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Erdogan’s Attempts to Blackmail Europe are Doomed to Fail by Con Coughlin

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15681/erdogan-blackmail-europe

If the current crisis facing Turkey is entirely of Mr Erdogan’s own making, that has not prevented the Turkish president from trying to deflect attention away from his own mishandling of the conflict by seeking to provoke a new migrant crisis in Europe.

When Turkey took the controversial decision last year to purchase Russia’s state-of-the-art S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, Mr Erdogan calculated that it would herald new era of friendly cooperation with Ankara’s long-standing rival in Moscow even if, by pressing ahead with the deal, the Turks risked jeopardising their relationship with NATO, which bitterly opposed the deal.

Russians now find themselves in a direct confrontation with Turkish forces in Idlib province, where the Turks are trying to protect a number of Islamist militias committed to overthrowing the Assad regime… [A]s the recent escalation in fighting has demonstrated, the Russians’ main priority is to support the Assad regime.

Mr Erdogan is also about to discover that there has been a hardening of attitudes among European leaders about dealing with unwanted migrants since the Turkish leader last used his blackmail tactics five years ago…. These days, senior politicians in Mrs Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats take a more hard-nosed approach to the migrant issue, with one senior party member warning the migrants this week, “There is no point coming to Germany. We cannot take you in.”

If Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan believes he can bully European leaders by provoking a fresh migrant crisis in southern Europe, then he would be well-advised to think again.

Ankara’s announcement that it is once again opening the floodgates to allow millions of refugees from Syria’s brutal civil war to travel to south-eastern Europe in search of refuge has been taken to persuade European leaders to back Turkey’s increasingly desperate situation in Syria.

Having launched an ill-considered military offensive against the Assad regime in northern Syria, Mr Erdogan now finds himself facing the consequences of his action, with regime forces, backed by Russia and Iran, waging a highly effective campaign against the Turks, which has so far resulted in the deaths of scores of Turkish troops.

In addition, Turkey’s decision to deploy thousands of troops to Idlib province in northern Syria has resulted in a fresh wave of refugees fleeing across the border into southern Turkey, where Turkish officials are already struggling to cope with the estimated four million Syrian refugees that have already sought sanctuary in the sprawling refugee camps.

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Terrorist Collaborator Pleads Guilty Mother of Syed Farook destroyed evidence of planning for deadly 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/terrorist-collaborat

“The mother of Syed Rizwan Farook, the male shooter in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack,” the U.S. Attorney for California’s central district reports, “has agreed to plead guilty to a federal criminal charge of intending to impede a federal criminal investigation by shredding a map her son generated in connection with the attack.”

Rafia Sultana Shareef, 66 also known as Rafia Farook, “has agreed to plead guilty to a one-count information charging her with alteration, destruction, and mutilation of records,” according to the March 3 statement.

After the attack, Shareef learned her son Syed had been identified as a suspect, and told family members that Syed and his wife Tashfeen Malik had perpetrated the attack at the Inland Regional Center. Shareef “fed into a shredder” Syed’s map, directly related to the planning of the attack that took place on December 2, 2015. For those who may have forgotten, Bringing Calm to Chaos: A Police Foundation Review of the San Bernardino Terrorist Attacks provides a chilling description by those on the scene.

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Michael Cutler: Comprehensive Immigration Reform Should be Renamed the “Overwhelm America Act” How Sanders and radical Dems weaponize compassion to destroy America.

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/comprehensive-immigration-reform-should-be-renamed-michael-cutler/

We must never lose sight of the fact that Bernie Sanders is a pro-communist candidate who has called for a “Political Revolution” in America.  He must be taken at his word. 

Sanders steadfastly lauds Cuba’s Castro for providing health care and education for Cubans, blithely ignoring the barbaric brutality of the Cuban communist government that has caused many Cubans to flee Cuba by perilously taking to the sea on virtually anything that floats.  Sanders also ignores the actual collusion between Castro and Russia that brought the world to the brink of a nuclear World War III in October 1962 when Castro welcomed nuclear-tipped Russian missiles that could have struck cities across the east coast of the United States including Washington, DC and New York.

Bernie has also expressed similar sentiments about former Nicaraguan communist and totalitarian Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega. 

It is beyond disturbing and very telling, that Sanders, a candidate for the U.S. presidency, would hold such anti-American foreign leaders in high esteem.

My dad used to tell me that if you want to turn capitalists into communists, take away their money.

It is my belief that Bernie Sanders plans to achieve a total revolution in America through passage of Comprehensive Immigration Reform coupled with his off the charts costly programs to provide for everyone in the United States, not just citizens of the United States with “Medicare for all,” free college and a number of other such expensive programs that would crash our systems.

