CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

VINDMAN-

Posted By on February 13th, 2020

https://civildeadline.com/bombshell-report-alexander-vindman-

Bombshell Report: Alexander Vindman Admits He Made Up Parts Of Trump’s Call Summary!

Democrats are trying to spin yet another false narrative that the President would have been impeached if they were allowed to call witnesses. As time goes on, however, it’s become painfully evident that Democrats built their entire motion to impeach off of a flat out lie.

Previously, the public knew that Democrats based what they claimed was ‘abuse of power’ by the President on hearsay. We now know that it far more sinister than that.

According to a report done by Breitbart, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman admitted he made up elements of President Donald Trump’s call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an official summary.

Prior to the call, Vindman included a discussion about corruption in the talking points provided to the president but Trump did not use them in the call.

The Vindman Caper: Lee Zeldin and Victor Davis Hanson Nail the Obama-Fomented Subterfuge in the National Security Council

https://www.redstate.com/stu-in-sd/2020/02/12/the-vindman-caper-lee-zeldin-and-vd

The Democrats and the legacy media continue to propagate the false narrative that the firing of the Vindman twins – and now the projected reassignment of at least 70 other staffers – from the National Security Council is either witness retaliation, retribution, part of the “ongoing cover-up,” or just “pure cussed orneriness” on the part of the President in the aftermath of his acquittal-for-life.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Beware of a Palestinian state – the Kuwait lesson Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on February 13th, 2020

The Palestinian track record

In the Arab Middle East, unlike Western democracies, historical memory is very long. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is forgiven.

Therefore, Arabs are aware of the direct correlation between the scope of Palestinian freedom of action in Arab countries, on the one hand, and the level of anti-Arab Palestinian terrorism, on the other hand.  

This harsh correlation was demonstrated in Egypt and Syria during the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, as well as in Jordan.  The latter experienced the 1970 civil war as a result of the unprecedented self-rule provided to Mahmoud Abbas’ PLO in Jordan. It was manifested in Lebanon, which was plagued by a series of civil wars during the 1970s and early 1980s, ignited by the extraordinary autonomy accorded to Mahmoud Abbas’ PLO in Lebanon.  

Also, in 1993/94, the establishment of a ground-breaking Palestinian Authority in Judea & Samaria triggered a massive Christian flight from Bethlehem, Beit Jallah and Beit Sahour.  Consequently, this Christian dominated area was transformed into a tiny enclave of a 12% Christian minority.

Simultaneously, notwithstanding Palestinian verbal commitments to desist from incitement and violence, Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority embarked on an unprecedented wave of anti-Jewish hate education and terrorism.   

ISRAEL, MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

From Harlem to Tel Aviv: Aulcie Perry’s Basketball Journey by Gary Shapiro

Posted By on February 12th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/01/16/from-harlem-to-tel-aviv-aulcie-perrys-basketball-journey/

Legendary basketball player Aulcie Perry’s life has been remarkable on and off the court. 

This African-American athlete’s life changed dramatically after playing basketball on a court in Harlem in 1976. A scout from Israel saw him there and recruited him to join the team Maccabi Tel Aviv. Within a year, Perry catapulted the team to a European championship, a feat repeated four years later. 

Israeli director Dani Menkin’s documentary “Aulcie” follows the arc of Perry’s remarkable life and career. It premiered this week at the New York Jewish Film Festival, which is sponsored by the Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center.  It has upcoming screenings in Las Vegas and Palm Beach, among other locations.  

“It is a love story,” said Menkin. He noted that Perry embraced Israel and the feeling was mutual. Perry converted to Judaism, became an Israeli citizen and adopted a Hebrew name, Elisha Ben Avraham. And Israel rescued his career when he was released by the New York Knicks before ever playing game in the NBA.

“In return, he put Israeli basketball on the map,” said Menkin.

The film describes Perry’s early life growing up in Newark, New Jersey, in the 1960s. Born in Newark Beth Israel Hospital, Perry was already 6’5” at the age of 13. The violence of the period was striking. Perry said that around 20 of his fellow high school students were dead before they graduated. “Basketball was my way out. I knew it was going to be a way out of a bad situation,” said Perry.

Maccabi Tel Aviv gave him his start. In the film, the team is described as becoming part of “the in thing” in the 1970s. For example, Moshe Dayan could be seen shaking hands with players on the court. Perry became the equivalent of a pop star. 

“He was Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar rolled into one,” said Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff. “He turned himself and his team into the kings of Europe.”

He and Israeli model Tami Ben Ami became an item. They were a power couple, like “Brangelina,” said Wolff of Sports Illustrated, referring to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. 

