another day, then the ultimate victory is not assured. In contrast, the contest still hangs in the balance and the outcome of any one battle may not be the overriding determinate of the final result.

This thought is summed up in the work “The 48 Laws of Power,” a best-selling 1998 book by American author Robert Greene. Law 15 states, “…. a feared enemy must be crushed completely. If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation. The enemy will recover and seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.”

Examples of this truism abound in history. There are several examples of when tactical battles were won but the bigger strategic objective was lost, with disastrous long-term consequences.

Dunkirk 1940
After Nazi Germany’s 1940 spring offensive against Western Europe, the last remaining Allied combatants — France and Great Britain — found themselves defeated and cornered in the French coastal town of Dunkirk. Over 300,000 French and British troops (along with a small number of Polish forces that had survived the campaign against Germany the previous September) were trapped after marauding German Panzer forces had crushed the inexplicably weak and uninspired French army in what was perhaps history’s most one-sided major land engagement.

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Alex Berenson explains why US schools ‘should be open’ with ‘no restrictions’ despite pandemic ‘You don’t shut down the schools,’ ex-NY Times reporter tells Bill Hemmer. ‘You don’t shut down society’

Posted By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.foxnews.com/media/alex-berenson-schools-should-reopen-no-restrictions

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer on the “Hemmer Time” podcast that his preferred response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic “is not that different than what people who are experts on infectious disease were saying we should do about flu pandemics.

“That means,” added Berenson, “you don’t shut down the schools. You know, maybe you temporarily shut them down if there’s a large rash of cases for a week or two. But you don’t shut down the schools. You don’t shut down society. You don’t force people to wear masks in public unless there’s really good evidence that doing so is going to reduce transmission, which we don’t have.”

Berenson, the author of “Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns,” has drawn a large social media following — and become a divisive figure — for his skepticism about the effectiveness of lockdowns and mask-wearing in stopping the spread of the virus.

He told Hemmer that a case to “temporarily shut down the country … for a week or 10 days or two weeks” could have been made around mid-March, as confirmed cases began to multiply in early hotspots like New York City.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Arick Wierson & Bradley Honan:Democrats, it’s too soon to cheer Trump’s defeat

Posted By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/opinions/too-soon-to-cheer-trumps-political-demise-wierson-honan/index.html

(CNN)One need not listen hard these days to hear the sound of Democratic pollsters and pundits gleefully cheering that the end of President Donald Trump’s term in power is finally in sight — Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day on January 20th, 2021.

Such Democratic groupthink goes as follows: the Covid-19 pandemic has killed more than 130,000 Americans and shows no signs of letting up; the economy has been plunged into the deepest recession in decades; and amid ongoing protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, Democrats are fired up and ready to vote as never before.

Moreover, a diverse array of national polls couldn’t be clearer: Trump is in deep trouble nationally — with Joe Biden leading him by double digits.
Democratic strategists seem to believe this means that Biden has successfully cut into the President’s support among key parts of his political coalition: white voters, suburban voters, independents and voters who are middle aged and older. And the latest polling shows that even GOP strongholds like Georgia and Texas could be in play this fall.

It seems Democrats are all too keen on taking a victory lap before they pass the checkered flag.
Those declaring Trump politically finished should recall the words attributed to the famous American novelist Mark Twain. As the story goes, Twain’s death was rumored when his cousin fell ill and reporters couldn’t locate him while touring in Europe. Upon learning of his supposed demise, Twain, according to his biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, told a reporter that “the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.”
As Paine tells it, the rumor appeared to emerge because Twain’s cousin, who shared his legal surname of Clements, fell ill and papers were reporting that Twain was possibly dying. The chattering classes may be in for a nasty November surprise. There are lots of reasons to suspect that Donald Trump may be the Mark Twain of American politics — in that reports of his political demise may be grossly exaggerated.