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Guilt By Accusation How Democrats use the tactics of Stalin’s prosecutors. Bruce Hendry *****

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/guilt-accusation-bruce-hendry/

Editors’ note: Below is Part 3 of a new essay written by Bruce Hendry: Democrats, Progressives and Socialists. Stay tuned for the ensuing chapters. [See links to previous chapters below this article].

 Guilt By Accusation.

Brett Kavanaugh is an outstanding jurist who was nominated by Donald Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nothing from his judicial past could be seriously be challenged by the Democrats, so at the exact moment when it would cause the most damage, they charged him with groping Christine Blasey Ford at a party 37 years before, when he was all of 15 years old.

Ford, couldn’t initially remember in what year it happened, although she eventually decided on 1982, or where it occurred, or how she got to the party or home from the party.  She did remember the names of four people that were at the party, including her best girlfriend.  Not one of those four people, including her own girlfriend, remember the incident. Her girlfriend said that she had never met Brett Kavanaugh.

End of story, right?  To any fair minded person this woman is either mentally unbalanced or a liar, and the fact that this accusation was withheld for 37 years and then made at the precise moment that would cause the most damage to the Supreme Court nominee would strike any normal person as being staged. The Democrats, both Group Two Democrats, the politicians and Group One Democrats, the loyal but clueless big hearted group rallied behind this ridiculous and destructive tale.

“Guilty until proven innocent;” “she wouldn’t lie because she’s a woman;” “If you don’t believe her, you are insulting every woman that has been sexually assaulted;” they said. But to believe Christine Ford one would also have to believe that every accusing woman always tells the truth and that every accused man lies.

In a “how to sell” seminar one learns about the “assumptive close.” One assumes that the other party agrees with one’s assumption without actually talking about it, then one proceeds to the close. The assumption here was that if Brett Kavanaugh dry humped a girl when he was 15 years old, then 37 years later, as an adult, he would be disqualified from any responsible position. There is no evidence that he did such a thing, but even if he did, as a teenager, that certainly would not in itself disqualify him for responsible positions for the rest of his life. That’s ridiculous. But that’s what the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee argued.

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With Biden ascendant, it’s useful to remember just how awful he is By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/with_biden_ascendant_its_useful_to_remember_just_how_awful_he_is.html

The specter of Americans voting for an open socialist is frightening. We’re way past 1972, when Americans rejected a hard-left candidate. Since then, leftists acquired a stranglehold on education, creating a generation of young people who think socialism is cool. Bernie could have won.

Bernie’s probable departure shouldn’t cause us to ignore that Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. He’s usually wrong, famously dishonest, almost as hard-left now in his policies as Bernie himself, corrupt, and showing signs of severe mental degradation.

(Regarding the incipient senility, Dorothy Parker’s cruel question when the famously taciturn Calvin Coolidge died comes to mind: “How can they tell?” The same can be said of Joe’s mental decay.)

With almost 50 years in office, there’s a laundry list of “awfuls” attached to Biden: Borking the esteemed Robert Bork, plagiarism, leading the hi-tech lynching against Clarence Thomas, crafting the 1994 crime law that warehoused generations of black men in American prisons, leading the intemperate pullout from Iraq that led to ISIS, and helping credit card companies ride roughshod over Americans all spring to mind.

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Dutiful Democrat candidates follow orders and self-terminate By Frank Friday

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/dutiful_democrat_candidates_follow_orders_and_selfterminate.html

You have to give them credit: the Democrat establishment has carefully cultivated and trained a massive welfare state clientele over the decades, and when the word goes out, boy, does everybody fall in line.  This is true even when the designated candidate is the monumentally stupid and corrupt Joe Biden.

This constituency is composed most famously of the long-suffering poor black community — like the folks at the beck and call of Jim Clyburn in South Carolina.  It includes lots of poor whites as well, the ones in the Yankee “opioid belt”; they keep places like New England and Minnesota voting blue.  Then there are characters like Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete, who were on TV saying they were going to fight it out all the way to Milwaukee, until they got the phone call, and then they weren’t.

Here in Kentucky, our primary is not for several months.  But the orders came down here, too, as they did everywhere, to get behind Old Joe if you know what’s good for you.

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The Case for Ginsburg to Recuse Herself Unlike Sotomayor, she has shown bias against Trump by publicly characterizing him as unfit for office. By Michael J. Broyde

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-for-ginsburg-to-recuse-herself-11583367515?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

President Trump recently lashed out at Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Both should recuse themselves on all Trump, or Trump related, matters!” he tweeted. He’s wrong about Justice Sotomayor but has a point about Justice Ginsburg.