While Perry’s life story has ups and downs, the latter has much to do with drugs. What started as an addiction to pain killers for his knee “became my downfall,” acknowledged Perry. “It’s when everything began to collapse for me.” 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Olmert and Abbas: Laughing and Crying By Moshe Phillips

Posted By on February 12th, 2020

https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/olmert-and-abbas-laughing-and-crying/2020/02/12/

“Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas will hold a joint press conference in opposition to US President Donald Trump’s peace plan,” according to Channel 12 News. Unbelievable, right? A former Israeli prime minister and a one-time star of the Likud party allied with Yasser Arafat’s heir and protégé? It must be fake news. But, alas, it is not.

Perhaps more than any other leader in the State of Israel’s history Olmert believes that his personal opinion of what Israel’s borders should be set as is always correct.

When he was a hawk and advocated the retention of all of the lands liberated in 1967 and later, when as a dove when he showed a full desire to retreat from all of those same exact lands. The one thing that Olmert never wavered on was that his view of what to do with Judea and Samaria was the right way. Olmert’s political journey from one camp to the other had been the story that dominated the public view of him at least until he was convicted of corruption in 2015.

At the time it was happening, Olmert’s political metamorphosis was given nearly the same intense news coverage as former PM Ariel Sharon’s was at the time. Was Olmert’s story as straight forward as the media portrayed or was there something that the news outlets missed?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Roger Stone Sentencing Fiasco By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on February 12th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/the-roger-stone-sentencing-fiasco/

Some Justice Department personnel handled it questionably, but Trump’s reaction was worse.

The first thing to grasp about the Roger Stone sentencing fiasco is that Stone, even accepting the worst plausible gloss on his crimes, is a 67-year-old nonviolent first offender. If the criminal-justice “reform” fad were authentic, and not a stratagem of social-justice warriors who have taken Washington’s surfeit of useful idiots for a ride, then we could all agree that the original seven-to-nine-year sentence advocated by prosecutors was too draconian — even if it was, as we shall see, a faithful application of the federal sentencing guidelines as written.

But no. Like criminal-justice “reform,” the Stone prosecution is more politics than law enforcement. It was the Mueller probe’s last gasp at pretending there might be something to the Russia-collusion narrative – notwithstanding that, when the “gee, it sure feels like there could be some collusion here” indictment was filed, over a year and a half after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, it had long been manifest that there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy.

So, the Left has a quandary here: Do they hate Trump more than they love sentencing “reform”? We could have predicted the decision to go with hating Trump, and thus fomenting outrage over DOJ’s retraction of its original sentencing recommendation of about nine years’ imprisonment, now slashed to a far more reasonable range of four years or less. To be fair, though, Trump critics could not have been expected to resist the combination of DOJ missteps and Trump Twitter taunts that mark Stone’s sentencing, the combination that has managed to turn Mueller’s maulers into media martyrs.

MEDIA Comments turned off

MSM going for new record: 4 major outlets run fake news stories in only 10 hours yesterday By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on February 12th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/msm_going_for_new_record_4_major_outlets_run_fake_news_stories_in_only_10_hours_yesterday.html

The mainstream media have so debased themselves that their attacks on a candidate can actually drive support to the target.  This has already happened among Republicans, only 15% of whom express trust in the media.  The astronomical levels of support for President Trump among Republicans is in part due to the unfairness of the unrelenting media attacks on him.  A similar phenomenon seems to be taking place among supporters of Bernie Sanders, who react to media attacks from establishmentarian outlets by embracing him even more fervently.  They are, after all, angry about what they see as unfairness and are suspicious of the powerful.  They still see the media as among the powers that be.  See, for example, this precious moment when a voter tells MSNBC that its criticism of Bernie turned her into a supporter:

Keep it up, MSM.  You are becoming an involuntary asset for the GOP.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

North Korea goes all out to hide its coronavirus cases By Monica Showalter

Posted By on February 12th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/north_korea_goes_all_out_to_hide_its_coronavirus_cases.html

China’s coronavirus epidemic has spread to nearly every country in Asia, with one little curious exception: North Korea.

Sure, a casual outside observer might note that North Korea is a tightly controlled communist country, but actually, it’s got a pretty porous border with China and, being a totalitarian hellhole, a vigorous black market trade moving in and out for goods.

This might just mean it’s got more coronavirus than it’s letting on.