In a lone opinion dissenting from the court’s order in Wolf v. Cook County, Justice Sotomayor said she wouldn’t stay a lower court’s injunction against a Trump immigration policy. “Claiming one emergency after another,” she wrote, “the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming limited Court resources in each.” (Three other justices dissented without issuing opinions.)

Justice Sotomayor’s opinion doesn’t disparage Mr. Trump. She criticizes the government’s position, but she’s harsher on her colleagues in the majority, writing that their “recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others.” Mr. Trump is the one personalizing a legal dispute, and it would pervert justice if litigants could force judges to remove themselves from cases simply by denouncing them publicly.

Justice Ginsburg is a different case. In public interviews in 2016 she called Candidate Trump a “faker” and said: “I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country would be—with Donald Trump as our president.” She even mused about fleeing the country: “‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.” She apologized—kind of: “Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.” She admitted her remarks were “ill advised,” and that “in the future I will be more circumspect.”

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Schumer Threatens the Court The leading Senate Democrat draws a rebuke from Roberts.

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/schumer-threatens-the-court-11583368483?mod=opinion_lead_pos

Democrats like to accuse President Trump of violating institutional democratic norms, and often he does with his rhetorical broadsides. But at least he’s never directly threatened the U.S. Supreme Court the way Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did on Wednesday.

Speaking to a crowd on the Supreme Court steps, the leading Senate Democrat declared: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.” He meant Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the newest Justices who were appointed by President Trump.

Mr. Schumer was speaking before abortion-rights activists as the Supreme Court considers whether to curtail the ability of abortion providers to sue on behalf of women seeking abortions—a doctrine known as third-party standing. Mr. Schumer, still addressing Messrs. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, added: “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

The “whirlwind”? “What hit you”? We won’t go so far as to call that an incitement to violence, but it surely was a threat of political reprisal against the Justices if they don’t vote the way Mr. Schumer wants. Does he mean impeachment or packing the Court?

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The anybody-but-Bernie comeback Ryan Cooper

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://theweek.com/authors/ryan-cooper

VERY important issue which so far the MSM has treated as a 3rd rail -dementia…..DPS

For decades, the cliché about American political parties has gone that “Republicans fall in line, while Democrats fall in love.” But for a significant portion of today’s Democratic electorate, that is not the case. Joe Biden’s campaign came back from the brink of death on Super Tuesday, on the winds of a sudden burst of coordinated support from the Democratic establishment. At time of writing he was projected to have won Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Alabama, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee, and was running close in Maine.

In the South Carolina primary last weekend, exit polls showed that Biden won a smashing victory primarily thanks to one person: House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the most powerful Democrat in the state, who endorsed Biden just days before the primary. After that win, both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out and endorsed Biden, as did his former opponent Beto O’Rourke and several other Democratic officials.

But this flash coronation wasn’t because Biden convinced his competitors that he had the best policies or the best temperament to take on Donald Trump. There is one reason and one reason alone the establishment has rallied around Biden: He is not Bernie Sanders.

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Boris Johnson, Disraeli Has His Eye On Your ‘New Dawn’ So Does Our Brexit Diarist By Stephen MacLean

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/brexit-mr-johnson-disraeli-has-his-eye-on-your/91038/

Boris Johnson, in his latest riposte to Brussels, is the man who won the heart of Brexiteers. This is the Prime Minister who tells the European Union that, unless significant progress is made quickly toward reaching a trade deal, then Britain will spend its time until December 31 focusing on its global trade agenda, relegating its future relationship with Europe to a footnote.

This Boris is in stark contrast to his predecessor, Theresa May. She enters the history books as having been too willing to bow to Brussels bureaucrats, at the expense of Britons and despite a referendum that called for the contrary. The new, post-Brexit Boris is also tacking differently than pre-Brexit Boris, who stirred up unrest among Brexiteers for seemingly going limp on full British independence.

Now, per the London Sun, the Prime Minister, with a ruling majority in Parliament, is feeling his oats. Boris’s “radical reshaping” reminds one of Sixtus V. Cardinal Montalto accedes to the Chair of Peter in 1585 as a “caretaker” pope — infirm and hunchbacked, clearly not long for this world. Yet no sooner is he elected than he throws away his cane, stands bolt-upright, and cries: “Now I am Cæsar.”

The Prime Minister’s renewed vigor thus cheers Brexiteers intent on full independence. This, though, was not Boris’s only volte-face. Students of Benjamin Disraeli have seen in BoJo not a little of that wily Victorian statesman. Both leaders captured the popular appeal and exude a joyous political élan. No less significant, a reputation as a “chancer” clings to them.