That’s what the reports are now saying, starting with Australia’s Daily Mercury:

The North Korean capital of Pyongyang was supposed to stage a massive military parade on Saturday to spark its 72nd anniversary celebrating the founding of the country’s armed forces. Last year, the country’s dictator Kim Jong-un presided over a grand procession displaying all of the hermit nation’s new weapons, with an onslaught of soldiers marching in perfect step. This year, nothing like that took place. Local media reports, heavily controlled by Mr Kim and his ruling party, said the Workers’ Party had been successful combating “severe and dangerous difficulties” but didn’t mention the parade at all. That sparked suspicion the coronavirus, which originated in mainland China and has spread to almost 30 countries worldwide, had reached the hermit nation.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Goes From Leftist Hero To Has-Been In One Interview By Joy Pullmann

Posted By on February 12th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/12/ruth-bader-ginsburg-goes-from-leftist-hero-to-has-been-in-one-interview/

Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser proclaimed that ‘Justice Ginsburg’s feminist legacy teeters on a knife’s edge’ because for once she adhered to the text of the law.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is about to lose her feminist card. Ironically, it’s for departing from her usual legal schtick to reinforce that what the law says matters, instead of giving authorities license to do whatever the heck they want.

On Monday, Ginsburg reinforced previous assertions that the legal deadline for passing a 1970s and 1980s constitutional amendment to ignore sex distinctions has passed.

“I would like to see a new beginning. I’d like it to start over,” Ginsburg said about the so-called Equal Rights Amendment Monday.” There’s too much controvery about latecomers — Virginia long after the deadline passed — plus a number of states have withdrawn their ratification. So if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard states that said, ‘We’ve changed our minds’?”

When Congress went through its part of the amendment authorizing process for the ERA, its authorization included a deadline for ratification by the states. Supreme Court precedent says such deadlines for ratification are legally valid. Still, today’s left chooses to ignore the parts of the law they don’t like while using the parts of it they currently find to their liking, or making things up if they don’t like the law at all.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Why The Green New Deal Would Destroy The Environment The Green New Deal is anything but ‘clean’ or ‘green.’ Even the relatively modest numbers of solar and wind installations in the United States today are causing serious environmental damage. By Paul Driessen

Posted By on February 12th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/12/why-the-green-new-deal-would-destroy-the-environment/

A few minutes of serious thought from self-described environmentalists would prompt a realization that if the Green New Deal, a program championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were implemented, it would create an environmental disaster.

In recent decades, policymakers have forced public utilities to generate increasingly more electricity from fashionable “renewable energy” sources, especially wind and solar, and pushed automakers to manufacture more electric vehicles. Their chief goal is to eliminate reliable, affordable, generally clean fossil fuels, including natural gas, even though they generate most of America’s electricity and power most U.S. transportation.

Environmentalists claim to worry that carbon dioxide from these fuels will cause devastating global warming. Many would also eliminate nuclear power, which they say is inherently unsafe.

As I argue in a new Heartland Institute policy study, however, environmentalists have paid too little attention to the serious harm Green New Deal policies would inflict on the environment — including scenic lands, wildlife habitats, and threatened and endangered species. Implementing the Green New Deal would undermine the very values environmentalists have espoused for decades.

America faces a dilemma. Will it focus on real environmental problems that do measurable harm to human and ecological wellbeing, or will it mandate policies to head off climate disasters that are based on warming predictions have been repeatedly proven wrong by real-world empirical observations? Will it recognize that harnessing intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar energy requires enormous amounts of raw materials and mining, resulting in massive land-use impacts and human rights abuses, and is anything but clean, green, renewable, and sustainable? Or will it ignore all this?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Here They Go Again: Pelosi to Launch New Investigation into Trump By Megan Fox

Posted By on February 12th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/here-they-go-again-pelosi-to-launch-new-investigation-into-trump/

Just when you thought America’s long impeachment drama was over and behind us, the Democrats have begun the process to do it again. While most of us believed they would try to repeat impeachment, we thought it would start in the second term and not a mere week after Trump was acquitted the first time.

But Nancy Pelosi is hot under the collar about Trump tweeting about the absurdly long sentence that Deep State prosecutors suggested for Roger Stone. The president tweeted out a storm of criticism when the news broke that prosecutors were recommending nine years in prison.

Keep in mind that child rapists get an average of three to seven years in prison. Calling the recommendation for the sentence, which was certainly politically motivated, “horrible and very unfair” (and it may not even a crime based on the way these prosecutors do business), the president then went on to question the prosecutors. These same prosecutors, who had ruined the lives of many people surrounding the president, were connected to the Mueller witch-hunt. None of the charges were related to the president or anything his administration had done but were a conglomeration of tax offenses from years ago and “lying to the FBI,” which was a crime created after the investigation began.